Stockalike RF Engine Configs v3.2.6 [01/20/19][RF v12]

[karamazovnew]

AvGas should stick around, since AJE (the airbreather companion to RF, let's say) uses it, but I highly recommend hiding the other ones Stockalike RF doesn't use. Hiding them i.e. -RESOURCE_DEFINTION[resname] {} and @TANK_DEFINITION[*] { -TANK[resname] {} } will cause no problems.

Thanks for the heads up. AJE only seems to rename it to Kerosene, I hope

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[AJEPropeller]]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:Final

{

@MODULE[ModuleEngines*]

{

@PROPELLANT[LiquidFuel]

{

@name=Kerosene

}

@PROPELLANT[AvGas]

{

@name=Kerosene

}

}

}

I've managed to make a small modification, maybe not the most optimal MM change, but it seems to work. What it does is remove the price of the fuels that Real Fuels replace.

@PART[*]:HAS[@RESOURCE[LiquidFuel]]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:BEFORE[RealFuels] // Removes price for Liquid Fuel

{

%tempcost= 0

@tempcost = #$/RESOURCE[LiquidFuel]/amount$

@tempcost *= 0.8

@cost -= #$tempcost$

!tempcost = null

}

@PART[*]:HAS[@RESOURCE[Oxidizer]]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:BEFORE[RealFuels] // Removes price for Oxidizer

{

%tempcost= 0

@tempcost = #$/RESOURCE[Oxidizer]/amount$

@tempcost *= 0.18

@cost -= #$tempcost$

!tempcost = null

}

@PART[*]:HAS[@RESOURCE[MonoPropellant]]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:BEFORE[RealFuels] // Removes price for MonoProp

{

%tempcost= 0

@tempcost = #$/RESOURCE[MonoPropellant]/amount$

@tempcost *= 1.2

@cost -= #$tempcost$

!tempcost = null

}

This leaves all empty tanks (and not only) with the same empty price as the stock game. Now it's just a matter of using Kerosene and LOX combination for a stock 1.25m engine and multiplying RealFuel costs to arrive at the same full price as LiqFuel+Oxidizer. So far, the number I've come up with is 2091.6.

My problem is that for some reason, due to my mod configuration (doesn't happen if I just use RF and Stockalike on a clean install), all of my non-procedural tanks receive an extra "full" fuel cost by simply adding the tanks. Say I have a 500$ empty tank, then I configure it for a 1000$ fuel configuration, the price jumps to 2500$. If I then empty the tank manually, it drops to 1500$, not 500$. Only if I clear all tanks does it go back to 500. Weirdly, this doesn't happen for procedural tanks. When I figure out the culprit, I'll report back

EDIT: Seems Tweakscale is causing the issue. Phew, it seems that by just deleting the config files that Tweakscale provides (which I never use anyway), all is back to normal.

Edited March 2, 2015 by karamazovnew

[Raptor831]

I'm pretty sure that the cost of tanks (procedural or otherwise) are only for the dry tank. Can't say for sure, since I generally play in sandbox, but I'm fairly sure the game calculates the cost of the fuel onboard as separate from the tanks.

Tweakscale tends to do odd things if you don't pay attention. I'd bet it's pulling a defined number for cost somewhere (probably in the part's config) and Tweakscale isn't realizing you've changed the number. I only understand TS on a basic level, so take that evaluation with a large grain of salt.

[SpaceHungryMan]

Just want to report that the most recent update doesn't appear to have caused any issues.

Also, SRB thrust curves seem to be working as they should. Umm, don't really have anything new to add to that discussion other than LES don't work well with Pulse, and seperatrons are now more necessary than ever.

[NathanKell]

KSP calculates price as follows (no, really):

Final cost of part = initial cost of part ('cost' in the cfg) -(for each resource)[res.maxAmount - res.Amount * res.costPerUnit]

So if you have all resources completely full, the final cost is exactly the cost specified in the cfg.

For RealFuels-enabled parts, the full cost of the maxAmount of each resource is added, however, in addition to a per-liter cost, so it's suggested that for non proc parts you cost your parts as the 'dry' cost, and set the per-base-volume cost to 0.

[lurkoholic]

Raptor831, I didn't notice this before I sent the Sea Dragon configs, but the webapp now sets the same max thrust for all configs for an engine. Looks like a lot of the engines from the repo are set that way (Hydrolox has the same max thrust as Kerolox).

Also, SDHI breaks the tank editor for the MK1-2 Comand pod. It will still show up with Food, Oxygen, Water, etc. for TAC (and Ablative if you also have DRE & Ven's Stock Revamp), but you can't edit what resources are in the pod, and it doesn't contain any Electric charge or Hydrazine.

[Raptor831]

Raptor831, I didn't notice this before I sent the Sea Dragon configs, but the webapp now sets the same max thrust for all configs for an engine. Looks like a lot of the engines from the repo are set that way (Hydrolox has the same max thrust as Kerolox).

Also, SDHI breaks the tank editor for the MK1-2 Comand pod. It will still show up with Food, Oxygen, Water, etc. for TAC (and Ablative if you also have DRE & Ven's Stock Revamp), but you can't edit what resources are in the pod, and it doesn't contain any Electric charge or Hydrazine.

Argh. I thought I fixed these things. Which means that all of the updates I just pushed have to be redone. What's worse is that I don't know what I changed to make it work again. But it is working (just tested the app).

As for SDHI, I thought I fixed that too. It's in the Fuel_Conversions.cfg file. If you remove that file, does SDHI work again? Also, does it work without Stock Revamp? I don't have that one installed, so there may be a conflict with that as well. Really, if you have some time, I'd need to know which of the following combos work with Stockalike: SDHI + Revamp + TACLS, SDHI + TACLS, and Revamp + TACLS. That way I can at least figure out where to begin beating up the code. This Conversions file is a royal pain to make sure it works!

[lurkoholic]

Argh. I thought I fixed these things. Which means that all of the updates I just pushed have to be redone. What's worse is that I don't know what I changed to make it work again. But it is working (just tested the app).

As for SDHI, I thought I fixed that too. It's in the Fuel_Conversions.cfg file. If you remove that file, does SDHI work again? Also, does it work without Stock Revamp? I don't have that one installed, so there may be a conflict with that as well. Really, if you have some time, I'd need to know which of the following combos work with Stockalike: SDHI + Revamp + TACLS, SDHI + TACLS, and Revamp + TACLS. That way I can at least figure out where to begin beating up the code. This Conversions file is a royal pain to make sure it works!

It worked fine with Revamp+TACLS, I'll look at it more thoroughly tonight. I know SDHI has atleast one MM patch with :FINAL (the one that adds the umbilical port), but removing that one didn't help.

[Raptor831]

It worked fine with Revamp+TACLS, I'll look at it more thoroughly tonight. I know SDHI has atleast one MM patch with :FINAL (the one that adds the umbilical port), but removing that one didn't help.

Ok, I'll double-check my SDHI part of the config tonight. Probably something I tweaked that broke it.

[karamazovnew]

For RealFuels-enabled parts, the full cost of the maxAmount of each resource is added, however, in addition to a per-liter cost, so it's suggested that for non proc parts you cost your parts as the 'dry' cost, and set the per-base-volume cost to 0.

Yeap, my mod made them "dry cost" by removing the fuel cost before RealFuels transforms them. But the only place I saw the costPerkL was in the RFTank.cfg file of Procedural Parts. Or maybe I'm missing something? I'd love to be able to set an inner casing price, with pressurized and cryo tanks being more expensive to configure, so you gave me some great news. I'll start messing around with it.

For now, after deleting those tweakscale cfg files for the tanks, and letting tweakscale only deal with IR and a few other mods that provide configs for it (DMagic Orbital Science), non procedural tanks work as in stock. If I leave them, the exact cost of the fuel is added, I have no idea why it does that. But with RF alone, a tank that costs 250 in stock and 204 empty, is made 204 by the modification I made, then by adding Kerosene and LOX, jump back to 250. Works great. Now it's just a matter of tweaking the other prices around the stock value. But I'll have to wait for a fix for the max thrust issue that lurkoholic noticed.

Something else I don't understand is why there's such a small difference between Balloon and normal tanks. The old stretchy tank files show crash tolerance (makes sense), but for all other tanks I can't find anything. I guess I could make something like this, with cost given by the costPerkL value:

Shell: I'll lower this a bit proportionally for all tanks, as the mass and price for stock might not make much sense, but I won't put it zero. I will probably use the stock Procedural Part pricing and mass (maybe a bit more, hehe).

- Default: standard mass, non press, non cryo, standard cost

- Cryo: + mass, cryo, +perklcost

- Service: ++mass, press, cryo, ++perklcost, only tank to hold electrical and Life support

- Baloon: -mass, press (I know it's not realistic), +perklcost (using in lower stage might be prohibitive because price, since I can't make it collapse)

- Baloon cryo: -mass, press, cryo, ++perklcost

- Fuselage: nope, or maybe add various resources from other mods here... hmm... I'd rather leave Near Future and Interstellar do their own thing, I love their tanks.

- Structural: I'm guessing this is what Default was supposed to be?

By the way, is there a way to force electrical charge usage for cryo and pressurized tanks?

EDIT: Ok, good news! After a day of torment, I've finally figured out how to deal with costs for tank types.

First of all, the reason why procedural Tanks were free with Real Fuels is because that activates the code in the RF Tank.cfg file of Procedural Parts, which contains this bit of code: costPerkL = 0.00957, which is extremely small and shows zero to everything but the largest tanks.

But there's another way to increase the price of the empty tanks, on top of the listed price:

@TANK_DEFINITION[whateverTankType]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:AFTER[RealFuels]

{baseCost = 10}

This actually does 2 things:

- for non procedural parts: it adds 10 credit on top of the listed price, regardless of volume.

- for procedural tanks: it adds 10 credits per volume of tank, divided by 1.2272, the volume of a cilinder of 1.25m diam and height of 1m.

Finally, for even more control, we can change the cost for each volume of configured tanks space.

@TANK_DEFINITION[balloon]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:AFTER[RealFuels]

{

@TANK[LqdOxygen]

{

cost=2

}

}

This is a bad example, but what it does is add 2 credits for each L of volume for the LqdOxygen in a Balloon tank. The fuel cost is separate

Edited March 2, 2015 by karamazovnew

[Raptor831]

@lurkoholic: Ok, figured out what I did. I fixed the SDHI issue a while ago, came back to that file and added a check that I thought would help. Turns out it broke it. Reverted that change back, and all should be good now.

@karamazovnew: You could shorten up your definition, if you wanted to just catch all tank definitions. Try this:

@TANK_DEFINITION[*]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:AFTER[RealFuels]
{
  %baseCost = 10
}

Same idea goes for the TANK nodes.

[lurkoholic]

Ok, I'll double-check my SDHI part of the config tonight. Probably something I tweaked that broke it.

I don't think the :NEEDS[sDHI] works since SDHI isn't a plugin, and Sumghai doesn't use FOR:[sDHI]. I tried adding FOR:[sDHI] to the "@PART[Mark1-2Pod]....." line in "SDHI_SMS_MMPatch_TACLifeSupport.cfg", which allowed the pod to be edited again, but it didn't auto-fill the TACLS resources.

[Raptor831]

The :NEEDS[sDHI] should work so long as SDHI is installed to the default /GameData/SDHI/ folder. AFAIK, MM uses the folder names as well as .DLL names in the NEEDS/BEFORE/AFTER spots. FOR is just a way to add arbitrary runs.

I just tested again on my install and it seems to be working, with resources pre-filled (including EC and Hydrazine). Pic:

Most recent version of RF, TACLS, and the latest repo version of Stockalike. Ablative from DRE/Stock Revamp should work as advertised as well. If it still doesn't work, post a link to your log file. I'll run through that and see if I can track it down.

[karamazovnew]

@lurkoholic: Ok, figured out what I did. I fixed the SDHI issue a while ago, came back to that file and added a check that I thought would help. Turns out it broke it. Reverted that change back, and all should be good now.

@karamazovnew: You could shorten up your definition, if you wanted to just catch all tank definitions. Try this:

@TANK_DEFINITION[*]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:AFTER[RealFuels]
{
  %baseCost = 10
}

Same idea goes for the TANK nodes.

Aye, it's just that I'll probably use different costs for each individual tank anyway. For example, it makes sense to have the same pricing per fuel for Balloon/Default and BalloonCryo/Cryo, but I can set both Balloon tanks types to be more expensive from the go, since they weigh less, rather than make every fuel cost more to add.

Now for the difficult question, for anybody who's played a few stock careers, since I'm about to start tweaking the values:

Kerolox default tanks will be as close as possible to stock. Would you like less or more? Do you think the stock ones are ok?

Now, considering configurations with the exact same deltaV (size will differ, mass will differ, as will TWR):

- What's the max price increase that you'd pay for a hypergolic fuel that allows unlimited restarts with Engine Igniter (so the best possible fuel)? +50%, +100%, +200% more?

- What's the max price reduction you'd like to see Hydrolox in the default tank? -50%? -25%? This will dictate how expensive your first stage is.

- What's the max price increase you'd like to see Hydrolox in the best possible tank (I'm inclined NOT to use ServiceModule for Hydrolox, but BalloonCryo) on longer voyages?

Once that's done...

- Would you agree to remove Liquid Hydrogen from the Service tank? In my mind, this should be used for Hypergolics, electrical and life support only.

- Would you like me to remove everything from the Structural type tank to leave it for adding other resources (such as for Interstellar, EPL etc.)?

Finally...

- SRBs seem to have prices already added, although they are cheaper than stock. Would you like stock prices instead?

I'll try as much as possible to make the modifications based on a few multipliers, so people can tweak them later easier.

[Raptor831]

Couple of points:

Hypergolic engines matter more than the fuels. There are hypergolic launch-stage engines that are only designed to light once, so the reusability factor depends more on the engine config, which is paid with the engine costs really.

Frankly, I'd assume balloon tanks were cheaper than regular, since they have less structure to worry about. But I don't know, so maybe someone else who knows can chime in?

I'd also leave LH2 in the service tanks. The Apollo SM had LH2 and LOX as part of the fuel cell that kept it powered. The tank types are more about what kinds of tanks can be housed inside, so I'd be for keeping them a little more open to whatever the player wants to put in them.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Raptor831

[lurkoholic]

@Raptor831: Thanks for the fix! Maybe my tweaks only changed the pod function because I broke something:confused: So is :FOR[ ] only necessary for a mod with a different name than it's main folder in Gamedata (like this mod)?

@karamazovnew: Could you base the price on tank dry mass? A Hydrolox tank will have a lower dry mass than a Kerolox tank. Obviously a cryo tank would cost more, but I'm not sure about the baloon tanks (they would just require extra Helium/pressurant, maybe that's not very expensive). I think at one time, the balloon tanks weren't supposed to allow radial attachments. The hypergolic fuels already costs signifcantly more than LqdH2 or LOX in RealFuels, maybe you could multiply all of them by the same amount to bring Kerolox closer to stock LiquidFuel/Oxidizer? Here's some real world costs from 2001: www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/pdf/SSP.pdf. I didn't know that LqdH2 and LOX for fuel cells would cost more...I guess that makes sense. Didn't they drink the water from the fuel cell in the Apollo capsule?

Edited March 4, 2015 by lurkoholic

[Raptor831]

@Raptor831: Thanks for the fix! Maybe my tweaks only changed the pod function because I broke something:confused: So is :FOR[ ] only necessary for a mod with a different name than it's main folder in Gamedata (like this mod)?

@karamazovnew: Could you base the price on tank dry mass? A Hydrolox tank will have a lower dry mass than a Kerolox tank. Obviously a cryo tank would cost more, but I'm not sure about the baloon tanks (they would just require extra Helium/pressurant, maybe that's not very expensive). I think at one time, the balloon tanks weren't supposed to allow radial attachments. The hypergolic fuels already costs signifcantly more than LqdH2 or LOX in RealFuels, maybe you could multiply all of them by the same amount to bring Kerolox closer to stock LiquidFuel/Oxidizer. Here's some real world cost from 2001: www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/pdf/SSP.pdf , I didn't know that LqdH2 and LOX for fuel cells would cost more...I guess that makes sense. Didn't they drink the water from the fuel cell in the Apollo capsule?

The :FOR[] is intended to be used by mods to define when their configs will "run". If you look at the logs, you can see MM going through each pass and telling you which edits were made when. The folders are kind of a default :FOR in MM (if I'm understanding it correctly). Regardless, you can use NEEDS on and folder name, DLL name, or defined FOR pass. It wouldn't hurt to use a FOR[MyModFolder] just to be explicit, but I believe you are correct.

And, glad it got fixed!

Also, yes, the Apollo astronauts drank the water that is the byproduct of the fuel cell. The water was also part of the cooling system, IIRC. That's why losing the O2 tank was so devastating for Apollo 13; it knocked out the power, breathable O2 supply, and the H2O supply (and by extension the cooling system) with 1 explosion. (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module#Electrical_power_system)

You should check out Paul Kingtiger's Universal Storage, which adds a realistic fuel cell in wedge format. Paired with KAS, it's a great modular life support/power system for both single missions and stations. It's also got some nice math to back up its numbers, in case you were ever looking for that sort of thing.

EDIT

I just updated the repo with new configs (again). They should be the same as before, but with the proper thrust values for hydrolox and methalox and anything else that should not be the same thrust as kerolox. This should fix the bug that lurkoholic mentioned.

As always, let me know if you find bugs. If this one is clean, I'm going to try and add RCS to the webapp, and once that is fixed I'm hoping we'll be ready for a new release.

Edited March 4, 2015 by Raptor831
added repo update

[karamazovnew]

Well, a bit of new on progress (in case anybody cares) on the RF tank makeover.

I've been complaining before that there isn't much difference between different tank types. Well, now there is Optional, of course, in case you don't like it: Utilization!

Remember that slider in the procedural tanks that we never used or knew where exactly to put? Well, I got rid of it and tweaked the utilization for each tank and resource (needed because I suck at ModuleManager and I don't know how to change all TANK modules inside a TANKDEFINITION module, HELP!!!!).

- Default: 85% utilization

- Cryo: 80% utilization

- Service Module: 75% utilization

- Balloon: 95% utilization

- Balloon Cryo: 90% utilization

Of course, these percentages are just placeholders that you can change.

Works wonders for Procedural tanks, but in case you still want to use non procedural tanks, this creates a problem. You see, any non-procedural 1200L tank, only gets 1000L of usable volume by choice of the RealFuel mod. So it already has a 85% utilization, regardless of tank type (from what I can tell). So if on top of that, I force a 0.85 utilization , suddenly you get only 850L, which is a huge reduction. Well, no worries, I just increase the volume of all Real Fuel tanks by 1/0.85 so that the tank remains at about 1000L after my mod. In fact, I'll make 2 versions of this:

- first one will change all tank types by 1/0.85 so any balloon tanks will get a boost, while all service tanks will get a reduction (this depends on how that tanks was modded by RealFuels)

- second one will change every tank type by 1/"their_utilization", so that they all get back to their original values. In this way, only people using Procedural Tanks will be affected in any way.

In other news, I've managed to retweak prices to make the LoX fuel combinations a bit more spread out. Kerosene was much too OP for my taste, smashing Ethanol in every way and making Hydrolox useless except for high TWR launches. Now it's a bit nicer. I've simply made these changes:

- first, multiplied all fuels by 1743

- multiplied again Liquid Oxygen by 1.3087, so that Kerolox costs exactly as stock fuel and Hydrolox and Ethanol get a boost in price (they need less LOX than Kerosene)

- Halved the price of Liquid Hydrogen. That's right... it was waaaaaay to expensive to make it worth while. Now it's a proper cheap option for first and second stages. Even early orbital can be achieved well with it.

Things I didn't touch were the hypergolics. They are properly expensive compared to non-hypergolics, but I can't vouch for how balanced they may be with eachother (I only use KW and stock engines). Solid fuel I'll get to stock prices. I hope tomorrow to have something to upload for you guys, currently I need some sleep

[SpaceHungryMan]

Well, a bit of new on progress (in case anybody cares) on the RF tank makeover.

I care

So just to be clear, you're trying to change the utilization for every TANK module in each TANKDEFINITION module? I assume we're talking about the RealTankTypes.cfg?

@MODULE[TANK_DEFINITION[whatever]]
{
  @TANK
[*]
  {
    @utilization = whatever
  }
}

Some variation of the above should work. I think.

[karamazovnew]

Nope, that doesn't work. First of all, it's not a module. @TANK_DEFINITION[*] works but I don't want to change them all the same, if I use TANK[*] it doesn't do anything. It only works if I input tank resource by hand. Was hoping for a shorter code

[SpaceHungryMan]

Oh. Hmmm.

What about @TANK_DEFINITION[Default/Cryogenic/whatever]?

Or @TANK_DEFINITION:HAS[#name[whatever]]?

I'm just spitballing here. Not exactly an expert myself. When I get the chance I'll actually try and see if I could get it to work.

[karamazovnew]

Oh. Hmmm.

What about @TANK_DEFINITION[Default/Cryogenic/whatever]?

Or @TANK_DEFINITION:HAS[#name[whatever]]?

I'm just spitballing here. Not exactly an expert myself. When I get the chance I'll actually try and see if I could get it to work.

Solved it, I wasn't using indexing properly. @TANK[*] only changes the first tank (of any name), @TANK[*],* changes all of them, yey.

Edited March 5, 2015 by karamazovnew

[SpaceHungryMan]

Solved it, I wasn't using indexing properly. @TANK

[*] only changes the first tank (of any name), @TANK

[*],* changes all of them, yey.

Great news! I'll try to remember that for future reference.

[Raptor831]

The Utilization of a part is the idea that there's a pill-shaped tank within a cylinder-shaped container. So, the big orange tank has a pill within it that is the actual vessel that holds fuel. The percentage of the volume that the pill takes up within the cylinder works out to around 87%. That's where that number comes into play. Not sure using that to differentiate tanks is the best idea, though. Cost is still probably a better way.

One thing you could do is make the cost of putting cryogenic fuels in a non-cryo tank. There is a number that dictates this, so that you could nudge that penalization up a bit, making cryo tanks more useful for cryogenic resources.

Also of note, is that NathanKell pulled the costs of all the fuels to match 1965 prices in 1000's of US dollars (1 KSP Money = $1000 USD). So, the costs are grounded in some kind of reality. The benefit of LH2 is that it has high Isp. It's a pain to keep cold enough to be useful, even if hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, so the high price doesn't surprise me. Ethanol is cheaper (I assume) than RP-1, but we use RP-1 in rockets because it's better. The cost/benefit spectrum isn't fully useful in KSP, because things like toxicity or manufacturing/storage issues aren't addressed.

Scaling the fuels to stock is a good start, though, and I'd basically make kerolox match the cost of LF/O for any given tank, then scale the others accordingly. It keeps the balance of RF while being in-line with stock KSP. You also might want to look at the Community Resource Project thread, as they are talking about this kind of stuff as well.

[karamazovnew]

Sorry for the following long post. Raptor I hope you don't think I've hijacked this thread. I'm a sailor and will leave for a few months soon. Whatever changes I make should sit with your mod anyway. When I finish (soon) I will post the configs here. It will be playable, I promise, but I'm hoping you guys can improve on it. When I get back, I want to see a proper mod made out of it.

snip

About Utilization: I had actually finished that, leaving all non-procedural tanks intact, letting RealFuels deal with them. The file I had was nice and allowed further tweaking around the base "default tank" values. I'll include at the end for inspiration, but it will have a*.bak extension.

I won't use it in the mod because of a huge problem. Procedural tanks mess up whenever I press the automatic XX%/YY% button in the interface. Basically it's always stuck at stock utilization. There is a way to work around it, but it's an ugly one so I've abandoned that route. What I will do is something I should've done from the start: make 5 different procedural tanks. I'll limit myself to Default, Cryo, Balloon, Balloon Cryo, ServiceModule, Structural. These will be copies of the normal RF procedural tank but allow for cleaner separation between the tank types. Want different crashTolerance or max temperature? Well, now you can. Maybe some helpful modder can integrate them into the career tech tree more nicely (rather then having all of them from the start). They'll even come with different textures so you can tell them apart easier. Also you'll be able to see the fuel details for each, to figure out which has Pressurized or Insulated stuff. Heck we can even add electrical charge needed for pressurization, Failure in Dangit, things like this. These were things which were impossible with the current Procedural setup.

About prices: currently, my mod first removes all traces of old fuels, so you start with empty costed tanks. Kerosene+Lox jump them back to exactly the old full price. The rest of the price changes I already listed in the previous comment. They are not great changes, I like the realism that Nathan provided. Why did I change them a little bit? First of all, the 2096 multiplier I first used made Hypergolics excruciatingly expensive. By reducing it to 1743 and increasing the price LOX to bring Kerolox back to the stock LiquidFuel value, I've also made Hypergolics a bit more bearable. Secondly, I've made myself a crappy Excel file to show me the economical efficiency of any rocket, in different situations (launch, second stage, orbital maneuvering, deep space). The file took into account ratios of cost, deltav, twr, cryo etc. and it gave me a score for each situation, with weighting applied for various "Desired" factors (such as Delta V and TWR at launch, cryo in deep space). That file showed me that the Hydrolox combination was NEVER useful except in rare occasions at launch. By changing the price just a bit, I got the difference from a max 0.5 efficiency compared to Kerolox to about 0.8 in almost all situations when long term boiloff isn't an issue . This also improved Ethanol a little bit Anyway, the changes are easy to remove if you don't like them, I'll put instructions in the cfg file.

Now about tank type prices: when empty, all tank types cost exactly the same. Consider it the shell+a basic tank inside. But if you add resources listed as "pressurized" or "insulated", the cost of the empty tank suddenly jumps. Quite a lot so far, you guys might want to lower it

- pressurized adds 300 credits per 1000L (the basic 1.25m*1m tank), basically doubles the cost of the empty tank.

- insulation adds 200 credits per 1000L

- both of them add 500 credits per 1000L

For example, a cryo tank provides insulation for LOx and LH, but not for Kerosene (not needed). The Kerosene parcel inside the Cryo tank will cost exactly as inside a Default tank. But the LOx will be more expensive. LH+LOx will be even more expensive since both have the "is insulated" property. Thus, Cryo tanks will be viable for orbital manuevers, but not for launch (the size makes them humongously more expensive).

Balloon tanks are OP. About 10% jump in DeltaV as opposed to Default tank? Balloon tanks will add 600 credits per 1000L on top of the above, for every resource. So a Balloon Cryo actually costs you 800 credits per 1000L.

Again these prices do not include the actual fuel, nor the price of the base tank.

For example: an empty Jumbo can hold 32000L and costs about 9862 credits when empty. RealFuels lists it as a Cryo tank.

- Price with Kerosene: 12149.6 (the entire 32000L of Kerosene costs 2287.6)

- Price with Kerolox: 17037 (12000L Kerosene at 1064 credits, 20000L of LOx at 2075credits and a whopping 4137 credits just to set up the LoX insulation).

- Price with HiLoX: 21371 credits at full, 16662 when empty, so a maximum of 6800 credits which comes from just 200 credits for every 1000L of volume (actually it calculates for 34kL, not 32kL, don't worry that is a consequence of that Utilization file I'm still using). See, I told you HiLox was expensive. Cause it still is

In the same way, a Balloon Cryo tank of the same size will cost up to 25600 more credits (when empty). Ouch. Of course, that's by design. You'll have to think twice before using it for launch, better go with Default one If you want to see the absolute max, use Nitrous Oxide which is also pressurized, hehe.

Please remember that I'm only talking about empty tanks here, which you can recover for a bucketload of cash. And you should From what I can remember Kerbal Construction time might be using price as a factor for build time. That's one more thing to worry about, hehe.

Edited March 6, 2015 by karamazovnew

[Raptor831]

@karamazovnew: No, not worried about thread hijacking. But, your ideas are getting big enough that you probably could use your own thread, just to keep it organized. I'd be interested to see your working documents/configs.

Pressurization is achieved (I believe) when a resource is stored, and it stays pressurized until it is released. Think O2 canisters. They don't need electricity to stay pressurized. Same for insulated tanks. Insulation is a passive means to slow heat transfer (like a drink cooler); as such it doesn't need electricity. Now, RF has those cooling fins, so that keeps the tank at a specific temperature (think refrigerator). That needs electricity, which is already modeled in RF. If you needed to re-pressurize a tank, then you'd need electric charge.

Someone said that balloon tanks were supposed to not have any surface attachment available (lighter weight but no expansion options). If you remove that option for your Balloon part, it'd differentiate that tank more and actually have a "cost" to using it above the physical cost. If you can't add boosters or RCS ports or anything, then that will be a tough call.