Frank327

I'll answer a few questions on the basis of what I experienced with my Duna+Ike apollo mission in career mode before 1.0, the vessel from LKO onwards looked like this: First of all, it's a good idea to use the same lander for Duna and Ike. Of course the requirements are different, the dV for the Ike landing + return requires almost half as much fuel but you don't have to send your lander fully fueled to Ike of course. Whatever you'd be wasting on sending a slightly oversized lander to Ike is more than compensated by the fact that you only need one lander for two destinations. On top of that you want to add surface mining into the mix and sending two landers of the same design that can both refuel themselves is just wasteful. I don't know how doable this is with rovers and bases that you want to assemble, those seem a hassle to land and get back into orbit again. Also maybe instead of relying on mining you can take extra fuel in the main module and refuel your lander in orbit. Also you can save a lot of dV by not parking your "mothership" in a circular Duna orbit but in an elliptical orbit that doesn't quite reach the apoapsis for getting captured by Ike. From that orbit you can launch your lander at apoapsis, doing a slight retroburn and letting the atmosphere do the rest of the work for landing. Only downside is that you might end up in a mountainous area because you can't precisely target a landing area anymore. From there I launched my lander again and made it rendezvous with the mothership again into the elliptical orbit and the entire thing only had to make small burns to reach Ike orbit. Remember that every burn you make with the mothership spends a lot more fuel than the burns with only landers. So make the landers do most of the work and you can save weight. In general this seems like a hugely ambitious mission for your first real mission outside of the solar system with 3 components landing on two bodies and the entire thing being reusable because you intend to dock it in LKO again. Also am I understanding correctly that you're sending a small fleet instead of a single thing to duna? Because then you have the extra action of synchronizing everything once you're there because they'll arrive at vastly different times and locations. If your goal is to do a career landing on Duna and Ike then I would: 1. Not include mining 2. Not include a rover 3. Not include a surface base 4. Only do one landing on each body 5. Expect nothing to be reusable and only have a lander can with kerbals land back on kerbin. Doing interplanetary apollo missions with life support is a challenge by itself, no reason to make it more complicated than that in your first real interplanetary mission.

This is the sequence I usually have: 1. Orbit around kerbin 2. Fly by mun/minmus 3. Land + return mun/minmus and do it a few times. It's a good idea to practice landing by quicksaving just before it and just try different methods and check your fuel afterwards. It's fun to do and you learn more about the game. 4. Orbital rendezvous and docking. Start with doing the saving of kerbals from orbit, then try and build a very basic space station meant for refueling. 5. Send probes to Eve and gilly. They don't need to return so you don't need lots of dV. Look up transfer windows for KSP and you'll see how the planets need to be aligned to get there. 6. Explore Duna/Ike with kerbals and return. Surprisingly it doesn't take a lot more dV than mun/minmus to do a Duna return mission. The fact that you can use parachutes to land on duna compensates for the increased dV needed to get there and the increased dV needed to get back. If you want to be ambitious you can do it apollo style where the lander is quite a bit smaller than the main modules (science and habitation). It's a heavy craft but you can use it to land on both Ike and Duna and still take a research lab with you. You need to know how to dock to be successful with such a design though. If you complete such a mission you can pretty much fill out the tech tree. 7. Explore more planets/moons and try and capture a satellite in kerbin orbit. 8. Build a refueling station near mun/minmus that is self sustaining with mining equipment.

One question I have about your miner is why do you have so many ore tanks on the same vehicle that has an ISRU converter? If I remember correctly, ore is twice as heavy as the fuel it will be turned into. So why not have a single ore tank and the rest be fuel tanks and do most of the converting on the surface of vall. You'll be able to ship more fuel and be less heavy and waste less dV getting into orbit with your payload. Another option as mentioned is using lots of ore tanks and putting the ISRU converter into orbit on the refueling station. Then you won't have to take the 4t converter to the surface of vall and back up again. But on relatively high dV moons like vall and even the mun I would prefer only shipping fuel and not raw ore from surface to orbit because you'll burn so much of it in transport. Shipping ore around on minmus or one of the smaller jool moons is much easier and much more profitable. Actually I think on vall it would be most profitable to divide the operation into three parts. First, a landed miner + converter that doesn't go into orbit anymore. Secondly a fuel transport that takes the fuel from the miner and transports it to orbit. Thirdly an orbital station where you can store the fuel for use. Docking the fuel transport and the surface miner together is going to be the toughest part of the operation.

I think there's other reasons than just the game balance that makes people finish the tech tree before going interplanetary. 1. Many people still play the career mode the same way as before money was introduced. Everybody got used to making big ships to hoover up all the science at their destination without much concern for the money it would be costing or the (IRL) time you're spending on it. I think players who started KSP after money was introduced will play it differently, not bringing lots of science equipment with them to cut costs and move on to new moons/planets earlier looking for more challenges and money. 2. The game is balanced in such a way that time doesn't have much of an effect. I think the devs were expecting people to just skip months or even more than a year on end to get to the transfer window of duna or eve. If you do a few missions on mun/minmus and then head straight for the transfer window of duna, then the pace of the research would feel a lot more natural. I can only speak from my own experience, and I didn't completely finish the tech tree after visiting duna/eve/ike/gilly on moderate.

Knowing KSP, you'd have to take a big enough supply of snacks on your mission. You'd have a "snacks" meter just like you have a fuel meter and there'd be a varying supply of them in every type of cockpit and other parts that hold kerbals. Also there would be snacks containers. It would have pretty much the same function as something like TAC life support (having to make your crafts bigger if you want to make your missions longer), but be more kerbalized.

As someone else said, capturing asteroids outside kerbin SOI feels scary but is really effective. Indeed, escaping kerbin in the same direction that the asteroid is coming from will get you a decent intercept. As for rendezvous at elliptical orbits, the first most important step is getting into the same plane as the target (get the AN/DN close to 0). From there, get your orbit to touch the target orbit at its periapsis. From there it's all about arriving at that point at the same time as the target. You can adjust the time it takes to reach the rendezvous point by burning prograde at the rendezvous point. Basically, make a manouver node at the point where the orbits touch and fiddle around with it until you've got a close encounter. If the target orbit is much bigger than your own, you might have to wait one or more orbits before burning. As long as your approach orbit remains smaller than the target's orbit, it's 100% fuel efficient.

The most important thing is that it gives you more difficult and profitable contracts. For example with low reputation you tend to get satellite contracts for equatorial orbits around kerbin and with high reputation you get contracts for kolnya orbits around kerbin or polar orbits around the mun and that sort of thing. What I found out in career mode is that turning your reputation into funds through strategies isn't worth it because if you keep your reputation high you can earn a lot more money with the more difficult contracts. And if contracts are getting too difficult for you just burn it away through the strategies and you'll get lots of easier contracts again.

Don't take this the wrong way but I'd learn how to play the game before making "the ultimate" KSP guide. It would be a good idea to at least play through career at least once. If you'd have played through that you would understand why your tutorial for getting orbit is pretty useless. If you want to teach people how to get to orbit, then do so with a rocket that weighs 18t maximum and show them how to do a gravity turn to get there. Because if you can't do that then pretty much every other tutorial out there is better.

Right now, the two must difficult parts of the early game of KSP are learning how to do a good gravity turn and how to land on the mun. But they are exactly the two subjects that don't have a tutorial. I understand why it is, it's more difficult to do a tutorial when the player's time to follow the instructions is naturally limited. Maybe for these two subjects it's an idea to let the game take over for a while and show the player how to do it. Just let them see what a gravity turn looks like and then let them practice it. Also it might be an idea to have something like an encyclopedia in the science centre with these lessons explained again. We've got all these guides online about gravity turns, moon landings, basic aerodynamics, delta-v and the oberth effect. If these tutorials are accessible in the game then I think players would feel a lot more immersed. Also a bonus gripe about the tutorials and especially the "to the mun part 2" tutorial. It would be nice to teach the players a stable and optimal way to fly. So when you let them fly from the mun to kerbin, teach them to get into an equatorial orbit first and then burn prograde at the right moment to launch themselves retrograde from the mun. Right now the tutorial teaches them to escape the mun in the most inefficient way.

The COM shifting isn't a problem with my spaceplane. The place where I'd put the passenger cabin or probe is pretty much at the COM already and the adapter between cockpit and docking port doesn't have fuel in it (though it could have quite a bit of liquid fuel and it would still be balanced). The extra weight is mainly noticable around 30km where you suddenly have to pitch up too high and can't get your 2200m/s anymore because of a lack of either lift or thrust (I don't know which). Maybe I flew it wrong the second time though. By the way, I'll third the opinion that your helicopter is really cool. Looks like it will be useful too.

I think making your plane so short is a bad idea in general. It decreases the margin for error between it being flip-happy and being uncontrollable. With longer planes you can have more distance between your pitch control and COM while still putting your COL and COM relatively close together. It makes them more stable. The air intake body is a really useful part for early airplanes behind the fuel tank. I'm not an expert on this stuff though. It's just what I noticed building some planes myself.

The thing I like best about the Mk2 parts is how sleek you can make your spaceplanes look. Here's what I slapped together with the 300 science parts. It's mainly designed for the laythe/vall mission that I'll do one of these days. I'm struggling to make it fly just as well with either a passenger module or full sized probe in the space where there's now a cargo bay with really lightweight science equipment. You can see the two black lines of the opened science jr. in the picture. It's pretty startling how small the weight difference has to be for the lift and thrust to suddenly not be enough.

My impression was that you should aim for 1:1 lift to mass ratio and one turbojet engine for every 15 tonnes (?).

I had a go with a class E asteroid too. That's a tug with a skipper engine on the end for reference. I had a lot of trouble keeping it stable at the start too. The trick is to have a really good probe core. Once you're docked to it with your manouvre node lined up with the centre of mass, just free the pivot of the claw and tell your SAS system to aim at the target (being the centre of mass of the asteroid). Then lock the pivot and it should fly straight without wobble or tilting. This way your engines will be aimed exactly right. If the asteroid is already passing by kerbin very close (or colliding) then the mission should be doable. In my case its kerbin periapsis started at 16.000km and I had 2/3rd of the fuel to get it into the atmosphere for aerobrake. Of course that's still not counting with the circularization burn you have to do once you've aerobraked.

Depends on what kind of SSTO it is. If it's a spaceplane I think refueling in orbit is cheaper but if it's an SSTO rocket then it probably doesn't matter too much and it would be easier to do in one launch.

I think a good difficulty level is using the moderate settings, but disallowing the revert flight and quicksave options. It won't really be a grind, but you'll still need to get lots of reputation and multiple missions per launch to keep it going fast.

I also did a Duna + Ike apollo mission, here's what it looked like in LKO. I used only LV909 and the Poodle engine for most of this mission, but it doesn't have a lot of room for mistakes. LV-N's on the carrier would obviously have made it easier, but I didn't have them unlocked yet. You can make it a lot lighter if you take out the science lab and habitation module. If you get the phase angles right (ksp.olex.biz) then getting to duna should only take some 1100m/s. What I did was not circularize at duna but instead get into an equatorial elliptical orbit. That way I didn't have to burn a lot of fuel to get to Ike after returning from Duna. So once you're in an elliptical orbit with periaps around 60km you undock the lander at apoaps and reduce periaps to around 10km to land. Pack enough parachutes and you won't need to burn a lot of fuel (on this lander I used 5). When you return from duna, get into a circular orbit that touches the orbit of the main ship. Now you'll be at the same place as the main ship, you just have to do a burn to make sure you'll be there at the same time. When you're at the touching point and on the next pass the main ship will be just behind you, burn towards apoaps until your orbit takes long enough for both ships to arrive at the same time. From there it's a normal rendezvous. As for docking, don't bother placing RCS thrusters all over your main ship. It's much easier to do the docking with your lander. Just make sure you can control your main ship and keep it stable. Ike should be a bit easier than Duna. You can do it with the same lander, just refill your fuel from the main ship.

Kerbal space program is designed in such a way that time isn't a factor. The factor that determines how far you are in the game is science level and funds mostly. And because moho is such a difficult planet to get to they wait with that contract for a long time. It's done so that relatively new players know what planets they should try and go for if they want to steadily progress through the game. If they're suddenly given the moho contract after minmus just because the window is open then they might quit the game in frustration when they run out of fuel with 3km/s left on the circularization burn. Besides, the moho window comes up so often that it shouldn't be a factor. Although it would be nice if the planetary alignment in career would start some 60 days before the duna window.

Maybe there's some randomization to it. My guess: Mun Minmus Duna/Eve/Ike/Gilly (might be random, but I think this is the order. Maybe ike before eve?) Jool/Pol/Bop/Tylo/Vall/Laythe (I suspect it starts with outer moons and works inwards) Dres? Moho? Eloo? I think once you get into the SOI of a body, you won't get its exploration contract. Also sometimes a lack of reputation can prevent you from getting an exploration contract.

You can target the kerbal without the tracking station if you can physically see him. So once you're within a few dozen km of the kerbal, get out of map mode, find him, click him and select him as your target.

The way you play the game also influences how much it is either grinding easy missions or working through difficult missions. The way the creator of this thread played, it's always going to be grinding easy missions. Three things determine how difficult (and rewarding) the available contracts will be: 1. How much reputation do you have? 2. How many pioneering contracts have you finished (like escape atmosphere/explore mun/explore eve) 3. What parts have you unlocked with science? If you do the pioneering contracts as soon as you can and you don't give away rep in the admin building and you research specific techs early, the game will be very quick. If you sacrifice your reputation for science and don't go beyond kerbin SOI before level 3 R&D then you're choosing to make it a grindy game. Once you go beyond Eve/Duna it's not uncommon to get 4-5m funds in one launch (on moderate). And Eve/duna missions with multiple contracts can definately give you more than a million per launch.

My rocket today also started tilting at liftoff and I can't seem to fix it. I do know why it tilts, the fuel of one of the four outer engines depletes faster than its mirror counterpart. But I double checked fuel lines and put them back on one after the other and in mirror mode - nothing changes. I checked if there was engine clipping, nothing. I checked if I accidentally drained fuel or did something with a thrust limiter again nothing. And if I delete all the fuel lines it does fly straight. Is there some known bug where fuel lines don't work properly anymore?

The moment where you unlock the first probe core and the first solar panels is where career mode gets pretty easy. Satellites are super cheap to launch to anywhere in the kerbal system and the missions give big payouts and even science. Also you can do them (except for the minmus satellites) without any building upgrades. So science is actually really important.

I think that's also where reputation kicks in. If you don't sacrifice your repuation in the admin building you get really difficult and profitable contracts. Once you dump your reputation to get some extra cash/science, suddenly you get only cheap and easy contracts.

I always thought it was just short of mun landing and return, but maybe it just has very narrow margins. Either way, adding an extra fuel tank and a stabilizing system wouldn't hurt to make it a bit easier for new players. If you look at career mode, one of the advantages that easy has over normal is that it says "stock vessels are allowed" which would make it seem like an advantage. But right now having stock vessels available is anything but an advantage and when new players find out that most stock vessels don't even fly properly they might get discouraged with the game.