Mod-Oriented Tech Tree (Aug 3, v0.3.3 bug fixes)

[ZeroGravitas]

Investigating further it so far appears to only be parts from deadly re-entry that are missing. I suppose I could try moving the heat shield from procedural parts closer to the start as a workaround, but it's just very odd. The DRE parts show up fine in the RandD building but just never make it to the available parts in VAB or SPH. I just can't imagine what would cause that?

[scerion]

Found that the Basic Fairings node and the Actuators nodes the parts all have no cost to them. Few other parts in random nodes also have no cost.

[JeffreyCor]

Investigating further it so far appears to only be parts from deadly re-entry that are missing. I suppose I could try moving the heat shield from procedural parts closer to the start as a workaround, but it's just very odd. The DRE parts show up fine in the RandD building but just never make it to the available parts in VAB or SPH. I just can't imagine what would cause that?

That is sounding extremely weird as I also use DRE with this tree and the heat shields are showing up fine in the VAB. In care you're running differently I am also running in full career mode not just science mode. If they are showing up as being locked you might have additional shields with the name part name conflicting.

[Aurum6]

I just wanted to pop in and say that I love this mod! I'm using this tech tree in my current playthrough, with B9, KW, and the Near Future packs to fill out the nodes, and I'm having the most fun I've ever had playing this game. It feels like I actually have a choice in where the game goes next, instead of the very linear stock progression. There are lots of tech tree mods out there, but this is exactly what I have been looking for for a long time. Keep up the good work!

[Lechuza]

I just wanted to thank you for making this! I started using the tech tree for my new play through, and I have to say I find it more intuitive than the stock one. I have a bunch of mods installed, a lot of them on your list of supported ones, and the progression is a lot better with a lot more room for decision making and direction. There isn't another mod like this one, so please keep it updated, it is amazing what a change like this can do to a new game, thank you!

[Lechuza]

Is this still being updated? I would give anything to have this tech tree working with Interstellar and other mods. Love it! I refuse to switch to the vanilla tech tree or any other for that matter!

[cvod]

It will be updated when I have time. How does it not work with Interstellar? No one else has mentioned that.

[Streetwind]

I played with this tech tree for a bit, in a game that includes FAR, Deadly Reentry, TAC Life Support and RemoteTech among other things. This combination is fairly tricky: manned craft are difficult to use for long duration missions, so you really want to get unmanned craft up into gear as soon as possible, but you also need to prepare for that by launching commsats to ensure you can control them. And launching these commsats is rather hard without fairings in the presence of both FAR and Deadly Reentry. So you have to get a lot of prerequisites checked early-on.

My experiences so far:

- It was quite a steep start. Even the early tech nodes need much more science than stock, which kind of caught me off guard. I ended up having to scum some surface samples from KSC biomes, which I don't usually do, in order to progress thanks to the 50% science payout difficulty setting I locked in for myself. Not really a problem, just... unexpected.

- Took me quite a while to find and unlock fairings. They in fact too me longer than solar panels, batteries, communication antennas etc., and they were the thing that held me back from launching commsats the longest. Additionally, the prerequisites for the node with the 1.25m fairings already contains parts that require at least 2.5m fairings and rockets to launch properly, so that seems a little backwards.

- I'm kind of missing small engines and tanks for my probes and commsats. I'm already starting to see nodes with 3.75m parts in them, but I have not yet found any node containing any 0.625m tanks or engines. One of the early probe nodes had some tiny radial monopropellant engines from RLA, but unfortunately those are not serviceable because I only have 1.25m RCS tanks. If you attach things radially to those, they no longer fit into anything smaller than a 2.5m fairing. And considering that what I'm actually trying to launch is a simple stayputnik with an antenna and some batteries and OX-STATs, a 2.5m rocket seems kind of overkill. So right now I'm basically building satellites with LV-909s, where the engine weighs more than the entire rest of the satellite combined and has so much TWR that I'm using the rightclick tweakable to throttle it down to 5% in order to be able to maneuver with any sort of precision. The tiniest available fuel tank still gives me more than 6 times the dV that I need, too, even with the comically overweight engine/tank, and forces me to use an expanded fairing instead of a standard one. Really, I never thought I would ever say this, but I'd offer a kingdom for an ant engine right now! Could you perhaps consider moving a few 0.625m parts a bit more down towards the start? A small monoprop tank would make the radial RLA engines servicable, but a single small-size inline engine would do as well. Maybe with one of RLA's small fuel tanks.

[FreeThinker]

Please add support for more Mods

[FreeThinker]

- I'm kind of missing small engines and tanks for my probes and commsats. I'm already starting to see nodes with 3.75m parts in them, but I have not yet found any node containing any 0.625m tanks or engines. One of the early probe nodes had some tiny radial monopropellant engines from RLA, but unfortunately those are not serviceable because I only have 1.25m RCS tanks. If you attach things radially to those, they no longer fit into anything smaller than a 2.5m fairing. And considering that what I'm actually trying to launch is a simple stayputnik with an antenna and some batteries and OX-STATs, a 2.5m rocket seems kind of overkill. So right now I'm basically building satellites with LV-909s, where the engine weighs more than the entire rest of the satellite combined and has so much TWR that I'm using the rightclick tweakable to throttle it down to 5% in order to be able to maneuver with any sort of precision. The tiniest available fuel tank still gives me more than 6 times the dV that I need, too, even with the comically overweight engine/tank, and forces me to use an expanded fairing instead of a standard one. Really, I never thought I would ever say this, but I'd offer a kingdom for an ant engine right now! Could you perhaps consider moving a few 0.625m parts a bit more down towards the start? A small monoprop tank would make the radial RLA engines servicable, but a single small-size inline engine would do as well. Maybe with one of RLA's small fuel tanks.

Install Tweakscale and Modular Parts and these problems shouldn't hold you back anymore

[Streetwind]

No thanks, no form of procedural or resizable parts will ever make it into my saves again. Tried it once, didn't like it. It renders redundant everything I play career mode for, and I don't like playing sandbox.

[JeffreyCor]

Been having a problem with procedural fairings upgrade to larger sizes not actually unlocking the larger sizes. Possibly because of some update PF did causing the upgrade unlock to break?

[CaptainKipard]

cvod, have you seen this thread in the suggestions subforum? It'd be good to have your input.

[cvod]

I played with this tech tree for a bit, in a game that includes FAR, Deadly Reentry, TAC Life Support and RemoteTech among other things. This combination is fairly tricky: manned craft are difficult to use for long duration missions, so you really want to get unmanned craft up into gear as soon as possible, but you also need to prepare for that by launching commsats to ensure you can control them. And launching these commsats is rather hard without fairings in the presence of both FAR and Deadly Reentry. So you have to get a lot of prerequisites checked early-on.

My experiences so far:

- It was quite a steep start. Even the early tech nodes need much more science than stock, which kind of caught me off guard. I ended up having to scum some surface samples from KSC biomes, which I don't usually do, in order to progress thanks to the 50% science payout difficulty setting I locked in for myself. Not really a problem, just... unexpected.

- Took me quite a while to find and unlock fairings. They in fact too me longer than solar panels, batteries, communication antennas etc., and they were the thing that held me back from launching commsats the longest. Additionally, the prerequisites for the node with the 1.25m fairings already contains parts that require at least 2.5m fairings and rockets to launch properly, so that seems a little backwards.

- I'm kind of missing small engines and tanks for my probes and commsats. I'm already starting to see nodes with 3.75m parts in them, but I have not yet found any node containing any 0.625m tanks or engines. One of the early probe nodes had some tiny radial monopropellant engines from RLA, but unfortunately those are not serviceable because I only have 1.25m RCS tanks. If you attach things radially to those, they no longer fit into anything smaller than a 2.5m fairing. And considering that what I'm actually trying to launch is a simple stayputnik with an antenna and some batteries and OX-STATs, a 2.5m rocket seems kind of overkill. So right now I'm basically building satellites with LV-909s, where the engine weighs more than the entire rest of the satellite combined and has so much TWR that I'm using the rightclick tweakable to throttle it down to 5% in order to be able to maneuver with any sort of precision. The tiniest available fuel tank still gives me more than 6 times the dV that I need, too, even with the comically overweight engine/tank, and forces me to use an expanded fairing instead of a standard one. Really, I never thought I would ever say this, but I'd offer a kingdom for an ant engine right now! Could you perhaps consider moving a few 0.625m parts a bit more down towards the start? A small monoprop tank would make the radial RLA engines servicable, but a single small-size inline engine would do as well. Maybe with one of RLA's small fuel tanks.

This is the kind of feedback I've been looking for (I'm also rather surprised I didn't get it sooner). All this will definitely be taken into consideration when I get a chance to work on this again.

Please add support for more Mods

It would be helpful if you named some in particular. I will probably integrate any big part packs, but very specialized parts or unpopular part packs won't be a high priority since this is still in development.

Been having a problem with procedural fairings upgrade to larger sizes not actually unlocking the larger sizes. Possibly because of some update PF did causing the upgrade unlock to break?

This would make sense to break. It had a very unique way of defining the parts in the tech tree. Sorry it broke.

To everyone:

Updates to this are long past due, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to work on this. But remember that's why this is in the development forum. It also doesn't help that my main drive failed and I haven't had a chance to reinstall everything.

[JeffreyCor]

No need to apologize! Your work on this tech tree is very much appreciated and without knowing if something didn't work it would be impossible to fix.

[Borisbee]

I'v been using this tree as my first play through of career mode and I find myself frustrated at the lack of probe cores early on. I'm of the mind that I feel unmanned should come first if you so choose, given how risky flights can be early on and I play with no kerbal respawns. How would you feel about moving some things around so that we have access to probe cores at the start?

[cvod]

I'v been using this tree as my first play through of career mode and I find myself frustrated at the lack of probe cores early on. I'm of the mind that I feel unmanned should come first if you so choose, given how risky flights can be early on and I play with no kerbal respawns. How would you feel about moving some things around so that we have access to probe cores at the start?

I don't know that I will put them in the start node, but I will be making them easier to get to earlier. I think the lower portions in the tree around electronics are going to be changed quite a bit. Probe cores will probably be one of the first accessible nodes (parallel to rockets, planes, and survivability).

[Lechuza]

Would you consider adding BoxSat into the tree? Also, I believe that Klockheed SSE and the other mods works fine with 0.25, why are you going to pahse it out? Will it not be updated to 0.90 when it comes out?

[Streetwind]

Just noticed: the node "Small Life Support" carries a six different TAC-LS containers tagged "small"... except the water hexcan. Which happens to be the medium variant. It's probably switched so that the small water hexcan is in a later node with the other mediums.

[FreeThinker]

Still waiting for Interstellar support before I install, when will you update?

[FreeThinker]

I'v been using this tree as my first play through of career mode and I find myself frustrated at the lack of probe cores early on. I'm of the mind that I feel unmanned should come first if you so choose, given how risky flights can be early on and I play with no kerbal respawns. How would you feel about moving some things around so that we have access to probe cores at the start?

I agree, sputnic core should be your first core.

[cvod]

I agree, sputnic core should be your first core.

The problem is there are a lot of people that don't like starting with just probes. I happen to be one of those. I will be placing a probe core in one of the first purchasable nodes once I reorganize that section of nodes. I may offer an alternate download that starts probe-first, but it wouldn't have different node structure.

Edited December 5, 2014 by cvod

[JeffreyCor]

An alternative for if you want specific things to start first in your own game is to have custom parts set to start tech. Being custom the placement will never be listed and will always go to start. For instance I like to start with simple flight first, so set custom parts for wings, control surfaces, cockpit, and a prop form firespitter to make a simple plane at the onset. The same could very easily be done with a sputnic if you wanted to

[Borisbee]

An alternative for if you want specific things to start first in your own game is to have custom parts set to start tech. Being custom the placement will never be listed and will always go to start. For instance I like to start with simple flight first, so set custom parts for wings, control surfaces, cockpit, and a prop form firespitter to make a simple plane at the onset. The same could very easily be done with a sputnic if you wanted to

That's pretty much what I ended up doing. Gave myself the mechjeb modules since for some reason the ascent module wasn't unlocking when I researched it in the tree. Prolly a bug with something but I ended up just restarting the career since I was early in and put the 4 modules in the start node. I enjoy engineering and designing things but flying to orbit time and time again drains me, so after the third or so time flying to orbit manually my patience was wearing thin.

All in all I do enjoy this tech tree, and I think if more and more mods are added it can only get better. Box Sat is a great mod and I agree it should get some attention.

[cvod]

That's pretty much what I ended up doing. Gave myself the mechjeb modules since for some reason the ascent module wasn't unlocking when I researched it in the tree. Prolly a bug with something but I ended up just restarting the career since I was early in and put the 4 modules in the start node. I enjoy engineering and designing things but flying to orbit time and time again drains me, so after the third or so time flying to orbit manually my patience was wearing thin.

All in all I do enjoy this tech tree, and I think if more and more mods are added it can only get better. Box Sat is a great mod and I agree it should get some attention.

Box Sat is now on the list of planned mods.

For anyone who has played with this tree, how do you feel about the rocketry nodes? I've been unsure whether to change them or not. I feel like there's barely enough engines to justify how it's currently organized.