[1.3.x] SETI, Unmanned before Manned [Patreon]

[FreeThinker]

Of of the way you could improve balance is by making the Static non foldable Anttana's require move power for transmission and standby power. The rationale is that the folding antenna's are trading lower size and we weight for lower efficency. This will make the large permanent dishes more intresting when power consumption is important. For example both voyagers use static dishes which are very efficient in sending their signals back to earth.

Edited March 26, 2015 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

I just started using RT so no idea if these fill that hole, but there is this mod by sigma which expands the stock line of antenna

It seems they fill that hole, they only forget to modify the 25% cone range

[Yemo]

Thank you all for the input.

Northstar1989 provided some alkalinie fuel cell info as well (thank you!), so with all that feedback in mind, those are the changes I propose:

Hydrogen usage in converters

The current alkaline fuel cells do not use the proper densities.

They use 1oxygen for every 2 hydrogen units. While that is easy to remember, it shifts the proper mass balance, which might lead to problems with other mods using hydrogen and oxygen.

Unfortunately, that formula was also used for the water splitters and sabatier reactors.

To reduce future integration issues, I will probably use the correct formulae from 0.8.6 onwards.

Of course that will also affect hydrogen storage.

While we are on the storage topic, I might rebalance the procedural food containers as well, to improve gameplay. However the adjustments will be rather small.

RemoteTech

Based on the suggestions by Lord Aurelius, I propose those changes:

* Antenna EC/s reduced by factor of about 2

* DTS-M1 rebalanced, 0.2 EC/s instead of 0.82EC/s, later @advElectrics (behind R&D upgrade)

* KR-7 rebalanced, 0.05 mass instead of 0.5, 0.2 EC/s instead of 0.82EC/s, earlier @scienceTech

* KR-8 rebalanced, 0.15 mass instead of 1.2, 0.16 EC/s instead of 1.81EC/s, 0.1 cone instead of 0.01

* 88-88 rebalanced, 0.1 mass instead of 0.5, 0.21 EC/s instead of 0.93EC/s

* KR-14 rebalanced, 0.2 mass instead of 1.0, 0.21 EC/s instead of 0.93EC/s

* CommTech-1 rebalanced, 0.3 mass instead of 1.0, 0.3 EC/s instead of 2.6EC/s

* Reflectron GX-128 rebalanced, 0.18 mass instead of 0., 0.34 EC/s instead of 2.8EC/s

Note that the DTS-M1 is shifted behind the first R&D upgrade (where the refoldable panels are, instead of adjusting to the unfoldable panels).

The earlier KR-7 would take the place on initial ComSats.

However I m not sure about the proposed size adjustments. At the moment, the KR-14 fits roughly into 2.5m cargo, the KR-8 into 1.875m and the KR-7 into 1.25m.

Oh, and while this would be too much for 0.8.6, I wanted to speak with Sigma88 anyway, since I would really like to have a 2.7Gm dish for the Joolean System.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Yemo

[FreeThinker]

You reduced their cost even further, they were already rediculously power efficient, why make it worse? Before there were some good reasons to give a communication satelites a significant amount of solar power, now a single tiny solar panel will be enough

Edited March 26, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Wiseman]

You reduced their cost even further, they were already rediculously power efficient, why make it worse? Before there were some good reasons to give a communication satelites a significant amount of solar power, now a single tiny solar panel will be enough

Power generation is never really the issue with comsats, it's surviving dark time. What this means to me is I don't need to put in a battery bigger than the rest of the satellite combined, which looks like it will be much more important with BackgroundProcessing.

[Lord Aurelius]

@Yemo

I like the proposed antenna changes, the ridiculous weight of the remotetech dishes has been bugging me for awhile.

The reason I suggested a rescale for some of the dishes is that the giant remotetech folding antenna doesn't really have a fixed dish counterpart (at least not one that looks the part), stat wise the CommTech-1 is the closest but it is much smaller, around the same size as the KR-14. Rather than having two dishes that are more or less the same size, having one be a very large fixed dish (doesn't matter if it doesn't fit in a cargo bay, we have procedural fairings) would give a little diversity and could provide a dish for a 2.5m stack for very large comsats. The range could also be increased even more, so that players using something like the Outer Planets mod would have an appropriately large dish to put on comsats/interplanetary vessels. Also, large ground satellite arrays.

[Yemo]

You reduced their cost even further, they were already rediculously power efficient, why make it worse? Before there were some good reasons to give a communication satelites a significant amount of solar power, now a single tiny solar panel will be enough

Power generation is never really the issue with comsats, it's surviving dark time. What this means to me is I don't need to put in a battery bigger than the rest of the satellite combined, which looks like it will be much more important with BackgroundProcessing.

There are 3 reasons:

1. Even the voyager dish uses only about 280W.

2. From 0.8.6, the solar panels/arrays/wings are much larger for the same output (rescaleFactor of 2.3 instead of 1). On the last page there is a screenshot with solar arrays tweakcaled to provide the SETI Greenhouse (1 kerbal version) with enough energy for kerbin orbit. Each of them only has a nominal output of about 10kW (10EC/s) around Kerbin.

3. Solar Panels will follow the inverse square law power curve by CaptRobau, which means, that they only provide 3.5% of their nominal kerbin output when around the joolean system. Thus one of those massive SETI-Greenhouse solar arrays would just be enough to power a probe core (40W) and a CommTech-1 (300W), with just 10W to spare. And that is certainly not enough to recharge the batteries after flying behind a moon or Jool itself. So for a real mission to Jool, you would need both of those massive arrays just for the probe core and CommTech-1.

- - - Updated - - -

@Yemo

I like the proposed antenna changes, the ridiculous weight of the remotetech dishes has been bugging me for awhile.

The reason I suggested a rescale for some of the dishes is that the giant remotetech folding antenna doesn't really have a fixed dish counterpart (at least not one that looks the part), stat wise the CommTech-1 is the closest but it is much smaller, around the same size as the KR-14. Rather than having two dishes that are more or less the same size, having one be a very large fixed dish (doesn't matter if it doesn't fit in a cargo bay, we have procedural fairings) would give a little diversity and could provide a dish for a 2.5m stack for very large comsats. The range could also be increased even more, so that players using something like the Outer Planets mod would have an appropriately large dish to put on comsats/interplanetary vessels. Also, large ground satellite arrays.

I used the voyager dish as a reference for the CommTech-1, which has a 3.7m dish. Imho the large foldable one is rather too big (and some other ones as well, but they look cool), than the CommTech too small. But I m hesitant to reduce the size of the large foldable one, since I considered making it something of a dual purpose dish in the distant (?) future...

[Svm420]

Looking forward to this update more and more. this will be my first career with RT, so I really want to start with it properly balanced. Any chance of release in the next day or so? Not try to be pushy or rush you just curious and excited.

[Yemo]

Looking forward to this update more and more. this will be my first career with RT, so I really want to start with it properly balanced. Any chance of release in the next day or so? Not try to be pushy or rush you just curious and excited.

If nothing major comes up again (like the hydrogen problem), I am aiming for a release "before the weekend".

[Lord Aurelius]

@Yemo

Ok, I see your logic, and yes the remotetech folding antenna is enormous (although I still like my giant satellite dishes). What might that dual use be, some kind of radio telescope experiment?

For a smaller antenna to fill in the Joolian system gap, maybe you could consider reincorporating the old stock Communotron 88-88, if I remember correctly it's about half the size of the new model when unfolded. The KHI mod has all the old stock parts.

And while searching for that previous link, stumbled across this again: KSPX. Might have a few useful parts that haven't been addressed by the stockalike mods we already have in SETI.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[Yemo]

I can see a lot of potential uses for that large folding dish.

From your radio telescope experiments to solar energy, solar sails (although it is not nearly big enough for that and folds the wrong way), or some form of particle collector.

I will take a look at those mods in the future, some more command pod variety would be nice. Especially now that manned missions are more special due to the drastically increased energy requirements to keep them alive.

Of course Tantares would fit very well for that as well, but would require many more parts to be rebalanced.

[Yemo]

After reading in the RemoteTech thread, would it make sense to give the KSC a 400Gm omni antenna?

The rationale would be, that normal sats can be tracked from base stations as well.

So at least for a short window every kerbal day, KSC would be able to make a direct connection to a SAT.

edit: When I was still playing the game myself , I tended to go for a 2+1+1 KSO "network". One sat about 120° forward of KSC and one 120° after KSC made up the first "pair". Then the third sat opposite of KSC with more advanced Dishes and instead of a 4th sat to complete the second pair, I rolled out a rover with the latest dish and just parked that rover close to the KSC...

Edited March 26, 2015 by Yemo

[Svm420]

I agree with the 400Gm.

[Wiseman]

Makes sense to me, and it's better than having to build a goofy rover with a dish sitting on it to park on the lawn next to the massive dishes of the Tracking Center. Would it be possible to tie the range of the KSC dishes to tech level?

[Superfluous J]

Would it be possible to tie the range of the KSC dishes to tech level?

I have wanted this for roughly 3 evers.

[Yemo]

Hm, it seems like I can not change the remote tech settings with module manager configs...

So I would have to provide a compatibility file, again...

I do not understand why people do not make their settings MM patchable.

People could just write their own MM config and would not have to fiddle around each update.

If I upload a changed remoteTech settings file, I will also set the signal delay to false as SETI is primarily a gameplay mod, not a realism one.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and about the tech level upgrade. I do not know how to do it for parts (for which it is certainly possible as other mods do that).

Eg Procedural Part sizes unlock at tech levels, as do some other mod parts (I do not remember the name of that mod) and mechjeb functions.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Yemo

[Lord Aurelius]

I second (third?) the 400Gm tracking station antenna, those are some good sized dishes there, much bigger than anything available to put in space at this point.

If you're going to distribute a RemoteTech config file, would you also consider enabling root mode by default (i.e. a dish pointed at an omni will have an effective range somewhere in between the omni and the dish, not just limited to the omni range) and also the multiple antenna multiplier so we can use antenna arrays to increase range? I've done those on my RemoteTech config and I've been liking the results.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[Yemo]

I second (third?) the 400Gm tracking station antenna, those are some good sized dishes there, much bigger than anything available to put in space at this point.

If you're going to distribute a RemoteTech config file, would you also consider enabling root mode by default (i.e. a dish pointed at an omni will have an effective range somewhere in between the omni and the dish, not just limited to the omni range) and also the multiple antenna multiplier so we can use antenna arrays to increase range? I've done those on my RemoteTech config and I've been liking the results.

Hm,

that poses a problem I did not consider when suggesting the 400Gm tracking station omni.

With that change and root mode enabled, the Communotron 16 would be enough for everything within the Kerbin sphere of influence.

And multipleAntennaMultiplier would make that even worse.

Also it requires even more knowledge/online spreadsheet consultation to get the "best" out of the game.

I think I will postpone those RemoteTech settings ideas, since it would need testing and fiddling around. Also it would have to be done by distributing an alternative config, so it is totally independent from the normal updates anyways.

[Svm420]

I second (third?) the 400Gm tracking station antenna, those are some good sized dishes there, much bigger than anything available to put in space at this point.

If you're going to distribute a RemoteTech config file, would you also consider enabling root mode by default (i.e. a dish pointed at an omni will have an effective range somewhere in between the omni and the dish, not just limited to the omni range) and also the multiple antenna multiplier so we can use antenna arrays to increase range? I've done those on my RemoteTech config and I've been liking the results.

Love the ideas being thought of.

Would you mind telling me what changes you made so I can try that as well? Unless it's easier for you to pm the config file to me. Thank you.

[Lord Aurelius]

@Svm420

Here's the contents of my config file. If you want more information, check out the remotetech online documentation (there's a link on the remotetech thread). Note that this is with remotetech XF, which adds the ControlAntennaWithoutConnection flag. Disclaimer: As Yemo said, these settings are probably a bit OP for the current antenna ranges, with the mulitpleAntennaRangeMultiplier you can spam the Communotron 16's to get pretty good omni range and with root mode you'll probably only need dishes on the comsats, not on the probes themselves until you get quite a ways out from Kerbin. I don't mind too much, I always liked the idea of remotetech but found the default settings to be a bit too punishing and these settings make it much less annoying while still adding the realism of building a comm network.

(Not sure how to do the spoiler thing, so here's a code section)

RemoteTechSettings
{
	ConsumptionMultiplier = 0.5
	RangeMultiplier = 1
	ActiveVesselGuid = 35b89a0d664c43c6bec8d0840afc97b2
	SpeedOfLight = 3E+08
	MapFilter = Omni, Dish, Path
	EnableSignalDelay = False
	RangeModelType = Root
	MultipleAntennaMultiplier = 0.5
	ThrottleTimeWarp = True
	HideGroundStationsBehindBody = False
	DishConnectionColor = 0.9960784,0.7019608,0.03137255,1
	OmniConnectionColor = 0.5529412,0.5176471,0.4078431,1
	ActiveConnectionColor = 0.6588235,1,0.01568628,1
	ControlAntennaWithoutConnection = True
	GroundStations
	{
		STATION
		{
			Guid = 5105f5a9-d628-41c6-ad4b-21154e8fc488
			Name = Mission Control
			Latitude = -0.131331503391266
			Longitude = -74.594841003418
			Height = 75
			Body = 1
			MarkColor = 0.996078,0,0,1
			Antennas
			{
				ANTENNA
				{
					Omni = 7.5E+07
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

Edit: You can also add more ground stations easily by just adding more entries to the ground stations section, I did that with an old realism overhaul install that also added a bunch of new launch sites and just added ground stations at the new coordinates.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[Svm420]

@aurelius Thank you. I have just started with RT and have only skimmed the guide. I understand much better now after finding the page about those settings. I'm curious on the page describing root behavior it says to use range multiplies of 0.5 I see yours is still 1 have you tried it at half? Would that help balance that setting in a simple manner? Just wondered as I have no experience with this.

[ spoiler=spoiler][/spoiler ] Just without the spaces. I hate that forums don't document all the formatting available that would make using them so much nicer

[Lord Aurelius]

@SVM420

I hadn't seen that appendix before, I just saw that root mode took the ranges of both antennas into account when calculating the effective range (which is much more realistic) and enabled it. A 0.5 range multiplier would help balance it, it looks like it changes things so that to achieve the stated max range you have to use two identical antennas, while still providing a nice boost to ranges when you use a long range antenna with a short range one, so when you update your comsats so you can send your existing probes farther out.

The MultipleAntennaRangeMultiplier will probably need some tweaking, if you set it to 1 it looks like it basically adds the omni ranges, I just randomly picked 0.5 since it was in the middle so I would get some boost by using multiple antennas without being ridiculous. It seems to work pretty well on my comsats with 4 Communotron 16's since it doubles the omni range.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[Revenant503]

If I upload a changed remoteTech settings file, I will also set the signal delay to false as SETI is primarily a gameplay mod, not a realism one.

Might I suggest not going down that route...your already edging up to moving from a mod to enhance gameplay to becoming a mod that limits choices. Not to be negative, but I really don't think this should be another Better than starting Manned

[Lord Aurelius]

@Revenant503

What is SETI doing that's limiting choices? Core SETI only has a few required mods, and it has a ton of completely optional (but fully supported and balanced) mods that add a tremendous amount of new choices when building a craft. If you're worried about remotetech limiting choices, it's not a required mod, you don't have to install it if you don't like it. I've played BTSM and I agree that it's quite limiting (which is why I stopped playing it), SETI is basically the opposite and due to procedural parts gives a lot more choices than stock, especially with the supported parts mods that add a lot more variety for things like engines that were pretty limited in stock.

As far as adding a config file download, Yemo had to do a similar thing with TAC life support because of the way the mod is structured where he can't edit the config file directly with module manager. Also, all the files in SETI are easily edited text files, there aren't any hardcoded plugins (like BTSM), so if something isn't quite what you want it's relatively easy to simply change the config. I've done that a couple of times on my SETI install with things like adding SAS to the early probe core before SETI did it, and also with my own remotetech config.

[Revenant503]

In that particular instance Yemo was talking about removing the time lag, Remote tech has a perfectly normal method of doing that, that is a players choice, if you bury that in a seti config file somewhere...then your either removing or obfuscating that choice.

I thought SETI was about to be about rebalancing, not deciding how KSP should be played, which is how the last few pages of this thread read to me.