parts [1.12.x] Karbonite/Karbonite Plus (K+)

[RoverDude]

Nope, will need more than that.

[willow]

I've been mining on Eve and on Eeloo now. But I'm getting about .2 karborundum at max warp per second.. Which is kinda slow if you ask me. I've checked 3 or 4 biomes on eve but they all had similar returns or worse. At this rate I'll take two years to fill up the ship...

Is there something I can do to speed up the process?

[NihilRex]

I've been mining on Eve and on Eeloo now. But I'm getting about .2 karborundum at max warp per second.. Which is kinda slow if you ask me. I've checked 3 or 4 biomes on eve but they all had similar returns or worse. At this rate I'll take two years to fill up the ship...

Is there something I can do to speed up the process?

Best bet is to run off to other things, and let it mine in the background.

[RoverDude]

Yep, see above. There's a reason these bits work on rails.

[willow]

Yep, see above. There's a reason these bits work on rails.

Well, allright, and I get the idea that it's a precious resource that will take time and effort. And don't take my suggestions as criticism please, for what it's worth this mod and it's challenges has been occupying my time and thought for the last few weeks. It's really fascinating!

I also got a torch by now and that changes my perception somewhat. It simplifies matters significantly. I can now leave the nuclear reactor at home. Which saves a lot of weight. Now 10k of electric charge and about 8 units of karborundum suffices for a kerbin ascent. The torchlight drive to me seems to be properly balanced and what I had expected of using karbonite. Maybe it's a tad overpowered, but then again it's a huge engine for my tiny ship!

To get more karborundum the obvious goto was to add more drills. So I built a 64 dril rocket. Which apart from being monstrous also brought my game to a crawl whenever I got it anywhere close to a base. And it still only does 7 units per second at max warp!

Admac spoke of a 200,000 unit miner. Which at that speed would take 8 real hours of full time warp to fill up. I'm curious as to how he does it. I suppose he leaves his computer on overnight. But in game that would be about 80 years? To me that is a bit much.

I'd hope for some tool to increase the mining ability about 10 fold. Perhaps a heavy land, deploy and then never launch again (or we'll explode on you) mining rig? Perhaps it uses so much power that you need to bring a nuclear power plant with you. Perhaps allow the big drills to dig up karborundum? Something other than just having to add multiple mining drills. I'm okay with doing the work, I really am, but I'd like a result that avoids killing my computer

Also, it seems to me that the little karborundum drives are way harder to use than the torch drives. If anyone would ask me I'd say to just ignore them and save up for a small torch. With the exception of the largest one they are impossible to use inside the atmosphere. And the largest one is only usable when tied to a big ass nuclear reactor. And the torch has none of these penalties at all. The karborundum requirement is one thing: less efficient is really fine. But the electric charge requirement as a side effect is so large that it becomes a serious hindrance. I remember the first time I just looked at the numbers in disbelief, no battery was going to solve that. The only way I managed it is via the already mentioned nuclear power plant. I'm waiting for the near future electric parts the condensators might also do it. But they haven't been updated for .90 yet... Maybe it should not be a six fold ISP difference but merely a two fold?

Or as a more radical idea: Exchange the atmosphere/vacuum differences for the torch drives and the smaller karborundum drives. So you can use the small engines for landing and ascent while the humongous drives are to be used for the mother ships and will have serious issues when trying to lift off from atmospheres..

At any rate playing around with this has been an immensely interesting few weeks! It's been real fun trying to get this to work and solving the various problems that come up. As a highlight, me and two whitesuit kerbals enjoyed camping out on eve with their eve camper prospecting for the best spots to mine. And I managed to get them off the planet a few years later Thanks for building it!

[rabidninjawombat]

@Willow- The nice thing about karborundum is that a little goes along way. With just small amount of the stuff (50 units or less) you can move a massive ship almost anywhere in the Kerbol system (with the right planning in my experience)

[RoverDude]

@willow - karborundum extraction rate got a bit of a nerf, which given how little you need and how powerful the drives are makes sense. There will likely be a new balance pass to decrease the gap between the torch and fusion drives. RE drilling time, just set up your op and go do other things - it will keep on gathering even when not in focus.

[Admac]

Yeah and my mining was in .25, and I was using 16 drills (On an action group) on a 38% concentration so it was less than an in game day. I have been having issues with all my stations having their machinery set to zero, so my career has been advancing at a snails pace. I've looked over the specific numbers and the torch drives are an order of magnitude less overpowered now, but the increased ISP means that even the most trivial amount of K+ will last forever. For me that means there is less incentive to do a large scale high efficiency operation, since it looks like even a single sphere will last for longer than I could ever need. And get the USI FTT pack if you are looking for better powerplants, they are pretty great.

It turns out I have no good screenshots of anything from that mining op, a few super dark pics of a billion fans on a ship, but I'll see what I can do to post some new ones medium soon.

[willow]

@willow - karborundum extraction rate got a bit of a nerf, which given how little you need and how powerful the drives are makes sense. There will likely be a new balance pass to decrease the gap between the torch and fusion drives. RE drilling time, just set up your op and go do other things - it will keep on gathering even when not in focus.

If I compare to admac's numbers. "A bit of a nerf" is like calling a single tear a bit of a bath tub. Because that's about the ratio I think we're speaking about. Don't get me wrong, I agree with your assessment that it needed a nerf. And what I'd suggest is a minor tweak compared to the nerf you applied.

I know that the system continues mining when I'm not looking, I brought a tank full of karborundum back to kerbin. When I returned to eve about two thirds of a year to a year later we had gathered a whopping 30 units with 5 drills... :/ Which I believe indeed covers the trip when using torch drives with maybe a little to spare.

The smaller drives... no, it doesn't cover it by a long shot.. The karborundum fusion drive I was using couldn't even get to orbit on that amount. Lugging a nuclear reactor with you for a kerbin ascent costs 15 units, eve ascent I don't know the exact number but it's probably at least twice or trice that much... In other words: A single eve ascent takes over a year to mine with 5 drills. If you remove the atmospheric penalty you'd use not a years worth but.. 1 month? I'm making rough guesses here. It's not a lineair equation and the ship designs will change. But it seems more fair.

I'm not trying to think against you here, but with you. I think you as the developer and I as the player will both be most satisfied with an optimal balancing of the mod.

I think in space the fuel is pretty well balanced when using the torch. Mining it is a bit slow and I'd suggest a speed up between x4 or x10. (nothing compared to the nerf you applied) Also change the situation so the torches get the atmpospheric penalty while the fusion drives get an extreme boost, the vacuum atmosphere isp ratio is now 6/1 how about making that 2/1? I don't remember their ISP, but I suggest upping them a little while lowering that of the torch. It's okay for the torch to have the isp advantage especially if it has the atmospheric disadvantage. And then give fusion drives isp's that depend on their sizes.

That way players will use engines depending on situation. Bringing the ISP's closer and lower compared to the increased mining speed. I think should be balanced to allow an eve roundtrip + landing for a small to medium ship with one or two drills.

At any rate. Again. Thank you for an epic mod, and thank you for your patience with my rant! Maybe others want to pitch in with their opinions? I'm sure we all share the desire for K+ to be the best it can be.

[shynung]

I think you should put back the liquid hydrogen requirement for the torch drives. We can get liquid hydrogen from Karbonite distillers now, might as well have something use it.

[Admac]

I still haven't sent any 0.90 K+ expeditions, but If the rate is that low, it might be a bit of a pain to extract meaningful levels of K+. I wonder if you are in a poor deposit of it, since it's biome based now it's possible to get an Eve to spawn with only poor deposits. The real question is if a reasonable number of drills (8 maybe?) on a good deposit can fill up a sphere within a 1-3 year transfer window.

As far as potential new gameplay mechanics go, I think it would be a fun challenge to have large scale mining require a manned base vs just a resource bump. 100% of my missions in 0.25 were robotic, other than a manned station it would rendezvous with (but not dock, too unwieldy) to EVA over and repack chutes between missions. If a mammoth rover, or a crewed base + delivery rover were needed for macro scale output, then that would be a lot more challenging and interesting. I'm thinking a Mk 3 style K+ refinery that boosts drill output and some 10-30 ton drills that require monstrous amounts of power to require a big enough base that attaching it to the lander is no longer practical. Then just have it churn away on rails with a lander mission once in a while to pick it up. To my eye mining the most valuable resource in the solar system with a 50 kilogram drill that can be powered by a small solar panel seemed less than industrial. The current adorable drills are then there to load up small robotic probes, or science missions and not power the production base of the homeworld.

The other thing that colours this is the use case for K+. If it is something that is a 30+ hour set of missions to establish, then a rebuild of the space program to switch all the ships over to K+, then a few big drops on the homeworld to solve money issues, that felt balanced to me even if I'm hauling 4000+ tons of K+ a year.

[Captain Sierra]

Roverdude, I'm starting a new install with the Outer Planets mod. In case you don't know what that does to Eeloo, it basically increases it's SMA by a factor of 5 . . . . Yeah there's no way I'm getting out there. In the default system, Moho IIRC is actually higher dV to get to and, since the stuff can be farmed from the sun, I'm daring to make the semi-scientific assumption that its embedded in Moho's surface by the solar wind and that its embedded in Eve's surface from long long ago when the solar system was young. The Question in this is how do I get it to generate on Moho instead of Eeloo (since Eeloo is impractical to get to even with karborundum fusion drives in Outer Planets).

[RoverDude]

Here's the doc for making configs - just add a NEW config that adds what you want, and rock on.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1apMiDJDYtfGi_wznWejP5MmBjK7RxPZnRwFPCsATrIY/edit?usp=sharing

[Captain Sierra]

Here's the doc for making configs - just add a NEW config that adds what you want, and rock on.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1apMiDJDYtfGi_wznWejP5MmBjK7RxPZnRwFPCsATrIY/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks! BTW I'm gonna be giving your Starlifters a workout dragging the stuff from Moho all the way up to my Joolian colony efforts.

EDIT: It's cool seeing how much stuff you built into Regolith that is purely there for future expansion. It also gives me a lot of ideas for what you might be planning with AMT.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Captain Sierra

[willow]

I wonder if you are in a poor deposit of it, since it's biome based now it's possible to get an Eve to spawn with only poor deposits.

THAT is a very real possibility. In my defense I've checked 4 or 5 eve biome's and 2 eeloo biomes... All had pretty much the same values, the worst value was half that of the best. So I just presumed there wasn't a lot of variation!

I'd look up the precise values tonight, but I completely borked my save file. That last teeny tiny addon must have caused a rapid unplanned savefile disassembly. Because I could no longer enter the VAB or exit the game... It really bummed me out too because I got quite far this time.

I think I agree with your rule of thumb though. A sphere in 3 years with 8 drills on a good spot sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Although I haven't used spheres yet. I don't know their contents but I seem to remember it was up to 10k of karborundum?

As for balancing. You know a game like KSP really is about trying things out. The extended reach karborundum gives isn't an end game imho. I believe it should enable an interesting infrastructure in combination with colonies. I see karborundum as a mid game achievement which enables end game dreams.

Edited January 8, 2015 by willow

[Mannaro The Patient]

I find myself with even more questions...

REGOLITH_PLANETARY_RESOURCE
{
    ResourceName = Karborundum
    ResourceType = 2
    PlanetName = Sun

    Distribution
    {
        PresenceChance = 100
        MinAbundance = 1
        MaxAbundance = 5
        Variance = 50
    }
}

Assuming i am following the bouncing ball... Solar Karborundum should be 100%, but it is set as ResourceType = 2 meaning Atmo instead of Interplanetary. Which seems odd because the sun has no atmo.

In fact i don't see any IntPl Karborundum.

Next, are the interplanetary bands at fixed altitudes, or is that random as well?

Trying to find a bands altitude when you don't even know if the band exists could be rather annoying. In the Jool SoI looking for karbonite could be bad enough, trying to find Karborundum in the Suns SoI could be insanity provoking.

@Chyort - Looks like you found a typo on the Sun one I'll take a look and see what I can fiddle with to get it where it needs to be.

I got the same problem, no Karborundum near the sun as there is no atmosphere. There is a way to correct it like force a height above surface where should be the maximum concentration of the resource? This could be helpful on the other planets with no atmosphere.

[RoverDude]

Yep basically it would be configured as an interplanetary resource and the numbers tweaked accordingly.

[Mannaro The Patient]

I managed it to work but got the same particle value everywere.

REGOLITH_PLANETARY_RESOURCE
{
	ResourceName = Karborundum
	ResourceType = 3
	PlanetName = Sun

	Distribution
	{
		PresenceChance = 100
		MinAbundance = 1
		MaxAbundance = 5
		Variance = 50
		MinRange = .5
		MaxRange = 1
	}
}

I can change MinRange and MaxRange as I want, even both at 0, but the Advanced Particle Collector gets 0.084325 Karborundum particle every secs in the whole Kerbol system, even far FAR away from the sun. The particles stops only when i enter in a planet sphere of influence.

Maybe a Regolith bug?

[RoverDude]

hm, I'll have to look and see.

[klesh]

I am a sucker for anything .625m. I'm going to try this too.

[Errol]

The advanced karborundum detector is supposed to be found under nuclear propulsion in the ctt right? I can see it in sandbox, but can't for the life of me seem to find it in career....anyone else have this trouble?

Never mind, I found it under resource exploitation.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Errol

[Kielm]

For the Karborundum definition, I amended the final Sun entry in my installation to be the following:

REGOLITH_PLANETARY_RESOURCE
{
	ResourceName = Karborundum
	ResourceType = 3
	PlanetName = Sun

	Distribution
	{
		PresenceChance = 100
		MinAbundance = 1
		MaxAbundance = 5
		MinAltitude = 0
		MaxAltitude = 0.00001
		MinRange = 0.00001
		MaxRange = 0.00001
		Variance = 50
	}
}

This has placed a band of K+ particles tapering off after 2600m to just above the surface of the sun.

I haven't adjusted the abundances or variances from the original entry (yet).

What I learned from playing with this, that others might find useful:

• MinAltitude is a minimum starting point for any band that might be generated. 0 = Equatorial Radius (equivalent to surface/sea level I believe?). In this case 0 = 261,600,000m from the centre of Kerbol - the surface of Kerbol.
  
• MaxAltitude is the upper limit for the same, in this case it is 0.00001 x 261,600,000 = 2,616m. Add to Eq. Radius and the upper limit is at 261,602,616 from the centre of Kerbol or 2,616 above the surface.
  
• The Min and Max Range specify the thickness of the band that is generated. The above example uses the same multiplier as the altitude does (2,616m) so the band should be between surface and 2,616m, and 2,616m in width/depth/thickness/whatever.
  

Tested and seems to work without any problems, everything is roughly where I would expect to find it, give or take a few hundred metres (probably due to the variance).

To be perfect the numbers should be 0.0000076452599388379204892966361 (261,602,000 divide by 261,600,000), but this is close enough for me.

Good enough to approximate a band at around 2000m above Kerbol, for anyone that wants it.

@Mannaro The Patient

I noticed the advanced particle collector does not always automatically* update the displayed Karbonite rate when I was testing band location by Hyperediting around. Could this have caused your problem?

*closing and opening the collector refreshes it.

- - - Updated - - -

@RoverDude,

I understand why you made the K+ tanks forced empty when designing craft to launch from KSC, but would it be difficult to get the mod to account for any Karborundum that has been returned to Kerbin and make only that amount available for use in future designs?

It was one of the things that I found a little annoying about Interstellar - having to keep a tank of antimatter near the launch pad/runway and fuel up before launch.

Edited January 23, 2015 by Kielm

[another_brian]

http://oi59.tinypic.com/14dplx0.jpg

So I feel like a jackass but i can't seem to find any of these parts.

I unzipped the file and put it in its own folder in the game data folder along with Karbonite, AVC, and a few others.

Should I have put it elsewhere?

Do I need to create new categories in order to see them?

Thanks for karbonite and your help with this

[RoverDude]

So I feel like a jackass but i can't seem to find any of these parts.

I unzipped the file and put it in its own folder in the game data folder along with Karbonite, AVC, and a few others.

Should I have put it elsewhere?

Do I need to create new categories in order to see them?

Thanks for karbonite and your help with this

Sounds like you didn't install it correctly. You must include all of the contents in their original location (GameData merges with your current GameData).

[another_brian]

I don't understand what you mean when you say GameData merges with your current GameData.

Do I put K+ into the Karbonite or the original KSP GameData folder or somewhere else entirely?

Thanks for your help. I read through much of this thread but didn't see info on how to install it.