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

[Gargantua]

Hello I have a problem: every time I activate the 3.75m Z-model, I instantly lose all control of my vessel and my frame-rate drops massively.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Jaxxman]

3 hours ago, Gargantua said:

Hello I have a problem: every time I activate the 3.75m Z-model, I instantly lose all control of my vessel and my frame-rate drops massively.

Any help would be appreciated!

It seems that your ship is actually blowing up. When it happened to mine, the game was actually struggling to render the complete ship failure. You will need to rethink your design. Look for unstable areas of the ship that need struts or are outside of the warp bubble. I noticed that the bubble is not 'equal' in regards to the tolerance of ship dimensions. Protrusions to the side of the drive tend pass before those fore and aft of the drive. Hope this helps.

[capi3101]

5 hours ago, Gargantua said:

Hello I have a problem: every time I activate the 3.75m Z-model, I instantly lose all control of my vessel and my frame-rate drops massively.

Any help would be appreciated!

You're not running the drive and the exotic matter generator at the same time, are you? That'll get you every time...

Can we see a screenie of the craft you're using? Also, what mods are you using? I'm primarily interested in what you've got for power generation and storage.

7 hours ago, Modding Maniac said:

So this mod still works? i thought it was dead

Still works just fine - this screenie is from two days ago:

The braking as you approach failsafe isn't working quite right right now (at least not by my observations); other than that it's perfectly fine.

Speaking of which, @helaeon and @RoverDude, I'm trying to get you guys some hard data on that. It's definitely jumping from E-7 or E-8C to 0.001 C somewhere along the line, at least it has been in my local save. The behavior's been consistent in all SOIs I've visited so far since v1.5.1; came damn close to hitting Minmus once, warp got me down to 23,000 m. I'll do some more tests.

 

[Gargantua]

18 hours ago, Jaxxman said:

It seems that your ship is actually blowing up. When it happened to mine, the game was actually struggling to render the complete ship failure. You will need to rethink your design. Look for unstable areas of the ship that need struts or are outside of the warp bubble. I noticed that the bubble is not 'equal' in regards to the tolerance of ship dimensions. Protrusions to the side of the drive tend pass before those fore and aft of the drive. Hope this helps.

There are no explosion sounds or anything, nothing appears in the flight log either. Also, I'm not even throttling up, just right clicking the drive and activating it! Check the screenshots below:

Top Left: The ship just after activating the drive, at this point I have about 4fps and no control.

Top Right: What appears in the console after activation.

Bottom Left: The ship in the VAB, as you can see no parts of it are outside the bubble. The only difference is that the ship in orbit has 2 landers docked to it.

Bottom Right: List of all mods in my GameData folder.

17 hours ago, capi3101 said:

You're not running the drive and the exotic matter generator at the same time, are you? That'll get you every time...

Can we see a screenie of the craft you're using? Also, what mods are you using? I'm primarily interested in what you've got for power generation and storage.

No I'm only activating it, no throttle up at all xd. Im using KSS for power generation, the enormous engine at the back has a built in fusion reactor which generates more than enough electriccharge.

I cheated a test vessel into orbit with just the drive, batteries and a drone core and it seems to activate fine then. So I'm not entirely sure why it's not working with my main ship :c

I hope the info I have provided is helpful.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Gargantua

[RoverDude]

huh, try it with a minimal mod set maybe?

[helaeon]

@capi3101
What is your physics tick set at? The amount of distance being covered here, higher physics tick times can make big jumps in all the calculations happen due to the obscene distances being covered very quickly and I have most of the calculations happening exponentially or logarithmicly - due to the extremely large speeds and distances being considered. There isn't much I can do about this and it's been a problem since I first started tinkering with the laws governing warp in KSP.

Are you trying to approach the planet at full throttle? Just like Elite Dangerous you're going to blow by (or through) and the brakes aren't going to work very well. Unlike E:D the warp drive is not an integral part of the game so the functions I'd probably need to keep everything nice and tidy aren't there, so... we get a much more finnicky and unpredictable warp drive. Also unlike E:D if you blow through the planet and are unlucky to be in it during the next physics tick you super explode not be placed at fail-safe altitude. Further, with most bodies other than Jool or Kerbol (I think), even with a physics tick of .04 you can blast by the entire failsafe altitude in one tick if at full throttle. You do know that our "lore" that's part of the deal with getting to use a warp drive... that it is a bit unpredictable and we'll call certain bugs features.

Also FYI  I'm playing a lot of Warframe so I'm unlikely to be doing much with KSP. I do check in once in a while to answer questions, but I won't be making any coding changes to this in the near future. Anyone is welcome to make adjustments though It is also possible something has happened between 1.3 and 1.6 that has broken how the brakes worked. I personally haven't ran a warp-drive ship since my last burst of coding to put the brakes in.

[capi3101]

2 hours ago, helaeon said:

@capi3101
What is your physics tick set at? <snip />

Are you trying to approach the planet at full throttle?  <snip />

To be honest, I don't know where I'd look to check that. Haven't fiddled with it anyway - I guess it's "default", for all the more good that says. I'll see if I can find it next time I fire up the game.

The approach is not at full throttle through. Generally I crank the drive's thrust limiter to somewhere around 25% upon entering a planetary SOI; it was a habit I got into pre-brakes. 

It's proving difficult to type exactly what I'm doing/seeing, so I'll record/post a video next opportunity I get. Hopefully it will clarify things.

[capi3101]

17 hours ago, Gargantua said:

There are no explosion sounds or anything, nothing appears in the flight log either. Also, I'm not even throttling up, just right clicking the drive and activating it! Check the screenshots below:

Top Left: The ship just after activating the drive, at this point I have about 4fps and no control.

Top Right: What appears in the console after activation.

Bottom Left: The ship in the VAB, as you can see no parts of it are outside the bubble. The only difference is that the ship in orbit has 2 landers docked to it.

Bottom Right: List of all mods in my GameData folder.

No I'm only activating it, no throttle up at all xd. Im using KSS for power generation, the enormous engine at the back has a built in fusion reactor which generates more than enough electriccharge.

I cheated a test vessel into orbit with just the drive, batteries and a drone core and it seems to activate fine then. So I'm not entirely sure why it's not working with my main ship :c

I hope the info I have provided is helpful.

Hmm...okay. You are getting a bubble, and you've got another craft that reported works, so at this point I'm inclined to think there might be a mod conflict. Which specific mods have parts represented on your ship? You've already mentioned a KSS fusion generator and of course the warp drive is there, plus I'm seeing a crew centrifuge unless I'm much mistaken; what else do you have there? I'd look at those mods first for potential conflicts.

[Gargantua]

12 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Hmm...okay. You are getting a bubble, and you've got another craft that reported works, so at this point I'm inclined to think there might be a mod conflict. Which specific mods have parts represented on your ship? You've already mentioned a KSS fusion generator and of course the warp drive is there, plus I'm seeing a crew centrifuge unless I'm much mistaken; what else do you have there? I'd look at those mods first for potential conflicts.

Im using KSS for the fuel tanks and engine, NearFutureElectrical for the batteries, NearFuturePropulsion for the xenon tanks, the Interstellar Endurance mod for the landers, FTLcontinued is used as there is an FTL drive and finally StationPartsExpansionRedux for the structural parts, utility and command modules of the ship.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 1/19/2019 at 9:14 AM, Gargantua said:

Hello I have a problem: every time I activate the 3.75m Z-model, I instantly lose all control of my vessel and my frame-rate drops massively.

Any help would be appreciated!

If by chance the USI warp drive is attached to, or clipping a cargo bay, it will misbehave like this. I can't tell as any image of your ship so far is too small to try to identify every part.

[helaeon]

On 1/20/2019 at 10:05 PM, capi3101 said:

To be honest, I don't know where I'd look to check that. Haven't fiddled with it anyway - I guess it's "default", for all the more good that says. I'll see if I can find it next time I fire up the game.

The approach is not at full throttle through. Generally I crank the drive's thrust limiter to somewhere around 25% upon entering a planetary SOI; it was a habit I got into pre-brakes. 

It's proving difficult to type exactly what I'm doing/seeing, so I'll record/post a video next opportunity I get. Hopefully it will clarify things.

Physics Tick is in the settings. It's Max Physics Delta-Time per frame. Different versions of KSP have had different defaults here. Also people with heavily modded games have often made this number larger, which means the warp-drive's calculation update less often. Instead of your warp drive "flying" through space think of it that it's doing successive hops of a calculated distance and in that physics delta time, you're in a new location everything gets updated and another jump.
To give you an idea of how this can be a big issue: at 1c in with a physics tick of .04 seconds (which may be the minimum one can set it to) your ship jumps 12,000 km. Kerbin has a diameter of 1200km.

[Gargantua]

15 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

If by chance the USI warp drive is attached to, or clipping a cargo bay, it will misbehave like this. I can't tell as any image of your ship so far is too small to try to identify every part.

I just redesigned the ship so that nothing was clipping the drive and nothing was docked, still having same issue. Also when I try to switch vessels, the altitude resets to 0 although the ship still appears in orbit. Trying to go EVA crashes the game.

[Gargantua]

Okay so it seems the problem is caused by the main command module apparently being outside of the bubble. Even though it clearly is not, it disconnects from the rest of the ship and the console states this was because it was outside the bubble.

EDIT: After some more testing, it seems that the 3.75m bubble guide is larger than what the drive actually uses. The true size is closer to that of the original 2.5m model. See the screenshot below:

The top of the 2.5m bubble guide is pretty much exactly where the ship splits using the 3.75m drive.

Is anyone else able to confirm this?

Edited January 22, 2019 by Gargantua

[capi3101]

12 hours ago, helaeon said:

Physics Tick is in the settings. It's Max Physics Delta-Time per frame. Different versions of KSP have had different defaults here. Also people with heavily modded games have often made this number larger, which means the warp-drive's calculation update less often. Instead of your warp drive "flying" through space think of it that it's doing successive hops of a calculated distance and in that physics delta time, you're in a new location everything gets updated and another jump.
To give you an idea of how this can be a big issue: at 1c in with a physics tick of .04 seconds (which may be the minimum one can set it to) your ship jumps 12,000 km. Kerbin has a diameter of 1200km.

Okay...my physics tick is 0.04. I think the units are seconds per frame, IIRC.

Did go ahead and carry out on my threat to do a YouTube video of what I'm seeing. Filmed a warp transit of LSV House Harkonnen going from a polar orbit over Duna to a retrograde equatorial one. Craft uses one of the standard 2.5 meter drives; it's also got Pathfinder/Buffalo parts including a drydock, mass driver and a quad of SAFER reactors (which are little more than buffed RTGs). I do apologize for the relatively poor quality - my laptop is setup for office applications more than gaming. The numbers are mostly readable, though, so it still should yield some usable data. I also apologize for the craft's shaky handling; KJR picked that particular moment to take a nap. Ship was absolutely fine after switching to a different craft and then returning to Harkonnen, but that all happened after I stopped recording.
 

 

Edited January 22, 2019 by capi3101

[helaeon]

@capi3101 how severe of a braking effect are you expecting? That video was looking about right to me for Duna. Especially after the Laythe + Jool fix (apparently that combined gravity well is quite deep and you can't get out at all with the way I had it originally with much stronger braking). Now there is an absolute minimum max speed the warp drive will make you go. It's a floor on how severe the braking can get. I think it happens to be 0.0001c if I remember right. So yeah, looks like working as expected.

[capi3101]

7 hours ago, helaeon said:

@capi3101 how severe of a braking effect are you expecting? That video was looking about right to me for Duna. Especially after the Laythe + Jool fix (apparently that combined gravity well is quite deep and you can't get out at all with the way I had it originally with much stronger braking). Now there is an absolute minimum max speed the warp drive will make you go. It's a floor on how severe the braking can get. I think it happens to be 0.0001c if I remember right. So yeah, looks like working as expected.

Uh...in the past I've been able to have the drive running flat out (100% on the thrust limiter, full throttle) and get nowhere close to the failsafe altitude because of the amount of braking going on.

Come to think of it, though, I did give KSP a hiatus for a good long while last year... <checking_archived_files /> Okay...I was using v0.7.0.0 with 1.3.1, v0.10.0.0 with 1.4.x, v0.10.1.0 with 1.5.x...and I've got v0.10.0.0 now with 1.6.x.

Okay, IIRC 0.10.1.0 was the version with the really strong braking. I take it y'all decided not to go that route.

 

 

0.0001c? The floor I'm seeing in all five configuration files is 0.001c (assuming it's the line that reads "minMaxSpeed = 0.001"), a full order of magnitude faster. Should it be 0.0001?

[helaeon]

@capi3101 I honestly don't remember where I set the minmax at. If it's in the file as .001c then that's what it is at. You may tune as you see fit. I probably left it exposed in the cfg for just this reason (and so could be altered by module manager as desired).

[PunkRockZoologist]

On 1/20/2019 at 12:14 AM, Gargantua said:

Hello I have a problem: every time I activate the 3.75m Z-model, I instantly lose all control of my vessel and my frame-rate drops massively.

Any help would be appreciated!

I'm having this problem too. My ship is quite long, but it is still inside the bubble as it is represented in the VAB. I am using stock, USI LS, MKS and Near Future Technologies parts.

[capi3101]

23 minutes ago, PunkRockZoologist said:

I'm having this problem too. My ship is quite long, but it is still inside the bubble as it is represented in the VAB. I am using stock, USI LS, MKS and Near Future Technologies parts.

Do you have any part clipping going on?

[helaeon]

@PunkRockZoologist Keep in mind too large part counts have a very large and fast detrimental effect due to the way we need to move all those parts through space to make the warp effect happen. Every frame a new position and velocity is applied to each part in the vessel. This is done on a vessel wide basis but, KSP is still doing all of that and calculating all that it usually does to keep that wad of parts together.

I part clip pretty severely and have never really had huge problems, but they have happened. Radial connections of course are more dangerous than node connections. My part counts are nearly always under 300 or so if I have a lander docked individual ships are 150 or less (usually closer to 100). Keep in mind too I'm running an i7-8770k, 32gb DDR4 memory, and a nVidia 1080 so I can get away with more than a lot of people can.

[Aaroneytor98]

Para que version esta?

[Moderator note:  Translates as "What version is it for?"]

Edited March 19, 2019 by Snark
Note added by moderator

[Snark]

6 hours ago, Aaroneytor98 said:

Para que version esta?

Hi @Aaroneytor98,

Please try to keep questions in the English-language forums in English only, per forum rule 2.3.c.  If you'd like to post in Spanish, there's a place for that. 

• Spanish (Español)

Gracias!

[goldenpsp]

7 hours ago, Aaroneytor98 said:

Para que version esta?

[Moderator note:  Translates as "What version is it for?"]

The answer is in the original post at the link called "download here"

[GraczNet]

Why am I getting 4 warnings from Module Manager when this mod is installed? Is it normal?

[JadeOfMaar]

26 minutes ago, GraczNet said:

Why am I getting 4 warnings from Module Manager when this mod is installed? Is it normal?

The MM patches for re-tuning the engines for scaled systems have errors in them.