egg changed the topic of #principia to: Logs: https://esper.irclog.whitequark.org/principia | <scott_manley> anyone that doubts the wisdom of retrograde bop needs to get the hell out | https://xkcd.com/323/ | <egg> calculating the influence of lamont on Pluto is a bit silly…
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ Ick… won’t let that deter me though. I want it and “be the change you want in the world” I guess
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ I have a masters in engineering (even if I never got a job with it) so time to get my big girl pants on and try and figure it out
<queqiao-> ⟨Kirk (He/Him)⟩ Well by the time you solve it I think you'll have earned a doctorate
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ Still something I want to do, I’ll start trying to figure things out tomorrow
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ 😼
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<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ It won't work
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ plus it adds nothing to the game
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ just periodically discard satellites that would've decayed
<queqiao-> ⟨anomaliae⟩ I have to agree. Even if you did succeed it would be a waste of effort and time when what it adds isn't all that special and just creates more calculations for the game to do. Unsure if its even worth it.
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ Imagine cycling through 10 satellites and reboosting them every few months
<queqiao-> ⟨anomaliae⟩ Exactly. That just makes things annoying as heck. And if it is a important sat that is now out of fuel to boost you are gonna have to STS-125 it and go up there to boost it. Sounds like a pain in the butt
<queqiao-> ⟨anomaliae⟩ And boosting stuff the size of a space station is gonna make your PC cry out in pain
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ And if station keeping can be automated, that just entails bringing some fuel and thrusters on every satellite
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ And in return you get the same experience as without orbital decay except with much more lag
<queqiao-> ⟨kalpyy⟩ having a more realistic game is worth the effort for some people
<queqiao-> ⟨markush100⟩ In an ideal world yeah
<queqiao-> ⟨anomaliae⟩ Trust me I understand. I push my pc to its limits already despite it being beefy. But some things aren’t worth it
<queqiao-> ⟨anomaliae⟩ An example was I worked on and got working my own raymarcher. I had intended to create volumetric plume exhaust for things like launch pads and srb trails. But the performance woulda been crap.
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<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ For those interested, there is now a β version of #σκοπός that is compatible with a normal RP-1/PLC campaign. Go try it out and provide feedback there.
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ Neat!
<raptop> There's probably a case to grab ##principia (or really #principa since it's an actual programming project) on libera
<raptop> (belatedly)
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ Yeah you’re right. I still want to be able to contribute something to the game, that’s just the first thing I thought of.
<queqiao-> ⟨siimav⟩ (I would suggest starting the contributions from somewhere else)
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ There was a mod that added orbital decay for stock KSP. Though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t maintained
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ I would certainly like a something like that so my first satellite isn’t sitting up there forever
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ There could be a way to maybe have a ‘light’ orbital decay
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ Like once a week it check all the satellites below a certain altitude, and uses rough values for when it should’ve decayed by
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ If it has fuel, subtract some amount of fuel and don’t change the orbit
<queqiao-> ⟨Rad⟩ If it doesn’t, destroy the vessel
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ Please stop speculating about cheesy implementations.
<raptop> 🧀🧀🧀
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ yeah the orbital decay mod was kind of crap and didn't work correctly for stock and has literally no hope in hell of ever working with principia.
<raptop> "orbital decay" ends up being an annoying term because of how it refers to at least 3 different things
<raptop> . o O (orbital decay mod that models gravitational waves)
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ oh right, for stationkeeping you need to decrement resources at warp off of vessels that are packed and unloaded. to do that right requires writing your own code to serialize and deserialize the vessel off of its config node representation because the parts that represent the vessel don't exist at high warp on rails in KSP. Kerbalism has code to do stuff like this, but it is a major undertaking on its own.
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ this isn't an "engineering" problem in the "oh, i know differential equations" sense, but in the software-engineering years-long-yakshaving sense, since KSP itself isn't built well to do it.
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ Indeed. As tends to happen when people start speculating, much of the discussion here over the past day or so has been utterly confused as to the real difficulties. For SRP or in-orbit atmospheric effects, the difficulty is not computational cost, it is having some model of the shape of the satellite (we have the orientation already, but the shape is another can of worms). And then in order for that to be playable, stationkeeping and...
<queqiao-> ... attitude-keeping are needed, for which two major difficulties are designing a way to specify the station and attitude to be kept, and consuming fuel.
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ (And there are some control problems in there too, but in a sense that is the easy/fun part.)
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ (Fun for lamont, at least. On the Principia side this isn’t really our cup of tea.)
<queqiao-> ⟨ballatik⟩ For me this discussion ends up about a lack of gameplay benefits regardless of the technical complexity. If infinite life craft are the problem, then adding part failure seems to be a much simpler and less player-fiddly inducing way to do that.
<queqiao-> ⟨ballatik⟩ * address
<queqiao-> ⟨siimav⟩ Antenna degradation!
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ I don’t think this is necessarily uninteresting from a gameplay perspective; it could have nice interplay with something like #σκοπός in contributing to mission design constraints.
<queqiao-> ⟨qazerowl⟩ I have been informed in the past that the most difficult/fiddly part of adding "persistent thrust" to principia is modeling the fuel drain as the maneuver is executed. Since that would be needed for automatic stationkeeping anyway, maybe that is a smaller (although still quite large) feature reabean could consider tackling in the form of a plugin for principia
<queqiao-> ⟨ballatik⟩ I love the concept, and would love for it to work. The past discussions I’ve seen though boil down to (1) manual station keeping on multiple vessels is fiddly and not fun, and (2) automatic station keeping means adding some fuel and doesn’t meaningfully change gameplay.
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ I think the conclusion in (2) is in part because there is currently no meaningful orbit or payload design for Earth satellites.
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ But anyway, I don’t see it happening any time soon for the other reasons cited above, so it doesn’t matter that much that it might be interesting.
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ and you can't really go from "having a more realistic game is worth it for some people" to "lets do something like the broken orbital decay mod", that is an inconsistent argument. so if you want realistic orbital decay you need to solve all the problems. and that probably STARTS with harmony patching KSP to have shadow parts and shadow resources on vessels so that Principa and Kerbalism can use that for resource management. THEN you...
<queqiao-> ... need to solve stationkeeping because Principia's orbits are annoying enough to already need that. THEN you can mess around with adding simple atmo drag to the integrators in Principia (so after a year or three of work you get to do the easy and fun stuff finally after you've fixed KSP itself).
<raptop> siimav: imagine having solar panels and cameras degrade based off of age and radiation
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ raptop: I have been thinking about that because it heavily influences orbit design in early telecoms
<queqiao-> ⟨siimav⟩ Solar panels, in fact, already begrade based on age.
<queqiao-> ⟨siimav⟩ * degrade
<raptop> nice
<queqiao-> ⟨egg⟩ (I was thinking of antennæ, not cameras)
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ What I wanted to see was more thought needed to be put into designing satellites for its desired life span for communication & scientific needs. That’s what I want to figure out a way to contribute to the game. I’m willing to figure out the problems that come with that.
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ lecture about to start now on geometric langlands at IAS if you follow the zoom link.
<queqiao-> ⟨kalpyy⟩ what's inconsistent about it? Its just more effort than is worth it for 99.9% of people
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ because doing something like the orbital decay mod doesn't satisfy the requirement of being realistic in order to make it worth it
<queqiao-> ⟨kalpyy⟩ I've never used or heard of this orbital decay mod, and it is probably a bad example
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ that was sort of my point
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ Neat!
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ i don't think i understand a word of this, its all just vibes for me...
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ luckily for my brain, Arsenal will be playing Sheffield United right after it
* raptop wants to read that as involving an Arsenal Birb
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ didn't know Arsene Wegner had a bird named after him in addition to a soccer team...
<queqiao-> ⟨lamont⟩ (yeah i looked it up, just making a layered joke of misunderstandings)
<raptop> fair enough
<queqiao-> ⟨reabean⟩ If I could figure out station keeping, that could open up possibilities for contracts around Lagrange points or at least for satellites staying there long term.