Empiro

I'm thinking that it could part damage. Other than landing legs, tires, and solar panels getting damaged, everything in the game is either "perfectly fine" or "blowed up". Maybe in .25 a hard collision won't blow up your engine anymore, but damage it, or cause your fuel tank to start leaking. It fits all of the categories, and good players usually don't hit things hard.

I'd love to see a better vertical snap / alignment. Right now I'm using editor extensions, and though that's really good, the "vertical snap to the middle of the part" is rather limiting. I'm a huge stickler for lining up parts just right, and right now I often have to rotate parts to odd angles then switch between SPH/VAB modes and play with symmetry settings to get everything just right.

I'm definitely running into issues that's possibly related to this mod -- when I move ships with docking ports away from each other, I often get lots and lots of Null Reference Exceptions until I back out to the space center. Usually this manifests itself as the UI flickering. Anyone else getting similar problems? It could also be a different mod I have, but since it never happens when I use decouplers to detach ships, this is the likely culprit.

For me, a big thing I want to see are more unique challenges when doing science. For example, sending a Kerbal on a mission is a unique challenge -- I need a heavy pod instead of a tiny probe core, and if I'm playing with TAC, I need provisions. In addition, I want to be more careful since I don't want him to die a fiery death. The Mystery Goo and Science Jr. both present a bit of a different challenge since I have to figure how how to place these fairly awkward parts because they tend to make your lander tall and/or unbalanced (and is definitely something you need to worry about if playing with FAR). However, the other experiments don't do that -- thermometers, gravioli sensors they're tiny, massless parts, and just add more clicks for me to do. Even when I have a Kerbal along, the 3 experiments of EVA reports, Crew Report, and Surface Sample all behave exactly the same way (other than Surface Samples requiring you to remember packing a ladder on some worlds). There's no reason why all three experiments can't be collapsed into one larger report (that covers what the surface is like and how everything feels to the Kerbal). I also agree with Andrew above that it shouldn't require any clicks, and it should just pop up automatically. I think there are lots of ways for experiments to present more unique challenges. For example, having more bigger and heavier parts like drills that require some planning to carry with you. Perhaps other experiments require you to bring a heavy sample back. Maybe some experiments need a particular arrangement of parts. We can add more unique challenges based on the planet as well. For example, if you want to land on Eve, perhaps you need to invest in something that can withstand heavy pressures, and something that can withstand extremely high temperatures if you wish to land on Moho. Another thing I'd love to see especially is that now we have contracts is to see science tied tightly in with contracts. Make it so that you gain very little science (if any at all) outside of contracts and have the contracts ask you to do something very specific -- like what some of the Fine Print and MCE contracts are asking, things like landing in a specific location and driving around.

Even further reductions for space planes would be great. I hope you're able to still let us make modifications to the ship though -- a common use of space planes for me is to use the same design but swap out the payload. Like I said, though, I'm loving the mod. I'm playing at 6x part and resource costs, and things take forever to build (I thought of upping the construction rate, but ultimately decided against it). I hope in .25 they add other ways to spend money. The game right now is really balanced on a knife edge -- be good at building things and money is never an issue. If you're not, then you'll always be short.

Great mod! I'm having lots of fun in my no-revert career game, planning everything out carefully and running simulations before doing the real thing. I've got a pair of suggestions that could make things a bit more interesting: For things that have a large resource cost, like SRBs and Fuel Tanks, perhaps it makes sense to separate out the build times for the part itself versus the resource cost, and make resource "build" time very fast. This way, things like SRBs and Fuel Tanks are relatively quick to build, since they're just shells filled with stuff, while an engine is complex all the way through, and takes a lot longer to build. Also, perhaps a "build quickly" option should be present. It would be useful to mount rescue missions if you're playing with TAC Life Support, and to avoid missing a tight launch window. I'm thinking that perhaps it should just be a simple multiplicative cost increase -- e.g. 2x the cost to build in 1/2 the time, 3x to build in 1/3 and so on.

Ah I see thanks for the pointer. It looks like it's a problem with not being able to tweak the resource costs in the game. I'm going to try to play around with a module manager config and see if I can't get the costs to line up right by tweaking the resource costs.

I've encountered a bug with the difficulty selector: It doesn't seem to take resource cost into account properly. I've noticed that with the MKS Colony Mod, a lot of the storage tanks have a huge cost in the cfg file (because the resources they can be filled with are expensive). By default they come empty, and cost only a few k. However, if you increase the difficulty, the empty tanks cost an exorbitant amount.

Yes, but in the game it's not really feasible because you can't time warp when accelerating, and it would take too much real-time to do it. This is why Ion Engines have way, way more thrust in the game than in real life.

As a general rule of thumb, if you're in a circular orbit and not using gravity assists, it takes 0.414 * your current orbital velocity worth of delta-v to get into a highly elliptical orbit that's close to the edge of the SOI. (You're basically burning just under the escape velocity which is square-root of 2 times your current velocity). You can then make an arbitrary plane chance at the AP with very low cost. You then need to burn back to your original circular orbit, though with Duna, you can just aerobrake. So to answer your question, assuming no gravity assists, around Duna it would take about 400-500 m/s delta-v to make any arbitrary plane change by going to the edge of the SOI.

Great work with the patches. I'm definitely looking forward to a Ramjet / Scramjet engine. I agree right now that non-RAPIER / SABRE engines are pretty nerfed and right now it's really hard to make an efficient SSTO without using one of those engines.

More science maybe, but I prefer the current system of a single experiment giving you all the science. The older versions had repeatable experiments, but it was tedious and unnecessary because you'd just take along 5 experiment pods.

There's some good suggestions about how to do the turn here. If your question is about circular orbits, then with a maneuver node, you want to place it right on the AP. Zoom in if you have to. However, I usually just wing it by burning while keeping the time to AP around 5-10 seconds and keep going until the PE is almost equal to AP. You can control time to AP through a combination of increasing / decreasing thrust, and aiming slight above or below the horizon. Increase time to AP, increase the thrust or pointing slightly above the horizon (by pointing above, you can even move the AP from behind you to in front of you). Decrease time to AP by pointing below the horizon or cutting thrust.

I did a tour of Jool not too long ago. I only had a single 20-25 ton 3-stage lander that had 6800 m/s DV for landing on Tylo, the core had 2300 m/s which is more than enough to land on Vall, Bop and Pol, and I refueled it from the main ship. For Laythe, I had a 10.5 ton space plane which was pretty fun to use. It let me choose where I wanted to land more easily. Hopefully you don't have too much issue touching the lander down on to solid ground. Like others suggest, you don't need to get into a low orbit. I put myself into an elliptical orbit around most of the moons so that I could get low orbit science (I only had a single Science Jr and Single Goo to save on mass in the Tylo lander). It takes some patience to rendezvous and dock with an elliptical orbit though.

I like the mass requirements because then you can't just re-use the same tiny satellite over and over again. However, maybe a more natural way would be to add a few special "instrument" parts that don't do anything but just have mass, kind of like the rover research parts? They can have all sorts of odd sizes and attachment points. The satellite contracts could ask you to bring a particular part into orbit, and you can treat it like a "test part" contract that temporarily adds the part to the builder and removes it after to avoid cluttering up the part lists after you complete the contract.

I'd actually recommend setting a refueling station around Kerbin, and ship the fuel from Minmus. There's a bunch of reasons why this makes sense: -Your refueling ships are simple (just big tanks), and it costs very little fuel to go from Minmus -> LKO due to aerobraking -Your return trip is relatively cheap because you're just shipping empty tanks back -As Kasuha points out, due to the Oberth effect it actually costs more to go from Minmus to any planet other than Duna/Eve -You don't have to fiddle with trying to lower your periapsis at just the right time, or having to worry if Minmus is in the right position -Most of all, your explorer ship is probably heavy (habitat modules, labs, etc.), and not needing that extra 900+ m/s DV to make Minmus orbit means that either you can have a much smaller launch vehicle, or you can bring along lots more empty tanks to refuel, and give your explorer ship far greater range

Essentially, when you exit the Mun's SOI, you want to be close to parallel with the Mun's orbit (in the retrograde direction). For the absolute maximum savings, follow this procedure: 1. Create a maneuver node for 270 m/s as suggested above. Zoom out a bit so that you can see your orbit around Kerbin after you exit the Mun's SOI. 2. Drag the node around so that the Apoasis around Kerbin is at a minimum. 3. Note your periapsis. If it's 20-30km around Kerbin, then you're done. 4. Otherwise, if the periapsis is too low (into the ground, for example), reduce the amount you burn. If it's too high, increase the amount you burn. Go to step 2. What you're doing is that if you imagine you're in high circular orbit around Kerbin, you'd simply burn retrograde to lower your periapsis most efficiently. However, if you're don't burn exactly retrograde and add a radial component, you'd still lower your periapsis, but you'd also increase your apoasis at the same time. When you're trying to escape the Mun, the Mun will deflect your course a bit so it's hard to tell if you're exiting purely retrograde. By following the above procedure, you make sure that you exit the Mun with only a retrograde component.

The trick to getting really circular orbits is monitoring your time to apoapsis rather than your periapsis. As suggested above, when burning to circularize, point slightly below the prograde marker toward Kerbin to depress your apoapsis so that it doesn't go up. Then, once your periapsis is above the surface of Kerbin, slow down your burn. Keep your time to apoapsis at about 5-10 seconds out through a combination of throttle control and pointing either slightly above or below the prograde marker. Do this for as long as you can, and you will end up with an orbit very close to perfectly circular.

You're always under the influence of gravity, but that's not gravity drag is. Gravity drag is the lower effective DV you get from burning against gravity. For example, if your TWR is 4, if you burn against gravity for 10 seconds, your effective acceleration is 3G, and your resulting speed is about 300 m/s. If you burn perpendicular to gravity, your resulting speed is about 400 m/s. The extra cost of raising the PE is mostly due to the reduced Oberth effect. When you circularize your orbit, there's a time between cutting your engines when your AP reaches 70+km and when you circularize. During that time, you slow down a lot. When you perform a direct ascent, you burn all your fuel at once without cutting your engines. Your approach definitely has lower loss due to atmospheric drag. Your rocket is pretty small, so atmospheric drag makes a big difference, but for bigger rockets, drag has relatively less of an effect. Basically, direct ascent has the following advantages: -Lower atmospheric drag loss -Better use of Oberth effect because you burn earlier and when travelling faster The one big disadvantage is gravity drag loss. For very small rockets with high TWR, the advantages probably outweigh the loss from gravity drag. Sure, but optimizing purely for DV is the wrong approach to take when rocket designs and flight plans go hand in hand. Maybe with future technology things will be different, but in KSP today, getting into orbit first and then going to your destination is usually a good idea.

I just want to point out that this isn't correct -- gravity loss comes when you thrust against gravity. If you thrust perpendicular to gravity like when you are in a circular orbit, there is no incurred gravity loss. You said earlier that your design has an absurdly high TWR of 4 to 6+. This does reduce gravity losses by quite a bit, but then I believe that in this case you're optimizing for the wrong thing. If you made a smaller rocket with a more modest TWR, you'd still be able to reach Duna. Even though it would cost more Delta-V, it would cost less resources overall (in terms of quantity of fuel and engines) because your rocket is so much smaller.

I think that the science values are generally fine for the Mun and Minmus, but the issue is that when you multiply that by the number of biomes there are, you get tons and tons of science for repeatedly doing the same thing. Is there a mod that reduces the science you get for just changing biomes? Basically, something that gives you less than 100% of the science for just changing biomes but more than what you get for repeating the exact same experiment in the exact same place.

Has anyone actually experimented with spaceplanes on Eve? Even if you can't use jet engines, it seems like a space plane could still help in the following ways: You can have have a lower TWR in your lower stage and save weight on engines. You can ascend more slowly, and not lose as much due to drag / gravity losses.

I actually recently had a mission that sounds very similar to yours -- a space plane for Laythe, a staged lander for Tylo (and the ascent stage gets reused for Vali, Bop and Pol). I also had a pair of probes I dropped into Jool and Laythe. I used a reverse gravity assist around Laythe to get into orbit around Jool. I think the gravity brake works better because you can more easily tweak both your periapsis and apoapsis around Jool. I put myself 3 million km from Jool at periapsis, and my Apoapsis touched Tylo's orbit. This let me get low orbit science around Jool (you can't get atmospheric data without being sub-orbital anyways, I believe). After the maneuver, I dropped off my Laythe space plane (weighs about 10.5 tons), and it was easy to get an encounter with Laythe with just a few m/s. Aerobraking around Laythe was actually the hardest part -- Laythe's atmosphere grows thick very quickly, and it has a tiny SOI compared to its gravity, so either you're on an escape trajectory, or you won't leave the atmosphere. I'm playing with both Deadly Reentry and FAR, and I had to make use of the overpowered B9 air brakes to control exactly how much I slowed down. It's pretty hard to land on Laythe --I used a B9 VTOL engine on my space plane to let me land more easily. It wasn't balanced enough vertically, but it let me land at a very slow horizontal speed. The main ship then went to Tylo before going to Vali and then finally to Laythe to pick up the space plane (it's very light when empty). I then used a gravity assist around Tylo to put myself close to Pol's orbit. It took a long time to get the orbit to match up with Pol. After landing on Pol I waited until Pol crossed AN/DN of Bop and did both the transfer burn and inclination correction burn at once, which really saved on fuel. In the end though, my mission turned out to be massively over-engineered, and I had tons of fuel left after leaving Jool, but it was a great experience and I thought that I did a pretty good job with the flight plan.

I posted this in the suggestion thread, but thought to post it here too: If it's possible to spawn beacons/flags, it would be a cool mission to generate a cluster of 3-5 or so beacons within a few km of each other, and generate a mission that asks you to get really close to them (close as in <5m) while bringing along a piece of heavy scientific equipment (that's otherwise useless). It would give players a bit of extra challenge to lift and land this equipment at a precise location, and make rovers useful without artificially requiring that your wheels touch ground at all times (if you're a badass pilot, you can certainly fly to each location and land).

I'd love to see a combination of these, as well as missions requiring lots of precision I'm thinking something like: - Crash a probe weighing at least X tons travelling at least Y m/s (and optionally for a bonus payment: to within Z km of some spawned beacon (maybe flags can be used?)). The weight and speed restrictions make it hard for you to just have a single "mothership" that drops pieces off. I'd also love to see some complex, multi-part missions have have a clear logical goal and progression: - Land some esoteric scientific equipment X (it can be big, heavy, expensive and otherwise useless) to within 10km of some spawned beacon - Run test / scan using the equipment - Randomly generate a handful of new beacons nearby within a few km, and require you to bring a different piece of heavy equipment (like a drill) to extreme precision (like with 5 meters) of those locations. - At any of the locations, have a chance of "finding something really interesting", which generates a new mission that asks you to bring the sample back -- again, the sample should vary in mass (from very light to extremely heavy), but it shouldn't always happen (so always bringing along a huge return lander is wasteful). If you bring it back, you should get tons of science (but maybe very little extra money, so you have to decide if it's worth it or not). The combination of: the weight of the equipment, precision at which you must place it, and the fact that you have to do this 2-3 times make it natural for you to want to use a rover. However, if you're badass enough of a pilot and bring along lots of extra fuel, you can also do small rocket hopes. I generally like giving multiple options and ways of doing things, and I don't like arbitrary limitations or requirements (for example, the rover mission mod requires you to be touching the ground as you travel, which I don't like). I don't think it's possible within the game at the moment, but if you can generate unique equipment names and ids (perhaps using the same hilarious contract description generator), you also force players to have to launch a new rocket for each mission, which prevents them from doing cheese like leaving a Kerbal somewhere to plant a flag now and then.