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suicidejunkie

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Everything posted by suicidejunkie

  1. I'm playtesting some KCT config options which make it use your idle scientists to do the research, and engineers for construction in case you're interested. Getting more build rate and/or research speed is thus a matter of hiring and training and not assigning *everyone* to missions. If you add a mod for Kerbal salaries then it would be worth firing them occasionally too. I'm also considering using Pilots for affecting rollout time and for contributing a small amount of science points when you finish building a rocket since they've got time to test prototypes.
  2. If you're down to just one module attachment point, then attach a hub so you can attach more things!
  3. Reaction wheels are well known to be physically unrealistic in many ways. It should also be pointed out that kN are force, not torque. Electricity units are never going to convert properly into movement. From what I've seen and read here, the practical problems with turning rotation into thrust mostly comes down to blade physics limitations.
  4. Add KAC, and have multiple missions ongoing that are overbuilt for the job so they are capable of doing heroics in lieu of their main mission. Leave junk lying around everywhere to make use of with KIS/KAS. I've taken to leaving "portapotty" lifesupport stashes around the surface of Mun and Minmus, so that after crashing my Kerbals can take a breather, and hop from one stash to the next to make it back to base.
  5. I found a bug in scrapyard/KCT. 1) Build a ship, launch & recover. (6 days to build) 2) Build another, using the inventory parts available. (2 days to reassemble) 3) Duplicate the ship in the queue (6 days to build) 4) Edit the duplicate, make no changes, wait a second (build time updates to 2 days) Bonus) Reset parts -> 6 days. Apply parts -> back to 2 days. Kinda smells like multiple new ships are using the same old inventory parts after a duplicate action?
  6. The high velocity launchpad: Build a rocket with ~1.0 TWR. Then put a pack of hammers underneath it. Your rocket thus keeps a consistent 250m/s ascent going through the lower atmosphere to avoid both horrendous gravity losses and aero problems from wacky contraptions on top. Tuned SRBs: A set of unbalanced fleas gets the ship off the launchpad and angled right for the gravity turn. The main boosters then light up and take you to space. Years ago, I also saw a video in which tuned sepratrons would separate, rotate and redock an Apollo style vessel with one button.
  7. If you have KIS/KAS, you can stage radial LS tanks off with minimal mass penalties by having an engineer EVA to unbolt them.
  8. Using KCT version 1.3.9.0, under KSP 1.3.1, I've set my build rate formula to: 0.2 * ([L]+1) * ([EnL]+[EnK]) /([I]+1) * sign (1+[EnK]-([I]+1)^1.8) Which should be linking the build rates to the number of engineers idling around KSC, with an extra build queue opening at around 3 and 7 engineers. But the ETA of my craft doesn't change when I hire or fire engineers at the astronaut complex. It did update when I went to the tracking center and back, or if I visited the VAB and returned. I'm guessing that the cached build rate simply needs to trigger a recalculation upon exiting the complex since there are variables that depend on things you do in there. There should probably also be an update once in a while based on game time if there isn't already; kerbals on missions could die from suborbital situations while you're looking at KSC.
  9. I was messing around while testing mod stability in 1.3.1, and I welded a pair of BACCs onto a basic reliant 1st + 909 2nd stage vehicle, and tried flying it IVA with RPM without testing. It quickly flipped down to 45 degrees, and I was very concerned, but apparently that is the ideal launchpad angle when the TWR is close to 4.0. Somehow managed to end up in orbit with 2.5km/s left in the tank through pure luck in the design phase. Apparently this vehicle is very consistent about parachute drag tipping it over to the ideal launch angle; SAS is useless, but it is almost trivial to fly to orbit.
  10. Are you considering asteroid/surface ISRU? Can you mine for water and crack to oxygen to save yourself a third of the tonnage?
  11. 1) Plant flag next to rocket 2) Board and use roll gyros to move towards flag. 3) Impact flagpole with the angled edge of the capsule and gun the engine when the nose deflects sufficiently upwards. If you have a probe core or pilot on board trying to hold radial, you can also substitute a passenger's helmet for the flag. This is a literally more Kerbal solution, and thus preferred if available.
  12. Yeah, its annoying when mods switch archive styles and I was doing a bunch in a row. Messed this one up, and then did it right on the second pass when I didn't see it yet in GameData.
  13. I just found the problem. There was a copy of the DLL in GameData/JSI/RasterpropMonitor/Plugins. AND GameData/GameData/JSI/RasterpropMonitor/Plugins Don't know why the reported directory was wrong, but that's cleared things up.
  14. Quite sure. Module Manager is the only DLL there, including hidden files.
  15. This is odd. https://imgur.com/a/Rj7lH I just downloaded the most recent version yesterday. On startup, I get an error message saying the raster prop monitor DLL is in the wrong place. According to my file system it is fine, and everything actually works in game, so I'm happy to just ignore the message, but I thought I should mention it.
  16. Even MechJeb couldn't land a rocket with TWR < 1.0
  17. Or simply stack the parts neatly, don't worry about a wee bit of flex, and avoid amplifying your oscillations with inappropriate SAS/control outputs? I've jackknifed a skylab on the way up, and had my share of RUDs, but they were my own fault for poor design and/or piloting, and I don't want to blame the game for it or turn off physics elements to make it work anyways. If you don't care about the engineering and just want to fly a fun looking assemblage into space, that's totally cool; I've made my share of crazy contraptions, but the game clearly does not require struts to make ships work if you do things right.
  18. Generally, you'll be fine until rescue or instantly doomed, but there's still some middle ground. A random failures mod might be useful, but you can also just play like a Space Cowboy and deal with the problems as they arise naturally. You definitely need to have multiple simultaneous missions ongoing, with lots of margin so that they can go off-script and perform some heroics when necessary. TAC + KCT + KAC + KAS/KIS are all quite helpful. Avoid Mechjeb, KER and design tools; just add more margin and figure it out later. You'll need that overengineering of the base vehicle in order to pull off Scotty(tm) brand heroics beyond the intended mission parameters. Like the time a food transport to Minmus got mistakenly filled with tourists and partway there realized that while there was decades worth of food, there was only about 25 kerbal-days of water and oxygen intended for the pilot alone, and they were almost gone now. A high energy transfer using the return fuel, and Bill KAS-assembling a rescue ship from local scrapyard parts resulted in a 1km/s flyby and a fresh can of air bolted on with 9 minutes to spare. Or the time Bill and Bob caused a RUD by letting a prototype miner jiggle itself down the side of a hill at 2m/s, then failed to quite make Minmus orbit on the partially mined ore. So Val had to cut short her training mission on the far side, and do a retrograde intercept and boost, then provide umbilical life support until Jeb flew a serious rescue ship in from Kerbin. Basically, my advice is to play fast and minimalistic with the planning, overdo the engineering, but have lots of simultaneous missions and ramshackle infrastructure, and then apply some creative engineering spirit when things inevitably go wrong. Just because your mun lander falls over on flat ground doesn't mean you shouldn't send the other 5 copies of it, because an engineer can remount the landing gear on the nose for liftoff if he needs to, or bounce the ship off a flag. And you've already spent the time building them and proven you can jury rig them to get home, so you may as well use them right?
  19. I don't bother recovering strap-on boosters since the parachute itself becomes most of the recovery value. The main stage runs hot and short and splashes down in booster bay for a pretty high percent value. The payloads then put themselves into orbit before refueling and never get recovered; just reused until they're broken down for KAS parts at Jeb's Minmus scrapyard.
  20. For Minmus transfers, that's my typical strategy. Pull out a rough burn to get AP up in approximately the right place, then put a tiny normal burn halfway to Minmus which pulls the orbit up to meet Minmus' orbit. Then fine-tweak the timing on the main burn to get an intercept. For training purposes, it is handy to go from Minmus to the edge of Kerbin's SoI, then drop back in a retrograde orbit which will easily catch a thin flyby of Mun. Minor RCS puffs can turn that into a bit of a gravity assist braking, and then you land on Kerbin with 3-stars for everyone.
  21. I managed to land a capsule stack of suborbital tourists on the painted line down the middle of the runway twice, with FAR allowing the radial parachute boxes to act as miniature wings and provide terminal control before popping the cloth out. The rockety bits all dropped into booster bay or the desert however.
  22. Along the lines of "do it right from T-0", another angle to consider is when to abort (not revert necessarily) the mission and update the initial launch parameters to more correct values? If going too high, at what point will you not have enough dV to make orbit and allow a safe place to review the mission? If going too low, at what point do you need to abort and slow down to avoid burning up and/or impacting the ground? PS: Pun not intended
  23. Is the Deep Kethane mentioned a while back implemented? I have an odd psychological need to hoard any resource that is finite even if I could never use it all, but if there is a replenishment (even uselessly small), I'm OK Also, might there be an option to have a slow resource generation on all the tiles (proportional to the starting density perhaps)? I'm imagining a harvester sucking down all the local Kethane, moving on to the next tiles, and by the time it has trundled a route around the entire planet, the starting hex has a bit of resource built up again. An infinite cycle of nomadic wandering.
  24. Why are you pitching up and down? Isn't the idea of a gravity turn to simply follow prograde? Seems to me that you should instead consider throttle; if you messed up the start and are going to high, throttle back to increase the turn rate, and if you're going too low, throttle up or abandon the gravity turn for an emergency maneuver. In terms of predicting where you should be, you could get fancy, but maybe try interpolating between the nearly-empty stage N and the full stage N+1. As you start to run out of fuel for one stage, pretend its stats are gradually changing to the stats of the next stage and act accordingly so there is no sudden shock. Keep the deviations gradual, and plan ahead.
  25. I'm sorry, but that's just flat out nuts. Did you never do a sanity check on selling dirt vs rocket fuel? Ore costs 2 spesos per ton. One ton of monoprop costs 300 spesos. Launching a convertotron to the runway (it can be powered by the launch clamps!) and then recovering it will earn you over a speso per second, and operates in the background while you're doing other missions. I think my spaceplanes average 90-95% recovery or so, with no quicksaves. In theory it costs 2000 for 5 passengers and a KIS box to Minmus surface or mun orbit, but 10k is Mortimer's minimum bid. Most common is the minor fees for missing control surfaces and upholstery cleaning after a flat spin recovery, but even in the worst cases of wing-eating disease, the plane can be put down safely on the Minmus or KSC flats using chutes in the cargo bay, so I haven't had any complete mission losses.
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