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

[Yemo]

Given the state of the mod and the external delays for Karbonite and MKS/OKS,

I decided to release v0.7.0 without them.

Also, I plan to move the SETI BalanceMod towards the release forum within the next days.

New Version 0.7.0

Unused Parts now excluded from loading

• Based on the Suggestion and Code by Olympic1
  
• No changes to the mod folders are necessary (no deletions), thus easier to update to new versions of mods
  
• If excluded parts are still used on active vessels, compatibility files are available
  

New Dependency: B9 Aerospace Procedural Parts

• Except for AV-R8 Winglet and Swept Wing, all aircraft surfaces are discontinued
  
• The old surfaces are shifted towards Experimental Motors, so active craft can still use those parts
  
• This passive support for old surfaces will continue until version 0.9 (2 versions ahead)
  
• From 0.9 onwards, the compatibility file has to be used for those surfaces/wings/elevons
  

New Dependency: Contract Configurator

• New altitude contract compared to 6.4
  
• Rebalanced early contracts
  

CommunityTechTree adjustments

• Increased the science costs for enhancedSurvivability and recycling to 90
  

Extended Mod Support

• Active Struts
  
• Remote Tech XF (listed under phase4 because it is a tweak for RemoteTech)
  

Adjustments and Renaming/Ordering

• Universal Storage Decoupler: Small shifted back to generalRocketry
  
• Micro Landing Struts shifted back to landing
  
• RealChute Radial Chute shifted back to survivability, RealChute entry costs adjusted
  
• Procedural Liquid Fuel Cone renamed ("0" group) and shifted to basicRocketry
  
• TT-18A Launch Enhancer, radial decouplers with prefix "0"
  
• Fuel Line and Struts now have prefix "0"
  
• Intakes with and without fuel renamed to start with "Intake"
  
• Cheaper XM-50 Radial Intake
  
• Deadly Reentry special UP-25 Decoupler now starts with "DR: Decoupler"
  
• Deadly Reentry Heat Shields now starts with "DR: Heat Shield"
  

Minor Changes and Fixes

.

[Superfluous J]

Unused Parts now excluded from loading

I have no idea the wizardry involved in this but thanks to everybody who made it happen.

[braxfortex]

Out of curiosity, why pull the sounding rocket parts from USI? Were they too cheap, too easy to get early science with, or did you not want to balance them?

[mkire]

why do SRBs cost so much compared to stock? Isn't the general idea of SRBs being cheap, and thus not caring about recovery?

[Yemo]

I have no idea the wizardry involved in this but thanks to everybody who made it happen.

All credit goes to Olympic1, I just copy pasted!

If you want to do it yourself (eg when you permanently only want to use specific parts from mods and writing a config is easier than deleting for every update):

For disabling the 200 charge battery bank, you only need to find out its name from within the part file (eg: "batteryBank") and then put it into a ModuleManager config statement.

I was shocked that it was so straight forward ;-).

!PART[batteryBank] {}

Out of curiosity, why pull the sounding rocket parts from USI? Were they too cheap, too easy to get early science with, or did you not want to balance them?

There seem to be some leftovers from a dev version of the originally planned 0.7.0 (which was scheduled to be the "UmbraSpaceIndustries update").

While I do not support the SoundingRockets at this time, there is no reason to specifically exclude them in a release version.

To reactivate them, please go to the SETI\MM-UnusedParts folder and delete the "Umbra" files, they will be replaced by blank files in 0.7.1 (until USI/Karbonite/MKS/OKS are ready to be supported).

Thank you for pointing me to this oversight!

why do SRBs cost so much compared to stock? Isn't the general idea of SRBs being cheap, and thus not caring about recovery?

Honestly I wondered that myself when I started this mod.

With all the other issues and incompatibilities around, I didnt prioritize changing it and then it just didnt come up again.

So at the moment, they just have the original Procedural Parts values.

I will take a look at them for 0.7.1, which may become the "release" version.

Thank you for bringing this up!

Edited January 29, 2015 by Yemo

[NathanKell]

Yemo, I'm going to move this to releases per your request, but on examining the zip I'd like you to do a couple things.

1. When you state your license in the OP, please make clear that the plugins you are bundling are under their own respective licenses (MM, MiniAVC) and per the terms of the addon rules link either to their source or to their threads (which contain links to source). Please include the same in your readme.

2. You need not include readme and license for Proc Parts, merely a statement that your mod contains work derived from Proc Parts and that such work is thus released as CC-BY-SA. Including the readme is rather confusing, since the mod itself is not included.

[Nachtwind]

A small word of critic from me... do you really need to call that mod SETI?

I expected something about science or finding extrakerbalian life... not some rebalancing mod.

SETI is a widely accepted acronym and might make people (like myself) looking at this thread just because you name your mod like that.. It would be nice if you'd either chose to not use the "SETI" acronym or make clear in the very first lines what your mod is not about... It almost feels like getting tricked Like someone putting up an ad for new "Samsumg Galaxy" but handing out a bubblegum walke talkie instead.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Nachtwind

[Superfluous J]

It would be nice if you'd either chose to not use the "SETI" acronym or make clear in the very first lines what your mod is not about...

While I'll agree that the acronym is slightly deceiving, you may want to re-read both the subject line of the post and the first line of the first post. Here let me past them here:

[0.90] SETI - BalanceMod - Scope, Economy & Tech Integration, v0.7.0, Jan 28

The Scope, Economy & Tech Integration - Balance Mod combines and tweaks existing mods to provide a somewhat coherent gameplay experience.

Seems pretty open and non-obfuscated to me.

[Nachtwind]

So it would be enough just to remove "SETI"

[Superfluous J]

So it would be enough just to remove "SETI"

Other than the fact that that's the acronym of the 4 words in the mod name, sure.

[Nachtwind]

So is

SEIT

ITES

TIES

TEIS

SIET

STIE

TSIE

STEI

TSEI

SITE

....

So why does it have to be SETI - the only acronym that has an actual accepted meaning?

[Superfluous J]

So why does it have to be SETI - the only acronym that has an actual accepted meaning?

I would assume the modder wanted to draw the viewer's eye. Which seems to have worked overly well in your case

[Yemo]

So is

[...]

So why does it have to be SETI - the only acronym that has an actual accepted meaning?

I would assume the modder wanted to draw the viewer's eye. Which seems to have worked overly well in your case

Professional:

I was searching for an acronym containing some specific letters. And since it had to be a "name" instead of a technical acronym, speakability (best in multi languages) was necessary as well.

Combinations which provide no clear differentiation between spellings are also bad, that removes anything with two vocals behind each other and discourages 2 "unfriendly" consonants together.

Also, the "I" had to be in the beginning or the end and from the previous argument, ITES would be unclear ( ITs or ITES?). ISET is too close to SAT and so on...

If you start thinking about it, it is not so easy.

Practical:

It was catchy, contained the right letters and provided flexibility for other future uses. It is almost always used as SETI-BalanceMod, there should not be any doubt what the mod is about .

It is like in most product names, an eye catcher and memory anchor. Now, a Mustang is a horse or a car, but when the car was released, it was just a catchy name...

There might even be some rl-SETI related stuff in the (distant) future of this mod (please keep in mind that rl-SETI starts with SEARCH, not finding...)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, we moved to the release sub-forum. Thus version 0.7.1 had some adjustments to readme and license clarification (thank you NathanKell).

Also, the contracts are slowly expanded, you find the new progress section in post 2 of this thread. Please keep in mind that contracts are WIP and quite some stuff is still on the to do list. Contract Configurator is WIP itself and not all planned options/configurations/parameters are currently available.

Feedback and suggestions for the contracts would be great!

New Version 0.7.1

Contracts

• Rebalanced early contracts
  
• New progression contracts for Mun/Minmus, Kerbol, Duna
  
• Stock contracts for the above targets unfortunately still in place, because they cant be deactivated/modded independently
  
• Taking a look at other contract packs is recommended (eg. SCANsat, RemoteTech)
  

Rebalances and Adjustments

• All probe cores (except first one) are two way capable, requires 2 Kerbals in the controlling vessel
  
• This enables eg using probe landers without KSC connection, when there is a connection to remote control vessels/stations
  
• SRBs cheaper
  

Minor Changes and Fixes

Edited January 30, 2015 by Yemo

[Lord Aurelius]

I just want to reiterate my appreciation for this mod, it basically solves all the issues I had with the stock tech tree/progression/parts balance. One more quick suggestion, I think that the adjustable landing gear mod [link] would be another mod to consider adding to your list of recommended mods as it fit nicely with this mod and would solve many of the issues with large spaceplanes.

The next issue I'm working on is that it's a tad too easy to get things into orbit in stock (even moreso with FAR) so I was trying to integrate this with the Jumbo 3.2 RSS config [link]. For the most part everything appears to work, although some of the contracts have altitudes that need adjusting and remote tech needs a config edit. Are there any other things you can think of that would need to be adjusted to make this rebalance play nicely with a system rescale?

[Svm420]

If this mod becomes dependent on a planetary size change I wont be using it. I would rather see integration of KIDS to adjust ISPs rather than a change in the size of planets. Otherwise I love the mod and cant wait for karbonite and mks/oks inclusion. Thanks!

[Lord Aurelius]

I wasn't suggesting that this mod require a rescale mod, I was just asking what other things I should consider when installing alongside one. I agree that the focus of this mod should be the stock kerbin system.

[Nachtwind]

It was catchy, contained the right letters and provided flexibility for other future uses. It is almost always used as SETI-BalanceMod, there should not be any doubt what the mod is about .

So it is a trap.. if you'd take money i'd say it is scamming.. Like i said.. naming something that practically has a completely different use and maning after something that is widely known and draws attention is just stupid.

Sorry, but as it may seem to draw attention it will also repell people from actually trying it. I see no reason to even give the mod a first glance ingame (and so do several other people i talked about..) because of this "trickery" (left alone the fact that there seem to be several licence concearns.. etc etc).. but well, you the modder should know best.

[Superfluous J]

So it is a trap.. if you'd take money i'd say it is scamming.. Like i said.. naming something that practically has a completely different use and maning after something that is widely known and draws attention is just stupid.

Like Apple. You can't eat their products. Liars. And Windows. They're trying to trick you into thinking your computer screen shows you what's going on outside. And don't get me started on Grape Nuts...

You are vastly overexaggerating this, either in your mind or in your words just to make a point. If he'd called it "K.A.R.B.O.N.I.T.E." or made the initials KER or another common KSP mod or system's name, then yes he would be out of line. But there is no function for searching for aliens in the game, no reason to, and they' wouldn't be called "Extra-Terrestrials". Your argument holds as much water as those I posted above.

[Nachtwind]

Like Apple. You can't eat their products. Liars. And Windows. They're trying to trick you into thinking your computer screen shows you what's going on outside. And don't get me started on Grape Nuts...

Actually you seem to not understand the problem... The mod's author claims a widely accepted name for his mod to draw attention whereas Apple, Microsoft and co created brands (and symbols).

Also Apple shows also no tolerance for the misuse of one of their trademarks. There has, for example, been a shop that sells apple pies and uses an apple with a child's face in it as logo: They were sued for the fraudulent use of the Apple logo to draw attention to their products...

So your examples dont apply the way you think. It is ok to use a symbol for a product, everyone does, but just reusing a symbol for something completely different is practically unheard of.. Except for infamous examples where the falsely used symbol/name/trademark was stopped from using that symbol/name/trademark.

You are vastly overexaggerating this, either in your mind or in your words just to make a point. If he'd called it "K.A.R.B.O.N.I.T.E." or made the initials KER or another common KSP mod or system's name, then yes he would be out of line.

Actually there is no difference if he called it KARBONITE, REGOLITH or like any other mod and the current situation. If you were coming from science or were actually more involved in the scientific community you would know that you just cant use one abbreviation for different topics.. and i guess the same goes for economy.. just copying a name is a no-go. Especially if it is done by free will and with the attention to draw attention.

But there is no function for searching for aliens in the game, no reason to, and they' wouldn't be called "Extra-Terrestrials".

A mod that enables multiple implementations of the SETI program might suit the game very well... i do see quite a lot of uses of such a mod, but unfortunately i have better things to do than to write that mod.. and even if I or someone else did that a mod called "SETI" it would not be possibly named that way as it would reference to this mod, even though there is not exactly any tie between them other than the name. Just like all USI mods are linked by name etc.

So you see there are more concearns inolved than just the misuse of the acronym..

[Yemo]

So it is a trap.. if you'd take money i'd say it is scamming.. Like i said.. naming something that practically has a completely different use and maning after something that is widely known and draws attention is just stupid.

Yeah, like 5thHorseman and I said, apples, mustangs, windows, allianz, spiegel...

Sorry, but as it may seem to draw attention it will also repell people from actually trying it. I see no reason to even give the mod a first glance ingame (and so do several other people i talked about..) because of this "trickery" (left alone the fact that there seem to be several licence concearns.. etc etc).. but well, you the modder should know best.

Sure, it has benefits and drawbacks. Ehm, you are mad at me and thus do not use (freeload) the mod I did for free? I do not understand the logic.

I do not know from where you get the idea of the license concerns.

Actually you seem to not understand the problem... The mod's author claims a widely accepted name for his mod to draw attention whereas Apple, Microsoft and co created brands (and symbols).

Also Apple shows also no tolerance for the misuse of one of their trademarks. There has, for example, been a shop that sells apple pies and uses an apple with a child's face in it as logo: They were sued for the fraudulent use of the Apple logo to draw attention to their products...

So your examples dont apply the way you think. It is ok to use a symbol for a product, everyone does, but just reusing a symbol for something completely different is practically unheard of.. Except for infamous examples where the falsely used symbol/name/trademark was stopped from using that symbol/name/trademark.

That argumentation is so out of this world that I m not sure whether to giggle at this trolling or angrily call for better socioeconomic education in schools.

In fact I remember a lawsuit from Allianz (insurance company), sueing people for using the word Allianz (which simply means alliance) in other contexts. Rofl. Next, Apple sues people for using "I" in sentences, because it is an infringement on their iphones and ipads....

Actually there is no difference if he called it KARBONITE, REGOLITH or like any other mod and the current situation. If you were coming from science or were actually more involved in the scientific community you would know that you just cant use one abbreviation for different topics.. and i guess the same goes for economy.. just copying a name is a no-go. Especially if it is done by free will and with the attention to draw attention.

The mod is called the SETI-BalanceMod in almost all instances. There is no ksp related SETI mod (I checked before using SETI). An rl-SETI mod would be called SEKI anyways, since the planet is called Kerbin, not Terra.

Using the same acronyms for multiple, distinctly different purposes is extremely common. Again, please educate yourself before flaming (your first posts where reasonable/legit inquiries/concerns, but it goes in the wrong direction).

Here you go:

[TABLE]

[TR]

[TH]Possible Meanings[/TH]

[TH]Rank[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence[/TD]

[TD]***[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Silly Effort to Investigate[/TD]

[TD]***[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Secure Enterprise Technology Initiatives[/TD]

[TD]***[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Science Engineering and Technology Institute[/TD]

[TD]***[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Search for the Extra Tiny[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Science Engineering and Technology Institutions[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: slow extensor tibiae motoneuron[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Solidarity for East Timor and Indonesia[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Shaft Engine Test Instrumentation[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Summer English Teaching Institute[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Systems Engineering and Technical[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Self Employment Tax Initiative[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Supported Employment Training Initiative[/TD]

[TD]**[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: System Engineering Team Integrated[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Sciences Exactes Technologie Informatique[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Sexuality Education Training Institute[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Standard Edition for Intel[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Summer Educational Technology Institute[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Seach for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Software Engineering Tools Information[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Spectrally Efficient Target Imaging[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SETI: Science Education and Technical Information[/TD]

[TD]*[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

I do not understand some of them, but well, thats what turns up searching for SETI.

A mod that enables multiple implementations of the SETI program might suit the game very well... i do see quite a lot of uses of such a mod, but unfortunately i have better things to do than to write that mod.. and even if I or someone else did that a mod called "SETI" it would not be possibly named that way as it would reference to this mod, even though there is not exactly any tie between them other than the name. Just like all USI mods are linked by name etc.

So you see there are more concearns inolved than just the misuse of the acronym..

"Misuse of the acronym"...

See above...

About the "better things to do, than make a mod", well, then I thank you for taking the time to entertain me and the other people reading this thread.

Also, thanks for bumping this thread, but it is heading off-topic...

Seriously, it was a legit question/remark at the start, the rest was totally unnecessary...

Have fun with other mods/stock, if you are so offended by something like this. Or take a step back, sleep over it and reconsider, we all have bad days.

Edited January 31, 2015 by Yemo

[Yemo]

I just want to reiterate my appreciation for this mod, it basically solves all the issues I had with the stock tech tree/progression/parts balance. One more quick suggestion, I think that the adjustable landing gear mod [link] would be another mod to consider adding to your list of recommended mods as it fit nicely with this mod and would solve many of the issues with large spaceplanes.

The next issue I'm working on is that it's a tad too easy to get things into orbit in stock (even moreso with FAR) so I was trying to integrate this with the Jumbo 3.2 RSS config [link]. For the most part everything appears to work, although some of the contracts have altitudes that need adjusting and remote tech needs a config edit. Are there any other things you can think of that would need to be adjusted to make this rebalance play nicely with a system rescale?

Thank you, totally missed it over the naming issue.

I put adjustable landing gear on my short list, thank you for the suggestion. Better landing gear is really useful, especially with the procedural wings, and the great jet engines from bahamuto dynamics need support as well.

About the system rescale, I did not try yet. The contract payouts are also set with stock in mind, but that can be easily adjusted with the custom difficulty sliders.

Contracts in general might be a problem, since I do not load the (buggy, because only achievable by manned vessels) altitude contracts from stock and replaced them with only 2 altitude contracts. While that makes some sense for the "unchallenging" stock sizes, it might be lacking for the resized version.

Also keep in mind, that squad decided to make the building upgrades non moddable. So relatively tighter part and weight limits compared with the fewer starting contracts might produce problems/challenges).

[Errol]

Can you please give more detail about the changes to probes RE: remotetech?

I would have asked earlier when it was still relevant before that flame war I just had to trudge through. I hope that over...

So, we now no longer need a six kerbal team to run a command station (or what ever they are called...I can't ever remember)?

[Yemo]

Can you please give more detail about the changes to probes RE: remotetech?

I would have asked earlier when it was still relevant before that flame war I just had to trudge through. I hope that over...

So, we now no longer need a six kerbal team to run a command station (or what ever they are called...I can't ever remember)?

Yes, at this time, only 2 Kerbals are needed to establish "local remote command capability".

Also, you do not need the later probe cores, every probe core can do that now (except HECS).

At the moment, the weight difference between the probe cores (except HECS) is not dependent on their function itself, but by the power/magnitude of their supporting internal components, like stabilizer torque and battery power.

I wish I knew how to give probe cores (or any components) tech dependent upgrades, like the remotetech omni antenna or the proceduralparts updates. Then I could gradually indroduce this function.

Given this restriction, I (again) traded some progression for long term usability of the components.

Not sure whether to set the required number of Kerbals to 2 or 3. Three would be better and the Mk 1-2 command pod would be great for that. On the other hand, 2 is great for the non-R&D upgrade game. A Mk1 command pod and a lander can (together with a small OKTO2 core) would fulfill the 2 Kerbals requirement.

Eg you did not yet extend the sat network to Minmus (because you wait for another dish or so), but the contract says, first land unmanned, then a manned landing. You could now create a vessel which fulfills the "local remote command" requirements and attach a small probe lander to this vessel. You make a highly elliptical orbit above the planned landing site with the command vessel and then land with the small probe. This gives you more flexibility in your approach, but afaik, a full KSC connection is still necessary to transmit science from the lander.

[Lord Aurelius]

I wish I knew how to give probe cores (or any components) tech dependent upgrades

I believe that FlowerChild does this in his Better Than Starting Manned mod [link]. From looking through the files, it appears that he wrote his own custom modules that had the tech checking code in them.

[Errol]

Yes, at this time, only 2 Kerbals are needed to establish "local remote command capability".

Also, you do not need the later probe cores, every probe core can do that now (except HECS).

At the moment, the weight difference between the probe cores (except HECS) is not dependent on their function itself, but by the power/magnitude of their supporting internal components, like stabilizer torque and battery power.

I wish I knew how to give probe cores (or any components) tech dependent upgrades, like the remotetech omni antenna or the proceduralparts updates. Then I could gradually indroduce this function.

Given this restriction, I (again) traded some progression for long term usability of the components.

Not sure whether to set the required number of Kerbals to 2 or 3. Three would be better and the Mk 1-2 command pod would be great for that. On the other hand, 2 is great for the non-R&D upgrade game. A Mk1 command pod and a lander can (together with a small OKTO2 core) would fulfill the 2 Kerbals requirement.

Eg you did not yet extend the sat network to Minmus (because you wait for another dish or so), but the contract says, first land unmanned, then a manned landing. You could now create a vessel which fulfills the "local remote command" requirements and attach a small probe lander to this vessel. You make a highly elliptical orbit above the planned landing site with the command vessel and then land with the small probe. This gives you more flexibility in your approach, but afaik, a full KSC connection is still necessary to transmit science from the lander.

Hmm, that last sentence makes me a lot more ok with that change. I must admit I'm not even using your mod yet, waiting for MKS integration, but I am following this thread closely. At first it seemed like you were completely defeating that portion of RT, and I thought it sounded too easy, but considering you don't get the science transmission advantages from this type of 2 kerbal direct control is much better. Thanks again for developing content for this game we all enjoy!