Universal Storage 1.4.0.0 (For KSP 1.4.x) 13th March 2018

[smunisto]

Thanks, Coolbeer, for the shared files. I will test them tonight in my install.

By balanced I meant comparing whether an Octo, full of food(for example) wedges and a normal 2.5m tank of food will have supply of food for the same amount of days.

And Daishi - I was wondering - those wedges have relatively high polygon counts, right? Is the performance impact negligible enough for you to justify the additional modelling at the back of the wedge? After all - once attached in the VAB, you never see that back side again, right?

[Paul Kingtiger]

Finding information on food amounts in space is annoyingly difficult. In the end I looked at lots of pictures of meals for the ISS, space shuttle and Apollo. The shuttle was the most helpful as the meals come prepacked in a tray which you can easily estimate the size of. I came up with the value of 2000cm3 or 2 liters of food per day (assuming 2 meals per day).

With a wedge having a maximum size of 122 liters that is about 60 days of food (a little less to make room for packing and structure. I think my current placeholder value is 50 days food per wedge.

For water I've gone for 3 liters a day for drinking and washing (assuming there is some additional water content in the food). That limits your mission times until you put a water purifier on your craft, although a fuel cell helps.

[CoolBeer]

A simplistic wedge can be done in as little as 52 triangles(28 if you don't make the back end flat).

(This is based on a 24 segment cylinder, you could make it even less, but roundness really starts to suffer the lower you go).

It wouldn't be as nice though, though you could do some things with normal mapping I suppose, like the stringers on the outside.

It could be interesting to check if there would be any difference at all in performance between the current models and a simplistic one.

-

Kolbjorn

[Daishi]

Thanks, Coolbeer, for the shared files. I will test them tonight in my install.

By balanced I meant comparing whether an Octo, full of food(for example) wedges and a normal 2.5m tank of food will have supply of food for the same amount of days.

And Daishi - I was wondering - those wedges have relatively high polygon counts, right? Is the performance impact negligible enough for you to justify the additional modelling at the back of the wedge? After all - once attached in the VAB, you never see that back side again, right?

For 50 tris? Nah its not really worth leaving a gaping hole in the mesh to save a tiny number of polygons. If they're not there you really notice them, and that back hatch is only 10 tris. Most of the polygon density is in spherical shapes, canisters, or tubes, (generally arranged where you see them as as main components of the part) where you need a fair bit to create the appearance of a smooth surface. Kindof another reason i want to step away from the gas block as a permanent placeholder - its got far more polygons than it needs.

A simplistic wedge can be done in as little as 52 triangles(28 if you don't make the back end flat).

http://i.imgur.com/Dbd5Bmq.png

(This is based on a 24 segment cylinder, you could make it even less, but roundness really starts to suffer the lower you go).

It wouldn't be as nice though, though you could do some things with normal mapping I suppose, like the stringers on the outside.

It could be interesting to check if there would be any difference at all in performance between the current models and a simplistic one.

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Kolbjorn

I dont think it matters tbh performance wise, as much as ram or layered shaders would (normals, specular, emissive heat maps, etc). Mesh is much easier to calculate by the engine than rendering its surface with multiple layered maps. Remember the old VAB? And how fast the game was back then? It had (probably) hundreds of thousands of polygons due to boolean modelling and other methods not ideal for poly efficiency. As soon as the new one was built (lower poly count, but much much more textures) the game started to get a bit sluggish.

I mean, physics and nodes are the main bottleneck here. Paul's doing a brilliant job packing as much as he can into these parts so you dont need thousands to get anywhere. I don't know what the magic wedge count for lag is, but it shouldn't be a game changer

[Raptor831]

I mean, physics and nodes are the main bottleneck here. Paul's doing a brilliant job packing as much as he can into these parts so you dont need thousands to get anywhere. I don't know what the magic wedge count for lag is, but it shouldn't be a game changer

Yeah, poly count usually isn't an issue. There are 2 parts that I know of that bring my machine (iMac 2.8GHz i7, 4GB RAM, 512MB ATI Radeon, OpenGL 2): 1) the IACBMs from FusTek Expansion, and 2) the super-ultra-large solar panel in Near Future. I think the Balka solar panels from KOSMOS are bad for me as well, but it's been a while since I've used those so I don't remember. I think those examples are just extremely detailed models and/or textures. Other than that, the only limitation I have is pure part count.

I can do about 200-250 parts on launch and still be ok. Might be able to push higher since I've made some tweaks. My stations I try and keep below 150 to avoid lag. But, in interplanetary space (or high enough orbit) I probably could do 300+ parts quite readily. Processor speed is the bottleneck, as that does all the physics calcs. 64-bit would help that (would help RAM usage more, until Unity can actually dump textures when it doesn't need them), but it still would probably be the bottleneck. Graphics in KSP is something you can actually "waste" cycles on generally anyway, so a few polys aren't going to hurt.

The only downside to these parts is the fact that you'll have 9 minimum for the octo. Not great, but if you want to swap any out then you need it. And that's the best thing about these parts. Strap some octos on a station, and you'll just need to replace the wedges when the O2 runs out. Shuttle runs, anyone?

[Ruedii]

It would be nice to make electrolysis capable fuel cells (can turn the water back into hydrogen and oxygen), chemical conversion cells (can convert liquid fuel, or if-applicable kethane into hydrogen and convert oxidizer into oxygen) and auxiliary water, hydrogen and oxygen tanks as well as give a right-click-menu command to "dump" excess water into space, similar to the fuel-transfer function.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Ruedii

[CoolBeer]

It would be nice to make electrolysis capable fuel cells (can turn the water back into hydrogen and oxygen), chemical conversion cells (can convert liquid fuel, or if-applicable kethane into hydrogen and convert oxidizer into oxygen) and auxiliary water, hydrogen and oxygen tanks as well as give a right-click-menu command to "dump" excess water into space, similar to the fuel-transfer function.

TACLS has a unit for converting water to oxygen/waste, I have no clue on how balanced it is though.

One issue you would get is the power required to split water(quite a bit) and the complexity of compressing it down for storage(I imagine this to be non-trivial).

Oxidizer is generally thought of as basically liquid oxygen anyway, so it could be used as is(with RealFuels it really can be LOX), but usually you don't hook those systems together, and LOX was usually not used for long term spaceflight, they would use a hypergolic mixture instead, because it's waaaaaaay easier to light, just mix the fuels and off you go. (Yes, they did use LH2/LOX on the Saturn S-IVB(third stage), and it got started twice, once for orbit insertion and once for TLI, but it's complicated to do).

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Kolbjorn

[Daishi]

It would be nice to make electrolysis capable fuel cells (can turn the water back into hydrogen and oxygen), chemical conversion cells (can convert liquid fuel, or if-applicable kethane into hydrogen and convert oxidizer into oxygen) and auxiliary water, hydrogen and oxygen tanks as well as give a right-click-menu command to "dump" excess water into space, similar to the fuel-transfer function.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/73455-WIP-Universal-Storage-by-New-Horizons-and-Strana-Mechty-Engineering?p=1081619#post1081619

Paul has a nice write up on the converter equipment on the dev thread that kindof covers what you're after

[Hotblack Desiato]

nice models

would this be possible?:

have one tweakable tank, where the user can change the content inside the VAB, and later on in space.

for example: one tank that can either store monopropellant, tac-lifesupport-goods or even rocketparts from extraplanetary launchpads. because I hate all those tanks clogging up my VAB-interface.

later in space, I usually use up monopropellant, and then I'm sitting on an empty and fairly useless tank, that could easily accept something else.

[Daishi]

nice models

would this be possible?:

have one tweakable tank, where the user can change the content inside the VAB, and later on in space.

for example: one tank that can either store monopropellant, tac-lifesupport-goods or even rocketparts from extraplanetary launchpads. because I hate all those tanks clogging up my VAB-interface.

later in space, I usually use up monopropellant, and then I'm sitting on an empty and fairly useless tank, that could easily accept something else.

Thanks!

Hrm, we're planning to make a monoprop wedge, which i guess could be utilized for different things with the tweakable system. Not sure how though, i'm just the humble modeller Paul might know.

By the looks of it, TAC is adopting a different method of distribution - so it shouldn't come bundled with parts anymore, and is shipped as a sole "life support engine". 3rd party people like us step up to the plate to supply the parts, and its up to you guys to choose which pack. Doing it that way means its easier to keep part levels in your VAB sensible by not doubling up with multiple parts that do the same thing. Hopefully there won't be as much clutter for the average person soon. A tweakable tank for multiple uses would fit in quite well

Edited April 10, 2014 by Daishi

[YukiCruentus]

Keeping an eye on this one. Hoping for the TAC-LS soon and maybe some Interstellar compatibility. Right now I won't grab it simply because I have 44 mods already and it doesn't add anything helpful to the others quite yet.

Edited April 10, 2014 by YukiCruentus

[Paul Kingtiger]

nice models

would this be possible?:

have one tweakable tank, where the user can change the content inside the VAB, and later on in space.

for example: one tank that can either store monopropellant, tac-lifesupport-goods or even rocketparts from extraplanetary launchpads. because I hate all those tanks clogging up my VAB-interface.

later in space, I usually use up monopropellant, and then I'm sitting on an empty and fairly useless tank, that could easily accept something else.

It's possible, at least in the VAB, other mods do it. But I don't think we will be, it adds a large level of complexity to things, for a limited pay off. Changing in space would be less realistic as well as a tank and supporting equipment has to be designed for the specific fuel (liquid O2 isn't going to sit nicely in a Hydrazine tank).

However if you use KAS you can remove and replace wedges in orbit and add a KAS container wedge which can hold a variety of small objects.

[Raptor831]

nice models

would this be possible?:

have one tweakable tank, where the user can change the content inside the VAB, and later on in space.

for example: one tank that can either store monopropellant, tac-lifesupport-goods or even rocketparts from extraplanetary launchpads. because I hate all those tanks clogging up my VAB-interface.

later in space, I usually use up monopropellant, and then I'm sitting on an empty and fairly useless tank, that could easily accept something else.

You can do this with Real Fuels or Modular Tanks. You set up a tank config, then make your part reference your tank type. In the VAB/SPH, you then specify which resources the part can carry and how full they start. Once set up, you cannot add space for other resources, you can only fill/consume the ones you set up.

I've done this for my install (with Real Fuels) using a copied Water wedge (since that was the most generic). I set up a tank to include all of the TACLS resources plus Hydrogen, and I can mix/match the tankage depending on my needs.

TACLS has a unit for converting water to oxygen/waste, I have no clue on how balanced it is though.

One issue you would get is the power required to split water(quite a bit) and the complexity of compressing it down for storage(I imagine this to be non-trivial).

It seems EggRobin's fuel cell and electrolyzer is balanced. Last time I looked, I ran the math and the Oxygen was correct and the Waste came out to the correct mass of the Hydrogen. As far as power required, I have no idea. The Universal Storage fuel cell was very close to EggRobin's numbers, once they were converted to the proper units.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Raptor831
Added second quote/response

[AntiMatter001]

uhm i'm just asking but couldf i use the already avalible tanks and just re-configure them to use rocket fuel etc?

also an idea: decouplers on the nodes on the parts/containers so you can pop em off if need be

[Daishi]

uhm i'm just asking but couldf i use the already avalible tanks and just re-configure them to use rocket fuel etc?

also an idea: decouplers on the nodes on the parts/containers so you can pop em off if need be

Sure i guess?

And nooooo that would be an accident waiting to happen! If you have KAS you can right click the cores and tell them to eject everything - if you're spinning your craft it flings them quite far. Or, just grab one with a Kerbal, drop it, and let it float away.

[Paul Kingtiger]

uhm i'm just asking but couldf i use the already avalible tanks and just re-configure them to use rocket fuel etc?

Sure, the licence allows you to do pretty much anything you want to the parts, provided you don't distribute them to anyone else. So you can make any changes you want, but you can't share those changed parts.

If you want to do that use module manager to make the changes and share the module manager config file.

[LethalDose]

This looks great. I'll be watching this for the TAC-LS parts.

[Paul Kingtiger]

So this is what happens when you add "a lot" of US parts to a rocket.

[Daishi]

Just a teaser - future updates will include the ability to toggle the external structure off in the VAB before launch. Use this to set up stocked trusses full of equipment for realistic space stations, reserving the protective structural shell for service modules or sleeker craft

One more part to make until the ECLSS release, check the development thread to follow my progress.

[BananaDealer]

http://i.imgur.com/8bjwIG9.jpg

Just a teaser - future updates will include the ability to toggle the external structure off in the VAB before launch. Use this to set up stocked trusses full of equipment for realistic space stations, reserving the protective structural shell for service modules or sleeker craft

http://i.imgur.com/SSkFh9q.jpg

One more part to make until the ECLSS release, check the development thread to follow my progress.

Why not also make the protective covers detachable (either via KAS or simple decouplers)? In any case- sweet.

[CoolBeer]

Just a teaser - future updates will include the ability to toggle the external structure off in the VAB before launch. Use this to set up stocked trusses full of equipment for realistic space stations, reserving the protective structural shell for service modules or sleeker craft

I like the look of it and the option for it, but I do seem to find the "realistic space station" comment a little bit funny, would you really want high-pressure tanks exposed to the heat from the sun?

(I'm certainly no expert on the matter, but it does seem "ill-advised" from a realism standpoint.)

I do love the option for it though, as I find myself putting these things inside of fairings where it wouldn't matter(not that I would see them in that case, but hey...).

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Kolbjorn

[Daishi]

Why not also make the protective covers detachable (either via KAS or simple decouplers)? In any case- sweet.

Twice the part counts for twice the lag We considered doing that at the start, but it just got a bit ridiculous when staging was concerned. Then grabbing nested parts with KAS would often make the whole stack fall apart (see some of the Flexirack demo videos as to what happens when multiple objects are interacted with at the same time).

We also tried having them as fairings that were ejectable, but they respawned on every craft load and then blocked nodes (aka the engine fairing on a docking port problem).

[Daishi]

I like the look of it and the option for it, but I do seem to find the "realistic space station" comment a little bit funny, would you really want high-pressure tanks exposed to the heat from the sun?

(I'm certainly no expert on the matter, but it does seem "ill-advised" from a realism standpoint.)

I do love the option for it though, as I find myself putting these things inside of fairings where it wouldn't matter(not that I would see them in that case, but hey...).

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Kolbjorn

Lol, true enough. Well "lightweight" looking space stations then, don't slam me on the low standards of Kerbal engineering! They can all enjoy their tasty solar radiation and exploding oxygen tanks in style

[BananaDealer]

Twice the part counts for twice the lag We considered doing that at the start, but it just got a bit ridiculous when staging was concerned. Then grabbing nested parts with KAS would often make the whole stack fall apart (see some of the Flexirack demo videos as to what happens when multiple objects are interacted with at the same time).

We also tried having them as fairings that were ejectable, but they respawned on every craft load and then blocked nodes (aka the engine fairing on a docking port problem).

Can't you make them work like the standard KAS containers? Only in reverse. Like, the protective covering would have the

{
name = KASModulePartBay
BAY
{
attachNode = top
type = containerA
type = containerB
}
}

MODULE

That may however also require a two-part system.

[CoolBeer]

Lol, true enough. Well "lightweight" looking space stations then, don't slam me on the low standards of Kerbal engineering! They can all enjoy their tasty solar radiation and exploding oxygen tanks in style

Hehe, kerbal engineering indeed

(On the other hand, it's not like we have solar radiation in game anyway,

I seem to recall someone taking a 2HOT Thermometer very close to the sun, and it still read very little. Hmm, seem to have found something here and here).

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Kolbjorn