Goddess Bhavani Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Hi, I took about a years' haitus from KSP as I felt a bit burnt out and not able to make awesome stuff. I also had a RL career switch to tend to at the time. Things got serious and what do you know, I felt out of place in life and everywhere else eventually. Also looks of shock from friends as I went from typical office drone to commenting in an arcane fashion on electronic medical records and sharing interesting tales from the operating rooms.. But anyway, I got in the mood for some KSP and Oh My God 1.2 already. When I left it was 1.0.4 and I'm pretty sure I will have to go mod shopping already. Feel free to school a returning newbie on what changed and what magically appeared from the magical forges of Squad - while some things like Z, T and space are the same, it looks like the UI has had a revamp making it look that much more modern. And clouds. I need a nice cloud pack that doesn't destroy the framerate. Once I have a couple hundred hours in I'll start posting/sharing creative craft again and posting them on youtube, hopefully! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starhawk Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Hello pandoras kitten and welcome back! The biggest new features in the most recent release are the communications network, probe scanning system (kerbnet), and rewritten resource flow system. Also massive bugfixes, stabilizing the orbit system, rewriting the close approach marker system, innumerable optimizations, and untold quantities of quality of life improvements. Many things added and tweaked by Mike (Mu), Bill (Taniwha), Nathanael (NathanKell), Sébastien (Sarbian), Jim (Romfarer), Brian (Arsonide), Chris (Porkjet) and Nathan (Claw) before they left. The UI was mostly rewritten for 1.1 and is much improved in 1.2. There's also the KSPedia which aims to be a basic reference for the game. Probably lots more I can't remember. Happy landings! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goddess Bhavani Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 Cool! After 2 hours of using CKAN to shop for my favorite usual mods (only to see I have to wait for the essential Kerbal Engineer Redux to be 1.2 compatible), I was more or less mission-ready.. or so I thought! I started making a series of b@da55 Sounding Rockets using @RoverDude's fantastic mod and soon found myself sitting on tiny rockets streaking across the stratosphere. I then unlocked the first three tech nodes using sounding rocket science alone, and hatched an evil plan (tm) to create an SRB-based manned program just for kicks. For starters, a BACC booster core will be propelling a Mk.1 command pod to the edge of space, unmanned, with a Sounding Rockets avionics and science package atop the capsule. I also chopped the engine thrust to half so I could remotely attempt to destroy the vehicle if anything went wrong; or simply just let it fizzle out on the launch pad for lack of TWR and treat it as a static fire test. Actually this is an excuse for setting the BACC thrust so low that it sat on the pad for nearly a minute before taking off so slowly you'd probably ask why the heck is the rocket so fat and lazy. Unfortunately, Jeb snuck aboard this unmanned flight and things got VERY sour VERY fast - for I have installed the Gyro Saturation mod and the rocket had NO control as a result! At about 4000m altitude (still going really slow) the BACC started to do an uncommanded gravity turn by itself and ended up trying to fly horizontal, breaking the speed of sound. With no control (not even to cut off the engine, welcome to SRB perils) and no aerodynamic lift to speak of, it of course started to plummet back to earth, still accelerating, and would break Mach 2.0 in its lawn-darting adventure had I not the fortitude to trigger stage separation anyway in a last ditch attempt to save the command module and its avionics stack. Success - the capsule thrust away from the runaway booster, aero forces flipped the capsule around "by design" and it started slowing down........ And Jeb died anyway because I hit the parachute activation too late. To add insult to injury, the avionics package survived. Flight 2 - After mourning Jeb's loss and feeling extremely bad I am playing on hard difficulty and cannot revert to launch pad, I recalled manned space flight on both the US and Russian sides had fatalities before successful manned space missions. Apollo 1, for instance. I decided Valentina shall be chief kosmonaut and the R-1 manned SRB program should continue. I increased the BACC thrust to 80% and left everything else as is, for with higher acceleration it will streak out into space on a sub-orbital trajectory on its own. I decided from my past KSP experience of many thousands of gameplay hours that BACCs were weak and easily manageable - famous last words. Without Kerbal Engineer however, I had no idea how much power the SRB would actually generate, and how much dV this BACC - Mk.1 pod setup has. It ended up going way, way out to 200km and coming back down nearly vertically. Once again, I did not open the parachute in time and Valentina died. I then decided yours truly would be fired as head of the space program and decided the world should start to know about my hilarious incompetence in this post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cochran Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 2 hours ago, pandoras kitten said: Without Kerbal Engineer however, I had no idea how much power the SRB would actually generate, and how much dV this BACC - Mk.1 pod setup has. It ended up going way, way out to 200km and coming back down nearly vertically. Once again, I did not open the parachute in time and Valentina died. Two pieces of good news for you. 1. There is a of Kerbal Engineer available that works in KSP 1.2. Hasn't yet been released on curse, but I've been using and haven't noticed any problems. It's version 1.1.2.0. Download the master archive at https://github.com/CYBUTEK/KerbalEngineer/archive/master.zip Unzip it, Go to the "Output" folder and copy the "KerbalEngineer" folder to your GameData folder. 2. Parachutes now have an "Open when safe" option. So you can pretty much immediately stage the parachute as soon as you hit atmosphere and the parachutes will actually deploy at the earliest safe opportunity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goddess Bhavani Posted October 23, 2016 Author Share Posted October 23, 2016 (edited) Thanks so much! After getting the hang of lofting small payloads into orbit it's time to launch faux Sputniks (Stayputnik?) to get a rudimentary communications network in place. Also getting into my element making funny things. 1950s cruise missile / recon drone anyone? Another mod finding request: There used to be a mod that showed a lot of additional stats when you right clicked a part - drag, temperature, lift factor, etc etc. I tried doing a forum search and got a Critical Temperature Gauge. Would you know of a mod that shows even more per-part stats? Edited October 23, 2016 by pandoras kitten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
legoclone09 Posted October 23, 2016 Share Posted October 23, 2016 Welcome back to the forums! Long time no see! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goddess Bhavani Posted October 23, 2016 Author Share Posted October 23, 2016 I actually found my old 'space sheep' flag. I shall be planting it on the mun soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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