JRA

I'd like to propose a 3rd option. Who cares? I find it humorous that people in countries other than the USA feel so strongly about how things are measured in a different country. I've traveled throughout the world for 15 years and have had, literally, zero trouble converting between the various systems in the different places I go. Its not just units of measure either. Every place has a different culture and how they communicate measurement is just as different. Even in places where they use, apparently the most wonderful thing to ever happen to humans, metric. People still uses colloquial terms to describe various measurements. As was mentioned all measurements are arbitrary. Celsius is based on the boiling point of water. What a lame colorless, flavorless compound to base temperature off of. I think it would be much cooler to base the temp off the various states of mercury. Much greater granularity. No confusion either, if mercury boils I'm staying in where it is air conditioned. All that matters is that everyone in collaboration understand the units. It doesn't matter if it is based on the thickness of a pube or the freezing point of water.

So, now RO doesn't work for me and I will not be able to advance any further. If I try to close down with a vessel in orbit I can not get back to that vessel without KSP crashing, even though Mem use is at ~2gb. Here are the notes I have so far on the career mode. Contract Notes General Thoughts

I have completed looking through all the orbital launches from 57-62. A rough summary of what the missions were about is here. Gunter's is not always specific about what the mission was for. Probably because a lot of these were spy says and defense stuff. Still this much is clear: Pre 1957 - Sounding Rockets 1957 - Earth Only 1958 - Already attempting Lunar missions and orbital comms. 1959 - Already attempting interplanetary flybys (unsuccessfully) There were lots of experiments going up including beginning mapping and recon sats.

I will get started on the Gunter's Space Page chronology. Also, I have started up a play through and am keeping track of what I did. How much it cost. How much return it gave me, roughly. Mostly in science, since this we have a new tech tree, but also in money. Not keeping track of reputation, but I probably should be. I am ready to start manned orbital flights and lunar probes in that game.

You are right that 10 would be a grind, but that's why I said undetermined # of launches. I do think that 5 free science just for turning on some engines is kind of silly for Realism Overhaul and the Realistic Progression Tech Tree. The ideas currently floating around don't have to be a grind at all. With just the starting node I managed to get 44.5 science without being gamey at all. That took 7 launches, but it didn't need to. All you need is 5 science to unlock Early Orbital Rocketry and you can easily get 6.3 science with one sounding rocket to only 20km. So even coming well short of 100km lets you move on. Edit: You can get that just from doing a probe reports FlyingLow and FlyingHigh

If I understand, just do away with the Launch New Vessel entirely? Replace it with the sounding rocket contracts? That is an idea that I think i like. As I mentioned earlier, I think I would like to have the game hold back offering Escape Atmosphere and Reach Orbit as well, until some undetermined number of sounding rocket contracts have been completed. I imagine it would be better to tie as many rewards as possible (all) to something the player actually does in the game that is meaningful. Giving away EarlyOrbitalRocketry just because the player built something and turned the engines on doesn't strike me as interesting. Edit: After all, who is going to offer to pay you to put things in orbit if you can't even launch a stable rocket of any real distance?

Or, another thought. Disable science on the "Launch New vessel" contract. And, don't give any science for the sounding rocket contracts either. Instead, have the player rely on getting probe reports for the various flights. it would only take some combination of probe reports from "LandedLaunchPad, FlyingLow, FlyingHigh, and SpaceLow" to do it. A player could easily get a SpaceLow report with the first node sounding rocket tech. At least i was able to. It took a bit of practice, but not too hard. I am not new to KSP but I am certainly new to RO.

Is there a way to alter the starting "launch new vessel" contract so it does not give 5 science? That is exactly enough to open "EarlyOrbitalRocketry." I think it would be better that the 5 science needed for that be tied to the sounding rocket contracts. Perhaps, the first 2 or 3 sounding rocket contracts could just give money, and then a later one could give 5 science? Or each sounding rocket contract could give one science and thus completing 5 would open "EarlyOrbitalRocketry" What do you think? Perhaps not even possible, not sure how moddable the stock contracts are.

One of the questions I had was in regards to the readme. I don't see anything documented as to what exactly is supported. Where can I check RP0 requirements? I have been going with the assumption that the plan is to support RO and its associated mods, at least in some fashion. I had assumed that the first few nodes were considered closest to completed since they had been renamed. Then I saw that the Explorer was available right from the beginning and thought perhaps nothing was really ready yet but the contracts. Still after finishing the first few nodes I decided to look at the whole tree and offer feedback on thoughts I had as I was unlocking it. I will repeat an earlier question as well. Is there anything in particular you are looking for feedback on or help with? I saw in one of the .cfg that it said FIXME, but it didn't look to me like anything in particular needed to be fixed.

Ok, so I took a break from playing a loaded up a fresh game. gave myself 50,000 science and set about unlocking all the nodes in order, while thinking about their position relative to everything else. My notes are below. They were written in one sitting. At this time, no surprise, the tree seems wildly out of sorts. The notes are a few pages long (no blocks o text), and you can read them here. I like the idea of having each column roughly equate to a historical block of space exploration. However, what I chiefly noticed is that you might need to go to the very end of the tree to finish unlocking Apollo era stuff. For reference it took ~29,000 science points to unlock the whole tree. If the player doesn't get tech to land kerbals on other bodies roughly mid tree I don't think they will be able to get enough science to advance. So, with that in mind I am going to start a fresh game and play it through, taking notes on what I did and see how it flows. Can I keep up with the science income to keep advancing the tree at a reasonable rate? After all no one is going to spend 1,000 hours playing to unlock enough parts to build the Saturn V.

Ok, been using this for ~2 days now. And, this is dope. I am taking notes on my thoughts now. Will give feedback in the next few days. Edit: Are there any particular issues you are having trouble with or need feedback on.

I am willing to do some testing and attempt to troubleshoot issues. When do you think this will be good enough to install and try? Next RO update?

Yes, the part.cfg of all the soviet engines include references to LiquidOxygen and LiquidH2. Yes, it was annoying. I got it from the Realism Overhaul thread. There is a link to it by mediafire(?) in the first post. I don't know if it is Dragon01's or just an archive that has been hanging around. I can tell you though that Dragon01's thread doesn't contain the soviet engines as far as I could tell. Perhaps I was on the wrong thread? Thanks to you helping me decipher the log I think this file will fix it. I just took the kero_fix file and expanded to deal with all the issues (I think). I renamed it too, since it is no longer just dealing with kerosene. If you see any problems with it let me know.

@Starwaster and @NathanKell, I fixed this problem by altering your bobcatkerofix.cfg. It now also renames LiquidOxygen, lqdoxygen along with what you had, renaming liquidfuel kerosene. I also added the RD0120 and RD0146 to the patch since they use LqdHydrogen and LqdOxygen. They were causing problems and it took me a bit to realize the problem was caused by the hydrogen being renamed as well. Now RealFuels works with the Soviet Engine pack. I have a ? though. I used bobcats ration of 72.7 H2 to 27.3 O2. Is that correct? I assumed I should just go with what he did. I also want to know if you want this patch? It allows me to use my game and I am happy to share it, if you want. JRA

@Starwaster and @NathanKell, With the bit of education I received I was 100% positive that RealFuels was installed correctly, with version 8.1. So, I concluded that there must not be a problem with RealFuels. Since the offending part was part of the Soviet Engine pack I decided to test this by removing the engine pack and seeing if KSP loaded fine. It did. Now: It seems there is a conflict with the part mod and RealFuels. So, how to get the Soviet Engine Pack to work with Real Fuels? 1st: I have the version that is available from the Realism Overhaul thread (I am not running RO but got the parts from there). I noticed that in the bobcat_kerofix patch under: @MODULE[ModuleEngineConfigs] It addresses the propellant "LiquidFuel" and changes it to kerosene, yes??? But, in the Soviet Engine pack there is also a listing for a second propellant, just below Liquid Fuel, "LiquidOxygen". See here. I am assuming this second propellant is the problem? The kero_fix patch doesnt seem to address this 2nd propellant. Therefore it would try to load that propellant from the Soviet Engines .cfg, yes? Then that would cause the problem??? TL;DR - As far as I can tell all the engines in this pack still call LiquidOxygen under ModuleEngineConfigs. Could I just amend the kerofix to also change liquidoxygen to lqdoxygen the same way?