PING – Portal Icarus Neural Gateway

A Dyson Sphere Program mod that adds a late-game building: the PING portal. It charges from your power grid like an accumulator and, once charged, teleports your mecha to another PING portal on a different planet or star (up to 50 light-years away). It works in normal games; no sandbox tools are needed.

• Mod GUID: ping.horstdaspferd
• Version: 0.9.10
• Dependencies: BepInEx, CommonAPI, LDBTool, DSPModSave

Status: work in progress. Report problems together with your BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

Features

• Paired portals: both ends need a PING portal. Energy is consumed at the sending portal only.
• Accumulator-style charging: portals charge from the power grid. Storage is 10 GJ, enough for the full 50 ly range.
• Distance-based cost: 192 MJ per light-year.
• Destination window: opens when you click a portal. It lists all planets and can be filtered and searched.
• Custom model: a three-step sci-fi podium with a warm orange LED edge.
• Assembler only: the portal cannot be hand-crafted. Stack size 5, crafting time 40 s.

Installation

With r2modman or the Thunderstore app

Install the mod. All dependencies are installed automatically.

Manual

1. Install BepInEx 5 and the dependencies listed below.
2. Copy PingMod.dll and the file pingmod (the model AssetBundle, no file extension) together into BepInEx/plugins/<any folder>/.

If pingmod is missing, the mod still works but shows the vanilla accumulator model and writes model bundle not found to the log.

Unlocking and building

• Technology: Interstellar Power Transmission
• Recipe (assembler, 40 s):

Place the portal inside the range of your Power-Grid and it starts charging.

Usage

1. Build a PING portal on the origin planet and one on the destination planet. Planets without a portal are not offered as destinations.
2. Let the origin portal charge. The energy bar in the window shows the stored energy.
3. Stand on the platform or within 2 m of its edge and click the portal to open the destination window.
4. Pick a destination. You can either use Galactic Map View and select an Planet or use the filters or the search field if needed:
   • portal filter: only planets that have a PING portal
   • "<= N ly": only targets within range
   • "This star": only planets of the current star
5. Click Teleport. A click on a row only selects the target. If the target cannot be used, the status line says why (not enough energy, too far, cooldown, no portal there).

A trip costs 192 MJ per light-year. A full 50 ly jump needs 9.6 GJ.

Configuration

The file is BepInEx/config/ping.horstdaspferd.cfg. It is created on first start.

Recipe, model and usage range are fixed on purpose.

Uninstalling safely

If you remove the mod while PING portals still exist in a save, the game may complain about unknown buildings.

1. Make a backup of your save.
2. Set RemoveAllPortals = true in the config and load your save.
3. The mod dismantles every PING portal and returns one portal item to your inventory for each. Planets are processed when they are loaded, so visit every planet that has a portal.
4. Save, quit, and then remove the mod.

Troubleshooting

Credits and license

• Mod code, 3D model, textures and icon: HorstdasPferd
• The sandbox-check patch is based on DSP_FastTravelEnabler by hetima; the destination window was inspired by DSP_PlanetFinder by hetima.
• Thanks to the authors of BepInEx, Harmony, LDBTool, CommonAPI and DSPModSave.

See CONTRIBUTORS.md for the full list. The mod is released under the license in the LICENSE file.

Source

https://github.com/HorstdasPferd/PING