Realism Overhaul Discussion Thread

[Jovus]

Thanks. That's what I thought might be the case, but there was hope to the contrary.

 

I suppose my RSS install will, per usual, be my serious install, and the base will have MKS/NFT for screwing around with.

[MaxL_1023]

If you mean Near Future Technologies, a lot of it is integrated into RO/RP-0 and works fine. Electric propulsion is somewhat (i.e very) sketchy, taking years to get your delta-v. However, the other parts, solar panels and some nuclear engines are useful. 

[Temeter]

The nuclear engine would be kerbal atomics, not NFT.^^

Nuclear engines are super useful in theory, but you got to find another mod to allow you frosting your fuel tanks enough to keep the Liquid Hydrogen fuel from boiling away. Otherwise they are little more than planetary departure engines.

Edited September 17, 2016 by Temeter

[MaxL_1023]

7 minutes ago, Temeter said:

The nuclear engine would be kerbal atomics, not NFT.^^

Nuclear engines are super useful in theory, but you got to find another mod to allow you frosting your fuel tanks enough to keep the Liquid Hydrogen fuel from boiling away. Otherwise they are little more than planetary departure engines.

Porkjets atomic age mod has a nuclear lightbulb which can run off of water.

[Temeter]

3 minutes ago, MaxL_1023 said:

Porkjets atomic age mod has a nuclear lightbulb which can run off of water.

Yeah, but that's very inefficient. I think Ammonium was the most efficient propellant I could store in a normal cryo tank? Was still 1.2k ISP or so.

Edited September 17, 2016 by Temeter

[MaxL_1023]

931s with water is still twice as good as any chemical engine, and water is a denser propellant that lets you use the lighter balloon tanks. I know Methane boils off - I did not know that Ammonia had no losses in a cryogenic tank. 

[PointyEndUp]

I've come to like Realism Overhaul with RSS a great deal and it's now my preferred way to play. That said, I like to build permanent installations and utility vehicles, so for my own use I'd like to trade a bit of the R in RO for convenience and compatibility with my virtual life-goals; specifically I'd like to mod the mod to do away with limited ignitions.

It was easy enough to modify the config files with a bit of C#, setting all the %ignitions tokens to a value of 0. But I would rather do this non-invasively, as a Module Manager patch, and I'm having trouble making that work.

I've been able to apply transformations to base properties of all engines (e.g change manufacturer name to see if it was working at all -- it was) but I can't seem to override the ignition count variable added by the RO configs. I don't know what's wrong with my syntax. I've tried a few variations and this is what I have currently:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleEngines*]]:FINAL
{
	// Test: Change manufacturer name. This works fine.
	@manufacturer = YayItWorks
	
	// Goal: Set ignitions to 0. This does nothing as far as I can tell
	@MODULE[ModuleEngines*],*
	{
		@ignitions = 0
	}
}

I hope no one takes this as a philosophical attack on the mod. I'm just going for a "best of both worlds" thing for my own little sandbox.

Big thanks if anyone can spot where I'm going wrong.

Edited September 21, 2016 by PointyEndUp

[raidernick]

ignitions can also be set in ModuleEngineConfigs so if you don't modify that also, the change won't work

[Phineas Freak]

@PointyEndUp as @raidernick said, the engine parameters are overriden by those defined inside the CONFIG{} nodes of the ModuleEngineConfigs{} module:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleEngines*],@MODULE[ModuleEngineConfigs]]:FINAL
{
    @MODULE[ModuleEngineConfigs]
    {
        @CONFIG,*
        {
            @ignitions = -1
        }
    }
}

Also, setting the ignitions to 0 will force the engines to have 0 ignitions and you will not be able to ignite the engines at all.

[PointyEndUp]

Thanks gang, I'll try that tonight.

Also, setting the ignitions to 0 will force the engines to have 0 ignitions and you will not be able to ignite the engines at all.

Oh, maybe it was -1 I had forced it to before, then, and not zero, when I took the brute force approach of recursive find & replace in the RO configs.

[PointyEndUp]

That worked, although it does need to be 0 and not -1. -1 yields one ignition, 0 results in unlimited.

Thanks guys! Now I can go about applying this to just a few key engines for permanently deployed vehicles and leave the rest as RO intended them.

[Phineas Freak]

7 minutes ago, PointyEndUp said:

That worked, although it does need to be 0 and not -1. -1 yields one ignition, 0 results in unlimited.

Oh, i thought that you wanted that feature...anyway, i'm glad that you made it work!

[archenemy_6]

I seem to be having a problem with my last two realism overhaul installs (1.1.2 and 1.1.3) Whenever I try to send a probe to one of the outer planets (Jupiter and beyond) I always make a maneuver node with an encounter or near encounter and burn for the appropriate time only to find out shortly after that my apoapsis isn't anywhere near what it said when I set the node or when I finished the burn. (i.e. having ~5 km/s of delta v in my transfer stage only to use all of it and come up anywhere between 1-2 km/s short) I installed all of the required and a lot of the recommended mods and have never had much of any problems with my install. Has anyone else had this problem or maybe know what's going on?
I will try and replicate it with a new sandbox game and get some more info and screenshots this weekend.

[Jovus]

What's the deal with utilization?

Specifically, why wouldn't I just push it to 100%?

I recognize that it's useful for replicating rockets, because it allows you to play with mass and delta-V without deviating from the specc'ed dimensions, but what if I'm not concerned with replicas?

Is there some downside, either coded or style-wise, to just pushing that slider all the way to the right?

[Sahadara]

I've been having some trouble with planes. It doesn't seem to be something that can be resolved by fixing some small issue on the craft, so I've come here to see what it is that I'm missing. Take this craft for example

Whenever I try to launch any plane on the runway (note that because of RO, it is already smooth), it uncontrollably swerves left and right. This isn't the usual KSP plane swerving where it tends to turn to the side due to angling of the wheels. This feels more like the plane is sliding around. Any insight into what is causing this, be it a design flaw or a bug, will be greatly appreciated. Note that I went from a clean install and only got RSS and Realism overhaul compatible mods through CKAN, nothing extra. Thanks in advance.

Edited September 27, 2016 by Sahadara

[Lazy8]

I did a search for anything asteroid and RO related...nothing came up. Are there currently any mods supported that insert asteroid in real orbits or close to real orbits?

[BevoLJ]

On 9/25/2016 at 7:42 PM, Jovus said:

What's the deal with utilization?

Specifically, why wouldn't I just push it to 100%?

I recognize that it's useful for replicating rockets, because it allows you to play with mass and delta-V without deviating from the specc'ed dimensions, but what if I'm not concerned with replicas?

Is there some downside, either coded or style-wise, to just pushing that slider all the way to the right?

In a vacuum I can't think of a reason not to push it all the way to the right.  But most missions start on Earth, so not in a vacuum.  Limiting thrust can help set ideal TWR for launches and timing gravity turn events. (ex: staging during MaxQ typically has explosive results.  )

/facepalm  Sorry read that as thrust. I added a situation for what you were asking in post two down.

Edited September 28, 2016 by BevoLJ

[Jovus]

26 minutes ago, BevoLJ said:

In a vacuum I can't think of a reason not to push it all the way to the right.  But most missions start on Earth, so not in a vacuum.  Limiting thrust can help set ideal TWR for launches and timing gravity turn events. (ex: staging during MaxQ typically has explosive results.  )

I maybe misunderstood you. It sounds like you're saying something like increasing utilization decreases the part's tolerance for stress, which would be really cool. I'd love an Atlas that would crumple if I tried to put a Mercury capsule on it.

But maybe you're just saying that utilization is another way to play with the balance of TWR and delta-V.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Jovus

[BevoLJ]

Oh, opps.  I totally just misunderstood what you were asking.  Utilization.  I for some reason read that as thrust.  My bad @Jovus.  /facepalm 

I have used utilization a few times but only for very particular cases.  Almost always best to just set to 100%.

The main cases I go lower is to put more mass at the top of the rocket.  As far from the engines as is possible.  This gives the engine gimbles far better control of the rocket.  Mostly this is useful to get through MaxQ, but can even be useful in a vacuum as better control authority is always helpful regardless.

Edited September 28, 2016 by BevoLJ

[Jovus]

Speaking of thrust now, are you saying that the thrust sliders in the VAB actually do something for liquid engines now? I remember testing my install in 1.0.5 and finding out that they didn't.

[Phineas Freak]

@Jovus it works only for the solid rocket motors, not for liquid - fueled ones. And even then not all SRMs are configured to be tweakable but this is more of an oversight than a rule.

[leudaimon]

Actually, is most cases using an utilization of 100% is cheating. The meaning of utilization is the percentage of the tank volume occupied by propellant. With the exception of spherical balloon tanks of RCS, most tanks have a much lower utilization. As can be seen in any schematics of a real tank, there are two separate spheroid tanks inside a cylindrical tank. Thus, it is not possible to achieve 100% utilization. That's why the slider is at 86%. I really a resource for rules of thumb for tank utilization, but didn't find any around. What I usually do is get near to 100% in RCS tanks, and a little above 90% in big cylindrical tanks, a bit higher if they are of type balloon. For the small ones I keep the default 86%.

[Phineas Freak]

41 minutes ago, leudaimon said:

I really a resource for rules of thumb for tank utilization, but didn't find any around.

For balloon type tankage (i.e. Atlas A/B/C/D/E/I/II sustainer and Centaur) then a 96% - 98% utilization is correct. You can lower that to simulate the internal structures like the LH2/LOX inlets, slosh buffers, thrust structures e.t.c. Mono & bipropellant tanks have a fill fraction of 70% to 90%, depending on the type of bladder used for pressurization and the propellant port construction. For the rest a fill fraction from 88% up to 95% is not difficult to achieve in reality but it is difficult (the ULA ACES will probably have a fraction like that).

Sources:

• DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF A LIGHTWEIGHT FUEL TANK ASSEMBLY
• DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF A PROPELLANT TANK ASSEMBLY
• Airbus Defence & Space (product brochures)

[Jovus]

Thanks, guys; that was really helpful.

[Patrykz94]

Guys, is there any good colonisation mod that works with RO/RP-0? I'm assuming that UKS is probably not compatibile so do you have any recommendations?