Kerbalism Bridge

Recommended to visit the Forum to view the release post

Preface

As many of you probably know, judicator, the original author of zKerbalismSystemHeat and zKerbalismFFT, has been away from the community for quite some time, and both projects have effectively been unmaintained for years.

At the same time, Kerbalism itself continues to thrive thanks to the ongoing work of R-T-B and many other contributors. As a long-time fan of the Kerbalism, Near Future Technologies, Far Future Technologies, and SystemHeat ecosystem, I felt it was worth keeping these integrations alive and up to date. To that end, I've taken over maintenance and future development under the MIT license.

This release brings together a wide range of fixes, community contributions, previously unmerged pull requests, and other compatibility updates needed to keep everything working with modern versions of Kerbalism. Those efforts have ultimately led to the creation of KerbalismBridge.

Introduction

Notes: Please back up the archive in advance before installation. This update will cause the vehicle modules in your existing archive to be replaced, so you need to re-enter each vehicle and open them.

Kerbalism Bridge extends Kerbalism to advanced power and thermal parts — reactors, converters, harvesters, capacitors, cryo tanks, and more. Those parts show up in the Kerbalism planner, pull from Kerbalism resource stores in flight, and keep simulating on unloaded vessels during timewarp instead of freezing at unload-time values.

The download ships as several optional GameData packages: a main bridge (minimum for SystemHeat) plus satellite mods you add only when you need them.

Lineage and improvements

This project continues the work of judicator/KerbalismSystemHeat and judicator/KerbalismFFT (originally by Alexander Rogov). It is maintained at Aebestach/KerbalismBridge and is not an official judicator release.

Compared with upstream KerbalismSystemHeat, Kerbalism Bridge keeps the core idea — Kerbalism resource accounting for SystemHeat parts, planner support, and background simulation — and adds:

• Loaded-vessel integration for fission reactors and engines (upstream mainly covered unloaded vessels).
• Background thermal simulation for SystemHeat loops on unloaded vessels, so long timewarps do not leave heat loops frozen at unload-time values.
• Two integration layers (Layer A / Layer B) instead of one style for every part — see below.
• Optional satellites for NFE capacitors, SpaceDust harvesters, CryoTanks, dynamic radiation decay, and more.
• zKerbalismPluginHost loading from PluginData/ (do not put Bridge DLLs in Plugins/).

Compared with upstream KerbalismFFT, this fork keeps antimatter containment, fusion reactor/engine planner and background behaviour, science and reliability patches, and industrial FFT processors — and improves:

• Loaded-vessel Kerbalism routing for fusion reactors (power and propellant), not only background simulation.
• Fusion waste heat in Bridge background thermal sim when the main bridge is installed.
• CryoTanks moved to a separate zKerbalismCryo satellite for clearer maintenance.

Version history: CHANGELOG.md.

Layer A and Layer B (brief)

Bridge does not use one integration style for every part. Pick one layer per part:

Quick rule: parts that already use Kerbalism ProcessController / Harvester → Layer A. Parts with mod-specific modules (SystemHeat fission, FFT fusion, NFE capacitors, …) → Layer B. Do not mix both on the same part.

Packages

Main bridge (minimum for SystemHeat)

Satellites (optional)

Requirements

Installation

1. Install Kerbalism, Module Manager, and zKerbalismPluginHost.
2. Remove legacy GameData/zKerbalismSystemHeat and any old Plugins/ copies of Bridge DLLs. If upgrading from pre-1.0 Bridge, install the new zKerbalismNFE satellite for NFE capacitors.
3. Copy zKerbalismBridge + zKerbalismProcess + zKerbalismNative into GameData (minimum bridge).
4. Add satellites as needed (zKerbalismFFT, zKerbalismNFE, zKerbalismSpaceDust, zKerbalismCryo, zKerbalismDynamicRadiation, zKerbalismSterlingSystems).
5. Delete ModuleManager.ConfigCache and restart KSP.

Licensing

See LICENSE. Runtime dependencies remain under their respective licenses.