Okeley dockely...I'm not quite done everything I wanted to, but the early tech tree is beginning to get that angelic choir moment that I aspire towards, and thus I want to let you guys play around with this while I wrap up loose ends.
Thus, I present to you version 0.00999 of BTSM:
Download Link
Installation instructions (
these are important...read them):
-Go here:
Deadly Reentry link and download Deadly Reentry Continued. You need to install this FIRST, before BTSM, otherwise my tweaks to Deadly Reentry won't take effect, and the overall balance will be WAY off. I'm working with the author/maintainer of that mod to eliminate this install order dependency, but for now, this is the way it is.
-Install BTSM by copying everything in the .zip file into your KSP directory (this is also how Deadly Reentry is installed BTW).
And here's the change log for this release (which can also be found in the readme):
WARNING: This release represents a pretty extensive rebalance of many aspects of BTSM. Thus, I would highly recommend starting out a new career with it, as things will definitely get whacky with a save from a previous version. Obviously BTSM is still very much WIP, so compatibility with saves from previous versions can not be expected.
-Reworked pretty much all the tech levels. I'm happy with everything up to and including tech level 5 (where you get your first manned capsule), fairly happy with tech level 6 (Mun landing) but will likely tweak this a bit more, and have *partially* fleshed out the remaining tech levels. I'll likely be putting out another release within the next couple of days to cover the remaining tech levels and balance for the other planets (this is largely all stock parts so it should go rather quickly), but wanted to get this prerelease out to you guys so you could give the first few tech levels a go. With all the changes in this release they are *much* more refined than in the previous version.
-Added Deadly Reentry Continued as a "required mod" to be installed alongside BTSM, and balanced its values to fit with the rest of the gameplay I'm shooting for. BTSM players don't need to manually tweak any settings or anything like that as I've taken care of that part in the BTSM config files, but you do need to manually download and install Deadly Reentry yourself. It can be found here:
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/thr ... ntinued-v3 . Mucho thanks go to the mod author/maintainer NathanKell for helping me out with getting everything working the way I wanted it.
-Added a rudimentary life support system that causes the various command modules to consume electricity if they have any kerbals on board (the cost is the same regardless of the number on board). If the ship runs out of energy, kerbals on board will be killed. Note that this creates a distinction between command and landing modules in that landing modules will consume far more energy for life support due to poor shielding, meaning that you will generally not want to keep your Kerbals in them for extended journeys (like to the Mun and back), but will rather want to leave them empty until they are to be used. Note that Kerbals on EVA do not currently have or consume electricity for life support, so sending them EVA to keep them alive is a known exploit and will be resolved in a future release. For now, just don't do that :)
-Added a number of separate parts that act as early game low-tech equivalents to stock parts, so that by the end of the tech tree you'll have a full selection of the regular vanilla parts in the game (well, that's my goal anyways: at present the command pods in particular are still being directly modified from stock values). At present, these parts just use the stock models, so I apologize for the visual confusion there, but this should be considered placeholder until I find an alternate solution.
-Added SAS functionality back into manned capsules and cockpits under the assumption that it is not an actual SAS system involved, but is rather the crew keeping the vessel straight for you. I did this because with the addition of Deadly Reentry, keeping your command module pointed in a straight line becomes a much much bigger concern, and your Kerbals are well motvated to do it for you :)
-For similar reasons, added *small* (and I do mean small...you won't be able to reasonably turn an entire craft with them) reaction wheels back into the Mark I Command Pod so that you'll have a measure of attitude control on reentry. I've also tweaked the M1-2 pod to have slightly larger reaction wheels than the MI, but still *MUCH* smaller than vanilla. Again, these integrated reaction wheels are NOT something you can navigate an entire rocket with so fins and RCS (or a separate reaction wheel part) are still very much a necessity with these capsules when they are a part of larger vessels.
-Removed sensor display functionality on the Thermometer, Gravioli Detector, Barometer, and Seismic Accelerometer. They would bug out the UI if used and make running experiments with these instruments impossible (vanilla bug), plus they just weren't very useful in that role to begin with.
-Removed all science value on the surface of Kerbin for all experiments. No more silly calibration experiments, and after all, this is a space program game, not a Tour De France one.
-Moved the Aerodynamic Nose Cone down to tech level 3: Survivability, to provide a little more flexibility in early rocket design, since the Standard NC really didn't fit well with some rocket designs at this stage. This is largely an aesthetic thing, since nosecones don't seem to have any discernible effect on rocket performance other than adding weight and drag (they're supposed to have some positive effect in .22, but no one seems to know what they actually do, if anything). HOWEVER, note that with Deadly Reentry nose cones can come in very handy for slightly shielding heat sensitive parts below them, especially on ascent. This is particularly useful for say putting a nosecone on your probe core, then attaching the low tech batteries to the core beneath the "umbrella" of the cone, as those low tech batteries are extremely heat sensitive and will have a tendency to burn off first at high speeds.
-Moved the inline stabilizer from tech 5 to tech 4, as reentry without one (especially on the early tech probes) is exceedingly difficult. Seriously, if you're trying to reenter with a probe, do yourself a favor and make sure you have an SAS module. You can do it manually without, but it's far from easy.
-Reduced the weight of the early tech batteries slightly, reduced the power to transmit some early game experiments, and increased the weight of the thermometer, all to make transmitting data instead of carrying multiple instances of the same experiment slightly more attractive. In combination with the addition of Deadly Reentry, there's really no good reason to load up on experiments anymore and try to return them back to Kerbin when you can just transmit results.
-Rearranged which tabs certain parts appear in the vehicle assembly building for greater clarity because with some of the new parts I added in, some tabs were getting excessively crowded, and my custom parts were sometimes appearing in the same tabs as stock parts with the same models causing confusion as to which was which. For example, RCS tanks now appear under the control tab with their corresponding thrusters, xenon tanks and electric engines appear under the propulsion tab, wheels and stack separators now appear under to control tab, and jet engines, jet fuel tanks and parachutes now appear under the aerodynamics tab. I've basically tried to reorganize things so that they make a little more sense and to avoid the problem where some tabs have multiple pages of parts while others are almost empty, which should hopefully make finding the parts you want easier once you get used to the new system.
-Replaced the modular girder segment at tech level 3 with octagonal struts instead. Turns out that modular girder segments have a whole host of exploits associated with them this early in the tech tree (thanks to Stormweaver for cluing me into this) that allow you to do some truly crazy stuff, so they and other similar parts have been pushed to *much* later unlocks. I've also increased the weight of the octagonal struts to make them more in keeping with other structural parts as they weighed next to nothing before. Note that these struts are particularly useful when trying to balance craft for reentry (you want them to be bottom heavy so that they don't start flipping in the atmosphere).
-Reduced the strength of integrated reaction wheels on just about everything. They were ridiculously overpowered before and as a result largely eliminated the need for RCS thrusters.
-Decreased the dry weight of the Rockomax BACC Solid Fuel Booster slightly as its performance relative to the smaller booster was actually pretty crappy despite it being an "upgrade".
Known issues:
-Currently there is an install order dependency between BTSM and Deadly Reentry. I'm working with the maintainer of DR to resolve this, but for now, make sure to install DR first, then BTSM afterwards so that DR will have its values properly adjusted for BTSM.
-There are a couple of problems in Dead Reentry at present that the author is actively working on correcting, but which I want to point out here: first, vehicles may randomly explode when you first launch them, or when you switch to them in flight. On launch, just revert back to the VAB, then relaunch and it should be fine. In the case of vehicles in flight, the only thing I can recommend is creating regular backups of your saves for now so that you can reload should this happen. Secondly, after a vehicle burns up on reentry, returning to the space center directly can result in a frozen interface where you won't be able to click on various buttons and interface hot spots. To avoid this, if a vehicle burns up on reentry, I recommend reverting to launch before doing anything else. This seems to reactivate the interface to work around the problem.
-At present, you can't transfer crew through docking ports, which can make certain missions at tech level 6, before you have access to RCS thrusters on your space suits, more difficult than they should be. I'll likely be adding the ability to transfer crew through docking ports in the near future.
-Currently, the surface sample experiment can be transmitted at 100% efficiency and the samples do not need to be brought back to Kerbin. Obviously, this isn't ideal, but I did this intentionally as there's currently no way to transfer samples between vehicles, which would be particularly important for Mun landings and such. It's already been announced that such transfers will be possible with vanilla 2.3, so I've decided to just allow the results to be communicated for now until that feature is released. Ideally surface samples would also have storage containers associated with them, and would have mass, which are things I'll likely take care of in the future if not part of 2.3.
-Some of the tech nodes, especially late in the tech tree have inaccurate descriptions, names, and icons at present (e.g ion and nuclear propulsion, which have nothing to do with those kinds of tech anymore). I'll be taking care of that in the future as it's a bit of a pain to adjust and it obviously doesn't affect gameplay balance.
-I'm still not entirely happy with the balance between command and landing modules, especially around tech 6. At present you can still get away with using a landing module on reentry and such (provided you attach a heat shield), which I really don't like, and I'll be attempting to rectify that in the future.
-Life support does not currently display the rate at which it is draining energy in the resources drop down at the top right of the screen. Your energy is still depleted, it just won't show up in the delta number. Will fix this in the future.
-The eventual intent with the Science Jr material studies thingy (available at tech level 8) is that it can only be operated by Kerbals on EVA, meaning you'll have to successfully land manned missions on various planets to use it, and then return it to Kerbin to study the results. Unfortunately at present it's not a simple task to restrict it to EVA use but I'll hopefully take care of this in the future. For now, if you want a real challenge in keeping with the spirit of BTSM in the late game, I'd suggest restricting yourself to only using it on manned missions. It provides an ungodly amount of science to correspond to the difficulty of pulling this off.
Enjoy! :)
