Print

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

[LoSboccacc]

they stated somewhere they are not going to add dv and other info in plain ksp. but they often change idea and follow the community feedback to an extent, so it depends on demand I guess.

[Aseaheru]

It might be interesting if they add techs that modify parts, like one that adds HUDs and such to internals... I mean, it even makes sense. Spaceshuttles had a bunch of guff strapped on inside by the end of their lives...

[jhxmt]

I've started a new career, having overextended myself (budget-wise) in my excitement of having unlocked a load of kerbinite and TAC modules (and then promptly managing to blow up several missions' credit worth on the launchpad).  This time I'm being much more minimalist.

While I could install Engineer, it conflicts with a couple of other mods I've got installed (I think), so I'm calculating TWRs by hand at the moment.  I'm thinking I can get a single basic solid booster engine to lift four of itself, a separator, a T-30 engine, a T400 fuel tank, a capsule and a MK16 parachute.

Turns out my thinking was correct, but it's not QUITE enough to get into a stable orbit.  D'oh!

Edit: I successfully landed a kerbal on the Mun and planted a flag.    Then realised I didn't have enough delta-V to get them back, and they only had a day or so's worth of life support supplies (I'm playing with TAC) left with them.

Cue a rescue mission!  Successfully launched a probe-headed ship with an empty command pod to the Mun, and landed it a mere 500m (500m!) away from my crashed kerbal.  The landing went almost perfectly, but on the rocky terrain I suffered a minor scrape...and the engine exploded.

So now I have one engined-vehicle with no fuel, and one full(ish) fuel tank with no engine, and no way to attach the two or transfer the fuel.  Sigh.  Still, at least the rescue vehicle was carrying a week's worth of supplies, which are still intact and usable, so the kerbal can survive until MunRescue-02 can get there (in one piece, hopefully).  And they managed to recover all the lovely, lovely science from their old command pod, so I'm still hoping to return all of these goodies eventually.

TAC Lifesupport really piles on the pressure if you do something stupidly wrong (like forgetting to add decent supplies to your initial munar lander, heh). 

[nogoodnames]

So, continuing my attempts at replicating commercial spaceplanes while using Realism Overhaul, here's Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, after launching from Cape Canaveral:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It still has a few problems I need to work out. For some reason the RCS system doesn't seem to work at all, and from what I've seen the control surfaces don't do so well either. The launcher also has some problems such as massive oscillations in the first stage and the second stage not firing at all. However, as you can see, I made it to space regardless (though not quite orbit).

Overall it was a lot easier to get right than SpaceShipOne. Mostly because I only need to really worry about aerodynamics for reentry while with SS1 they were a constant concern. I wish the new Mk.3 parts were out so I could make the cockpit a bit more accurate. As it is, it can only hold 6 kerbals as opposed to 7 and the nose section is all wrong, oh well. I know there's an actual Dream Chaser mod, but this seemed like more fun.

[Dutchling]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[nogoodnames]

Kraken: 1, Reaper: 0

[BigD145]

Someone call a doctor, it's having a seizure.

[Gentlefish]

Why is it wiggling, and how is it holding together?

[Shadowlord]

IMO they should drop that building b****t update and do 1 version release with some mod features implemented into core (they are fixing their game, and i mean it's all out there):
1) FAR - that's obvious, atmosphere mechanics are stupid in base game.
2) Procedural fairings - FAR can't exists without it
3) Crew manifest - no comment
4) Kerbal Engineer Redux - really? no info about the craft while designing it?
5) KAS - no comment

Optional (with possibility to turn on/off in campaign difficulty settings, due to changing difficulty of the game):
1) TAC life support - obvious
2) RemoteTech - adds depth to unmanned probes
3) TweakSize - why can't i make bigger/smaller parts? can be very cheaty with missions thought
4) Stage recovery - it simply automate process of changing craft, manually deploying chutes and manually recovering

Stage recovery is nice.

I tried TweakSize recently and it was completely broken: Reduced-size parts had negative costs, and KSP crashed to desktop when my negative cost rocket crashed (deliberately) into Kerbin. I'm assuming an incompatibility with another mod I'm using since there wasn't anything about negative costs on the bug tracker.

I wouldn't want to see FAR forced in.

[LoSboccacc]

The problem with all that mod is they have a godawful interface and clutter the game with parts.

Examples

Crew manifest has too much menu to do anything

Fairing should be implicit like they are for the engines, at most realized as a tweaker on a standard decoupler

Kas add billions parts and most of them redundant. Like the claw and the magnetic attachment and the attach to ports fuel duct and the actual attachable port etc etc.

Don't get me wrong I use most of them and then some and I love them for the most part but they are a far shot from the game accessibility

[MarcAFK]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Needs more struts, unless you were going for Miyazakian nightmare fuel, in which case; moar boosters.

[jhxmt]

I managed to recover my stranded kerbonaut from the Mun intact!  Intact and alive!  I lost another lander while doing so, but that's what I get for stupidly landing my first manned mission on the lip of a crater.  Nice, flat spaces are far more preferable. 

Happily, even after all the research and design work that I put into getting the guy back alive, the science that I managed to retrieve more than made up for it, teching me up nicely.  I was also able to use a cut-down version of my rescue rocket to run a couple of kerbal-in-orbit rescue contracts, which more than paid me back for the expenses incurred.

So now my budget is healthy, my tech is more advanced than it was (mainsail ahoy, yay!) and I can start thinking about pursuing interplanetary contracts now.  Unmanned, of course.  Fool me once.   

[nogoodnames]

I decided to send an unmanned mission to the Moon today. Since I wasn't exactly sure of how much delta-v I needed, I over-engineered the design a bit. I ended up giving it over 20 km/s of delta-v at launch, with a launcher just under half the mass of a Saturn V. If you're used to the kerbal scale then this is freaking MASSIVE, but with RO it worked out to be just a bit more than necessary to land on the Moon and come back.

Other than the larger scale, the biggest challenge came from Remote Tech's signal delay, which averaged about 1.2 seconds. Not so much as to make real-time control impossible, but enough that manually keeping the lander on target was difficult. After a failed first attempt I settled on using RT's simplified autopilot to hold retrograde while I controlled the throttle. I ended up doing a very smooth landing going from 300 to 2 m/s over about 10000m, rather than the more efficient method of killing all velocity close to the ground. Fortunately my lander turned out to be pretty well suited for the task and the second attempt went pretty much perfectly (well third, but no one told me the Moon had 15 km tall mountains).

[Lightningfalcon]

Ah, terrain.  You are burning retrograde, coming in for a nice, smooth landing... AND THEN SURPRISE MOUNTAIN.

[puke]

Other than the larger scale, the biggest challenge came from Remote Tech's signal delay, which averaged about 1.2 seconds.

Do you have any idea how to do a fully automated landing with remote tech?  I can't figure it out.

Outside the Kerbin system, delay is too high to control the throttle or anything else yourself.  And I can't figure out how to give instructions relative to distance above surface...

With a little atmosphere I can put probes down with parachutes... but without atmosphere I guess you need a six-kerbal command center somewhere within a reasonable latency?