Stock Antenna Balance

Uses ModuleManager to adjust the range, power usage and other attributes of the stock antennas and how they function with the new CommNet that was added in KSP 1.2. This makes it much more important to use a mix of direct and relay antennas to communicate with Kerbin's Deep Space Network (DSN).

Current effects:

Full details are available at GitHub, including sample network link strengths between planets.

• Direct-connection antennas are changed so that you can't reach back from Jool/Eeloo without relying on a relay network.
• Stock antennas now have better defined niches.
• Relay antennas are now equivalent in power (or stronger) then DSN antennas on Kerbin's surface. This makes it possible to disable the extra ground stations on Kerbin's surface in the difficulty options.
• The drawback is that relay antennas also consume a lot more power when transmitting data and should not be used on science-gathering probes / spacecraft.
• Relay antennas are also heavier and more expensive and have constant power draw. The optional contracts will give you guidelines on how much battery capacity you need to operate through Kerbin's shadow.

Effect on existing games:

• May cause loss of probe / craft control due to changed CommNet ranges.
• May cause power issues due to the constant power demand of the relay antennas.
• Science gathering spacecraft may be unable to send data back home if they only have relay antennas installed (and not enough battery capacity to process and transmit the data).

Removal is easy as long as you have not used any of the antennas which were added by this mod, removing this addon's folder under GameData/ will revert your antennas to the stock capabilities.

Recommended KSP difficulty settings:

These are available in the "Settings / Difficulty Options / Advanced" menu and can be changed at any time in a career save.

• DSN Modifier - use a value between 0.02 and 0.10
• Turn off "Enable Extra Groundstations"
• Occlusion Modifier, Vac = 1.02
• Occlusion Modifirer, Atm = 0.98

If you don't adjust these values, you'll find that the DSN ground stations are often going to take priority over those relay satellites that you lovingly placed into KEO orbits.

Affected Mods/Addons:

There are ModuleManager (MM) patches for the following mods:

• DMagic Orbital Science (Soil Mosture and SIGINT)
• SXT