The Karbonite Travelling Circus Chapter 6 -- It All Goes Dark

[Geschosskopf]

I use such Science shuttling missions to replenish TAC supplies on board the station. What about you?

Yeah, I'll certainly do that once Science Station Mun actually needs supplies. But as you see above, it was launched with full pantries. Despite now having been in space nearly a month, it's still got over 500 days of provisions left. This seemed a safer course than leaving supply runs to the whims of the contract generation system.

Those Map-View screenshots....wtf.

Yeah... I'm getting pretty exasperated with carefully positioned satellites jumping around for no good reason as soon as I turn my back, then getting frequent unexpected Mun encounters that keep screwing them up as I'm trying to get them back in place. I mean, I've got Kerbal Alarm Clock set automatically to throw up SOI-change alarms 5 minutes beforehand, so when I plot a node that shows no encounters on the map, KAC agrees. So then I'm warping along thinking it'll be smooth sailing to the next node, and suddenly POOF! I'm in Mun's SOI without KAC ever saying anything. And because I crossed the SOI boundary at the 1K to 10K warp I naturally was using to cover the long distance, not only is my trajectory even further screwed up as a result, but I'm still warping that fast in the new SOI, which sometimes results in VERY near-misses with Mun's surface.

Unexpected encounters happening to the ship currently under control, though, have been going on since forever, although they seem to be happening more often now than before. I can deal with this, although I'll gripe about it. What's really annoying me is the disruption now happening to ships that should be safely on rails, as securely set on their courses as the planets themselves. Never seen that happen before. And having an on-rails satellite actually switch from orbitting Kerbin to orbitting Mun all by itself takes the cake on that. Seriously, WTF?

The really bizarre thing is that changes to on-rails ships don't happen as you'd normally expect, when you're warping while controlling another ship. No, I've watched that and they keep to their rails as they should. Instead, the changes happen while I'm in the VAB or when I reload the game. I do a mission, all is as it should be, so I either quit the game or do something in the VAB. Next time I look in space, however, on-rails ships will have jumped around. For example, with MOS Trailing getting into Munar orbit just now, it was doing just fine all during the Karbonite Mun Lander thing. I reloaded the game and it was still OK. I launched Duna 1 and all was good. Then I went back into the VAB, whipped up the experiment ship for the station, and when I launched it, MOS Trailing had made its move.

Given all this, I've about decided to junk Remote Tech. You just can't rely on satellites staying where you very carefully put them. Besides, it cramps my style.

At least I'm assuming that's what you meant when you said "wtf". If you were instead asking what all the extra lines on the were, that's Remote Tech. The yellow lines are direct links between ships and the white lines show cones aimed at planets/moons.

[Scotius]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56440-0-24-AntennaRange-1-4-1-Enforce-and-Encourage-Antenna-Diversity

Use this mod instead. It still enforces some realism, while not being ridiculously .... about it. Like i wrote - good thing we do not need anything resembling RT in real life. Otherwise we would still be looking at other planets only with Earth-bound telescopes.

[undercoveryankee]

Like i wrote - good thing we do not need anything resembling RT in real life. Otherwise we would still be looking at other planets only with Earth-bound telescopes.

There are two main differences between RT and real life: in RL, ground stations are easier to deploy than satellites, so the DSN can reach any probe that can point a high-gain antenna at Earth, and there are more fallback options like lower data rates or one-way communication to allow the DSN to communicate with a lower-gain antenna, so total loss of the ability to send recovery commands is rarer.

I don't consider it RT2's fault that it encourages players to attempt interesting station-keeping configurations and discover that the game doesn't like them, even if it does lead you to decide you would rather play with something simpler.

[Geschosskopf]

There are two main differences between RT and real life: in RL, ground stations are easier to deploy than satellites, so the DSN can reach any probe that can point a high-gain antenna at Earth, and there are more fallback options....

And these days we have the ability to make probes a lot more autonomous than before, so they don't need they hand held constantly.

I don't consider it RT2's fault that it encourages players to attempt interesting station-keeping configurations and discover that the game doesn't like them, even if it does lead you to decide you would rather play with something simpler.

I don't, either. I have no real complaint about RT2 itself. It's just that doing it elegantly requires more precision than the game itself is capable of, and doing it within the game's limitations requires such application of brute force as to make it both a grind and somewhat silly. And besides that, it's really in the way of the big flotilla stuff I enjoy most.

So I'm thinking it's time to pull the plug on this and get back to doing what I normally do.

[Geschosskopf]

CHAPTER 6 -- It All Goes Black

So I'm thinking it's time to pull the plug on this and get back to doing what I normally do.

Well, the KTC eventually developed better communications technology (as in uninstalled RT2 and installed Antenna Range) and got on with business. And in the fullness of time, it was time to go to Laythe again. Doing so with NEAR, Deadly Reentry, and TAC Life Support made it a more complicated effort than previous jobs so the plan was 1st to establish a nearly self-sufficient, closed-system OKS space station with seats for 10 as an advanced base. This would be expanded in the future into a major spaceport. But while waiting for the next transfer window, its crew of Nelrim, Hanhat, Theovin, and Rodry would supervise scanning Laythe for resources and, using a few probe rovers, scout out good places to establish self-sufficient colonies.

This was still a pretty hefty mission, entailing a reasonably large flotilla of 11 ships at a total cost of about $3.7 million. To get all the large station pieces and its initial stock of supplies, plus its pioneer crew out to Jool required rather large rockets, although the various supporting probes weren't quite as big. But most of them looked about like this, using the massive 5m lower stages from KW Rocketry.

They mostly all operated on the same principle, a single NEAR-friendly, tall, skinny stack. The big lifter to get it a good ways up, a 2nd stage to put it orbit and start it on its way, a nuke to get it the rest of the way and do any necessary orbital maneuvering, and the payload in a fairing which would stay on until all aerobraking was done. The few not built this way were small enough to have chemical transfer stages.

And to keep space from getting littered up with spent 2nd stages, these (and most of the higher stages) had TAC Self-Destruct modules on them. This, seriously, is the greatest mod ever. Blowing up boosters is the least of its many uses. But anyway, when activated via staging, each part of the dead booster blows up from the bottom up, resulting in a fun chain of explosions saluting every launch.

And so eventually all 11 ships were on their way.

And all was looking good. It was a good flotilla launch, all nice and tight so nothing would have to wait long on something else to arrive, but still spaced enough not to be overwhelming upon arrival.

And pretty soon, all 11 ships were out of Kerbin's SOI and it was time to start plotting mid-course corrections. And at this point, everything went black.

The KTC has a long history of being wiped out by supernovae but this is the 1st time it's been captured on film. But given that it's all black, maybe instead this time the universe suffered the Big Rip. In any case, the game file is totally hosed and the same blackness envelopes even reloading from a previous quicksave. So back to the drawingboard yet again....

[Scotius]

Kraken couldn't resist such a smorgasbord of tasty morsels ready to devour Too bad - it was such an interesting beginning.

[Geschosskopf]

Kraken couldn't resist such a smorgasbord of tasty morsels ready to devour Too bad - it was such an interesting beginning.

I really don't know what happened. 11 ships is a medium-sized flotilla by my standards. I think my biggest ever was 24 and it had no problems and more recently 14 ships went to Ike without a hitch. And this was actually a fresh game started in sandbox mode once I'd researched everything, so it didn't have a hangover from anything beforehand.

[Tw1]

Strange. Was it a 32 or a 64 bit install? Any mods giving errors? That was pretty bad luck.

[Geschosskopf]

Strange. Was it a 32 or a 64 bit install? Any mods giving errors? That was pretty bad luck.

32-bit. I won't be doing 64-bit until Squad solves some of its problems. As to errors, I searched all the logs and couldn't find a single one.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

[Zylark]

Given all this, I've about decided to junk Remote Tech. You just can't rely on satellites staying where you very carefully put them. Besides, it cramps my style.

I've not had quite as many problems as you running RT - but I've had my fair share of duplicate vessels going kablooie forcing a revert to a previous save. I'm also rethinking keeping RT in my career. The concept of the mod is great, but it would seem it have not gotten much love and attention lately, so the bugs are pretty bad when they do crop up.

I also keep backups of all saves... Should anything happen - which it have, and backups have saved my bacon more than once. Basically I copy paste the latest persistent save to a separate folder. I got five of them backup folders, save_1 through save_5. Plus I alt-tab now and again to make backups. Not to mention a near compulsive disorder regarding making quicksaves.

Or put in slightly other words: I've had my share of problems, and the current version - at least with all the mods I am running - is not entirely stable.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Zylark

[Cydonian Monk]

I've also just ditched Remote Tech (again), though not because I had any issues with it. (If anything, this play through is the first time I've not encountered the duplicate bug caused by RT. Maybe that's fixed.) Instead I'm having issues with other things, that have caused me to distrust Module Manager again, but only because the Stock game doesn't like... much of anything really. Resulting in the same blackness you've just discovered.

One wonders what happens to the kerbals eaten by the Kraken. Do they respawn? Or are their very souls consumed and stricken from the universe?

[Geschosskopf]

I've also just ditched Remote Tech (again), though not because I had any issues with it. (If anything, this play through is the first time I've not encountered the duplicate bug caused by RT. Maybe that's fixed.)

I'm unfamiliar with this duplicate bug you and Zylark mention. What is it?

My problem with RT is that IMHO it's just not realistic. For 1 thing, here on Earth we have tracking stations all around the planet so there shouldn't be a need to make a satellite network just for that. For another, at least these days probes have a fair amount of autonomy so don't need somebody sitting at a console actually controlling all their actions 24/7 like is necessary in RT. And then of course it just totally cramps my style when it comes to doing the flotillas I groove on.

Instead I'm having issues with other things, that have caused me to distrust Module Manager again, but only because the Stock game doesn't like... much of anything really. Resulting in the same blackness you've just discovered.

Well, when I started playing again after this disaster, I noticed it wasn't just the save that was corrupt. 2 mods also had ceased to function, despite still being installed. These were RCS Build Aid and NEAR. With RCS Build Aid, it was so dead it didn't even appear on the Toolbar anymore. With NEAR, the CoL marker in the VAB/SPH was broken, just being a blue dot on the floor unresponsive to the addition, subtraction, or movement of wing parts. Reinstalling both these mods solved those problems, however.

So I started doing something else (a weird idea involving asteroids) and soon encountered another problem. At one point, the whole maneuver node system became invisible. The nodes and the future trajectories as a result of them just didn't show up on the map. Going back to the space center and then to the ship again fixed this.

However, at this point the Kraken struck again. My asteroid tug, which had captured a Class D in solar orbit and gotten it captured at Kerbin, suddenly went nuts. I could rotate right onto the maneuver node marker on the navball, but then the marker would start swinging wildly back and forth from 1 side of the navball to the other and wouldn't stop. Burning a bit didn't stop this, nor did physics warp, and using regular warp caused the immediate and extremely forceful explosion of the tug, scattering fragments hither and yon with enough angular momentum to rival pulsars.

All in all, I'm not particularly happy with 0.24.2. It seems to be rather less stable in both 32- and 64-bit versions than previous versions, both stock and modded. I hope 0.25 will address this.

One wonders what happens to the kerbals eaten by the Kraken. Do they respawn? Or are their very souls consumed and stricken from the universe?

Being eaten by the Kraken is the Kerbal version of being chosen for Valhalla, the most desirable afterlife option. To be eaten by the Kraken is to become one with the universe itself. Kerbals not eaten by the Kraken are consigned to the dark, cold, damp realm of decay and putrification, forever shut off from any view of the stars. The main reason that Kerbals go to space is in hopes of being eaten.

[Cydonian Monk]

Ooooh. So the Kraken are the Valkyries? I can get behind that idea.

As for the duplicates bug - there is/was a nasty bug buried deep within the bowels of RemoteTech that caused a craft to be duplicated. Everythibg is identical - especially its orbit and position. As a result, when you load the craft and physics kicks in - Blammo! The two copies of the vessel are occupying the same space, resulting in a part-spraying explosion.

Back a year or so ago when I was trying to fix a fork of Remote Tech, I isolated it to some code inside the Flight Computer but couldn't get it narrowed down enough to find and fix. (More importantly though - I was able to reliably reproduce it.) As I've not seen it happen for quite some time either Cilph or the new crew found it and fixed it, or it's just no longer an issue. Might have been an interaction with other things, too.

[Geschosskopf]

Ooooh. So the Kraken are the Valkyries? I can get behind that idea.

Kinda sorta. I mean, the Kraken is the Supreme Being, normally a deistic entity unconcerned with the trivial affairs of mortals. The Kraken created the lesser (to It) interactive gods of the traditional Kerbal pantheon to build the universe for it. And the most important thing in the specifications was to make sure there was always a good supply of Kerbals, which is the Kraken's favorite food. That way, It would always have something to snack on during Its periodic inspection tours to make sure the lesser (to It) interactive gods were doing their jobs (which is, incidentally, why Kerbals are snack fiends themselves).

Being eaten by the Kraken, therefore, has nothing to do with the individual merits of the Kerbals involved nor the importance of their mission to Kerbalkind. It's just a matter of being in the right place (space) at the right time (when the Kraken gets puckish during an inspection tour). Still, to be eaten by the Kraken is to become at least a small part of the Supreme Being, which is better than being tossed in the dumpster due to passing your expiration date.

As for the duplicates bug - there is/was a nasty bug buried deep within the bowels of RemoteTech that caused a craft to be duplicated. Everything is identical - especially its orbit and position. As a result, when you load the craft and physics kicks in - Blammo! The two copies of the vessel are occupying the same space, resulting in a part-spraying explosion.

Wow, cool bug . Ragequitting, keyboard-smashing, and monitor-fisting certainly, but still cool. Sadly, I never experienced that in my time with RT.