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

[magico13]

There's an option to modify the cost of simulations by how many you run per editor session, so you could modify the formulas so only the first simulation for a particular editor session costs money and all subsequent ones are free, if you still wanted to have some cost associated with it. Then you can make tweaks to the vessel or change the orbit altitude, or anything like that without paying tons of money to make small tweaks.

I find RP-0's landed simulations to be quite cheap for basic things like sounding rockets or early planes. Especially since you can accomplish most tests with a ten minute simulation. I haven't tried the orbital ones myself, so I'm not sure how much they cost.

[Herrkurt]

The landed simulation prices are good by my count. 60-800 depending on if I am just testing systems on the pad for thirty seconds or going for a full orbit test 1h 40min long. What kills me is the cost for an hour of orbital time being much more than the cost to launch the vessel. I wonder what it will want to charge when I want to simulate an unmanned moon landing? Can someone point me to where to turn the simulation costs of in KCT. The only vaguely relevant button I saw was allow simulations on/off.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Herrkurt

[magico13]

The only vaguely relevant button I saw was allow simulations on/off.

The button immediately below that one in the Preset window says "Simulation Costs", which if clicked will turn off simulation costs

The longer, more convoluted way would be to set the relevant formulas to zero (by showing the formulas, finding the two SimulationCost formulas, and then replacing their contents with 0).

Note that changing any setting away from the Preset's default means any changes made to the Preset won't be carried over into your save without you either reselecting the Preset or manually updating your custom Preset.

Edit: Part of the fix will come when I eventually add the ability to define more of the orbital parameters. Then you won't need to simulate as long because you'll be able to move the ship to start out over a continent. Another fix is when I get the RemoteTech disabling code working properly (currently if you have no antenna on your craft you can disable remote tech in a simulation and it will work as intended. Having any antenna breaks that). But it also just sounds like the orbital simulations could use a few tweaks.

Edited September 23, 2015 by magico13

[Laie]

Can someone point me to where to turn the simulation costs of in KCT. The only vaguely relevant button I saw was allow simulations on/off.

Look a little lower: "Show/Hide Formulas", the replace the simulation formula with a simple zero.

Incidentally, in my first simulations there was a pop-up with the option to disable remotetech for the sim. I clicked "don't show me again" on that menu (or words to that effect) and don't know how to re-enable it, though.

---

Change of topic: how's the mood about changing a few contracts? The ones that I like less, in that order:

• Mars/Venus flyby long before there's any antenna to do it with.
  
• Reentry has to be unmanned. Alright-ish for the first time, but I'd really wish the second and third could as well be completed with mercury missions.
  
• Geostationary orbit. I don't like doing contracts just for their own sake, and GEO serves no real purpose.
  

About GEO: one could conceivably build a comm setup with the first dish antenna in GEO, but the first dish comes rather late. By then, I have long since set up my early omni network and GEO simply offers no additional benefit, only more signal delay.

[magico13]

Incidentally, in my first simulations there was a pop-up with the option to disable remotetech for the sim. I clicked "don't show me again" on that menu (or words to that effect) and don't know how to re-enable it, though.

That feature only half works (as mentioned above) since it has to forcibly remove remote tech part modules from the vessel and remove the vessel from the network. Works great with probe core SPUs but not with Antenna SPUs, so as long as you have no antenna it should work. To show that window again, just press the KCT button during the simulation and it will pop back up.

Also, using the dedicated "Simulation Costs" toggle is generally safer than replacing the contents of the formulas.

[NathanKell]

chrisl: The idea behind RP-0's handling of simulations is that sims are you telling The more complex the calculations they need to make, and the more unknowns, the harder it is and longer it takes / the more people need to get involved. Sim costs represent the resoruces expended doing that.

However, I definitely need to lower the cost of orbital sims. Ground-start sims have the cost I want for them, but orbitals not so much. At a rough cut I think it makes sense to have (Earth-)orbit sims cost the same per time unit as ground-start sims.

Laie: I agree that reentry should have its no-crew requirement removed, or perhaps limited to one with a repeatable reentry contract (lower reward than the 1/LEO one) added. Ideally it would be along the lines of "fly over x coordinates and take a picture, then bring it home". Regarding Mars/Venus flyby, good point on the antenna bit. As of now they unlock once you fly by the moon, but we can add a tech requirement. For GEO, a GEO commsat doesn't need more than, say, 5x Comm 16s to be viable (20Mm + (20Mm * 20Mm)^.5 = 40Mm if both sides of the link have 5x Comm16), no dish required at all.

The milestone contract should stay--it's a significant milestone, but I'm happy enough to not have a repeatable contract, instead handling it via maybe cannibalizing the RT contract pack's contracts.

[Trolllception]

I actually tend to turn off simulation costs in KCT. Never really understood having to pay, even small amounts, to test whether a design was viable or not. Or to try out different ascent profiles. When I was designing my surveyor probe (this was before I added American probes to my mod list), I must have run through about a hundred sims trying get the weights and thrusts right. And since each sim took place in moon orbit, I could only do a single test before having to go back to the hangar and call up another sim. No idea how much I would have spent doing all those tests if I were paying for sims.

FYI If your using the US Probes pack and using the Surveyor probe from the kit I had enough Delta-V to perform a direct descent onto the moon. There was a little bit extra delta-v on the vernier engines but maybe only 50-100 m/s. Not sure if an approach from orbit would work well or not. I hear you on the simulation bit. I actually turned off the build times on KCT since I kept putting a rocket on the pad, sending it up, realizing I forgot something, reverting to hanger, go back to KSC, go back to the craft, select recover in KCT, wait for timewarp, edit, rollout, wait for timewarp ... it all gets very tedious after awhile. I wish that reverting to hanger would go straight into vehicle edit mode but the rollback probably prevents that from working logically.

I took the difficult route on this one and used a Star-37E booster to launch the surveyor to the moon. If you need to perform minor orbital corrections the probe has the vernier engines with unlimited restarts that can do the job.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Trolllception

[magico13]

I actually turned off the build times on KCT since I kept putting a rocket on the pad, sending it up, realizing I forgot something, reverting to hanger, go back to KSC, go back to the craft, select recover in KCT, wait for timewarp, edit, rollout, wait for timewarp ... it all gets very tedious after awhile. I wish that reverting to hanger would go straight into vehicle edit mode but the rollback probably prevents that from working logically.

Turn off rollout times (by either sliding the rollout/recon slider all the way up so that instead of having rollout you just have longer reconditioning times, or by disabling rollout and reconditioning completely in the settings by toggling off the "Launchpad Reconditioning" button) rather than completely disabling build times. Then when you revert to the editor the craft will be sitting in storage and you can edit it without waiting for it to rollback (you'll still have to switch back to the Space Center to edit it though. I can tweak that so reverting goes into edit mode instead when rollout is disabled). Ideally you'd use the simulations to make sure everything was totally ready to go, but you're just one person and not an entire space agency filled with engineers, so mistakes are a bit more common

Edit: Nathan, would you like an option for having the VAB/SPH and R&D levels for the simulation cost formula? Alternatively, or additionally, I could provide the total number of tech nodes that have been unlocked as a variable too. Either setup would give an estimate for "progression". Realistically I don't know how much the costs would go down as technology progressed, so much as the time requirement would go down. Which now makes me think I should provide a formula to define the maximum amount of time a simulation can be run for. First simulations might be a few seconds or minutes, while later ones could be years as technology improves.

Edited September 23, 2015 by magico13

[Trolllception]

Turn off rollout times (by either sliding the rollout/recon slider all the way up so that instead of having rollout you just have longer reconditioning times, or by disabling rollout and reconditioning completely in the settings by toggling off the "Launchpad Reconditioning" button) rather than completely disabling build times. Then when you revert to the editor the craft will be sitting in storage and you can edit it without waiting for it to rollback (you'll still have to switch back to the Space Center to edit it though. I can tweak that so reverting goes into edit mode instead when rollout is disabled). Ideally you'd use the simulations to make sure everything was totally ready to go, but you're just one person and not an entire space agency filled with engineers, so mistakes are a bit more common

Hmm this sounds like it would be the ideal solution. Especially if reverting to hanger went straight into edit mode. That would definitely remove a major headache from my gameplay. I tend to use the simulations a ton but sometimes I will load a saved ship and launch it and find out that realfuels bugged out on my FASA tank and there is no fuel in the stage. Other times I am simply a bit over ambitious and think my design is ready to go sans testing. I really do like KCT overall as a whole and feel it adds alot to the game.

I want to prefix this by saying I understand balance has been mostly put into the pre 1965 range but wanted to give some feedback.

Do others feel the current construction times and research times are appropriate? I am nearing 1967 in my RP-0 career but found that I needed to 'cheat' and buy around 300 points in KCT to keep my technology research rates reasonable when researching 100+ point technologies. I wonder if scaling by year might make sense for science given that as we advanced in our space career we learned certain knowledge which allowed us to progress more rapidly. The progression was going well until about 1965 when I started reaching 100+ point nodes that had research times over a year. That would be fine if you could research multiple nodes at the same time but given there are a few nodes that are needed to reach the Apollo program I resorted to the cheaty method of giving myself funds and increasing my upgrade points. I had put about 20-25 points into R&D legitimately before I started 'cheating'. I also have been giving myself science points here and there but that may be my play style. I am playing on Normal settings with science at 150% and funds at 100% with required research for part costs and I found it to be reasonably challenging for my needs.

[NathanKell]

Um...you're expected to buy lots of KCT upgrade points. I have ~100 by 1961, and I expect to have another hundred by 1963 at the latest. Points represent people and infrastructure in your space program (which is why I asked magico if he could add maintenance costs to points, i.e. 1 fund/pt/month, say). Unlike regular KCT, where buying upgrades increases in cost per point (and the RnD boost doubles for each point), in RP-0 the cost is *always* 10k funds to buy a point, and the increase you get is linear.

So that sounds like either point costs should go down, or fund rewards should go up?

[chrisl]

I think I have an install issue. I've got the American probe installed and I see in R&D "Basic Orbital Rocketry" there is a Magellan Probe and Magellan Orbital Scanner. I have purchased them both but can't seem to find either of them in the VAB. Any ideas where to look for those?

EDIT: I'd second an increase in rewards but only for earth probe contracts. Those tend to be the main way I earn funds since it's very hard to have enough dV left to do any significant orbital maneuvers around the moon or the inner planets. But it often feels like I'm doing nothing but launching "research" probes. Especially when you need so much for level 3 launch pad (basically required for manned moon missions) and R&D. That said, I wouldn't go more then twice what the current reward is. Has to be a middle ground around launching probes to gain funds, and launching rockets for your own purposes.

Edited September 24, 2015 by chrisl

[Trolllception]

Um...you're expected to buy lots of KCT upgrade points. I have ~100 by 1961, and I expect to have another hundred by 1963 at the latest. Points represent people and infrastructure in your space program (which is why I asked magico if he could add maintenance costs to points, i.e. 1 fund/pt/month, say). Unlike regular KCT, where buying upgrades increases in cost per point (and the RnD boost doubles for each point), in RP-0 the cost is *always* 10k funds to buy a point, and the increase you get is linear.

So that sounds like either point costs should go down, or fund rewards should go up?

Ah... I wasn't sure if I was supposed to buy so many points or not. My career has the difficulty set to normal with 120% funds and 100% science. I may not be the best example though since I am using some of the FASA non-RP0 parts which are not costed correctly. I also am hesitant to farm science from Kerbin as I find it tedious (personal opinion). I haven't been anywhere except the moon and a single Explorer-6 probe sent out into a solar orbit (failed venus attempt). I would like to see if there are other opinions on career difficulty. Maybe Scott Manley will give us a good indication in his video series once he starts getting into space. I'm hesitant to use my opinion since I am still a bit inexperienced with realism overhaul and need more practice.

Also on the topic of missions that was discussed earlier. I also felt the missions were pretty good already and only felt a bit lacking in the Aircraft department. I thought the progression actually felt really good and the Moon impactor and flyby missions felt appropriate. Maybe the crewed moon missions should require a probe impactor or unmanned flyby to be completed before the manned moon missions unlock. I liked the first satellite mission and felt there should be more missions of that style for satellites since they have relaxed orbit requirements. Unlocking stock missions requiring a specific equatorial orbit with low eccentricity is rather intimidating in RO/RSS/RP-0 for myself.

I think I have an install issue. I've got the American probe installed and I see in R&D "Basic Orbital Rocketry" there is a Magellan Probe and Magellan Orbital Scanner. I have purchased them both but can't seem to find either of them in the VAB. Any ideas where to look for those?

EDIT: I'd second an increase in rewards but only for earth probe contracts. Those tend to be the main way I earn funds since it's very hard to have enough dV left to do any significant orbital maneuvers around the moon or the inner planets. But it often feels like I'm doing nothing but launching "research" probes. Especially when you need so much for level 3 launch pad (basically required for manned moon missions) and R&D. That said, I wouldn't go more then twice what the current reward is. Has to be a middle ground around launching probes to gain funds, and launching rockets for your own purposes.

Hmm Magellan should be located in Unmanned tech not Orbital rocketry, do you have the latest RP-0 release? They might be listed under Non-RP0 since they shouldn't be located in that node. They *should* be listed in the correct locations if you have the latest version of RP-0. The tree.cfg file in the most recent RP-0 release is confirmed to have the changes present.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Trolllception

[NathanKell]

I think the real solution will be to replace the stock orbit contract system the same way we replaced everything else. That'll give us better progression and control over parameters.

It's also worth mentioning that R&D center upgrades also increase the science rate. But yeah, definitely expect that buying KCT points is as major an expense as upgrading facilities (probably as major an expense as upgrading all facilities combined).

[Laie]

It's also worth mentioning that R&D center upgrades also increase the science rate. But yeah, definitely expect that buying KCT points is as major an expense as upgrading facilities (probably as major an expense as upgrading all facilities combined).

I've just completed my early lunar missions and wonder if I should buy more upgrades or the big launchpad instead. I won't see any significant cash flow until I can dock or do flybys, both are about two years away. Strategising ought to be fun, but there's just too many unknowns to make a informed decision.

In the long term, I'll probably spend millions on upgrades; so far it's been about $300k (that's a lot of clicky-clicky by the way). The money seems to be available, but I think it would be easier on the player if the value of R&D upgrades grew exponentially so that the gap doesn't become quite as large. Not only for the clicks, but also to make it more difficult to paint yourself into a corner.

As for progress, I'm finding myself totally capable of planetary missions long before I have the proper antenna. I could orbit (not flyby) Mars on hydrazine and the early returnable core; bipropellant RCS allows for orbital maneuvers at the destination despite a big scientific payload (like, ScanSat surveys). For the same reason, I can put together a lunar lander long before I have the surveyor.

Do solar panels need to be as expensive as they are? Even if I only place them on one side and rotate the craft, solar panels are responsible for a significant chunk of the mission cost (often doubling the value of the payload). Not that I can't afford it, it's just that the price seems odd.

Something needs to be done about control. MJ often can't cope with my craft (can't even hold them steady in many cases). Presumably that's because RO vessels tend to have rather little control authority. I tried tweaking the PID settings but so far haven't managed to get any kind of improvement. What works reasonably well, at least for minor adjustments/hold steady: a) get Claw's Stock+ tweak all SAS values way down c) tell MJ to use stock SAS. Unfortunately, MJ refuses to use SAS if it's not equipped on the vessel. Thus Able/Delta/Agena remain uncontrollable.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Laie

[magico13]

I might be able to add a way to purchase multiple points at once. In the normal game that's not really necessary, but RP-0 seems to require a large number of manual purchases, so I can't imagine clicking that button 30 times on top of the 30 times you have to click the button to spend it is much fun :/ I'll add it to my todo list.

[Trolllception]

Something needs to be done about control. MJ often can't cope with my craft (can't even hold them steady in many cases). Presumably that's because RO vessels tend to have rather little control authority. I tried tweaking the PID settings but so far haven't managed to get any kind of improvement. What works reasonably well, at least for minor adjustments/hold steady: a) get Claw's Stock+ tweak all SAS values way down c) tell MJ to use stock SAS. Unfortunately, MJ refuses to use SAS if it's not equipped on the vessel. Thus Able/Delta/Agena remain uncontrollable.

I was wondering about this myself. I don't seem to have a functioning ASAS with proper tracking (Prograde, Retrograde, Target Mode, etc) in my install. ASAS actually functions in quite a strange manner. ASAS also seems to function better when selecting prograde to simply hold attitude. Is this due the ModuleRCSFX/No reaction wheels?

I found MechJeb handles ASAS properly. I have the FAR and ModuleRCSFX modules for MechJeb installed.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Trolllception

[Laie]

I don't seem to have a functioning ASAS with proper tracking (Prograde, Retrograde, Target Mode, etc) in my install.

I'm not sure what you mean with proper ASAS... as in the stock game, the ability to toggle SAS (and which modes are available) depends on pilot skill, or probe core capabilities. If no core on your vessel has SAS, you can't toggle it. The "Early Controllable Core" can do everything but maneuver nodes; the Ranger Block III can only do Pro/Retrograde. I presume that these are the capabilities of the stock cores they're based on which haven't been touched for RO.

With little control authority, the SAS algorithm often does a better job of keeping the vessel pointed in some direction than MJ. Especially when I tweak the SAS settings (one needs the Stock+ mod to expose them as tweakables, though). Any attempt to tune MJ have so far been unsucessful. Not sure if the attempt is even worthwhile: By using the "Use Stock SAS" toggle on MJ, I can effectively switch between two control modes (MJ is preferable if there is enough authority); I'm not sure if there even can be a single MJ setting that can deal with everything.

Problem is that MJ honors the stock capabilities: if a vessel has neither a pilot nor a SAS-enabled core, I'm stuck with MJ's controller.

[NathanKell]

magico13: Awesome, as always! That'd be a great help.

Laie: Hmm. I would have thought that the starting dish would be enough for Mars. I take it it's not? And that's one node from Stability / Early Probes.

Only the early solar panels are expensive; the next ones you get (including the advanced version of the static panel) are much, much cheaper. Though perhaps costs in general for them should come down; I'm not familiar with 1950s solar panel cost, though I think I found *something* originally to base them off...

I'll add SAS to Able/Delta/Agena, good point. As for control, I guess we'd best ask Sarbian when he gets back, he was going to look into it before...

Trollception: the 'regular SAS' mode has decent PID settings, stock, the advanced modes do not (they don't work for crap in *stock* KSP, let alone RO). That's why Laie is referring to Claw's bugfixes.

[Laie]

Laie: Hmm. I would have thought that the starting dish would be enough for Mars. I take it it's not?

The first dish has 400Mm, DSN ground stations have 5e11m 1e12m. 1Mega = 1e6, right?

(+ 400e6 (sqrt (* 5e11 400e6)))
20,400,000,000.0

So, a good 20Gm, or 20e9.

Approximate orbits:

Venus: 100e9

Earth: 150e9

Mars: 250e9

So either I messed up some decimal points, or the first dish is totally inadequate for interplanetary missions.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Laie

[NathanKell]

Ah, dang. Right you are. Time to move an IP dish earlier I guess, or up DSN range.

[MatterBeam]

Ah, dang. Right you are. Time to move an IP dish earlier I guess, or up DSN range.

Doesn't RemoteTech handle multiple dishes boosting each others' range?

[Herrkurt]

Laie- Are you doing a low-orbit omni network with the starting extendable antenna? What altitude?

I've noticed the DTSM-1 or whatever, first moon range dish, can't target Kerbin as a whole. At least that is how it looked when I tried. How do you prevent connection loss? Watch the probe and planet closely and switch targets manually? Multiple dishes pointed at KSC, Woomera, and somewhere between? Is there a way to set it to auto-hop targets as the planet rotates(or probe orbits)? I thought most space probes where programmed to do that.

- - - Updated - - -

Krakenfour- That is something you have to set in one of the configs for RT if you want it.

[Rothank]

Doesn't RemoteTech handle multiple dishes boosting each others' range?

Omni-directionals boost each other, but dishes don't. At least they shouldn't.

[NathanKell]

Correct, they don't. However, they do get a clamp of 1000x their range when talking to a ground station, rather than the 100 of omnis.

[Herrkurt]

Nevermind. I got it pointed at Earth and connected.

So what are we mostly doing for low orbit coverage? 10, 20, more? Varied inclination but same closely matched period with occasional corrections? Just throw another 20 out in various periods to avoid the need for precision?

Edited September 25, 2015 by Herrkurt