I've begun playing this again pretty heavily lately, and have some general how-to questions.
First, an observation: I'm playing stock, in career mode. having limited access to parts and a method (science) of getting incremental access to more parts makes the game vastly more fun for me than it was before. Now, I have an objective to shoot for rather than just building the biggest craziest things possible and watching them explode.
On to the questions:
1 - multi-parachute landings of large objects:
I dont have much available in the way of RCS yet, so I'm adding stability by placing multiple capsules at the top of my rockets. This has the added advantage of allowing me to bring home multiple soil samples and EVA reports from each trip.
I'm having some problems with parachuting these things back to the ground. Say I've got a 9-capsule cluster at the top of a rocket, the parachutes tend to pull the thing upside down during landing. I can combat this by landing with SAS enabled, but it is still a struggle to consistantly get it to the ground safely.
Any tips?
2 - launch stability for tall rockets:
I've got some pretty good lifters made out of the basic entry-level (all the level 4 tech, some of the level 5) parts, and they are stable enough once they are under thrust. But, because they are long and skinny, they wobble a bit on the launch pad. I can put those big red cranes on there to stabilize them, but then there is about a 20% chance that a lower stage will whack into an upper crane while the thing is on its way up.
Is there a way to combat this? Is there a way to force a crane to stand further away from the rocket, to avoid being hit by lower stage boosters?
Do I just need to leave symmetric gaps in the booster arrangement, to account for the presence of cranes? I'd rather adjust the crane position, if possible.
3 - Is there any benefit to planting flags? They dont seem to create any research and instead clutter up my map. Is it just a RP function?
4 - Excessively Heavy Lifters. Any tips? I've looked at some heavy lift examples, and most are pretty traditional rocket stacks -- most use the big yellow tanks that I dont have access to yet. I saw someone had posted a picture of an air-breathing SSTO VTOL lifter, basically a ring of rockets that lifted a tank straight up. Is this feasable? was he cheating?
I tried a variant on that design, and about half the engines exploded when they got to a certain altitude. I was expecting that flame-out meant they just went out when they didnt have enough air, and then would kick back in if they ever dipped back into the atmosphere. They totally exploded instead.
I've tried making massive rocket rings by using 8x symmetry and angling out boosters in a giant cone or inverted V, and then turning each of the 8 into clusters of 7. Unfortuneatly, I cant use the 6x symmetry on top of the existing 8x, so I need to sort of eyeball the subassemblies and they tend to end up slightly unbalanced.
What's the best way to cluster an absurd amount of thrust in your first stage? Without making giant pancakes of solid boosters, I mean.
5 - speaking of SSTOs, I take it there is no real way to "recover" a rocket for future use? There is the "recover" button, but it is not like it brings the slightly damaged version back to your hanger to be refit -- it just cleans it up from the map and gives you the science and pilot back. Is there any real way to "re-use" a lift vehicle at this point in the game, or is that still a planned feature?
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1506644 times)