AlexanderB

My bad, I cut my post a little short. I meant to say, depending on entry angle, speed and craft drag, its easily possible to stay above safe parachute speed all the way down to sea level. I try to build my entry-vehicles so they slow down to safe speeds at around 5k altitude, and set my parachutes to open at 0.34 (about 5k on kerbin), so even if I accidentally triger my parachutes in space, I should land safely. Should... However, some mountains are taller than that. :X

Depending on entry angle, mountains will certainly kill you, as its easily possible to go beyond parachute speeds, unless you fit airbrakes or drogues or some other way to slow down more.

yes, as in, it isn't solved? Because it isn't, turning on the drills and forgetting the ISRU completely drained an asteroid for me.

A certain 'D. Kerman' that got his name censored from the name generator.

That might work, I don't know. True, usually the command pod blew up too, but it was possible if you smacked it into the ground just right, not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to kill one or more of the kerbals inside.

Just looked it up, the code is still in the game, but there is no real easy way to trigger it, you have to somehow kill the crew without breaking the command pod first.

In the really old versions of KSP it was possible to K.I.A. your Kerbals without actually destroying the pod itself. They took that out of the game though, I think.

Running any kind of video capture software? the F1 and F2 keys aren't 'shared' in some way, like FN keys or something?

Yeah, that one.

If you really want more FPS, you can do some things though. -Tweak the water (and possibly surface) level of detail, if you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel gpu-wise this could certainly help in some situations. -Tweak the minimum physics timestep, if the CPU/parts count is holding you back, this might help. (basically, it slows down game-time (orange or red counter) instead of/before bogging down the FPS into single digits if there is too much stuff going on for the CPU to keep up.) -Overclock your CPU if you have the know-how to do it. Other than that, I think most mods have been named, here is my list: -KER, I need my dV readout to build stuff. The info windows while in flight are also quite useful. -Kerbal Alarm Clock, set notifications for planned maneuver nodes and other events, so you can timewarp without forgetting that other craft that needed attention. Also includes interplanetary transfer window help, real useful stuff. -change the CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT in the settings.cfg to something more than 3 (I have 6) so you can plan ahead of SOI changes better. -Planetshine, makes it a lot easier to see what you're doing in the shade/at night if you can turn the vacuum brightness up a little. Haven't installed, but certainly considering: -KAS, pick and place (small) parts outside of the VAB, place fuel lines between nearby vessels, etc.. Neat stuff, adds a whole lot of EVA dynamics (repairing stuff by bringing up actual spare parts and putting them on in EVA, running a fuel line instead of docking, etc..) -KIS, would go together with KAS, or so I heard. Haven't looked into it. -KOS, I'm also a programmer, so automating certain things is certainly something I could/would do, and it certainly adds options beyond my wildest imagination. It does bug me that it seems to use different syntax than what I'm used to, but I'm still willing to give it a try some time. -Mod to allow time travel to control both/all parts of a multi ship mission 'simultaneously'. I forgot what it was called though, but if you want to drop your space rocket from a plane, and then land the plane safely too, that would be the best mod to have I think. As you can see, I don't really bother with parts' mods, I already have plenty of work getting of use most/all the stock parts, let alone if there is a bunch extra. I did add parts in the past, but a lot (mk2 spaceplane parts, resource mining, fairings) is now in stock KSP. Oh, and a lot of mods start with the word Kerbal and have a 3 letter acronym, so that might be confusing sometimes.

Heh, so sarcastic.

Its really easy to completely run out of ablator that way, the trick might be to not go too high, and re-try a bunch of times until you have as little as possible left over on landing.

-(Accidental) modification of the key mapping, probably the most likely option. I'd check that out first. -Running some other software in the background that captures those keys. (unlikely, but possible) -???

Not even sure thats real 3d, does enabling Aero work? I just had a look at it, It should be possible to get some form of 3D acceleration in Virtualbox, under settings, display tab, tick the "enable 3d accerlation" box, max out the graphics memory slider to 128 MB, and then maybe, maybe it'll run KSP. But I highly doubt it.

Pretty sure virtualbox doesn't pass though 3d video in any way shape or form, it emulates a 2d-only card with 16 mb video ram.

Yeah, I just had too much stuff (3 pods, 3 chutes, 4 drogues) for the single heat shield. I ended up splitting the pods, with a single heat shield and chute each. I timed the chute by setting the pressure to 0.34 (~5 km on kerbin) so they open after slowing down enough, and reducing the decoupler force keeps the pods close together. (for physics range.) That worked surprisingly well, completely unattended safe splashdown. Still, I think I'll be installing hyperedit so I can do more testing, there is a lot more potential for fail.

How much fuel is typically in an E-class asteroid? a C-class clearly wasn't worth the effort. Still experimenting with # of drills v/s the ISRU, and still not sure about the radiators, the ISRU seems to run a little hot regardles of radiator count, but at least it doesn't randomly shut down.

It was.. weird before I even put on flaps, I meant more as in, why is the COL indicator so far backwards towards the rear control surfaces? I guess I'll just live with it, as long as the COM doesn't move too much its all fine, I actually tried moving the wings backwards and forwards but both made it more difficult to fly.

Its my first time using the Mk3 parts, and I built a pretty generic (or plane-looking if you will, heh) aircraft. Flies just fine, as you'd expect of something that looks so very much like any regular plane. However, the COL indicator in the SPH is really far back, usually that would mean the thing would be neigh impossible to get off the runway, but this plane works just fine. I checked by removing the rear stabilizers and that returns the COL to about the back of the wings, but it (still) feels really off somehow. Anyone else notice stuff like this? This is the first time I've had that I couldn't get the COL and COM close together on a plane.

The fan on my GPU revs up to full blast when I'm looking at a full screen of water, and immediately revs down when I look up at the sky, somewhere inbetween most of the time during normal gameplay, so yeah. If you're suffering actual FPS problems from looking at planet surfaces, upgrade your GPU and/or turn down your sky water and/or surface detail settings. If you're suffering lag issues with large(r) part counts, you need to upgrade (and/or overclock) your CPU.

I remember reading somewhere that the tech-tree is now stored in a single file so its much easier to edit. Not sure where I saw that though, might be part of a mod. I'll look into it as well. The more intuitive tech tree sounds very nice, I like the collecting science and funds(contracts), however I don't like the grinding needed to even get relatively 'basic' parts that are scattered all over the first 3-4 tiers of the stock science tree together with a bunch of parts I hardly ever use, or not in the way I'm forced to use them with the stock science tree. massive stack of tiny tanks? Just to force the part count up? Because 1 or 2 larger tanks make much more sense, the tiny tanks are great for probes and landers though, but you don't get parts for that until you've done a bunch of science Go to the mun without lander legs to get science to unlock the LV-909, eh, "Terrier" and landing legs.. Doesn't make sense to me, lol. [edit:], as of 1.0.0, the change log lists: "- The R&D Tech tree is now defined in a cfg-file." See, I did read that somewhere. Anyway, now to find out where that file lives and modify it. [edit2:] It also states "* Science Results in Sandbox Mode. They may not be worth much Science (or any at all), but running science experiments in Sandbox Mode will now show you the same results as in other game modes." Yay!

Going straight up straight down might've done that, its easy to have too much inertia and fall straight 'through' the atmosphere, hit the top of a mountain before you get low enough for the air density <3~5 km to slow you down enough to even activate the non-drogue chute. But it all depends on entry angle and where you land it seems. Thats all things I can tweak by quicksaving before the deorbit burn though.

I was just typing up a reply when I noticed your signature.. *facepalm* Obviously I know how to get to LKO with 5 parts, its even easier now without the soupmosphere. Let me rephrase that, a vehicle that has a good/great cargo fraction, generally uses air breathing engines to beat the hell out of the rocket equation and can safely be returned in 1 piece to the KSC for 100% refund, all for maximum exploitation of the game mechanics. In other words, space planes and jet-assisted vertical boosters with landing legs. It just seems they nerfed the turbojets from their pretty much game-breaking state since I last played (0.25 or so). Back to rapiers and just gotta re-learn the balance.

I'm thinking my problem craft might just be plain too heavy and/or dense. Some more testing* reveals that reducing weight or adding drag (airbrakes) severely reduces the amount of energy absorbed by the heat shield. Guess I learned something new. (*based on the tip of putting a descending SSTO at a right angle to the air stream)

Currently trying to land with a MK1 Command Pod, 2x Mk1 Crew Cabin, 1.25m heat shield, mk16 parachute, 2x radial parachute and 4x drogue parachute, straight transfer from munar orbit. I already figured out to spin it axially to stop the radial parachutes on the side of the command pod from melting off, not sure what that does, but it helps. I've so far landed it once by engine-braking a couple-hundred m/s off right before re-entry (slightly less eliptical than munar height), and then repeatedly aerobraking at ~40km. If I skip the engine braking step (let alone try to aerobrake from interplanetary speed), I burn up because I run out of ablative material. I guess thats just how it is now? Unless stacking heat shields works to either divide the load, or dump the outter one once it runs out. (Have not yet tried that..) Thanks. Since before 1.0, yeah. Old style sounds exactly like what I'd do, I guess I have some unlearning to do, both design-wise and flight-wise. Guess I'll focus on rockets for now, try to figure out the new drag, re-entry heating, etc.. before I start doing SSTO's again. Hm, so there is a sweet spot? Guess I'll be save scumming a bunch to find it now, haha.