Kerbital

I've added some advanced tech mods, that I won't even use (because I'm too stupid to figure them out), only to have my tree expanded so I'll have something to spend my science on. One trip to Moho with DMagic mods, beamed to, and processed by, an orbital lab would easily yield 10,000 science. I wanted to do this. I tried airplanes but I suck at flying. I tried VTOL mod, but it was too complex. Boats don't appeal to me. So I just used standard landers (command modules dropped from orbit), but didn't like that either, it felt weird. I gave up. I hope you'll succeed and have fun while doing this.

Oh yes, that's what I do. Otherwise I'd max out the tree by the time I was done with Mun and Minimus:)

I use Science Relay mod by DMagic. You can transmit your science to another vessel. You lose the bonus of landing your samples on Kerbin, but if you do a lot of science and have a station with a lab somewhere in orbit, it's worth it IMHO. I also use DMagic's Orbital Science that gives you around 10 new instruments for more science. The downside is that I max out my expanded Tech Tree quickly.

I don't believe this forum allows that. You need a link.

Crew arrived on the space station. I'm running out of ideas. Perhaps I should try some planet expansion. The vessels are "unrealistic" shuttles. Modified, dual mode (H2-Ox/H2-EC) engines sip fuel and make them SSTO and they can land back on Kerbin as well. I got tired of staged launches a long time ago. In case someone wonders about (lack of) aerodynamics, they have a shroud around the top part during launch.

Built another space station.

Learned that solar panel are not much of use far, in Jool's vicinity. My lander ran out of juice several times. The lander needs a reactor and larger battery. Thanks for AmpYear mod:) Also, needs more powerful engines to take off from Laythe, this barely cut it. Scrapped the mission, too dangerous. Sending the crew back home for some needed time off.

That makes sense.

Ah, thanks. They looked to me like the Clamp-O-Tron Sr to me.

Built another "longship". A trip to Jool this time. Custom Hydrogen/EC engine to make the job easier. I don't want to wait around for 30-minute burn:) But it requires two large reactors to run. The round panels are NF solar panels models but serve as space dust collectors. Then hydrogen is extracted from space dust. Another shortcut as I'm bored of drilling and hauling ore around. Surveyor probe: What is the purpose/function of those two large docking connectors in the middle?

Well, Dropbox is killing the public links, all of my images will soon disappear. If you used Dropbox to insert images, same will happen to you. Thanks Dropbox for breaking the internet. If anyone figured how to insert images from OneDrive or Google Drive, please let me know. I don't want to use Flicker or ImGur... because reasons.

@Diazo Hi, CKAN still shows as incompatible with 1.3:

That would be just star itself, no planets as they all would have perished in supernova explosion

LOL, me too. Same thing, ha, ha! For that reason I like the Near Future Solar. The large deployable panel "sticks out" further from the mount point allowing more flexibility.

Ah, I came here to check on your landship progress. Do post more images:) I ended up playing Homeworld - Deserts of Kharak for few days because of you. I have not finished the single player campaign yet. Then I watched The Martian in meantime and I'm thinking about going back to KSP to fly some missions to Duna. I haven't played for several weeks, only trolled the forums:) *** @Stewcumber - your contraptions are awesome

@FungusForge How about KSP Wheel? It has adjustable gearing. Just turn off damage in the preferences, they're fragile. Are you using TweakScale and Kerbal Joint Reinforcement? TweakScale also increases a part's specs not just size.

No worries

Is that where your inspiration came from: the land carrier from Deserts of Kharak? I haven't played that game though, I probably should.

I used a lot of mods but I found KAS/KIS overwhelming, just didn't have the mind to dig into these two mods. I did try a mod that allowed you to pack stuff into crates, don't recall the name, but it was somewhat convoluted as well.

I wonder if that's what was happening to me: "kick the rover up on undock" sounds like it! I made sure to engage all wheel brakes before takeoff but I never used the yellow wheels.

Yes, It works fine. I used 4 engines for larger rovers too. But again, this is a one way trip. I was looking for a reusable solution. This was the most successful design. Rovers did not explode every single time, but still often enough to discourage use.

I used hacked, i.e slightly overpowered RCS thrusters for that. I'd fire the upwards facing ones during turns or if the rover lost grounds contact. Also, front firing thrusters aided in braking, while rear and downward facing ones help with jumps, although that was risky unless the rover had a reaction wheel to keep it level. Ah, found some pictures. This was before I learned how to edit cfg files to add internal reaction wheels. The top-side mounted thrusters helped with leveling up the rover if it flipped. This one did not have front and rear facing thrusters. I later used quint-thrusters for more flexibility

Yeah, VERY prone to flipping over, in partricular in low gravity, in my experience, almost too much so some solution was needed to prevent flipping and to recover a flipped rover. I added a reaction wheel code to the rover body .cfg files to add stability control and, in low gravity, such wheel is enough to flip the rover back over. I disliked using landing legs as recovery mechanisms for flipped rovers. Another thing that bothered me about this is that a rover will take damage when flipped and the lack of any field repair pretty much made rover missions very precarious and prone to failure because of flipping related damage or immobilization. You have to be super careful when operating a rover. The Feline rover is very prone to flipping due to high center of gravity. I designed my rowers to be flat, low and wide and used structural elements to create sort of roll cages to protect elements such as solar panels from damage when filliped over. I regret that I don't have any images. Overall, combined with the difficulties of transportation, I gave up on rovers.

IMHO, you need fewer (not more), much larger and more actuated wheel groups or track assemblies, and not just on the sides but underneath too for extra traction. Or something like the sand crawler from Star Wars. It might be difficult to build in KSP. And there always be some difficult terrain that it will not be able to negotiate. What would be super cool: to make it a giant hovercraft!

The thing for me was that when I docked a rover (using standard docking ports inside or outside a carrier vessel) it would "explode" when detached later. As if the detaching force was great and shot the rover with great speed. If this happened inside a bay, it usually resulted in explosion. If the port was on the outside of the ship the rover would fly away really far and this also resulted in damage. I've built many cargo vessels, both with various bays to carry the rover inside or with external attachments. The only way it worked for me was if the rover was attached to a crane style carrier with a coupler. No problem. But that was a one way trip. I wanted a solution that would allow me to load up the rover to fly it to other locations. It's possible that some mod was to blame, but I'm pretty sure I tried this on pretty vanilla game with same results. If you look at the image I posted above: The rover is actually flying at great speed out of the bay. I had to be quick to take this shot. It ended up kilometers away from the ship and in pieces.