[WIP] Kip Engineering: Now updating - Universal Docking Ports

[LitaAlto]

If you're using the station hubs, then be prepared to rebuild your craft. This was my first ever mod for KSP and that being the case it was very shoddily made for a number of reasons. The upcoming update will break pretty much everything worth mentioning.

Oh well, I guess SkyPad 6 is a thing, then.

"Attention SkyPad 5 crew and residents: An Emergency Kraken Warning has been issued for all space stations. Please proceed to the nearest airlock and prepare for evacuation once--"

*loud woosh of sudden decompression and emergency airlocks sealing*

"ONCE A RESCUE SHIP ARRIVES. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EVACUATE BEFORE--"

*sound of imploding pressurized crew tube*

​"PLEASE STOP."

[CaptainKipard]

What about make only a top mode and a left node for these parts?

node_stack_top =

node_stack_left =

The names make no difference afaik and I'm using NODE{} with transforms anyway. It's much easier to set up.

Oh well, I guess SkyPad 6 is a thing, then.

"Attention SkyPad 5 crew and residents: An Emergency Kraken Warning has been issued for all space stations. Please proceed to the nearest airlock and prepare for evacuation once--"

*loud woosh of sudden decompression and emergency airlocks sealing*

"ONCE A RESCUE SHIP ARRIVES. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EVACUATE BEFORE--"

*sound of imploding pressurized crew tube*

​"PLEASE STOP."

What's this?

Edited October 20, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Kolago]

Click on the Logo under LitaAlto's post and you will see!

[LitaAlto]

What's this?

SkyPad 5 is the latest space station I've built with your hubs. Since you've announced the hubs will break existing crafts after the upgrade, it's time to retire that station and prepare for the next iteration.

(Sorry, got carried away with my headcanon about how the Kerbals would react to knowing their station is about to break.)

[Gaalidas]

That little kerbal reaction segment was awesome.

[LitaAlto]

That little kerbal reaction segment was awesome.

Many Kerbals died to bring us this information.

(Seriously, thank you!)

[CaptainKipard]

To be fair to everyone we should add MM configs for each of the life support mods, because I can't imagine people using more than one of them at once.

Other resources like monopropellant should be configurable in the VAB for each part if possible, so JSIPartUtilities seems like the only way to go.

[CaptainKipard]

LitaAlto I don't want to discuss development over PM, please use the thread.

The part names are still the same, but there are new parts too:

kip30hub <- 2.5m version

kip30hubmed <- 1.25 version

kip45hub

kip45hubmed

kip60hub

kip60hubmed

kiphexhub <-- the big one wont have a medium version.

[toadicus]

Kip, I'm happy to move this discussion into the development thread as you prefer.

Context for everyone else:

Pending [sekrit new things from other people], I'm going to go ahead and implement an optional gender restriction in ADN. Unless you strongly disagree, I'm going to continue using the "helper module" approach, so the parts can be used without the plugin (though they won't behave like gendered ports in that case).

A sample part definition might include something like this:

MODULE
{
	name = ModuleDockingNode
	nodeType = size2
}

MODULE
{
	name = ModuleAdaptiveDockingNode
	ValidSizes = size2
	Gender = male
}

The Gender field will be optional. No or invalid definition will result in non-gendered behavior (as we have currently); male or female (or any other capitalization thereof) will result in enforced gendered behavior.

Specifically, ADN will obfuscate the ModuleDockingNode's "nodeType", to prevent Squad's code from recognizing the ports as a match. When ADN detects an appropriate match (same size in ValidSizes, opposite gender), it will swap the types to something consistent (but still incompatible with other ports), and Squad's code will do docking as normal.

I can manipulate the magnet force in a variety of ways, including just shutting it off entirely (technically so can you, by manipulating acquireRange in your ModuleDockingNode definition). But, to keep things playable without a mechanized solution, you'd need to have your colliders matched perfectly so players can get the transforms lined up appropriately. If you have a specific behavior in mind let me know.

I have messed around with requiring a specific rotation for TweakableEverything, and I recall Squad's code for it basically just didn't work. With ADN I can probably revisit that, if it's something you want for this.

This all sounds great.

I think acquireRange should be enough. I'll turn it way down.

Precise roll would be great too. Are you able make the magnet force perfect rotation if the orientation is close, or would you just need to have a viable range?

I'll look into the roll stuff. I'm pretty sure Squad has provisions for it (there are fields in ModuleDockingNode for "captureMinRollDot" and "acquireMinRollDot"), but when I tried messing with those values many months ago nothing happened. Even if that's still the case, now that I have a plugin that is detecting all these things I can see about implementing it myself.

Edited October 29, 2014 by toadicus

[LitaAlto]

LitaAlto I don't want to discuss development over PM, please use the thread.

The part names are still the same, but there are new parts too:

kip30hub <- 2.5m version

kip30hubmed <- 1.25 version

kip45hub

kip45hubmed

kip60hub

kip60hubmed

kiphexhub <-- the big one wont have a medium version.

OK, will do. Sorry I misunderstood your original request.

(For everyone else: I asked about the part names for the sake of making some MM configs for life support.)

[CaptainKipard]

If anyone has any experience with JSIPartUtilities please visit this link and help me figure out how to have configurable resources. I'd like to give players the option of adding or removing rcs propellant to any of the hubs.

[LitaAlto]

I have ModuleManager life support configs for the station hubs, including TAC, ECLSS, IFI, and Snacks. Cpt. Kipard, to his credit as a developer, is keeping consistent names across releases, so these configs should work with upcoming releases as well as current ones.

Download here.

I only have Snacks for testing. If you have TAC, ECLSS, or IFI, please give these a try.

I presumed that the large hubs should have resources for four Kerbals, while the medium ones would have resources for two. I also went from example configurations which may or may not be properly balanced. Feedback on the config is very welcome.

[CaptainKipard]

Excellent.

Hmm, I guess we should have talked about the amounts a bit more. When you have a minute could you tell me how long all of these last?

Also I didn't realise this earlier but the medium parts aren't big enough to hold Kerbals and resources. I think I'll just keep them as empty structural parts.

[LitaAlto]

Excellent.

Hmm, I guess we should have talked about the amounts a bit more. When you have a minute could you tell me how long all of these last?

Also I didn't realise this earlier but the medium parts aren't big enough to hold Kerbals and resources. I think I'll just keep them as empty structural parts.

Since I'm more familiar with Snacks! LSS I can speak to that easily enough--on average .5 Snacks are consumed per Kerbal per Kerbin day. (That is slightly variable--Kerbals with high Courage will sneak an extra Snack here and there, while Kerbals with high Stupidity will forget to eat now and then.) Presuming two Kerbals per medium hub and four Kerbals per large hub, that translates to about 200 days' worth of Snacks per hub per Kerbal.

I think that's reasonable--long enough to make sense for a space station, but not so long that you can go indefinitely without service missions or greenhouses. But I can make these values more restrictive, so you only have 100 days' worth of supplies instead.

I went with default configs for two- and four-Kerbal pods for the other three LSS addons, so I'll have to get back to you on how long those supplies would last.

Regardless, if you've decided to leave the medium hubs as purely structural parts, it would be pretty easy to drop them from these config files, and only provide life support resources for the large hubs.

[CaptainKipard]

I should have asked you first; Are you doing this for me to redistribute with the parts or do you want to keep this as your own mod. If it's the latter then ignore the rest of this post.

I'd like to think about this in terms of the ISS. I'm typing this as I work it out, so a lot of it might not be very interesting.

Right now there are six people in space (presumably on board the station).

The ISS receives food, air and water about once or twice a month, based on this wiki article. To make the game less repetitive, let's say you'd need to send supplies once every month for 6 kerbals.

A small space station capable of supporting 6 kerbals would have I think 3 or more of these parts. Two straight sections (each with two crew capacity), The processing lab (also with two crew capacity), one x or 6-way hub for docking or expansion. In my mind it makes little sense to have storage inside parts which don't have straight walls, I think I'll only have life support storage capacity in the I sections, the diagonal sections, and the T and L-hub.

So 6 kerbals at 0.5 snacks per day means 3 snacks per day. Times 30 days is 90 snacks in the whole station. So let's say 40 snacks in the I-hub and L-hub and 20 in the T-hub. That's a lot less than in those MM configs. Afterall a station isn't just made of one part.

So

40 snacks in: I-hub, 30hub, 45hub, 60hub, L-hub

20 snacks in: T-hub

0 snacks in everything else.

The other MM configs should have equivalent amounts plus space for waste.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[LitaAlto]

I should have asked you first; Are you doing this for me to redistribute with the parts or do you want to keep this as your own mod. If it's the latter then ignore the rest of this post.

...

So 6 kerbals at 0.5 snacks per day means 3 snacks per day. Times 30 days is 90 snacks in the whole station. So let's say 40 snacks in the I-hub and L-hub and 20 in the T-hub. That's a lot less than in those MM configs. Afterall a station isn't just made of one part.

So

40 snacks in: I-hub, 30hub, 45hub, 60hub, L-hub

20 snacks in: T-hub

0 snacks in everything else.

The other MM configs should have equivalent amounts plus space for waste.

I can go whichever way. I'm happy to follow your lead here. And you have a valid point about the resources as I originally defined them.

I do want to ask Sarbian about regex support in MM though--if I can keep the config relatively simple, it'd be easier to maintain and tweak. Without regex, that's six separate configurations per cfg. That's manageable but not exactly elegant.

[CaptainKipard]

I thought you can override parts, later in the config.

If not, I can make things easier by changing the names.

[LitaAlto]

I thought you can override parts, later in the config.

If not, I can make things easier by changing the names.

I wondered about that, actually. Let me experiment first with the character classes since that'd make the configs very simple. If that doesn't work I'll try your suggestion of using a wildcard to set a default for the large hubs and then define exceptions after the fact.

[update: Sarbian has weighed in. While MM does use .NET regex, Unity itself apparently reserves certain characters, like square brackets, that you need to use regex character classes. Meanwhile, the day job has been pretty brutal. But I will have more spare time this weekend to try the override option out and to finish my research into other life support systems.]

Edited November 6, 2014 by LitaAlto

[OldMold]

Hi Cap. Any updates you can share?

[CaptainKipard]

Not on my end. I've been waiting for LitaAlto to finish her(?) configs and doing other projects in the meantime.

I might be remodelling the 1.25m parts, and only using the scaled versions of the 2.5m parts as placeholders because the presence of handrails was intended to convey a sense of scale. That's all really.

[LitaAlto]

Yes, her, thank you.

Sorry I've been elsewhere. Right now I'm waiting on a new and rebalanced build of ECLSS which should be dropping fairly soon.

PunkyFickle just released a TAC part resource calculator, which will let me finish that config much more quickly than expected.

Snacks! and IFI shouldn't take long to write or test. If anyone wants to try those out with the current hubs, I may have something on Friday. TAC will be done over the weekend and I'd like testers for that as well.

[CaptainKipard]

Good timing, I was about to give up and release the things alone.

I wouldn't worry about testing. The numbers I suggested to you are already more gamey than realistic, and even if it's not enough people can add resources the usual way for each of those mods.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[LitaAlto]

Do we want to continue to wait on ECLSS?

I did ask if I could get the figures used for the rebalanced mod, but haven't heard back from Shasol (who's continuing the mod from asmi) as of yet. I did just send Shasol a private message so hopefully he'll answer soon.

The rest are done, so if you don't want to wait I can just archive what I have and post it.

[CaptainKipard]

Post what you have, and do ECLSS one when you're able. Thankyou.

[LitaAlto]

Very well. Here's the configs for Snacks, IFI, and TAC:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/07mb3gz7g0kdkah/LifeSupportMMConfigsForLPHubs.zip?dl=0