[Retired] Multipurpose Colony Modules for MKS/OKS (0.4.5)

[Angelo Kerman]

I'm testing some more bug fixes and should have a new update later this week. Finally, no more selecting modules in the editor while trying to do stuff with the Module Operations Manager.

[funk]

I'm testing some more bug fixes and should have a new update later this week. Finally, no more selecting modules in the editor while trying to do stuff with the Module Operations Manager.

Sounds promising, btw I've uploaded some new configs for RemoteTech and DeadlyReentry and edited CTT (only a small change, sry Akira_R & Enceos) and USI again to be more consistent. Perhaps they will need to be changed to work with the upcoming updates. Descriptions are in the configs. FAR won't be needed unless you will design some wings or jets .

Edited March 11, 2015 by funk

[skbernard]

@skbernard: Assuming you have infinite rocket parts, you'll need a Colony Hub, survey stakes, some form of power such as the PDU, and a Machinery Plant. That presumes no life support, and assumes you are using KAS pipes or the portable crew tube to connect the modules together with. I also assume you have some type of storage, and your MCM modules are just sitting on the ground. Hope that helps.

Well i am clearly doing something wrong because my build percentage and time is sitting at 0% and 00:00:00 remaining time (while the resources are at 100%, it only needs rocket parts, i have plenty) ... i have two one star engineers in there, whats the minimum engineers to make it work? - i have never, ever been able to get anything to build with EL before... never... i must have a mental block or huge knowledge gap somewhere in my brain...

[rabidninjawombat]

Well i am clearly doing something wrong because my build percentage and time is sitting at 0% and 00:00:00 remaining time (while the resources are at 100%, it only needs rocket parts, i have plenty) ... i have two one star engineers in there, whats the minimum engineers to make it work? - i have never, ever been able to get anything to build with EL before... never... i must have a mental block or huge knowledge gap somewhere in my brain...

Right click the modules, and look at your productivity. (this is a EL feature) it needs to be above 0 (i.e. not in the negative) for things to get built.

If i remember correctly, 2 star engineers should be fine for building.

If your productivity is in the negative. Try having your engineers EVA then re-enter the module. I was in the negative in my play through and this fixed it. (dont think its a bug with MCM, think it was because i was transfeing my crew around with CrewManifest mod.)

Edited March 13, 2015 by rabidninjawombat

[skbernard]

Right click the modules, and look at your productivity. (this is a EL feature) it needs to be above 0 (i.e. not in the negative) for things to get built.

If i remember correctly, 2 star engineers should be fine for building.

If your productivity is in the negative. Try having your engineers EVA then re-enter the module. I was in the negative in my play through and this fixed it. (dont think its a bug with MCM, think it was because i was transfeing my crew around with CrewManifest mod.)

ah thats probably what it is - i'll double check after work - thanks for the info wombat

[skbernard]

still having issues, i've raised the engineers to 2 stars and modded all crew members to have 0.1 stupidity - productivity is locked at 0 for each module and 0 to vessel productivity - no dice, cant get positive productivity and cant build...

anyone have a guess as to whether this is an EPL thing or an MCM thing - i guess i'm leaning towards EPL

- - - Updated - - -

reinstalled EPL and its fine now - at one point it was discussed that we thought it would be safe to remove EPL parts as we just needed the dll, but that either may not be true or i deleted something else that i shouldnt have - thanks for working through this with me

[funk]

still having issues, i've raised the engineers to 2 stars and modded all crew members to have 0.1 stupidity - productivity is locked at 0 for each module and 0 to vessel productivity - no dice, cant get positive productivity and cant build...

anyone have a guess as to whether this is an EPL thing or an MCM thing - i guess i'm leaning towards EPL

- - - Updated - - -

reinstalled EPL and its fine now - at one point it was discussed that we thought it would be safe to remove EPL parts as we just needed the dll, but that either may not be true or i deleted something else that i shouldnt have - thanks for working through this with me

You can delete /Internals if deleting launchpad in /parts. All parts except of survey stakes. And /ships and /resources. That's what I've deleted and it works fine. I think you deleted one of the configs in /ExtraplanetaryLaunchpads. These are for patching Exworkshop to all parts which have MODULE[Command]. But ExWorkshop is needed for calculating productivity.

[skbernard]

yeah i must have borked something - all is well now and i can finally say i have built my first ever EL buildings (a mining platform and an MCM refinery) - thanks again

on to another question about the IMEM - after digging through the configs looking for things i may have broke with EL i started looking at the IMEMs - and yes i know they are just efficiency parts as they are workspaces but one thing i saw when looking at the parts they help is that it doesnt appear to be template specific - for instance it seemed that my aeroponics IMEM increased the efficiency of my refinery module (and every other module that has the IMEM as an efficiceny part) - are the different templates (and looks) just for flavor or do they actually serve a purpose i'm missing? (except the habitat, thats different)

[Angelo Kerman]

yeah i must have borked something - all is well now and i can finally say i have built my first ever EL buildings (a mining platform and an MCM refinery) - thanks again

on to another question about the IMEM - after digging through the configs looking for things i may have broke with EL i started looking at the IMEMs - and yes i know they are just efficiency parts as they are workspaces but one thing i saw when looking at the parts they help is that it doesnt appear to be template specific - for instance it seemed that my aeroponics IMEM increased the efficiency of my refinery module (and every other module that has the IMEM as an efficiceny part) - are the different templates (and looks) just for flavor or do they actually serve a purpose i'm missing? (except the habitat, thats different)

There might be a bug in the efficiency calculations, but make sure that you set the IMEM to the appropriate production module. So the Aeroponics module should have an Aeroponics IMEM. I'm a bit pressed for time right now but I'll have more time to fix some of the issues in Multipurpose Colony Modules next week.

[Yemo]

I tried out MCM 0.4.5B, especially the MCM part.

While checking how the templates work, I found that the template mass and costs do not seem to have any effect.

That means, that the MCM has a mass of 1.25 tons, regardless of the chosen template.

Also, is there a way to open up/use your template switching mechanic for other mods?

For example I want to make a resource converter for my SETI-BalanceMod. I want to have one base part like your MCM and then switch module templates (with different costs and masses) for that base part, eg one template for an oxygen/hydrogen Fuel Cell, another module template for a liquidfuel/oxidizer fuel cell.

Thank you very much!

[Angelo Kerman]

I tried out MCM 0.4.5B, especially the MCM part.

While checking how the templates work, I found that the template mass and costs do not seem to have any effect.

That means, that the MCM has a mass of 1.25 tons, regardless of the chosen template.

Also, is there a way to open up/use your template switching mechanic for other mods?

For example I want to make a resource converter for my SETI-BalanceMod. I want to have one base part like your MCM and then switch module templates (with different costs and masses) for that base part, eg one template for an oxygen/hydrogen Fuel Cell, another module template for a liquidfuel/oxidizer fuel cell.

Thank you very much!

I disabled part mass and cost awhile back as I was having problems with making them work properly. As for the template switching, you can use the WildBlueTools to do that. Multipurpose Colony Modules was built on the resource and module switching in WildBlueTools. For resource switching, use:

WBIResourceSwitcher

//Index of the current module template we're using.

CurrentTemplateIndex

//Determines whether or not the resource container can be reconfigured in the field.

fieldReconfigurable

//Decal names (these are the names of the graphics assets, including file path)

logoPanelName

glowPanelName

//Name of the transform(s) for the colony decal.

//These names come from the model itself.

logoPanelTransforms;

//List of resources that we are allowed to clear when performing a template switch.

//If set to ALL, then all of the part's resources will be cleared.

resourcesToReplace

//Name of the template nodes.

templateNodes

//Name of the template types allowed

templateTypes

//Used when, say, we're in the editor, and we don't get no game-saved values from perisistent.

defaultTemplate

//Base location to the decals

decalBasePath

//Base amount of KAS the part stores, if any.

baseKasAmount

//Since not all storage containers are equal, the

//capacityFactor is used to determine how much of the template's base resource amount

//applies to the container.

capacityFactor

//Shows/hides the editor Next/Prev buttons

showGui

WBIModuleSwitcher lets you swap out modules in addition to resources.

For examples, take a look at the existing templates.

[Yemo]

Thank you very much, will try that out.

About the mass and costs, procedural parts and firespitter have that capability.

Eg procedural parts calculates the total mass from the procedural tank volume times density and a possible variable like eg "massConstant = 0.2" (from TankContentSwitcher module) for the DREHeatshield.cfg.

Whereas firespitter.dll also adds a base mass and a selection dependent mass for the FSfuelSwitch module, eg for selecting Karbonite, the total mass would be 0.0125 tons:

MODULE
    {
        name = FSfuelSwitch
        basePartMass = 0.01
        resourceNames = Karbonite;LiquidFuel;Oxidizer
        resourceAmounts = 20;18;22
        tankCost = 20;20;20
        tankMass = 0.0025;0.00125;0.00375
        hasGUI = false
    }

Maybe you could take a look at their code for solving and reenabling that functionality for MCM.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Yemo

[Angelo Kerman]

Thank you very much, will try that out.

About the mass and costs, procedural parts and firespitter have that capability.

Eg procedural parts calculates the total mass from the procedural tank volume times density and a possible variable like eg "massConstant = 0.2" (from TankContentSwitcher module) for the DREHeatshield.cfg.

Whereas firespitter.dll also adds a base mass and a selection dependent mass for the FSfuelSwitch module, eg for selecting Karbonite, the total mass would be 0.0125 tons:

MODULE
    {
        name = FSfuelSwitch
        basePartMass = 0.01
        resourceNames = Karbonite;LiquidFuel;Oxidizer
        resourceAmounts = 20;18;22
        tankCost = 20;20;20
        tankMass = 0.0025;0.00125;0.00375
        hasGUI = false
    }

Maybe you could take a look at their code for solving and reenabling that functionality for MCM.

It's not an immediate priority for me but I will address it in a future update. There are other issues I'm working on such as the mouse cursor going through the Module Operations Manager screens and selecting parts underneath. Balancing issues are lower priority than functionality fixes at the moment.

[IGNOBIL]

Started trying this today, it's brilliant, much easier to set up base with this than MKS, it took me 8 launches to set a full base at the moon, and this can be made in probably 2 or 3, gonna send MCM to Laithe!

The bug I found was the exploding ponderosas, couldn't attach any to the ground, with the exception of the PDU, I edited the KAS file to attach upright, and just send a bunch of PDU's and change them into whatever I want! Brilliant!

[Angelo Kerman]

Started trying this today, it's brilliant, much easier to set up base with this than MKS, it took me 8 launches to set a full base at the moon, and this can be made in probably 2 or 3, gonna send MCM to Laithe!

The bug I found was the exploding ponderosas, couldn't attach any to the ground, with the exception of the PDU, I edited the KAS file to attach upright, and just send a bunch of PDU's and change them into whatever I want! Brilliant!

Glad you got it to work. Exploding Ponderosas is an issue that I have yet to solve. Mind if I ask how you edited the Ponderosa to attach upright? I wasn't able to figure that out.

[Mecripp]

Does anyone have a FStextureSwitch for changing module templates for those of us who don't use MKS ?

[NihilRex]

Does anyone have a FStextureSwitch for changing module templates for those of us who don't use MKS ?

You could install Firespitter without MKS, if you simply want that functionality.

The issue is that without MKS, the various modules will not do their jobs, so perhaps you could explain your desire a bit more clearly?

[Mecripp]

I use Karbonite but not MKS and and guessing his plugin don't work with out it has, I don't see it and, I can make a cfg for what, I want them to do has, I don't get in the whole punchcard thing and has, I posted FStextureSwitch is a MODULE from Firespitter was asking if anyone had one.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Mecripp2

[funk]

Started trying this today, it's brilliant, much easier to set up base with this than MKS, it took me 8 launches to set a full base at the moon, and this can be made in probably 2 or 3, gonna send MCM to Laithe!

The bug I found was the exploding ponderosas, couldn't attach any to the ground, with the exception of the PDU, I edited the KAS file to attach upright, and just send a bunch of PDU's and change them into whatever I want! Brilliant!

From my experience, Ponderosas will mostly explode when the ground isn't flat, or at some special places, which have weird ground, like KSC... perhaps it's because sometimes you first see water and the next layer is normal KSC ground. If you go to grasslands they behave normal. If you place the Ponderosa be sure that the projection of the bottom at the ground doesn't flicker, then rotate it in place. Maybe it would help to change the mesh in a way that there is only a small contact plate at the bottom and Ponderosas box will slightly float above the ground.

I use Karbonite but not MKS and and guessing his plugin don't work with out it has, I don't see it and, I can make a cfg for what, I want them to do has, I don't get in the whole punchcard thing and has, I posted FStextureSwitch is a MODULE from Firespitter was asking if anyone had one.

Not sure what you're asking for, the clue of FStextureSwitch is in the name. It is only for having multiple textures for one part. Alternatively there is FSmeshSwitch for other shapes. But I think you're looking for FSfuelswitch, as it gives you different resource combinations. And for sure you won't need it. MCM is setting up the modules by its own, without the need of MKS, but you will need Kolonytools.dll from MKS for converting stuff into the desired resource.

Edited March 17, 2015 by funk

[Mecripp]

@funk thanks didn't know what, I was missing to use Angel-125 plugin but putting the Kolonytools.dll in will try, thanks again.

[fatcargo]

Hi ! I just started using MKS/OKS combo and soon after found this addition.

It quickly became obvious choice because it allows containers with specific resource (i'm a heavy user of MFT and this pack closely follows the same de-cluttering philosophy).

Now, here is my problem : in SPH editor, i started testing various parts and with exception of MKS/OKS parts, most of Multipurpose Colony Modules parts have two problems.

First is mutliple-mesh problem. I have noticed that those parts can be picked up from catalog but can't be attached and have overlapping parts. I have recognized this because i had similar problems back when B9 Aerospace was patched and re-published several times just to work under on of older KSP versions.

Second problem is that parts that can be placed in editor, do not have options for configuring resources present in right-click menu (like those shown in original post, second image in gallery).

I tried to analyze the problem and all i could find so far is that "FSmeshSwitch" module is not showing it's menu items (there is no "Next Variant" button). When i compared MCM parts with same-name module definitions in B9 parts i found no errors. I don't know what else there could be.

And i really would like to have reconfigurable storage, just like MFT does for fuel tanks.

[Kokanee]

Any idea what is causing my Duna base to flip over on load?

[Angelo Kerman]

Hi ! I just started using MKS/OKS combo and soon after found this addition.

It quickly became obvious choice because it allows containers with specific resource (i'm a heavy user of MFT and this pack closely follows the same de-cluttering philosophy).

Now, here is my problem : in SPH editor, i started testing various parts and with exception of MKS/OKS parts, most of Multipurpose Colony Modules parts have two problems.

First is mutliple-mesh problem. I have noticed that those parts can be picked up from catalog but can't be attached and have overlapping parts. I have recognized this because i had similar problems back when B9 Aerospace was patched and re-published several times just to work under on of older KSP versions.

Second problem is that parts that can be placed in editor, do not have options for configuring resources present in right-click menu (like those shown in original post, second image in gallery).

I tried to analyze the problem and all i could find so far is that "FSmeshSwitch" module is not showing it's menu items (there is no "Next Variant" button). When i compared MCM parts with same-name module definitions in B9 parts i found no errors. I don't know what else there could be.

And i really would like to have reconfigurable storage, just like MFT does for fuel tanks.

It sounds like you might not have the latest Firespitter installed. MKS/OKS has the latest I believe.

Any idea what is causing my Duna base to flip over on load?

http://i.imgur.com/Af9Zatb.jpg

Wow, I have not seen that. Thus far I haven't had issues with the Ponderosa, other than exploding when dropped. Did you attach the Ponderosa to the ground?

[Kokanee]

Yep, anchored if if that is what you mean.

[Angelo Kerman]

Actually what I mean is attached. With KAS, there's a pylon that, when on the kerbal's back, can be attached to the ground by right-clicking the context menu and selecting Attach. The Ponderosa has a similar feature.