Its actually better in my humble opinion, that they are not compatible. The V2 would just be a novelty.

As an aside, the "tiered non-functional" thing wasn't intentional. Keen added extra identifiers to the files, which I haven't yet incorporated. I was under the impression that it was strictly a performance altering change - I'll have to look into how it actually works and see if I can tweak it for a "best of both", or at least a decent compromise.

So long as it's something in the base game (including DLCs) I shouldn't have any problems with it. I know I've been a little slack in that the reskins from the Heavy Industry pack haven't been tweaked yet, but I haven't forgotten. Why can't Keen just incorporate cross-entity references already?

If you're referring to Aversion/Skallabjorn's mod V2 engine, however, that's something you might want to bring up with them. I'm not sure if I could tweak its values without incorporating the entire mod into mine (I'd need permission to do so at the very least) or causing issues with mod load orders.

Probably the best re-balance I have played thus far. I'm really enjoying the rethinking of basically anything involving hydrogen. I notice that tiered hydrogen engines are non-functional which is a good thing as it truly brings back the value of 500kw 4cyl. Any chance you'd be willing to incorporate the V2 Hydrogen Engine block out there?

While I'm sure it would be possible to add binary consumption, it would require a more in-depth modification than just tweaking a few configuration files - which is all I'm doing.

As it stands, I just simulate the hydrogen being generated as if it already has oxygen with it at a 6:1 ratio (realistically this would be common bulkhead storage, not a pre-mixed gas, strictly for safety). It's not ideal, and seems hugely wasteful (particularly of oxygen), but it does at least also provide a solution (of sorts) to the O2 Generators only being able to produce H2 _or_ O2 at any time, not both.

Of course that does nothing for the absence of Ice being returned in the case of the generators, which is why I keep mulling the idea of going nuclear instead. But that strikes me as too much of a balance shift, so I'm sticking to combustion.

I'll have to take a glance over your configs. See if there's anything I've missed or could learn from.

Just found your mod while browsing. If you want to make the gas generators have fully realistic power consumption and production rate per volume/mass, I wrote some configs for the No More Free Energy mod that provide that. I highly doubt the mod is compatible with this one, but you might want to check out my calculations for a baseline, as well as their code if that interests you:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2189531971

I'm going to take a look at this mod, it looks like it's deeper in scope than NMFE and I could write some similar configs for this. That said, what I was actually looking for when I found this was a mod that makes the hydrogen engine require both hydrogen (2U) and oxygen (1U) and return Ice (2U), so I can make fully closed-circuit hydro/LOX fuel systems with realistic thermodynamics using my NMFE configs. Do you know of any mods adding such an engine?

I'm still not a fan of the way it breaks the laws of thermodynamics (lots of energy being created out of nothing here), but that's just one of those things that has to be done to make it playable I guess. Maybe later I can learn how to return it back to ice and revisit the situation.

At least for the time being I wasn't planning on increasing their output. They strike me as though they're still mean to be an ICE of some description - and a 50MW (~68,000HP) engine is one of those things you find in large ships with exposed con-rods surrounded by ladders and catwalks. The in-game ones remind me more of a very large truck engine, for which 5MW (~6,800HP) is more reasonable.

Good to hear the ratios feel workable.

If I've got the math right, on the large grid it should take ~267.8mL of hydrogen per second to run a generator, which a single generator can produce at around a 26.3% duty cycle. So, at least theoretically, 1:1 will be self-sustaining (after a bootstrap), and 4 engines could run at 95% output from a single generator, providing just over 19MW in total output.

unless i have misinterpreted your intended changes, If your aim was not to increase the power production of the engine, then it works fine. Currently engines are useful again with the consumption changes. Some part of my brain thought you meant to increase power output of them. Currently 2 Engines required to run one O2 gen, i can live with that. :)

Your changes to the engine dont seem to be reflected in game, to be safe i tried on new world with just this mod loaded, according to menu large grid engine still outputting 5WM and small 500KW, good news though that the consumption seems to be ok

Why it's stored completely separately to the gas properties is beyond me. But Keen has a lot of properties which really should be derived from existing data and possibly an efficiency modifier - at least in my opinion. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

And please - bombard away! I can't find everything wrong myself, so I need feedback to make corrections or gameplay-based tweaks.

I think I have it adjusted. There's a completely separate value ("FuelProductionToCapacityMultiplier") which, at least according to what I have read, is responsible for determining the "fuel value" of hydrogen as far as the engine is concerned. This defaults to 0.005, which divides 1,000 times into the specified MaxPowerOutput of 5. If I'm right, that covers the 5MW output (most values are stored as mega-whatevers) and 1,000L/s consumption.

Sorry for the bombardment, I've still not been able to test yet, (time starved father) but reading the wiki, large grid consumes 1000 l/s and small 100 l/s you may need to alter consumption of you haven't already done so

Personally I would of leaned toward the 200% increase for a smaller net gain (about 2.4 MW net) But I tend to prefer things challenging. Maybe others have thoughts on this? Again, appreciate the work and responses 👍

Wil give it a try as soon as I'm able, just off the top off my head though if my math is correct that should be 50MW large grid and 5MW small grid. Sounds a bit OP but I'll reserve judgement till I've tried later :)

Just updated the Hydrogen Engines. Give that a go when you get a chance and get back to me. This is one of those things where how it feels will be more important than whether it's accurate or not, simply because it can't be accurate (it's an ICE so should be no more than about 50% efficient, but has to be higher because the gas is lost).

To put some numbers on it, I'm mulling between a 200% efficiency, 1,000% efficiency (roughly the same as the base game but a nice round number), and 700,000,000% (100% efficient fusion). The latter clearly isn't an option for both realism (it takes energy to confine fusion) and gameplay reasons, but I do need to do something.

I'll probably opt for the base 1,000% in the end. Just need some time to think it over.

Well, I mean, that's realistic... except in the real world you'd get the hydrogen back, and that's currently beyond my ability to incorporate due to lack of knowledge about the game files (though it would be fantastic if I could do both that and gas masses).

Obviously it's terrible for gameplay, at least following Keen's current design.

I'll have to check but there might be a value I can tweak to separately increase their efficiency. If it works I'll just have to settle on a ratio somewhere between what it is now and a fusion reaction (since that's the only reason I can think of that you don't get the gas back).

im using the realistic version if that helps

Been playing for a little while with this mod now, the only hiccup i see with it is probably Hydrogen engines. Are you considering incorporating engine changes tweaks? Currently your mod makes them useless as the hydro costs more to produce than the engine provides, so you effectively make a net loss in power. Thanks for the response btw :)

Just at a glance, it seems I may have been too generous to the Arcade variant. If it costs 1/12 as much electricity while also yielding 12x as much hydrogen, that could be a 144x advantage instead of the intended 12x. I'll have to double-check that, and decide which way I'm going to go to correct it (probably keeping the yield but restoring the electrical cost).

Arcade is cheaper (electrically) by design. Since you're having to use more, you're having to make more. As such I tried to maintain long-term electrical parity, so (for example) if it takes 20MW to produce enough fuel for you to fly for 30 minutes in Realistic, it will take the same 20MW for 30 minutes in Arcade - just that you'll have to cycle the tanks more often.

In essence all it's doing is compressing the time (both production and consumption) by a factor of 12 (to match the 2-hour in-game days) while remaining neutral in pretty much every other regard.

I will give the numbers a look over, though, just to make sure I've met that intention.

Really enjoy the idea of this mod, as I'm putting together an extreme modlist for my own masochist playstyle. However, I can't help but feel that the power consumption of the O2 gen should be less in realistic than it is in arcade. Total power consumption should remain the same over the production of a full tank. In my testing it was cheaper to run in arcade, but cost more power for less production in realistic? Great mod though

Yep. As it turns out (at least according to what I could find), the whole "Hydrogen Economy" thing is very slow and very energy intensive in the real world. Probably why it's still not common-place, despite the potential advantages it offers.

Ah right, so in the realistic version things go slower basically?

Thanks!

I mostly made it for more of an immediate sense of feedback. A Large Grid, Large Hydrogen Tank takes a very, very, VERY long time to fill in "realistic" - about 73 hours, 38 minutes, 41.76 seconds, realtime, with a single generator. Arcade is still over 6 hours but that's a little easier to grasp, in my opinion.

Y'know, you're right - I completely forgot to mention that explicitly anywhere.

The difference is time. The Arcade variant is basically scaled to the same 2-hour day the game uses (at least going by the "Sun"), so everything happens 12x faster. That applies to both production and consumption, with any electricity involved being adjusted accordingly. In actual gameplay terms it just means you cycle your tanks 12 times more frequently.

However, the default suit jetpack is an exception. I've re-tweaked it so you still get the same basic 2 minutes of "air time" in both, which matches up with the base game.

Hi Thalyn, sorry if you have it written somewhere and I missed it, but what are the differences between the realistic and arcade versions of this mod?

Incidentally, this is why I list oxygen capacity in U instead of an actual measurement. The U simply stands for "Units", seen as how it's not an exact match to any real-world volume (though I'm sure there's an imperial equivalent to it somewhere). Hydrogen, on the other hand, uses L, in terms of actual litres of compressed (40g/L) hydrogen.

That having been said, the oxygen tank sadly can't be measured in litres. 1 "Oxygen" in-game is the amount of oxygen you would find as a gas within 1m³ of Earth's atmosphere, or approximately 21L. I could re-balance it between the tanks, generators, and the engineer easy enough, but that would leave sealed rooms containing far, far less usable oxygen than they should, since I'm yet to find how to adjust atmospheric equivalent oxygen values.

As a result of this, the tanks I've used should get consumed at the correct speed but list only a fraction of their actual volume, both in gaseous equivalent and physical capacity.

I'd been wondering about which terminology should be used. I've worked the numbers based on the actual volume contained within the tanks - not the equivalent gaseous volume. This is mostly for simplicity's sake, in that a 10,000L tank holds 10,000L of whatever goes into it, whether it's oxygen, hydrogen, 30 weight, breadcrumbs, or sand.

Hydrogen tank:
The internal space of a large grid hydrogen tank is approximately 275 cubic meters.
The density of liquid hydrogen is 0.07 tons per cubic meter.
The 275 cubic meters of internal space of the hydrogen tank can hold 19.25 tons of liquid hydrogen.
19.25 tons of liquid hydrogen is 215.6 million liters of gaseous hydrogen in the standard state, equivalent to 43.12 times the original version.
Therefore, the original hydrogen tank capacity is multiplied by about 40 times before it is realistic.
Whether it's a large grid or a small grid hydrogen tank.

Suppose a large grid of oxygen tanks has an internal volume of 20 cubic meters.
So how much oxygen this tank can store depends on the density of oxygen in the tank.
Naturally more liquid oxygen than gaseous oxygen.
The density of liquid oxygen is 1.14 tons per cubic meter.
The 20 cubic meters of space inside the oxygen tank can hold 22.8 tons of liquid oxygen.
22.8 tons of liquid oxygen is equivalent to 18.24 million liters of gaseous oxygen in the standard state.
In other words, a large grid oxygen tank should store 1824 liters of oxygen, which is equivalent to 182 times the original version.
Only in this way can it be called realistic.
The SE world should have more advanced technology than Earth, but a large grid of original oxygen tanks only store 100,000 liters of oxygen, and even dozens of times less than the current world's civilian oxygen cylinders.
Summary: the original capacity X 182 times is a realistic number.

The mod's tank capacity is too low.
When the oxygen tank fills a 10,000-liter space room with air pressure, it needs to consume 10,000 liters of oxygen.
In other words, the capacity in the oxygen tank refers to the amount of gaseous oxygen, not the space inside the oxygen tank.

Efficacy also needs to be looked into. The only setting I can see which might line up with that is labelled as "FuelProductionToCapacityMultiplier", which seems to be set at 0.005 for both by default. Unless that's just a depreciated flag for the since-removed Ice conversion.

I'm hopeful but cautious. It's entirely possible that it automatically takes the Hydrogen energy density value to figure out how much is used by the engine, and if that value does NOT have the same 3,600 multiplier of thrusters this will be a pain.

Well, 1.189 is here, and along with it are the Hydrogen Engines. It looks like I'll be able to tweak these, but it could take a while given the settings that are afforded.

Off the top of my head it looks like:

The capacity will need to come down. They're 500K and 16K for large and small grids respectively, which seem to be about 20% of their corresponding default tanks, so that gives me a starting points of 54K and 2K respectively to work from. Honestly that sounds OK, so I may well just set it there and leave it.

...

More musings...

I'm having a thought as to how I might be able to justify more efficient thrusters based on currently developing technology: VASIMR thrusters are already a thing, with hydrogen (pure hydrogen) as a potential fuel (along with helium, xenon, argon, etc). Ordinarily these would use an external electrical source for power, but I see no reason why it couldn't use a fuel-cell-like setup to create electrical energy from the same hydrogen it is going to use as a propellant.

Isp of such thrusters are theorised to range from 3,000s to 12,000s, or about 6x to 25x more fuel efficient. If you split the difference (7,500s) and halve it to account for the extra consumption (3,250s) you wind up at about 7.22x the efficiency.

Well, that explains some of my disconnect... the SSME is ~2.3MN, not ~2.3kN. That means it's 518.35kg/s going by TSFC. Total of 1,319.7191l of my simulated propellant, which would yield a burn time of 204.59 seconds off a full Large Grid tank. The default Large Grid Large Hydro Thruster is over twice that output with just over half that fuel consumption.

Uh oh. Granted that's still an order of magnitude smaller tank in my simulation (thus quicker to fill) that's still a pretty massive efficiency oversight on my part, unless I've missed something.

BTW, I hope no-one minds some of my "out loud" thought here. I've come to realise that a few things weren't documented as well as they should have been, so when I revisit things I've been having to basically start from scratch. Plus side, it lets me catch faults like the reverse ratio. Down side, it takes way too long.

At present, I'm leaning towards that 452.3 being the amount of time 1kg of propellant can provide 1N of thrust. Add in a gravity multiplier (since that seems to be common in these equations) and it winds up at around the 1.93 second mark for full 2.3kN output (452.3 / 2,300 x 9.18), which is pretty close to what I'm seeing with the TSFC.

To me, that suggets my H2 thrusters (and, indeed, the ones in the base game) are roughly 10x too efficient.

What makes this more confusing is that the Isp of the SSME (in a vacuum) is 452.3 seconds. My understanding is that this means 1kg of propellant (LOx/LH2) will provide 452.3 seconds of burn. 1kg of propellant in my simulation is, rather conveniently, 2.546L (since that's the same as 1kg of ice turned COH).

TSFC goes on to suggest that 225.37g/(s-kN), or 518.35g/s of fuel consumption, is used by the SSME in the same environment. In other words, now just under 2 seconds for the same amount of propellant - 226x higher consumption.

I suspect this is something I'll have to tweak in my thruster mod instead, since I'm pretty sure I've got the gasses right. But any insight here would be helpful.

Something isn't sitting well with me....

I was running some napkin math the other day, and the longevity this is providing just seems too much. I don't believe I've modelled the gasses wrong (though it's happened before, so...) but something's not right. Reason being that the SSME uses ~1,340l of liquid propellant every second , which has almost twice the density as the COH I'm simulating, to produce some 2.3kN of thrust.

Granted these aren't the most efficient LOx/LH2 engines, they're a pretty good guideline. And that consumption is about 700x greater than what I'm projecting, which is a substantial margin of error.

As always, I'm open to comments and critique. Otherwise, outside of maintenance releases I'll probably let this sit until such time as it's either rendered superfluous by Keen rebalancing the base game or if they add bipropellant support.

Now, you may notice that there's a 55.5% increase in yield for a 33.33% decrease in energy, basically cancelling each other out. Might make it seem silly that I'm even bothering since there's only about a 3.3% overall change. Well, because it's more realistic given the systems involved, and because it gives it better overall compatibility with correctly sized tanks; plus the included tanks will have 7x the capacity.

The good news is that this will have almost no negative effect on existing designs using this mod which don't also use modified tanks. Straight off the bat your actual fuel reserves will have technically gone down by 1/3 (same volume with less effectiveness so it gets used faster), but the included tanks will (when full) ultimately provide over 2x the burn time. Sadly, modified tanks will just lose 1/3 their burn time, but they'll at least fill 55% faster.

So what am I going to do?

In the short term, I'm going to be a tad unrealistic in the interest of simplicity and gameplay. I'm going to simulate a 2:1 ratio instead, which rather conveniently corresponds exactly to water. Under theoretical absolutely optimum circumstances this should actually be the ideal ratio since everything is burned, but in practice not all of the hydrogen will react and you'll wind up with an oxidising flame ultimately damaging the thruster (basically creating an ideal rust environment, since it will be rich in oxygen, water and heat).

What this means for the mod:

- 916.6g of ice (1L) will create 916.6g of COH, or exactly 1:1. That means 1L of ice will yield 2.55L of COH, for a net gain of 55.5% compared to the current 1.64L.
- COH energy density will be set to 3.7344MJ/L. Net loss of 33.33% compared to the current 5.4MJ/L.
- Tanks can be set to their full capacity once more. Net gain of 600% compared to current (suit and bottles will be +50%).

I've been thinking about experimenting again with COH, rather than straight up CHG. Bipropellants don't seem like they're going to happen any time soon (if at all) and "realism" is presently suffering as a result. Since my goal is realism, well...

The problem with this, however, is that I've been doing more research on the subject and it seems I was backwards before. 6:1 oxyhydrogen evidently isn't 6 parts oxygen - it's 6 parts hydrogen! What's more is this value was chosen for logistical purposes, as the optimal ratio for rocket thrust is in fact 4:1 (4 parts hydrogen, of which 2 are unburned; also useful information).

Why is this a problem? Because I was OK with the concept of "throwing out" hydrogen. Unless you were creating extra pure oxygen, you'd invariably wind up with an excess of hydrogen anyway which would have to be vented so you could keep splitting ice. If it's a hydrogen-rich mix, however, that means you'd be "throwing out" oxygen instead - very not-OK.

I haven't played for awhile, thanks for the quick fix as always!

Huh... I must have goofed somewhere. Probably when I corrected that cockpit issue, which means it's (frustratingly) been this way for a while.

Uploading a new version now.

The issue where this mod interferes with the jetpack's vertical movement seems to of returned :-(

You're quite welcome. I haven't had a chance to appreciate it much recently myself, so I'm pleased someone else is able to do so.

I appreciate your work on this mod, I've used it for a long time.