[0.24.x] Stock ReBalance v1.4 | 11/09/14

[TheExplosionist]

Only a few engines have such a high TWR and most LH2/LOX engines have a lower ISP, 450 is close to the maximum theoretically possible. Also bipropellant nuclear engines have a ISP of about 500.

It says somewhere nuclear engines are roughly 3x better than H2/O2 and I think that was for steam. Nukes that exhaust H2 should be even better.

[ayana]

Delivered an orange tank worth of fuel to Laythe. Everything went fine even if I had to be more patient with the torque.

[R0cketC0der]

It says somewhere nuclear engines are roughly 3x better than H2/O2 and I think that was for steam. Nukes that exhaust H2 should be even better.

That is for nukes which create thrust just by hearing the propellant. However the nuclear engine in ksp takes both liquid fuel and oxidizer, which was suggested in real life to get extra thrust in exchange for ISP. Basically it's functioning like a NERVA, but it also uses combustion.the ISP of an engine like that would vary strongly with the throttle, 500s was about the expected result for such an engine at full throttle.

[lordkrike]

AFAIK the fairings fit correctly with the decouplers which is what we're looking for here.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. Can you try to explain a little better? Or maybe show me a picture, if you have the time?

I haven't noticed it creating any gaps. The fairing doesn't move at all. Everything seems to fit nicely, including decouplers.

[ayana]

Not a complaint, but seeing how ineffective solar panels are at Jool, some more methods to generate power seem necessary. The stock RTGs are a little puny to be the main source of power for a space station and the solar panels just too small to be really useful.

[Quiana]

Not a complaint, but seeing how ineffective solar panels are at Jool, some more methods to generate power seem necessary. The stock RTGs are a little puny to be the main source of power for a space station and the solar panels just too small to be really useful.

That has been something stock has lacked in, though for reasons other than you think. There just isn't enough in a stock game library right now to either use power or generate it, since one or two panels has always been enough to power 90% of the things you'll need it for. Hell, it takes mods to start adding in many features that, to me, give reason to have power generation and regular amounts of it. If you're really hurting for power generation, there's a few mods to add in some things, such as the Universal Storage modules (with a fuel cell based off realistic Apollo-style measurements) along with mods like Near Future (which add in a large amount of energy-using 'futurish' engines and somewhat balanced nuclear reactors). Honestly I didn't want to use many of the engines in Near Future so I pretty much yanked out everything but the reactors and the stock-like larger batteries.

[NathanKell]

It says somewhere nuclear engines are roughly 3x better than H2/O2 and I think that was for steam. Nukes that exhaust H2 should be even better.

No, that's for pure H2 exhaust (~950s). LOX-Augmented NTR gets only about 640-50 tops.

[stupid_chris]

Not a complaint, but seeing how ineffective solar panels are at Jool, some more methods to generate power seem necessary. The stock RTGs are a little puny to be the main source of power for a space station and the solar panels just too small to be really useful.

Yeah I thought about it. I might add a slightly bigger RTG alongside the "new" parts, as well as some form of fuel cell I guess. I'll see about it once I have some spare time for this

Also, just wanted to make it clear for everyone here: I'm not going to balance the engines in this according to real life counterparts. That's really not the goal of this whole project. There are mods that already do this better than I ever could, those being Modular Fuel Tanks, and Real Fuels. Go grab those if it's what you are looking for, as what I'm doing here is solely some balance with gameplay-wise orientation, and about giving each part it's own niche, not about sticking to reality as close as possible.

[NathanKell]

Chris, not telling you to rebalance for realism, just popping up when I see something off-base. :]

[stupid_chris]

Chris, not telling you to rebalance for realism, just popping up when I see something off-base. :]

I know, that's why that wasn't meant to you

[Rakaydos]

How does a Basic Jet on laythe compare (in power output per ton, ignoring fuel costs) to RTG or solar cells at Jool?

[m4v]

I noticed in the console (alt-F2) spamming of an error message complaining about parts being zero mass. I solved it by giving the zero mass parts a very low mass. Also gave launchclamps their original mass (they can't hold on to anything when their mass is very low).

It does throw errors, but they don't affect gameplay.

I didn't notice any errors like that, which parts causes this? there shouldn't be any zero mass error messages, if that's the case then there's a part that has zero mass but has physic significance enabled, thus the game complains and will give it some arbitrary low mass.

[stupid_chris]

I didn't notice any errors like that, which parts causes this? there shouldn't be any zero mass error messages, if that's the case then there's a part that has zero mass but has physic significance enabled, thus the game complains and will give it some arbitrary low mass.

I checked again and the only time it throws errors related to the center of mass, is that if you have the center of mass enabled and that you remove the root part, it starts spamming that it can't find the CoM. Else it seems pretty clean.

[undercoveryankee]

Suggestion: Increase the mass of the Advanced Grabbing Unit to be the same as a senior docking port. Makes it a little less attractive for small ships to klaw onto a space station instead of using docking ports.

[Zeroignite]

So, regarding the change for antennas to send data one Mit at a time... now I'm wondering, does the game do ok if you send fractional Mits? What I'd love is a plugin to throttle antenna transmission to a slideable electricity/second rate, to avoid that awkward problem of completely bottoming out your batteries and watching individual packets prevent any real charging.

[Dodgey]

Would you be able to disable to ability to transfer fuel through the Advance Grabbing Unit? I remember seeing a mod about a week ago which included a basic docking port which had that characteristic.

[stupid_chris]

Would you be able to disable to ability to transfer fuel through the Advance Grabbing Unit? I remember seeing a mod about a week ago which included a basic docking port which had that characteristic.

That would only work if that thing is set in the config, so I'll take a look.

[m4v]

I don't think you can, since fuel transfer capability is defined in the resource I think, with the transfer attribute, only solid fuel can't be transferred in any way. In any case removing the fuel transfer capability of the klaw has more serious gameplay implications, as is the only way to transfer fuel without docking ports, or KAS. You're not balancing here, but changing gameplay mechanics, for example, rescue missions will be less interesting.

If the concern is that the grabbing unit makes docking ports less useful then I suggest making it heavier.

[Dodgey]

My gripe is that it makes docking ports basically useless, they have no niche as it were. Aside from the realism component which I won't use in my argument, functionally there isn't any reason to use a docking port. The ability to grab and dock to an object without two corresponding docking ports could be very powerful, got a fueling station? Put a couple of these on there and dock anything to it, docking port or not. No reason to plan ahead.

As Stupid_Chris said (and I hope I'm not miss quoting him), it's not about making parts better then others, it's about giving them their own niche, their own use. It seems to me that having the AGU the way it is now is just having a "better" docking port.

Also what gameplay implications are there really? As you said, they are the only way to transfer fuel without docking ports, that's correct, but should they be a way of transferring fuel without docking ports. I mean they aren't filling a hole, it's more about convenience than anything. I also fail to see how it would make rescue missions less interesting, I assume you mean deep space in solar orbit. I see quite the opposite effect. With it the way it is now you can rendezvous, dock with the AGU, fill'er up with fuel and fly back to Kerbin. If you couldn't transfer fuel you would either have to dock normally, move the crew over to the new ship or grab the ship and push/pull it back to Kerbin. It's more of a challenge in my eyes, requiring you to be more innovative.

As to actually implementing this, how about when you alt clicked on the two fuel tanks a path was drawn between the two tanks checking if there were any parts which fuel could not flow through, similar to the way fuel flow works at the moment. After all a path similar to that would of already had to been drawn due to the way the root part works right?

Whoa, didn't mean to type that much, oh well, I think I got my point across.

[undercoveryankee]

My gripe is that it makes docking ports basically useless, they have no niche as it were. Aside from the realism component which I won't use in my argument, functionally there isn't any reason to use a docking port. The ability to grab and dock to an object without two corresponding docking ports could be very powerful, got a fueling station? Put a couple of these on there and dock anything to it, docking port or not. No reason to plan ahead.

For the moment, the game crash if you're controlling the non-AGU ship when the AGU docks makes putting the AGU on the fueling station kind of awkward.

[m4v]

As to actually implementing this, how about when you alt clicked on the two fuel tanks a path was drawn between the two tanks checking if there were any parts which fuel could not flow through, similar to the way fuel flow works at the moment. After all a path similar to that would of already had to been drawn due to the way the root part works right?

You will need to write a plugin for that. Increasing its mass should be a more simpler approach, if you want the convenience of the AGU then pay up with your dV. Edited April 28, 2014 by m4v

[Random Tank]

Umm, as cool as this balance pack is, it killed all my antennae for Lack Luster Labs... (as in, they don't function as antennae anymore )

Do you know what might cause this? I can just fix it if it's simple enough...

[Amaroq]

@Random Tank - I think the issue between Lack Luster Labs and Remote Tech 2 is something from the latest LLL release, not from this mod -- please check the LLL thread.

[Random Tank]

@Random Tank - I think the issue between Lack Luster Labs and Remote Tech 2 is something from the latest LLL release, not from this mod -- please check the LLL thread.

I don't have Remote Tech... the antennae only stopped working after I added this rebalance pack and VOID... I'll remove some stuff to test it, but I have a strong feeling its this as VOID doesn't change any parts...

[Amaroq]

Okay, but as this mod tends to explicitly list parts by name, and is focused on the stock parts, I'd be pretty surprised if it interacted with LLL much at all. In fact, reading the source of this, I'd be shocked. Here's a link to what I was thinking of in the LLL thread - Lack Luster Labs, pg 188, maybe the LLL antennae lost their ModuleDataTransmitter in the latest update?