Reduce Electricity to Reduce Range

[Pharylon]

Sometimes you get a Satellite up that is using just a bit too much juice. What about adding a slider to the tooltip that lets you reduce power to the dish (in exchange for a corresponding reduction on range?)

[ACReeser]

:+1:

[erendrake]

I think that a lot of mods should utilize the slider to let users tune this kind of stuff. This is a great idea

On Wed Jan 07 2015 at 9:09:59 AM Alex Reeser [email protected] wrote:

[image: :+1:]

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/RemoteTechnologiesGroup/RemoteTech/issues/272#issuecomment-69044263 .

[Rockstar04]

I think this would be great on the other end of that as well, being able to use (exponentially of course) more power to increase the range of a dish.

[Peppie84]

ok i'm nearly ready with this task. I also added the ability to increase the consumption of 85% over the defined EnergyCost. The minValue is set to 1/4 of the defined EnergyCost.

Example for RTGigaDish1

Lowest values	Config defintions	Highest values
Max DishRange: 80Gm EnergyCost: 0.56/s	Max DishRange: 400Gm EnergyCost: 2.8/s	Max DishRange: 720Gm EnergyCost: 5.04/s

Example for Communotron 16

Lowest values	Config defintions	Highest values
Max OmniRange: 750km EnergyCost: 0.039/s	Max OmniRange: 2.5Mm EnergyCost: 0.13/s	Max OmniRange: 4.75Mm EnergyCost: 0.247/s

What do you think? Need some feedback!

[Peppie84]

btw i had an issue with the stepInc-Value as i made these screenshots. lowest value Gigadish is now 100Gm with an energy of 0.7/s = 25% of the defined energy cost, and so on ....

[Rockstar04]

This looks great!! Is it in any way configurable? Right now the power usage looks linear, I would love to be able to have more penalty for overpowering a dish. That way you would still want to pick the "right" dish for a certain distance, but if there was some kind of emergency, or you wanted to re-purpose a satellite instead of launching a new one, you had a little flexibility.

[Peppie84]

Hi @Rockstar04 do you have any idea how i should do the "overpowering" ? Btw the power-slider are currently only on the editors and will be disappear in flight. So you can't "re-purpose" a satellite atm.

[Rockstar04]

I guess it didn't occur to me that all the pictures are taken in the VAB. I think this is great as it is, and the linear power usage is absolutely fine. I just spend some time in excel trying to find an elegant formula similar to yours that would give diminishing returns but couldn't figure anything out that I liked.

Since I did help any with this I don't want to sound like I'm demanding anything, I am always grateful for people who put in time on opensource projects!

[Peppie84]

@Rockstar04 if i play with the current solution it feels not right -.- I changed the calculation again to this: You can increase 85% of the defined Energie, but now this will not increase the range of 85% as well. I changed this to only the half. For example:

old calculation for Reflectron GX-128:

Max Energie: 5.18 charge/s Range: 740Gm

new calculation for Reflectron GX-128:

Max Energie: 5.18 charge/s Range: 570Gm

I think this is better, using more energie to get only a bit more of range but only for increasing not for decreasing the energie.

[enceos]

It would be really nice if this option was configurable in-flight. Maybe code from Tweakable Everything (EVA) can help with ideas for an in-flight slider.

[futrtrubl]

Your range calculation should follow the inverse square law. so

this.Mode1OmniRange = (this.BaseOmniRange / this.BaseEnergyCost) * this.EnergyCost;
this.Mode1DishRange = (this.BaseDishRange / this.BaseEnergyCost) * this.EnergyCost;

should be

this.Mode1OmniRange = this.BaseOmniRange * Math.Sqrt(this.EnergyCost / this.BaseEnergyCost);
this.Mode1DishRange = this.BaseDishRange * Math.Sqrt(this.EnergyCost / this.BaseEnergyCost);

[Ristellise]

Looks good. However i think you change the sliders to be actual numbers like 1.00 Mm etc...

[zeroinformatique]

I noticed the power isn't draining when you are away from your probe. So, as long as you don't switch to your probe, it's working indefinitely.

Is it possible to also simulate power usage while you are away? Based on the usage when you leave the vessel should be sufficient, maybe.

[erendrake]

@OzoneGrif we had talked about this a little, the issue is that once we signup for simulating this we would likely want to simulate dark side drain and occlusion duration. right now we are still trying to get up to date with 1.0 so these would have to be quite a ways off.

[zeroinformatique]

A first step, without all this complexity, would be to make sure the power generation is positive when leaving the vessel. Otherwise it doesn't really make sense to fine tune antenna power.

Simulating the dark sides and occlusion would be awesome, but it is certainly much more complex to do.

[futrtrubl]

And if you are simulating all that you could then have it intelligently reduce power consumption to only what is needed to maintain its connection.

[space-is-hard]

Just a warning, if this is going to be able to be tweaked in-flight, the user will be in real danger of accidentally sliding the bar too far left and losing connection (possibly even permanently, if the vessel is too far out to feasibly be able to send some other vessel into range).

Possible solutions:

• Let the user adjust the antenna power regardless of connection status - Kinda cheaty, unless you're a fan of RemoteTech XF
• Don't let the user adjust it low enough to lose connection, possibly with a warning message (via hudtext?). Vessels escaping quickly from an area of coverage may still suffer the same problem as the minimum required power to maintain connection quickly becomes inadequate.
• Have the antenna automatically adjust power to maintain connection - Maybe make this a new feature of signal processors? Could be toggleable behavior in settings. This may also alleviate a few headaches for players who find themselves just out of comms range (with the default power settings) and unable to regain connection.

[anxcon]

if an active connection exists, and you lower it, the minimum should be what keeps connection if you get a distant that wil break connection, it should auto raise (if possible) to keep connection

could add a button to turn on auto range, requiring active connection, scales power to the current connection range + like 5%, and just updates on module update

or for that matter, remove all of the ideas on this issue, and simply calc distance to target, and scale the power cost accordingly, no need for slider, aside from perhaps omni antenna

[enceos]

@anxcon The autoadjust button would be nice, but we need that slider to reduce the range of geostationary sats, for example. Different planets require different values.