"shutting down" and "waking up" probes

[Drew Kerman]

So, I noticed in a recent play session that I can turn off the electrical supplies to my probe, causing it to go dead. But then I can re-enable the electrical supply and the probe will come back to life. This is possible even with RemoteTech2 - cutting off the supply means no connection, but that doesn't stop me from turning the supply back on and regaining a connection.

I was considering using this for long-term probe missions, but not sure how much of a cheat this would be. I recently read about the Rosetta spacecraft "waking up" after 957 days and this is the behavior I'm looking to model. Maybe a manual edit of the persistence.sfs file to remove a little bit of the overall electrical supply for the "trickle" that was used to keep track of the days leading to the automatic wake-up cycle.

[Claw]

I'm not sure if you have a question in there, but I like the philosophy. It seems reasonable to be able to "shutdown" a probe and set it for wakeup XXX days later. Although that may complicate the game for little gain in play value since craft fly around on rails when not in focus anyway.

Being able to manually shut them down and turn back on seems fine to me at this point since you can't program anything into the craft (in stock KSP anyway).

[CaptainKipard]

That seems like cheating to me, but you could try doing it with kOS by writing a script that disables everything except the probe core, and re-enables the antennae after a set amount of time. You wouldn't be able to control the probe during that time, until it wakes itself up.

[Drew Kerman]

It's like a question in how I should do this for a good balance of realism and gameplay

Although that may complicate the game for little gain in play value since craft fly around on rails when not in focus anyway.

I haven't done any far-flung missions yet but you're saying that a probe that's drifting off into interstellar space, if I don't load it until like a year after it launches it will have the same power level as when I last loaded it a year ago?

[Jimbimbibble]

If you're concerned about electricity usage, just deploy some solar panels.

[PhaserArray]

So, I noticed in a recent play session that I can turn off the electrical supplies to my probe, causing it to go dead. But then I can re-enable the electrical supply and the probe will come back to life. This is possible even with RemoteTech2 - cutting off the supply means no connection, but that doesn't stop me from turning the supply back on and regaining a connection.

I was considering using this for long-term probe missions, but not sure how much of a cheat this would be. I recently read about the Rosetta spacecraft "waking up" after 957 days and this is the behavior I'm looking to model. Maybe a manual edit of the persistence.sfs file to remove a little bit of the overall electrical supply for the "trickle" that was used to keep track of the days leading to the automatic wake-up cycle.

I have actually cut off the power to my probe until it reached its destination, with RemoteTech2. I cut the power off, meaning the probe went dead but later I clicked the enable/disable power flow button again and to my surprise, it worked, the power supply re-opened and the probe woke up. You don't need to edit the persistence file, I believe the same thing works with no RemoteTech2 too.

[Claw]

It's like a question in how I should do this for a good balance of realism and gameplay

Yep, I agree.

I haven't done any far-flung missions yet but you're saying that a probe that's drifting off into interstellar space, if I don't load it until like a year after it launches it will have the same power level as when I last loaded it a year ago?

Yes, at least in my experience.

[Drew Kerman]

Yes, at least in my experience.

Hrm, unless someone can verify I'll need to test this. I can understand not modeling detailed physics but resources consumption shouldn't be a heavy processing task to undertake for any ongoing missions, especially when the entire ship data is loaded regardless of whether you actually load into that ship or not through the tracking station

[Claw]

Hrm, unless someone can verify I'll need to test this. I can understand not modeling detailed physics but resources consumption shouldn't be a heavy processing task to undertake for any ongoing missions, especially when the entire ship data is loaded regardless of whether you actually load into that ship or not through the tracking station

KSP isn't modeling detailed physics when warping or for ships on rails. My understanding is that ships on rails are simply point masses gliding along their trajectories.

For example, you can have a ship that dips down to 40km in Kerbin's atmosphere and back up. If it isn't in physics range (on rails), the ship will not aerobrake.

BTW, I tried running a probe on batteries only that I happen to have recently launched. It had solar panels but they were stowed (and had never been unstowed). I only warped about a week (it should have been dead), but when not in focus, it did not experience drain. I'm not sure if having stowed panels mattered. (Maybe I'll try without panels later unless someone already knows...)

[sonicsst]

I have actually cut off the power to my probe until it reached its destination, with RemoteTech2. I cut the power off, meaning the probe went dead but later I clicked the enable/disable power flow button again and to my surprise, it worked, the power supply re-opened and the probe woke up. You don't need to edit the persistence file, I believe the same thing works with no RemoteTech2 too.

I believe that's a bug in RemoteTech2 that has been fixed in the latest version. I used to be able to target dishes without a connection by clicking on them but now it says 'no connection'.

Edited March 9, 2014 by sonicsst