Cairol

Hey there. I was not kerballing for about 3 years. But good games last longer than bad decisions. So here we are. 3 years later. Ripened and with some gray hair. (not kidding, my mums genes really hit me lately...) Updated the game and got to work. A basic Kerbin orbital satellite system it should be (with RemoteTech). Business as usual. ... Or not so usual. Heck, I was unable to read the "Multiple Launch View" diagram of my favourite Remote Tech Visual Planner. And Google didn't help me either. Old bugger. But hey, I'm expierienced. I don't need those stinkin' diagrams... So I patched together my first little rocket with 3 minimalist satellites as payload. "EFFICIENT" it's called. Well, I was at "Mark VII" until that thing could properly perform it's mission without running out of dV. I was thinking about grabbing my old, trusty check list assortment. But as said, I've done this stuff a million times... Now, deploying those 3 sats went as follows: Attempt 1: Got near the AP to deploy Sat 1, hit SPACE and realized, that I forgot to activate the Communotron on the sat and I also forgot to attach an antenna onto my deploy vessel. And I also only had a pilot in that capsule and no enigneer. So...... R.I.P. that satellite. (I have an internal rule, that only Engineers can fiddle with tech on EVA. So no EVA for manually extending that antenna) Attempt 2: Successfully decoupled 1st sat. Told MechJeb to circularize at next AP. But....it didn't budge. So I was like: "Hey, MechJeb, dude, bruh, lad, ... why you not turning that thing into the prograde stellar wind?" I was double-checking the sat and my blueprints. Then I realized why the OCTO2 core is much smaller and lighter than the OCTO. I first thought I was smart to use the OCTO2, because it's exploiting the games obviously wack balancing of probe core weight/feature ratio. Also, 2 is better than not 2, right? RIGHT? But in reality, those idiots of Probodobodyne forgot to include reaction wheels. And RCS is for beginners. So, R.I.P. that satellite too. Attempt 3: This time I got them all deployed. But after the second sip of my victory tea, I realized, that those sats were not nearly as evenly spaced as they should be. In fact, the most of the time, they didn't have a connection to each other or the KSC. Found out, that I had interpreted that Visual Planner diagram completely wrong and was deploying those sats in a way too high orbit to reliably work with Communotron 16's, and also, the battery capacity was so tightly measured ("EFFICIENT" it's called...), that the antennas would disable themselves at < 20% EC. Attempt 4: I let those other 3 sats in orbit and flew 3 new, slightly improved ones up there and again deployed them. But again, the spacing between them was horrible. So even with 6 sats up there, the signal coveage was spotty at best. So I went to sleep. Attempt 5: Today I upgraded those sat blueprints to make them actually viable (and more EFFICIENT!). And then took my Deployer Mk VIII to bring them in a fresh, unhumilated orbit. This time, I had figured out how to read that obsolete Multi Launch View diagram. So the 3 sats finally ended up in 120 degree spacing. Next Mission: Deploy 2 polar orbit satellites. I built an abomination of a COM sat with 9 dishes on it, to cover the whole Kerbol system (as a relay at least). I also didn't forget to attach stuff via electric servo hinges. Just to give the kraken something to eat. Nailed the design for my large deploy rocket (honestly, that thing I put together in 5 minutes "just worked" - and not in a Bethesda way...) Brought those sats up there. But then I did realize, that I had no clue how much dV I need to get them to highly eccentric orbit. So ofc, I didn't have enough with me. So I didn't even try to, aborted the mission, de-orbited the payload and set up my re-entry. And at about 40 km above ground, I realized, ..... I didn't bring parachutes on my perfect large deploy vessel that "just worked". In my despair, I tried a powered landing over land. If SpaceX can do it, I can too. I'm an IRL engineer after all (who doesn't do rockets or anything remotely close to it ofc) I actually almost did it with my poddle engine, but my pod got separated from the tank/engine part at impact and tumbled into a rock wall and exploded. But hey, I didn't give up on Valentina and erm.... Cris..fred until the very end. XD So at that moment, I realized 2 things: A) Even with gray hair, I DO need my old checklists and tipps & tricks docs B) This game is still as much fun as it was 3 years ago. Have a good one! And keep the blue side up! Wait....that's not for space flight..... Welp.

SInce I updated from V.1.3.x to 1.4.3, I get Log spam: Method not found: 'UnityEngine.Texture2D.LoadImage' For pretty much any mod I have installed. This method seems to have been replaced by "ImageConversion.LoadImage" in Unity framework. Can I do anything about that, or do all mod owners have to fix their code? Even plugins that are listed as compatible with V.1.4.3 are throwing this exception. And I guess itt's not good, because those assets will then be missing in the game.

Can we have some indication that [x] Science has interrupted time warp? I was searching desperately for hours to find out why I was thworn out of warp randomly evey couple of seconds when orbiting Kerbin. The only clue was this "bubble" sound that plays whenever you get thrown out of warp which somehow made me suspect [x] Science. I like to keep the "Science here and now" window open. But now that I know that it causes out-of-warp whenever the orbited biome changes, Sure, you can deactivate it when you know what's going on. But this is a bit in convenient. I guess other players will stumble over this too.

I run the following mods: Can anyone tell me which mod can throw me out of time warp constantly? Scenario: I'm establishing orbit at 100 km. Then I try to time warp. This works for about 1 - 5 seconds. Then there is some "bubble"-like sound and when that sound plays, I'm reset to 1x speed. This sound plays in random intervals every couple seconds. Before I try to deactivate mod after mod, I thought someone can perharps tell which of my mods can do this and emits this bubble sound. I first had x-Science under suspicion because the sound would somehow fit. But there is no option to say if I want to get thrown out of warp and I have no experiments on board. EDIT: Found it. It in fact IS [x] Science. Whenever you have the "Science here & now" window open, or the large science window, it throws you out of warp when the biome changes. Even when orbiting and even if you can't do science from the active vessel directly...

Yeah, I'm coming from RT. That's why I'm asking. ^^ Thanks. I guess I will stick with RT then. I'm more used to this than the new ComNet "lite" version of the stock KSP.

Where can I look up the power demand of all antennas with the new ComNet feature? There is a power demand stat in the context menu of each antenna. But this seems to be the demand for transmitting science. (At least I hope so...it's pretty high) But I search for the power demand for normal remote control communication withing the ComNet I create with my satellites. This should be a separate stat that's applied whenever an antenna is deployed/active, but without transmitting science. I need this to plan my battery capacity for the different satellites.

Addition: I did some testing and it's the case that the game loads fine when I start it via the Steam launcher. But whenever I start it by using the KSP.exe or KSP_x64.exe directly, it stops during loading as described in my last post. It's ok to know the workaround. But I still would like to know why this behaves differently. I actually found a corrupted file with the Steam Local Files checker. But it did not solve the issue.

Since I updated KSP to V1.2, it loads all the way until it reaches the file "Spaces/PodCockpit/Internal/PodCockpit" asset. Then it stands there forever. RAM usage at this point is about 1 GB and I have still plenty of RAM free. Same happens with x64 version at the same moment during loading. Before the update from V1.1.2 to 1.2 I was able to run it in x86 and x64 mode with a couple of mods without problems. Oddly enough, it loaded exactly once after I made a completely fresh, unmodded install. But the problem recurred after starting it a second time and has since the exact same problem as described above. The output_log file does not give any immediate clue what's going wrong. - at least not for me. http://pastebin.com/vfeyG5AZ Can someone help here? I have found some similar topics with google, but no reliable solution was given in any of those. I'm running Win7 x64 on my laptop (it's not my gaming PC) 4 GB RAM 2x 2.13 GHz Intel Core2Duo CPU nVidia GT 230M with 512 MB dedicated VRAM

My technique for setting up a well distributed sat network is this: If I want to deploy 3 satellites around a planet, I look up the orbital period of the desired orbit around that planet. http://ryohpops.github.io/kspRemoteTechPlanner/ Let's say it's 3h for a 1500 km orbit. (don't mind my numbers here. I don't have realistic ones in front of me). So I lauch a single vessel which carries ALL 3 satellites. Then I enter my desired orbit, but with an orbital period of 1/3 (or 2/3) of the desired orbital period for my sats by establishing an excentric orbit, with the AP at my desired distance and the PE so it results in the 1/3 period. Then when I approach my AP, I deploy my first sat and circularize it's orbit at the AP. Then I wait until I again approach my AP and deploy my second sat and circularize it's orbit, which has now exactly 120° phase angle to the first one, as I have effectively spent 1/3 of the target orbital period going around the planet. And on the 3rd pass of my AP, I deploy the 3rd sat and circularize it's orbit. So all 3 are now in pretty much perfect alignment, phase-angle-wise. Last step is, to finetune the sats orbital period to the millisecond, so they won't go out of sync for ages. The site above actually has a graph for this "Multiple Launch" approach, which provides the 1/3 period numbers and corresponding AP/PE. Just in case you don't want to calculate them yourself. Doing the same with multiple separate launches will be much more of a problem, when you want evenly distributed sats.

18 GB RAM. I'm still running 1.1.2 because I'm waiting for certain mods to be updated for 1.1.3. But since 1.1 my game crashes in random intervals in the VAB. Mainly when placing or deleting parts. Anything between 5 Minutes to 2 hours. Usually 2-3 times an hour. Regardless of the size of the craft I'm constructing. But I guess this should improve with 1.1.3, as Squad addressed some crash problems in the VAB.

Burned to death after a staging error on the launchpad. My SRBs and their decouplers were staged simultaneously, while the launch clamps were not staged. This was causing the boosters to hit the main rocket tank which caused that to explode, which caused tanks further up to explode which eventually lead to total destruction of the command module by secondary explosions after being separated from the main rocket. Of course I had no LES on my rocket on that day. It was out of order and being overhauled because of a missing mandatory warning label above one of the exhaust nozzles that should say: "If you can read this, your crew is safe from possible staging errors."

For 1.25m rockets, the LV-T45 is my most used engine besides the Terrier. For 2.5m rockets, it's the Skipper and the Poodle. For 3.5m ascent stages, it's the Mammoth. For planes, it's the RAPIER. So I consider those as the most useful, because I use them the most. (makes sense, ha? )

For me, HyperEdit is NOT NOT NOT for changing any orbital body in the game. Lately there was a user which changed Kerbins orbit and things went really bad from that point on. So I don't mess with planets or moons. I only use it to warp my crafts to other bodies if I feel I have to test them before doing the real thing. Sometimes, the Kerbal Way™ is too worrisome for me to just stitch something together and send it to some planet I've never been before...

I found the culprit. As soon as I add the MechJeb control part (this walky-talky thingie) onto my vessel, all RCS ports start to react to the throttle control in the usual direction of an engine. I'll report this in the MechJeb thread then. Nevermind. EDIT: It's actually not a bug, but a feature of MechJeb I didn't know about. In the "Smart RCS" menu there is an option "RCS throttle when engines are offline" which is by default active. Must be new...

I played Space Engineers at that time and in the forums I often stumbled over sentences like: "Why does SE not have xxxx? KSP has it." "Why does this not work like in KSP?" "How about implementing mechanic xxx like in KSP?" "Why is this so unrealistic? KSP does it much better!" So I got curious what this KSP is that seems to do certain things about space and aero much more realistic. Went to steam. Went to Youtube. Found Scott Manley. Bought the game. Best decision ever.

Possible bug: The RCS 5x7 thruster blocks don't respect the "Fore by throttle = OFF" setting. They always are hooked to the throttle and activate whenever the throttle is > 0%, which make the Monopropellant tank emptying fast, if RCS is enabled while the main engine is being used. I didn't test this with the other RCS blocks, but I guess it's the same for them.

Possible improvement: The "Show UI" button is not so obvious from which mod it comes. I certainly missed this button for ages until I got curious why there is no fuel switching available on the Fuel Tanks Plus that claim to have MFT support. Better call it "Show Fuel Loadout" or something like that. Another improvement: Could you add a button to distribute LF and O2 fuel values to become the typical ratio for LFO engines? Like when I reduce the LF in a tank from 500 to 400, I can with a press of a button reduce the O2 amount according to that 1:1.22 ratio? Would be a nice quality of life feature.

Which sane man would change the orbits of Kerbol system bodies with HyperEdit anyway? Don't play god if you don't understand the math behind it...

Known bug. I thought they would have fixed this in 1.1.3. But it seems it's not.

There is some Squadcast where the devs talk about 1.1.3 and especially this bug fix (minute 36). They pointed out that the orbital decay is practically gone, except for really really high orbits. (like for a sun dive, they said) That's why they said it's only been "greatly reduced".

Hm, you mean the "Simulate in Background" setting? It actually does the trick.I thought it has something to do with threading. Thanks for the suggestion. EDIT: Hm. It does reduce CPU load. But it still simulates in background. When I fly an ascent and TAB out and come back 20 seconds later, my rocket has gained altitude. Seems to still not work as I imagined. But I guess this is a bit off-topic now.

Which software do you use for that? Standard windows remote desktop? I can't imagine it delivers 30 FPS or more, as TeamViewer for example lowers the displayed colors of the screen and has an update rate of seemingly < 25 FPS. Feels like 10-15 FPS to me, plus games would be unenjoyable due to the reduced colors scheme and compressed image transfer.

Well, "Squid" could be a reference to the Kraken. Seems legit to me. The game has a modding API, which means, even if Squad at some point stops updating it, we can still mod the hell out of it. Which means, KSP will probably live and prosper a good while. Don't hesitate to buy it. It's worth every penny in it's current state and Squad has alrrady informed us about future plans. No need to worry that they will skip development or support soon.

My CPU is already about to melt with 1 KSP instance open. And it seems to not stop simulation/CPU utilization when ALT+TABbing out of the game. So even with my 18 GB RAM, I'm not keen to try running a second instance.

A lot of good information here. I'll try to extract and transfer this knowledge to my space plane designs and ascent profile. It's still tricky though, as it's seemingly impossible to give as exact numbers as it's possible with regular rocket ascents. Too many factors to cope with. So I guess it's still a good chunk of try and error. Aka, "the kerbal way"...