bigcalm

Yeah, it should be noted that Eve-ascent is probably the hardest challenge in the game. There are so many phases that you need to think about, and you kind of have to do it in reverse order and it's easy to end up in a situation where what you've designed just won't work and you need to start again. So let's talk about the phases in reverse order -- The ascent: You will need a vessel with roughly 8k delta v to go from the surface of Eve at sea level to orbit around Eve. It needs to be as aerodynamic as possible, and needs to have as little payload as possible - including doing the stuff that you always forget to do like removing monopropellent from the capsule. Save every gram you can! You want a separate craft to rendezvous with the orbital craft, either to pick up the crew, or dock with it to take it back to Kerbin if you want. Don't try and design it to get all the way back to Kerbin from the surface of Eve -- you'll be adding a lot of additional complexity to an already mammoth task. If you have MechJeb installed, use its delta v calculator in the VAB, set the body to Eve and pay attention to the SLT number - this is the surface-level-thrust and takes into account the atmosphere. It should be above one for every stage within your rocket (except possibly the final orbital-insertion burn). Because of Eve's gravity and soup-like atmosphere, you'll need big powerful engines that work well in atmospheres - the Vector, the aerospike, and if you've gone really big, the Mammoth. You also want it as aerodynamic and as slippery as a fish whilst in the atmosphere as the drag from that atmosphere will huuuurt your chances. My typical ascent profile tends to be straight up for the first 35k of atmosphere and *then* do the gravity turn. And seriously, think about aerodynamics when designing. I had a rocket that could make it from sea level with ~1k delta v to spare, I added some stabilising standard fins to it because the gravity turn was a bit hairy to pilot and just the addition of those fins made it such that the rocket would then not even get close to orbital velocity. With Kerbin, you can brute-force stuff, use reaction wheels, not worry about aerodynamics all that much, but with Eve you very much have to care, We also want to talk here about staging, which you will have to do in some way to get to 8k delta v. I have often designed my Eve ascender where ejected stages just end up crashing into the rocket, and no amount of separatrons fixed it. You should carefully consider the aerodynamic forces that will be at play when you eject stages -- is the atmosphere going to push on it on one side after ejection, and cause a rotation that smashes it into the active stages? Stuff that can help: Tail fins are the best stock aerodynamic surface in the game. Use them for aerodynamic stability, not just on your Eve ascenders but on every rocket that goes in an atmosphere. Try to make the rocket relatively tall and thin. It's kind of cheaty but a closed air-intake is the most aerodynamic thing you can put in an airstream. When doing the gravity turn be *gradual* - it's easy to cause flip-out, ruining your chances of reaching orbit. Make sure to eject every gram of weight off your ascent stage before ascending - don't take the landing legs or the deflated parachutes with you. If you want more than a one-man ascender, consider using the aircraft cabins as they're the lightest crew-to-cabin ratio you can get. Don't be afraid to throttle back when in the lower atmosphere - in the dense soup below about 20k, trying to go above about 250ms means that almost all of your thrust is going to be effectively used by aerodynamic drag and not accelerating your rocket. The ground: So you managed to land! Congrats! You thought about how the Kerbal was going to get from the capsule high up on the rocket to the ground to plant a flag and get back didn't you? Before moving from the ground-phase to the ascent phase, you should be able to eject everything that is unnecessary for the ascent phase - parachutes, ladders, science gear, ISRU, ore tanks, etc. If it's not needed for the ascent get rid of it before you start ascending. With the kerbal-to-the-ground problem, there's two basic ways - either have a capsule low-down near the ground, where you can then 'transfer' crew from the bottom capsule to the one that they'll be sitting in when they launch (disadvantage - you lose science experiments), or have a Acme corporation ladder-style arrangement from the top capsule to the ground that can be ejected before take-off. Stock landing gear suuucks on Eve. You can easily end up with situations where it vibrates, explodes, judders or simply doesn't hold it steady, and blows up in bad ways if you shift focus to another vessel and back again. This just generally means extra testing, careful placement, lots of strutting and possibly fiddling with some damper / spring settings in advanced tweakables, For particularly large landers it can sometimes be worth trying just landing everything on girders rather than landing gear, as they're pretty sturdy and don't suffer from the same issues as stock landing gear (they suffer from DIFFERENT issues!). The other issue will be slow movement - you can perhaps use ground tether to fix this which should work most of the time but may also occasionally cause some of your landing gear to explode either immediately or when shifting focus from to another vessel and back. When a vehicle is moving, even very slowly, a Kerbal on a ladder will not have the option to 'climb out', which gives rise to certain scenarios where a kerbal can get out, reach the ground to plant the flag, and then not be able to return to the capsule, so if possible, have your ladder array such that a Kerbal can go round something circular, let go and simply be standing on something rather than always requiring 'climb out' to be available. The descent: From a low orbit of Eve, you will be hitting the atmosphere at approximately 3km/s. For an interplanetary intercept, you'll be hitting at least 4 km/s and also won't have much choice on *where* you land. Both are dangerous and extremely likely to make things blow up on atmospheric entry without heatshields. However, just sticking a big heatshield on the bottom is unlikely to work, because to make it aerodynamic in the ascent phase, the rocket is now tall and thin, meaning that the centre of mass of the rocket is a long way from the heatshield. Which means as soon as you start hitting the soupy atmosphere, the craft will then spin round to face the titanic heat of atmospheric entry and blow up. The way to fix this is to add extra heatshields at the top of your rocket, at an angle, like the following image. What this will do is make it a little like a very draggy dart - the heatshields acting as the flights on a dart to keep it firmly planted in the direction of travel, and all the fragile explodey-bits safe from the air-stream. Continually rotating the craft during atmospheric entry can also help as it allows different bits to heat up at different times, possibly preventing an explosion. Naturally, if you go with the configuration in the image, your entire rocket *must* fit above a 10 metre heatshield, which may involve redesigning the ascent or ground stages. If you find you need the upper heatshields, you will also need the ability to eject them as soon as you reach a low enough speed (500ms ish). After ejecting the upper heatshields, you then need to inflate the parachutes, which I only tend to do once I'm below 10k in altitude - it's easy to end up with a situation where you eject the top heatshields, inflate the parachutes and then because you no longer have the draggy things at the top have Eve's gravity accelerate you to the point where the parachutes go poof. Which isn't great. Then, after the parachutes have fully deployed, you should be able to eject the bottom heatshield without crashing into it (adding weight / separatrons can help here - if it's too light, i.e. just the heatshield it's easy to crash into it and have your precious engines destroyed). Don't forget to deploy your landing gear after this and hope you don't land on a steep slope ! Off Kerbin / to Eve: Given the amount of effort involved in designing the Eve-portion of the craft, I'd recommend just brute-forcing it however you can to get it there. You have mammoths available on Kerbin and can refuel vessels in orbit - do it and don't care about the cost! I also try to get the vehicle in a relatively low orbit around Eve before attempting descent/ascent, as this will mean I can more easily pick a landing spot and I'll be hitting the atmosphere at the lowest speed. Testing If you're not adverse to it, design and test it in Sandbox mode, use debug F12 cheat menu to put it in orbit of Eve for testing, and only copy the craft over to your "real" game when you're happy. If you want to test in sandbox mode at Kerbin, there's a few bits of "simulation" that you can try which will get close to the conditions you'll experience at Eve: By putting the craft in a highly elliptical orbit and then adjusting the periapsis to hit the surface, the craft will hit Kerbin's atmosphere at roughly the same speed as you enter Eve's at from low orbit. The ascent phase you design should be able to lift off from Kerbin, get to orbit, de-orbit, get close to the ground (you won't have landing gear to actually land) and then make it back into orbit a second time. You should also test whether the kerbal can successfully get out of the capsule, to the ground, and back up to the capsule and safely eject all of the parachutes/landing gear/etc.

Ok, there's a couple of things that might be wrong here: There's two resources here - silicates are the mined stuff, silicon is the stuff that's processed. If you want silicon to be transferred to planetary resources, the base that makes silicon needs a storage kontainer for silicon that is marked as a planetary warehouse. You also need a logistics module (duna logistics, etc.) on the base that is "pushing" to planetary resources, though you don't need it to be manned. Silicon will only be transferred to planetary resources once your storage kontainer is mostly full. So it might just be you need a little patience and for the stored silicon to build up in the base that's creating it. Once some silicon has been pushed to planetary resources, it will then be available for your other base to pull it - if you have a manned logistics module and a storage kontainer for silicon set to planetary warehouse as well. It also needs a "use" for that resource - so if you're not producing specialised parts on that base it might not be attempting to pull.

ScanSat. Adds something genuinely new and useful to the game.

Question - with or without mods? But yes, imagine if the Kerbals invented such a ground-breaking concept such as a hosepipe. What wonderous science that would be! Without mods: Maybe a rover with a Klaw on the front. Yeah, it's likely quite Krakeny, but autosave before doing any "docking" and you should be ok. With mods: KAS gives you hosepipes (some faffing required), MKS gives you a window that allows automatic transfer within 150 metres (but MKS also comes with lots of other complexity, like life support).

You should be able to make a lander that can get to the surface in a single stage, refuel itself on the ground using ISRU, and then return to Tylo orbit. However, you will likely have to top up the fuel that's in it when it reaches orbit in order to reuse it again. Use a large engine - I used the Rhino, but mainsail should do it too. A fixed refuelling base is a reasonable idea, but accurate enough landings are likely to be challenging. Do you have a backup plan for when you're not accurate enough? I would start from equatorial orbit, because of the likely need to rendezvous with it, and I think I normally start descent at about 100km circular orbit.

Anyone remember when the Tundra modules used to look like this?

I've tried another "full" resource diagram, this time with duplicate resource boxes, the font slightly larger, and no overlapping arrows. Not entirely sure it works, it's now not particularly obvious how I look at the diagram and get e.g. Metals because it's now in two places. Could also do with removing that "OR" circle by having multiple extra Supplies / Organics boxes. https://drive.google.com/file/d/108sPu-rTQWRUkm7XHfmB7EmzALy-B6-p/view?usp=sharing

I'll get that corrected - good spot. I only ever used to use flexi-tubes to connect rovers to bases, for the purposes of machinery or nuclear materials transfer (mainly because on previous installs, "Perform Maintenance" would regularly not appear as an option). However, I believe some people used to create bases permanently connected with flexi-tubes. Personally, I was too terrified of Kraken attacks to try that.

Yeah, it's not easy to visualise, or draw. I like the idea of splitting into separate 'Farming', 'Manufacturing' and 'Advanced' sections though as I've done in the guide, because the flowchart with all resources and all conversions in it is really complicated. I'm happy to share the diagram(s) with you if you want to try and make them better. I think it's ok, as to work out what you need to get, say, Refined Exotics, you just need to track the arrows backwards to the resources that feed into it - though you are right that there are arrows everywhere and it's a bit difficult to follow. I've also tried to separate out into "what processes this" sections rather than 'raw,refined,product' - i.e. if it's done at an Assembly bay or workshop, it's an advanced resource and is a yellow box. If it's done at a Refinery, it's a refined resource and is a green box, if it's done at an agriculture module, it's an agriculture resource and is a purple box. Each box should be coloured appropriately depending on what produces that resource (and in the "full" chart, they're different box shapes as well so that the colour-blind have a chance). There's a key at the bottom of each flowchart. I'm not sure what the difference would be between a 'Product' and a 'Final Product' would be?

I've updated the tutorial guide now Please let me know if you notice any errors, or anything that needs clarifying/expanding on. Additionally, if you have any screenshots that you'd like included (I particularly want bases that don't follow my standard pattern), please let me know and I'll fit them in to the guide. If anyone wants any of this to update the wiki let me know - I can supply lots of screenshots and have the tutorial text as a separate file that should be easier to pull into a wiki than getting it from the forum post.

I've updated this guide to include everything in the pre-release of the new constellation. Updated the following: * Ground tether now reliable * Added sections for EVA Construction, WOLF, Professions and Orbital Construction * Fleshed out some of the other sections - added flowcharts for resources, included the new advanced resources for rocket building, added the Ore -> Material Kits conversion, and added some notes on Transport Credits and refuelling reactors.

I'm just doing my own resource flowcharts - they still need quite a bit of work (and I likely need a 'combined' one) but I'm hoping to do ones that are sufficiently good that the wiki can be updated as well to include the new 'advanced' resources. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G8QKslpC_dN5PNtkkJUgEpcKuxmmSYaL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tenYvvzflqYIO0H5DqQBKE7up1vvMEWq/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-SwLaVginHPzGj27mRVaqzAdfJ0B5jzF/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yAsxd3cMeSvJTUsQG3wjwX6ANRGyLcMU/view?usp=sharing --- I've also got a bit further with WOLF stuff - it looks like the power module I was trying to use was set to its "High" setting which means it required crew (and all the many many complications that leads to). Setting it to it's "Low" setting means that I don't have to crew it and thus I can set up a basic WOLF mining base without too much trouble - it'll still be 90+ tons payload to match the 'physical' thing I have there that's 40 tons, but that's ok, I'm prepared to put in the extra effort to reduce part count on the final base. --- That KSP Part Volumes mod looks awesome - and kind of required if you want to replace KIS with the stock EVA construction. It looked from your videos Tacombel that you only ever small or inflatable parts on EVA construction - whereas I tend to forget stuff (e.g. forgetting to add a substrate Kontainer) that can't currently be moved. The weight-assist of the pioneer (and other konstruction pieces) is great, but the size was the big blocker to using EVA Construction. I'll try that mod out and see if it fixes the issue. Part of the joy of MKS is that because of the complexity, you do forget stuff but there can be a solution as well - I think KSP is at it's finest when something goes *slightly* wrong and then working out a way to fix it without having to wait for another transfer window.

Thanks Tacombel, I've been trying to answer my own questions - * Using Stock EVA Construction instead? - It's possible, but you can't move any parts above a certain size (essentially, the part needs a ModuleCargoPart module entry on it in the save file). Apart from the inflatables and small parts, hardly anything in MKS has this module tag - so you can't move a small Kontainer, a Duna module or small processor. Given that these are things that I tend to forget, I personally will likely stick with KIS going forwards, though if anyone whips up a module manager patch to apply ModuleCargoPart module to larger parts within MKS, I'd be very interested. * Weldable construction ports - The standard docking ports now have the weld option (yay!) * Wolf This looks... enormous. I thought initially that I could use it to maybe do something like mine all the raw materials without needing any physical infrastructure except a hopper the results out (yay, less lag). But whew, just to do this you need an awful lot of modules - you need extractors to get the raw materials, but to power the extractors you need a power module, but this needs crew (and other bits) which means I need life support, food generation and maintenance, so I need agriculture modules, a maintenance module and likely some other bits. After putting together a 50+ ton monstrosity that wasn't anywhere near finished (and also, had nothing apart from wolf modules), I abandoned it, because what I was attempting to replace could mine 8 resources, and was 43 tons including de-orbit engines and fuel.

Heya - I'm planning to update the MKS tutorial I put together a while back - Basically, I want to include some sections about the new advanced resources (alloys, electronics, etc), rocket building, WOLF stuff, and some fleshing out of what's already there and corrections where required (e.g. ground tether now works perfectly for me) Some questions before that though! * The legomatic ( KF-250 Fabricator) - converts Ore into Material Kits directly - is this a permanent thing or just happened to be in the pack when I downloaded it - it seems a bit of a cheaty shortcut to getting Material Kits, that's all! Any other parts that provide the ore -> material kits functionality ? * Do rovers still work for the purposes of extending local logistics? Basically, instead of having a pioneer or logistics centre, which extends local logistics out to 2km rather than 150 metres, you could have one of RoverDude's rovers at the base instead of the Pioneer/Logistics centre. However, I only ever did this a couple of times and it was a few versions ago (having since used a logistics centre instead) - do they still work? Do they need to be permanently manned to function? Do they need wheels to work (I'm sure I tried just sticking a malemute cab on a non-wheeled base and it didn't work). * Wolf parts - I think I understand them (basically, they're just a 'virtualized base' with the outputs going to hoppers on a 'real' base, along with some additional faffing around transport routes, which should ultimately help hugely with regards to part count and general lag). Have their models been updated recently - when I compare the ones in my install to the ones in the Wiki guide, mine are all boxes, whereas the ones in the wiki all look like Tundra modules. If so, I'll update MKS again before taking any screenshots to add to the guide. * Any tips on playing without KIS - i.e. using the stock EVA construction mode. I realise that e.g. Pioneer can help in terms of contributing to mass limits, but I'm more concerned on size limits - I can't seem to move anything beyond a certain size (and the parts that I do want to move are all above that size). I've reinstalled KIS on my local install, but if there's a way to move/attach larger parts without it, I'd love to know how. * Have the weldable docking ports (used to require KAS) been deprecated? Any replacement if they have? * What are the mass / size limits for the orbital constructors? PS. Love the new domes, they look gorgeous.

Honestly? It looks good in flight - but you absolutely need better (or lower) landing gear on that plane. Also, because the landing gear is so far forward (likely because you're trying to make for an easier take-off) you're getting tail-strike all the time, particularly on take-off, but also on landing. Short answer: Bigger landing gear (LY-10 small landing gear), and move it further back - this will make it harder to lift off, but you'd be much less likely to get tail-strike when doing so, and similarly, less likely to get tail-strike on landing.