[1.1] RemoteTech v1.6.10 [2016-04-12]

[Valkyria90]

Is it possible to modify any files in Remote tech to make the mod purely for looks, and not for actually staying in contact with your crafts?

I recently installed Outer planets mod, and even the GX-128 cannot reach all the way back to Kerbin. I love the mod, but im getting a bit tired of using it, however i would still like to keep the antennas and the dishes for the looks, and for making good looking satellites, bases and spacecrafts

Edit:

Even better: is it possible to make every antenna infinite range, so that im still depending on LOS, but not relying on having huge dish antennas on my pretty small ion probes? :3

Edited April 8, 2015 by Valkyria90

[futrtrubl]

Is it possible to modify any files in Remote tech to make the mod purely for looks, and not for actually staying in contact with your crafts?

I recently installed Outer planets mod, and even the GX-128 cannot reach all the way back to Kerbin. I love the mod, but im getting a bit tired of using it, however i would still like to keep the antennas and the dishes for the looks, and for making good looking satellites, bases and spacecrafts

Edit:

Even better: is it possible to make every antenna infinite range, so that im still depending on LOS, but not relying on having huge dish antennas on my pretty small ion probes? :3

If you look back a few pages there is a mod that removes the remotetech functionality letting you use antennas for asthetics. Changing the range is even easier, either edit RemoteTech_Antennas.cfg and set ranges to something huge or (untried) set RangeMultiplier in RemoteTech_Settings.cfg to something huge.

[Sigma88]

Is it possible to modify any files in Remote tech to make the mod purely for looks, and not for actually staying in contact with your crafts?

I recently installed Outer planets mod, and even the GX-128 cannot reach all the way back to Kerbin. I love the mod, but im getting a bit tired of using it, however i would still like to keep the antennas and the dishes for the looks, and for making good looking satellites, bases and spacecrafts

Edit:

Even better: is it possible to make every antenna infinite range, so that im still depending on LOS, but not relying on having huge dish antennas on my pretty small ion probes? :3

First of all let me give you some alternatives because Remote Tech is awesome

1- OPM already changes the reach of a remote tech antenna in order to cover plock, so you should be fine regardless

2- use this mod in addition to RemoteTech, it will add antennas with higher reach

3- If your small ion probes are set to orbit planets and moons you can park a bigger probe with a huge antenna around the planet as a relay satellite and then send the small ion probes around the moons and stuff... (my mod can help you with that, but it's not really necessary)

4- you can delete all the .cfg files with "Probe" in their name from the folder GameData\RemoteTech, that will allow you to control the probe even if you don't have signal

If you still want to remove everything:

as someone already mentioned in the first post there's a download for Remote Tech just for the parts and none of the funcions. It may have some problems with compatibility tho

[somnambulist]

1- OPM already changes the reach of a remote tech antenna in order to cover plock, so you should be fine regardless

CaptRobau wasn't kidding when he named Outer Planets Mod -- Plock has a SMA nearly six times that of stock Eeelo. To put this in perspective if you overlaid the OPM system on our own solar system Plock would be about half way between Mars and Jupiter. If Kerbin exploded someone on Plock wouldn't know about it for nearly a half hour. (Space is big. Really big.)

A few months ago I did some preliminary work on making RemoteTech act more like the Deep Space Network complete with ground stations for interplanetary communication. It would have been an interesting addition to a stock solar system but the vast distances in OPM would make for an even better experience. I'll need to do some testing over the weekend but it should be possible to have a RT experience in OPM that's more exciting than, "make the big dish go further."

[Drew Kerman]

I've been following some of the stuff they're doing for New Horizons with the DSN and it really humbles me when I consider how easy we have it

[Sigma88]

CaptRobau wasn't kidding when he named Outer Planets Mod -- Plock has a SMA nearly six times that of stock Eeelo. To put this in perspective if you overlaid the OPM system on our own solar system Plock would be about half way between Mars and Jupiter. If Kerbin exploded someone on Plock wouldn't know about it for nearly a half hour. (Space is big. Really big.)

A few months ago I did some preliminary work on making RemoteTech act more like the Deep Space Network complete with ground stations for interplanetary communication. It would have been an interesting addition to a stock solar system but the vast distances in OPM would make for an even better experience. I'll need to do some testing over the weekend but it should be possible to have a RT experience in OPM that's more exciting than, "make the big dish go further."

In my current save I'm following a progression:

First I'm sending out probes with scansat to scan every planet, and in the meantime I built a station around kerbin with oks

Then I'll start some colonizing.

For now I deleted the opm cfg that increase the reach, Ill probably use the origami to go to further

I don't know if the feature is from remote tech or mks/oks but when I build a station with more than a certain amount of kerbals it gets the red spot of KSC. And you can guide craft from the station instead than from kerbin

[Stone Blue]

I don't know if the feature is from remote tech or mks/oks but when I build a station with more than a certain amount of kerbals it gets the red spot of KSC. And you can guide craft from the station instead than from kerbin

Its from RT....I dont know if it got changed, but it used to be if you use the RC-L01 Remote Guidance Unit on a ship/station crewed by at least 6 Kerbals, that vessel will operate as a space-based KSC....Good for establishing around the furthest planets, so you can control probes/rovers/sats without the addition of heavy/cumbersome long-distance comm equipment, or signal delay...

[Sigma88]

Its from RT....I dont know if it got changed, but it used to be if you use the RC-L01 Remote Guidance Unit on a ship/station crewed by at least 6 Kerbals, that vessel will operate as a space-based KSC....Good for establishing around the furthest planets, so you can control probes/rovers/sats without the addition of heavy/cumbersome long-distance comm equipment, or signal delay...

yeah, that's it. MKS/OKS included it in its modules then because I don't have that probe core in my station

[Stone Blue]

yeah, that's it. MKS/OKS included it in its modules then because I don't have that probe core in my station

OK...yeah, see, thats the part that I didnt know changed or not: if the specific .cfg module for that function got added to any of the other RT parts or not...But if MKS/OKS has it, thats kewl to know...

[OminousPenguin]

I've noticed that the masses of the RT2 antennas are ridiculously high.

1000kg for an antenna??? Decimal place is definitely in the wrong place.

I guess most people don't really pay attention - I know I've only just noticed it after playing with RT2 for well over a year. - Normally you just add enough fuel to get the delta v you need without really paying attention to the mass of individual parts and comparing it to real world equivalents, but that's what I did tonight hence noticing it.

The folding ones should probably be the most massive.. Fixed ones like the KR-7, KR-14 and CommTech-1 should be lighter at around 10-20kg. The GX-128 should obviously be the heaviest at around 50kg (not a ton).

Anyone disagree? If so, please explain your self!

[Sigma88]

I've noticed that the masses of the RT2 antennas are ridiculously high.

1000kg for an antenna??? Decimal place is definitely in the wrong place.

I guess most people don't really pay attention - I know I've only just noticed it after playing with RT2 for well over a year. - Normally you just add enough fuel to get the delta v you need without really paying attention to the mass of individual parts and comparing it to real world equivalents, but that's what I did tonight hence noticing it.

The folding ones should probably be the most massive.. Fixed ones like the KR-7, KR-14 and CommTech-1 should be lighter at around 10-20kg. The GX-128 should obviously be the heaviest at around 50kg (not a ton).

Anyone disagree? If so, please explain your self!

I think the higher mass is explained by the fact that those antennas can operate in the atmosphere

I never checked out voyager 2 stats, or even better cassini that aerobraked at saturn.

That could be a good indication

[OminousPenguin]

Ah yes good point. The fixed ones that can tolerate atmospheric stress should be heavier, but still no where near what they are.

Cassini was one that I looked up before making that post, but I can't find the mass of the antenna anywhere. The orbiter has a total mass of 2125kg - Just guessing that the antenna doesn't account for anywhere near half of that

The 0.9m antenna on the GPM satellite has a mass of 24kg including two gimballing motors. ^[ref]

This 10m antenna has a mass of 230 kg. ^[ref] Note that this antenna is for a radio telescope rather than data communications and so will have different physical requirements... and it's 10m.

I'll revise my suggestions: KR-7: 35kg, KR-14: 50kg, CommTech-1:90kg and GX-128: 120kg. - I still think these are a bit high but I think they're balanced for gameplay.

[Stone Blue]

Well, I guess one thing to also consider for weight, is where would you add the extra weight of the REST of the comm system?...Do you consider the weight of the transmitter, receiver, an included power source, and wiring, to already be included in the stock core/pod, or would you include that extra weight into the vessel with the antenna?

[Sigma88]

Ah yes good point. The fixed ones that can tolerate atmospheric stress should be heavier, but still no where near what they are.

Cassini was one that I looked up before making that post, but I can't find the mass of the antenna anywhere. The orbiter has a total mass of 2125kg - Just guessing that the antenna doesn't account for anywhere near half of that

The 0.9m antenna on the GPM satellite has a mass of 24kg including two gimballing motors. ^[ref]

This 10m antenna has a mass of 230 kg. ^[ref] Note that this antenna is for a radio telescope rather than data communications and so will have different physical requirements... and it's 10m.

http://www.wtec.org/loyola/satcom2/fhc_02.jpg

I'll revise my suggestions: KR-7: 35kg, KR-14: 50kg, CommTech-1:90kg and GX-128: 120kg. - I still think these are a bit high but I think they're balanced for gameplay.

cassini has a ~118 kg antenna with ~27 more kg of stuff needed for communications

If I'm reading this correctly (page 18 in the book, which is page 30 of the pdf)

That's pretty impressive considering they flown it inside another planet's atmosphere to aerobrake, or at least it is to me having zero background in this kind of engineering

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I guess one thing to also consider for weight, is where would you add the extra weight of the REST of the comm system?...Do you consider the weight of the transmitter, receiver, an included power source, and wiring, to already be included in the stock core/pod, or would you include that extra weight into the vessel with the antenna?

lol, didn't see your post when I was writing mine.

I think it's safe to say everything should be put into the "Antenna", you can take out the processing stuff as those can be already covered by the core I guess

Anyway it's between 118 and 145 which is pretty much inside the leeway you would expect when going from IRL to KSP

[Svm420]

Really looking forward to an official 1.7 update. The debug logging is a little heavy on the dev version with no way I know of to turn it off or down

@ Sigma88 Does this mean you'll be updating your mod antenna mod with adjusted weights?

[Sigma88]

wait, I'm an idiot.

Cassini didn't aerobrake, idk why I thought it did.

They did use the antenna to shield the craft from stuff when passing through the gap in the rings, but then it used engines to get captured

Is there anything that actually aerobraked with an operating antenna? that may be a better comparison

- - - Updated - - -

Really looking forward to an official 1.7 update. The debug logging is a little heavy on the dev version with no way I know of to turn it off or down

@ Sigma88 Does this mean you'll be updating your mod antenna mod with adjusted weights?

I call my stuff "expansion" instead of mod on purpose, because the intention is to expand some mods I love adding some neat feature but I am very careful not to change the way the mod is intended to be played. So I always follow what the main mod choices are.

If Remote Tech will change the mass I will do the same to maintain my stuff coherent with everything else.

Anyway in the meantime if you want different masses and don't feel confortable going into the .cfg files yourself you can PM me, I'll throw together something for you.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Sigma88

[OminousPenguin]

That PDF is a good find Sigma88. Thanks.

@Stone Blue, yes the weight needs to include additional supporting systems, however:

The cores already contain transmitter/receiver hardware, albeit but with a much lower power antenna.

The power source is external - solar panels etc - so just transformers and regulators are required.

You could bump my proposed masses up by 25kg or more and they are still going to be a lot more sensible than the current 1000kg and 500kg values.

Edited April 10, 2015 by OminousPenguin

[Sigma88]

That PDF is a good find Sigma88. Thanks.

@Stone Blue, yes the weight needs to include additional supporting systems, however:

The cores already contain transmitter/receiver hardware, albeit but with a much lower power antenna.

The power source is external - solar panels etc - so just transformers and regulators are required.

You could bump my proposed masses up by 25kg or more and they are still going to be a lot more sensible than the current 1000kg and 500kg values.

Still I can't find any information about spacecrafts using aerobrake with an operative antenna. I'm starting to wonder if this was ever done.

[Stone Blue]

@Stone Blue, yes the weight needs to include additional supporting systems, however:

The cores already contain transmitter/receiver hardware, albeit but with a much lower power antenna.

The power source is external - solar panels etc - so just transformers and regulators are required.

You could bump my proposed masses up by 25kg or more and they are still going to be a lot more sensible than the current 1000kg and 500kg values.

Well, as to the power source, I didnt mean an external source, I guess I should have used "power SUPPLY", instead...Granted with TODAY'S level of technology, things are more compact, but as an example, in the '80s-'90's I worked as an avionics tech in the service...And a basic comm or nav system had specific "modules"...Sometimes all in one box, sometimes in separate units, ie a transmitter, receiver, power supply, display unit...All usually depending on what kind of overall juice was needed for the system...Generally, basic, short range comm systems were basically small packages, while longer range systems required larger "packages"... For example, there was an all-weather, navigational radar system used in KC-130's, that the main component resembled a beer keg, and weighed close to 100lbs...TOTAL system weight may have been close to 200-400lbs... They also had one of the first airborne GPS receivers, and the thing was about 2.5ft x 1.5ft x 1ft, and it also weighed close to 100 lbs...Those did not include the display units, either...

Sorry for being longwinded...

I guess the point is, if you want to get REALLY detailed, and depending on how close to real life weights you want to get, go ahead and tweak the .cfg specs to your hearts content...

I just wanted to point out that there may be more than just with and without antenna weights to consider...

And yes, I agree, some of the given antenna part weights ARE still excessively high...

Edited April 10, 2015 by Stone Blue

[Sigma88]

Well, as to the power source, I didnt mean an external source, I guess I should have used "power SUPPLY", instead...Granted with TODAY'S level of technology, things are more compact, but as an example, in the '80s-'90's I worked as an avionics tech in the service...And a basic comm or nav system had specific "modules"...Sometimes all in one box, sometimes in separate units, ie a transmitter, receiver, power supply, display unit...All usually depending on what kind of overall juice was needed for the system...Generally, basic, short range comm systems were basically small packages, while longer range systems required larger "packages"... For example, there was an all-weather, navigational radar system used in KC-130's, that the main component resembled a beer keg, and weighed close to 100lbs...TOTAL system weight may have been close to 200-400lbs...They also had one of the first airborne GPS receivers, and the thing was about 2.5ft x 1.5ft x 1ft, and it also weighed close to 100 lbs...Those did not include the display units, either...

Sorry for being longwinded...

I guess the point is, if you want to get REALLY detailed, and depending on how close to real life weights you want to get, go ahead and tweak the .cfg specs to your hearts content...

I just wanted to point out that there may be more than just with and without antenna weights to consider...

And yes, I agree, some of the given antenna part weights ARE still excessively high...

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/

[panzer1b]

is there a way to 100% eliminate the lag between control (i know its realistic, but its more annoying then anything else). Aside from this, ive actually started using this, as it gives an actual purpose to satelites, and makes droid control ships actually necessary to deploy battledroids, tanks, apcs, ect on the ground. Still, until the time lag is fixed (or i can find a way to disable it, if possible plz tell me how), ill stick to stock mechanics.

[futrtrubl]

is there a way to 100% eliminate the lag between control (i know its realistic, but its more annoying then anything else). Aside from this, ive actually started using this, as it gives an actual purpose to satelites, and makes droid control ships actually necessary to deploy battledroids, tanks, apcs, ect on the ground. Still, until the time lag is fixed (or i can find a way to disable it, if possible plz tell me how), ill stick to stock mechanics.

EnableSignalDelay = False in RemoteTech_Settings.cfg

[Sigma88]

EnableSignalDelay = False in RemoteTech_Settings.cfg

You can find the file futrtrubl is talking about in gamedata/remotetech

It will show up after the first time you run the game with the mod installed

And you actually need to modify the file itself, making a MM patch will not work

[FreeThinker]

EnableSignalDelay = False in RemoteTech_Settings.cfg

I actualy like to increase time lag by lowering the speed of light proportianal the the scale of the solar system I'm playing. That way, I get a moor realistic latency when at Jool. It also gives manned vessels a distinct advantage over remote controlled vessels

[Sigma88]

I actualy like to increase time lag by lowering the speed of light proportianal the the scale of the solar system I'm playing. That way, I get a moor realistic latency when at Jool. It also gives manned vessels a distinct advantage over remote controlled vessels

I usually play without signal delay because for starters there are no good way to send comands (except maybe kOS wich I'm told is not 100% compatible)

and even if it was possible I have barely the time to play a couple of hours of ksp each week, I can't be bothered to lose my life trying to get things right with tens of minutes of lag. (and with OPM is even worse)

But if I had the time I would have liked to try it with kOS

I don't really like manned ships, if you have a manned vessel RT becomes almost a non factor