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Captain Vlad

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Everything posted by Captain Vlad

  1. Sees a note from Valentina in the pilot lounge, saying she's taking the new Mach 6 spaceplane for it's first outing because they bumped takeoff up to 15 minutes before he usually arrives. Sees that she puts little faces as dots on the 'i's', all sticking their tongues out at him. Then realizes his powdered doughnut box is empty, and Bob and Bill had just walked past...they'd said the stuff on their hands was chalk from Werner's board, but doesn't he use dry erase now? He ponders this as the sonic boom rattles the Astronaut Complex's windows, and he can hear a chirpy, female "yeee haaaaa!' from the radio room down the hall.
  2. I have separate designation systems for my rockets and my spaceplanes. Rockets I usually name with a sort of project name, like Endeavour or Challenger, which each name denoting the target body (Challenger for Mun, Endeavour for Minmus, etc). Usually just a number after that, along with a designator for probes. Aircraft and spaceplanes are X-something when I'm designing them and sometimes retain it if it's just something I was trying out, concept wise. If it's something that has repeated utility, like a cargo lifter or a crew transfer vehicle or whatever, I decide it's 'in-service' and in my head I have more than one of them. Those get a designation based on what kind of engines they use and whether they're intended for orbital or atmosphere use. Usually get a fancier name after the designation. RO-1 Torpedo, my .90 orbital hauler, was "Rapier, Orbital", for example. I also put letters after the number if it varies from the original design in some significant way. I was planning a large, reusable craft that would stay in space for some interplanetary missions before 1.0 dropped and I restarted my career. If I end up with one of those, I consider them a 'ship' and they'll get a cool name preceded by KCS.
  3. I've had decent luck using them as additional drag resources during spaceplane reentry.
  4. Both your theory and Newblar's are just what embarrassed adult Kerbals tell the baby Kerbals when they don't wanna have "the talk" just yet. Sort of like the stork delivering babies in some Earth cultures.
  5. And ya' know what? I can work with that.
  6. Plus it also has the tendency to sound 'official' when it, in fact, isn't.
  7. Accident? As if the review board would buy that. This was CLEARLY a test of some new Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle design for the delivery of some horrible cargo to several targets simultaneously, but accounting said the R&D guys only had funding for one launch and this tourist contract had to be completed for the KSP to stay in the black. Don't think we'll let your negligence or your irresponsible decision to try and do both at once pass without... ...oh hey, you brought cake?
  8. Is your LM manned at the time, or does it have a probe core? If it is manned, does it have a pilot aboard? I noticed that if I took the only pilot out of a multi-Kerbal craft for EVA, SAS stability assist ceased working.
  9. The 'weapons in KSP' thing is weird for me too. I'm the last person to tell someone how to play their own game, so more power to the OP and whatever he's trying to build. But I have this bizarre emotional 'no, that's not right' feeling whenever I see the subject come up. Given that I've spent a considerable portion of my life playing games where the purpose is to blow the other guy to smithereens and rate Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as one of my all time favorites, I find this reaction odd. I have a couple of planes I built where I think 'this would make a good fighter. But fortunately it doesn't have to be and Jeb can use it to buzz the control tower'. To Jacob: Some of it may be that we're so inundated with games centering on violence that one that totally isn't becomes distinctly refreshing. But then people start talking about building bombers and missiles and it kills the buzz.
  10. I love rescue missions. Built a 'two stage to orbit' rocket that only loses its boosters do they'd be more profitable for the Kerbin orbit rescues. Named it like, the Salvation or something. They don't pay THAT well, but I seem mildly obsessed with getting the little guys back down. Just pulled my first rescue in Munar orbit a couple of days ago.
  11. Welp, she made it. Not efficiently and with just enough fuel left over to de-orbit and set down on dry land. Climbed to about 15K then followed the tip that you need to be close to reentry effects...trailed flame most of the way out, but the light feathery flame, so no damage incurred. I made it to 28,000 meters before I had to switch modes and attained a 118x101 km orbit (or thereabouts). Need some serious flight profile work, but nice to no I could do it, especially with this odd looking beast.
  12. I'll give some of these suggestions a go when I get home and let ya' know how it works out. Thanks in advance for the help.
  13. So despite starting my career over and being nowhere near some of the wings and engines I like to put on SSTOs, I couldn't resist the temptation and started a sandbox game just to make some spaceplanes. Remade an old one that worked okay in .90 but I feel it has more potential in 1.02. If by potential you immediately think 'wow that's some good acceleration' then you and I probably think alike, but I'm running into a problem. I'd heard Rapiers didn't accelerate so well at higher altitudes, and that the new semi-standard SSTO ascent profile is to gain speed at a lower altitude before pitching up. Buuuut...doing so, the Mk1 to Mk2 adapter I was using as a portion of the fuselage...overheated and blew up. I started my first big acceleration around 10,000 meters, and a second attempt at 15,000 with the same results. Am I just starting too low or what?
  14. I see Val and Jeb as friendly rivals, who get along well but are constantly trying to one-up the other. I don't see this happening in a non-professional way, since they're astronauts. They're just both bad-ass pilots in the same program and that comes with a healthy dose of ego and competitiveness. I don't imagine they're romantically connected.
  15. Why should this character become a fighter: Because the player selected 'aggressive negotiations' as a policy and Mario is charging way too much for those fuel transfer pipes.
  16. Also would really like to see an early-tech-tree two-man 1.25, command pod, as others have described.
  17. I've found it really useful. It's not intrusive to me and while I usually don't make huge major omissions, I do do things like forget to add ladders or truly sufficient battery capacity, etc. So it's helpful.
  18. But the whole flight turns into such an adventure...
  19. At the Astronaut complex, playing a never-ending game of darts with Jeb to see who gets to fly my first 1.0 manned Munar mission. Suspect both of them keep sneaking to the VAB to sabotage the unmanned probes I have sent so far, and then telling the admins that robots are unreliable. She ended up being the pilot on my first successful orbit this time around, while Jeb performed the first orbital rescue. I try to split 'landmark' missions between them.
  20. There's been no KSP update release that hasn't made the game better. This one was no different; its made one of the best game's I've ever played significantly better.
  21. My first rescue contract came up almost immediately after I'd made my first successful orbit, and, since at that stage of career mode, $54,000 is a lot of money, I accepted it, but then built a two-man rocket with some pretty basic parts, though fortunately I had my workhorse 909 already...don't think the mission would've been possible without it. After some reverted test launches (my version of computer models. Could use sandbox mode, but too lazy) I get the rescue ship orbit ready and send her skyward with Jeb at the controls (Val got the first orbit, so I gave Jeb the first orbital rescue). Rocket, somehow, proves a little shakier than it did in the tests (probably pilot error...) but makes it to orbit with what I figure is plenty of fuel. What I don't have plenty of is battery power for the reaction wheel. So, over the course of the next eight game time hours I make adjustment burns, first to let the stranded Kerbal's pod catch up to Jeb, then to meet up. Doing this requires me to steer prograde or retrograde with SAS on for a few seconds, to save electricity. Despite the lack of constant fine control, I end up within .3 kilometers of our Kerbonaut from the lesser agency and she spacewalks over and hops into Jeb's craft, probably wondering why all the lights were turned out and a note not to plug any electrical devices in was on the control panel. And then it's time to re-enter, with precious little battery power. I point retrograde, burn, again using brief spurts of SAS, hoping to save enough I can just leave it on through the big flaming slow-down. Down we go, don't have any trouble holding the craft stable until fire starts to burn away the heat shield but as the capsule starts to rock, I turn SAS on. It lasts longer than I'd feared but shorter than I'd hoped, and the ship is still trailing fire when it starts to tumble end over end. She holds together, though, but a new problem arises when I realize that she's going waaaaay faster than I expected her to be at that point. Plummeting in over some mountains, I pop the chutes after the flames die down and the partially deployed silk slows me up, but...nowhere near enough. They deploy, finally, but I'm not fully slowed fast enough and the rescue ship hits the ground harder than is safe, destroying the heat shield. It sort of bounces when it hits, though, and when it hits the ground again, it stays together. Jeb and the KSP's newest recruit get out of the pod and await the arrival of the recovery team and probably clean spacesuits. Started re-setting my chutes to open much much higher after this mission. Thing is, I've done things on KSP that were probably more difficult, but I think that may have been my most harrowing mission since I got the game, due to the low tech level, small budget and the new re-entry danger.
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