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Hopefully it is. Below is a tall list of likely questions.
- What is the difference between the three [solid] radiator types?
- The white ones are low temperature. (In System Heat: 300 ~ 400K) Their service is towards the common forms of ISRU, to cryogenic storage, and to life support systems. They're on the same level as the fridge in your house and the water cooler for your gaming PC. At this tier they have the tiniest capacity.
- The gray, metal pattern ones are upper mid temperature. (In System Heat, 1000K) They handle things that produce or consume large amounts of heat. Their service is towards the lower end of atomics such as anything with nuclear fission. Currently, that's all that I think is available for 1000K radiators to be used on. But my thermal drill system should land here too.
- The black, Graphene ones are high temperature. (In System Heat: 1300K) Their service is towards mid-upper atomics, so, primarily fusion tech and late-game fission tech depend on them. They struggle with high thrust fusion and any antimatter tech, though, and that is why any reasonable ship design always has great eagle wings of Graphene.
- How do I make more exotic materials like Fusion Pellets, Fissile Fuel, Liquid Deuterium and Antimatter? (etc)
Not all of these materials are exotic, and most conversion recipes aren't available without Rational Resources Companion. To the ones that are available, find the specialty (of Sterling Systems' refineries) that the material applies to, then pick the related part and find and equip the recipe onto it. (The parts use a converter slot feature from another mod and avoid PAW clutter.)
- Fusion Pellets are made at the Sterling Titan Foundries.
- Liquid Deuterium can be extracted from Water via the Hydrolox recipe at the Sterling General Chemistry Centers.
- Fissile Fuel and Fissile Pebbles are made at the Sterling Fissile Foundries.
- Antimatter is not currently available. A dedicated "accelerator" kit is planned for that corner of the ISRU field.
- What is the Purpose of the Conical Shadow Shield, and why does it weight so much?
The part is explained on its own section of the Shields page. It lacks functional purpose but it still has uses. It's quite massive in order to help it to resist the heat that leaks from engines attached after it.
- What is the purpose of the "Open" Super Shields?
It allows players to build giant saucer ships that don't need a a big robotic door (or a door at all) or hackery of fairings and robotics to get into and out of. Part of the purpose of the super heavy shield is to build traveling stations that are protected and weight balanced on both major sides for potential operations at low stellar orbits.
- How do you manage/store "thermal" energy/power? Is it like EC?
The MIHS family of inline heatsinks have two primary roles:
- To hold the largest amounts of useful heat energy, ThermalPower.
- To provide thermal inertia and slow the overheat of all ISRU devices on the craft. ThermalPower is 1 MW of heat as ElectricCharge is 1 kW of electricity. Not all daily working machinery run on electricity, and part of the point of Sterling Systems is to hype that up.
- These parts are HUGE! How do I get them to space...?
There are upper limits to what can reasonably be launched into space. Beyond those limits is the territory of mods for orbital construction and mods for automated resupply. Where those limits are depends on how much you're willing to put in the effort to build a HUGE-ER launch vehicle or to build the orbital launch site.
- Do I need Continuous Collisions or Physics range extender due to the size of these parts? Is there another option?
The stock pack/unpack distance is around 150m. No single Sterling part exceeds that size so you do not need Physics Range Extender. You will need it, however, if your settlement as a whole exceeds that limit.
- How do I stick these colony parts to the ground?
Currently, you don't. No configs for anti-drift or anchoring are currently included. I intend for players to alert me to their choices and either create their own configs or let me know their favorite so I can write for them.
- Spawn Points and Landing Pads, where in Kerbol are you able to put these? Its not flat anywhere!
The construction field has sizes between 25x50m and 100x100m. It IS the flat. Be sure to spawn it with launch clamps attached and hidden underneath, and be sure to never press Space while you're there.
- Do they actually allow you to spawn rockets from the VAB?
Yes. The whole point of the Sterling construction sites are to be an accessory to Sandcastle or Extraplanetary Launchpads.
- What mods complement Sterling and unlock its full potential?
Currently, I cannot think of any particular mod that complements Sterling Systems, not intentionally, anyway. This mod is not really made to be the yang to someone's particular yin but players tend to promote this mod and Far Future Technologies as a great pair.
By contrast, my other major mods do complement something and I can name such pairing easily:
- Moldavite Machines is a greenhouse pack and complements the big 4 life support mods (USI, TAC, Snacks, Kerbalism). Other such mods must bring their own configs.
- Rational Resources exists to add value to mining resources for TAC LS and Kerbalism, and to add value to cryofuel mods and RealFuels.
Due to the high emphasis on thermodynamics, one mod that counts towards "unlocking full potential" is System Heat. There is a lot of radiator technology but without that mod, it all ends up 1-dimensional and tasteless. Players will naturally only ever pick the Graphene radiators for the big MW numbers to take care of all the onboard ISRU and secondarily, the arbitrary amount of waste heat from nuclear engines.
- Is this [World Power solar panel] how it's suppose to work? Doesn't seem to be doing anything.
The part is somehow already broken. (They tend to be rather fragile.) That's why it offers you nothing. Full details are given at World Power.
- How to use the thermal engines
You use them the same way you use any electric engine, however, instead of ElectricCharge, these engines ask for ThermalPower and the (current, only adequate) source for that is the extremely heavy Pebble Bed reactors. In a nutshell:
- Attach one or more thermal nozzles to your craft.
- Throttle limit them until they meet the desired TWR.
- Do some math and figure out the required ThermalPower for that TWR. It should be as simple as
Throttle fraction x Rated ThermalPower demand x Count of this engine - Attach one or more thermal reactors which produce more than the total amount of ThermalPower.