Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

[E.B. Farnham]

Ha, no problem man, that's what playtesting is for. I take it you mean that their surface attachable. Yeah quite handy for sticking the battery pots to the side. I'm guessing you want a trade between weight and convenience on the second and third batteries? Or just too early for the utility of laterally mounted extra nodes, at least ones that light? Will have to redesign my Munar orbiter I think.

I hadn't even thought of using them as decouplers though I'd of likely got to that thought at some point.

Gratz! :)

Yup I have my second mission to land on the way now. Tweaked a few things here and there on the rocket for this run. Should have a bit more fuel. The last one was down to the wire. I unlocked some engine upgrades that should help too.

Yeah, as I mentioned in the release notes, I really wanted surface samples to be return to Kerbin, but am waiting on the next vanilla release for that.

Yeah it just makes more sense. Hence my piggy back pod. I think I remember reading that. Hopefully they also add some biomes to Minmus and maybe Duna in the next update.

Nope, not really, and I can certainly up it a bit since I did the same for the Mk1. I've done it before without though, so you sure you didn't forget to transfer power to the pod or something? At the same time, at over 30Km I suspect you're also risking skipping out of the atmosphere on a return from the Mun.

I'm tweaking that part of the tech tree right now (tech 6 manned launches Mk1-2), so I'll run some tests.

Yeah it's caught me out due to my tendency towards slightly too safe reentries. Yeah I think it's about 32 or under and you re-enter without a skip. Not 100% sure though. Might do some tests of my own and write it down for future referencing. Would be handy to know.

[jorgebonafe]

@Jorge; Do it again, but this time with Science!

...seriously. There's a lot of science to be had once you can hit orbit, which unlocks a lot of new toys to play with.

Humm... Well, I did all of them before... the thermometer, barometer, gravioli.... I'm getting 0 science for everything...

Damn, I get stuck all the time in this game.....

[FlowerChild]

Humm... Well, I did all of them before... the thermometer, barometer, gravioli.... I'm getting 0 science for everything...

Did you do the gravioli over all the various biomes in low orbit (over 75Km, under 250Km)? You get different results for each.

Did you do the high orbit experiments (over 250Km altitude) for the thermometer and barometer?

I assume the good experiments aren't unlocked yet?

Attaining a stable orbit is the big step forward in being able to nail all the biomes with the gravioli detector, especially if you go for a polar orbit (which allows you to hit the poles, and also every other biome as Kerbin rotates under your orbit). You really shouldn't be short on science if you've done that.

[PatriotBob]

So... I feels bad.
Poor Jeb had to die. Not for science, or in a firey death, or anything glorious.
His life support ran out.
Had over 4000 electrical power remaining. Just not any in the capsule.
I will build a memorial to his silent demise. So sorry Jeb.

[Psion]

i did that too. decoupled my landing pod and then realized i had all my batteries attached to the lower parts of the ship, so seconds after decoupling poor jeb blacked out. XD

[dawnraider]

Jeb had a rather sudden epiphany. I accidentally shot my rocket too high, since I did not lower its trajectory enough using fins, which ultimately resulted in his demise.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah it's caught me out due to my tendency towards slightly too safe reentries. Yeah I think it's about 32 or under and you re-enter without a skip. Not 100% sure though. Might do some tests of my own and write it down for future referencing. Would be handy to know.

After testing it out, I don't think it's your altitude that's the problem. Let me relay a story:

I just attempted a direct reentry from the Mun aiming for 30Km. At about 75Km, I charged up my command pod from the batteries on my 2nd to last stage. At around 70Km, I oriented myself retrograde, and separated. All good.

At around 65Km, I noticed much to my alarm, that the stage I had separated from was slowing down faster than my command module, and my alignment had been so perfect (miraculously so...total fluke), that I was slowly heading straight for it.

At around 60Km, we collided. Impact wasn't enough to cause any damage, but sent me spinning end over end. I had to fight like crazy to stabilize the craft, and all the while the flamey death effects were building up around me. All this time, I was burning energy like crazy of course because my reactions wheels were going full blast as I tried to stabilize.

Just around the time I had stabilized into a wobble that was going maybe 30 degrees back and forth over my intended alignment, that 2nd to last stage began blowing up nearby from the heat, so looks like I managed it just in time. Definitely one of my most satisfying landings, and Jeb, Bob, and Bill, all seemed rather ecstatic to walk away from it.

Anyways, long story short: by the time I brought her down I still had 60 out of the 150 energy in my capsule :)

So, given my extreme reaction wheel use, I suspect you're REALLY overworking them man, perhaps with SAS constantly fighting against the pod naturally turning into the direction of travel or whatever. With the command pods, you can pretty much just go dead stick on them entirely and they'll keep the correct orientation due to being so bottom heavy.

So yeah...don't over maneuver and burn your batteries noob :)

[E.B. Farnham]

After testing it out, I don't think it's your altitude that's the problem. Let me relay a story....

Aye after reading this I did some tests and I figured it out. What I'm doing is I'm coming in 90 degrees off angle to retrograde so that when I decouple I'm on a slightly different vector to the rest of the ship. This wouldn't be a problem except I'm doing it at 70km as that's where time acceleration cuts out. So by the time I've turned the ship and decoupled I'm around 50 - 55km and off angle.

Here's the problem, when I turn the pod 90 degrees in atmosphere it sets up an oscillation in the pod which is causing its tail to wag, so to speak. I'm guessing this is caused by the heatshield side center of mass and the drag and lift forces. I've been correcting this and smoothing it out manually, burning my juice as I do so. It's become an ingrained habit to manually correct as SAS used to be awful.

I tried doing the same thing but just doing it dead stick. In this case the tail still oscillated up and down but the power levels were fine. Burned off my radial back up chutes though.

So then I tried the same thing but I decoupled and turned the pod at 80km so I had it stable on retrograde before I hit 70km. This worked just fine and I reentered with no problems.

So yup moral of the story, don't turn your pod while in high atmosphere and if you do end up in a tail wagging situation don't try to incrementally smooth it out, better to let it just wobble, unless it's threatening to tumble the pod of course.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Although i do tend to wing my flights as far as Duna, i do a decent amount of realistically applied math in my head, and reentry height is one of the things i enjoy doing in that regard. I built myself an equation for reentry altitude to avoid skipping through the atmosphere that i never fail to use to the full extent. For a Munar free-return trajectory the ideal periapsis is ~35-36 km, and for a lander return you want to keep it just slightly higher than that, maximizing at ~38 km. For low kerbin orbit reentry keep it at 25 km and for high kerbin orbit reentry you should keep it anywhere between ~29-33 km. if anyone wants the actual equation PM me, but keep in mind that it doesn't work perfectly, for objects with relatively high drag-mass differentials and for objects moving at even higher velocities the equation degrades to the point where it is literally impossible to touch the atmosphere at all without shattering any heat shields in use, which is completely wrong, but otherwise it does work, and that is what matters.
Also, Atmosphere skipping is actually a very effective way of aerobraking assuming you have extra ablative shielding, which is not typically an issue with regards to the added mass of extra shields, and even considering that, ablative damage occurs primarily immediately FOLLOWING the reentry heat stage, which if you have reached that atmospheric level it is nearly impossible to have maintained the velocity to skip without massive structural damage anyways.

[jorgebonafe]

I just bought all T3 upgrades (or is it T4? I'm not sure, the ones that cost 45 science) and I have enough science to buy one upgrade on the next level.

Looking at all the possibilities and different parts I can get, my brain is melting... How is anyone even supposed to know what to do with all that stuff? I feel like I have to enroll in an actual aerospace engineering course just to be able to understand this game...

[FlowerChild]

So yup moral of the story, don't turn your pod while in high atmosphere and if you do end up in a tail wagging situation don't try to incrementally smooth it out, better to let it just wobble, unless it's threatening to tumble the pod of course.

To your credit though, my last test inspired me to check, and it turns out the Mk1-2 pod has an excessively high rate of energy consumption on its reaction wheels compared to the others in the game. Also turns out that I messed up the value on the inline reaction wheels, and it's too low at present.

So yeah, thanks for cluing me into that :)

[Stormweaver]

So...I was curious how the progression went if your first T3 node was the one with winglets as opposed to the other two which have science.

I was a little worried that I'd have more hassle getting a rocket up to 250km than I do getting the uncontrolled ones where they need to go, but it turns out...it's a lot easier. Definately going to be my T3 pick from now on :)

[FlowerChild]

Yup, as I mentioned in the comments of one of Icy's videos, the first choice at tech 3 basically comes down to this:

"Do you want bigger engines for your unguided rockets, guided rockets, or a manned capsule for your unguided rockets?"

Put in that context, I think the best choice is clear.

The 1st and third nodes from the top give you the potential for more science through new experiments. The 2nd node gives you the ability to effectively use them. If you buy stability first, you launch one mission to high orbit to buy the next node, then the other ones become *much* easier to accomplish. If you buy the others, you're stuck with unguided flights that rely on a fair bit of luck to succeed. Buying either of the other 2 is essentially putting the cart before the horse and sets you up for pain to emphasize that guidance is rather important, so that hopefully by tech 4 you realize that RCS is a really big deal, or you get an even bigger dose of pain to further emphasize it.

I really didn't think that choice would cause people so much difficulty. Watching Icy's videos in particular has got me rather confused, as every mission his primary problem that he wrestles with is lack of guidance, yet every time he goes back to the tech tree, guidance is the last thing he considers purchasing :)

[PatriotBob]

I'm all for bigger, better rockets. But if I can't keep it pointed the right direction or from ripping it self apart what good is more thrust?

I almost always snag control first on a new tier just because it means I have more control in what science I can get. Be it winglets, RCS or struts. All these things keep rockets under control and on target which means more science and my kerbals don't die firey deaths.

Side note: Is there any way (TAC fuel balancer aside) to pipe power constantly. Similar to a fuel line. I'm trying to solve my problem where life support only counts power from the pod (or directly attached to it?) so when my comms transmitting tasty science, it eats all the power from the pod and attached power, and my kerbal dies. Even though there's thousands of units of power in batteries a little further down the rocket.

[FlowerChild]

Side note: Is there any way (TAC fuel balancer aside) to pipe power constantly. Similar to a fuel line. I'm trying to solve my problem where life support only counts power from the pod (or directly attached to it?) so when my comms transmitting tasty science, it eats all the power from the pod and attached power, and my kerbal dies. Even though there's thousands of units of power in batteries a little further down the rocket.

Errrr...that's strange, and a bug if that's the case. I haven't run into that myself in any of my testing. The code is supposed to be drawing power for life support from any available, not just that which is directly connected, and is using the vanilla functions that do precisely that. If you're absolutely certain that's the case, and something else isn't going on, I'll take a look at it, but please be certain here as I'm not particularly inclined to spend more time wrestling with the mod API right now :)

[Marasambala]

I can confirm that's happening. I found, though, that you can tell the pod to not use it's own power(play/stop button when you right click.) It'll draw from the rest of the batteries. You just have to remember to turn it back on or the result is the same.

[FlowerChild]

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! The pain.... :)

Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to go back to the code <cries>

Yeah...I think it's becoming clear to me I really don't like modding KSP's code ;)

[PatriotBob]

Sorry about that... I was assuming I was doing something wrong or had missed something.

I can confirm that's happening. I found, though, that you can tell the pod to not use it's own power(play/stop button when you right click.) It'll draw from the rest of the batteries. You just have to remember to turn it back on or the result is the same.

Didn't think about that, might help solve that problem to some degree. :)

[TheGatesofLogic]

Flowerchild, if it is still something that you are considering, ablation is a bit more complex than even the smartest people tend to think. Ablation is a COOLING process, i find that a lot of people tend to think of it as a heating process, in the same way that many people believe boiling is a heating process and such. Almost all ablative shielding is made of ceramics, which have EXTREMELY high melting points and stay extremely rigid up until they reach that point, though they typically vaporize nearly instantaneously at that point. Ceramics are also brittle, that doesn't mean they are weak, just that they fracture with minimal deformation, and this brittleness is well reflected, in fact representatively MORE apparent, on the microscopic level. What I'm getting at is the PURPOSE of using heat resistant shields (ablation involves MUCH more than just temperature). When an ablative shield is shaped properly (like how it is in the game) and is in sufficiently dense atmosphere the pod actually becomes MORE heat resistant because an air cushion forms below the pod and it both absorbs and redirects the heat flow. This air cushion, however, is riddled with powerful shock waves that allow two things to happen, 1: the shockwaves propogate heat away from the shielding 2: these shockwaves rapidly ablate the shielding even though the temperature of the pod is actually dropping rapidly. These two things are actually one and the same, the heat is lost in the process of "erosion" of the shielding, ablating the hotter parts of the shielding faster than the cooler parts. This explains why ablation is so high when the temperature is dropping, after the fiery visual of reentry.

Now to explain reentry heat higher up: When the pod is higher in the atmosphere there is not nearly enough particles to gather into any effective air cushion beneath the pod, thus nearly all of the energy of the rapidly approaching air molecules is turned into heat in the collision with the pod, heating both the pod and the particles (the high temperature particles then "roll off" the pod resulting in the glowing fire trail thingy). These collisions however do not impart much ablation at all, as most of the particles collide nearly perpendicular to the surface of the ablative shielding, which has nearly no ablative component to it.

Thus explains your concerns with the apparent issues with the rates of ablation occurring with a different peak than the rates of temperature fluctuation. just thought I'd give you a heads up in that regard :)

despite the fact that the author of the mod did not appear to understand how it worked precisely, he actually got it quite nearly correct with his implementation.

[FlowerChild]

Thus explains your concerns with the apparent issues with the rates of ablation occurring with a different peak than the rates of temperature fluctuation. just thought I'd give you a heads up in that regard :)

Thanks man, it does reassure me to know it's working how it's supposed to. I know next to squat about ablative shielding, but how it was working felt counter intuitive to me. Glad to hear it's working as it should.

despite the fact that the author of the mod did not appear to understand how it worked precisely, he actually got it quite nearly correct with his implementation.

The current maintainer (NathanKell) is not the original author of the mod. He just adopted it after I assume the author grew too busy to do so or what have you (hence why he's referring to it as Deadly Reentry Continued). That's why him and I are going back and forth about whether it's working right in the DR thread, as he didn't actually write the code either.

The default values for DR also make it next to impossible to actually burn up, so I've been rather suspect about its functionality overall as I go through tweaking it, as to me, that would seem to be the first bit I'd be concerned about if making a reentry mod, especially if I were going to call it "Deadly" :)

[E.B. Farnham]

To your credit though, my last test inspired me to check, and it turns out the Mk1-2 pod has an excessively high rate of energy consumption on its reaction wheels compared to the others in the game. Also turns out that I messed up the value on the inline reaction wheels, and it's too low at present.

So yeah, thanks for cluing me into that :)

Neigh bother chief. If I come across anything else that seems odd I'll give ye the word. Though that's all I've noticed that felt off so far.Which, all things considered, is pretty impressive. Most games I note a few things that don't feel quite right. For a mod to seem so spot on, in so short a time is mighty.

Also I haven't had any power problems with my command pods (that weren't caused by me at least), I can run them dry as long as there's still power in the rest of the ship. So it's not a universal issue unfortunately.

[FlowerChild]

Neigh bother chief. If I come across anything else that seems odd I'll give ye the word. Though that's all I've noticed that felt off so far.Which, all things considered, is pretty impressive. Most games I note a few things that don't feel quite right. For a mod to seem so spot on, in so short a time is mighty.

Fuck man, I can't emphasize the amount of work I've put into this though. It's really gotten retarded :)

Very glad to hear it's feeling so right. I think I might bump up battery weight and transmission power usage again to be midrange between what I had previously and what I had now, because, reentry aside, batteries and power consumption are starting to feel like a trivial consideration now, whereas they felt much more like a limiting factor in previous releases.

May take a couple of passes to tweak that to strike the right balance between energy being a real concern to manage, and not making it so overwhelming that storing results and returning them to Kerbin becomes a more practical option. DR definitely helps there, as designing for reentry now is a very different thing than designing a one-way probe.

Also I haven't had any power problems with my command pods (that weren't caused by me at least), I can run them dry as long as there's still power in the rest of the ship. So it's not a universal issue unfortunately.

Yeah, that's been my experience as well, which is why this is a bit of a head scratcher for me. Since this seems to be a sporadic issue, and since people have workarounds, I'm probably going to leave that one until I'm done this first balance pass as I really need a win right now to restore my spirits, and I know if I dive back into the code I'm going to wind up seriously depressed about how long all of this is taking me :)

Also, I'm thinking I really need to split off life support into a separate resource from energy anyways, otherwise manned missions will just become the standard once solar panels are unlocked, which would be rather unfortunate IMO. So, given that, I'll likely have to rewrite that code at some point which makes any time I spend correcting any current problems with it an eventual loss.

[E.B. Farnham]

Fuck man, I can't emphasize the amount of work I've put into this though. It's really gotten retarded :)

Haha, yup making something look easy is always a lot of work. Look on the bright side though, at the end at least you get to keep something you're proud of, conjured by your own brain and made by your own two hands. I know folks who'd kill for the opportunity to create something that in the end they'll be proud of or even own for that matter. I've spent too much time labouring for others not to be a bit jealous of that.

Yeah it definitely seemed power/weight was more of a concern before I started filling out tier 6 and doing my Mun landings. I'm coming back with a lot of juice still in the batteries now. I think my current design is coming back with about 8000 of it's 14000 battery power on an uneventful mission. Though I would consider myself to be at the stage where Mun landings are routine.

Though it stands to reason to separate power and life support in the long run. If just for the additional control it'll give you over restricting the player. Abstracted into power as they are now is a grand workaround though. It does what it's meant to by putting a clock on your entire mission. Run out once and your forever watching it tick down, wondering if you worked it all out properly or if you'll loose another crew to the big empty. Though it's not a huge concern for me as I can build pretty big rockets without issue it's probably far more of a concern to someone who's relatively new to KSP. So if it gives me pause when I'm working out how much power I need it probably puts the shits up those who haven't had as much KSP plan, build and fly time.

Plus it's worth noting that at some point you'll feel like you've squared away the "to the Mun" stage and want to move on to the other worlds but you'll probably have to wait for Squad to sort out the biomes and what not. So sounds like as good an excuse for a break as any. Assuming you can turn off your inner designer ;)

[Wookieguy]

Got an issue. I put a probe into orbit around the Mun, but can't get a reading from my gravioli detectors. I try, then it says it can't be done right now, and the button to take the measurement goes away until I relog. I'm at 150 km, and have enough power, so I don't get what's wrong. Bug, or a silly mistake?

[EDIT]
Didn't realize how low low-orbit around the Mun is. Darn low.

[FlowerChild]

Haha, yup making something look easy is always a lot of work. Look on the bright side though, at the end at least you get to keep something you're proud of, conjured by your own brain and made by your own two hands. I know folks who'd kill for the opportunity to create something that in the end they'll be proud of or even own for that matter. I've spent too much time labouring for others not to be a bit jealous of that.

Yup, very true, and I certainly do take pride in it, however I'm on a ticking clock right now with regards to my finances and RTH, so every extra day I devote to this is making me more and more stressed out.

Under "normal" circumstances (whatever those are), if I had a good chunk of time to devote to this, I'm sure I'd be much happier about it. However, as it's dragged on longer and longer than intended "just one more day" at a time, it's had quite a heavy toll on me personally. Meanwhile, I've already invested so much work into it, that abandoning it at this late stage before it's at a quality level where I'll feel comfortable leaving it be for awhile, is not a reasonable option for me.

In retrospect, I really don't think it was a very smart move for me to start up this project given current circumstances, but I hadn't anticipated it would be half the pain in the ass it is to modify things in KSP as it's turned out to be.

Plus it's worth noting that at some point you'll feel like you've squared away the "to the Mun" stage and want to move on to the other worlds but you'll probably have to wait for Squad to sort out the biomes and what not. So sounds like as good an excuse for a break as any. Assuming you can turn off your inner designer ;)

Yup, agreed, as the balance between celestial bodies with biomes, and those without, is exceedingly difficult to nail given the ones with biomes multiply the science returns by incredible amounts (like the Mun has around 15 biomes for Pete's sake, as opposed to Duna and every other planet that only has 1).

I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for that though, but it's definitely a pain. Also, I don't expect Squad to rectify that anytime soon, as to my understanding they're probably waiting until they redo the models for the other planets to match the increased detail on the Mun and Kerbin from a couple of releases ago, as it wouldn't make much sense to lay out biomes when the models are likely to change rather dramatically. Obviously, doing those models is likely a heluva lot of work, so I sincerely doubt they'll be in .23 and I suspect it may be several vanilla releases before we get them.