Jump to content

WanderingKid

Members
  • Posts

    493
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by WanderingKid

  1. That's because you necro'd a nearly 3 year old post. For the curious who drive by, the default control scheme was changed so that we would stop accidentally firing off our abort systems trying to re-focus, which is also Backspace. For the record, that key is called the grave key, though I doubt most care. XD
  2. First, ESU comes up way earlier in career mode than the RC-001S, so there's that. The ESU is also significantly cheaper. So, if you're in sandbox, there's basically no reason to care, at least about using a single ESU without anything else if you're using the highest end probe cores. As an example of caring in Career, one of the ways I was boosting my early science was using 'Mun Bombs', basically 20k funds rockets that would land in a biome on Mun, snag all the science I could use, stuff it into an ESU, and ship that ESU (+Heatshield, OKTO, Battery, 3 panels, an antenna, +Ant+Oscar) home. By lightening the payload on top I kept cutting costs on that rocket until it came close to being equivalently valued to a re-usable Mun Lander that needed refueling. However, for another use, I'm currently playing with a lander that uses a 2 man landing can, 2 ESUs, and is bouncing around Minmus collecting 3 copies of all the data. Why 3? One set is going to be sent back to Kerbin for analysis. The other two are going to be fed into two different research centers on Minmus to produce yet more science (and eventually funds). ESUs are great ways to get multiple copies of the same data for different uses as well. It's a bit clicky to get it all done, but it saves you a lot of repeat visits.
  3. Felt this was more discussion than question, but your call. Usually I get 'em right. Hrm. You know, a mini-tug on the over-built Skycrane isn't a horrible idea, actually. Something like the Doodlebug... Yeah, you're probably right. Thanks for looking into the config files though. I've played with KAS before, just trying to keep this particular playthough as 'mod-lite', as I'm recording it for YT. You're going to laugh at me... I'd forgotten. I almost never use that exploit so I'd completely forgotten it was an option, and I would have used it because as far as I'm concerned the Klaw shouldn't have fired it off on a random spin in the first place!
  4. So my mission, as Kerbal missions tend to go, has gone awry. I'm merrily building a Minmus Base, my power couplings show up from Kerbin, and my Skycrane goes over, snags the batteries, and lands them without issue. Next I re-rendezvous with the craft bringing my power supplies, grab the solar panel system from the wrong side, eject off the tank that brought it along so I can grab it from the RIGHT side, and begin landing it. As soon as my klaw lets go, it goes into an unrecoverable wild spin because the component has no SAS, probe core, or anything else. It's meant to be transported, not wander around on its own. I've never noticed before that the klaw imparts random force to something it lets go of. Is this normal now? I was able to catch it once, thought "Okay, it's stable now, and I'll just let go and.... and... well, crap." Off it goes spinning again. Having blown my SAS playing "Catch the spinning component" it's a moot point at this point, the component's going to crash on Minmus, but what techniques do you use to go about re-capturing something like that?
  5. Not normally, no. The one you used for the front wheel is a lot more forgiving than the 'stuck out' rear wheels you used. They need to come down so softly that you basically need a mod to be able to monitor your downward velocity. Swap over to using 3 of the front style wheels and you'll be in a better position. The rest of the landing gear ISN'T made out of explodium, thankfully. Usually if you pop those gears you've simply over-weighted the gear and need to use the next size up.
  6. Where's your science tree up to? That'll help inform us of what's available to build.
  7. Version 1.2.2... Ran into a very strange bug with the investor mission, and this is the first time I've played with your pack at all so I don't know if it's new, or just me. Looks fun though. Built out a quickie rover/hitchhiker, and went to go pick them up. When I switched characters, it switched to one of the investors who was floating ~135m altitude who survived landing, but the game then froze to white screen. No error log generated, I had to crash it from Windows directly. Rebooted the game, reunhooked the rover, switched characters (wrong direction again), and this time he landed and froze me again. It's very weird. What can I provide to help the debug, besides the persistence file, which you'll find in my dropbox below? https://www.dropbox.com/s/5vm5k7p24uih9fk/Science Boom R%26D.zip?dl=0 EDIT: Does anyone know a way to pull these guys out if I can't stop the bug? It's pretty much hosed up my KSC.
  8. What's throwing you off (slightly) is the atmosphere of Kerbin. Let's take, for example, a trip from Dres to Moho and back again to land on Dres. Insane or not, your calculation makes sense. The reason for that is you would have to burn to slow down for orbit around Dres on your return, and then burn again to land safely. However, because of the atmosphere on Kerbin you can Aerobrake off massive amounts of dV from the totals. This counts for any planet with an atmosphere that you can safely aerobrake in. Those planets are Eve (bring heatshields), Kerbin, Duna, Jool, and Laythe.
  9. I've basically played Hard only since it was introduced, as Normal was just too simplistic and non-restrictive. I also re-enable save/load though, because KSP can be silly sometimes, like blowing up planes on the runway. I'll do easy occasionally for showcase videos, but then I'm playing with things just to make it easier for a recording. So, Hard. First, and foremost, you must get your money's worth out of the world's first contracts. Don't do anything new until you've either gotten a world's first for it, or you've moved on to Mun for the world's first. This includes EVAs, returning science from orbit to KSC, etc. Milk those puppies. I don't do surveying contracts, and I don't do parts contracts (unless they're on the Launchpad). They aren't worth my time. You can really get into shortening your number of launches, but that's a moot concern really. I also don't typically worry about recovering booster components, except at the very beginning when I'm doing 'hop and pops' off the Launchpad to clear the first few world's first contracts and get some goo/mat bay science in. Your first ship to orbit shouldn't cost you more than 10-12k, and you can legitimately get up there with a T-45 and a stack of FLT-100s (the half ton tanks) if you're careful about it and leave yourself some fuel for final deceleration under chute. Without upgrading the pad or tracking center you can do a Munar flyby if you wait for moonrise, burn prograde until your Apoapsis is ~14 million, and wait. You'll be close to a free return and can adjust from there once you return to Kerbin's SOI. The final verdict, though, is hard mode forces you to do more with less. Less upgrades, less power, more finesse. Chase into the science branch deeply to get to the Mat Bay Jr. That's a lot of science for the rest of the tree. Abuse low/high altitude tests, and low/high orbit tests. You don't need to orbit to get to high space, just need to go up. Use SRBs, they're cheap for the power and part count, particularly once you open the BACC Thumper. Once you open up OKTO, along with solar panels, you have satellites to bring in funds with. You don't have to go that far to get that going, and as an extra point you start setting up your commnet for their cash. I was working on a reasonable walkthrough of Hard Mode (at least till leaving Kerbin's SOI) but I managed to get myself distracted building a Minmus Science base and then playing with recordings... I'll need to get back on that. However, you HAVE the funds, I assure you. They're there. Rescuing LKO Kerbals and sending up satellites gets you a bucketload of funds for the early upgrades. Start small, work small. Don't over-engineer. Learn to Rendezvous. You can't transfer resources between units until you upgrade some buildings, but you CAN dock and transport a craft with an already full tank somewhere else. Learn the Delta-V equation (or use KER/MJ) to figure out your Delta-V on your craft. Aerodynamic rockets take ~3,500 dV to circularize in LKO. Abuse EVA's over biomes by going into a polar orbit instead of east/west. The problem is that there isn't just one trick, there's a few dozen of them, each one small, each one making an impact until you get where you need to be. If you're curious about upgrade order, my usual is: Astronaut Center (EVAs), Mission Control (more simultaneous contracts), Tracking Center (finally getting conics and nodes), and then the Launchpad to launch 30-40t rockets for Mun/Minmus landings. Inside Kerbin's SOI these are the only upgrades you should need. The rest are gravy.
  10. To add to the discussion (in a lengthy form), a technique I used back when I did my Let's Play for the Duna mission was to attach one of my landers (it was my emergency lander, in fact) to the back of an orange tank with the Docking Port Seniors. It's mighty poodle engine was engaged during transfer and added some TWR for the orbital transfer, and when it was detached it had plenty of TWR for landing/takeoff from Duna. Part of the idea here is just to help you think laterally and generate some 'fun' ideas. If you do this with all your one-shot landers, those engines can be reattached for the trip home, and you won't need to drag along the empty tanks they used either. Just use another set of docking port seniors from the engine itself and (if you're bringing a claw tow along) re-attach the engines right to your mothership again, and ditch the lander completely. So, from top to bottom, think this way for your lander: DockingPort Sr. Gas tank(s) Crew compartments DockingPort Sr. (x2) Poodle Engine The docking ports won't add much weight, comparatively, but doing this will save you a tremendous amount of Delta-V. You won't have wasted tonnage on 'dead' engines, you'll ditch unnecessary mass for the return transfer, and the tow itself can be very light, only used for local maneuvers. Think Okto-2, a few RCS ports and a tank, a docking jr, a claw, and an SAS component to help with rotations. Slap on a few massless batteries and solar panels and you've got a short range tug that comes in at ~1 ton total. Each of those poodles outweighs that tug by itself, nevermind all the lander components. You can even leave the mini-tug behind when leaving orbit to save a little extra dV. Also, while I like having a backup 'rescue' lander (my missions rarely go as planned, I've noticed, particularly at Duna) a reusable lander with discarded fuel tanks on the mother ship will save you mass overall. Here's the general principal: A lander going to Duna takes up mLand mass (cockpit/hitchikers/etc) + mLFO fuel for landing and takeoff. Unless the lander is staying there, you need enough fuel on the lander to de-orbit, land, takeoff, re-orbit, and rendezvous. Four trips to Duna with four landers = 4 mLand + 4 mLFO, along with mLFO(extra) being wasted, which is your safety margin of fuel per lander. If you re-use the same lander four times, you're only bringing along mLand + 4*mLFO mass. Additionally, your mLFO(extra) can now be used for either a 5th landing (if you've got enough) or can be kept as an additional safety margin for other explorations, or your return trip home. If the fuel tanks for the 3 mLFO extra fuel landings are detachable from the mothership, you've saved 3 mLand in weight on your insertion to Duna, and you can still discard the additional dead weight tanks when you're done, leaving you in the same state on the way home. Just some food for thought.
  11. I did some goofing around with no-tech approaches to Mun and got these results for blind shots at the Mun. With Maneuver Nodes you can refine this much more accurately, but it's the guidelines I've ended up with:
  12. So, short form: I've got a design I want to be able to 'snap into' a few different cargo bays using the TT-38K decoupler. I can't figure out how to subassembly it so I can mess with it. I've tried using it for a root part, but no joy. What methods do you guys use when you have standard booster builds or cargo components that you want to radially attach to an existing design to speed up assembly?
  13. For some reason RCS tanks seems to be very weak for holding onto heavy things. If your design was flipped over, where the light part was on the outside, you'd be in a better position. I know a few possible ways to deal with it, but I wouldn't call any of them great. One is to strut the orange tanks to the RCS tanks. That will help with the snap off they're incurring. Also, accelerate at say 1/5 to 1/4 the burn rate until those orange tanks are empty and the mass is less. Annoying, but the lack of g-force should help keep them attached. You will probably want to experiment to find out where your limit is.
  14. On a side note, I was having the same problem you were until I started sticking a radiator on top of the Mk1 right behind the cockpit on top, away from the heat. That solved 95% of the problem. A slightly higher Periapsis did the rest.
  15. Hey all, my google-fu is failing me for this mod. I'm trying to figure out how to use pathing, and I can't seem to find any instructions on it. If I missed it somewhere in this thread can you please tell me which page it's hiding in, otherwise if someone can point me in the right direction for a tutorial or explanation, I'd appreciate it.
  16. I rarely have an issue with lawn-darting a returning 5 man craft with a MK1 pod and 2 crew components attached for a 5 man runner. I use them as Tour Buses for xp'ing my Kerbals and the like. The trick for me has always been using a heat shield on the tail to give it a rounded edge and pushing the radial chutes out a bit so they recreate some drag at the top like fins. As for time/profit, okay, I can see that. 10-12 kerbal tourist buses would count, to me, as a station, even if it's coming home.
  17. Opening cash is the world's first contracts. I milk them like mad. Sets me up nicely for stage 2. I drive up the science portion of the tree to the Oktos. Once I have Okto, I start sending up single-shot dual MG-5 satellites all over the place. Comm network, here I come... and it's getting me cash, too. 2 pod LKO rescues round out the cash grab here while I'm dancing around with Mun world firsts, as you have to return a bunch of them and I've got time to spare at that point. I rarely, if ever, have a cash problem from that point forward. I've gotten very good at building minimalist rockets to do exactly what I need them to do. However, it's at this point I've started banking towards a pair of science bases on Minmus while 4 scientists go on a nice tour of the local SOI and Solar to get 3 star xp. Meanwhile, a lander is soaking Mun's biomes with refueler craft being launched every day or so, so there's plant the flag requests and (hopefully) science from on or around Mun (don't lose anything for the crew reports). Meanwhile, Minmus satellite network contracts are coming up and the same design I used for Mun starts setting up my Minmus network. Once I've got Seismic opened up, a Minmus Lander is launched to start biome hopping and collecting 3 copies of all science, using the new Science Storage units. That will then park near wherever I've decided I'm going to park my new science stations, which is usually the Greater Flats just for convenience of so much flat ground. Eventually, the Station parts are launched once the Mun lander comes home and beefs up the science available. I get pretty dry on cash here for a little bit, so I will probably ship a few solar suicide stations or similar up. Once that's done, it's home free. Minmus Science begins processing and the lander heads to Minmus orbit, grabs the third copy of data, hitches a rescue ship home, and kills the science tree. From there on a contract turning science to cash leaves the organization free and clear. Since the bases are modular, if they ever run out of science to process I'll detach the mpl, toss it aside, and connect a new one to the base and it can start fresh one the lander that was left in orbit does another series of biome bounces.
  18. Watched the Nutshell video. There's a way to do it without maneuver nodes. At Munrise, burn prograde until your apoapsis is ~14.5m from Kerbin. You'll do a high flyby of Mun and come back for free (or nearly free, depends on exactly how well you hit it).
  19. Out of curiousity, how would you recommend going about finding a dev to ask nicely? I'm relatively sure the new staff is currently trying to ramp up on all the years of code after the recent upheaval, so I'm not sure where I'd start at this point.
  20. As far as I can tell even simply orbiting won't get you those contracts, though you can get tourist contracts right after an orbit. I'm hoping some more mod writing or investigative players can help me here with nailing that down: Also, I guess it depends on what you consider Tier 2. I consider the first node that's open by default Tier 1, just so I line up with the wiki when I do my videos. I was going to comment that Val wasn't level 3 there, but I had the wrong career in mind... As for the tech levels, since it was a tutorial video there was a few things I wanted to make sure the ship had: Enough Delta-V for newbies to adjust to mistakes (like I did in the video when I flattened out too early and stayed in the drag atmo too long, I usually get apo above 50km on the T-45). Enough Delta-V that you don't have to wait ages for orbital rendezvous if you're off slightly. A very safe default parachute pattern. Solid flight controls for the gravity turn. Ease of controls in orbit so you're not flipping SAS on and off to deal with electrical drain. As to the bare minimums: 2xMK1 Pod Mk16 chute on top, adjust to 1,250m altitude deployment to avoid bricking. TR-18A 19xFL-T100 Tank 1xT-45 Swivel TR-18A RT-10 Hammer at max thrust. 17.630t, 19.1m tall, 26 parts. You'll hit orbit with ~245 m/s dv left. You'll need ~60 of that to de-orbit cleanly aiming for 32,500 altitude. Leaves you about 180 m/s of dv to play with. You have to adjust incredibly slow, and let your orbit do all of the work. Turn off SAS for turns and turn it on again once you've rotated, to save on electricity. It's a monster and the SAS will chew on it. Once you're within the 2.2 km of the target swap out and have the rescue victim come to you. It's a long flight but they've got more dv than you do! That's my tier 2 solution, but I don't like flying it. It has absolutely no room for errors, and landing in highlands/mountains is dangerous, if not suicidal. On a side note, the KURSE requires Flight Control and Advanced Rocketry. It's not obvious at first glance but those are AV-R8s on the tail, not AV-T1s. Hard to tell without having the craft file in front of you however. So the KURSE, as the craft file stands, requires: Advanced Rocketry (45) Flight Control (45) All of Tier 3, 2, and 1 (63) Total: 153 So, you're right in a way, I suppose it depends on what you consider 'low-tech'. Those nodes to me though are very early opens, even in a Hard career. I did however adjust my saved version of the KURSE to simply use the Tier 1 tailfins instead of the AV-R8s to drop the price on the ship further, but I wouldn't want a newbie trying to fly that thing. It requires a practiced touch.
  21. Does anyone know if there's a way to review the spawn requirements for contracts to show up? Example: You won't get 'science from around Kerbin' until you've gone above the atmosphere (might be orbit, not sure, but you get the drift). I was wondering if there's a config file or something else I can use to find out the exact specs for each mission type. In particular, I'm interested in the bare minimums for 'Rescue a Kerbin from LKO' requirements, which I believe requires an upgrade for the tracking center, but I might as well try to learn to fish instead of having one given to me. Thanks!
  22. A clarification, as I'm not sure the tone you're intending via simple text: The tracking station doesn't need to be upgraded, I don't use maneuver nodes nor orbital targetting at any point. The KURSE fits on a basic Launchpad, it comes in under 18t. Finally, you can get level 1 prograde controls for your pilot simply orbiting, and is simply convenient, not necessary. Yes, you do need the Terrier, however. If you were looking for a way to pick up a Kerbal at Tier 1 science, no, I don't have that solution. I did record the video later in a career game I was playing mostly because I was waiting to remove orbital clutter for ease of viewability. Having 12 different returning and departing vessel orbits was cluttering up the screen.
×
×
  • Create New...