Magzimum

An Elcano is a land-based round-trip of a planet or moon - a circumnavigation. Because you stay on the surface, there is no time-warping (perhaps 2x or 3x physics engine if you are brave or foolish, but certainly no 5x, 10x or 50x warp). So, it's lots of hours of driving or sailing.

I think the point of the OP is that the mod thread (especially popular ones) are often very polluted with praises/requests/bug reports/complaints/off topic talks, and in between the lines the OP seems concerned that the modders have a full-time job responding to all the posts in their thread, and/or it becomes difficult for others to find the relevant technical posts in between the chitchat. The OP seems to suggest that we split at least some of the praises into a sticky.

Lots of discussions on what KSP2 needs to have, but there seems to be consensus that it will get space stations. That triggers me to think that we may be allowed to build large structures in space (or on other planets/moons). How do you guys think that the developers will keep the frame-rate sane? My computer grinds to a painful halt when I put more than 500-600 parts into a structure/ship. I've once launched 1000 parts, but the framerate was 1 frame per minute, and time went more than 10x slower than real-time. Will KSP allow the merging of parts into some super-part? Will KSP2 come with very large pre-made structures (like the KSC in KSP1) which you get to upgrade on other planets/moons? Other ideas? I'm just being curious. And I need a little expectation management because I am having pictures of huge space stations of thousands of parts that somehow don't crash my computer.

I built a Minmus base. All stock. Big unit on the left is the Minmus Valdez. It can disconnect and get into Minmus orbit to refuel my next overdimensioned mission. What I like most about the base is that it has no wheels and no engines. It's all built up from parts that I flew in separately, and connected using the little rovers that are scattered around the base.

There are two that come to mind that I want to work on soon: See the Mohole with a crewed mission Visit Eve with more than one Kerbal (I'm thinking of a crewed mission to Eve of 3 or 5). Major milestones that I haven't hit, and may never try: Grand tour Elcano on any other body than the two I already did... Elcano's are heroic, but take awfully long.

I sent a luxury cruiseliner to Dres, while ruining the finances of my career game out of love for Dres. Full report here: Pics or it didn't happen: I already wear the badge with pride, having earned it a few years ago with this mission. So, this is really just because Dres needs love.

Welcome to Mission Control. Please make a selection. Searching through some archives, an intern at the Dres Tourist Board made a startling discovery. The market for luxury cruises to Dres is ripe for the picking. The Dres Tourist Board needs luxury ships to visit Dres, and they needed it yesterday. And that's why they need our help. We decided to go to Dres before the Tier 3 science upgrades, not because it's hard, but because we didn't have the cash to upgrade the R&D center. Playing career at difficulty level "moderate". Figure 1, Dres. Beautiful. Having 13 kerbals all equally eager to get a quick promotion to a safer job visit Dres and see the sights we decided to build a luxury spaceliner to bring them to Dres and back. Dres needs love. Lots of love. Pity that our career really could not afford to send so much love, but more about that later. The idea was born, the seed was planted, and the kerbal was out of the bag. We will build a spaceship with 54 seats. It shall be a VTOL. With wings. And it shall go to Dres. Enter the DRESLINER. Figure 2, Glorious. The engineers at the VAB were initially worried when the boffins at HQ let the Dres Tourist Bureau into the design team. It turned out they had underestimated the problem. Figure 3, Sturdy VTOL. Money, money, money So, our cashless career struggled to upgrade the R&D center. The idea was to launch to Dres, make some world-firsts-cash, and then move on. Initial models to launch the Dresliner into orbit showed that it needed a gargantuan launcher and we could not build gargantuan launchers in the Tier 2 VAB, so, we took out two contracts to take a series of temperature readings on Gilly, put those contracts into a box, marked it with "do not open until Year 10", and upgraded the VAB with the cash we got up front. The design for the launcher went through various iterations, in a frantic search for more dV without exceeding the remaining budget. In the end, we accepted an Eve orbital space station and a Gilly space station mission, and use the cash to build the launcher. And when we realized that we needed moar boosters, we accepted a Minmus space station mission to buy some big SRBs as the final punchline. Our space program is set for the next 5 years... but Dres needs love now. Figure 4, The up front cash of these missions funded the Dresliner Dres, we are coming! And with all the bureaucracy done, it was time to fly. So we loaded up all the Kerbals we had on the list, and rolled it onto the pad. Figure 5, "For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above a giant stack of explosives. Planet Kerbin's blue, and there is nothing I can doooooaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaahhhh!!!!" Figure 6, "Can someone please close the front bay doors, we are about to go supersonic" In all its glory, the Dresliner made it to Low Kerbin Orbit... ... And towards Dres. And thus the Dresliner arrived at Dres. They were made for each other. Figure 7, Upgrading the VAB: 1,267,500 funds, Building and launching the Dresliner, 848,478 funds. Getting the Dresliner into orbit around Dres: priceless. And Dres immediately started giving love back to the Kerbals. It was not luck that we were coming in for a landing right next to the impressive Dres Canyon. It was meant to be. Figure 8, Dres really opened up to us. And there she was. The Dresliner had landed. Figure 9, We actually landed. (editors edit - I actually landed on the first run, no save games needed all the way from the launch - but this luck would not continue) Once landed on a new planet, the Kerbals did what Kerbals do, which is to line up in a neat row, plant a flag and smile for the Picture-with-Kerbals-in-the-foreground-and-the-lander-in-the-back. And never mind the 2,295 m/s worth of fuel left in the tanks. Surely that is enough to get home. Right? Figure 10, 13 Kerbals on Dres. Guys, next time we take a photo with the sun at a better angle. The Kerbals played around a bit... Going home ... But in the end, this was a first date. We' re not moving in yet. Figure 11, Two Skipper engines came to Dres only for this picture. And when the planets were aligned in just the right way, the Kerbals waved their last goodbye and promised to be back one day. The Dresliner aimed for Kerbin. Or, rather, aimed far too high, and made the mid-flight burn to get into the same plane as Kerbin is orbiting. Figure 12, Surely 95 m/s worth of fuel is enough to slow down this giant ship as it comes in from interplanetary space. Right? After the ship had found a course to meet Kerbin at 71 km, it was finally obvious that there really was not enough fuel. So, a rescue mission had to be built. Luckily, the World-Firsts society had wired some 400,000 funds into our bank account so we could build a big and very fast tanker. Figure 13, Darn it: Flying Fuel Services Figure 14, Thirsty Dresliner gets a drink. Check out the vertical speed. Things got pretty hot. Figure 15, Carefully entering the atmosphere. Nothing went boom, so that's a success. And thus, 13 Kerbals made it home. Thank you Dres. Figure 16, Next time we put sails on our ship. Epilogue Since landing back on Kerbin, the design team has started to design for the Minmus station. Eve is not yet in the right position. Nothing has been launched yet. All Kerbals received medals and promotions, but they all decided to stay on the flight roster. They can always become one of the boffins later. - The End -

Weird. The pictures showed first time I posted, but also didn't show the next day when I had a quick look. Tried Imgur this time. Hopefully better.

Here is my attempt. It has 48 passengers (3 x 16), and 4 x 820 + 2 x 8 = 3296 solid fuel. Score: 48000/3296 = 14.56 I am pretty sure this can be improved, because it gained too much altitude and speed, but for now this is my submission! I may try another time with the smaller passenger cabins.

I hope that KSP stays close to its roots: A real space simulator with a bit of (quite original) humor as a flavor. Whatever new features they add should come second to those roots.

Because Dres needs more love, I planted this Dres Resort on Dres' surface a good while ago (Dres Awareness Challenge, which is still going strong!). It did not have a huge variation in colored lights, but it made it up in sheer quantity. I do have to admit that this is a mission from 2016, so I don't think this should qualify for any prize. But it was a cool mission, so I thought I'd spam it here. As part of the same fleet (launched during the same transfer window), I also launched a communication satellite. And a space station / ship with 8 landing pods and many lights.

Facilities I would like to have: Extra Runway As mentioned above, just for fun. Craft test facility (e.g. wind tunnel or "modeling facility") In addition to the extra runway, I would also love to have a facility to test crafts. Some called it a windtunnel (an earlier post by @BadOaks ), but I would also be happy if it was the Kerbal Aerodynamics Modelling Program (KAMP). I use the cheat a lot to get my craft into a particular orbit (e.g. Eve) to get its characteristics right before building a giant launcher and fly the mission. I use a Sandbox game for tests, and then copy the craft file into my Career game. I'd like to do that inside the Career game without cheating.

But they do belong in a forum where the players discuss some modifications to the game.

No I am not sure. But I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption that once you got one runway figured out, you can add a second one much easier.

You make a valid point, and I agree that from a purely functional point of view, the east-west runway is all you need to get things into orbit. But... Moar Runways! It would look cool. It would allow for new challenges in this forum. It would hardly slow the game down. It wouldn't be difficult to program for Squad if you just add the extra runway(s) without any options of where to launch from. It would be as easy as adding some easter eggs somewhere.

Without using Valentina's jetpack, I got her to go 2829.2 m/s, on a chemical rocket. I wish I could say that this can be optimized further, but getting a Kerbal into orbit with a limit of 3 tons is actually already quite the challenge for me. I really enjoyed it!

If you use it to all the time, for everything: Yes, it's bad. You should learn how to get a simple rocket into orbit. Learning stuff about rockets and orbits is really a part of the game. If you use it to optimize an Eve lander, and you are tired of launching every new iteration, then getting an encounter with Eve, getting into a stable orbit, etc... then I would totally recommend to just get a Sandbox game, cheat the lander into Eve orbit until it works (which may be 20 iterations later), and then going for it for real in the career game (with a launch from the KSC and the whole transfer to Eve etc.).

I managed to get 6856.9 m/s. Compliments on a fun challenge! I could probably optimize another 100 m/s out of this, but for now I would like to enter this. More info in the spoiler.

I rescued my poor Kerbals. I'd call this schoolbook rescue. Better not go full throttle though, even on those tiny engines. Mission was a complete success. All targets achieved. Only mission control kept piling new missions into this one flight until it ran out of dV.

I play this game since 2016. And I still forget my parachutes sometimes. This is an early career return craft from the Mun, where the word "return" is used rather carelessly. Jeb is somehow still excited...

Use Kerbnet, and create waypoints. These show in map-view. It's much quicker than planting flags anyway.

You should make Jool move around Dres. Cuz Dres.

Dres has plenty to give, all it needs is a little love.

The Poles of Duna look like candy even more than Minmus! Also very pleased with the rover lander. A little extra steel plating made for very easy delivery of the rovers. Once disconnected they just rolled off and turned themselves. And the ramps doubled as landing legs as well!

Physics you need to understand before starting the game: Basic gravity: Stuff falls down back to a planet or moon unless you put a big engine on it. If it falls from higher, it will splash harder when it hits the ground. Moar Boosters! Physics you do not need to understand because you will slowly learn it in the game: Orbital mechanics Rocket designing The game is really good at teaching actually. https://xkcd.com/1356/