Enable inactive vessel electricity consumption?

[yautay]

Hi,

I've been looking for this for a long time already, and finally I gave up!

I've found on forum that it's common and normal state that inactive vessels do not consume energy while we do not actually control them.

For me it's very annoying and not realistic at all, I would rather say cheating...

Is there any method, plugin, fix or whatever that can enable permanent electricity consumption (even threshold) on inactive vessels, like satellite fleet, Remote Tech relay network and others?

Regards!

Michal

Edited May 22, 2014 by yautay

[Kasuha]

Probe cores always consume electricity, even when they're on rails. Add a probe core or a few, or put some lights on your ship and leave them on.

[yautay]

Should be like you said,

but I observed this on pure and mod KSP 23.0 / 23.5 both Win & Lnx - and what I've noticed, that on my PC there was no "background" electricity consumption at all. I've tried to launch into orbit two same type satellites, then compare active & inactive for electricity status. Both of them were on same configuration (theoretically same consumption), but after time warp and change over to inactive one - it's state was exactly same like initial when is settled down on orbit.

[Kasuha]

How do you detect that "no consumption". The game only reports change in battery charge, so if your solar panels and/or NUKs manage to keep the battery full, no consumption is reported even though it happens.

If you don't have any NUKs on your probe, just watch what it does while it is in shadow of a planet.

[yautay]

I launch probes without any solar panels or generators, only core & batteries + coms (ie. RT) . So it must be depleted after some time.

Then I check probes during game, and battery state doesn't change. Each time when I make it active - battery level is exacly same as I left it when going inactive.

While probe is active it consumes energy as it shoud be... When is inactive nothing changes...

[Kasuha]

That's strange, are you using any mods?

[Streetwind]

I'm with yautay here. I can launch a craft with a probe core, but no solar panels and no RTGs and nothing that produces power, go back to the space center (or switch to a different vehicle), timewarp 10 years and then check: the probe still has power. In fact, it has exactly as much as I left it with. This is fully stock, and the game has worked like this ever since I started playing.

I am not sure if a craft that is in physics range of an active craft consumes Ec, but any inactive craft outside physics range of an active craft definitely does not. It doesn't matter what you have on board and how hungry it is; it simply doesn't consume Ec. It's frozen in time.

The only exceptions I know of are the life support mods. They go around this by keeping a copy of the craft's stats and calculating the power use themselves in the background. Next time you switch to that craft, the saved Ec storage gets overwritten with the number the mod calculated. You can see this happening sometimes when you load a craft you haven't had active in a long while - when the craft loads, the power bar first appears at the old value for a fraction of a second and then drops to the new value.

[Claw]

In my experience, you are correct. Putting a craft "on rails" results in no electricity consumption. If it is within physics range (whether the focus ship or not), electricity will be consumed.

I agree that it's a bit unrealistic, but that's just the state of the game right now. I'm sure there is a mod out there for this, but I don't know of one off hand. I don't know if RT has an option to adjust power or not.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm fairly certain that ships that are on-rails but focused (i.e. focused ship in non-physics timewarp) still consume electricity. Not as certain about unfocused.

[yautay]

Exactly!

Life Support mods consume resources regardless if on/off rail.

Vessels/probes in physical range consume Ec.

This makes me sad, a lot of fun goes through the funnel because of it...

I've not found any way how to correct this issue.

Do you know if there is any hope for this issue to be changed in future?

M

[koshelenkovv]

Actually, it's not that weird.

Rosetta was not powered for entire flight, it used hibernation mode.

New Horizons uses hibernation too, despite of having a continuous power supply from RTG.

Let's pretend that when you switch to KSC to manage other missions, your probe enters hibernation and consumes negligible amount of power. And you do not use any of its instruments at that time anyway, so it looks right.

[Drew Kerman]

Let's pretend that when you switch to KSC to manage other missions, your probe enters hibernation and consumes negligible amount of power. And you do not use any of its instruments at that time anyway, so it looks right.

That doesn't work for communications satellites that are always active. However to get around this I just run them as active vessels and make sure they can last with all antennas/dishes deployed through a night transition, and then call it good.

I've heard the ECLSS life support mod did EC consumption while on rails, but otherwise no - the stock game does not consume any EC unless the vessel is active

[Kasuha]

Okay I finally tested it and it's really true.

Active ship and all ships within its physics range use electric charge over time, even in non-physics time warp (with some strange effects at highest time warp levels).

Ships outside physics range don't use electric charge.

From tracking station all ships are inactive and don't use electric charge, even if the ship is selected.

[Claw]

In my experience, you are correct. Putting a craft "on rails" results in no electricity consumption. If it is within physics range (whether the focus ship or not), electricity will be consumed.

I agree that it's a bit unrealistic, but that's just the state of the game right now. I'm sure there is a mod out there for this, but I don't know of one off hand. I don't know if RT has an option to adjust power or not.

I'm fairly certain that ships that are on-rails but focused (i.e. focused ship in non-physics timewarp) still consume electricity. Not as certain about unfocused.

Yeah, sorry. I misused the phrase "on rails" there. I really meant to say "out of physics range" since you are right, craft under warp are placed on rails. So it's really a matter of "in physics range" or not, but has nothing to do with "in focus" or "on rails."

Okay I finally tested it and it's really true.

Active ship and all ships within its physics range use electric charge over time, even in non-physics time warp (with some strange effects at highest time warp levels).

Ships outside physics range don't use electric charge.

From tracking station all ships are inactive and don't use electric charge, even if the ship is selected.

Yep, like Kasuha says.

The "with some strange effects" probably has to do with the fact that the charge rates and the discharge rates do not time scale the same during time warp. I think charging gains more benefit from time warp than discharging. So if you have a craft that's discharging electricity and can't produce enough to quite keep up, you can time warp the recharge rate will increase more than the discharge rate. (At least this is true for some things.)

I think you can also lock out a battery on a probe, and even if it runs out of other available electricity you can still "wake it up" by turning the battery back on.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yeah, sorry. I misused the phrase "on rails" there. I really meant to say "out of physics range" since you are right, craft under warp are placed on rails. So it's really a matter of "in physics range" or not, but has nothing to do with "in focus" or "on rails."

I hadn't observed the effect, so I wasn't sure how it worked. Just wanted to be clear. So anything within physics range of the focused ship drains electricity, regardless of timewarp (though physical timewarp has side effects).

[yautay]

Hi,

OK, this will close thread... There is no way so far to change this issue - I'll change state for Answered.

Thanks for clarifications!

M

[tychochallenge]

Probe cores always consume electricity, even when they're on rails. Add a probe core or a few, or put some lights on your ship and leave them on.

that is strange, i had a probe with only solar panels and batteries on Kerbol escape, once i got it to 100 times further than Eeloo, i went to the probe and the batteries were full...

[Claw]

that is strange, i had a probe with only solar panels and batteries on Kerbol escape, once i got it to 100 times further than Eeloo, i went to the probe and the batteries were full...

If you read the rest of the thread you'll see why.

[Tahib]

Incluced in Asmi's ECLSS Revived

Reviving old thread here, but i think it's still interesting, at least it was for me. It's not documented in Asmi's, but vessels do consume power while inactive in 0.25. I did search for it before, and had no clue it's already in my current game.

[Chrysoprace]

Necropost, but this is still the case as of today. I built a science base on the Mun, fully expecting it to only operate just over half of the time, because even with many batteries there is no way it can make it through a Munar night. The only generation it has now is solar and I intended to add fuel cells later when I add some mining capacity to keep the lights on and the lab running. 

Switched over to it to see how much fuel it had during the middle of the Munar night and was surprised to see the batteries full when they should have been long dead, so as long as I stay away from it during the night the lab keeps producing science. It seems strange to me that the game can keep the lab converting data to science without also draining the power.