Export thread

Still playing Kerbal Space Program.

The thing uses conic approximations for orbitals. It's actually quite good. Unlike the last time I played, there's more than the Mun and Minmus (the small outer moon)--there's a whole solar system. Duna is the Kerbin equivalent to Venus, and your first window of opportunity to visit (based on phase angles) is on day 54 of the game. I'm on day 41ish, so I don't have much time to prepare, because another window doesn't come around until around 200 days later.

Because the window of opportunity is so small, I want to launch everything I need to get there in one day. Thus far, I've been launching ,orbiting, and landing single spacecraft on the Mun and back. So, to practice, I launched the skeleton of a satellite into orbit, along with a bunch of fuel tanks. The satellite was about 60 tons, which is pretty much at the top end of what I can lift with stock parts. Each fuel tank was 62 tons if you include the delivery vehicle.

Then I had to manage capturing those spacecraft in Munar orbar, each about 10 minutes apart from the other. Once in place, I had to match each fuel tank to the satellite orbital plane and Hohmann transfer to meet up, match velocities, and then carefully bump the docking ports together. A big pain in the ass when you're dealing huge masses. This is definitely a game for nerds. I did it in two batches..once with three fuel tanks to prove the concept, and then the next with the remaining 6.


The satellite itself was the tallest thing I've built, and I actually maxed out my hanger height building it.


Liftoff!


The fuel tank component


Each tank weighs 36 tons full, plus the delivery vehicle. It really does take that many rockets to get into orbit. I'm using an asparagus style lifter, with each tank feeding fuel into it's neighbor in an S configuration. Each tank drops off in pairs until I end up with one single tank and rocket just on the edge of orbit for circularizing the orbit. Then I drop off all the big tanks and use the little lander to get to the Mun.



Juggling multiple insertions and orbital maneuvers.


Fuel tank and delivery vehicle, intercepting my already-placed satellite.


Separation of structural support and empty fuel tanks and rockets.


On approach. Slowing to match velocity.


Docking with RCS thrusters


Delivery vehicle separation.


Using RCS thrusters to fly retrograde until my orbit decays.


Crash! The unmanned delivery vehicle is no more, and no longer cluttering up my orbital space.



My fuel station in all of its glory 40KM off the surface of the Mun, with Kerbin in the background. This satellite configuration probably has enough on-board fuel to feed 20 missions to the outer planets.

Naturally, I plan on hanging one of these around each of them, too

When this game hits $10, I am so all over it.

I've never been able to get into it. I've tried but it's just not tripping my triggers.

Dave said:

I've never been able to get into it. I've tried but it's just not tripping my triggers.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you want its sister game, Herbal Space Program?

--Patrick

The game looks awesome, but I just know I'm going to spend at least the first two days gleefully blowing things up.

bhamv3 said:

The game looks awesome, but I just know I'm going to spend at least the first two days gleefully blowing things up.

Click to expand...

Well, in the new Career mode, you basically start out with a manned pod, two solid fuel rockets with no gimbals, and no landing gear or parachutes.

So basically a manned bottle rocket, with no way to control or land the thing. I'm lucky that I hit the water in just such a way that the pod sheared off, and my Kerbal survived. But I got science for it, and so was able to upgrade to some better equipment pretty quick

How much math and science does one need to know to play this?
or is it more intuitive?

It is not intuitive at all. Seriously. But fun. It's kind of like Dwarf Fortress in how unforgiving it is..however, you can keep killing your poor Kerbals without losing the game entirely.

You can get by with intuition, but until you actually come to some understanding of orbital mechanics, the game will be pretty rough for you. Eventually, if you stick with it, you'll find yourself keeping an eye on thrust-to-weight ratio, Δv values for each stage of your rocket, rocket Isp values for space and atmosphere, etc. See this entry in the KSP wiki for an example of what I mean. Knowing all those formulas will really help your game play, but it's not really necessary to pull out the old-slide rule in order to get to the Mun and back. But if you want to do anything that requires more precision, like docking or dropping several components in the same few meters on a planet for a base, you'll need to do some math.

The game has added some very rudimentary tutorials to show you the very basics of prograde and retorgrade acceleration, and that kind of thing. But they only really touch the tip of the iceberg.

That said, the devleoper is very third-party add-on friendly, and there's a huge repository of them to choose from. These range from MechJeb, which almost acts as an autopilot of sorts, to add-ons that create new features like moon mining. I use couple of add-ons that keep orbital inclination, periapsis, apoapsis, surface speed, etc on my screen as I play, for convenience.

I know my husband uses a mod that speeds up time for when he does deeper space missions.

Dei said:

I know my husband uses a mod that speeds up time for when he does deeper space missions.

Click to expand...

That's built in..no need for a mod

Oh, and though I don't use them much yet (having learned to play KSP in an earlier version that didn't have them), the new maneuver node system evidently makes things a lot more non-mathy

Wow, I've made it to the Mun, hell, I've landed on the Mun, but that orbital fuel station is an idea above my paygrade. Kudos.

Really getting into the maneuver nodes now that I'm doing inter-planetary transfers.


Lesson 1: Don't give yourself enough only enough delta-v to escape Kerbin and hope to hohmann transfer once you hit the Sun's SOI. While it worked for 5 ships to Duna, you can see two here that got re-captured by Kerbal and I had to give them a bigger push when they swung back around. Those two ships arrived like 30 days later because of the mistake. The takeaway: Try to delta-v all the way to Duna in one maneuver. If you line up the phase angles right, you can do it.

Lesson 2: Make sure you have enough fuel. My very first ship to Duna (the kethane scanner from the mining add-on) had enough fuel to get into orbit, but not enough to move to a meaningful position to scan the planetary surface. I had to send a tugboat with enough fuel to get the scanner to my refueling base.

(As a side note, my fuel satellite on duna looks so puny because I reconfigured the whole thing to be modular. Now I ship the head and tail seperately, and can insert as many fuel and docking sections in between as I want. For Duna, I just went with one of each so I wouldn't have to juggle as many ships.)



Lesson 3: This goes with lesson 2...Airbraking is your friend. Duna doesn't have much of an atmosphere, but any atmosphere at all will slow you down. Hitting Duna at 11KM (just a few km above the highest mountain range) can shave about 1100 delta-v off of the circularization burn. That's a lotta fuel saved. (That little orange splat is my maneuver node for circularization..they've very handy.)




Lesson 4: Bring enough resources the first time. I set up my mining base on Duna, but I didn't put enough power modules on the ship. I had to fly in a solar panel array and link it up (via the Kerbal Attachment System add-on) in order to have enough juice to mine for more than a few seconds.

Since taking these pictures, I've refined the ships a little--such as replacing the solar array with a 20-ton array of radioisotope thermoelectric generators similar to what we currently use to power satellites in real life. They don't provide much power, but 64 of them do the job, and they work at night

Now, I also have a whole mining set-up on and around Ike, Duna's only moon. My latest mission: Send a refueling satellite to Jool, the gas giant. I can't mine kethane there, so it'll just have to be an emergency way-point in case I get get stuck exploring the outer planets without enough fuel to get home.

I'll ask the crass question - how many astronauts did you lose figuring all that out?

I actually didn't lose any on Duna. I did all of my catastrophic learning on the Mun way back when I first started playing. My initial escape trajectories from Kerbal were so half-hearted because I was afraid of catapulting myself into an un-recoverable orbit. But because of that, they were completely recoverable.

After the scanner fiasco (I ended up with like 50 delta-v after achieving orbit...I almost didn't make it), I made big rockets, and refueled them in Kerbin orbit before sending them out. Most of them arrived at Duna with 3-4K dV worth of fuel, more than enough for my purposes. Duna's about 1/3 the gravity of Kerbal. More than the Mun, but I've got plenty of experience landing ships on Kerbal. My chutes didn't work as well as I'd hoped in the thin atmosphere, but I had plenty of fuel for rocket-assisted landing.

The big question should be how many Kerbal's I've killed trying to learn how to make flyable space-planes.

My husband loves this game. I keep threatening him with starting an anti-Kerbalcide group. I swear he blows them up on purpose.

GasBandit said:

When this game hits $10, I am so all over it.

Click to expand...

Not $10 yet. But 40% off right now ($16)

So I got mine yesterday, started playing. Man, science is hard to come by. I'm also going to have to RL research some rocket designs, I can get into orbit fairly easily, and my best suborbital shot gets me over 3km at apoapsis using an unmanned probe. I just read that apparently I'm expected to do EVAs in every biome on Kerbal, and the easiest way to get the "low atmosphere" EVA reports is apparently to make planetfall, get out, and jump up and down. And here I've been defying death with goo and Science ScootyPuffJr. like a sucker!

Yeah, I hear that verson .23 made science harder. For an old hand at the game, I could max the science tree in like 4-5 launches.My last career run through, I got to Duna in 4 launches, and came back with like 45,000 science points. Heh.

A beginner absolutely couldn't do that, though, so I'm not sure where the proper balance is there.

I did a flyby of Mun. Was kinda difficult with the tech I had, but paid off big time. "High above mun" goo, materials test, EVA and crew report netted me about 200 science, by far the most I've gotten from any mission thus far. Finally got solar panels and the science doohickey that lets you do more than just 1 experiment per pod, finally. Oh, and a thermometer, which will help too.

(Playing on my laptop currently, so the pictures are sucky)

So Yesterday I got a crew to the Mun.

TO the Mun.



They're still there. Had a little accident during landing and the vehicle tumped over on its side. I tried using the SAS reaction wheels to sort of angle it up a mountain and use that as a ramp to get back up, but it was no go, the friction was just too much. So, Jebediah and two redshirts I hired are currently Marooned on Mun. Maruned?

Incidentally, that Mobile Processing Lab that makes up the bulk of that lander's body is a bitch to get into orbit. Or at least it is when you don't have any good Rockomax engine parts or fuel tanks researched yet. Which I didn't. So how did I get that pig up there? Wellllll... Say hello to my "Mun Express."



Clocking in at 288 individual components and I don't know HOW many tons, the Mun Express is a hodgepodge solid rocket boosters clamped to a towering pencil of Rockomax X200-16 fuel tanks and "Poodle" engines. It's a six stage monstrosity that blows up on 75% of launches. But that one that goes well gets the job done... barely. It's a rokkit that'd do any Ork proud.

Pictured below: The Mun Express in a typical launch abort.




After a couple dozen or so more attempts to get a Mun Express back to the Mun to pick up the stranded Kerbals there (75% went as above, 20% were destroyed impacting the Mun, the remaining 5% didn't have enough fuel to escape Mun after landing), I figured it was just not going to work, and I'd best set about getting science some other way to improve my tech to the point that I could make a decent go of a rescue. So I went back to the drawing board today and made created the Mun Light Science vessel.




The MLS used new-to-me innovative ideas such as smaller solid boosters attached to the larger solid boosters that decouple in mid-stage once they're spent, and radially mounted liquid fuel tanks that are drained first and also are jettisoned once empty. Shucking the heavy and unwieldy Mobile Processing Lab (which enables the reuse of science equipment, othewise without one each facility can only be used once per mission), I resolved to make do with simply one Jr science lab and two Goo containers. The rest of the science payoff would have to come from crew reports, EVA reports, soil samples and the like. Furthermore, I decided to go to Minmus instead of Mun, as I heard it was easier to land on with much lower gravity.

Boy was it ever. I didn't take screenshots during the mission (because I just figured out tonight it was F1 instead of PrtScrn) The much lighter MLS had a much easier and more reliable time getting into Kerbal orbit, executing its transfer burn, and landed on Minmus with so much fuel to spare I was able to take back off and land somewhere else for another round of EVAs and samples. Then I detached from the science portion of the vehicle, and my command module with its tiny engine thrusted its way back home over the next dozen or so days. I gained just over 700 science from that trip, a huge enough reward to enable research of 5 4th tier disciplines, giving me access to my first truly useful Rockomax brand engine, the "Skipper," as well as a decent sized fuel tank, my first docking ports, a command module that seats 3, a hitchhiker container that can seat 4 (so now a real rescue craft that isn't sticking two guys in an empty science lab is possible), better solar panels and batteries, and actual lander components so that maybe I won't have to land the entire rocket Flash Gordon style next time I travel to another world.

Pictured below - what I left on Minmus



So now I'm building an experimental vessel to learn the ins and outs of docking and boosting stuff into orbit to stay there. I hope to build an orbital refueling station sort of like Tinwhistler, albeit on a much lower scale because I'm a long way behind him on research.

So tonight I discovered pushing fuel tanks into orbit takes about a 13:1 ratio at my current tech level!



This was, of course, after three hours of failed designs involving all kinds of intricate stages of both liquid and solid boosters. Finally I said "screw it" and just set up an asparagus-staged cluster of my biggest fuel tanks and engines. The above fuel tanks and nacelles drop off in opposing pairs as they run dry of fuel, which the first pair does pretty quickly because in addition to being siphoned off to the other tanks by hoses, ALL the tank stacks have their own Rockomax (tm) Skipper engines as well.



Here's what my fuel lifter looks like after two pairs of nacelles have dropped away. The top half of the central stack is the fuel tank I'm lifting. You can see the docking ports and reaction thrusters on the sides, and the ball on top is the Stayputnik (TM) probe controller which is steering the rocket, and later which will become the "brain" of the fuel can if I need it to reorient itself for docking later.
Here's the little bastard in orbit, finally.



As you can see it's a big floating fuel drum with self-orienting retractable solar panels on the sides to juice up the batteries that power the probe CPU and the running lights. There's a 100-unit tank of monothruster fuel between the main cylinder and the Stayputnik for the RCS thrusters.

So I figured, well, all very well and good, let's just boost another one up there and dock with it!

(Not pictured - CRASSSHSHHHHHH)

So today, Gas Bandit learns patience. Approaching the existing module at 50m/s is too fast to slow down in time. I got it down to about 10 but didn't reorient correctly and the second segment literally decapitated itself on the first, leaving the Stayputnik module to orbit alone while the rest of the second segment became rudderless debris and went spinning off into the void. Fortunately it didn't damage the first segment much, just set it spinning, which I got under control.

So, next time I just boosted the second segment kinda-sorta nearby, then went and designed myself a tug. Basically the same rocket only instead of the fuel station segment at the top, it's just a command module with a docking ring on the nose and a small fuel tank and engine on the back, along with the usual litany of RCS etc.

I spend the next hour catching segment two and getting it caught up to segment one. With that little tug, slow and deliberate is the name of the game.





Finally I get the suckers close together, and close the last hundred meters at less than 0.5m/s.



The tension is palpable. I briefly have to switch control to the first segment, to reorient it for docking, then switch back before there is a collision.



Below: Having spent upwards of five real hours getting to this point from design to docking, I begin chanting my mantra: "Don't fuck up. Don't fuck up. Don't fuck up."



"Don't fuck up don't fuck up don't fuck up..."



"DON'TFUCKUPDON'TFUCKUPDON'TFUCKUPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH"



CLANK!



Success!!! I proudly regard my first, puny space station, christened the Fuel Utility Station, and wonder how the hell Tinwhistler built his massive fueling complex without putting in a marathon 24 hour session.

At any rate, I spend another RL half hour pushing the station into a higher orbit so it goes slower and is easier to catch (I had to chase the damn thing around the planet a dozen times at 145km), and once I have it stable in a circular orbit at 300km, I push as much monofuel and regular fuel out of the tug and into the station as I can (all but just a few drops for the retroburn to get home), detach the tug and send it home.

Jebediah is as good as rescued, right?

Right?

(Also I can't believe there's not a science reward for docking a ship for the first time).

BREAKING NEWS - Headline reads, Hero Kerbalnauts rescued from Munar Gulag!

After about 2 game weeks of mucking about getting science and building orbital refueling stations, the Kerbals I accidentally marooned on Mun have been returned safely home, and even managed to scrape up a soil sample and some reports for science along the way. Also, I have my new computer now, so the graphical fidelity should be much better.

The Rescue Vehicle lifts off from the pad:



Really, docking with the refueling station is almost as much of a trial as getting to the Mun is. Especially since I placed the reaction thrusters in such a way that they're most useful in lander mode and not so much in booster mode. Eventually I just end up getting kinda close and then switching over to controlling the station itself, and maneuver the station to dock with the ship.



Having refilled the fuel and reaction tanks, the remote controlled rescue vehicle strikes out for the Mun.



Thanks to the abundant amount of fuel, I am able to position and land at the pole, near the crash site. In fact, it's only a 5 km jog from the wrecked Munar Express to the Rescue Lander.



The trip is made easier by extensive use of the EVA jetpacks. Though one of the junior members of the crew gets a little overzealous and manages to overshoot the Rescue Lander by over 500m.





It's a little bit of a race, as the mission operation area on the surface is in the shadow of a large polar mountain - and the sun won't come up for days. This imposes a time limit on the window of escape - the Stayputnik control module on the rescue lander won't function without electricity, and though I installed a generous amount of battery power, it won't last forever without the sun hitting the solar panels. If the batteries run dry, there's no manual override - the Kerbals will have to sit in the Hitchhiker module until the sun comes up and power is restored.

Fortunately everything goes smoothly, and the Rescue Lander lifts off with plenty of electricity to spare.



It turns out to have been a very good thing to have refueled in Kerbin orbit - liftoff and escaping Mun's gravity well uses up almost all of the remaining fuel. Fortunately from the great altitude, correction burns are cheap and fast. A course is plotted for maximum aerobraking as the ship will slingshot around the far side of Kerbin.



Everything goes remarkably well. The lander survives re-entry, the parachutes open and aren't yanked off. Jebediah can't help making a crew report from above the highlands - the one biome I hadn't exhausted.



The doughty lander and her crew of Munar refugees touches down in a bright, lush highland meadow. Weeks after their ill-fated mission, they are home.



Next time - Time to send them right back to the Mun again! HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Call me weak, I installed MechJeb. Whoo buddy.

GasBandit said:

Call me weak, I installed MechJeb. Whoo buddy.

Click to expand...

I have a personal rule with mechjeb: If I can't do it by hand, I don't use Mechjeb for it. Once I've learned to do the maneuvers, and grow tired of the repetition, I have no problem letting the computer automate them for me. I do most of my orbital maneuvers now with the maneuver nodes and don't bother with mechjeb much except for the tedium tasks of taking off and landing.

I mean, I've launched hundreds (maybe thousands) of ships. The fun value of executing a gravity turn at 7K altitude grew stale a long time ago. But still, it's nice to have the skill, because sometimes you build a monstrosity that mechjeb can't fly right, and you just gotta muscle it up into space by hand. And if you don't know how to do that, you're screwed.

Some people look down on mechjeb, but I don't really care if/how people use it. KSP is a sandbox game, and some people like to do the math, and others like to build stuff and put it in space without a lot of tweaking. If you're having fun, that's really all that matters.

Tinwhistler said:

I have a personal rule with mechjeb: If I can't do it by hand, I don't use Mechjeb for it. Once I've learned to do the maneuvers, and grow tired of the repetition, I have no problem letting the computer automate them for me. I do most of my orbital maneuvers now with the maneuver nodes and don't bother with mechjeb much except for the tedium tasks of taking off and landing.

I mean, I've launched hundreds (maybe thousands) of ships. The fun value of executing a gravity turn at 7K altitude grew stale a long time ago.

Some people look down on mechjeb, but I don't really care if people use it. KSP is a sandbox game, and some people like to do the math, and others like to build stuff and put it in space without a lot of tweaking. If you're having fun, that's really all that matters.

Click to expand...

Ok, I feel less lame now that I know you use it too. Plus, all the Mechjeb panels are starting to make it feel less "Apollo 13" and more "Star Trek." Which is kinda cool.

So far I've conformed to the same standards you do - everything I'm having mechjeb do, I've already done myself once the hard way. We'll see if I stick to that when it's time to visit Duna.

But in the meantime, I've been building a Munar Fuel Utility station, and have made a second successful foray both to Mun and Minmus. That friggin mobile processing lab is a bitch to lug around when you don't have mainsails or jumbo tanks yet. I've basically resigned myself to never landing one on the Mun, because I need the Munar science harvest to get the tech to get the capability to land the MPL on Mun-sized objects. So I'll probably have to live with one-shot science equipment until it's time to go to another planet.

I've had this game for a while now, but kept hitting a wall when it came to getting past the first science node. Now that I've finally figured out (aka googled) how to generate science, I might be able to get somewhere.

Fair warning, Duna's a bitch to land on. Even with Mechjeb.

It has considerably more gravity than the Mun, but much less atmo than Kerbin, so you end up with the worst of both worlds.

I ended up ditching mechjeb, and doing a suicide burn from 150K by hand. Basically killed all of my horizontal speed and fell straight down, kicking on the engines every now and then to slow my descent and aid the parachutes.

It'd probably help if I didn't tend toward relatively heavy landing vehicles.[DOUBLEPOST=1388694354,1388693940][/DOUBLEPOST]

Gared said:

I've had this game for a while now, but kept hitting a wall when it came to getting past the first science node. Now that I've finally figured out (aka googled) how to generate science, I might be able to get somewhere.

Click to expand...

It took me 8 launches to get enough science for Duna in version .23. 10 to get enough science to get to Jool. At 14, I maxed the science tree, but probably could have done it two launches sooner due to mistakes like forgetting to get some EVA science, or spending points on the wrong trees too soon.

The key is putting multiple science modules on your ship, so you can get all of the far orbit, near orbit, and surface science in one launch. I usually put 4 or 6 of everything on a single ship, so that I can try to sneak in some extra science in on a moon flyby if I can, or hitting multiple biomes if I have the dV for it.

Then, when I am on my way back to kerbin, I eva, take off all the science from the modules, and move it to the command module (something you couldn't do in .22), and drop away the heavy science parts before splashing down.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p8blkhb7bjbd7tg/Untitled Space Craft.craft

This is a link to a thrust-plate style asparagus lifter that I use to get large craft into orbit (or for smaller craft to ensure I have enough delta-v to get to the outer planets). You can put it in the VAB folder under your save game/crafts folder in ksp.

All the parts are stock (.23) except for a MechJeb module, but it does use mainsails and orange tanks so you may have to open it in sandbox mode to see it, depending on how far your research is. I've made a video so that you can see it in action as I push a 74 ton delivery vehicle to the Mun with it. Hopefully the idea it will help you guys out on the bigger missions. Once you have enough science to get 1x1 structural plates, i-beams, and fuel lines, you can build this kind of thing, using any available combination of tanks and rockets.



Forgive my crappy voice. I'm getting over a cold

started playing again a few weeks ago after the .23.5 version update.

This version was made in cooperation with NASA, and they've added asteroids to rendezvous with.


Pretty much the hardest thing I've ever done, and MechJeb's automations are pretty much useless. That said, the node editor made it a lot easier to line things up precisely, since the little drag-bars on the maneuver nodes are shitty for doing anything with precision.

I watched a youtube video tutorial on the procedure, and that was pretty much useless too. I pretty much waited until the asteroid was a few hours out from kerbin, made a tight orbit to intersect, and burned a shit ton of fuel to match orbits once I was close. After that, it was like docking, but easier, because I just had to hit it anywhere with the claw. I had just enough fuel left slow it the 100ms or so I needed to keep it in Kerbin's SOI.

Success!

After I captured the thing and got it in a stable (though heavily inclined and eccentric) Kerbin orbit, it was much easier to rendezvous with. I spent 3 large rockets worth of fuel pushing the thing in a circular, non-inclined orbit at 260K.



I only got 60 science for EVAing out and chipping a piece off. What a load of crap.

So as I mentioned in another thread, the new version of KSP hosed my save with the changes in the science trees, so I started over. Not that big a deal, I know better how to do things this time.

After a couple trips to Mun and Minmus, I'm tired of going all the way there and trucking the data all the way back for a biome and a half (I can usually swing two landings on one trip, but I can only haul around one materials lab). So to help me finish out the last eight biomes I need on Mun, I've built a better refueling station than I had before (still not as awesome as that one Tin made though of course)



Had to fly it up there in two pieces - the leftmost assembly til' the first bottleneck was the first one. Mostly just fuel, RCS thruster tanks, and 4 solar panels, though I forgot to put extra batteries on it. Then I flew up the next piece (the middle piece above), the science annex with a couple more solar panels, batteries, crew quarters and the all-important mobile processing lab which can reset scientific equipment to be used again without returning to Kerbal. The last piece (the one on the right with the nacelles) is just a refueling transport topping off the tank. The whole thing is whizzing around at a mere 40km altitude.

Now the plan is to get my lander out there one more time, then just hop back and forth between each biome and the refueling station, compiling all the data in the lander's command module and resetting the equipment and refueling for the next biome. Thus, with luck and patience, I should be able to completely strip the Mun of all its scientific value on my next trip out there

Also it's now SO useful that Mechjeb identifies the biome of landing sites as you mouse over them during selection. No more "is this highlands or midlands? Is this the east crater or the east farside crater? Guess we find out when we land."

GasBandit said:

Also it's now SO useful that Mechjeb identifies the biome of landing sites as you mouse over them during selection. No more "is this highlands or midlands? Is this the east crater or the east farside crater? Guess we find out when we land."

Click to expand...

hah, it looks like it's time for me to upgrade. I was keeping this info in a spreadsheet, along with good lat/longs to land at.

Tinwhistler said:

hah, it looks like it's time for me to upgrade. I was keeping this info in a spreadsheet, along with good lat/longs to land at.

Click to expand...

Well, I dunno about yours, but my earlier version of mechjeb stopped working entirely with that same patch and I had to update it to get any functionality whatsoever.

GasBandit said:

Well, I dunno about yours, but my earlier version of mechjeb stopped working entirely with that same patch and I had to update it to get any functionality whatsoever.

Click to expand...

There've been problems with some of the nightly builds. Version 2.1.1.0 has been stable and working, so I haven't mucked with it.

Ah, I have 2.2.1.0 . But maybe that version has it too... just watch the middle of the landing guidance panel while you're picking a spot, it's kinda subtle.. it just sticks the word "highlands" or "flats" or whatever in there kinda surreptitiously. The wiki says the biome infoitem was added in 2.1.1.0 ...

So I had another object lesson in overconfidence/technology tonight. I was trucking right along, digging ALL the science out of the Mun, when on an ascent out of the farside crater Mechjeb goes berzerk and starts having my lander do flips. After a moment of handflailing panic, I manage to disengage the ascent guidance and mash the emergency "Just LAND SOMEWHERE!" button because the lander is now plummeting anyway, and despite its very recent hiccup, I trust the reflexes of mechjeb to get me down safely more than my own.

It doesn't steer me wrong, but the landing site is on a hillside and the lander tumps over. Fortunately I manage to RCS/SAS it right-side up again, and begin the liftoff... and this time, I realize...

... I don't have enough fuel to circularize the orbit. Not even if I only lift off to 20km, the lowest orbit I dare (any lower and you risk smacking a mountain at 2000 m/s).

I begin a desperate gambit. I burn all my fuel in the circularization maneuver, then blast away all my RCS thruster fuel to aft.

Still not going to make it... but I'm close. So close. Probably 40 delta v from a circular orbit.

Desperate gambit number two. Jebediah Kerman climbs out of the cockpit module, grabs every bit of data he can carry, and jumps up off the lander. Engaging his jetpack, he tries to muscle his way into an EVA orbit.

It's only when I "hear" the impact explosion of the lander that I realize I've done it.

Jebediah Kerman is in orbit... in only a spacesuit with a depressingly small reserve of monopropellant to guide his trajectory. Carrying probably thousands of points worth of scientific data.

Thus begins the rescue mission.



Remember that refueling transport that was docked to my munar orbital refueling station? It's got mechjeb, so it's got an autopilot. I fuel up its nacelles and decouple it from the rest of the structure.

Man, it's very tough to catch a guy with no spaceship as he tumbles through orbit, especially since mechjeb's not really into this sort of thing. Fortunately, I manage to close the distance manually to where mechjeb can take over and get me within 100m.



Using his last few drops of propellant, Jeb manages to reach the cockpit hatch. The precious scientific data is tucked safely inside.



So tonight I learned two things. First, I need to redesign a better lander, and second, mechjebs automatic intercept ascent guidance is buggy and not to be trusted. Oh, and a third thing - always store every trip's science data in the refueling station, don't take it back down to the surface where you might blow it up.

It's now past midnight, so tomorrow I'll take care of that, along with sending some kind of recovery transport to pick up Jeb and the data (since the refueling transport isn't designed for re-entry - no parachutes and engines useless in Kerbin's atmosphere/gravity).

Did…did you just reenact Mission to Mars in Kerbal?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Did…did you just reenact Mission to Mars in Kerbal?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Nnnnot exactly. Nobody died, nobody was left on the surface, there were no alien martian prehumans... and I didn't have Jeb jump "at" anything other than just "must get higher, must achieve orbit... will worry about what happens then later!"

The only real similarity is the fortuitous foresight to have a fueled resupply craft already in orbit.

Actually that sounds more like Gravity. You should rename that dude to Sandra Bullock

Just a few screenshots of what I've been up to lately...

Here's the heavier, harder-to-tump-over lander I finished off the Mun with.



Here's the refueling station I've built around Kerbin this time. With the new Kerbodyne super heavy lifter rocket parts, it's much easier to get stuff into orbit. I had tons of fuel left over, so rather than just deposit the orange Rockomax tanks like I thought, I docked the whole durn fuel lifter. Twice. (minus the asparagus sections that fell off during liftoff)... and let me tell you it took a LOT of RCS thruster work to wrestle those leviathans into docking position, even with Mechjeb.

It also has a tug docked to it right now, which feels much more like an actual tug than my old game save's tug was, since it has the new claw attachment on the front and can grip any object at any place, not just hang on tenously by a docking port.


And finally, here's a shot of that tug in action, once I had totally drained one of the fuel boosters, I detached it from the station and pushed it slower to a reentry orbit with the tug.


(the tug's headlights are super bright)

Ok, spent some time on this game this past weekend, and had some fun with it. My biggest frustration right now is that the process of building rockets is very exacting, and my mouse control is not, so if I'm even a little bit off on where I place something on a rocket, the whole thing topples over on the launch pad (ok, well, no - if I'm a little bit off it just doesn't fly straight. It takes being a moderate bit off for it to topple over). Is there a mod that takes care of this, or a setting I'm missing somewhere, or something?

Gared said:

Ok, spent some time on this game this past weekend, and had some fun with it. My biggest frustration right now is that the process of building rockets is very exacting, and my mouse control is not, so if I'm even a little bit off on where I place something on a rocket, the whole thing topples over on the launch pad (ok, well, no - if I'm a little bit off it just doesn't fly straight. It takes being a moderate bit off for it to topple over). Is there a mod that takes care of this, or a setting I'm missing somewhere, or something?

Click to expand...

Here are some tips.

1- make sure you are connecting sections at their "snap-to" position. The easiest way to do this is to have your camera looking horizontally from the side, and move the mouse (with your section being moved) to the empty space below/above what you're trying to connect it to, and sort of move it around in the empty space until it "snaps" to where it is supposed to attach, as opposed to angling the camera and placing the mouse directly on the surface you want to attach the part to.

2- Symmetry is your friend. Make sure to use the "snap to angle" and automatic symmetry tools in the lower left hand corner to make sure that any sections you build out to the sides are at perfectly congruent angles and do not change the balance of the rocket. I find hexagonal symmetry generally the most useful.

3- even with all that, the "settling" of the rocket on the launchpad can sometimes cause problems. Pay close attention when launching, and as soon as the "physics" kick in on the simulation, hit T to turn on your SAS - assuming you have enough SAS modules (most command modules have them, but larger rockets will need supplimentary SAS wheels which, once researched, appear under the control tab in the building ui) - and this will make your rocket automatically attempt to keep your rocket pointed straight up and not falling over, be it on the pad or in flight. You can then use WASD to turn your rocket during flight, and SAS will attempt to halt rotation when you release the controls and hold the rocket on the course you set it. Once you research RCS thrusters and tanks, it becomes even better - very large rockets with multiple side-tanks/engines will almost assuredly need the oomph of RCS thrusters to keep from spinning out of control as the uneven fuel drain/slight imperfections in structural components start to tell during the liftoff burn. RCS turns on with the "R" key.

4- If you have engines/tanks on the sides, make sure you use plenty of struts to keep them from wobbling/splaying/torquing around. Left to its own devices, the superstructure of most rockets with nacelles/asparagus boosters/external solid fuel rocket boosters will bend and twist under duress. The struts will automatically give way appropriately during stage separation. So use those struts to attach the top and bottom of each external booster/tank to the main column, and also the top and bottom of each booster/tank to the ones adjacent. The symmetry tool can help make this fast and accurate.

5 - make sure you're using an engine with a gimbal. The first starter engine does not (I think it's called LV-T30?)... but almost immediately you'll get the next engine, the LV-T45 which has a 1 degree control gimbal. This will help correct errant flight during your burn (but not when the engine is powered down, obviously - you'll need SAS or RCS for that)

Also, when placing those struts, remember triangles are your friends and squares are your enemies.

And when you're doing re-entry, once you've got yourself oriented properly, turn off your SAS/RCS before deploying your parachute - parachutes have been known to rip off the ship if SAS is fighting to keep it at an oblique angle to the direction of travel. Which makes for dead Kerbonauts usually.

Finally found that radial symmetry button. Makes design and building a lot easier. Sadly, now poor Bill is stuck in a solar orbit.

Gared said:

Finally found that radial symmetry button. Makes design and building a lot easier. Sadly, now poor Bill is stuck in a solar orbit.

Click to expand...

Uh oh. Is it at least a circular orbit, or is it eccentric?

What'd you do, shoot for the moon and miss?

As for myself, I've been trying to make a real honest-to-god spaceplane, despite not having researched all the spaceplane parts. And by real-honest-to-god I mean one that can attain orbit and return home... which means liquid fuel rockets instead of jets.

I tried perching a jet on the back of a rockomax rocket, but when it hits around 15km and the jet flames out, suddenly the thing becomes uncontrollable, doing flips faster and faster because the center of mass no longer matches the center of thrust.

So I said "screw it" and just started tacking all the wings that would fit on a jumbo rockomax. Used a skipper engine instead of a mainsail because it's got higher specific impulse (fuel efficiency), but that drops the Thrust/Weight ratio down under 1.0. I was hoping the wings would make up for that with some lift, but so far all I've managed to do is ram Kerbonauts into the water at the end of the runway at 120m/s (268mph) over and over.

I guess I'm gonna have to punt on that, and go get more science done... probably on Duna.

Spaceplanes are a real bitch. In all the time I've been playing, I've only ever gotten one that worked worth a damn.

If you're going to get up in orbit, you'll need a combination of liquid fuel engines and dual-fuel rockets. At 15-20K, it's hard to get enough air into the liquid fuel rocket, and you need to spam a few ram intakes on the thing. Even so, you'll never get into orbit, because there's no air in space..you'll have to switch to a bonafide rocket engine eventually.

Tinwhistler said:

Spaceplanes are a real bitch. In all the time I've been playing, I've only ever gotten one that worked worth a damn.

If you're going to get up in orbit, you'll need a combination of liquid fuel engines and dual-fuel rockets. At 15-20K, it's hard to get enough air into the liquid fuel rocket, and you need to spam a few ram intakes on the thing. Even so, you'll never get into orbit, because there's no air in space..you'll have to switch to a bonafide rocket engine eventually.

Click to expand...

I've had good luck building regular jet planes. I find they are a lot simpler if you stick a reaction wheel in the middle and fly with SAS. But even on my old save, I barely managed to push 25km altitude with a whoooooooole lot of air intakes. So yeah, there's not much point in using jet engines at all, I'm finding. I had some crazy idea about hauling one over to Eve strapped to the back of a rocket, but even just getting it off kerbal seems more trouble than it is worth. Anyway it was really just a distraction to do something different after sucking every drop of science off of Mun before I started wading out into the rest of the solar system.

GasBandit said:

Uh oh. Is it at least a circular orbit, or is it eccentric?

What'd you do, shoot for the moon and miss?

Click to expand...

It's an eccentric orbit... I was actually just trying to orbit Kerbal, but I got a little bit carried away on my thrust amounts. Got a decent amount of science from it though, even with having to send the data back to Kerbal without re-landing.

Gared said:

It's an eccentric orbit... I was actually just trying to orbit Kerbal, but I got a little bit carried away on my thrust amounts. Got a decent amount of science from it though, even with having to send the data back to Kerbal without re-landing.

Click to expand...

Man.. you had to REALLY overshoot to do that. Heh. Well, if you're not TOTALLY out of fuel, you stand a chance of recapturing him in a year. Or it might make for an interesting mission to try to send a refueling probe to him... if you remembered to put a docking port on his ship.

If not, I think the grabbing claw part actually lets you transfer fuel.

GasBandit said:

I've had good luck building regular jet planes. I find they are a lot simpler if you stick a reaction wheel in the middle and fly with SAS. But even on my old save, I barely managed to push 25km altitude with a whoooooooole lot of air intakes. So yeah, there's not much point in using jet engines at all, I'm finding. I had some crazy idea about hauling one over to Eve strapped to the back of a rocket, but even just getting it off kerbal seems more trouble than it is worth. Anyway it was really just a distraction to do something different after sucking every drop of science off of Mun before I started wading out into the rest of the solar system.

Click to expand...

Well, the point in using jet engines is that they run for freaking ever on a load of fuel. It's evidently a lot easier to make single-stage-to-orbit vehicles using a combination of jets and rockets than any other way. One small jet tank to get you in the 20K's, and another small rocket to push you to orbit. Other than that, I haven't had a whole lot of use for space planes, and so haven't spent a lot of time on them.

I guess you'd need to master them if you really wanted to fly around on Eve or Laythe.

GasBandit said:

so far all I've managed to do is ram Kerbonauts into the water at the end of the runway at 120m/s (268mph) over and over.

Click to expand...

Do you get science for recreating Mythbusters?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Do you get science for recreating Mythbusters?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Nope. And I'm also kind of disappointed the physics engine in KSP doesn't allow for "skipping" off the surface of water. KASPLOOBOOM.

GasBandit said:

Man.. you had to REALLY overshoot to do that. Heh. Well, if you're not TOTALLY out of fuel, you stand a chance of recapturing him in a year. Or it might make for an interesting mission to try to send a refueling probe to him... if you remembered to put a docking port on his ship.

If not, I think the grabbing claw part actually lets you transfer fuel.

Click to expand...

Docking ports... yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting those later in the science tree.

Gared said:

Docking ports... yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting those later in the science tree.

Click to expand...

Welp, you know, there was one time I had to do a corrective maneuver but was out of fuel.. and what I did was I had the kerbonaut literally get out and push the ship from the side with his jetpack. It's hard to do accurately, but since you get replenished from a neverending source every time you go back inside the ship, if you start from far enough away, you could potentially really alter your orbit back into kerbal intercept.

GasBandit said:

Welp, you know, there was one time I had to do a corrective maneuver but was out of fuel.. and what I did was I had the kerbonaut literally get out and push the ship from the side with his jetpack. It's hard to do accurately, but since you get replenished from a neverending source every time you go back inside the ship, if you start from far enough away, you could potentially really alter your orbit back into kerbal intercept.

Click to expand...

That would be hilarious... and amazingly inane, I imagine. Maybe I'll send up another rocket and try to very gently nudge Bill back into Kerbal orbit.

Gared said:

That would be hilarious... and amazingly inane, I imagine. Maybe I'll send up another rocket and try to very gently nudge Bill back into Kerbal orbit.

Click to expand...

That'd be difficult, as the farther down the gravity well Bill falls, the faster he will be moving, and thus that much harder to intercept. Comes a point where it'd get as hard as trying to shoot a bullet at an already fired bullet. But what you might could do is jettison all stages possible so you're down to the lightest ship you can manage, and then just have Bill push it sideways until the return trip is once again in Kerbal's influence. It won't take much lateral force when you're millions of KM away. Then use Bill's pack again to circularize in high orbit (or at least attain orbit rather than escape again), then send another rocket out with an empty seat for him to take. Just be careful never to run out of propellant on any given EVA. Get back in to refuel frequently. Because if you run out, you're screwed, as you probably won't make it back inside the command module.

Eh, in this instance I opted to just restart the career mode. It may or may not have had anything to do with the fact that I was attempting to EVA bump my way out of solar orbit and lost the ship.

Gared said:

Eh, in this instance I opted to just restart the career mode. It may or may not have had anything to do with the fact that I was attempting to EVA bump my way out of solar orbit and lost the ship.

Click to expand...

Well, for future reference, you can also kill the ship from mission control, which kills the kerbonaut as well... but dead Kerbals come back to work after a couple days.

I went back to Minmus with a refueling station and lander to finish scrubbing it clean of science in one big trip before I take the big step to the next planet... but the only thing I thought worth taking a screenshot of - I never looked around inside a hitchhiker crew module before....

They could save a lot of space in the module if they started keeping the rubbish, junk, refuse, and trash in the "not food" cupboard.

--Patrick

Incidentally, here's a fisheye lens view from the other side, revealing the labels on the storage units not seen before to be "Toothbrushes," "Science," "More Science," "Board Games," and "Laundry." Also there's a sign pointing to the exit hatch that says "SPACE."

So having researched all the spaceplane research nodes after sciencing minmus as dry as mun, I tried building an orbital spaceplane again. I was elated to actually achieve circular orbit at 100km from a runway takeoff, thanks to the RAPIER engine which can switch between air-breathing jet and liquid/oxidizer rocket on the fly.



The problem is... on re-entry and landing, the weight characteristics of a nearly empty spaceplane are totally different from that of a fully fueled spaceplane, which throws the center of mass off from the center of lift... even with mechjeb assistance, the darn thing ended up doing the falling-leaf thing less than 100 km from the runway.

Maybe you need to install some "ballast" weight on the ship to keep it's center of mass where you want it?

AshburnerX said:

Maybe you need to install some "ballast" weight on the ship to keep it's center of mass where you want it?

Click to expand...

It'll be challenging to figure out how to move the ballast forward as the fuel drains to the rear. The ships generally don't have moving parts (other than things like retractable landing gears and solar panels, neither of which weigh enough to matter), and pumping fuel forward during powered flight in a craft with nacelles is a good way to unbalance and go into an unrecoverable spin.

Meanwhile, I'm still back here on Kerbin, trying to land my first successful science mission to Minmus. I mean, I've had a mission there, collected some science from my science lab in orbit, and managed to have enough fuel to get all the way back to Kerbin... but I forgot to put landing legs on my vehicle, and hit the ground at 6.8m/s, causing my labs to separate from the control pod and fail to count toward that launch. Still, this game is a lot more fun once you get some of the orbital math figured out.

GasBandit said:

It'll be challenging to figure out how to move the ballast forward as the fuel drains to the rear. The ships generally don't have moving parts (other than things like retractable landing gears and solar panels, neither of which weigh enough to matter), and pumping fuel forward during powered flight in a craft with nacelles is a good way to unbalance and go into an unrecoverable spin.

Click to expand...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25823-0-23-0-23-5-TAC-Fuel-Balancer-v2-3-22Dec

I hear it's all the rage among space plane guys

Gared said:

Meanwhile, I'm still back here on Kerbin, trying to land my first successful science mission to Minmus. I mean, I've had a mission there, collected some science from my science lab in orbit, and managed to have enough fuel to get all the way back to Kerbin... but I forgot to put landing legs on my vehicle, and hit the ground at 6.8m/s, causing my labs to separate from the control pod and fail to count toward that launch. Still, this game is a lot more fun once you get some of the orbital math figured out.

Click to expand...

I've actually done very little math in this game, especially in the beginning missions. It's all about using the map and the maneuver nodes. When you lift off, and start your gravity turn at 8km, switch to map mode with M and bring up the nav control bubble from the bottom of the screen. Continue to thrust at 45 degree incline, using your mouse to watch your apoapsis grow. When your apoapsis gets to be about 80-85 km, stop thrusting and click the apoapsis, and create a new maneuver node. then drag the "forward" widget on it away from the center until the dotted orange line becomes a circle and the periapsis appears, then keep doing it until the periapsis is also 80-85km. This will put a blue "Target" on your nav bubble, along with a countdown and a deltaV meter. When the countdown gets near zero (say around T minus 5 or 10 sec), do a full throttle burn pointed at the blue target until the DeltaV meter empties. You just circularized your orbit with no math.

Then to get to moon or minmus, click your orbit around 90 degrees from directly pointing at them to make a new maneuver node, drag out the "forward" widget and wait until the new orange apoapsis reaches the orbit of your destination. Then drag the position of the maneuver node back and forth along your orbit until it changes in an obvious way to show you're entering the target's gravity well. Then repeat the above nav burn process again for the new blue target. You just hohmann transferred to mun/minmus with no math.

Once you reach your target's orbit, thrust sideways until you've got a periapsis and your orbit path doesn't have you directly crashing into the surface. Try to make your periapsis 20-40 km. Then add a new maneuver node at your periapsis, and drag out the "Backwards" widget until the orange path becomes circular around the planet. This will give you the blue target for your retrograde burn to circularize. Burn it at the appointed time, no math needed.

I think you get the picture.

Oh, and as far as your science lab goes, once you do the experiment, have your Kerbonaut do an EVA, climb/jetpack down next to the science module, right click it and have him collect the data. Then he can go put it in the command module. This not only keeps it safe in the case of your above scenario, but it allows you to now design rockets that incorporate a stage separation between the command capsule and the entire rest of the rocket. So when you're re-entering Kerbin atmosphere, you can jettison all but the command capsule, which drastically reduces your mass and makes you slow down much further, and (if you're using a Mk 1 command capsule) only require one parachute to land safely even with no landing legs or engine (if you're using a Mk 3 command capsule, I recommend both the size appropriate nose parachute and a pair of symmetrically placed surface mount parachutes).[DOUBLEPOST=1401890634,1401890481][/DOUBLEPOST]

Tinwhistler said:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25823-0-23-0-23-5-TAC-Fuel-Balancer-v2-3-22Dec

I hear it's all the rage among space plane guys

Click to expand...

Droooool.

GasBandit said:

Oh, and as far as your science lab goes, once you do the experiment, have your Kerbonaut do an EVA, climb/jetpack down next to the science module, right click it and have him collect the data. Then he can go put it in the command module. This not only keeps it safe in the case of your above scenario, but it allows you to now design rockets that incorporate a stage separation between the command capsule and the entire rest of the rocket. So when you're re-entering Kerbin atmosphere, you can jettison all but the command capsule, which drastically reduces your mass and makes you slow down much further, and (if you're using a Mk 1 command capsule) only require one parachute to land safely even with no landing legs or engine (if you're using a Mk 3 command capsule, I recommend both the size appropriate nose parachute and a pair of symmetrically placed surface mount parachutes).

Click to expand...

That's what I do.


this is essentially the mid-to-late game lander I use to bounce around minmus and collect science.There are 4 radially-attached fuel tanks with rockets, and each have a suite of science modules attached. Though they never look exactly alike from game-to-game, the general idea stays the same.

I hop to each biome, collect one set of data, and drag it into the command pod. When I'm ready to return, I jettison the four radially attached rockets, and the central core has about 3K delta-v for the return trip, which gives plenty of room for error/laziness. I usually return with close to 2K science per trip, after hitting 4 biomes.

I ended up doing the same thing on minmus I did on the mun... 3 launches a couple hours apart, the first two are two segments of an orbital refueling station with a science processing lab, and the third is the lander. Time warp till the first segment enters orbit, circularize it, time warp to the second segment enters orbit, intercept the first segment - and if there's time - dock, then switch to the lander. I picked the entire thing clean in one trip, just by landing at a biome, doing the experiments and eva/crew reports and taking a surface sample, then lift back up to the orbiting station, refuel, put the data in the hitchhiker module (that's where I took that screenshot last page), then repeat in a different biome. Just have to remember to bring 3 kerbals total, one to fly the lander and two to work the science station to reset your experiments after you put the data in the hab module. Then with a 30-someodd data loaded in the capsule, pick everybody up off the station, refuel one last time and go home! I've managed to research all but 3 things on the list now, and I'm not sure I really need those 3 things (gravimetrics, cpu-somethings, and the final Mechjeb module)... so I guess it's time to stop procrastinating with spaceplanes and put together a trip to duna or eve.

I never bothered with the science processing lab. Two science runs to minmus, and I'm about 70% of the way through the tech tree. I haven't even landed on the Mun yet. 3 runs there will max out the tree.

Results of my 2nd minmus run, and what my science tree looks like after spending the points:



I spend the most of my time in the first 7-8 launches, scraping those tiny amounts of science I need to get the science modules and minimal propulsion components I need. Once I have that, it's 5 more launches to max the tree. So whenever I re-do career mode, I try to find new ways to maximize science with the primitive tools. I hope to one day be able to max out the tree in 10 launches or less.

Occasionally I'll run out to eeloo or duna for fun, but it's not needed in the current incarnation of the career game. Eeloo isn't that hard to get to, and provides a ton of science for the surface samples.

Heh, I see you didn't get xenon-ion engines either. Does anybody? I know the ISP is ungodly high but what use is a 2 kN thrust engine? Even the 60 kN thrust atomic engine feels anemic. I can't imagine depending on 2 to do anything worthwhile.

Also, damn, Seismic scans are bank. Maybe I should rethink skipping gravimetrics.

GasBandit said:

Heh, I see you didn't get xenon-ion engines either. Does anybody? I know the ISP is ungodly high but what use is a 2 kN thrust engine? Even the 60 kN thrust atomic engine feels anemic. I can't imagine depending on 2 to do anything worthwhile.

Also, damn, Seismic scans are bank. Maybe I should rethink skipping gravimetrics.

Click to expand...

xenon engines are fun to play with in sandbox mode--throwing out neat little probes that can go places easier than most ships. I'm talking something with hardly any weight at all, like


(though this example doesn't have nearly the energy supply for full trust)

In career mode, they're pretty useless for generating science, so there's no point in spending the points on them unless you're just rounding out your tree.

Just be happy that you have the .23.5 models. The .22 models were .5kN thrust, and used twice the electricity.

Question about probes in general - I keep reading stuff from 2013 on various KSP forums about sending a bunch of probes to other planets instead of manned ships, and about repeated transmission of research data that eventually equals getting and returning it by a kerbal... but my attempts at that don't work. It seems to me that there's now a cap on transmitted data's science value - you can never get more than 25% of the max potential science from a given experiment in the same biome? Am I just doing something wrong? If so, why would anyone even bother with probes at all instead of manned missions? Especially given that the 100% transmit value stuff - crew reports and EVA reports - can't be done by a probe?

GasBandit said:

Question about probes in general - I keep reading stuff from 2013 on various KSP forums about sending a bunch of probes to other planets instead of manned ships, and about repeated transmission of research data that eventually equals getting and returning it by a kerbal... but my attempts at that don't work. It seems to me that there's now a cap on transmitted data's science value - you can never get more than 25% of the max potential science from a given experiment in the same biome? Am I just doing something wrong? If so, why would anyone even bother with probes at all instead of manned missions? Especially given that the 100% transmit value stuff - crew reports and EVA reports - can't be done by a probe?

Click to expand...

nobody really bothers with probes in the career version of .23.5. They're strictly sandbox fun. There's a transmission cap that didn't exist in prior versions.

But yeah, in the older versions, I'd send one mission to duna, and ultra-spam transmissions all the way there, getting every last drop of both Kerbol and Duna science. I think I got over 10K for one mission, which is probably why they made the transmission cap. I was able to max out my science tree in like 5 launches.

What I'd *like* to see is satellites and probes having a larger impact on the game. Maybe make it so that each orbiting body trickles down some small amount of science points every hour or day until they reach some threshold of data. That'd probably take a drastic re-balancing of the current science points and tree, though.

Tinwhistler said:

nobody really bothers with probes in the career version of .23.5. They're strictly sandbox fun. There's a transmission cap that didn't exist in prior versions.

But yeah, in the older versions, I'd send one mission to duna, and ultra-spam transmissions all the way there, getting every last drop of both Kerbol and Duna science. I think I got over 10K for one mission, which is probably why they made the transmission cap. I was able to max out my science tree in like 5 launches.

What I'd *like* to see is satellites and probes having a larger impact on the game. Maybe make it so that each orbiting body trickles down some small amount of science points every hour or day until they reach some threshold of data. That'd probably take a drastic re-balancing of the current science points and tree, though.

Click to expand...

An easy way to make satellites/probes worthwhile would be to introduce a new surface mount camera science gear. They could get goofy and call it a "visible electromagnetic spectrometer" or something, with a description of "we taped a disposable camera to the side." Make it reusable like the thermometer, and have it give 100% transmission value for pictures taken, but be worth something like 1/4th of a crew report.

GasBandit said:

An easy way to make satellites/probes worthwhile would be to introduce a new surface mount camera science gear. They could get goofy and call it a "visible electromagnetic spectrometer" or something, with a description of "we taped a disposable camera to the side." Make it reusable like the thermometer, and have it give 100% transmission value for pictures taken, but be worth something like 1/4th of a crew report.

Click to expand...

if one of our blender (or other 3d program) wizards on the board could make a 300-polygon or less mesh and collision mesh (using the directions found here) that looks like a digital camera, I could probably mock up the functionality.

psst...





I'm using the Linear RCS port (which I've colored yellow) for my part model, since I know squat about 3d rendering, and it kinda looks like a camera. I need to add a few more descriptions for the various biomes, but I should have a fully functional camera (with 100% data transmittal) mod by some time this evening or tomorrow.

Unzip the attachment and throw the TinWhistler folder into your GameData folder.

Sweet.

Maxed the science tree in 8 launches yesterday. Felt pretty proud of myself.



This guy maxes the science tree in 2 launches. (not counting the first launch where he just sits a lander on the launchpad and collects the first 20 or so science he needs to build a real rocket).

I feel like an amateur.

Pfft. I feel like an amateur just listening to you and GB. Hell, I am an amateur! So far my best accomplishment has been crashing poor Jebediah into Mun because his lander didn't have enough fuel to slow down sufficiently.

Gared said:

Pfft. I feel like an amateur just listening to you and GB. Hell, I am an amateur! So far my best accomplishment has been crashing poor Jebediah into Mun because his lander didn't have enough fuel to slow down sufficiently.

Click to expand...

Hah, we all did that at one point. Matter of fact I think I documented my marooning of Jeb (and Bob and Bill for that matter) in this very thread.

After watching that video, I was inspired, and started my career mode over. I decided to push things as far as I could, but not use the video to try to mimic his ships.

I wasn't nearly as successful as he was, but I got a Mun flyby on my first flight, netting me 600-ish science in the process. My 2nd flight got me to Minmus, where I was able to hit a few biomes and net me another 1200 science. That rocket was wobbly as hell, but I managed to get it up there.

My 3rd flight was much better: Big orange rockets, struts, fuel lines. I had about 16000 delta-v. So I hit Jool, and did a flyby of Laythe. I was going to try to land there, but before circularizing, I noticed that the flyby orbit happened to fling me right into Tylo's SoI, so I decided what the hell, and went by Tylo, too. Netted 4900 science, and most of the tech tree.

Even more importantly, I got that far without mechjeb, because I didn't have the science points to spend on those nodes of the tree yet.

I'll max out the tree tomorrow on my 4th launch. I'm a bit impressed with myself.

Nifty tool I ran across the other day:

KSP Optimal Rocket Calculator
http://garycourt.github.io/korc/

You can optimize builds for mass, parts, or cost. It really helps eke out every ounce of delta-v per dollar on those contract missions.

Version 1.0 has hit, the game is officially launched.



Kerbal Space Program 1.0 is what we envisioned when development of the game started four years ago: we set out to make a game in which the player is given ultimate control over the exploration of space: from designing their rockets to launching and flying them to their destinations, in a universe that was modeled to be realistic, but at the same time still be fun to play in.

However, our 1.0 release is more than just a new version number. It’s also the biggest update to the game we’ve ever done, and contains many new and updated features, plus improvements to just about every game system, which we’re sure will appeal to both newcomers and seasoned veterans. These are the highlights:

Aerodynamics
The flight model has had a complete overhaul, meaning the lift is now calculated correctly to all lift-generating parts, which includes lifting bodies. The drag simulation has also been completely revised, and uses automatically pre-calculated data based on the each part’s geometry, to be finally applied based on not just the orientation of parts in flight, but also taking other parts into consideration. Stack mounted parts are now occluded from drag by neighboring parts, and lift induced drag is also properly simulated. Both the lift and drag are dependent on air density and the speed of sound, which are calculated from temperature and pressure. Be careful when flying aircraft in this new update: stalls are now properly simulated as well, and spontaneous craft disassembly during high-G maneuvers is now a very real thing.

Heating
A new heating simulation has been implemented together with the improved aerodynamics. Now, not only temperature but also energy flux is considered when making heat calculations, meaning radiative, conductive, and convective heating and cooling are all simulated and all parts have their individual thermal properties. Parts will emit a blackbody radiation glow if they get hot enough. Although part temperatures can now be affected by such things as being exposed to sunlight and hypersonic flight heating, they can be properly occluded from these effects as well. Atmospheric temperature (and density) takes into account latitude and the position of the Sun. Celestial bodies now accurately emit thermal radiation that makes nearby craft warmer. Finally, ablative heat shields (with a finite, editor-tweakable ablation material) have been added to protect the parts behind them from reentry heating.

Fairings
You can now add fairings to your rockets! Fairing construction starts with a base part which will allow you to procedurally create a fairing after you place it. The design of the fairing is left up to you: shape individual sections of fairing with an intuitive visual system which gives you total control over the shape of any fairing.

Once you've placed the fairings you can still edit your payload! Mousing over the fairing will make it transparent and will give you an exploded view, allow you to access anything that's inside. If you later want to edit a fairing, simply right-click the fairing base to modify it as needed.

Fairings will shield anything inside them from drag and heat, making them an ideal tool for making payloads survive even more aggressive aerodynamic stresses. Like cargo bays and service modules, they will also prevent wings from generating lift, as well as science experiments, solar panels and antennas from deploying, which means all these new parts should be a big part of your mission design.

Resource Mining
Mining for Resources is now a part of Kerbal Space Program: set out to find Ore, which can be found throughout the Solar system, including on asteroids. To do this you'll have access to several different scanners to map out and find the best places to mine, drills to extract it, specialised holding tanks to store it, and a processor / refinery unit to convert it into usable fuels. To help you find the Ore, new map overlays have been implemented on all celestial bodies, and new UI elements have been added to various pieces of equipment. Also, Kerbal engineers are particularly good at keeping those drills humming at peak efficiency.

Complete Patch Notes Here

Ho wow this is way different. I'm not used to my rockets exploding on the way UP.

GasBandit said:

Ho wow this is way different. I'm not used to my rockets exploding on the way UP.

Click to expand...

Pfft. Amateur. My rockets have been exploding on the way up for years.


Oh... you mean they shouldn't?

Gared said:

Pfft. Amateur. My rockets have been exploding on the way up for years.


Oh... you mean they shouldn't?

Click to expand...

Well, sure, I had some come apart in my early models, but once I got struts that problem went away entirely. Now I have the problem of entirely structurally sound rockets blowing up because apparently going over mach 2 immediately causes spontaneous combustion.[DOUBLEPOST=1430335518,1430335398][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh, and I'm still using Tinwhistler's camera mod Even though now they give you the goo cannister immediately and the Science Jr module in the very next upgrade level, which has meant for a lot less mucking about having to gather science from Kerbal's own biomes before making a mun-shot.

Gared said:

Pfft. Amateur. My rockets have been exploding on the way up for years.


Oh... you mean they shouldn't?

Click to expand...

Depends. If you're making fireworks rockets, that seems like the way to go.

Also the new heat shields seem to make my rockets want to flip over backwards, and the new cargo pods are difficult to actually place things inside. The official forum seems to agree with me on these, there's already a mod available to fix the heat shield issue.

Are you sure you're not confusing KSP with Besieged?
Because if you are, this sounds like completely expected behavior.

--Patrick

KSP 1.0 has a totally different (supposedly more accurate) atmospheric/drag model. My first launch last night flipped upside down and 'sploded from the stress forces. Winglets are your friends..they actually do something now for stability. I started added winglets to the base of my lower (atmospheric) stages and things cleared up considerably. Once you get fairings (in the aerodynamics tree), you should be able to smooth out your rockets even more, mitigating all those annoying little drag points.

Unfortunately, they forgot to apply the new drag models properly to heat shields. You don't even need a mod to fix it. You just need to change the config files for the heat shields. But a mod would be a lot more convenient for many people. That said, if you come in from a nice stable orbit (as opposed to coming in hot from deep space), and skim your way into the atmosphere (instead of suicide burning it), you don't need heat shields to survive kerbin re-entry.

They also changed the way fuel burn/dv is calculated. Rather than changing the time component (as was true in early release), different atmo pressures change how much thrust is generated. You'll always have x amount of burn time in a engine/tank setup now...what you get out of it depends on how deep in atmo you are. I like this, because it's more realistic and it also means that long burns in deep space ought to take a lot less time.

I started playing yesterday afternoon. At 2am, I started wondering what I was doing with my life and went to bed.

I finally made it to duna this afternoon, but without enough fuel for the return trip. 1.0 is definitely a lot more challenging.

I assume, you, like me, are playing the "science" version of the game instead of "career?" The expenses in career seem way too punishing, and the contracts don't reward nearly enough, imo.

GasBandit said:

I assume, you, like me, are playing the "science" version of the game instead of "career?" The expenses in career seem way too punishing, and the contracts don't reward nearly enough, imo.

Click to expand...

Playing career. But I'm miserly and build the cheapest rockets I can, and purpose them to run multiple missions in a single launch. In all previous versions of KSP, I ended up with tens millions of bucks by the end game. I'm doing alright in 1.0, but it is a little rougher.

For instance: It's cheaper to leave a kerbal stranded on every planet you visit..because you'll inevitably get "plant a flag" and "perform science on/around" those celestial bodies. In pre-release, you'd get those multiple times, but I haven't seen that yet in 1.0. Regardless, with a kerbal already there, you don't have to spend cash to send another mission when they do come up.

GasBandit said:

Also the new heat shields seem to make my rockets want to flip over backwards, and the new cargo pods are difficult to actually place things inside. The official forum seems to agree with me on these, there's already a mod available to fix the heat shield issue.

Click to expand...

1.1 is out. This bug (among others) is fixed.
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/337-KSP-1-0-1-Is-Up

Fixed an issue where the physicsSignificance flag was set to 1 for heat shields

Click to expand...

I love this game, I just wish I could actually buy the full version.

Points I like in the latest release, along with some tips and tricks:

Space labs make sense now! I can put a lab just outside of Kerbin's orbit (in Kerbol's/sun's orbit), and generate mad science over time. It's tougher to make science now, because you have to budget wisely, but it doesn't cost that much to field a couple of labs around kerbin, mun, minmus and the sun and just generate free science from then on out while you perform those long insertions into the SoI of Duna, Eve, etc.

As mentioned earlier, it's tougher to make money now. This is a plus to me, because the beta releases were very easy once you got things down.

You *will* still get multiple "plant a flag" "collect science from" missions, so it still makes sense to strand a kerbal at every planet you visit. If you feel bad about it, you can later pick them up and replace them with unmanned probes.

Take a lot of high-cash missions. "Putting a probe in x orbits" are my favorite, because I can generally make a lightweight high-dv probe, take several of those missions at once, and perform them all with one launch. If I put a thermometer and comms on them, I can also satisfy as many "collect science around" missions as I can along the way. It's easy to make several hundred thousand kerbucks in one launch this way.

Later, when I have plenty of cash (3-4 mil), I go to the admin building and start converting half of my cash to science. I usually complete the entire tech tree before exploring the jool system this way.

For hard to reach missions, unmanned probes with ion drives are the way to go. They've rebalanced these so that 2 Gigantor solar arrays will easily power the engine, and you get something like 7K DV from a probe head, the engine, three fuel tank, a thermometer, and 2 solar arrays. This is enough to satisfy tons of "put a probe around" missions for cash, so it pays to take a couple of dozen before launching an ion probe. Since they're so light, it costs less than 50K to build a launcher to get it into orbit, too.

Fairings will give you better DV out of kerbin if your payloads are chunky. I link these to a hotkey, so that I can manually blow them, which I do at a height of about 20K, just as the atmosphere thins. The fairing improves DV in thick atmosphere by reducing drag, and blowing at 20K sheds all the weight of the fairings. I easily see 200-400 more DV out of a launch, which is a ton (considering it only takes 700-800 to get to duna).

The biggest dislike I have right now is how scientists level up. A level 0 or 1 scientist doesn't work that well in the labs, and they don't level up over time. You have to send them on exploratory missions to lots of planets and then return them to kerbin to level them up. This is kind of dumb, because by the time you have the ability to really do that, you don't need science that much any more.

Thread Necromancer said:

I love this game, I just wish I could actually buy the full version.

Click to expand...

Dude, if it wasn't $40 now, I'd get you a copy. It's a bad ass game.

Tinwhistler said:

Dude, if it wasn't $40 now, I'd get you a copy. It's a bad ass game.

Click to expand...

I appreciate the thought but I'll pick it up in time. It's just going to be a few weeks before I can fit it into the ole budget. I am excited for it though. I'm afraid I may need a new video card for it before I can really run it. The card I run now, although a great card for back in the day is under utilized because of lack of support in Linux environments and I won't install windows again just for one game.

But I will get it, just takes time and planning.

FUCK. WANT. YES.

Think of the MIDI he could do with that!

--Patrick

Look out, Outer Space! Jeb Jr. is comin' for ya!

--Patrick

I just came here to post this

I feel like I should finally buy and play KSP.

bhamv3 said:

I feel like I should finally buy and play KSP.

Click to expand...

Is this before or after you finally buy & play Minecraft?

mikerc said:

Is this before or after you finally buy & play Minecraft?

Click to expand...

At the rate I'm (not) buying and playing games, it's hard to say.

bhamv3 said:

At the rate I'm (not) buying and playing games, it's hard to say.

Click to expand...

Well it's better than buying & not playing games at least. I've bought both games & barely touched them - I think I've got maybe an hours playtime between the two of them. Part of why I'm trying not to buy any more new games until I've spent more time on games that I've already bought & never gave a decent crack at.

In fact I think the only new game I've bought this year is Bloodstained. Which I've most definitely spent time playing & got my moneys worth out of.

drifter said:

Click to expand...

omg, I've seen a few custom keyboards but this takes the cake.

...I didn't realize until now that it's made out of a repurposed TI-99/4A.
I remember trying to sequence the rhythm track of Michael Sembello's "Maniac" using the built-in sound chip. Never had the voice module, though.

--Patrick