septemberWaves

This looks very interesting, but what makes side docking impossible? Wouldn't it be possible to make a docking port that attaches to the side of Gemini, and has a counterpart which attaches to the side of the station?

I see. Do you know if there's any planned release date?

Why would that be? Is the mod not publicly released?

Is this supposed to have configs for Earth like the original post seems to imply by listing Earth among the celestial bodies which the mod is configured for? I don't see any volumetric clouds on Earth, nor do I see a config file for Earth in the mod files. Is there an unlisted prerequisite mod? EDIT: I didn't see the requirement for E.V.E volumetric clouds. It might be worthwhile to edit the main post to make the requirements more visible, and to link to the main volumetric clouds mod, which I am having trouble finding.

Is there any solution to the problem of city lights being present directly beneath the KSC, thus ruining the terrain appearance around the space center?

Jupiter-C and Explorer 1 have been added. If I can make a version of PGM-11 Redstone that can accomplish the downrange milestone early, I'll add that in here, but until such time you have Jupiter-C for that. I won't add PGM-11 Redstone unless it's actually useful for career mode. Next update will be the Bell X-2, which I've already built but need to record a flight and landing guide video for, and Vanguard 1 (plus Vanguard without a payload). I'm also working on Mercury-Redstone and Mercury-Atlas (very WIP at the moment), and trying to see if I can make Viking out of the first stage of Vanguard and have it be able to complete the downrange milestone without needing an upgraded launch pad. The colour patterns for the fins of Bumper and Redstone-derivatives will be added once I can figure out the best way to apply the proper colour pattern. In the latter case, I suspect I will run into some difficulty because you can't place conformal decals on the all-moving procedural winglets.

Step 1: Use CKAN to install the latest version of Parallax. It should automatically install its dependencies. Following this step, you should have a folder in GameData called "Parallax", and a folder in GameData called "Parallax_StockTextures". Step 2: Open "Parallax_StockTextures". There is a folder in there titled "_Config". Delete "_Config". This is the precise set of steps that I took relating to Parallax, which allowed the game to load. I have not yet tested whether Parallax actually works following this, because I am awaiting a solution to the broken city lights beneath the space center before I actually play with KSRSS.

It's how you have to do it in RP-1. That's not a criticism of course; I like the sounding rocket phase, I think it's a good part of the RP-1 gameplay progression. EDIT: I think it may be possible to reach orbit with start node tech. I think I vaguely remember seeing someone do that. But it's not very practical, and messes with the progression.

Deleting the Parallax config (not from the main Parallax folder, just from the other folder) works. I had installed via CKAN, and was unaware of the need to delete the config file in question. I do, however, have the following problem: City lights are present directly beneath the KSC, where they should not be present. Is there a fix for this?

I apologize for the misunderstanding, I misinterpreted. In that case, I have no idea. I've not seen any issue like that before. Have you tested the craft? If it performs as it should, then you're probably fine.

If the part is properly configured for RO, then there is no "problem". RCS in Realism Overhaul is weaker than in stock (and stock-balanced) KSP by design, because RCS in real life is weaker. Reaction wheels are also weaker, and this is also by design. The result of this is that you cannot brute-force vehicle movements. Try using a small amount of thrust for a short duration to initiate a rotation or translation maneuver, and a similarly small amount of thrust for a short duration to halt that motion once your vehicle is where you want it to be. Be patient with your spacecraft; if you try to hold down the movement key for half of the duration of any movement, and then hold down the reverse movement key for the other half of the duration to slow down, what you will do is waste all of your RCS fuel - or, alternatively, throw away so much of your mass budget on RCS fuel that you can't carry enough payload for a mission. I will not provide you with the information of how to configure Realism Overhaul so that it no longer works like Realism Overhaul; that modpack is extremely carefully tuned, balanced, and maintained, and small changes can break things extremely badly. If you don't want to be patient enough to play RO the way RO is supposed to be played, I would recommend Skyhawk Science System (which is configured for BDB) with the KSRSS Reborn planet pack. If you are willing to be patient enough to learn how to play Realism Overhaul as Realism Overhaul, you need to learn at least the core differences. Realism Overhaul is not like stock (or stock-balanced) KSP. At minimum, read this guide on the RO wiki: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealismOverhaul/wiki/False-KSP-Lessons Also, if you want to play any kind of career game with Realism Overhaul at all, then you really do need to install RP-1 with the CKAN express install from a clean KSP install. If you don't do that, things will break. Realism Overhaul does not work properly in career mode without RP-1. You can safely ignore RP-1 if you only care about playing in sandbox mode. If you want to play in science mode, you should probably find another modpack (again, I recommend Skyhawk Science System), because there is no properly-configured science mode for Realism Overhaul. I understand the desire to learn by trial and error. That is not, however, an approach that works for Realism Overhaul. If you do not read the documentation, the best thing you can possibly hope for is that your spacecraft will fail because you do not understand them.

Apologies if this is the wrong part of the forum to place this, but I can't find a thread about Spacedock. For the past few days, when I open any Spacedock page, I am met with this: It appears to be an extremely broken search bar. I have clicked absolutely nothing on the page, this is simply how it looks immediately after opening up Spacedock. Every Spacedock page I have tried to open is obscured by this broken feature, which makes the site completely unusable, and there is nothing I am able to do to remove it. Because I don't know where to find a Spacedock thread on the forums, I have no idea whether anyone else has reported or even encountered this bug, so I am reporting it here.

If a part is properly configured to work with RO, then that is the reason for the change. Do you know how to use Realism Overhaul properly, or is this your first time using it? If the latter (which I assume due to your confusion at a part configured for RO), then I'd honestly recommend you create a new clean install of KSP and install RP-1 (career mode for Realism Overhaul) using the express installation method on CKAN. I'd also recommend reading the Github wiki for Realism Overhaul and RP-1. Doing that, and playing through a RP-1 career, will teach you how to actually use everything in RO, and to understand the game mechanics of the modpack. I don't know if all of these BDB RO configs work for RP-1 (which requires more complex configuring), but ROCapsules (the mod that provides crewed spacecraft for RP-1) uses BDB models for most spacecraft that BDB represents (with the main exception currently being the extended lunar infrastructure, though hopefully that is being worked on), and it's not hard to make reasonably-good looking replicas of the rockets.

I've spent the past several hours putting together as many Aerobee variants as I think makes any sense to make in current RP-1 (not historical colour schemes for the most part because I am having difficulty finding adequate source images). To make sure these work in hard mode, I have learned so much more about how to get rockets to ignite in high dynamic pressure than I ever expected to have to learn. For anyone who also plays RP-1 and wants to know the secret to sounding rocket ignitions: if thrust-to-weight ratio of the solid first stage is fairly low (i.e. 3g to 6g), try igniting the engine as late as possible while still during the burn (0.05 seconds is a good bet). If the thrust-to-weight ratio is very high, you'll need more time, though the exact amount varies and is usually between 0.2 and 0.8 seconds (heavily dependent on design). The worst contender here is Nike-Aerobee (second from right), which requires the AJ10-27 to ignite 1.7 entire seconds before solid burnout - that's more than half of the burn time of the solid stage - just to get a reasonably consistent success rate.

Behold! Colour schemes will be updated as soon as I can find some source documents, but the Aerobee family of sounding rockets has been added to the catalogue. Some of these are of... less certain utility than others. Next project is Redstone, because it's the only thing that makes sense for the 3000km downrange contract.

Not according to the challenge: If you want the challenge to be stock-only, you may want to rewrite it to say so.

I have a couple of suggestions to make this challenge more interesting and appeal to more people: While the picker wheel is certainly novel, it disincentivises people from just choosing to optimize for whichever category they prefer (or from both categories), thus disincentivizing some people from trying the challenge altogether. The "minimum size" category needs to be more clearly defined. Do you just care about height, or diameter, or do you care about all dimensions? I assume the latter, but it's not clear at all. The "minimum size" category should have strict restrictions on part clipping. Without such limitations, the challenge is reduced to an exercise in clipping as much as possible into the volume of the smallest fuel tank and sticking a command seat in there too. Because this challenge is all about optimization of a craft, I recommend separating stock and modded leaderboards - specifically, craft with any modded parts (not that any exist now, but they certainly will in future) or any mods which change the game's behaviour (in particular, its physics) must be judged separately, because otherwise the challenge is not fair. It also may be wise to pre-emptively ban any mods that adjust physics or add parts altogether, or (if you really want to allow part mods) limit any part mods to ones which are balanced like stock parts.

Working on Aerobee next. I'd appreciate if anyone could link some sources on historical Aerobee colour schemes.

ROCapsules (one of the core mods in a CKAN RP-1 install) includes most BDB spacecraft. I don't know if they've updated the lunar modules yet, but Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo in Realism Overhaul are already represented with BDB part models. As for the rockets, you can make them yourself in Realism Overhaul, and that allows you to actually have correctly-proportioned rockets; BDB's rockets do look good, but adhering to multiples of 0.625m diameter requires making compromises that you do not have to make in RO. The one thing that's really missing is the probes; as far as I know, BDB's probes aren't configured for RO at all (though some BDB probe core models are used as options for the procedural avionics core if I recall correctly). If you want to put in the work to configure them, I'd suggest joining the Realism Overhaul development Discord server and asking people there how to get started. EDIT: I took a closer look, and some probes may have configs, but it doesn't look like they all do.

I've been spending a lot of time making these vehicles, so I figured I may as well share them. Here's a few examples: These are all designed for RP-1 career mode, and I'll write some notes on how best to use them. All vehicles can be assumed to require no more than speculative technology level (the default for all difficulty levels) unless otherwise stated. All vehicles require only the RP-1 Express Install unless otherwise stated. Most vehicles are named for easy use with Project Manager. Soviet (to be added) US Sounding Rockets Science & Exploration Satellites Aircraft European/British (to be added) Other (to be added)

The forums seem to be having some trouble recently. Several times now, I've tried to open up the forums only to be met with this: Each time this happens, it has taken a long time to resolve. I assume the issue is high numbers of active forum users due to the recent release of KSP2. Is there likely to be a fix for this any time soon?

The progress on Minotaur is looking great, I look forward to trying it out in-game.

It looks like a transliteration of the english word "loaded" into Cyrillic characters, if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you, I'll use Dropbox.

What would be the best way to share a .png file which goes along with a craft file? I know I can share craft files via KerbalX, but the craft files I want to share have custom flags associated with them (for use with Conformal Decals). The custom flags are necessary because they're used to make replicas look authentic.