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[Rose]

Regarding the problems with coming straight down from suborbital flight, I found the only way to deal with it, besides going sideways, is to do a burn to slow yourself down enough to use the chutes.

[Greenbane]

Sounds like you need to get rid of the grind by starting straight in sandbox or with loads of money and starting science, grab some good kids and start colonising other planets.
I stopped playing after making my second rocket, I'm sure it used to be harder to get into orbit than just putting a bunch of the smallest tanks onto the first liquid engine. I guess I need a tech tree reorganisation or maybe I'll just nerf power values to add some difficulty. Also the world first bonuses gave me too much starting cash. I wonder if Kerbal Construction Time is updated for 1.1 yet.

Yeah, I did Career once a few versions ago, and I'm not so inclined to go through the same progression again. So my solution for that was to start in Career mode and then edit my savegame so to give myself plenty of science points. That way I can build whatever I want, only paying attention to funds and contracts, which provide a nice bit of structure.

Pure sandbox is somewhat less interesting, and being limited by science is one restriction too many, from my point of view: the current implementation of the scientific aspect isn't particularly fun.

[puke]

I dont mind when I can send micro-landers to minmus and finish out 95% of the tech tree, or get a couple thousand by sending a ship to tour the jool system.

It is grinding those first couple thousand points on and near Kerbin that is the painful chore, to make those intermediary missions possible.

Fortunately, career mode is fairly customizeable and you can start with a huge ammount of science out of the gate.  Or change the rate of return on science points...

[TheBronzePickle]

I have a ship design question.

The way I design my very early ships is the basic 1-kerbal pod and a Science Jr right underneath it, usually with a heat shield on the bottom.

The problem is, the Science Jr isn't heavy enough to keep the ship pointed in the right direction. Center of mass is too high, so the heat shield ends up completely useless... and my ship ends up burning away in reentry.

How do I mess with the center of mass to make sure my ship goes in shield down?

[SOLDIER First]

Doesn't SAS help?

[Akura]

Add another Science Jr.?

Because "moar thrusters SCIENCE" is a perfectly valid answer, right?

[MagmaMcFry]

How do I mess with the center of mass to make sure my ship goes in shield down?

I suggest putting the heat shield on top instead of on the bottom. You have to be careful during reentry though, since the Science Jr burns up very easily if you don't have the ship pointing exactly straight forward, more so if you have multiple Jrs.

[PTTG??]

Make sure you remove all the monoprop they ship with the capsule. You could also try balancing the science jr. on top of the capsule and the parachute on top of that.

[TheBronzePickle]

I didn't think monopropellant could weigh so much.

That should help a little, though I've found another, slightly more crude solution in double-stacking heat shields.

As for using SAS, I probably should put one on there when I've got my scientist going up, but I don't think I've researched it yet.

[SOLDIER First]

No, the capsule SAS. IIRC capsules have their own, if comparatively useless and shitty, inertia roller-things.

[PTTG??]

No, the capsule SAS. IIRC capsules have their own, if comparatively useless and shitty, inertia roller-things.

They only work when operated by a qualified pilot unless you've got a probe core on there.

[SOLDIER First]

I know. Is there a reason the pilot wouldn't be in the pod during reentry...?

[PTTG??]

I know. Is there a reason the pilot wouldn't be in the pod during reentry...?

If he's a scientist or engineer, he's more of a payload than a pilot. He's just barely qualified to steer, let alone turn on and off the SAS.

[Rose]

I think it's more that there's no automated SAS in the pod. It's jeb doing the corrections manually unless you get the sas module installed.

[Greenbane]

I tried to carry out some test flights on a brand-new sandbox game, with a handful of mods presumably 1.1-ready, and got four crashes in half an hour.

I gotta give the modders more time. Can't live without stuff like Texture Replacer nor Environmental Enhancements. Other mods I'm using are Kerbal Engineer, Joint Reinforcement, Docking Port Alignment Indicator and Raster Prop Monitor. One of those might be causing the crashes instead, but I thought the first two were more likely culprits, for some reason.