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

[Bosun]

My WarpDrives will not work.  

I have downloaded the Github FOR_Release folder and used it's contents as outlined above, but I still have a menu without advanced controls for the WarpDrive.  It simply has Activate/De-Activate and toggle torque buttons.  When activated - the warp bubble extends out around the ship, and when I throttle up while pointed at the target with the engine activated, it tells me I have 0.5kn thrust, 0.343c[max: 1.275c](throttle not maxed), [email protected], Conservation: Velocity, Fuel Flow .938u, Status Nominal, Fuel Req Met: 100%, Specific Impulse: 20,000.  

The ship at full throttle will shudder violently and sometimes lose parts.  But will not actually go anywhere.    Any ideas?

[helaeon]

@Bosun Do you have any other engines activated or RCS turned on? Everything but the AD should be off when it's running.
Specific impulse should be 1.

That turbo number is weird too are you playing in a scaled system? Because that Turbo@ suggests your max warp is 15-16 instead of 6. (which is curiously close to the old max warp)

I changed nearly every file on this upgrade, but I didn't move anything... Need to replace it all not just WarpDrive.dll. There may also be some issues if module manager changes some stuff thanks to another mod because I did add some more configurable parameters to the warp engine module (though they are set by default in the dll so if not in a part .cfg it will still function).

All of this together is suggesting that you're running an old set of part configs but the dll is installed correctly.

[capi3101]

15 hours ago, Bosun said:

My WarpDrives will not work.  

I have downloaded the Github FOR_Release folder and used it's contents as outlined above, but I still have a menu without advanced controls for the WarpDrive.  It simply has Activate/De-Activate and toggle torque buttons.  When activated - the warp bubble extends out around the ship, and when I throttle up while pointed at the target with the engine activated, it tells me I have 0.5kn thrust, 0.343c[max: 1.275c](throttle not maxed), [email protected], Conservation: Velocity, Fuel Flow .938u, Status Nominal, Fuel Req Met: 100%, Specific Impulse: 20,000.  

The ship at full throttle will shudder violently and sometimes lose parts.  But will not actually go anywhere.    Any ideas?

Are you trying to use the drive with the exotic matter generator activated? If you are, you shouldn't be...the bubble will collapse while running if the craft runs out of any of the three consumables the drive needs - exotic matter, xenon and electric charge - and since the EM generator requires so much charge to operate, lack of electric charge is a likely candidate. Just covering that as a possibility first.

If that's not the case, can we see a screenie of your ship, preferably one with your drive controls and consumables windows visible?

[Greatness101]

Are there plans to add more warp drives to this mod? There is an old post by Roverdude on this thread outlining ideas for other warp drives but that was from a really long time ago.

[capi3101]

3 hours ago, Greatness101 said:

Are there plans to add more warp drives to this mod? There is an old post by Roverdude on this thread outlining ideas for other warp drives but that was from a really long time ago.

The dev version has got three new 'z-model' parts: a 1 meter, 2.5 meter and 3.75 meter engine.

Specifics - the old parts are still there and they are more efficient insofar as the consumption of consumables is concerned, while the new parts fit inside fairings much more readily. In the dev version, all the engines share the same set of failsafe altitudes, which is one-half a planetary radius; a "braking factor" has been added that slows the drive down considerably in close proximity to failsafe (I've found that the data I provided in my earlier navigation guide is still very much usable in the dev version). Depletion of consumables has been stepped up considerably as well; I can only speak about stock power consumption, but adequate power for the drive's operation has gone from 4 RTGs in the current release version to a number of Fuel Cell Arrays in the dev version, with the number you need dependent on the engine you're using. My understanding is that if you're using community power sources, the electrical charge requirement is far greater; somebody else may need to fill you in there (I'd appreciate that information for the sake of my own knowledge, actually).

[helaeon]

If you're using FarFutureTechnologies, NearFutureElectrical, MKS, DSEV. It takes 25x stock electricity to warp, and 15x to make exotic matter.
I wanted the warp drives to use more electricity than Nert's largest MPDT. You're going to need a large fission or a fusion reactor (which is the point). Battery powered warp drives should be fairly useless and dangerous unless you have millions of ec worth of storage. I'm not even sure if the capacitors from NFE can keep up (I don't use them personally so I don't know).
I do use these mods myself and this is my intended electrical use... the stock values are for the purpose of making a truly stand-alone drive. The much higher values are the intended ones.

Edited December 31, 2017 by helaeon

[Space Kadet]

so im in orbit with a ship and one of the normal drives from the previous version, and when i engage warp it just sits there, the orbit seems to change but not alot (3 minutes the ap of the orbit shifted 3k) im at laythe and in a 500k orbit what am i missing? 

i do have full ec and the NF generator kicks out 3000ec/s it also worked fine before i updated.

Edited January 5, 2018 by Space Kadet

[capi3101]

5 minutes ago, Space Kadet said:

so im in orbit with a ship and one of the normal drives from the previous version, and when i engage warp it just sits there, the orbit seems to change but not alot (3 minutes the ap of the orbit shifted 3k) im at laythe and in a 500k orbit what am i missing? 

i do have full ec and the NF generator kicks out 3000ec/s it also worked fine before i updated.

Making sure I understand you correctly - you had a ship in orbit of Laythe with the old version in a 500k orbit, then you changed to the dev version. Is that correct?

500k is the old failsafe altitude for Laythe (new one's 250k for all drive models), so the newly-added braking factor will be pretty substantial at that point. You might check your thrust limiter; if you're not at 100%, start by ramping it up and see what happens. You might also try warping radially away from Laythe to 750k (the old failsafe altitude for the 0.625m drive) and see if you get a little more response out of it.

If you still can't get anything to work, shoot a screenie on up to this thread with your drive GUI and consumables windows visible and we'll take another look at it.

[Space Kadet]

5 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Making sure I understand you correctly - you had a ship in orbit of Laythe with the old version in a 500k orbit, then you changed to the dev version. Is that correct?

500k is the old failsafe altitude for Laythe (new one's 250k for all drive models), so the newly-added braking factor will be pretty substantial at that point. You might check your thrust limiter; if you're not at 100%, start by ramping it up and see what happens. You might also try warping radially away from Laythe to 750k (the old failsafe altitude for the 0.625m drive) and see if you get a little more response out of it.

If you still can't get anything to work, shoot a screenie on up to this thread with your drive GUI and consumables windows visible and we'll take another look at it.

i may have been the version before last, it was a ckan install,  and there is no thrust limiter.

heres the video of the first one warping (its at the right time 
https://youtu.be/_8gbuVaW3w8?list=PLmvNsdXzTt9k9yKene-N8LS6xK6LlOz91&t=1473

and now, and ive just reinstalled the freshe linked version from H's github on the last page. 
 

 

[capi3101]

35 minutes ago, Space Kadet said:

i may have been the version before last, it was a ckan install,  and there is no thrust limiter.

heres the video of the first one warping (its at the right time 
https://youtu.be/_8gbuVaW3w8?list=PLmvNsdXzTt9k9yKene-N8LS6xK6LlOz91&t=1473

and now, and ive just reinstalled the freshe linked version from H's github on the last page. 

Ok...I'm assuming you meant that you hadn't been using the thrust limiter; there's definitely one there at 24:22 in your video you've got the Warp Drive GUI open. 

Putting in the dev version will probably solve the issue; as I said earlier, 500k was the failsafe altitude for Laythe, so the drive shouldn't really have been working at all. Be advised that the rate at which consumables are used while warping has gone up dramatically with the dev version of the drive, particularly if you're using non-stock EC sources (which you are). You might want to quicksave before attempting to use the drive as a precaution, and definitely watch your consumables.

[Space Kadet]

5 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Ok...I'm assuming you meant that you hadn't been using the thrust limiter; there's definitely one there at 24:22 in your video you've got the Warp Drive GUI open. 

Putting in the dev version will probably solve the issue; as I said earlier, 500k was the failsafe altitude for Laythe, so the drive shouldn't really have been working at all. Be advised that the rate at which consumables are used while warping has gone up dramatically with the dev version of the drive, particularly if you're using non-stock EC sources (which you are). You might want to quicksave before attempting to use the drive as a precaution, and definitely watch your consumables.

i meant that was the video of it working with the previous version. since then its not worked at the same altitude (i used hyper edit to 504k) 

[capi3101]

Hmm.

2 hours ago, Space Kadet said:

when i engage warp it just sits there, the orbit seems to change but not alot (3 minutes the ap of the orbit shifted 3k) im at laythe and in a 500k orbit

Okay...I'm down to grasping at straws (the rest of y'all can jump in with ideas any time now). Just out of curiosity, what was your heading (course and elevation) when you engaged the drive?

[Space Kadet]

8 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Hmm.

Okay...I'm down to grasping at straws (the rest of y'all can jump in with ideas any time now). Just out of curiosity, what was your heading (course and elevation) when you engaged the drive?

heres what was happening

[helaeon]

@Space KadetI think you're getting bit by the gravity brake pretty severely, but it shouldn't be that bad at that altitude. It looks like you were running full-out long enough, but maybe not. Hard to say without your warp menu open. I know I need to run full out for a little while to escape a 350km orbit of Kerbin (I have my cutoff set to .25 in my personal game, so braking should be even less severe without that modification). You definitely have enough power and fuel. 
I'll give the current version a look again and try to replicate your situation when I'm on my KSP computer tonight assuming stock.
 

[Space Kadet]

49 minutes ago, helaeon said:

@Space KadetI think you're getting bit by the gravity brake pretty severely, but it shouldn't be that bad at that altitude. It looks like you were running full-out long enough, but maybe not. Hard to say without your warp menu open. I know I need to run full out for a little while to escape a 350km orbit of Kerbin (I have my cutoff set to .25 in my personal game, so braking should be even less severe without that modification). You definitely have enough power and fuel. 
I'll give the current version a look again and try to replicate your situation when I'm on my KSP computer tonight assuming stock.
 

thanks man, i was wondering if it was maybe jools gravity well interfering, but i really have no knowledge about gravity (nevermind in computer language) aside from being able to put a gold ball through a window at 100m

[helaeon]

@Space KadetGood news... Gravity brakes are working as intended so nothing wrong with the plug-in... Bad news is I may have made them a bit too harsh for this one use case. More good news though is this is all fixable in the configs so if ya'll would help me with suggestions for values you think are good that would be greatly appreciated.
I made the braking due to gravity wells additive so you didn't just blast past the other moons in the game. Plus thinking about it it's a gravity well sitting in a gravity well, it should be additive. Laythe is a special case where it has a fairly reasonable gravity well of its own and it's fairly deep in Jool's gravity well. You're still warping and you'll still be able to climb out of the well from failsafe, it'll just take a long time and a lot of exotic matter. I tested out at Tylo and thought it was fine... but didn't even think about Laythe.

The two values we need to be concerned with are GravFactor and BrakeFalloff. I think the thing to do is mess with GravFactor as values of BrakeFalloff much different than what I have tends to have you blowing past planets because you don't start slowing down soon enough. Very small changes make a big deal in both of these values so don't increment by too much. It may also be an idea to reduce GravFactor but bring BrakeFalloff up a bit.
I'm going to fiddle with these numbers a little bit and I'll give some new recommended values later. Once some new values are settled on I'll get them on Github and do a PR for the official repository.

ETA: I just did a bunch of tests... GravFactor = .55  BrakeFalloff = .78, works nice for Laythe but isn't strong enough for anywhere else. I think I like the original values better for general use.
I may make a modification to the plug-in so there is a minimum warp velocity. I'm thinking .0005c

Edited January 6, 2018 by helaeon
after some testing

[Space Kadet]

4 hours ago, helaeon said:

@Space KadetGood news... Gravity brakes are working as intended so nothing wrong with the plug-in... Bad news is I may have made them a bit too harsh for this one use case. More good news though is this is all fixable in the configs so if ya'll would help me with suggestions for values you think are good that would be greatly appreciated.
I made the braking due to gravity wells additive so you didn't just blast past the other moons in the game. Plus thinking about it it's a gravity well sitting in a gravity well, it should be additive. Laythe is a special case where it has a fairly reasonable gravity well of its own and it's fairly deep in Jool's gravity well. You're still warping and you'll still be able to climb out of the well from failsafe, it'll just take a long time and a lot of exotic matter. I tested out at Tylo and thought it was fine... but didn't even think about Laythe.

The two values we need to be concerned with are GravFactor and BrakeFalloff. I think the thing to do is mess with GravFactor as values of BrakeFalloff much different than what I have tends to have you blowing past planets because you don't start slowing down soon enough. Very small changes make a big deal in both of these values so don't increment by too much. It may also be an idea to reduce GravFactor but bring BrakeFalloff up a bit.
I'm going to fiddle with these numbers a little bit and I'll give some new recommended values later. Once some new values are settled on I'll get them on Github and do a PR for the official repository.

ETA: I just did a bunch of tests... GravFactor = .55  BrakeFalloff = .78, works nice for Laythe but isn't strong enough for anywhere else. I think I like the original values better for general use.
I may make a modification to the plug-in so there is a minimum warp velocity. I'm thinking .0005c

so is my understanding right that it takes into account both laythe and jool? as for blowing past moons, i figured that would be a given as they are so much smaller than a planet and warp drive would have to be that powerfull to begin with

[helaeon]

15 minutes ago, Space Kadet said:

so is my understanding right that it takes into account both laythe and jool? as for blowing past moons, i figured that would be a given as they are so much smaller than a planet and warp drive would have to be that powerfull to begin with

Yep I was thinking of this https://www.xkcd.com/681/, but I have to exaggerate things a bit. Speed of light is fast. It would be  fine if we didn't have to deal with physics ticks. Which in my case is every .06 seconds which at 1 c takes you 18,000 km. That's quite a long way in a system where an earth like planet is 2400 km across (this is blowing THROUGH objects not just past them. Game often doesn't even detect the collision and you can in no way react fast enough). Jool is 12000km across. you can go past it in one physics tick as well!

I already made up a test DLL that has a minimum speed (configurable in the part config) seems to work alright. I kind of liked the fail-safe never really being reached because you just couldn't warp at that altitude, it was just too slow. But Laythe may make that impossible.

[Space Kadet]

well in that case that its not a 'problem' with laythe, and your just in too deep to the Jool gravity well, what about a dual mode engine. and the second mode could be like an escape burn, in my head its something like a 30000km 'pop' straight forward that would take 90% of your exotic matter and EC and if you've done it right get you out of a grav well. but with a 2 week recharge time plus the required EM recharge.

i'm not sure how well my thoughts come across, but ive been an EVE Online player for along time, and i imagine the timeout similar to the triage module....

[helaeon]

I think I'm okay with a minimum max speed being built in. It allows the brake falloff to be a bit more severe without making things too slow overall.

I understand what you're saying. I think the main use cases would be getting too close to a star, jool, and laythe. Everywhere else the regular stuff works fine, so putting a floor on how much gravity defeats your ability to warp space should be okay. Plus it was easy to implement. That pop less so especially making it configurable for re-scaled systems.

[Space Kadet]

54 minutes ago, helaeon said:

I think I'm okay with a minimum max speed being built in. It allows the brake falloff to be a bit more severe without making things too slow overall.

I understand what you're saying. I think the main use cases would be getting too close to a star, jool, and laythe. Everywhere else the regular stuff works fine, so putting a floor on how much gravity defeats your ability to warp space should be okay. Plus it was easy to implement. That pop less so especially making it configurable for re-scaled systems.

yeah i can see that. I've not got enough programing to make this stuff but enough to understand how complex it could be  

maybe just put a tag on the engine that layth is a dangerous target because of jool  

that also keeps the idea of balance in check

[Space Kadet]

I have an od one for you, so i tried to change the bubble size in the spec, just changing the big unit from 20 to 30 and when i cross the SOI of kerbin this happens .... 

any ideas

[RoverDude]

3 hours ago, helaeon said:

I already made up a test DLL that has a minimum speed (configurable in the part config) seems to work alright. I kind of liked the fail-safe never really being reached because you just couldn't warp at that altitude, it was just too slow. But Laythe may make that impossible.

FYI - I'll be doing releases this weekend, so if you could, toss in the PR so it makes it into the official bundle, and thanks again!

[Space Kadet]

2 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

FYI - I'll be doing releases this weekend, so if you could, toss in the PR so it makes it into the official bundle, and thanks again!

*most innocent voice a 35 year old scotsman can make*

could you make the bubble slightly bigger ? like 1.25 times the size.....

[RoverDude]

Not without a bigger drive