Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tobel]

I am having a bitch of a time getting a H.O.M.E. station into orbit, let alone even bother burning for another planet. Has anyone else managed to get a 4-habitat style station into orbit and beyond? I'm only using HOME and Mechjeb.


The layout is basically below, with N being the power plant. Maybe I suffer from bigger is better syndrome but I normally just wind up using a single orange tank under each habitat with a mainsail engine and then surrounding it with additional boosters/mainsails that feed into the center to keep it going once the excess drops away.

O    O
  \  /
   N
  / \
O   O

I also might have stayed up for the last day doing classwork and whatnot so I'm missing something oblivious. Or maybe it's just too damn heavy, but I don't believe in that rubbish. There are always more rockets to add.

[Girlinhat]

I'm not familiar with HOME, but I do know that orange tanks are HEAVY things, and usually don't make it into orbit due to their massive weight.

My usual system for rocket design has changed a bit with discovering JATO.  I've made these 4-split jet modules that can lift about 50 tons each, which isn't significant but they can keep going up to 15km and that can help your rocket gain speed during that time.  Then start asparagus staging, which would be -perfect- in a 5 tower setup as you've described.

[Tobel]

I'll look into that, or ditching the orange beasts for the traditional 3m full tanks. I don't have a whole lot of mods yet.

[Girlinhat]

Your mods aren't the issue.  The problem is likely just basic design.  Stock parts should pretty much always be enough to get any given craft in orbit, as long as you realize the big goal isn't just to strap engines everywhere.  The REAL goal is to burn your fuel as slowly as possible, honestly.  Packing in more efficient engines and longer burn durations will get you a lot further than burst speeds.

I'm doing a Mun landing and return via Mechjeb right now, when it's done I'll see if I can't grab HOME and get a 5-tower module to the Mun.

EDIT: Crashed on return, because Mechjeb didn't know how to let the solar panels face the sun, so it perfectly crashed at a 90 degree angle to prevent the solar panels working.

Downloaded HOME, am confused how you even get these modules mounted in the X shape.  When attempting to attach them to anything other than a direct stack, they bug out and refuse to mount radially.

[Sirus]

If I were to install MechJeb, would it work on my existing save file? I have a ship enroute to my station core (an orange fuel tank, lights, crew, antennae, and additional batteries and solar power), but I can't quite get the rendezvous to work correctly. Would I have to start everything over again?

[tryrar]

Yup, since mechjeb works only if you have a certain module attached

[Girlinhat]

Mechjeb is a small module that enables the plugin, so you'd need to launch a new ship.

[forsaken1111]

Mechjeb is a small module that enables the plugin, so you'd need to launch a new ship.

unless he added mechjeb functions to the default command pods.

[sluissa]

You could also launch a mechjeb craft, dock it to the already orbited craft you want to rendezvous and then rendezvous the combination with the station.

[Sirus]

The rendezvousing craft is already on course. In about ten minutes game-time, it will be within 4km of the station core <_<
After that it might never meet up again.

Chalk it up to en earlier refusal to use mods

[sluissa]

If it'll be within 4km and not going in the opposite direction, then you should be good. 4km is close enough to match velocity and direct burn to it.

[tryrar]

So....I think I might have broken KSP. The game completely glitches out whenever I try to load THIS:

[Sirus]

Same direction, yes. I just keep screwing up the approach and end up burning up lots of fuel trying and failing repeatedly to get closer and stationary (relative to the core). Eventually I just end up on a Kerbin entry trajectory or rocketing off into space.

[BigFatStupidHead]

So....I think I might have broken KSP. The game completely glitches out whenever I try to load THIS:

The 'Hello World" bug seems to be associated with corrupted ship files. Don't know if there's much to be done, but it should only be the one ship.

[tryrar]

Tips for docking:

Remember whenever you get close enough to the target the nav changes to be relative to your current target, so you can burn prograde and retrograde without deorbiting yourself. So steps to dock:

1)Get close enough to target(within 4km or so)

2)burn retrograde(GREEN retrograde icon) to kill relative V

3)turn to PURPLE prograde marker and burn towards that(~25m/s will do)

4)repeat steps 2&3 as necessary until you are within around 100m. Kill V again

5)Turn on RCS autopilot(J/K, though that mod DOES help getting docking down). Turn on docking mode, and use your RCS to align with docking port and slowly move towards target and dock