Jade Falcon

Chatterer, Enhanced Navball, Kerbal Engineer, EVE, Astronomers visual pack. B9, Tantares, KW Rocketry, Habitat pack, NEAR. Kind of restrained I know and yes I could use all these in career mode. Its just I personally don't like the lack of variety in the contracts and I tend to choose the game mode that's opposite to what the majority do anyway. I'm weird like that. Got my eye on FinePrint mod which I think when it has even more variety will eventually help fix my KSP career reluctance but I think Kerbals should level up in skills and they should have a really high recruiting cost to offset the rather large payouts I was getting. I did try career and I was rolling in funds and it just felt like the funds weren't making any difference to the game. There should be more risk/reward to it. Not just land on the Mun, collect payout, get flag planting mission spammed by Gene over and over, transfer to lander, plant flag, collect cash, rinse and repeat. Yes I do know I don't have to do these missions but it must be OCD or something because if its there I feel obliged to do it and I wasn't really enjoying that.

Sandbox and modded for me. I like the idea of career mode and funding but I find the current contracts are not to my tastes, I realise its a first draft and all so I'm not bothered by this and will continue with sandbox for the time being.

I thought the contracts was a nice taste of what is potentially to come and something the devs will build on but at present for me personally I still prefer sandbox. Career mode at present has too many similar contracts and even when you dismiss some of the really idiotic ones its immediately replaced with something equally idiotic. Now sure its good for a laugh and very Kerbal but I prefer to either follow my own plan to entertain myself or I continue to work through Pecan's Exploring guide because that gave me tons of fun ideas. Plus I like to build spaceplanes from the start and not have to mess with rockets until I unlock all the plane tech so that's another reason why I prefer sandbox.

Scott Manley because when I first bought KSP his vids actually helped me get somewhere in this game. I also enjoy Cruzan AK's spaceplane tutorials.

Yes that is exactly what happens and exactly how you describe it. Isn't actual weathervaning to do with crosswind affecting aircraft on the ground which tends to turn the nose into the wind? If so I see what you mean by this because the effect at altitude I experienced is a similar effect, not the same but certainly similar in the fact that the nose tends to pull down sometimes. Yes after the first couple of replies from Hodo and Pecan I came to the conclusion my problems arose from bad balancing of tanks in the sense of not paying attention to the effect when drained as well as too steep an ascent. Too much speed is something I am certainly guilty of I will have to learn to start making my speed more gradual. Excessive drag in the rear which you mentioned may also be another of my design problems. Thanks for the reply some very useful info there.

I don't think the OP's example is any more of an exploit than the flag planting missions. I mean seriously go to the Mun. Leave lander on Mun. Go to Gene collect flag planting contract, swap back to Kerbal on Mun, say hello to 76K. Rinse and repeat. I try not to do those more than once now.

Yes I know. SSTO is single stage to orbit. Even a tin can with an engine on it that achieves orbit is an SSTO. Besides I've actually been enjoying your Exploring Campaign PDF recently and that has tons of interesting ideas. I merely meant that I personally prefer planes or spaceplanes. Its looking at the stars through the Mk I cockpit nothing beats it for me and yes I could bolt that onto a rocket if I wished but its not the same. Different strokes for different folks and all.

I laughed out loud at this. Thanks for the explanation. Ok cheers. As for rockets who cares I prefer planes anyway. The game is called Kerbal Spaceplane Program right?

True the quick and easy path leads to the Dark Side of SSTO design. I will endeavour to learn patience Master Hodo. Just as a pure experiment I thought I'd give NEAR mod a go, not sure if I'm ready for FAR yet but this plane I just built gets into orbit quicker with more velocity and plenty of fuel left and I'm now confused and wondering why that is because from where I'm sitting NEAR is way better than vanilla. Are vanilla aerodynamics really out of whack or something? Plus I had none of that weird bouncing either.

Yes I have noticed that in my tinkering. It seems to depend a lot on the aircraft, some designs they are really useful other designs not so much. In fact in some cases I have noticed adding them just ends up shifting the CoL in front of the CoM which is really bad. To be honest I really hate them on planes kind of destroys the aesthetic look for me which is another problem I have since I often feel the need to make something look nice but it seldom flies nice. lol Regardless I just tried something new and adapted the Aeris to my purposes so I could understand why it works. I now believe my problems arose from not noticing enough how the fuel shifts in flight, pilot error in regard to not shifting my pitch enough with Alt-WASD and also I think trying to get through the atmosphere a little too severely I think I'm trying to power through it and not coasting along enough rising my velocity. Plus also letting my intact air get too low and not realising how its affecting my ascent. Anyway I got this shameless Aeris ripoff into orbit, circularised and despite the low fuel readout at the bottom left I do have enough to burn retrograde and finally fly down to Kerbin. So many thanks to you both I will consider all this new information for future craft. Many thanks.

Thanks I do use the caps-lock and the alt-trim controls but I never noticed them display in blue at the bottom left so thats definately new to me. I do tend to use the fuel lines which I picked up from Cruzan's tutorials since I learnt about the balance problem from a Scott Manley video I think. As I said in my last post to Hodo I think the bouncing is the intake air problem, i.e enough air to keep the engines going but not enough to maintain the lift of the plane itself. I will need to run some more experiments to know for sure.

Yeah I guess I should think to check that cheers. I actually just tried to see if I had the same issues with the Aeris 4A and while for the most part the nose always kept its pitch up there was a point when the same issue happened. I think now what the problem is is that I'm letting the intake air run too low and despite the engines still working there isn't enough air running through to keep them at top performance. I actually noticed this when I move the camera around and I could see my jet trail had actually dropped in altitude from where I previously was. Plus the Aries has the nose winglets and they probably help a lot and not all of my designs use those so maybe a rethink is in order.

@Hodo No I don't have a picture of the craft to hand and no I'm not using FAR or NEAR.

Hi guys I've been building various spaceplanes according to the numerous video tutorials and helpful comments on the forum but there are some things that occur that I can't explain. 1) Typically I follow the guide to ascending but now and again when I hit a certain point the aircraft seems to want to pitch down. I have enough intake air and my speed is over 1000m/s but it still seems to want to go nose down. I can keep the nose up but its kind of like a bouncing effect. To begin with I thought maybe it was due to having the landing gear too far forward but that wasn't it. Then I thought maybe its drag causing it or its the SAS but if I switch the SAS off my plane tends to be awkward to fly. Or its the plane bouncing on the atmosphere or something. However it doesn't always happen at high altitude either so I'm confused. I know it must be something I'm doing wrong but I don't know what. 2) Sometimes despite having the velocity and what I think is a high enough altitude my AP suddenly starts falling and it doesn't matter how I orientate my aircraft but I just end up heading towards the ground again. Is this due to Kerbin's gravity and me not having a high enough altitude? Same problem occurs for me with some rockets so I think it must be a personal design flaw. 3) Ideally how much oxidiser do I need for a spaceplane since I often find I run out too quickly. I can get into orbit but circularising often costs me all my oxidiser. Is there a specific ration of fuel/oxidiser I need to apply? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm only 100 hours into this so far so I'm sure I'm still making stupid mistakes.

Well firstly I continued my career game but due some weird error it had become extremely laggy. The lag in the tracking station was unbearable so I deleted the save. I didn't feel like starting a new career game at present so I went into Sandbox and built some ships. First pic is the Wraith SSTO. It can get into orbit ok it just needs more oxidiser. So the Mk 2 version is currently at the design stage. Then I built the K.S.S Palomino which is a Kerbal rip off of the U.S.S Palomino from The Black Hole. I couldn't get it exactly how I wanted. This thing would cost at least 2 million so glad I was in sandbox mode. The lifter was monstrous and the ship itself steers like a drunk cow.