On June 14 2015 05:25 Cyro wrote: I'd kinda like a minmus mining base, but i'm dreading trying to actually dock useful craft to it :D
I think the easiest thing would be to not actually dock while landing, but instead land near and use rover wheels to move them up against each other. It might be better to have a dedicated craft to bring the fuel up to orbit so that you don't need to equip everything to be capable of landing on Minmus. If I were to make this myself I would probably have a module with fuel storage capabilities, rover and a klaw to go between the mining/conversion module and refueling vessel.
A big problem with the rover idea is that you need to make sure your docking ports are all situated in such a way that it is possible to attach them while driving about minmus. With Infernal robotics you could make the docking port on the mining station height-variable, i remember doing that once.
And instead of having a vessel that carries stuff into orbit, you could also just have the whole refueling station be launchable for a rendezvous in orbit. You needed to land it on Minmus anyways, so it should be able to achieve orbit. Problem here is finding juicy ore spots again afterwards.
On June 14 2015 17:55 Simberto wrote: A big problem with the rover idea is that you need to make sure your docking ports are all situated in such a way that it is possible to attach them while driving about minmus. With Infernal robotics you could make the docking port on the mining station height-variable, i remember doing that once.
And instead of having a vessel that carries stuff into orbit, you could also just have the whole refueling station be launchable for a rendezvous in orbit. You needed to land it on Minmus anyways, so it should be able to achieve orbit. Problem here is finding juicy ore spots again afterwards.
You can use a klaw which means you don't need to worry about aligning docking ports unless you think that would be cheating. Even if you use docking ports I don't see how that is a big problem since you only have to take it into consideration when designing the base and refueling vessel.
The reasoning for having a separate orbit delivery craft is that you don't waste fuel carrying all the mining gear up and down. You will often also want to have a research lab connected to the base when you take the trouble to put a base there anyway. If the base was made because of a mission, you might also have living quarters. The more parts the more impractical it is to launch the whole base into orbit, especially so if you have built your base one piece at a time.
So after the 1.0.2 patch and immediate fallout over the aerodynamics on forums, i expected a patch pretty fast to change it again (the whole never release software on a friday night then go home for the weekend thing) but it's now 6 weeks later and no patch or talk of a patch
..can i klaw a random fuel tank that's just floating in space?
There is a test version of 1.03 out for a selected few. It release won't be before the devs are back from vacation to fix new issues and apply balance changes. I am thinking 1.1 development is also draining resources away from 1.03.
i can't imagine not playing it on PC, though. Running on a CPU with cores 1/4 as powerful and potentially not having mod support as well as having to build everything with thumbsticks on a controller sounds awful ;p
On June 18 2015 01:34 Cyro wrote: KSP for ps4 announced
i can't imagine not playing it on PC, though. Running on a CPU with cores 1/4 as powerful and potentially not having mod support as well as having to build everything with thumbsticks on a controller sounds awful ;p
There might be a chance that the ps4 version will use mouse and keyboard despite this not being the norm with console games. Hopefully it won't affect the PC version in a negative way. I can't imagine the ps4 version will be a huge commercial success. However since the game uses the unity engine, porting the game might not be as complicated as it seems.
I think the sad thing is that this ps4 version will benefit from all the good press the game has been getting while delivering an inferior product. Unless the game has a lower price tag than the PC version, it does not seem fair.
It's worth mentioning though, that our moving to U5, which I think is fair to say is something everyone has been asking for quite a while, has been largely sped up by our collab with FlyingTiger, who are developing the PS4 version. The first step for them was to move the game into U5, and because that was something that affected the entire project, we felt the best way to go about it was to work together on upgrading the project, so the PC version wouldn't be stuck on Unity4 as they moved on. So contrary to popular belief, the move into PS4 is actually giving PC development a boost, not hindering it.
Magic aside, i don't think KSP is very API bottlenecked, it seems to die from the physics load on 1 thread. That would mean that "console optimization" or switching to another PC API wouldn't improve performance much - and it would also mean that an overclocked 2-4 core 6'th gen core CPU* could run the game five times faster than a ps4 could. Talking benchmarks here, actual real numbers and not just "olol it's quite a lot faster, maybe 5x"
That's like console having 12fps when PC has 60.
20fps when PC has 100
etc. Those are some very scary numbers unless they're limited to low part counts and part of the game is redesigned, they can't afford to run a pc-like build with all of its inefficiencies on such hardware
Will unity 5 improve physics performance much?
*releasing in 2 months
No, not by any means. Our UI overhaul will indeed support development of a console-friendly UI, but that will be for the console version only. The PC UI will work just the same as it does now, maybe even get a few improvements for itself in the process.
Remember, KSP is a PC game being ported to run on a console. The port is branching off the main PC development code, not the other way around. We did need to work together for the Unity5 part though, because that affects everyone.
Cheers
Unity 5 uses PhysX 3.3 rather than 2.8.X. This means two things. First, 3.3 is much more optimized than 2.8.X. We'll see a physics-simulation throughput of as much as 50% just because of this. It will probably not be the full 50%, but it should be noticeable.
Second, PhysX 3.3 allows for multiple threads to do physics simulation at the same time. This is limited in that you can't break down a single craft across multiple threads, but it will at least help cases where you have multiple craft within the physics bubble (docking, landing at a base, etc).
On a non-performance view, 3.3 is supposed to have fewer problems like phantom forces. a few more knobs to tweak things, etc.
The Unity 5 changes that don't involve PhysX have mostly been covered here, but an important one that hasn't been touched on is that the development environment can now run in the Win-64 environment, which will enable Squad to debug the Win-64 Squad client far more effectively, which means that we're much more likely to get a stable Win-64 version of KSP.
this patch introduces a big revision to the thermal system for parts. The heat simulation has been greatly improved, heat from reentry is now handled in a totally new (and more accurate) way, and we've also added five new Radiator parts, so you can have much more control over how your ship deals with excess temperatures.
Fuckton of changes. Looks like drag was significantly reworked, i'l have to stop using 1.0 atmosphere stats and try out 1.0.3 stuff!
pic from imgur
Is Squad trying to kill me? WoW 6.2 releases tomorrow and i'l already have to play that for like 8 hours today because i'm a procrastinating idiot
RAPIERs seem to have an effective top speed of 1.5 to 1.6 km/s at a steady 24km altitude, Turbojets top out at around 1.3 km/s at 22km. This seems to be a rather sizable buff to SSTOs.
thank fucking god. That's gotta be what, 6km higher than before? Yea, about that. I can't compare speeds (i usually flew very fast and very shallow craft that would burn up ), but simply maintaining speed to the higher altitude should be a huge buff (:
AERYN SEAL OF APPROVAL
turning feels better in atmosphere too
Another thing that i've noticed immediately is the heating/convection remodel actually cools you down really fast when you're moving at considerable but not dangerous speeds through atmosphere. As you can see in the vid, high speeds at low altitudes are quite instantly fatal - but there's quite a gap, one speed might be not really dangerous at all but if you go a bit faster or a bit lower in atmosphere it can overheat you very quickly. You seem to have good control over that when flying though, you can just adjust throttle when going up. Coming down, you can brake with a spaceplane but should probably be careful with trajectory with a rocket
1300m/s might be fine at 16km for example, but kill you in 1 second at 12km if you're going straight down
So, I just updated KSP and decided to take an SSTO spaceplane that I know failed to make orbit in both 1.0 and 1.0.2 - and it hit orbit the first flight, with some decent time spent engulfed in flames on the way up. So, even with a horrible ascent profile and bad flying, it made orbit with 120 m/s of spare d/v.
On June 24 2015 07:12 felisconcolori wrote: So, I just updated KSP and decided to take an SSTO spaceplane that I know failed to make orbit in both 1.0 and 1.0.2 - and it hit orbit the first flight, with some decent time spent engulfed in flames on the way up. So, even with a horrible ascent profile and bad flying, it made orbit with 120 m/s of spare d/v.
I am cautiously optimistic concerning this patch.
Image of triumphant craft in orbit Soon (tm)
I too have made a successful SSTO rocket in this patch. Just waiting for all my mods to update
I tried to use turbojets, but the additional height, speed and the ability to give yourself a bit of a kick with like one oxidizer tank using rapiers is too valuable i think.
75km apoapsis, 1550m/s is much easier to circularize from than 45km apoapsis, 1300m/s (and that's just when the air breathing function cuts out)
also as a side effect, we probably need a few more intakes. They halved intake air usage but because of the additional height we could still need more, as much as twice as many per rapier to fly at ~24km instead of ~18km with maximum thrust.
Two precoolers with a shock cone intake on the front should be about fine? Needs testing~
On June 24 2015 10:10 Cyro wrote: I tried to use turbojets, but the additional height, speed and the ability to give yourself a bit of a kick with like one oxidizer tank using rapiers is too valuable i think.
75km apoapsis, 1550m/s is much easier to circularize from than 45km apoapsis, 1300m/s (and that's just when the air breathing function cuts out)
also as a side effect, we probably need a few more intakes. They halved intake air usage but because of the additional height we could still need more, as much as twice as many per rapier to fly at ~24km instead of ~18km with maximum thrust.
Two precoolers with a shock cone intake on the front should be about fine? Needs testing~
I have never made a spaceplane, what are the advantages over a rocket?
On June 24 2015 10:10 Cyro wrote: I tried to use turbojets, but the additional height, speed and the ability to give yourself a bit of a kick with like one oxidizer tank using rapiers is too valuable i think.
75km apoapsis, 1550m/s is much easier to circularize from than 45km apoapsis, 1300m/s (and that's just when the air breathing function cuts out)
also as a side effect, we probably need a few more intakes. They halved intake air usage but because of the additional height we could still need more, as much as twice as many per rapier to fly at ~24km instead of ~18km with maximum thrust.
Two precoolers with a shock cone intake on the front should be about fine? Needs testing~
I have never made a spaceplane, what are the advantages over a rocket?
Uhh.. you can like...
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they're kinda useful for putting small stuff in orbit with reduced cost (much higher recovery money when you land the whole craft instead of staging or with minimal staging)
otherwise not so much, maybe more now than the engines are stronger
If you can reach Laythe it's very nice because air breathing engines work there (only other body with an oxygen atmosphere). You're basically just using overpowered engines instead of having lower stages in order to reach orbit. It might be easier to design a spaceplane that can get to laythe now; i'll have to spend a while on one though, making a decently flyable spaceplane with enough TWR, that much delta-v and a weight balance that will make it easily flyable when full of fuel or empty is quite difficult
On June 24 2015 10:16 Fecalfeast wrote: I have never made a spaceplane, what are the advantages over a rocket?
You can more easily control where you want to land (with some experience and practice). A spaceplane is also capable of entering atmosphere with less stess compared to a rocket with parachutes because you can more easily soften your decent. You can better control the trajectory and drag while aerobraking. In career mode there are missions to test part X at altitude Y and velocity Z. These are often more easily executed when using a spaceplane, partly because of better control and partly because wings allow you to fly at lower velocity experiencing less gravity loss compared to a wingless craft.
SSTOs (which doesn't necessarily have to be a spaceplane nor use air breathing engines) allow you to get things into orbit and return to the surface expending only fuel. SSTOs will save you money as long as you never get stranded, crash or burn up. SSTOs are also essential for reusable operations away from Kerbin. A mining station on another planet can supply fuel, but can't replace parts.
Air breathing engines and liquid fuel with their excellent specific impulse makes them a natural choice for missions to Laythe. An equivalent fully LOX driven craft with similar specs in Laythe's atmosphere will be much heavier and that mass will make every preceeding stage heavier also.
I think the main "advantage" is the fun involved and the satisfaction of completing a spaceplane that does something really well that other craft can't. It can feel as great as landing on the Mun for the first time.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vCtnC5Z.png)
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