Question "Universal Scenario"

[DelRioPilot]

Hi everyone,

Is it theoretically possible to create your own "Universal Scenario?"

Essentially this would be a scenario with ships at every base in the solar system, a shuttle on the launchpad, every space station in orbit, etc.

This would allow you to switch to whatever ship you'd like in a single univeral scenario. This would make small scenarios with only a few ships redundant, and give you more freedom in a "sandbox" style solar system.

Sorry if this sounds confusing, but I was just curious.

 

[garyw]

Yes. you do that already - for example changing between ISS and Delta-glider

 

[agentgonzo]

Yes you can, but it would take a lot longer to on loading to load a lot of (essentially) redundant vessels. It would increase memory usage.

I also remember hearing that there is a limit to the number of spacecraft3 vessels allowed in a scenario, but am not sure about that one.

 

[Jake]

It is possible, both theoretically and practically. Also, it's quite easy, albeit time consuming. You just edit the scenario file and add in the ships with the coordinates you like. Or use scenario editor. Dunno how many vessels can orbiter support though. Word to the wise though - wading through tens of ships when pressing f3 to get to the one you want (especially if they have confusing names) can be a really evil experience. Just build your own station with Greg's SSBB and you'll know what I mean soon enough.

 

[garyw]

I also remember hearing that there is a limit to the number of spacecraft3 vessels allowed in a scenario, but am not sure about that one.

It is something like 10..........

 

[Hielor]

UMMU will also crash on attempting to re-enter a vessel if you have more than 20 vessels in scenario, I think.

 

[Artlav]

Hm...
Interesting idea.

What if i redo this:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3868"]Heavens traffic 090405[/ame]
To generate vessels at defined locations instead?

Say, a DG at every second pad on every base, if more than one pad.
A Wheel-station around every major planet, a wheel station around every moon that is big enough.

All generated when approached or asked, so no limits bugs.

Any ideas/requests?
Will anyone care?

 

[TSPenguin]

Hm...
Interesting idea.

What if i redo this:
Heavens traffic 090405
To generate vessels at defined locations instead?

Say, a DG at every second pad on every base, if more than one pad.
A Wheel-station around every major planet, a wheel station around every moon that is big enough.

All generated when approached or asked, so no limits bugs.

Any ideas/requests?
Will anyone care?

That would actualy be beyond cool. Consider it requested

 

[the.punk]

Yes. Consider it as requested.
Sounds cool.

 

[Nemoricus]

You know, this might not actually be too hard to do.

The trickiest part would be spawning a Delta Glider with its gear down at any given base.

I'm going to have to check the API, but I'm not sure that there's a way to spawn a vessel on a landing pad. Furthermore, I don't know of any way to spawn a Delta Glider with its gear down. If somebody does know, please tell me.

Spawning a wheel station should be pretty easy. It is possible to directly set a vessel's orbiter parameters, so once the vessel is created, just give it parameters that give a sensible orbit.

Now, the orbital elements should be configurable, but need to sanity check, i.e., they will revert to a default if the defined parameters will put the vessel inside the object or its atmosphere.

So, what should these defaults look like? I'm inclined to say that they should depend to some degree on the mass and radius of the body that they are orbiting. An equatorial orbit with an eccentricity of 0 and an altitude between 100 and 500 km sounds good to me.

Also, what should be the threshold for spawning these vessels? Entering a sufficiently massive body's sphere of influence?

There also needs to be a cut-off where no space stations will be spawned so that we don't see space stations orbiting the gas giants directly or orbiting tiny scraps of debris like Phobos and Deimos.

Any thoughts on these?

 

[DelRioPilot]

I think it's a great idea Artlav

I think a wheel station orbiting the moon, and just every other planet would be sufficient.

 

[Jake]

Hm...
Interesting idea.

What if i redo this:
Heavens traffic 090405
To generate vessels at defined locations instead?

Say, a DG at every second pad on every base, if more than one pad.
A Wheel-station around every major planet, a wheel station around every moon that is big enough.

All generated when approached or asked, so no limits bugs.

Any ideas/requests?
Will anyone care?

Nice, I second/third that, redoing that thing would be great . Btw, any changes on the MFD? Everything still has the default Carina mesh?

 

[Nemoricus]

Hmm...actually, an equatorial orbit might not be such a good idea after all. An ecliptic orbit is probably much better for supporting interplanetary missions. Uranus is an outlier, with its high axial tilt. There you may need at least two stations for each major body, one parallel to the ecliptic, the other parallel to the equator.

I noticed that people are suggesting a station around every major planet. Why is this? I personally see little utility for a space station that's directly orbiting a gas giant instead of its moons. However, I'm willing to be corrected, so let me know if I'm wrong here.

For an upper threshold on the size of the planet that the stations should be orbiting, several times the Earth's mass may be a good limit. I'm less sure about a lower limit. It has to be small enough so that it doesn't exclude the major moons of the gas giants, like the Galilean moons, Titan, and Triton, and large Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto and Eris while being large enough to exclude satellites that are basically captured asteroids, like Phobos, Deimos, and Amalthea.

 

[flytandem]

The scenario I use most of the time is quite generic and fun. A DG parked at all inner planet and moons with at least one DG parked on a moon of each outer planet. 10 DGs is all. And the date is left bank so it's always the current date as it fires up. Makes for plenty of variety and choices of either going moon to moon or interplanetary.

BEGIN_DESC
10 gliders parked in various places around the solar system.
END_DESC

BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
  System Sol
  Date MJD ;
END_ENVIRONMENT

BEGIN_FOCUS
  Ship 3
END_FOCUS

BEGIN_CAMERA
  TARGET 3
  MODE Cockpit
  FOV 60.00
END_CAMERA

BEGIN_MFD Left
  TYPE Orbit
  PROJ Ship
  FRAME Ecliptic
  REF Earth
END_MFD

BEGIN_MFD Right
  TYPE Orbit
  PROJ Ship
  FRAME Ecliptic
  ALT
  REF Earth
END_MFD

BEGIN_PANEL
END_PANEL

BEGIN_SHIPS
ISS:ProjectAlpha_ISS
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
 ELEMENTS 6725254.40337405 0.00101890 70.37394164 213.53851851 47.83352456 273.86342456 53756.53657693
  AROT 110.00 -10.00 80.00
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000
  IDS 0:588 100 1:586 100 2:584 100 3:582 100 4:580 100
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  XPDR 0
END
Luna-OB1:Wheel
  STATUS Orbiting Moon
  ELEMENTS 2238013.8 0.00000 89.99990 0.00019 0.00019 297.04727 51985.24000440
  AROT 0.00 0.00 -159.44
  VROT 0 0 10
END
1:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Mercury
  POS -0.0002752 -0.0034891
  HEADING 90.60
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 2
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  RCOVER 1 1.0000
END
2:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Venus
  POS -0.0002007 -0.0014065
  HEADING 89.04
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 4
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  RCOVER 1 1.0000
END
3:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Earth
  POS -117.2601388 34.0891835
  HEADING 151.05
  RCSMODE 0
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 0 524 84 114
  XPDR 6
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  PSNGR 2 3 4
  TRIM 1.000
END
4:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Moon
  POS -33.4375 +41.12
  HEADING 90.17
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 8
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  RCOVER 1 1.0000
END
5:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Mars
  POS -135.43 +12.737
  HEADING 90.00
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 10
  NOSECONE 0 0.0000
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  AIRLOCK 0 0.0000
END
6:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Deimos
  POS -82.4781772 0.0036416
  HEADING 90.15
  RCSMODE 2
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 12
  GEAR 1 1.0000
END
7:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Callisto
  POS -88.4518294 0.0056206
  HEADING 88.99
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 14
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  RCOVER 1 1.0000
END
8:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Titan
  POS -80.0019790 -0.0478182
  HEADING 89.56
  RCSMODE 0
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 16
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  RCOVER 1 1.0000
END
9:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Oberon
  POS -82 0.01
  HEADING 90.00
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 18
  NOSECONE 0 0.0000
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  AIRLOCK 0 0.0000
END
10:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Nereid
  POS -0.02 0.0
  HEADING 90.00
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 20
  NOSECONE 0 0.0000
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  AIRLOCK 0 0.0000
END
END_SHIPS

 

[NukeET]

Just build your own station with Greg's SSBB and you'll know what I mean soon enough.

:rofl:

How true! Yet the blocks make for very nice looking stations.

 

[Oceanic]

And the date is left bank so it's always the current date as it fires up.

:speakcool: I didn't know that, thanks.

 

[Jake]

:rofl:

How true! Yet the blocks make for very nice looking stations.

Yes, indeed they do. I always carry something up there and assembly it. Let's hope that the Merging Vessels add-on is going to come out sometime soon

 

[agentgonzo]

:speakcool: I didn't know that, thanks.

Yes, it's a small undocumented feature of orbiter that is VERY handy. I've removed the date line from most of the scenarios in my install so that it's always a bit different each time you fire it up.

It's also very good if you are launching from your actual location on the Earth, as it looks the same as what you can see outside the window (barring weather etc)

 

[NukeET]

And the date is left bank so it's always the current date as it fires up.

BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
  System Sol
  Date MJD ;
END_ENVIRONMENT

Neat trick...thanks for the tip.

Though the 'Date' in your example isn't totally blank...I followed that template and changed a random scenario and ran it. And it came up with my local time in Universal Time format.