richfiles

I love that the core parts of Asteroid Day are being integrated. Oh, how I love that solar panel! I had that docking port bug pop up on me once on a base once... VERY glad to see it fixed! Glad to hear so MANY bugs are getting killed ded by the old can o'Raid!

Then PLEASE add moar action groups! Even stealing the pre-defined ones (like abort, lights, brakes, gear), I still run out! Now we have radiators, cargo bays, fairings, the version after this might have stock coms, and now we have extra actions needed for these new heat shields... Double the number of action groups, and make the default keybindings for Action Groups #11-20 be the numeric pad's 0-9 keys. That would be ideal. A.G. #1-10 would still be the numbers in the number row above the alpha keys. Adding more features is wonderful, but we need more ways to actually control it all!

With all these new parts and radiators and stuff... I'd love to see three more buttons, beside the Lights, Gear, and Brake buttons for Solar Panels, Radiators, and Antennas. I would also love to see the Numberpad 0-9 keys be assignable to an additional 10 custom action groups, for a total of 20 custom Action Groups, if you have a full size keyboard attached to your computer. Keyboards can tell the difference whether you press, say the "1" above the "Q" key, vs the "1" on the number pad. Making 20 action groups available, and an additional 3 primary deployment buttons would be, quite frankly, AWESOME! Between the existing and new stuff, you could theoretically have up to 27 different configurable actions groups. 20 custom, and 7 defined.

I would suggest: Add support for the number pad to control an additional 10 Action Groups, for a total of 20 custom Action Groups. Since practically ALL modern keyboards with a number pad report the number keys of the number pad as unique keys, separate from the row of numbers above the alphas (even if they return the same character), would it be possible to create an additional 10 Action groups that are activated by the number pad's numerical keys? I know I could DEFINITELY put 20 action groups to use as opposed to the currently limited 10 + the "predefined" action groups. Speaking of the predefined action groups, I concur that we should also have Antennas, Solar Panels, and Radiators as additional button accessible action groups on the Altimeter (also, each should have a unique key to activate) I would suggest as follows: [A]| 000000m | / \|L|S| \ ------- ||<-o |G|R| \______^_|_\___/|B|A| Where A, L, G, and B refer to the existing Abort, Lights, Gear, and Brakes, respectively, but the new S, R, and A would refer to Solar, Radiators, and Antennas. I suggest Antennas, since with the later plans for a coms upgrade to the game, that might be more important. We can always repurpose those features, much like we have done in the past... Abort, Lights, Gear, and Brakes are 4 more action groups when you're in a pinch! There also needs to be a way to assign Action groups in transit. I can't tell you how much of a pain it can be to dock craft together, and have it screw up Action Groups, or you be uncertain what the actual assignment of action groups on such a merged vessel would be. I think that more advanced designs need finer control, and right clicking parts on a moving vessel can be difficult. SSTO craft, tugs, science vessels/probes, anything using Infernal Robotics... 10 action groups is simply not enough. One more suggestion, also related to that UI cluster... I would also suggest being able to click on the altimeter when below 10000 radar meters, to be able to switch the altimeter to show the radar altimeter. If the numbers could be made with a different color, to differentiate it (black on yellow, maybe yellow/red stripes on the last 1000 meters?), that would be great. Exceeding the radar altimeter range would auto toggle back to ASL Altimeter.

I'd also like to make a very simple suggestion, one Squad could likely implement with VERY minimal effort... Add 10 more action groups on the number pad. Modern keyboards treat the number pad and the number row as different keys... The computer can tell the difference between whether you pressed the number 1 above the Q, vs the number 1 on your number pad. That one minor upgrade would give anyone with a full keyboard, or a number pad accessory attached to your computer by USB, access to 20 action groups, out of the box. Furthermore, if the config menu supported an action group "list" mode, with "ADD" and a "REMOVE" buttons, or an in game list like what Persa suggested, then maybe you could assign ANY unassigned key or combo to add additional action groups at will... The default would just be the 20 that comes from 1-9+0 in the row above the alphas, and the 0-9 of the number pad. If you have a gaming keyboard with macro keys... As long as the keypresses are detectable, you could use them as well. If the keys really only register as macros, then you'd have to first bind them in their driver software to something like Shift-Alt-Numpad1 for Macro key 1 and Shift-Alt-Numpad2 for Macro 2 and so on. Then you would bind, in the proposed action groups configuration list, Shift-Alt-Numpad1 for action group 21, Shift-Alt-Numpad2 for A.G. 22, and so on, till you've run out of macro keys. Even without the reconfigurable, bindable list though... Adding support for an additional 10 action groups assigned to a keyboard's number pad would double the number of customizable stock action groups. Add the additional "assigned" action groups (gear, brakes, lights, abort), and that would bring the total number of stock action groups to 24. It's a simple solution, and even a cheap full-size keyboard or a USB number pad isn't a hard thing to add to a setup that doesn't have a full keyboard (like a laptop).

I have a feeling that the Windows 10 issues might have killed some of the development efforts on these KSP Serial IO based controllers and Simpits. That, or people are just holding their breath for 1.1. I have to admit, between Fallout 4 coming out in November, and the wait for 1.1... I HONESTLY have not really sat down with 1.0.5 at all! The good news, Is I'm on the final stretch of my mechanical keyboard build. I think once that's officially done with, I'll have one less project and an excuse to get back to my Kerbal controller. I think the end of bad (cold) weather will also help, as I tend to do a lot of my big projects by traveling to my father's place, and working in his barn turned small shop. I have considered trying to layout a PCB for the FDAI controller. I certainly HAVE copper clad board I can etch one out with. We'll see... Wait, what's that... Preston Garvey needs me to clear out some raiders from... Yeah? Ah, and I see you marked the location on my map for me... Thanks...

I would like to say, I got a good punny chuckle at the vessel names in that tracking station screenshot! I also second the idea of additional sorting option in tracking. Sort not just by vessel name or by soonest maneuver node, but by launch order, by SoI, etc.

Sure, you can pick up and reuse your booster stage, but do you have a vehicle that can pick up my jaw? STUNNING!

I like to name my ships after disasters... Columbia, Titanic, Fitzgerald, Challenger, Outta Gas, Gilly Vanilli...

I hope wheel bearings become a thing again. I've never checked to see if that ever became possible again. First rule of console club: Don't talk about console club!

That pic... Evanitis ♡ Jool and it's moons. I've never even considered any type of "near future" engine mods... Anyone with a mod can spend funds, beam 1.21 Gigawatts into space with a nuclear powered microwave beam, and pull straight line power thrusts. Unf. Boooooring! The challenge of KSP, for me, is to actually try to use the physics to fly my missions, and not brute force things. I DO rather enjoy over engineering my ships... I sent what amounts to a massive fuel station and a reusable lander to Duna and Ike to basically get ALL the biomes in a single trip. Strategic hops, conjunctions where multiple biomes sit near one another, etc. It was a very fun mission. I burned half my remaining leftover fuel for a mighty fast transfer back to Kerbin. A near straight line. I almost biffed the capture. Sure, I powered back, but my recklessness could have cost me the science for EVERY SINGLE BIOME OF THE ENTIRE DUNA SYSTEM. I had my final lander... an MK3 "shuttle" cockpit that would hold all 4 crew (my two Scientists, Engineer, and Pilot, plus a rescue I managed to snag on the way out), spammed with radial parachutes, and some radial rocket motors... had it perform a MechJeb guided landing near the KSC, and I used the motors and the last of my fuel to power land it on the VAB helipad. Sadly, i do not have screenshots of the Duna transfer... It was rather bland. Trip there was a normal Hohman transfer. Trip back was a literal power drive. I burned half my fuel, failed to realize that the nature of my burn was having my burn not only to arrest my travel, but to then reverse myself into catching up with Kerbin. It worked, just. I just barely got captured into an orbit, and used aerobraking to bring myself down. This was in 0.90, before reentry heat. I'd rather not try stunts like that again. With reentry heat, I would have lost my crew. Fancy multi slingshot orbits seem to be the most entertaining option, to be honest!

How did this double post? Oh well... I'll change this to... Hmm... I've never been to Jool. I'm saving anything beyond Eve and Duna for after I finish my hardware controller. I also plan to install Outer Planets Mod, so I'll have even more reason to enjoy crazy Jool assisted slingshots to the likes of Sarnus and Plock! Using REAL instruments, no less!

Quite honestly, I'd prefer to use the biodome and torus for my crew. It's a known fact that leisurely lounging in an artificial biome as a Kerbal consumes snacks and koffee makes the stress of the job just simply melt away! Could it be implemented as recourse generator for CivPop, but be manned (kerbed?) by crew, not civvies? I'd really hate to lose it as a resource for my regular kerbals. I think a really cool thing to do with it, would be to treat it as a science lab extension. Having a station or base with one of the structures incorporated, in conjunction with a science lab module, would provide low G natural settings where natural science could be performed by crew members. The side effect, is if Civ Pop is installed, it would also produce food, and consume whatever resources the CivPop biodome type structures consume, maybe at a rate that's a multiplier based on crewed capacity. Say, it takes a minimum of 1 crew to generate food, improve on science returns, but it only provides the max multiplier ÷ the crew capacity x the crew count on board the biodome/torus. It could also have a minimum crew to produce any results. So basically, I'm proposing that using the mod on it's own would allow you to create a small boost to science if a lab module is attached, and you crew both the lab module, and the biodome/torus. If the structure is half full, you get half the science multiplier bonus. if full, you get the full science multiplier bonus. If CivPop is installed, it'd require being manned by Crew, not civs, to operate, but would produce both the science bonuses, as well as function as a food resource for civilians, and consume the same resources civilian food production modules consume. At least that's what would appeal most to me. Creating hooks to TAC Life support and that snacks mod would also seem to be pretty cool. Seems a biodome ought to extend the viability of any long term mission by quite a bit. I'd ALSO LOVE if the torus could end up with an togglable spin animation, if that's a possible feature. the spin is the whole point of a torus. It doesn't need to work in warp, but the fact that if you apply a spin o it, you lose it after warp... well, it means manually spinning it up is simply futile. Just my thoughts on it, and how I think it'd best serve both separate and combined with other elements of the game and other mods. Glad to hear you are seeing success in your business venture! I hope for the best of success! We certainly will appreciate the fixing of the mod, but I can be patient. What you're doing IRL is a wonderful achievement! Also, for your amusement: I received a contract to Recover Calzon Kerman and his "wreckage". I failed to note the vessel mass when I clicked accept... Mother of God... I may just use a klaw to attach a docking port to this puppy and tell the contractor to suck it!

I had a 32000 ∆v transfer stage for my first Duna mission. Crew cabin was slightly offset (the MK3 cockpit), and I had the bright idea of EVAing to collect science™. I did not use any type of advanced capture maneuvers, and the vessel was BIG... It was multiple launched strings of Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tanks, docked to a hub, and tugged with a ring of NERV engines at the front hub, with the crew cabin attached in the middle. A set of retrograde engines allowed deceleration without turning the vessel (the vessel was WAY too big and floppy for a push design, so engines were at the center), I left the rockets at full throttle, but with no active control, SAS dropped and the imbalance of the ship caused it to start spinning wildly and began to drift off course, ejecting my EVAed Kerbal. I had to switch to the ship to regain control, and prevent self deconstruction of the whole thing. By the time I was stable, my Kerbal was so far out, she had to be selected from the map view, cause i couldn't press [ or ] to toggle to her. She was a couple Km out. I EVA'd her back and boarded. Got my darn EVA report at least. Continued the burn (with SAS keeping the ship stable) My orbit was not well circularized, but that was okay. I snagged an Ike encounter, and used Ike to help bring myself under control. I love the range of NERVs, but it pays to have some backup REAL thrust for emergencies. I did not have that.

I can vouch for the no friction thing... Poor Bill...

Silly, They were just klandestinely recovering Kosmonaut kit dropped by Kerbals from the kompeting KSC.

That's due to a time display limitation in KSP. KSP stores time displayed as a 32 bit value. It's a well known and long standing issue with LOOOONG game saves that time goes screwy after you exceed this value and it loops back to the beginning. It's one reason I STRONGLY wish the developers would address this. In a casual game, where you just deal in local planets, and maybe occasionally start new careers, a person may never encounter it. People who play rather hardcore and do long term solar system covering total exploration type missions may end up hitting that limit. With OPM, and now End, you can far more quickly run into these time glitches, as travel takes that much longer. It's one reason why I run multiple concurrent missions simultaneously in my game (and manage the logistics of timing them all out using Kerbal Alarm Clock). At the moment, I have 2 missions to Eve and 2 missions to Duna, and a pair of stations in the Kerbin system, but funnily enough, am still working on my Mun Landing, which will have been done before I have to worry about Duna or Eve! All this by the second year of my game As for End itself... The indications seem to believe this would be a massive rocky world, not a gas planet. Any chance of using Eve as the model vs Jool, then? I'd LOVE the challenge of a brutally high gravity object, far from home, to land and possibly take off from. That would be a whole new scale of a challenge in itself! The limited value of "collect science at X" for gas giants basically means that Jool, while pretty, is entirely dependent on it's local neighborhood to provide real long term interest. If Jool had no moons, I think Dres would see more activity. People would fly by Jool and go "Oh, pretty!", and then move on. This mod has great potential, but I really want to see all the effort and time to make a trip out to End be worth more than a fly by or an orbit. Do please consider making End rocky!

In another thread I mentioned my plans for the tiny color CRT display I found, and got pretty elaborate... Decided to snip the whole thing short, and put the meat of my ideas here, where it won't hijack someone else's simpit thread. So, as far as project status goes... Cold weather and the Minutemen... Almost all work on this custom controller project has ground to a near stand still, as all my major wood and metal working tools reside in an unheated barn a town over, and that is far too cold right now to be venturing that far away, for that amount of time, to do that kind of work! Fortunately, I can still work on electronics, but cash flow has been slow, so parts are on a trickle supply. I've also been focusing almost all my spare project time on my mechanical keyboard. It'll be only a couple more weeks before the key caps show up, so it's a rush to finish by then. Said cold forced me to saw oak with a hand saw, and file the curves I wanted, with a hand file. Dat oak tho... Hard stuff... Anyway, very excited about finishing that project! It's okay though... I'm really just waiting for 1.1 to launch, and for the mods to catch up on Kerbal stuff again... In the meantime, I'm busy having too much fun playing Fallout 4. My plan for my CRT is to get one of those cheap little Raspberry Pi Zero boards (the ones that are super cheap). I want to set it up to auto play animations of the IVA and mission control characters (Gene Kerman, etc) at random. If I can make that work, then I'll mount the CRT in portrait mode. It'd be purely aesthetic. Maybe SOMEDAY, it'll be possible to feed it a docking camera video feed to it, somehow. I'm sure the Raspberry Pi can do that, as long as the game has a mod and a means to actually stream the video to another device. Does anything even DO this yet? I know there are IN GAME docking port cameras. Are there ones that can stream the video? For now, I doubt if it'd even have any interactivity, other than a "Coms" switch on the panel that will be able to turn it on or off. Maybe "UHF Coms" could cover switching power to the CRT video section of the panel. That's one area where I plan to have a number of non game switches to make it feel more "space capsuley". I actually have enough ideas that I don't know if the 25 switches I ordered will be sufficient to cover my requirements anymore. Off the top of my head, I need 10 for Action Groups, unless I go with my nice pushbuttons, and i need 5 for basic flight state controls. I need one for the FDAI (Pro/retro-anti mode switch) and another for selecting stage or total resource display. If I have 2 Coms switches, that leaves me 6 switches to handle power. Not sure if that'll be sufficient. I haven't even considered an SCE to Aux switch! Thinking of mapping that one to "Escape", so it can save my ass and let me revert my telemetry to a previously known state! Basically, my idea is that power for the various components of the system will each have unique switches, with their own DC Bus or AC Bus supplies. To turn on the FDAI, for example, I'd need to tun on "AC BUS A" to enable the 400 Hz Sine wave generator that powers it (and provides the reference signal), but I'd also have to turn on a "DC Bus B" to power up the controller for it. "Main Fuel Cell" would be the primary power supply. "DC Bus A" could switch on the main controller circuits. "DC Bus Aux" could power on the 12 volt rail for some of my side projects, like integrated dimmer lighting controls for my display cabinets and desk lighting (yes, they are getting centrally controlled). "AC Bus B" could power up my CRT display. "AC Bus Aux" and "24v Bus Reg" could both trip a relay to power up the Hakko 927 soldering station guts I'm transplanting into the panel to do double service as a desk mounted quick access soldering station, and to supply the 24 volts I need to power up my 4-20mA loop current meters for resource display (4 of my analog meters were super cheap, but require extra circuitry to run). Each switch will enable it's respective function only, though. "24v Bus Reg" and "AC Bus Aux" would physically provide 24 volts to their respective circuits, only, but both would activate the relay that powers up the transformer. That's real simple to do with a couple diodes. As an example, I could have "Main Fuel Cell" and "DC Bus Aux" powered on to run my lighting, and the controller would effectively be off, save for probably a couple panel indicators indicating what's active. Plugging a soldering iron handle into the front panel and flipping the "AC Bus Aux" switch would power on the soldering station. I'll change the red LED displays of the soldering station to green LEDs, to match the style I'm using elsewhere in the control panel. A small number pad will allow temp settings to be entered, though I may be able to rig up the DSKY to do double duty, if I can get it to selectively interface. It currently does have a number pad, after all, but I'm not sure... I did previously talk about changing the DSKY keypad to KSP centric legends, vs Apollo legends. If I do use the DSKY keypad, I could control the existing soldering station keypad with transistors wired to close each button position, with the Arduino activating specific transistors to match the pressed DSKY keypad Key. Maybe I should double legend the DSKY keypad. Retain the numbers and Apollo stuff, but have secondary KSP specific legends for ease of operation and use. Turning "AC Bus Aux" off, and "24v Bus Reg" on will keep the 24 volt power supply enabled and bring up the resource meters. If I were ever so inclined to play KSP with one hand while soldering with the other... I guess I could flip both switches on and multitask. If the "AC Bus A" is off, then that also means the Gyro "OFF" flag will be popped in the FDAI. It's a mechanical flag indicator on the navball that pops out any time the system fails to read the gyros or has a gyro power failure. The "LOC" flag... I think I'll have it pop the "LOC" flag off when the controller powers up, when "DC Bus B" is enabled. For it to function, both flags must go away. If either flag appears, then the unit will not function. I have a Glide Slope flag too, but I have no idea what I'll use it for. Maybe Gs. "GS" for Gs. Pop the flag if I read high Gs.

Wow! I have no idea what you're using for that display, but it's impressive! That's gonna make one heck of a cockpit! Is that software on the computer, running off integrated an integrated graphics port, or is it a single board computer receiving telemetry? (**EDIT** A fake telemetry readout in a fake spaceship cockpit! Le GASP! Can't wait to see it done for real!) Regardless, it looks very professional! As for cold weather... I know how you feel. My own project has ground to a near stand still, as all my major wood and metal working tools reside in an unheated barn a town over, and that is far too cold right now to be venturing that far away, for that amount of time, to do that kind of work! Fortunately, I can still work on electronics, but cash flow has been slow, so parts are on a trickle supply. Furthermore, I've been focusing almost all my spare project time on my mechanical keyboard. It'll be only a couple weeks before the key caps show up, so it's a rush to finish by then. Very excited about finishing that project! It's oaky though... I'm really just waiting for 1.1 to launch, and for the mods to catch up to that... In the meantime, I'm busy having too much fun playing Fallout 4. I did have a major setback with my own project, specifically the FDAI (navball) controller. Turns out, an Arduino doesn't stand a CHANCE of communicating enough bits over I2C, or processing fast enough to control the raw data needed to feed the DACs at a sufficient rate to do the arbitrary waveform generation on 10 channels. one, maybe two channels, sure, but not 10. Fortunately, someone suggested a cheap DAC that featured an independent voltage reference input that allows me to use the DACs as attenuators. Now I only need to make a hardware 400 Hz sine generator, and feed that into the attenuator DACs... I only need to update those (x10) at the rate KSP sends telemetry updates, not at 400 Hz x timebase resolution x 10. Far more manageable! The good news, is that once I'm done with my keyboard, I think I'll go back to working on the FDAI controller. I need to actually BUILD the circuit... I've got almost all the parts for it already. Focus, me! Focus! The actual control panel itself has been untouched, cause the translucent synthetic paper (from Nekoosa paper products) that I plan to use for meter and control panel backlit panels... Is useless with a printer that doesn't print color well, anymore. When spring comes, I'll venture forth from my weather shuttered doors, once again, and find a print shop. Too darn cold! Anyhow, very, VERY awesome build you have going on, and that "glass cockpit" is looking mighty, mighty fine! Well, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy! The new plan for it is to get one of those cheap little Raspberry Pi Zero boards (the ones that are super cheap). I want to set it up to play animations of the IVA and mission control characters (Gene Kerman, etc) at random. If I can make that work, then I'll mount the CRT in portrait mode. It'd be purely aesthetic. I don't know if it'd even have any interactivity, other than a "Coms" switch on the panel that will be able to turn it on or off. That's one area where I plan to have non game switches to make it feel more "space capsuley". The various components of the system will each have their own unique power switches, with their own "DC Bus" or "AC Bus" supplies labeled ("DC Bus A", "AC Bus Aux", etc). I think it sounds like a cool, relatively "immersive" plan.

So, what was this atomic element, again? I missed that detail. You know... Trying to close the Flag Plaque button instead of the actual window close button is ALMOST as bad as trying to rotate pics of KSP on the internet by right clicking and dragging... Guilty on both counts.

I was about to ask if rabidninjawombat would consider asking michaelhester07 if he could update the old biodomes and stanford torus pack to be compatible with 1.0.5... It's good to see this comment from October... but it seems even CivPop is now sitting in limbo, with no response since November. I always preferred the old pack's IVA for my stations. It's so relaxing and lovely. This lack of updates makes me sad...

Still no response to getting the nodes/thermal/aero on these parts fixed for 1.0.5... I REALLY like these two parts. They feel cozy. The civilian population parts just don't have that same feel, in my opinion. What I want, are these dome/torus parts for my crew, not for civvies.

That was the thing I was missing! DUH!!! I launched "Gilly Vanilli" (the 44 ton rover) that way. sent one to Minmus, and the other to Gilly. Gilly Vanilli was launched in my 0.90 save, on a large launcher rocket, flew itself to a low gravity body on a rear mounted NERV, landed, roved, performed a vertical takeoff, and could then perform the transit back to Kerbin, and safely land on Kerbin using parachutes. it could hold a crew of 4, two scientists, a pilot, and an engineer, preferably. It used docking ports to create a springy rocker bogey suspension (with 32 wheels!), and had landing legs to both protect the wheels during landing, and to lift the vessel off the found for an engineer to be able to repair the wheels (the vehicle is heavy enough, that repairing wheels sometimes fails unless the vessel is off the ground. This is also HILARIOUS when activated on Gilly... Those lander legs can be used AS a VTO system there! There were a bunch of the small stack decouplers attached to the rover's VTOL engines, with struts that then attached to the suspension, to keep it stable during launch. The two vessels were strutted to one another, and to the launch rocket. I don't have a picture of the double Gilly Vanilli launcher, only the individual vessels, but I have another launcher that uses the symmetrical double payload technique: My "Eve'n'Gilly" and "Ike'n'Duna" launchers: Both launchers are identical, save for their destination. I do use Tweakscale in these launchers to produce the nifty little science payload stacks. Rather than try to fit these inline, with the ISRU scanners in place, I decided to mount them side by side. Note the use of the 2-1 stack adapters and the center fuel tank adapter. I forget the actual part names. It gave me an efficiently compact 2 engine rocket for doing my orbital capture burn. Once I have that, I can decouple each of the two payloads, extend the additional solar panels, and use the ion engines to direct them to their final destinations. These payloads feature a combination of reusable science modules, and a redundant supply of reusable modules. Struts are your friend. KSP does NOT like to have loops in it's stack, but you can strut things. Interestingly, you can create parallel stacks with docking ports, but it can be tricky, as the alignment has to be perfect if you want all the docking ports to actually connect. Struts will keep things rigid, even when there is no connection in a stack. These probes are designed to spam science at their destination. each probe can perform 9 Mystery Goo and 9 Science Jr experiments. The reusable experiments are all included. My goal is to get these into a polar orbit, so I can cover as much of the planet's/moon's biomes as possible. If I have any modules leftover, I may try to get some atmospheric science in, hopefully before they reach the ground. The gilly probe actually has legs added... The Ion engines should be enough to biome hop on Gilly's low gravity. This pic would be of the "Ike'n'Duna" probe. Regarding playing a stock game, I can certainly get that some people prefer stock play. If you ever consider moving beyond stock play, KSP is really a game that can be heavily improved upon with mods, and not every mod will bring your computer to a grinding halt. I would make just a few honorable mentions... Tweakscale, GPOSpeedPump, Kerbal Alarm Clock, and KER/MechJeb. Tweakscale REALLY is a beautiful mod. It really fills in the missing parts that the game doesn't really provide. Masses, volumes, and values scale accordingly. Another great mod that really compliments an OTHERWISE near stock game is GPOSpeedFuelPump (formerly Goodspeed Fuel Pump). It just adds some very nice integral fuel pumping and balancing options to the game. I can design a station, lander and refueling tankers that automatically pump fuel in the right direction, without ever having to right click a single tank. Really great for complex little landers that use a dozen tiny tanks situated around the vessel to keep the CoG low. Traditionally, you'd have to right click every one of those to refill. Not with this mod though. Kerbal Alarm Clock is a wonderful, simple tool to keep track of multiple simultaneous missions. It's exactly what it says... a fancy alarm clock, and well worth it. I have two Eve/Gilly and two Duna/Ike missions, along with a lively amount of activity around Kerbin. KAC lets you easily focus on what you want to do int he here and now, and not have to worry about being distracted and forgetting to do a capture burn 76 days from now. The last two, Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER) and MechJeb, are very powerful tools in KSP. It IS true that MechJeb features powerful autopilot functionality, but I understand that can actually be disabled, if you prefer. What's important, are all the fancy spacey numbers that both mods give you. I can tell you this... for a while, i used to have MechJeb launch my ships, and dock them, and rendezvous... truth is, I just don't bother with the auto pilots anymore. the only "auto" tools I use these days are the maneuver planner, the execute maneuver node button, and Smart A.S.S. (a better version of the SAS buttons to the left of the navball). I know how to do all the things. I just let MechJeb point the ship and stop the engines. I get a nice landing projection when i land (which I also still do manually). The thing i don't think I could live without though, are the stat windows. Vessel stats, Orbital stats, Surface stats... I feel the game is not complete without giving me the option to see those "rocket sciency" numbers. If you have that much of an aversion to the temptation of auto piloting, stick with KER. It's just the stat windows. I just happen to see no reason to install both, as I'm already accustomed to the MechJeb interface.

50m Stanford Torus with four 8m biodomes. Yes, I'm aware it's "built wrong. This should be spinning in space, with the domes flipped glass inward. It has a small forest inside. What makes this base significant, other than it's gravity defying silliness, is that I launched and landed it as a single vessel, from KSC to Minmus, in 0.90. The "rover" weighs 44 tons on Kerbin, in comparison to the massive base. I relied on an incredible asparagus staging configuration that spanned the width of the VAB, and exceeded the fuel line length limit. It used triple height stacks of the large LARGE tanks, with mammoths at the bottom of every stack. I forget the cost, but it's the only thing that ever brought my budget back into 6 digits after unlocking the full tech tree (yes, this was a career save). You can see the means of landing here. 4 mammoth engines, with empty Kethane tanks (I've since quit using Kethane) ringed by landing legs. There are 8 of those landing leg stacks. there should be another one just off image to the right of the mammoth tanks. That's one "spoke" of the torus. There are four spokes, with 4 mammoth engine clusters total, one per spoke. There was a Kethane drilling rig at the center. The rings that the mammoths, the kethane storage tanks, and the extra SAS wheels attach to are the radial attachment point. I did use tweak scale to make those WAY bigger. Couplers would have been attached to the bottom of the two kethane ISRU tanks and the SAS wheels on each spoke, plus there was a central stack attached to the drilling rig. This made 13 stacks of the large Kerbodyne S3-14400 tanks, stacked 3 tall, with 12 mammoths at the bottom of those, and 4 on the vessel structure itself. the central tank was stacked one tank taller, and had decouplers all along, staged very late. This tank stack is important for landing. The outer most tanks had girders hanging between the tanks, reaching out for one another, with Oscar-B mini tanks at the end. This let me string 3 fuel lines (first stage to drop across a girder to an Oscar-B, the Oscar-B to another Oscar-B, and finally, the second Oscar-B to the next tank to be staged... The stacks really were that far apart on the stack! the next inner stacks only needed one girder with an Oscar-B to accommodate the distance. The inner ring of stacks could have fuel lines run normally. They all fed to the central tank, and from there, they in turn also feed to the landing motors. I had my control from here screwed up, and had to fly the pancake by adjusting engine throttle, as cantab mentioned. Until i reached orbit, that was my sole control. didn't even bother with RCS or SAS. on a vessel that massive, it's slow anyway. Once in orbit, I found the RIGHT probe core to control from, and flew it to minmus. On the top side, by the biodomes, are a number of LF+O and mono tanks, for resource collection. The general idea was that I lower the entire vessel to the planet on the fuel from the large central stack, and when each tank segment depletes, I drop it, and pray that it blows up and leaves my landing site clear of debris. Once the last stage is depleted, I drop it to be destroyed on impact, and burn the fuel stored in the ISRU LF+O tanks. There was just enough fuel for a safe landing on the numerous landing legs. Part of me wants to recreate this base, or one much like it in my current career. I know what mistakes I made last time, and what to do differently, but i also have no idea if the aerodynamics would ever let me launch this thing again. It IS mostly open space... Four spokes and a ring, but it's still massive. I really need a bigger VAB, as this was at the extreme limits of what I could do in the VAB already. if using tweak scale, I find that the double, triple and quad stack adapter are nice for splitting stacks into multiple columns. It does take some struts, cause of the limits in how KSP likes (or rather doesn't like) cyclical stack connection paths. One joint invariably REFUSES to snap and bond. Struts are your friend. symmetrically applied radial attachment points are really wonderful for creating good patterns of symmetry if you want multiple stacks coming off a central one. Much of the same can apply to mother ships. I have found that the Docking Port Sr is your friend in station/mothership design. Save the regular size and Jr. for probes, landers, and ferries. For any bulk transit, you need the structural strength of the large docking port. Another tip for large vessels, particularly long ones with many assembled segments, is to use a puller engine configuration. You go from wet spaghetti to a space train. Bonus points if you make it actually look like a train! It makes a WORLD of difference... as long as you put your engines far enough out at the ends of girders or radially mounted tanks to CLEAR the trailing ship. KSP will calculate the losses of occluded thrust, not to mention possibly overheat whatever you're burning against, so take diameter into consideration. If you use a design like that though, then you can have a singular rigid engine/control/SAS/RCS unit, and it will always orient correctly for a burn. even if the tail end is kinda floppy, it'll pull it into a straight line by virtue of everything being pulled by a centered force. A pusher configuration works very well in a grid body, but the disadvantages of pullers can overcome the impossibility of pushing a non rigid body. In theory, you could have a literal train made of segments joined by unlocked, pivoting claws, and it'd still ultimately pull in the right direction. **EDIT** And as a number of people have mentioned... GET KJR. Kerbal Joint Reinforcment is your friend. They use it, I use it. My understanding is that the way it works is it "eases" the physics on by ramping from no physics to full physics effects gradually, over the course of a second or two. it also tweaks the joint rigidity and strength to try to balance it out. Something like that. Fewer randomly rapidly disassembling vessels when you come out of warp or load them, and far less wobble when being and orienting vessels.

My Kerbals know Dres is real... My second launch ever accidentally shot out of the Kerbin SoI, passed Duna, and ended up "over there"... These were the days of unlimited budgets, crazy over-engineering, and having no concept of "aim", or "orbital dynamics". I never retrieved them.