[1.12.x] Alcubierre Warp Drive (Stand-alone)

[Enot02]

12 hours ago, helaeon said:

In my test version there is a folding warp drive that has a 1.25 node.
The way the module works is you have a model that is the part, then a scaled version of the warp bubble. You want that warp bubble to correspond to BubbleSize in USI_ModuleWarpEngine. Scale 1 roughly equals bubble size of 20 in the cfg.
There's nothing stopping you from making a MM patch or modifying the config to make a part with a bigger bubble or scale the whole part to something new.

I think I did something... I copied the file of the folding WD, then rescaled the BubbleSize 2 times. Then changed the rescaleFactor to 2 instead of 1. Did I do good?

[Riku]

I only have 2 problems with this mod, animation speed, the parts are super cool, I love the new parts made for SSTO ships with the halves of the ring away from the fuselage but the animations are super fast, I'd be really cool if you slow them down, also bubble size, you're keeping it balanced but I can't fit a fuselage 2 wings and a tail inside the bubble so please make it larger. thanks

[helaeon]

If you want to copy the file you need to change the part name in the cfg as well. Otherwise you'll have 2 files with the same part name (it doesn't matter what the file name is, it matters what name=XXX is in the PART brackets)

A lot of this is experimentation and remembering what you did so you can undo it if necessary. It's where we all started  

Don't forget that not only do you need to scale the model but you need to change WarpBubble as well. On the 2.5m USI drive it's 20, so if you make the bubble 2x bigger that value should be 40.

[Sarxis]

Finally, FINALLY, got around to researching the tech for the warp drive.  Having fun with it!  I've done a little bit of modding - got it down to .3c max velocity, and some other things.

 

It's interesting that while using angular momentum mode, I'm able to do some interesting velocity changes at the SOI borders and near periapsis.  It reminds me of using Lagrange points in the 'Independence War' series.  

 

I do wish I understood the mechanics of what is happening with all of this in game though.  

Edited November 29, 2017 by Sarxis

[helaeon]

@Sarxis there are some big changes coming. I think AM mode is broken in the current release, so those maneuvers may or may not work once the new version is out.
If you want to use something very  like what the new version will be you can look back a page or two and pull it off my github.

[pheedme]

Hello! Fist of all i want to say this mod kicks ass& than you for writing it. Was wondering if it would be possible to make the guide bubble or warp bubble non buoyant. I find the part floats several meters above the ocean...  creating a rather odd effect. Noticed this when splashing down with a warp spaceplane. I do not have this flotation issue with any other parts, i checked as to not waste your time cheers!

[Enot02]

I copied the file, but the par is still 0.625! WHY???

[capi3101]

Hey, any of y'all ever try to use the Alcubierre Drive to go catching rocks? I had a contract come up today to put a D-class over Ike, pays √1.5M. Ordinarily I'd scoff at the very notion of picking up something as heavy as a D, but with a warp-equipped craft, the only real issue should be whether or not the rock would fit inside the bubble...assuming I had a properly equipped warp ship available, of course.

[Electrocutor]

[helaeon]

8 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Hey, any of y'all ever try to use the Alcubierre Drive to go catching rocks? I had a contract come up today to put a D-class over Ike, pays √1.5M. Ordinarily I'd scoff at the very notion of picking up something as heavy as a D, but with a warp-equipped craft, the only real issue should be whether or not the rock would fit inside the bubble...assuming I had a properly equipped warp ship available, of course.

I've done it myself in previous versions. Works just fine. Big thing though is making sure you have an extremely small amount of torque on the ship so be super cautious about clawing. Also you should not use RCS in warp as it causes compounding errors in the calculations in both energy conservation modes. They're not really errors... more you're adding more energy into a system that should be having its energy remain constant. But due to how KSP works it is pretty hard to set that number at the beginning and not look at it again, so your final velocity at your destination will be unexpected. 

On 12/3/2017 at 5:53 AM, Enot02 said:

I copied the file, but the par is still 0.625! WHY???

Did you re-name the part (so you have two?) I think re-scale factor doesn't work well. Use the scale in MODEL { }. so if they're all 1 set them to 2. Also set the nodes. So if you scale by a factor of 2 multiply every node number by 2.

[Space Kadet]

On 12/4/2017 at 5:51 PM, Electrocutor said:

so how are you making that look so cool?

also some questions in general for the forum. now can you have parts extending outside the field, it seem to work for the craft that i used and just killed everything inside the field when the power ran out (i have an eventhorizon style idea for an escape boat)?
 

[helaeon]

@Space KadetShip is supposed to blow up when you run out of power and are throttled up or at least disassemble itself violently.
The parts out side of the bubble thing... it may be outside of the bubble model, but not outside of the real bubble radius that's being fed into the program (which is defined in the cfg). I've been using that a model size of 1 = bubble size of 20, but I know that the bubble is actually bigger than the model by some amount from my own testing.

The warp drive isn't supposed to kill every ship in physics range anymore. I would like it to do that, but it was generating NREs that weren't really worth hunting down for a specific use case and it was also burning up a lot of CPU cycles for something that happens rarely.

Also, for the lore of this particular piece of technology... it's experimental wild stuff. If it does something unexpected or seemingly unintended... that's what RD and I want. It's up to the player to engineer around it after discovering the quirk. Feature rather than a bug (to a point). For example with the new gravity brakes I'm totally cool with people getting stuck in gravity wells even with the warp drive throttled all the way up because they're only able to generate like 0.000001c of space warping.

[Electrocutor]

38 minutes ago, Space Kadet said:

so how are you making that look so cool?

also some questions in general for the forum. now can you have parts extending outside the field, it seem to work for the craft that i used and just killed everything inside the field when the power ran out (i have an eventhorizon style idea for an escape boat)?
 

Using 

The ease of converting parts to use it on depends on the attention to detail of the original models and textures. (diffuse, specular, normal, material meshing)

I've been working on a USI patch, but it will take quite a while finish as most of the parts have a simple model/texture (like non-pork stock), thus more manipulation is needed to make them look right.

[Space Kadet]

10 hours ago, helaeon said:

@Space KadetShip is supposed to blow up when you run out of power and are throttled up or at least disassemble itself violently.
The parts out side of the bubble thing... it may be outside of the bubble model, but not outside of the real bubble radius that's being fed into the program (which is defined in the cfg). I've been using that a model size of 1 = bubble size of 20, but I know that the bubble is actually bigger than the model by some amount from my own testing.

The warp drive isn't supposed to kill every ship in physics range anymore. I would like it to do that, but it was generating NREs that weren't really worth hunting down for a specific use case and it was also burning up a lot of CPU cycles for something that happens rarely.

Also, for the lore of this particular piece of technology... it's experimental wild stuff. If it does something unexpected or seemingly unintended... that's what RD and I want. It's up to the player to engineer around it after discovering the quirk. Feature rather than a bug (to a point). For example with the new gravity brakes I'm totally cool with people getting stuck in gravity wells even with the warp drive throttled all the way up because they're only able to generate like 0.000001c of space warping.

thanks thats amazing, it works quite well then so anything outside the bubble (upto a certain amount) is movable. but only whats inside the bubble gets destroyed when you run out of ec... so if your kerbals are outside that bubble they survive, but are stranded....

this is a brilliant mechanic!

[helaeon]

8 hours ago, Space Kadet said:

thanks thats amazing, it works quite well then so anything outside the bubble (upto a certain amount) is movable. but only whats inside the bubble gets destroyed when you run out of ec... so if your kerbals are outside that bubble they survive, but are stranded....

this is a brilliant mechanic!

The bubble model is just for show/effects and as a guide. The real bubble used in the plug-ins calculations cannot be seen. If you're inside that bubble you would move when all is working well and blow up when you're activated and run out of a fuel type. The kerbals would survive if they were outside the real warp bubble and you warped away, thus leaving them stranded there. The plug-in is supposed to clip off any parts that are outside the real warp bubble as soon as you activate the warp drive. Then if you warp away those parts will be left behind (provided you do not collide with them).

[Space Kadet]

49 minutes ago, helaeon said:

The bubble model is just for show/effects and as a guide. The real bubble used in the plug-ins calculations cannot be seen. If you're inside that bubble you would move when all is working well and blow up when you're activated and run out of a fuel type. The kerbals would survive if they were outside the real warp bubble and you warped away, thus leaving them stranded there. The plug-in is supposed to clip off any parts that are outside the real warp bubble as soon as you activate the warp drive. Then if you warp away those parts will be left behind (provided you do not collide with them).

i quite like they way the dev version works with the 'real bubble' so you can have a larger ship.

[Electrocutor]

I wonder if there could be a setting on the drive to control the size of the bubble: larger would allow bigger ships, but require exponentially more power (and create more heat) to activate.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Electrocutor

[Space Kadet]

43 minutes ago, Electrocutor said:

I wonder if there could be a setting on the drive to control the size of the bubble: larger would allow bigger ships, but require exponentially more power (and create more heat) to activate.

i like the idea of 2 bubbles, the 'internal' being everything inside this will be destroyed if power fails, and the external being this will be affected. by the drive for movement, and yeah more mass means more power, or slower speed...

[helaeon]

Just like adding more parts to make bigger bubbles... the fixed bubble size is meant to be a balancing constraint, as far as balance can be with a warp drive. That's from RD so I'm not messing with it.
Also, if I was feeling like fiddling further I'd figure out what the real bubble vs model bubble is, and make the model bubble ever so slightly smaller than the real one so they're in effect the same, so the model is a better guide vs now with the mystery fudge factor. However, I'm not feeling like loading up KSP enough over and over and over again to test that in game.

If someone wants to use the USI 2.5m drive and change BubbleSize to something smaller to narrow in what model size 1 actually equals. I'm happy to convert and push the rest of the configs if you don't want to do it yourself. Personally I'd start at bubble size 16 and build a ship with parts extending evenly from both sides and increase by 1 until parts stop being clipped off. Of course if 16 doesn't clip things off increment down until something does fall off. Personally the fudge doesn't bother me that much.
The plug-in uses the same value for this will blow up, and this moves. I don't really think it's worth it to have 2 different values, just adds complexity and things that can go wrong. Myself I've never made a warp ship so wanting for power it doesn't keep 100% EC for the whole trip and there's plenty of EM for going just about anywhere from anywhere even in an OPM system. (You guys know you're not supposed to leave the EM converter on while warping right?)

[capi3101]

Power requirements for the dev version, assuming stock power sources only:

0.625m engine 22.026/sec = 2 Fuel Cell Arrays
2.5m engine 91.774/sec = 6 Fuel Cell Arrays
Mk1 engine 44.052/sec = 3 Fuel Cell Arrays
Mk2 engine 110.129/sec = 7 Fuel Cell Arrays
Mk3 engine 148.839/sec = 9 Fuel Cell Arrays

MSV Fat Man, the Alcubierre ship I now have in my career save using the dev version of the drive, actually has three sources of electrical power - eight Gigantors to power the exotic matter generator while in parking orbit over Kerbol at 1.6 GM, six fuel cell arrays that activate and deactivate in tandem with the drive (a 2.5 m drive, as above), and two RTGs to power everything else while I've got the Gigantors and Fuel Cell Arrays inactive. It's a good system - Fat Man's been out to Duna and back twice now. Still using linear velocity mode.

Which reminds me - question: about angular momentum mode,  is it h or L that's conserved? The drive still doesn't affect the direction of the velocity vector, right?

I love the fact that that I can get closer to the planets; it's a lot easier to correct a bad approach than it used to be. I also find that I like the increase in consumable expenditures. Call me a glutton for punishment, I guess.

[Hs.Panda]

so brief explaination on how the controls work? iuse the throttle and it moves really fast? i don't undertsand the "translation not acceleration"thing? =/ and is it tweakscaleable?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Hs.Panda said:

so brief explaination on how the controls work? iuse the throttle and it moves really fast? i don't undertsand the "translation not acceleration"thing? =/ and is it tweakscaleable?

Yes, it's controlled by the throttle.

The drive grabs a chunk of space time and shifts it, but the craft stays traveling at the same velocity within that chunk of space time, so when you stop the drive, you return to normal space with the same velocity you started with. Which might be inconvenient if you arrive at a planet that has a significantly different velocity than the planet you left (spoiler: they all do).

I don't believe it's tweakable.

[Hs.Panda]

1 hour ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Yes, it's controlled by the throttle.

The drive grabs a chunk of space time and shifts it, but the craft stays traveling at the same velocity within that chunk of space time, so when you stop the drive, you return to normal space with the same velocity you started with. Which might be inconvenient if you arrive at a planet that has a significantly different velocity than the planet you left (spoiler: they all do).

I don't believe it's tweakable.

oh, poo, i was hoping to put it on some rather large craft, but if it's only 1 size..... =/

[helaeon]

5 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Power requirements for the dev version, assuming stock power sources only:
...
Which reminds me - question: about angular momentum mode,  is it h or L that's conserved? The drive still doesn't affect the direction of the velocity vector, right?

I love the fact that that I can get closer to the planets; it's a lot easier to correct a bad approach than it used to be. I also find that I like the increase in consumable expenditures. Call me a glutton for punishment, I guess.

That sounds almost exactly as I intended. Maybe the 3.75 should be more power needy, but stock is massively nerfed energy wise anyway so I think it's okay.
Angular momentum mode is supposed to conserve h (direction and magnitude). Direction of velocity vector remains unchanged.
Happy you're enjoying the changes. I think it's much better than it was personally.

[capi3101]

32 minutes ago, Hs.Panda said:

oh, poo, i was hoping to put it on some rather large craft, but if it's only 1 size..... =/

Define "rather large". The bubble on the 2.5 m engine extends to a diameter of about 40 meters; the 3.5 m part in the dev version has an even larger bubble. 

3 hours ago, Hs.Panda said:

so brief explaination on how the controls work? iuse the throttle and it moves really fast? i don't undertsand the "translation not acceleration"thing?

Pretty much that's how it works. Point your ship in the direction you want to go and throttle up a bit. There's a hard limit on how closely you can approach planets - in the release version your stop if you hit that hard limit, in the dev version there's a braking factor that gets pretty sharp as you approach the hard limit (which makes it pretty unlikely you'll actually hit it).

As far as "translation, not acceleration" goes, I might suggest watching a bit of a YouTube video I created not all that long ago. The fact that the velocity vector is not being affected by the drive is what lets you warp onto paths directly towards/away from a body. Not sure that helps or not.