[1.2.2] Realistic Progression Zero (RP-0) - Lightweight RealismOverhaul career v0.53 June 12

[pjf]

Question, could there be an addition made to this to include the CSS?

Uh oh, you'll need to expand acronyms. I don't think we're using cascading style sheets to paint our craft gold and blue, are we?

[Agathorn]

It literally took me a ludicrous number of tries to get my Vanguard-based launcher to work. Different failures I got-

-Vanguard fails to ignite (but the other "engine" that is in the engine part keeps firing, making it hard to notice) and the rocket tips over. This happened twice, but unlike the real infamous TV3 incident, I could recover most of the rocket afterwards. I began to use launch clamps and checked the F3 menu before blastoff. The Vanguard engine became fairly reliable - it would frequently fail to ignite, but I could prevent total failure with launch clamps, and I only recall a few in-flight failures.

-The AJ-10 quickly became the issue. It would fail to ignite, shut down, or downright explode on several occasions. In fact, I even did a "static firing" for the Flight Test mod by holding the stage down with launch clamps for a "ground test." Even on my final successful launch, it would frequently "lose thrust", reducing it to somewhere around half power.

-With AJ-10 failures (or even, if I remember correctly, total successes), I kept failing to make orbit. One particular case I remember is where my periapsis was 80 or 90km, below the edge of the atmosphere. I used the satellite for a bit before terminating. I eventually fixed this by using 4 SRBs (copies of the Altair solid-fuel stage.)

On another note, the British "Gamma" engines have no FlightTest configs. Could you add them? I kinda feel cheaty about using them when they can't fail like the other liquid engines.

Welcome to working with some of the worst rocket engines in history

- - - Updated - - -

Question, could there be an addition made to this to include the CSS?

I assume you mean the Community Space Shuttle. Two things i'd like to say on that.

First off, last I checked, even in RO itself the CSS support is not 100%. Secondly, remember that the final goal is for everything in RO to be supported in RP-0 but there is a lot to do. In *general* we are working through things in tech order, IE starting with earliest tech and working our away up.

[pearldrumbum]

Hello - just stumbled across this last night while looking at the RO mod pack and decided to give it a go. I'm having a problem getting the game up and running, however.

I started with a clean 0.90 install, used CKAN to install Realism Overhaul and RP-0 at the same time, along with about 2/3 of the recommended mods. The first time I started the game it took about 30 minutes to load into the main menu. "Oh well", I thought, probably to be expected with that much stuff loading for the first time. Then in the main menu it shows the RealSolarSystem Status box loading all the planets and moons. It seems to get stuck on:

"Editing body: Mun (5/17)

PQS Mun

PQSMod_VertexHeightMap"

Eventually I force closed KSP and tried again. This time it only took about 3 minutes to load the main menu, but still gets stuck on loading the Mun.

EDIT: Seems to make it a little further each time. I force quit and restarted again and it made to to 8/17, then 11/17.... restarting again. Maybe it'll get there eventually.

Any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else?

Edited March 5, 2015 by pearldrumbum

[Sampa]

Uh oh, you'll need to expand acronyms. I don't think we're using cascading style sheets to paint our craft gold and blue, are we?

I'm sorry, meant to say that this is the Component Space Shuttle

[Agathorn]

Hello - just stumbled across this last night while looking at the RO mod pack and decided to give it a go. I'm having a problem getting the game up and running, however.

I started with a clean 0.90 install, used CKAN to install Realism Overhaul and RP-0 at the same time, along with about 2/3 of the recommended mods. The first time I started the game it took about 30 minutes to load into the main menu. "Oh well", I thought, probably to be expected with that much stuff loading for the first time. Then in the main menu it shows the RealSolarSystem Status box loading all the planets and moons. It seems to get stuck on:

"Editing body: Mun (5/17)

PQS Mun

PQSMod_VertexHeightMap"

Eventually I force closed KSP and tried again. This time it only took about 3 minutes to load the main menu, but still gets stuck on loading the Mun.

EDIT: Seems to make it a little further each time. I force quit and restarted again and it made to to 8/17, then 11/17.... restarting again. Maybe it'll get there eventually.

Any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else?

This is very common with the RO pack. You are running out of memory.

[pearldrumbum]

Yeah, couldn't get any further on subsequent tries. Trying the whole install again with less mods and using the autopruner script worked. Weird, because my computer isn't ancient, and some of my other KSP installs are quite mod heavy.

EDIT - Upon closer inspection, I think the main cause may have been because I chose the largest resolution for the real solar system. This time I used 2048x1024 and no problems.

Edited March 5, 2015 by pearldrumbum

[stevehead]

I'm a little confused. Should we be using parts that have their names prefixed with "RP-0 nocost"? Also, are the "non RP-0" parts supposed to be hidden? There was the following quote below, but I have not seen any more about it:

Yep, I can write a quick MM to hide all those parts. It won't unload the assets though. Someone should be able to write a script for the latter, though, without too much trouble--it would pull from MM's ConfigCache and then crossreference with existing prune lists.

I apologize in advanced if I missed something. I'm new to both RO and RP-0, and it's a little concerning for me to see so many parts pre-fixed with with the "RP-0 nocost" and "non RP-0". BTW, I'm not using any part mods outside of what was required/recommended by both RO and RP-0.

[Agathorn]

I'm a little confused. Should we be using parts that have their names prefixed with "RP-0 nocost"? Also, are the "non RP-0" parts supposed to be hidden? There was the following quote below, but I have not seen any more about it:

I apologize in advanced if I missed something. I'm new to both RO and RP-0, and it's a little concerning for me to see so many parts pre-fixed with with the "RP-0 nocost" and "non RP-0". BTW, I'm not using any part mods outside of what was required/recommended by both RO and RP-0.

The indicators are there to indicate that those parts have not been integrated yet into RP-0 and that using them would be "cheating" so to speak.

BTW, I'm not using any part mods outside of what was required/recommended by both RO and RP-0.

The thing to understand here is that every single part needs to be placed and costed, and that takes time. There is still a lot of work to be done on RP-0. The reason you are seeing "many parts" not tagged is because you have installed part packs not yet supported. Just because it is supported in RO does *not* mean it is supported in RP-0. At this time only a small fraction of the RO parts are actually integrated into RP-0.

[stevehead]

The indicators are there to indicate that those parts have not been integrated yet into RP-0 and that using them would be "cheating" so to speak.

The thing to understand here is that every single part needs to be placed and costed, and that takes time. There is still a lot of work to be done on RP-0. The reason you are seeing "many parts" not tagged is because you have installed part packs not yet supported. Just because it is supported in RO does *not* mean it is supported in RP-0. At this time only a small fraction of the RO parts are actually integrated into RP-0.

Thanks for the clarification on the "RP-0 nocost" parts. I completely understand the time that is required going into these game mods and balancing them properly, but I was just clarifying that I did not install a bunch of random part packages like Karbonite or KW Rocketry that are definitely not supported. Actually the only part mods that I had installed outside of RP-0 is Deadly Reentry and I understand why those are flagged as "non RP-0", and I do have SXT so I know the non-engine parts are flagged too. My confusion is about NathanKell indicating a possibility of hiding these non RP-0 parts through a MM config nearly a month ago, I haven't seen anything more about it and I thought that it might have already been integrated into the RP-0 mod and I'm doing something wrong. I was hoping someone would provide an update about that.

[pjf]

Thanks for the clarification on the "RP-0 nocost" parts. I completely understand the time that is required going into these game mods and balancing them properly, but I was just clarifying that I did not install a bunch of random part packages like Karbonite or KW Rocketry that are definitely not supported. Actually the only part mods that I had installed outside of RP-0 is Deadly Reentry and I understand why those are flagged as "non RP-0", and I do have SXT so I know the non-engine parts are flagged too. My confusion is about NathanKell indicating a possibility of hiding these non RP-0 parts through a MM config nearly a month ago, I haven't seen anything more about it and I thought that it might have already been integrated into the RP-0 mod and I'm doing something wrong. I was hoping someone would provide an update about that.

The following is my own personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect that of the entire RP-0 team.

It's *very* easy to hide parts which are not yet placed or costed in the RP-0 tree; much easier than tagging them with a notice. However it's also a terrible idea.

A lot of parts in RP-0â€â€while not explicitly placed by handâ€â€will be at or near their final location. Many more of them will have RealismOverhaul support, meaning that their physical characteristics are correct, even if there's still discussion as to their cost, or their technology node.

By clearly indicating which parts haven't finished the placement and cost process, we give players the choice of still using them if they wish. In some cases, one may consider this cheating, but as it's a single-player game, it's not like you're harming anyone else by doing so. In many cases parts are moved to earlier nodes, or reduced in price, so using the "unsupported" parts is actually a handycap.

But there's one huge reason why having "unsupported" parts visible and tagged: we *know* they're unsupported.

If these parts were hidden, there's no reminder when playing that their data needs to be updated. What's more, our users ask about the unplaced parts, and when that happens we can do something very, very cool.

We can give them the power to place parts themselves.

Anyone with a github account can edit the tech tree using that link. They don't need to be an existing contributor, they don't need to know how to code, they don't need any special software aside from their browser. Github makes sure that any edits are checked by both a bot and a human before they're merged. The game itself make the part identifiers visible in the VAB/SPH, so someone who's installed a mod and wants those parts supported can very easily start the process of making that so.

A lot of RP-0 part placement happens because people want support for their favourite parts. Most of my contributions outside of the build system have been placing everything but engines.

If you really want WIP parts to be hidden, I can probably give you a couple of lines of ModuleManager code that will do that for you. But from an overall project health, player balance, and project momentum standpoint, having parts which are tagged but not hidden isâ€â€in my most humble opinionâ€â€vastly superior.

~ pjf

[celem]

Gotta say guys, loving the work thats been done on the RP-0 experience. Gives a very nice pace through the tech and mission profiles. Follows is my new player experience:

Starting with the sounding rockets is cool, learning to get those to fly straight works as a perfect method of unlearning stock-ksp design habits. Lack of attitude control really forces you to design right. The progression through to the sas-locking stayputs is a lot of fun. With these two phases teaching you aerodynamic forms and control-through-design then the transition to orbital flights feels natural and I now know the techniques needed.

I was not really familiar with the history of real rocket launches and didn't research, so designed my craft from scratch. I found it interesting that I was able to come up with work-arounds for issues that varied from the historical solutions, though comparing the two techniques side by side always showed mine inferior, they both still worked. In particular it never occurred to me to use solid kicker first stages to mitigate the low pad TWR on my heavy aniline sounding probes, I had my tinytims as final stage for a huge uncontrolled burn in upper atmosphere. Ultimately I would adopt both tactics according to the need, but the feeling of having come up with something that flies is gratifying.

I started with moderate difficulty settings and things felt pretty well balanced. I will add that I use stage recovery, its a little moot early game where the entire rocket costs peanuts and later game even first stages tend to burn up, but it let me make a few mistakes and abort launches without haemorrhaging cash. Cash is thin, but rockets cost so very little at the start, the removal of kerbin surface sci makes sense and tempers the scumming that usually begins a game of KSP. It was fun angling sounding rockets and spitting them into neighbouring biomes. I used only parts flagged as rp-0 placed and costed where i could, there seems to be more than enough options to build decent systems and I like the way some engines upgrade as your tech level climbs (something i loved in interstellar). I did start to feel things were moving a little slow right about the time I was taking the 150mil meter sounding contract. I had just managed to put a stayput with basic solar panels into LEO which meant i could rinse-and-repeat the 'Science data from space' contracts. Actually sitting in mission control churning the contract list to generate and fill these for cash was boring, so i did a couple as proof of concept then hacked in 50,000 funds and upped the pad. Right about here I started my manned program, cash and sci flows much happier. Theres just a little dead-spot right after you get your first sat orbits/really high soundings where you cant upgrade and theres not much interesting to do beyond wait for sci data contracts. This may will be manageable with stronger design skills, maybe I could have gone further with pad 1, but I was already on mark 11 of my orbiters and at partcap. Eventually i took another 200k to get vab 2 since i couldnt do manned with 30 parts and was again unwilling to grind.

[Agathorn]

One big cause of the first dead spot IMHO is the inability to manage the early orbital contracts. The hope is to address this using Contract Configurator, just that none of us have found the time to look in to that yet.

[chrisl]

I'd love to see the contract system updated to use historical flights as contracts. There are probably hundreds of launches that were done for no other reason then to test out components or do early scientific research that isn't covered by KSP (thinking of the Pegasus satelites which researched micro-meteor impacts on spacecraft). Having many of these launches recreated as contracts would be extremely interesting.

On another note, after one of the recent updates I discovered that the early AJ-10 engine and the X-405 engine are both gone. So it's no longer possible to recreate the Vanguard rocket. There are two non-RPO later generation AJ-10 engines (AJ10-118K & AJ10-137) but they aren't available on the tech tree until well after the Vanguard would have been finished. Plus, both are pretty large (2m and 4m respectively), neither produces the right thrust and neither seems to have built in gas jet ACS so rockets that used the "Able" stage are no longer possible, either. Hope to see this corrected in the next release.

[NathanKell]

celem: Comments like that make my day! Very much of what I hoped from RP-0 is that it will lead you to confront--and conquer--similar design challenges to those faced in real life, and to teach you the RO tricks of the trade as opposed to KSP ones: careful TWR management rather than moar boosters, using aero to control your flight, etc.

The other big cause of the early dead spot is our inability to mod the building upgrade settings. But hop on the Realism Overhaul IRC channel and we may be able to make a workaround for you.

chrisl: update SXT.

[chrisl]

celem: Comments like that make my day! Very much of what I hoped from RP-0 is that it will lead you to confront--and conquer--similar design challenges to those faced in real life, and to teach you the RO tricks of the trade as opposed to KSP ones: careful TWR management rather than moar boosters, using aero to control your flight, etc.

The other big cause of the early dead spot is our inability to mod the building upgrade settings. But hop on the Realism Overhaul IRC channel and we may be able to make a workaround for you.

chrisl: update SXT.

Thanks Nathan. I've got those engines back now. Too bad SXT (and other mods) doesn't use KSP-AVP.

[chrisl]

Maybe I haven't progressed far enough along the tech tree yet (nearly filled out what I can buy with a level 2 R&D Facility) but I can't seem to find the engines for the Titan Transtage. It should be a pair of AJ10-138 engines producing 35.6kN at 311s isp running on N2O4 & Aerozine-50. The "AJ10 Upper Stage Engine (Early)" uses the wrong fuel type. The "AJ10-118K" uses the right fuel but has better thrust and isp. And the "AJ-10-137" is 4m so definitely isn't the part for the 3.05m Transtage. Anyone know if I'm missing something or do I just need to get more research?

[NathanKell]

We probably haven't placed it yet

[pjf]

New release!

RP-0 v0.25 aka "What does the 'lox say?"

Tech Tree

Hydrolox engines now have their own tech-tree line. It may look empty, but each node unlocks new engine configs (identical to previous RP-0 releases). We're working on making engine configs visible in the tech-tree itself.

If you've researched the old hydrolox nodes, you'll need to unlock the new ones. Existing saves with hydrolox researched will have construction nodes unlocked instead.

Science

• X-Ray experiments now return their full science value on the first transmit.
  

Updated placement and costs for many parts, including:

• radialDecoupler2
  
• 6S tubes
  
• Many FASA parts
  
• FASA Apollo parts in particular (thanks to @BevoLJ).
  
• Mini solar panels
  
• X-405 price lowered in preparation for avionics changes.
  
• RD-0105/0109 price lowered since there's no further upgrades any more.
  
• LR-105 added
  
• Placed and priced RTShortDish2
  
• Wings, scoops, pylons, fuselages, ladders, lights, and tanks have more consistent costs
  
• US Hexacores
  
• Placed reaction wheels and Control Moment Gyros
  
• Various decouplers, clamps, and doodads.
  

General bugfxies

• Fixups in Universal Storage parts and costs that were snagged on a bug.
  
• Launch clamps now have command capability
  

Download here, or update via CKAN.

(For those wondering, avionics *is* coming, but it's not in this release as it's still a work in progress. Contributions to the avionics branch are hugely appreciated!)

[Acemcbean]

Wait, what? The X-Ray thing was a bug? Huh. Well, then, no more desperately trying to get all the X-Ray science from tiny biomes anymore!

[pjf]

Wait, what? The X-Ray thing was a bug? Huh. Well, then, no more desperately trying to get all the X-Ray science from tiny biomes anymore!

The X-ray experiment requiring you to mash the button about six times for each biome/situation to get all the science back was a bug. You'll still get extra points for flying over tiny biomes.

On that note, Science Alert is pretty much the best thing ever if you want to make sure you don't miss science at all.

[Acemcbean]

Pjf, I was just fretting about trying to suck all the science out of biomes with my Satellite-That-May-Or-May-Not-Have-Had-Solar-Panels-Because-I-Didnt-Expect-To-Make-Orbit.

[chrisl]

We probably haven't placed it yet

Well, that explains why I couldn't find it.

[chrisl]

Is there an equivalent to the MB-3-3 engine which was used on the Thorad-Agena/LTTAT? I found an entry on Encyclopedia Astronaumica that references this engine to the H-1, but all versions of the H-1/RS-27 have about 9% more thrust (947kN vs 866.7kN) than what I find listed for the engine used on the Thorad-Agena.

[NathanKell]

LR-89-NA-6 is probably closest. 831 rather than 866 though. The LR-79s in the Thors (and later Deltas) were basically LR-89s, just tweaked slightly (and vice versa). Rather than have a spate of near-identical CONFIGs we standardized on LR-89s.

[chrisl]

LR-89-NA-6 is probably closest. 831 rather than 866 though. The LR-79s in the Thors (and later Deltas) were basically LR-89s, just tweaked slightly (and vice versa). Rather than have a spate of near-identical CONFIGs we standardized on LR-89s.

Ok. I'd already noticed that the LR-89s were used in place of LR-79s, but when I noticed some of the later Thor/Delta rockets using something called the "MB-3" and "MB-3-3" I figured that was a completely different engine.

On a side note, does anyone know if the Thrust Augmented Thor's main engine fires at launch or if it only fires after the Castor "Stage 0" SRBs burn out? I figured it fired after the Castor's burned out, similar to how the Titan III works, but when I tried setting up a Long-Tank Thrust Augments Thor (like the Delta M), the SLT is below 1.0. It's fine if the Catstor's and main engine fire at launch but I've done something wrong if the main engine is supposed to wait until after Castor burn out to fire.

EDIT: One more question for you all. I'm not exactly sure how the upgrade stuff works (i.e., LR-79/89 Series Booster that can be configured as LR-89-NA-3, LR-89-NA-6, LR-89-NA-7, etc) so I'm not sure if this is possible. But could we add a configured for the Altair II to the X-248 engine, for for the Castor 2 to the Castor 1 SRB? I'm using procedural SRBs to recreate both of these motors right now, but would be nice if there was a way to add the configurations to the default motors.

Edited March 13, 2015 by chrisl