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

[RoverDude]

tbh, if someone wants to turn any of these into money printing machines.... it's a sandbox game.

[goldenpsp]

tbh, if someone wants to turn any of these into money printing machines.... it's a sandbox game.

I would agree. Finding creative ways to make funds is fine with me in a single player game.

[helaeon]

Hm I don't really get what Krakensbane is doing, but I just took a short look at the code at github in USI_ModuleWarpEngine.cs. Apparently to move the ship the current vessel position is taken and then krakensbane is moved to a new position based on old vessel position and and a jump distance based on the warpdrive operation. If this is working in a kerbol relative coordinate system wouldn't it be enough to just add the speed (multiplied by physics step) of the object I currently orbit to the ps vector in line 314? I guess if I am within the SOI of a moon this would actually be needed to be applied recursive to apply the speed of the planet too.

The thing I actually really like about this warp drive is the ability to make small precise course correction and directly see the new orbit (compared to the one from KSPI (last used version: KSPInterstellar-v0.11)), so enforcing a minimal throttle setting really does not sound appealing for me. Unfortunate without further guidance hints its very hard once the relative speed is low and the dirty old tricks like gravity adjusting extremely close to the sun and via extreme but precise (mechjeb landing guidline information) aerobrake maneuvers do no longer work because in both cases the ship is converted into a fiery ball of molten plasma :-), so precise control is more important than ever.

To really understand it you need to know the history behind krakensbane and why we have it. When other planetary bodies were added to the game and you tried to travel large distances, the velocity vector of each individual rigidbody (part) in your ship were subject to floating point errors. The further away you got from the origin of the scene the more pronounced the errors. This caused the pieces of your ship to be headed in slightly different directions at slightly different speeds due to these errors piling up - the original kraken slap. Which is what put me onto using Krakensbane to move our ship rather than setposition. As what the old kraken did sounded a lot like what was happening to our warp vessels. So Krakensbane, once your velocity goes over 750 m/s your ship becomes the center of the scene and the world moves around you. Everything moves in relation to your ship. You can see krakensbane being used as designed by the game when you change SOI (that's the G spike on scene changes). When the warp drive offsets the krakensbane frame we're offsetting the rest of the game space around the local physics frame and we do this repeatedly in real-time... this is obviously not how krakensbane was intended to be used. As a result we get some strange stuff like warping backwards at low throttle.

Serino and I originally started with what you were thinking... it didn't work. KSP does some goofy stuff behind the scenes to create the illusion that you're moving through space in an intuitive way. You "are" but the way the game is doing it is certainly not that simple unfortunately.

I do want to look into it. I'm hitting my busy season at work though so no promises. Right now my thought is set the minimum speed for the warp drive to say, 25,000 km/s. As soon as it turns on you go at least that fast. That should solve a lot of the backwards warping problems. When I have a bit I'll sit down and find the number where the backwards warping stops and set it just a bit higher than that. Then push it along if the tests go well.

I use this warp drive similarly to how you do, but I use the Angular Momentum mode and did a lot of the tests in that mode.

Edited June 12, 2015 by helaeon

[Storywalker4]

IDEA (although other mods do this, they aren't balanced against your mod, and are kinda cheaty because of it) : Jumpdrive. As I'm sure you know, the jump drive is a propulsion system able to put a craft from point A to B instantaneously. Provided it knows where B is. How I would imagine it to differ from the warp drive in the game is that the jump drive would physically connect two points in space. A ship and a beacon (or nearby said beacon), and the ship would travel through this hyperspace/subspace/wormhole tunnel to its destination. As mentioned, where the warp drive can travel wherever it pleases, the jump drives require beacons to be placed at a target to go there (so you have to have been to said body before. How to balance: Make it just as explode-y as the warp drive! Maybe a little less. Make the power consumption less, but the exotic matter (or whatever powers the jump drive) requirement more. In another mod (FTL Drive mod, which is honestly where this idea comes from [link: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/114401-0-90-FTL-Drive-Rev-001-Very-early-development if you could work with them on this because my idea came from them that'd be kind of you]), they balance it by using mass and gravity as limits to the ability to jump. Else you go boom.

Edited June 12, 2015 by Storywalker4

[undercoveryankee]

IDEA (although other mods do this, they aren't balanced against your mod, and are kinda cheaty because of it) : Jumpdrive. As I'm sure you know, the jump drive is a propulsion system able to put a craft from point A to B instantaneously. Provided it knows where B is. How I would imagine it to differ from the warp drive in the game is that the jump drive would physically connect two points in space. A ship and a beacon (or nearby said beacon), and the ship would travel through this hyperspace/subspace/wormhole tunnel to its destination. As mentioned, where the warp drive can travel wherever it pleases, the jump drives require beacons to be placed at a target to go there (so you have to have been to said body before. How to balance: Make it just as explode-y as the warp drive! Maybe a little less. Make the power consumption less, but the exotic matter (or whatever powers the jump drive) requirement more. In another mod (FTL Drive mod, which is honestly where this idea comes from [link: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/114401-0-90-FTL-Drive-Rev-001-Very-early-development if you could work with them on this because my idea came from them that'd be kind of you]), they balance it by using mass and gravity as limits to the ability to jump. Else you go boom.

My favorite jump mod is ESLD (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91582-1-0-2-ESLD-Jump-Beacons-Dev-0-6-2015-05-25). Decent balance, using drives that burn karborundum. And incidentally was the original source of the name "karborundum."

[SpacePilotMax]

Is it okay if I make it into 3.75/5 m?

[Xenro66]

Any way to make this go faster? 1.6x the speed of light is nice and all but I like extreme speeds XD

[RoverDude]

Actually it goes about 16x lightspeed currently... explain to me the case for making it go even faster please

[Murdabenne]

Actually it goes about 16x lightspeed currently... explain to me the case for making it go even faster please

Its so very Kerbal to say "Moar = Better!" LOL. All joking aside, I would bet that probably is at least part of the reasoning; I have a feeling that even a TARDIS would have trouble satisfying everyone.

[Xenro66]

Well, Roverdude, on the OP, it says "Up to 1.6 x light speed", so that's what I assumed before (re)downloading XD

Oh no... I'm having an issue. I built a simple ship that I can just hyperedit into orbit around kerbin, made sure I had my solar panels closed, started converting some exotic matter, but it was already full. I fired up the drive and stuff started exploding, it instantly ate all my electricity (30,000 units of it), so I switched it off... I don't really understand why this is happening.

However, if I use hyperedit to make sure all my electricity is full, it works fine? I don't understand what's going on. I'll try stacking some more batteries (even though it makes the ship weak), and edit my post accordingly.

Edit: I've refined the issue. If you start the conversion with the exotic matter already full, then activate the engine and throttle up, random pieces will start breaking off your ship.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Xenro66

[RoverDude]

No, you should not try exotic matter conversion with the drive operational because you're going to rapidly run out of EC and collapse the bubble.

[Xenro66]

Oh ok. I got it all working now. All I have to do now is figure out the most efficient way to use this so I don't have 15km/s to burn off haha.

[Murdabenne]

The only dependency is Regolith which is needed for it's converter

I'm new, just started playing at 1.0.2 and am looking for more fun/crazy stuff in my sandbox game (career is kinda grindy). I didn't see a mod named "regolith" current - the old one forum thread says it deprecated and I see no dependency in CKAN - so maybe an update to the text? Thanks for this, it looks great.

[RoverDude]

Regolith is now stock, so no dependencies left

[goldenpsp]

Regolith is now stock, so no dependencies left

right. I think he was referencing that the OP still lists regolith as a dependency.

[cantab]

I am reporting an incompatibility between the Alcubierre Warp Drive and ferram4's Ferram Aerospace Research. With both mods, and no others, installed manually the game regards parts within the warp drive's warp bubble as "stowed" even when the warp drive is not activated. Other (stock) engines will not activate and solar panels and radiators will not deploy if they are within the size of the warp bubble. This occurs on the ground on Kerbin or in space, and applies whether the warp drive is inactive or active. The warp drive itself is not regarded as stowed and will operate when above its failsafe altitude.

Installation details:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04.

KSP version: 1.0.4, Linux 64-bit.

Alcubierre Warp Drive version: 0.2.1

FAR version: v0.15.3.1 "Garabedian"

This is similar symptoms to what eliminate1337 described in late May, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100798-1-0-2-Alcubierre-Warp-Drive-%28Stand-alone%29-v0-2-1-2015-05-15?p=1958397&viewfull=1#post1958397 . I have not attempted to confirm his docking workaround.

Edited July 11, 2015 by cantab

[Jivaii]

Are we going to see different sizes?

[RoverDude]

Tbh these days I balance purely to stock as I no longer use far. That being said, I will accept a community mm patch if someone makes one.

[Joshwoo70]

Tbh these days I balance purely to stock as I no longer use far. That being said, I will accept a community mm patch if someone makes one.

Possible to make it cheatscaled? /tweakscale?

[RoverDude]

I don't support the use of tweakscale - do what you wish in your own saves, but for these I prefer unique models and will keep it that way in the distribution.

[Balto-the-Wolf-Dog]

I've been using the USI drives in combination with interstellar extended. I prefer the aesthetic of the USI drives, particularly the collapsing one, as I can get it on space planes, but for whatever reason I can't get them to charge exotic matter via reactor or solar panel. Interstellar drives work fine. Any idea why?

[RoverDude]

Not sure if FreeThinker was still messing with these configs or not. If so, I can't provide any support if KSPI is installed.

[NikoKun]

So whats goin on with this mod? Does it work with 1.0.4? ;

[RoverDude]

No reason why it would not.

[TheReaper]

it works in 1.04 as i just tested , excelent work again. But i have a question, can someone explain to me what does the option of conservation do? you can chose velocity or angular momentum but i didnt see much clear difference both just moves you arround without dV. I dont need much of technicals or paper after paper of definitons just a simple english writing of what it does. Thanks.