fourfa

Yeah, these should be under spoiler tags. More interesting for me would be how to discover them ourselves, with KerbNet scanners or however...

https://spacedock.info/mod/1022/Electric Lights This is just a mod wrapper around the .cfg above, but might be easier for some than grokking Module Manager code. Not updated for a long time but should be stable anyway

Yep, this was also listed in the patchnotes for 1.11, and was tweaked again in 1.11.x (not sure). In my testing so far, the kerbals are more resistant to sliding on ladders (though they do still a little over time) and MUCH more resistant to actually sliding off ladders and floating free. When they do slide such that the helmet comes in contact with a solid surface on the craft, there are still phantom forces that can slowly knock your craft out of orbit. But overall, it's reduced due to the reduced rate of sliding The reason to have a kerbal on a ladder is to collect EVA science, and other than ladder-sliding, the limited amount of EVA propellant was the big limiting factor. Now, the kerbal can get back to the craft, grab on a ladder, put their jetpack inside the craft, retrieve it magically full of fuel, and go on their merry way. This part of ladder riding is now MUCH easier to manage on long (even interplanetary) missions

Catching up on this thread after a break from KSP... Has anyone found a really compelling way to use kerbal konstruction for Caveman? There was a pretty quiet update that lets kerbals add their strength together to lift heavier parts on Kerbin, which should help. When I left my quasi-NCD run, Bill was floating in polar orbit of Minmus awaiting a EVA propellant re-supply. Infinite EVA prop is now easy by store/recover jetpack from nearby craft. The extended EVA prop tank comes too late (Adv Exploration, 160 Science) to be used though Upcoming changes in 1.12: built-in transfer window planner, was always allowed as an external tool (?) but not an in-game mod. Will need a slight adjustment of the rules...

Back to the KR-1 "Boar" as a singular engine, it was proposed by one of the legendary devs/artists Porkjet before leaving SQUAD. He created this design roadmap in ~2016 IIRC: Much (but not all) of which has come to pass in the ~5 years since. Many (but not all) of these parts were silently released as a mod of sorts, hosted on KSP's own server: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/files/PartOverhauls.zip The Single-Boar was not one of them. Does one of the other Pork-alike mods have a Single-Boar?

Here's hoping there's a momentum-conserving recoil force on the launcher... because this looks like a very entertaining way to propel spacecraft

You can build a propeller system into a service or cargo bay, which you close for the rocket phase

With Breaking Ground parts you can fly on electric power to fairly high altitude before lighting the rockets. This breaks the tyranny of the Eve rocket equation, letting you use reasonably efficient vacuum engines. Many examples on youtube

* (unless it's Minmus) And re: vertical landing, I have seen a number of designs that land horizontally but retrograde (!) on landing gear at fairly high speed, and use both engines and brakes to slow down. You need a very long flat 'runway' so obviously it's trivial on Minmus, but I've seen examples on both Moho and Tylo (and Duna, which for a lot of spaceplanes might as well be airless). And you need good scouting from orbit to find the spot. The horizontal takeoff is easier, with some taxiing around to get pointed at a hill to serve as a launch ramp

You might find this a useful thread:

The Cessna-style airplane nose wheel (LY-05) has no brakes, and I believe if a new player is playing Career mode, there's a length of time where the LY01/05 are the only wheels you have. I think that's the topic here...? FYI, the various wheels in KSP are generally referred to as either 'rover wheels' or 'landing gear.' The rover wheels all have brakes and motors, so they can power a vehicle without jets or rockets. Landing gear have no motors, and they all have brakes except the basic LY-05 nosewheel. Options are: drive around with a bunch of LY-05s, hilariously, and crash into many things. Option 2: make a jet rover with a pair of LY-01 landing gear in back, and one or two LY-05 in front. This can steer (front) and brake (rear). I usually build this when I get the Aviation tech node, and often drive it around like a rover to get science early on. Option 3: get some more science so you can unlock the Space Exploration research node - this will get you small powered rover wheels. (Deepest apologies if I missed the mark here, it's tough to tell how much experience a player has)

Good idea - there's a thread where small tweaks/patches like this are kept: Might ask there for help

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the RCS effects! edit - I thought it was working before... but in my 0.4.0 the Bobcat has no plume whatsoever. (No other plume mods)

Slap 2 orange tanks on a Twin Boar, and you have a rocket that can SSTO 25 tons of payload to orbit. Doesn’t really need a whole lot of design, and no reason to take the whole booster anywhere once you’ve reached orbit. Now, Single Stage To Anywhere - indeed there are plenty of threads for challenges like that, this just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

You'll need to clarify what's in and out of scope here. Decoupler forces? Landing leg cannons? Kraken drives? Suborbital catapults?

Stock EVA propellant has always been infinite and unlimited, where are we getting that it's likely to be patched? I mean, outside of Caveman I use the EVA Propellant mod but for Caveman all exploits are go IMHO

With 1.11 getting EVA reports from the surface of Minmus got WAY easier - because you can stow the jet pack in the capsule, then retrieve it full of free delta-V. Makes up for EVA fuel lost finding the pod after timewarps, and makes a jet pack descent/ascent to surface fairly easy. That ought to ease the scrounge for non-interplanetary science

FYI on your classic 2x Mk1 science roller - the Mk1 pods (actually, all command pods) are also science containers, so to keep four copies of experiments you only need 2x Mk1 + 2x science box. I definitely aim to bring 3x back from missions with good science returns. My favorite is Mk1 pod, 1.25m service bay, with 2x science boxes clipped just barely inside. Still leaves room for the small experiments and a solar panel I'm a little more lenient with clipping than some (3000 hours ago I was against it FWIW) but I got good mileage out of this armored model: Girders have really high impact tolerance and allow some crazy Duke Boys shenanigans

I never bother launching at the node, and I have fully strip-mined Minmus in my NCD run. The trick is, get to orbit and burn the Ap up to Minmus height without worrying about inclination. I just eyeball it at Minmus about 45-50° behind the Ap (ie Minmus 40-45° ahead of where you make your burn in Kerbin orbit). Then make your inclination burn when you're halfway out to Minmus. At this great height (and correspondingly low speed) the inclination burn is quite cheap - only 30m/s or so (guessing, memory is not fresh right now). I go to map view, align the camera so the Minmus orbit line is flat (ie near and far lines overlapping each other) and gently burn until my orbit Ap marker is right in line with Minmus's line. My orbit line will be a narrow parabola on both sides of Minmus - this is OK, it will translate to a slight inclination relative to Minmus equator, nbd. Another Minmus note: with Mun, if you don't put your Ap somewhat higher than the Mun's orbit, you're likely to crash into it. With Minmus you can set your Ap pretty much exactly at the orbit line and be OK. It's cheaper to drop into Minmus orbit if your Minmus Pe is as low as possible. BUT - if you end up with a high pass, don't bother adjusting your Pe right at the edge of the SOI, it's no better than just circularizing from your high Pe. This might be splitting hairs, but getting a crewed Minmus lander that can return safely is one of the harder subchallenges here and there's very little margin of safety.

Awesome! It really feels like there’s a natural limit there at like Mach 1.03. Interesting that you found highest speeds scraping the water, when my nacelles always seemed to pick up a few m/s up around 1km. I kinda want to try all the absurd combinations of helicopter blades, and dissimilar blades on the same shaft, and more aero shielding shenanigans.

All the spherical pods have crazy amounts of drag. This makes them trivial to reenter safely with, but very difficult to launch. You can fit gigantic, unrealistic fins at the back of the rocket (you'll need them on the core stage, not the side boosters) but still the drag is so severe it will really slow down the booster and require a lot more propellant than the other pods. The better solution is to use a fairing to hide the pod from aerodynamic drag until almost in space. If you're in career/science mode and don't have fairings yet - unfortunately the best strategy is just to wait and use the other pods until you do.

NCD in near-Kerbin space does eventually get to be a grind - which I'm going to narrowly define as repetitive tasks that bring no new rewards. Up until the final tier, each new tech opens up a new technique, a new ship design, a new source of science so there is a fairly immediate payoff for all the hard work, and you only need to repeat (say a probe Mun landing, or crewed Minmus landing) 3-4 times before the next unlock. The last 4-5 techs though, the pace slows down. That can turn into a grind, or you can just go interplanetary and come home with a giant science dump to finish the challenge with the one mission. Before getting to the frustration point with a NCD run, be sure to read the previous Caveman threads (here, here, here) for tips. NCD is such a hard challenge mode that it's not really reasonable to think you'll get through it without some community ideas. My biggest source of NCD frustration was the first hour of play. Take the initial contracts in the wrong order, and you can get stuck in a hole you can't get out of. Any death is a game-ender, as reputation essentially goes negative infinity. So be extremely conservative to start, test your early reentry strategies uncrewed if you can, bring spare parachutes, and really think about what causes your ship to lawn-dart before hitting 'space'

This exists now!

OK, a few issues to point out. You're severely lacking in control authority. No ailerons for roll control, the almost-vertical stabilizers are fine for yaw but very, very limited for the most important pitch control. Rear landing gear are too far forward and front gear too far back, so there's little passive directional stability on the ground. Insufficient intake air means the twin engines provide asymmetric thrust at take-off - and there's little way for the plane to counter it (I think this is where the oversteer comes from). You're carrying oxidizer in the rear-most section, which is just dead mass here. Main wings are too far back, making it want to nosedive very hard. To make it flyable I added wingtip ailerons, changed the tailfin angle to 90° apart from each other and moved them backward a few notches, moved the rear gear back and front gear forward, and added 4 of the same intakes (so 6 total). Moved the main wing forward (and main gear staying just behind the CoM). Drained oxidizer. But still... you're right that the braking power seems minimal. Partly it's a somewhat heavy craft for the power of the two Panther engines in dry mode - so by the time you get up to speed there's not much runway left to brake to a stop again (as you show in your video). Usually with Panthers you want to launch in afterburner mode (switching with action groups when you want fuel economy). That gets you up to speed quickly, leaving more runway left over if you change your mind. With those changes It flies nicely, extremely maneuverable, comes to a stop using about a quarter of the runway when touching down at ~70m/s. PS - I flew it in stock, so the change in main wing position I describe might not work or be needed in FAR. Same with the intakes.

You’re definitely right that the landing gear settings are very tweaky, sensitive to small changes, and defaults seem not to work very well. The settings you’re using seem like they should be OK to me, unless perhaps you’ve got a very large craft and the gear are just overloaded. My default settings are front friction at 2.0, brakes at 50% - rear friction at 4.0, brakes at 95% - and this works for me 99% of the time. Also rear brakes very close behind center of mass for easy rotation at launch, and for that matter a center of mass that barely moves as you burn propellant - together this means the main (rear) gear take almost all the load. If those settings don’t work, next thing is to disable FAR and see if anything changes. Does it nerf brakes to be more realistic?