[1.0.5 - Alpha 6] Dang It! (12 september 2015)

[Ippo]

Well, no, it's not intentional that they are *this* frequent. It's actually just a problem of balancing: tanks are always in use, unlike other components, so they age a lot faster.

The failure rate however is definitely something you can mess with in the configs: just open the Tanks.cfg in my ModuleManager folder and edit the MTBF and LifeTime to your liking (an explanation of what those values do is in the OP). Just please share the values you found once you are satisfied, it will help me balance things out

[goldenpeach]

Yes. They are temporarily enabled so that people who want to test it, can. It will be disabled in the release (unlike Squad, when I say Alpha I mean it).

[...]

Why?

They are useful for testing purpose(can I save jeb if this failure occur?) or just for the fun(let's see if I can land this plane with an control surface stuck during a maneuver?).

(Also, it can be fun to see that some design are extremely weak to some failures)

[Ippo]

Well, actually it will be disabled by default, but I am moving the debug options to a runtime flag instead of compile time.

In fact, if you check the last commit, I am working exactly on this (and will add some more)

[autumnalequinox]

Well, no, it's not intentional that they are *this* frequent. It's actually just a problem of balancing: tanks are always in use, unlike other components, so they age a lot faster.

The failure rate however is definitely something you can mess with in the configs: just open the Tanks.cfg in my ModuleManager folder and edit the MTBF and LifeTime to your liking (an explanation of what those values do is in the OP). Just please share the values you found once you are satisfied, it will help me balance things out [/QuoteE]

Ive been tweaking those values ill post when I find some that work well. Very enlightening about the constant use of the tanks causing the seemingly high failure rate. I didnt think editing the values would actually decrease the rate until a failure occured or it had hit the first lifetime value.

[Mister Spock]

I'm enjoying the mod, and I'll try to post impressions of failure-frequency here. I haven't played enough to form any definite impressions yet, but so far things seem nice. I'm playing a new career mode game, lots of mods (maybe I'll post a modlist later); I've done maybe 30 launches, mostly suborbital, doing contracts and such.

During that time, I've had two or three failures. I had one gimbal fail during the first stage of a launch, and I just had a battery fail on a communications satellite (at a rather inopportune time, I might add!). I think you said I need an EVA to repair something on a probe like that, right? So I'll have to send a Kerbal to meet with that satellite and fix it.

So far, so good!

[Ippo]

Alpha 3.2 is out!

This is pretty much just a polish update. There are no new features in it, but now I integrated my messages in the stock messaging app.

Also, you can now edit the settings using a window that can be brought up in the KSC with a button in the stock toolbar (thank ferram4 for this).

Cheers!

P.S: if anyone is using both 0.3.1 and KSP-AVC, can you tell me if you have been notified of the update please? Thanks!

Edited August 11, 2014 by Ippo

[montyben101]

Did you ever add the other "type" of engine to the failure list? I think it was called moduleengineFX or something

[Ippo]

Did you ever add the other "type" of engine to the failure list? I think it was called moduleengineFX or something

Yes, all engines are supported now

[TeeGee]

Is the KSO mod a supported pack for this mod? I might try this out..

[Ippo]

Is the KSO mod a supported pack for this mod? I might try this out..

Kinda. I haven't checked specifically, but unless it has some specific quirks, it should have the same support as every other part mod.

My mod will just look for all the engines, tanks, batteries and so on, regardless of where they came from, and try to mess with them

If you find some incompatibility, please report it on the issue tracker so I can check it out!

Edited August 11, 2014 by Ippo
typo

[Ippo]

By the way, I have my first bug report less than 1 hour, and it's from ME.

It appears that multiple buttons can appear in the stock toolbar. I'll look into it. I knew it was going to be the GUI >.<

[thrandisher]

lol, was just coming on to report that multiple button error. I know Custom Biomes had the same problem when it first went to the stock App thing.

[Ippo]

Try to guess how often it happened in testing. Hint: it's not one or greater.

[Ippo]

0.3.2.1 Hotfix

Ok, I just rushed a fix for the multiple buttons issues. It *should* work as intended now (I surely hope so).

Sorry again about the mess. If you have downloaded 0.3.2, you should update it. Sorry again.

[Mister Spock]

Haven't updated yet, but I will shortly; I want to finish my current orbital rendez-vous first. Just wanted to mention that I had my first antenna blow out, on an unmanned communications satellite (using Remote Tech 2), after a couple days over Kerbin. Very cool! I put three copies of each antenna on the satellite for redundancy's sake, and now I'm glad I did. What a terrific improvement to gameplay -- making us think about reliability.

I do have a couple questions. First, I seem to keep missing the popup messages about failures; are they logged anywhere? The red highlighting is what has notified me, so I guess I'm glad you have it (even though others have asked for a way to toggle that off).

Second, I see my broken probe has 50 spare parts in it. But I have to get a (non-stupid) Kerbal there to fix things, yes? So just rendez-vous, EVA, grab a spare part, and right click on the broken part?

Finally, does this latest update give us the option to toggle off the options to manually break things? I'm playing a "no-reloads ironman" kind of game, and I live in fear that I'll accidentally click the wrong button.

Thanks again for a wonderful mod.

[Ippo]

I do have a couple questions. First, I seem to keep missing the popup messages about failures; are they logged anywhere? The red highlighting is what has notified me, so I guess I'm glad you have it (even though others have asked for a way to toggle that off).

You should be getting a message at the top of the screen alongside with the red glow. Additionally, the failure should be logged in the flight log (press F3), and finally in the latest version you also get a message in the messaging system (the one that notifies you about completed contracts, top right of the screen).

Second, I see my broken probe has 50 spare parts in it. But I have to get a (non-stupid) Kerbal there to fix things, yes? So just rendez-vous, EVA, grab a spare part, and right click on the broken part?

Exactly, just like that. Right now the only advantage to intelligent kerbals is that they can save some spares, in the future you will need a kerbal with the right training. Also, probe cores won't have spare parts in them for long (as soon as I figure out how to filter unmanned pods from a MM patch).

Finally, does this latest update give us the option to toggle off the options to manually break things? I'm playing a "no-reloads ironman" kind of game, and I live in fear that I'll accidentally click the wrong button.

Yes, you finally can You need to bring up the settings window by pressing the app button. It's visible in the space centre and its icon is the one that doesn't mean anything (!#?).

Just wanted to mention that I had my first antenna blow out, on an unmanned communications satellite (using Remote Tech 2), after a couple days over Kerbin. Very cool!

... that wasn't me though. Antennas are still safe from my mod: what do you mean exactly "blow out"?

[Mister Spock]

... that wasn't me though. Antennas are still safe from my mod: what do you mean exactly "blow out"?

Oh! Are you sure? I definitely had a Remote Tech 2 antenna stop working, and it was highlighted in red. I sent a Kerbil up to rendez-vous with the ship and repair it, in fact, using your spare parts from the probe core. It was quite fun. (And scary: at the time I didn't have the tech for docking ports or the Claw, so I just jumped from one ship to the other.) You *sure* it wasn't you? Here's a picture -- dark, but I think you can see the antenna in question. It is one of the early RemoteTech2 antennas -- the Comms DTS-M1, I think.

[Ippo]

I *may* have figured it out: are you running MKS / OKS too?

I can confirm that antennae don't receive any of my failure module... unless some other mod adds a resource to them, in which case they get a tank module because they contain resources. For example, I just noticed that with MKS the DTS1 contains some PunchCards.

I imagine you don't have the log file anymore, right? I'm almost sure that if you could remember the failure message, it was a leak of some kind.

[Mister Spock]

Yes, I am running MKS/OKS. I don't recall for sure, but yes, it's quite possible it was a "leak." I doubt I still have the log file (although occasionally I do copy and keep output.txt, if something goes wrong). If I lose another antenna, I'll keep the log.

[Ippo]

Yes, I am running MKS/OKS. I don't recall for sure, but yes, it's quite possible it was a "leak." I doubt I still have the log file (although occasionally I do copy and keep output.txt, if something goes wrong). If I lose another antenna, I'll keep the log.

No problem, it must be that then. If it happens again, check the failure message (unless you disabled them) to see what's gone wrong, I think it will be "A tank of PunchCards is leaking!".

[autumnalequinox]

I have messages and everything enabled, and the newest edition, and upon inspection of parts I don't get a "... as good as new, etc" message in the top right corner anymore. i don't see any information on the screen about the part's current status. my screen is cluttered but i'm not seeing it. everything else is hunky-dory. my mod situation is the same as before, only change is the new version. i also updated during a current career game.

[autumnalequinox]

crap nevermind i see the messages now in the upper right bar with the other messages, perfectly organized. ignore that! i've been rather useless on the debugging front lately.

[Ippo]

Yep, I figured that the messaging app was the proper place.

By the way, the inspection message overrides the global mute, because I figured that it counts as a sort of report that the kerbal makes.

In fact, I had looked into making the inspection a science experiment (with a very low science value) so that you could transmit it to the KSC for roleplaying, but unfortunately science reports are disabled in sandbox mode, so that wasn't viable unfortunately.

[Mister Spock]

I'm still enjoying the mod. I'm on Tier 7 of the tech tree now in my career game, and I've had the following failures: 2 batteries; 1 antenna (discussed earlier in the thread); 1 engine failure (!); 1 fuel tank leak; and two other failures that I didn't pay attention to because my ship was busy crashing into Kerbin. Overall, seems like a reasonable failure rate. I've had a lot of fun designing EVA missions to fix stuff. In one case, I had to use the Claw, since the target ship did not have docking ports. Very fun.

[Ippo]

Thank you for your feedback!

Also, planning / development for alpha 4 has started. Please pay attention to the warning in the OP: the next update will break saves. Well, not really (hopefully, at least), what I mean is that from the next update each kerbal will have to be trained before he can repair stuff. If you upgrade from alpha 3, the kerbals that are already in flight might not have the perks you need should a failure arise.

More details coming soonâ„¢.