eataTREE

I love all your mods and consider them essential. Hugs, kisses. This last update, though, man... when you've got to give us our medicine, you gotta sweeten it. Put some cool new part into the update to make us feel better about all the nerfs. I had already noticed that the ISP of some of the engines was still pretty darn high and had been abusing the hell out of it Now the answer to everything is not "Kiwi * 7". How could you do this to me? /shakes fist at cloud (For reals, love your mods, thank you for keeping them up to date.)

It's a whole new world! And that new world has a whole new atmosphere. As this seems to be causing a certain amount of anguish and frustration, I thought I'd share my observations on what seems to work in the new post-1.0 era of rocketry. (Note: I am no expert! Feel free to improve upon/correct if you're able.) 1. Exploding going up This means your TWR is too high. The Souposphere was made out of low-friction silicon gel; not so the real atmosphere, which will turn you into a firework if you try to go too fast too fast. The Space Shuttle had a launchpad TWR of about 1.5 and this seems to be the safe limit in KSP now. 2. Not going to space/my rocket tips over It seems like a little more control authority is required now. If you are used to just using SAS, try sticking on some fins. As compared to the Souposphere, you want your gravity turn to begin sooner but be much gentler. If you use MJ, try setting it for 50% climb at 1km. 3. Exploding coming down Ah yes, this is the hard part. It comes down to this: if you are tumbling out of control, blowing up, or tumbling out of control then blowing up, it is because you are going too fast. You want to attempt re-entry at no more than 2.2 km/s or so. "But eataTREE!" I hear you say. "I have been to the Mun and am going more like 3km/s, and if you think I carry a spare kilometer per second of delta-V coming back from the Mun you are dreaming! What should I do?" Excellent question. The answer is to aerobrake. Set your periapsis for about 33,000 meters (lower if you're brave, higher if you're chicken), set yourself heat-shield first (you DO have a heat shield, right?), and streak like a fireball through the sky. This will wash off about 250m/s of orbital velocity, so you'll have to do it again a few times, but via this method you can get down to a nice safe re-entry speed while expending minimal delta-V. (As of 2.5.0, MJ's aerobraking predictions were wildly inaccurate, so I'm afraid they can't be relied upon to calibrate this process.) It also helps to be capable of some braking thrust, in case you notice that you are heading straight for a mountainside and need to get down to safe parachuting speeds sooner rather than later. 4. Other observations In general rockets don't like to go in any direction other than where they're pointed. Also, they want to fall over. This means your gravity turn is hard to start and then hard to stop once it starts. In the atmospheric regime you don't want to try anything too crazy, either in acceleration or steering. Drag chutes and aerobrakes are great once you get them, and make the whole non-explodey re-entry process much easier. Hope some of this was helpful. Happy flying!

Getting the same (Linux/x64/KSP 1.0 clean install plus MechJeb 2.5, no other mods). It seems like for radial staging in general it calculates the correct figure for total delta-V but doesn't separate it per-stage. ETA: Regarding ascent profile: I've been using a 50% turn starting at 1.5km, maximum Angle of Attack 25 degrees, with a maximum TWR of no greater than 1.5. This seems to get me to space without making the explodey.

Without your mod, KSP just doesn't feel like it's happening in the brutal harsh coldness of space, man. Thank you for keeping this updated.

All my craft with IR parts eventually encounter this weird bug where all the bits connected via IR parts lose their correct attachment point and get grafted onto the vehicle's center mass instead, making a huge mess. Does this happen to any one else, and if so is there a workaround?

Just popping in to fanboy a bit. This is by far my favorite "planetary expansion" mod currently available. It provides new challenges and places to visit yet remains lightweight and stable. Can't wait to see the new moons in the next release. Seconding the request for Final Frontier planet/ribbon pack. Keep up the good work!

So for the N1, is "exploding with enough force to turn the entire KSC into a new part of Booster Bay" going to be something we can disable? I'm totally cool with no.

Today I succesfully landed a rover on Duna and drove it around. If I can land the other mission component, the surface hab/lab, I will consider myself no longer noobish. I've been to Duna before but only in simple return capsules optimized for low mass. This is the first time I ever brought TEH COOL STUFFS to another body outside Kerbin SOI.

The log contains many instances of this error: [LOG 14:21:20.098] [TR.TextureReplacer] System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'CrewRoster' from assembly 'Assembly-CSharp, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. at TextureReplacer.Personaliser.replaceKerbalSkins () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at TextureReplacer.Personaliser.updateScene () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at TextureReplacer.TextureReplacer.LateUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Hmm, so the "quick fix update" doesn't seem to be working for me. No build aid, no configuration window, and life support resources don't appear to be consumed. I can still place all the parts however. This is x64/Linux. Any ideas, or do I just need to sit on my hands and wait?

Since upgrading to 0.90/2.1, the button to bring up the Texture Replacer UI isn't there. It doesn't appear to be obeying the config file directives either. This is x64/Linux. Any ideas?

I really need this mod! It's hard to bring enough Nutritionally Complete Koybean Paste for a century-long mission.

This is a great mod. I occasionally experience the "launch glitch to orbit" bug, but I find that if I just revert the launch once or twice, I will take off from the launch pad like I'm supposed to. Really my biggest obstacle in using this mod is all the extra RAM consumed by the additional planets and stars, but trimming my modlist, installing Active Texture Management in "aggressive" mode, and making a couple of other optimizations seems to have made it manageable. But all of this is well worth it in order to have something to DO with all the awesome future tech mods -- I don't use Interstellar, but I do use Near Future Propulsion, and now have a reason to build huge hydrogen-powered behemoth ships for century-long interstellar cruises. I do notice another minor glitch: having this mod installed makes the day/night cycle as observed from the Space Center scene take about a minute and a half to go from day to night and back, instead of six hours. Kerbin's actual rotation as observed from orbit seems to be proceeding at a normal pace however. Just an observation. Keep up the good work! I'm getting more RAM soon

ZOMG. I've been waiting for this to start my "real" (start over at tech level 0, no cheats, no funds-to-science) career mode game again. The only question is whether to wait for other mod authors to provide "official" integration or just start patching them in. The mod community for this game is amazing -- it feels like not only did you guys finish KSP, you then went on to write KSP II. Thumbs up would become wildly obsessed again.

Usually, if I find myself designing some sort of complicated, radially staged megalauncher, it's a sign I need to split my payload up into two launches.

Another satisfied x64 Linux user here. The difference between 32-bit OSX and 64-bit Linux performance on the same hardware is amazing. I would test to see if this applies to other Unity-platform games if I ever felt like playing a game that is not KSP The only downside is that I'm going to spend money now on more RAM, since I can load as many mods as I want, and apparently I want a lot of them.

I would not be surprised if the release moving to Unity 5 is a separate release that has few additional features, if any. They don't want to be in the position of having to wonder "Did this break because of the new feature, or did this break because of Unity 5" about every bug.

This post fills me with shame over my inability to make an Eve-worthy rocket that gets off the ground, much less one that makes multiple trips to Eve without refuelling. I nominate the person who did this for the Medal of Jebediah, with solid rocket booster clusters.

I seem to use a lot more stages than most people. If I'm not leaving significant mass behind at every step in the mission plan, I feel like I'm wasting delta-V. Also, the flight tracker looks so pretty with all those circles on it, when I enable debris display! A typical mission of mine has 12-15 stages in the "stage stack" before launch, and the mission proceeds like so: 1) Lower stage plus multiple booster groups ignite. 2) Separate primary SRBs (RT10's). 3) Separate secondary boosters (medium/large SRBs). 4) Lower liquid stage separates, intermediate stage ignites. If flight is going according to plan, we are now at gravity turn altitude, 8-10km. 5) Sometimes I use boosters on the intermediate stage too! These separate somewhere between 10 and 20km. 6) Intermediate stage expended, light the "final push to orbit" stage. We are at 25-35km. 7) LKO reached, final orbital stage empty or near-empty. Plot transfer maneuver, light interplanetary transfer stage. Any excess delta-V left in the orbital stage can be used to help the trans-destination injection burn. 8) Orbit reached, perform braking burn/aerobrake, then, either we detach the lander, or we discard the stage that got us here, which action will make the craft landing-capable. 9) If there is atmo here, there will be chutes, which will be a separate stage. Also, there is often a re-ascent stage that separates from the landed vehicle. 10) If a lander was used, we re-ascend and rendezvous with our CMS, then Jeb pulls the science data and jetpacks back to the main ship. The lander is abandoned in orbit, why waste delta-V taking it home? 11) Sometimes I even have a dedicated "come home again" stage. This will be used both for the return burn and to de-orbit Kerbin. 12) Re-entering atmo; it is time to separate everything that isn't the return capsule. 13) Final stage: 'chutes. So, yeah, 12 to 15 stages. I'm not sure that all this staging yields an actual benefit so much as I think I just like building things that are complicated.

Interesting. I like your radially mounted crew modules. Getting them to weigh the same so as not to throw the ship off course must have been a pain in the butt. I am currently designing the ship for my first J5 attempt. It has no rovers. On reading your mission report I realize I must fix this immediately. (I'd also really like to bring a spaceplane for Laythe.) EDIT: Did you have any problems with wobbling under thrust?

That could be a new contract, even. "Too much space junk is making missions hazardous. Go clean up 15 pieces of debris."

How do you get that cool interface for your action groups? I have a notepad and pencil next to the computer for keeping track of which button does what. Is that a B9 feature?

Seconded to everyone who says Duna. Ike is probably even easier, but doesn't look much different from Mun once you're there, and hey, it's cool to go to Mars, right? Besides: Dres is boring, Moho is too hard to reach, and Eve is the Kerbal Roach Motel of the solar system: easy to visit, nigh-impossible to leave. Two tips: make sure your lander has both braking thrusters and parachutes... 'chutes alone are not enough in Duna's thin atmosphere. Duna has many wide plateaux at high altitudes. Landing on one of these makes your re-ascent take less delta-v.

Version: 25 Hardware: Apple iMac 12.2, 4-core Intel i5, 4GB RAM, video describes itself as "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Whistler [Radeon HD 6730M/6770M/7690M XT]" OS: Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS w/kernel 3.13.0-37-generic #64-Ubuntu and flgrx 13.35.5 driver Mods: Uh... lots... Karbonite/MKS, FinePrint, MechJeb, Infernal Robotics, KAS, RemoteTech, ScanSat, RasterPropMonitor... however, the bug appears to manifest independently from whether the craft uses modded parts or not. Reproducibility: ~50% Problem description: At or close to the surface during landing, KSP becomes almost unresponsive and the system hangs for seconds to minutes at a time. This seems to occur more often with "tippy" landers that have a lot of rotational forces being applied, and is more likely to occur when landing on a low-gravity body, however, I have also observed it when landing on Kerbin after a bad landing while the craft was struggling to stay upright using SAS and reaction thrusters. When this state is triggered, it persists even if I exit to the space center (which takes a long time) or switch to a different vehicle. However, if I save and quit the game (which takes several minutes) and then restart and reload the saved game, KSP goes back to a normal state. This problem was not observed in version 24.2 on the same hardware with the same drivers and mod list. Any ideas? eataTREE

I started playing more or less right when .24 came out... yes, I'm a noob. What I can't deal with about Sandbox is that there is nothing tracking your achievements/progress in exploring the solar system. It may be silly, but I have a psychological need for the positive reinforcement (Ooh, you have successfully explored Duna! Have a bunch of imaginary money and imaginary science and reputation points) that Career mode provides. Perhaps playing MMOs damaged my brain or something. That being said, I hate the start of a new Career Mode game because I can't do anything I want to do because I lack the appropriate part. With the release of 0.25 I've starting giving myself 1000 starting science just so I can fly a mission other than "Jeb Takes A Dip In Booster Bay" out of the gate.