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RocketPropelledGiraffe

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Everything posted by RocketPropelledGiraffe

  1. Watch your thrusters closely when translating backwards: The thrusters on the capsule are pointing partially to the front, since the capsule is conical. you should get a little bit of backwards thrust from them, and those should be the onse firing when you try to maneuver in that direction. Your craft does not have any thrusters to move you to the front, that's why nothing at all happens when you try to go in that direction.
  2. Well, why should there be a thruster firing if none is pointing in the desired direction?
  3. I'm not at home right now so I cannot check the tutorial craft atm, but judging from the images I think you only have RCS thrusters pointing to the sides, none to front or back. There are four "place anywhere" thrusters at the back monoprop-tank and additional ones at the capsule, they only point and thrust to the sideways directions. That would be consistent with your experience that you can translate in any direction, but not to front or back.
  4. Tourist experience is just a side effect, since they are essentially Kerbonauts without any abilities. They are in the Kerbonaut roster until the contract is complete, and basically get the same XP as any other crew member. Not too elegant, but propably necessary in the way they are handled at the moment.
  5. Well, doing inclination changes when you are already around the planet is never efficient anyway - well, I guess RCS is still a lot better than getting out to push... If you are in the Jool system you can actually perform your inclination changes in a quite more spectacular way ( https://xkcd.com/1244/ ), if you like precision maneuvering and multiple gravity assists. Shooting around Tylo and Jool to get your inclined orbit around Laythe is really satisfying...
  6. This is good advice for most small craft with relatively high TWR. I find that making the precision adjustments with RCS thrusters comes in very handy, if your craft has RCS. You can do very precise maneuvering and if you overshoot the maneuver you can just thrust retrograde to correct the error. That way there is no need to change the craft attitude for a correction.
  7. Apart from "moar chutes", you can also put the SRB etc. in the cargo bay of a spaceplane. Certainly more difficult, but a very elegant solution if you are looking for a challenge.
  8. I think one of the problems in stock is that most of the wanted information is already there, but not "easily available": Orbital information is there, but you have to go to map view. You get relative inclination information when you target something, good enough for most purposes. Radar altitude is visible in IVA. Delta-v is coming at last. In stock I find myself switching and jumping between all available views, especially when landing - tedious. What is needed in my opinion is an overview list of all the data, KER does a great job with its customisable windows: You don't need all the info all the time and playstyles do vary as well.
  9. Just to be different: Pol! Well, actually I really like the rocky topography.
  10. So far I got a reasonable mix of both profession and ... of the rescued Kerbals - it's propably just bad luck in your case. Once you get the advanced probes in career pilots become somewhat unnecessary anyway - so rejoice that you have all those useful engineers on the roster.
  11. Keep in mind that you can only maneuver to match an inclined orbit when you perform the burn in the ascending or descending node - otherwise you can never get an exact match. That's also the reason why you should launch when KSC is in one of the nodes, as diomedea mentioned. As to the huge amount of delta-v required remember that you basically change the direction of all your velocity - this differs from a prograde burn where you just add a set amount to it. As a consequence the radial burn is extremely expensive if your current velocity value is large, which usually is the case in tight orbits. If you have to do a big adjustment it often pays off to raise your orbit first to get a high apoapsis and then perform the inclination change there. That way the velocity value at the maneuver node is smaller which makes the inclination change cheaper. After that you can lower the orbit again. The procedure sounds counter-intuitive because you raise the orbit first and then lower it again which seems to achieve nothing - but you can actually save a lot of delta-v that way.
  12. I don't think I've seen a "splashed down" test contract since 1.0 - In my opinion these never made much sense and I had hoped they were gone. I guess it's good I am aware of the difference now and do not have to learn the massive extreme hard way by splashing down after working on a "all planets grand tour" contract. Anyway, I gave it another try and managed to return to Kerbin's Highlands, mission accomplished.
  13. It really should be automatic. Accepting the explore contracts and then fullfilling them systematically one after another really hampers your more ambitious career goals - it sort of puts you on rails and almost introduces a KSP version of fake difficulty, e.g. no Tylo gravity assist allowed because you have to avoid the SOI to get the explore contract later... It's propably best not to overthink this and just grab the explore contracts when they are offered as an additional bonus. Deliberately avoiding a body's SOI simply to make it possible to pick up the contract some time later takes away a lot of fun for me.
  14. Thanks for the answer, basically as I thought. Once more some sub-optimal contract description, or rather poor contract scripting - both types of returning should count if you ask me. Let's see if I can find a backup save and hit Kerbin's desert in a second try...
  15. Yesterday and today I finally got around to do my first real SSTO spaceplane design to deliver small satellites (<3.5 t) to LKO. It is good fun, however, in carrer without action groups switching between engines and closing/opening intakes is mildly annoying. I am still struggeling with proper deorbiting, I only got back to KSC once in about 6 orbital flights. It's a good thing that Val can land just as easily in the desert or even in the ocean... No casualties so far...
  16. Oh All-Knowing Forums, let me invoke your wisdom... So I accepted the Kerbin 3 Challenge contract in my career game to go to Kerbin's moons and back with the same vessel. Attached to the orbiting and transfer vessel with Mk3 pod was the landing craft with Mk1 pod. I performed the Mun landing, redocked and refuelled with the orbiter and onwards to Minmus and do the landing there. Both moon landing items in the contract are registered as complete, so far so good. I had plenty of delta-v, so both orbiter and lander performed their return independently and splashed down at home. In summary the Mk1 pod along with its pilot landed on Mun, landed on Minmus, and finally splashed down on Kerbin. Mission accomplished? No, it turns out the landing on Kerbin is not recognized as completed. It seems splashing down is not accepted as proper landing. Did anyone experience a similar problem, did I do something wrong here? I read there are some issues with docking and correct vessel identification, but I did perform docking between the Mun and Minmus landings and these steps are both considered complete.
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