dnbattley

1.11.1 looks to have made many of the bugfixes changes needed to help with this challenge...

I've put together a slightly left-field (and kraken-based) video on this topic:

Magnificent. I am loving the variety of designs the weight limitation encourages. A very neat and tidy solution: great work. No worries: your gameplay does all the talking necessary! I'm not clear if you were only able to make the vessels you showcase using KIS/KAS or whether engineering mode could have worked, but in either way I'm grateful for your sharing in this challenge which I'm sure will inspire others.

Incredible! I love the ingenuity throughout this submission: a shipping container, replete with patriotic decals, extra parts and even a crane to assist the engineer? Brilliant! Thanks for sharing it, and I'm glad you had fun with it. And I also just noticed the reentry speed... crazy!!!

To clarify I'm happy with lawn chairs, but the kerbals must leave the target body on a vessel which has been created in situ. Whether and when they then EVA is up to the mission planner. I have the (unproven) theory that it might be calculating absolute symmetry relative to the VAB: Which is obviously moving in any other reference frame except Kerbin, and meaning "absolute" is anything but...

Firstly: apologies for taking so long to actually comment, but congratulations on the first truly successful submission! An impressively efficient mission demonstrating your process, and well done getting the symmetry on those solar panels looking so good! I know what a pain that can be in engineering mode... I don't want to derail the thread by inviting legalistic interpretations of my original wording, but in short I agree with this entirely.

You may be interested in this then: https://youtu.be/HRNBOVkbNUo But more seriously, moving a large object like an orbital station in a single flight is tricky (with or without Kraken drives) if it is not fundamentally built like a rocket with (mass-balanced) appendages.

Mission update: as expected, the drive type is important here. Now I did take your comment about "orbital station" literally, and download a ISS replica from Steam workshop and put it up with some kraken drives to power it. Inevitably, the chief problem was a) finding centre of mass and b) ensuring the whole station was sufficiently "strutted up" to avoid excessive flexing during the burn. Here's what happened: So... in summary a double landing leg drive seems to be fine for the purpose, but ensuring a strong enough connection to the core superstructure is the key challenge.

Unrelated to any submission, I would note that it is technically possible to build a Kraken drive in space, but it's really really awkward...

There are a few tutorials out there for creating different types of Kraken drives, but for a massive object like a space station, the KAL thrust exploit is likely to be the most stable (the alternatives being zompi- which is typically too weak to achieve large acceleration on a massive vessel) and landing leg (which runs the risk of breaking if over-stressed). I'm happy to submit something to this challenge to exemplify that.

Infinite score = 0 kg mass rescue package. Hmmm... are you thinking about just escaping a low mass body using just a jet pack? If so then does this clause: impact that plan?

Available to download now, but a how-to-build it guide to the all-new continuously variable kraken power drive used will be coming out later this month.

I'm not sure if you're still planning any more releases in the "Poor Pilot, Better Plane" series, but I thought I'd update you on the greatly improved version of the zompi-Kraken plane I shared previously with you, here: https://kerbalx.com/dnbattley/Space-Arrow-CVK-Jet-Mk-1. Unlike most other (and my previous) kraken craft this uses the throttle in a natural way, with full, variable and responsive thrust, and making its flight characteristics significantly more like a normal (very fast) plane. It does have some additional features such as VTOL though action groups, but these are entirely opti

Why thank you very much! Improved (albeit still very much amateur-level) video editing has been the only upside of 2020...

What a great challenge. While I'm not proposing this be a serious submission, due to it's "kraken-y" nature, I couldn't resist putting this video I made last year out there as inspiration (and also as a placeholder for any submission I do manage to make in the future...):