[0.90][WIP] Kerbal Konstructs v0.6.6 (Dec 16) - Static Objects and Launch Sites!

[RedParadize]

I've been playing with creating custom space centers whenever I get the chance but haven't been having much luck. Hopefully I can figure it out soon.

Well, it doesn't have to be exactly like KSC. I would still be quite exited if it was possible to add property to static building. Or ship/Static hybrid...

[Justin Kerbice]

KK Career Mode Base Management Strategy Layer (KKCMBMSL) - Working Title Obviously

In an soon to happen release of Kerbal Konstructs I'll be introducing the first stage of a new strategy layer involving base management. This will be optional and can be easily disabled in KerbalKonstructs.cfg if you don't want it. Since this is only the first stage, you may want to just try it out then disable it until more features are added.

Here's what the launch site selector will look like in career mode if you have the strategy layer enabled:

[...]

nice, I just thought you've took a break but it's definitely not the case !

Just need a bit of discovering and "refurbish" launch sites now I guess

[AlphaAsh]

Hello there.... <snip awesome sauce> ...

I have to be careful not to make promises for features I ultimately can't deliver but there's certainly a few things you mention that I am aiming to do something like it. So anyone reading this, keep that in mind please.

From that view you can build new building.

I'm planning to do a 'Base Manager' extension for KK which is a window available in a variety of scenes. Bases will have empty foundations and you decide what facilities are built on them. These facilities will need staffing and may be upgradeable. Each facility will provide some kind of benefit to the base and/or your space program.

...would it be possible to give static building property similar to the one that are in KSC?

This will depend on just how much of building destructibility and upgradeability is exposed in the API. I'd much prefer to hook directly into KSP functions than re-write functions.

...Or maybe attribute that parts can have? Like hatch, IVA, resource etc ?

See above. Squad may be implementing some kind of IVA-alike feature for KSC's buildings so again, if that's easy enough to re-use then I'd like to do the same for custom bases. Resource storage/generation etc. is a different beast but is relatively easy to implement already without actually needing to do anything with statics themselves. It can be managed with a database/persistence wrapper.

I'll address more of your post in an edit in a bit. Need coffee.

With a interface similar to it. Like the free camera (moving view on a plane using arrow). From that view you can build new building. Clic on building to get the interface just like in the KSC, and from there you access the management part...

medsouz has already started poking about the API to see how possible something like this is. I'm keen for you to be able to click on the VAB of any base and up pops the VAB scene, for example. medsouz is already near to having custom bases be able to carry out recovery instead of KSC. He's coming at it from the angle of basically telling KSP that this marker in this static is the space centre, not that marker at KSC. I'm experimenting with this from a different angle that doesn't involve having to do anything with the statics or Unity or mono - rather, you just switch in the transform of an open launchsite temporarily as the marker. No idea yet if it'll work.

Edited November 16, 2014 by AlphaAsh

[RedParadize]

Intesting, but if I understood correctly, its not exacly what I am looking for. Or maybe its more that I just don't know enough how stuff work in KSP. I guess I will start by the end and explain what I am looking for. Then maybe you will be eable to help me a bit. Brace yourself, I have a long list of wishfull thinking... and didn't do anything so far to make it happen...

Here is my premiss. I consider colonization as the endgame. but a colony can easily have 100+ parts. When I try to land a ship with a equaly large amount of parts near a colony like that, it lag and often it doesn't end well. The colony fall apart of I can't control the decent and crash. Also, when loading landed ship or colony, they often fly in the air on loading. The problem is, there is way too much stuff that rely on dynamic joints in this game.

Thats why I am concidering by the idea of using static building to create colony. Static object are stable by nature. And I would like to reserve dynamic for stuff that need it. What I have in mind is a bit like what MKS is, similar in the sence that Kerbals are required to make the colony work, its not that I want to replace MKS, large and permanent colony would take allot of time to build, so its more like something that could be build on top of it. I am thinking of something of much larger scale, hundreds of colonists and more. But Unlike MKS, I think it shoud be oriented toward Macromanagement. Colonist, resource and production idealy would not be managed individualy. As a example, concider this:

A Colony is considered as a single entity. Kerbals are not assigned to a building, but to a task. They sleep in the barrack/housing at night, and go to their work at day without player care (obviously it would be cool to have random activity like the one in KSC, but thats truely optional.) A kerbal, when entering a colony, change state and is no more tracked by TAC. Just like what scottpaladin's Deep freeze does. Instand of TAC, Kerbal are taked care by a much simplier system:

A colony can host as many kerbal as it can support. If its in balance, the player don't have to care about anything, and can go do something else. If it as less kerbal than its support capacity, excess of production will be stored in a warhouse and disposed as the player see fit. If a colony that have more colonist than its capacity. The last kerbal that entered will be concidered as guess and will concume the stored resources under the TAC system.

Same goes for other resource their respective production facility. To support a said amount of kerbal, a colony need a minimun mining capacity of each resources, excess of resource is stored and can be used to improve the colony, and later on, when the colony is big enough, build rocket hangar. At start, it will just store them like allista's hangar mod. And eventualy, build new rocket. Unlike Extraplanetary Launchpad, it would cost something as local worker would have to be paid. Also, I would like to use the same limitation in volume that allista's hangar mod have. To build bigger rockets, you would need a bigger assembly hangar. Price of parts could be multiplied by how technologically advanced they are. To reduce cost, industrial building would have to be upgraded. Upgraded industrial building would require more kerbal, and so on.

Colony would heavily depend on whats available localy. If the extraction sites are far, a rover hangar would be required to carry resource from the mining outpost to the main colony as well as the workforce required to operate the mine. The player would have to build a rover (localy or not) and drive it to destination and back once. Then its stored in the rover hangar to protect it from the kraken. Same for if the mining on a close celestal body, but with a rocket hangar.

To had some flavor, there could be contract linked to this. Not just colony construction, but colonist transfer as well, Kerbal could wish to go back to kerbin after a while. It couldbe influenced by courage I guess. Or, a simplier solution would be to have a precentage of colonist that request to go back every year. That precentage could be influenced by some thing like a recreational building or confort level base on how crowded the colony is.

Hummm.... now that I wrote all this. I realise that it could be done with massive single part colony module designed to be built instand of transported. Its starting to look much more like roverdudes MKS.

[AlphaAsh]

v0.5 is now available from KerbalStuff.

Changelog:

• Introduces stage 1 of a base management strategy layer to career mode.
  
• If you don't want to pay funds to open bases in career mode, open KerbalKonstructs.cfg and set disableCareerStrategyLayer = True
  

[Kaelum]

Could there be a way to build your own space centers on different planets? Would it be possible to make a more manual way to build things, like bringing materials?

[BudgetHedgehog]

Hey so I saw a great idea (I think so, at least) on reddit earlier this evening that might be of interest to KerbinSide/KerbalKonstructs.

Basically, it's a kind of aerial survey/discovery mechanic. You know how FinePrint (which will be stock) can generate contracts to fly over certain areas at specific altitudes? Well how about it gets those areas from KerbinSide and the contract is something like '[Agency] wants to build an airport/launch site/evil lair at this location - survey the ground to see if it's suitable' kind of thing. You go there, fly over it in the same manner as the aerial surveys now, and once you've completed it, the message says 'excellent work! [Agency] thinks this place is ideal for what they want! As a reward for your work, they will allow you to launch rockets/planes/evil things from it! For a one-time fee of [funds], of course'. And then that location appears in the KK launch list as a new place with the same kind of closed/open window now, except it was hidden before the contract was completed and now it's closed, and you can open it with funds and stuff, like you are now. Maybe if it's possible that if you launch from there, the Agency's flag is used instead of your own or something?

I remember reading somewhere I think in this thread about having a discovery mechanic where you'd have to go within a certain distance to 'discover it' - this is somewhat similar and I think a really cool idea how to do things. Would really help generate some kind of life on Kerbin, as well as create a gradual unlocking of places in the same way the tech tree unlocks parts.

Just a rough idea right now and I'm not sure if you guys need to talk to FinePrint about creating contracts, or if FinePrint needs to talk to you about getting locations, but yeah.. that's my idea

[AlphaAsh]

Intesting, but if I understood correctly, its not exacly what I am looking for ...

I'm not going to address everything in your post.

I'm not really interested in simulating realistic requirements for building and resourcing a base. I'm interested in adding a fun and fairly simple additional strategy layer to KSP. Also, due to some limitations with launchsites on planetoids outside of Kerbin's SOI, I'm not really considering colonisation. My focus is on making it possible to manage bases on Kerbin and providing appropriate benefits and rewards to your career with out too much challenge or complex mechanics.

My design goals aren't set in stone though and they may well change as I progress. Likely my endurance levels and the obstacles I hit will determine what this ends up looking like, more than suggestions from players. I don't doubt that few players will be completely satisfied and probably many will be disappointed. But I'm not a full time employee of Squad with the concerns they have for their design and selling more units. That probably comes off rather blunt but then I tend to do that.

[AlphaAsh]

<snip>

I'm thrashing out some initial design on how to handle being able to found all new bases on Kerbin. This will present a more complex interface however, since there's still the issue of not enough flat ground on Kerbin. So you'll essentially end up with a version of the KK editor targeted at providing only the functions needed for this part of gameplay.

As for contract integration, that is most definitely something I'd like to do with custom launchsites at some point. It's near the top of my glass ceiling for now though.

[JeffreyCor]

I really like the idea of base management! In the future will bases not show up at all until they are paid to be opened (if turned on in the config)?

[Justin Kerbice]

Hey so I saw a great idea (I think so, at least) on reddit earlier this evening that might be of interest to KerbinSide/KerbalKonstructs.

Basically, it's a kind of aerial survey/discovery mechanic. You know how FinePrint (which will be stock) can generate contracts to fly over certain areas at specific altitudes? Well how about it gets those areas from KerbinSide and the contract is something like '[Agency] wants to build an airport/launch site/evil lair at this location - survey the ground to see if it's suitable' kind of thing. You go there, fly over it in the same manner as the aerial surveys now, and once you've completed it, the message says 'excellent work! [Agency] thinks this place is ideal for what they want! As a reward for your work, they will allow you to launch rockets/planes/evil things from it! For a one-time fee of [funds], of course'. And then that location appears in the KK launch list as a new place with the same kind of closed/open window now, except it was hidden before the contract was completed and now it's closed, and you can open it with funds and stuff, like you are now. Maybe if it's possible that if you launch from there, the Agency's flag is used instead of your own or something?

I remember reading somewhere I think in this thread about having a discovery mechanic where you'd have to go within a certain distance to 'discover it' - this is somewhat similar and I think a really cool idea how to do things. Would really help generate some kind of life on Kerbin, as well as create a gradual unlocking of places in the same way the tech tree unlocks parts.

Just a rough idea right now and I'm not sure if you guys need to talk to FinePrint about creating contracts, or if FinePrint needs to talk to you about getting locations, but yeah.. that's my idea

aerial surveys could be great, but with a flatness target maybe (calculate slope for a path, it needs to be < x %, so mountains = contract completed but failed to get useful location), but it's completely different from the discussed discovery mechanism, which involved to get very close to a site and maybe activate it.

Contract can be done to do anything, it just needs to get KK interface from a contract (which is no needs to be linked with FP or made in FP but can benefits from some kind of API/utils from it), here, the specific contract would be linked to a specific launch site, so I guess launch sites could have a new item ("get_by_contract_first" or any other name) then all sites list as to be processed to choose one, get the coordinates for the survey, ... all in generate method of contract.

I took a look at this before thinking of delivery contracts.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Ignore anything about flatness etc, I meant take the location directly from KK - a base already exists on Kerbin, KK makes it invisible or whatever. Contract is created that requires you to fly over it, once you do, it is made visible and all that jazz. It's not the contracts defining the new locations, it's the existing locations defining the contracts. If it's not possible to hide the base, then make it like '[Agency] wants to use the airport/launch site/evil lair at [location] - survey the area to see if it's suitable' or something...

I only mentioned FinePrint because the original idea I saw was on about aerial surveys and FP already does that. I just thought it might be easier to use its system to create survey contracts than to make your own.

[Justin Kerbice]

Ignore anything about flatness etc, I meant take the location directly from KK - a base already exists on Kerbin, KK makes it invisible or whatever. Contract is created that requires you to fly over it, once you do, it is made visible and all that jazz. It's not the contracts defining the new locations, it's the existing locations defining the contracts. If it's not possible to hide the base, then make it like '[Agency] wants to use the airport/launch site/evil lair at [location] - survey the area to see if it's suitable' or something...

I only mentioned FinePrint because the original idea I saw was on about aerial surveys and FP already does that. I just thought it might be easier to use its system to create survey contracts than to make your own.

ok, you're right .

hiding site is already "available" (AlphaAsh has played with updatecache method which can be tweaked again to achieve this and it is also planned in discovery mechanism).

@AlphaAsh: if you're in, I think adding a new item for sites like a boolean "found_by_contract", then updatecache or other should ignore/hide the sites if it's true.

The only issue maybe is to update site by the contract . KK<->contract code "communication", contract code have to call a KK method to unhide launch site.

[CaptainKipard]

Does this have an extra long runways on the equator? The KSC runway is too short for my Skylon.

If yes, then how many times longer?

[blowfish]

Does this have an extra long runways on the equator? The KSC runway is too short for my Skylon.

If yes, then how many times longer?

Kerbinside (KerbalKonstructs is just the plugin it runs on) has a 5km runway at Area 110011.

EDIT: It's not equatorial though.

Edited November 22, 2014 by blowfish

[AlphaAsh]

Quick update on what I've been doing these last few days.

Recovering from open bases is finally working. That was a hellish bit of intense coding and testing, debugging, coding, testing.... you get the idea. You will still end up at the KSC, but recovery rates will be based on the distance to the nearest open base. I'm hoping to extend this with some kind of recovery rating for bases (that you can improve through upgrades). I'll see.

Base 'founding' is coming along nicely too. KK will 'ship' with some launchsites tailored to the purpose of you being able to build new launch locations as long as you can afford it. This uses a modified version of the editor GUI that takes away a lot of the fiddliness of the actual editor - features you don't need when actually founding new bases in a career game.

Still lots to do.

[Beale]

I wonder, has anyone else experienced the bug where vessels are spawned with zero stages?

And they are unable to be controlled.

It seems to happen almost at random, but most often after launching from another site and then trying to launch from the VAB again.

On return to space centre screen, camera is locked like this.

I will try to reproduce reliably if this is not a known issue, it happens quite a lot.

[AlphaAsh]

The zero stages issue is a new one, well for KK if it is KK. That issue has some history though but I can't recall what the cause of it was. I'll dig around the forums if you can't track it down.

The camera locking was a known issue with KK until I fixed it. Apparently though, I didn't fix it. When you reproduce the issue again, hard close KSP, grab the KSP.log and chuck it my way. Also can you confirm you're using v0.5 of KK?

[Beale]

The zero stages issue is a new one, well for KK if it is KK. That issue has some history though but I can't recall what the cause of it was. I'll dig around the forums if you can't track it down.

The camera locking was a known issue with KK until I fixed it. Apparently though, I didn't fix it. When you reproduce the issue again, hard close KSP, grab the KSP.log and chuck it my way. Also can you confirm you're using v0.5 of KK?

Hi!

I can confirm I'm using v0.5

I only suspect this is a KK issue due to it being related to launchpads, here's my mod list currently.

The only other mods I have that alter gameplay strongly are DRE and RemoteTech

If it happens again, for sure, I'll grab a log of it

[AlphaAsh]

KerbalKonstructs needs to be in the medsouz directory because there's a reliance on that path in the code. Do you use CKAN?

EDIT - Also do you use any custom static content? I don't see any KerbinSide directory and I'm wondering what custom launchpads you launch from.

Edited November 23, 2014 by AlphaAsh

[Beale]

KerbalKonstructs needs to be in the medsouz directory because there's a reliance on that path in the code. Do you use CKAN?

EDIT - Also do you use any custom static content? I don't see any KerbinSide directory and I'm wondering what custom launchpads you launch from.

Hi!

I didn't know that, you mean there should be a "medsouz" in GameData?

Also, I don't use CKAN.

I keep all my content inside a "static" folder in the Kerbal konstructs folder.

The only other launchpad I have is a Munbase I made myself

Thanks!

[AlphaAsh]

Like all mods, you need to retain the directory structure you find in the zip otherwise you are going to have a lot of odd and unstable behaviour from KSP.

EDIT - Also I see from the screenshot that base isn't on Kerbin. Kerbal Konstructs doesn't properly support off-Kerbin launchsites because of limitations in KSP. tldr: If you have bugs happening from launching, recovering or reverting from off-Kerbin sites, or you are ignoring standard mod installation convention for KSP, I can't help.

Edited November 23, 2014 by AlphaAsh

[Beale]

EDIT - Also I see from the screenshot that base isn't on Kerbin. Kerbal Konstructs doesn't properly support off-Kerbin launchsites because of limitations in KSP..

Okay, gotcha!

The models will serve for a Polar base too I suppose.

Thanks for the help, I will re-install.

[Alshain]

v0.5 is now available from KerbalStuff.

Changelog:

• Introduces stage 1 of a base management strategy layer to career mode.
  
• If you don't want to pay funds to open bases in career mode, open KerbalKonstructs.cfg and set disableCareerStrategyLayer = True
  

Does this include the discovery feature that was discussed earlier?

[AlphaAsh]

Does this include the discovery feature that was discussed earlier?

It does not.