Cavscout74

I don't know about coolest, maybe strangest - I got a Stalin Kerman once. After the rescue mission, I made him a her and changed name to Svetlana I also got a Thompberry Kerman once on a rescue contract. IIRC the spelling was slightly different than from Saga of Emiko Station, but close enough to worry me.

I know why - because it is awesome!!!! On to my career save: My manned Moho mission arrived, docked & landed. The two lucky kerbonauts on the surface got to take the MoRo-1 rover from the equator to the Mohole, back to a spot of debris south of the equator about 90* ahead of the outpost, then finally back to the outpost. Thank you, Bon Voyage!!! Flag planting on Moho by Phoebe & Johnny. This was the point I realized that I never switched to the new suits for the mission. I also added the inflatable ballutes mod and did a quick reentry test back from Minmus, which went very well. That test also involved a quick surface rescue on Minmus, poor Stephanie was stranded, and had to get picked up by rover then transferred to the pod that got used for the reentry test. Last but not least was the capture of an asteroid coming into Kerbin's SoI on a retrograde fly-by. Capture went well, just waiting to get to Pe to brake into orbit. I almost launched into a normal orbit, but around 5000m, realized what I was doing & reversed course. Actually, this was an entirely different asteroid - an E class on a collision course with Kerbin that I barely managed to redirect, about a month before the one I'm capturing.

May be best to either ask in the Tweakscale thread or direct the question to @Lisias

Continued with the revived 1..8 career today, with a few accomplishments - Eve orbital crew headed for home, Laythe Ocean Explorer arrived safely & I unlocked another tech node and was able to place a very long range comm relay in polar orbit around Kerbin. Departing Eve - I almost screwed my crew on this one, as I forgot to transfer snacks from the station before departing. I was already out of Eve's SoI before I realized. Luckily, after unlocking two snacks containers on the ship, I have enough for the trip back to Kerbin plus about 20 days. When the containers were locked (and the unlocked parts nearly empty) I had only 80 days or so of snacks for the 180-some day trip. The 1000G relay was one of the last things I did, but it was pretty simple - toss a big satellite into polar orbit, then bump the Ap over the North pole out close to the limits of Kerbin's SoI The biggest part of my day was the arrival of my Laythe Ocean Explorer and managing to splash down safely despite "iffy" communications - and this save has "Require signal for control" turned on, so if signal gets lost there's a pretty good chance of losing the craft. Resting on the surface, waiting for the RTG to recharge batteries. It will run in excess of 32 m/s submerged but the motor sucks the batteries down pretty quickly at full speed. Also popped over to the glide rover to wait for daylight, and caught a nice night time geyser eruption into some low clouds:

I should know that, but didn't think about it when I slapped that thing together. I've built dynasoar-like craft before, but it's been a while (2 years since I played KSP regularly, 3+ since I tinkered with a Dyansoar-like). The first two tests didn't even get going fast enough for the wings to be the problem, as my CoM & Thrust weren't quite aligned well enough. Only the last test built up any speed (or altitude) at all before ending badly. I'm mostly amazed the pilot survived the tests. I also forgot the pic of my failed 2nd Moho outpost landing - because I forgot to rotate the landing engines to not be occluded by the foot plates. I can't even blame that on being rusty as I had launched that craft before I quit playing KSP.

Continued on with my old career, filled some old contracts (who would've guessed, with a crew on Duna & probes everywhere that I never scanned a Minmus Olivine formation in this career yet?!?), landed a probe on Eeloo and got a crew headed for Moho - after the infrastructure arrived from the last transfer window. Finally completing the Minmus scanning contract. The crew at the Minmus mining base were approaching a full year before I noticed the contract, so I had them run around to get that done quick before sending them home I also built a new interface craft for Minmus. It works, but it's actually easier to just land directly at the mining base than deal with this Tested a rocket-launched spaceplane, with less than great results Moho Crew Station arrived in orbit Along with the Moho-Lancer outpost, which landed safely. I never sent a resource survey probe, so I had no ore info to go by. My chosen landing site only has a 6.2% concentration The MoRo heavy rover also entered Moho orbit & landed safely. I left it sitting on its cradle till the crew arrives. With new science sent back from all the arrivals, I was finally able to unlock the Rapier & bring my Lightning spaceplane into service again. After one test flight (with tourists) to make sure I remembered how to fly it, it was used to bring the Moho crew up to their transfer vehicle My Eeloo can lander finally arrived & set down safely. Gotta love Universal Storage mod - fit all your lander needs on an equipment rack safely inside a service bay The solar panels are mostly for show at this distance, but it's a standardized design I use (one for vacuum landings and one for atmospheric landings). There is a small RTG on the other side that provides the bulk of the power. I also decided Moho could use some extra fuel to make sure the crew can get home, so a huge launcher was thrown together to get 3600 units of LF to Moho: The Tylo Sample Return Vehicle & Tylo-Kerbin Return Vehicle headed out, with the return vehicle pictured. The lander has enough dV to land, gather science and return to orbit where the upper stage will dock with the return vehicle to bring surface samples back to Kerbin. Last but not least, my Laythe Ocean Explorer entered Jool space and made a small course correction to get a good fly-by of Tylo - it's still a few weeks out from the fly-by.

Yeah, that looks pretty familiar!!

I fired up an old 1.8 career and continued with a few missions I had going. This was the old Out of the Sands career in mission reports that I stopped because I lost the usb drive I was storing all my career info (current & planned missions, build times, etc) Exploring Duna And delivered a rover to Laythe by glider. I've tried this before (on both Laythe & Eve) but never succeeded before. Lost the previous Laythe to loss of signal and the Eve didn't survive reentry. Then sent a few Moho craft on their way - such as this giant crewed rover (minus crew) with landing cradle And a small station for whenever a crew gets sent And finally launched a Tylo sample return probe in two parts - the first is the lander while the second will dock after the return probe reenters orbit & bring the samples home to Kerbin

Fired up an old career save (1.8.1) and picked up at the first manned Duna landing in that save. The rover & outpost were already landed and the crew were in a station ready to land. So of course, the landing had to be at night. Not too bad - came down about 1.5km from the rover after a 2 year break from KSP, and another 3km from the outpost. Apparently the rover was still being driven to the outpost by Bon Voyage when I decided to land. Before heading off to see what else was going on, I waited for the crew's first sunrise on Duna:

It kinda was, actually

I actually fired up KSP and discovered I actually remember how to get to orbit. And return!! Nothing too impressive, but I haven't played in a while so it was nice to still remember what I'm doing. I also realized this build didn't have a lot of the mods I usually used - particularly Scatterer. Suborbital hop Jeb in LKO And coming home

For me personally, I kinda burned out on KSP. I'm sure i'll play again in the future, but KSP just hasn't been what I've wanted lately. And when I'm not actively playing, I don't spend much time on the forums besides an occasional check in. This won't be popular, but it's how I feel: It doesn't help matters for me that the last two KSP updates didn't exactly thrill me - after discovering problems in 1.11 with some mods I've used for years, I went back to 1.10. Then 1.12 came out and didn't fix any of the issues while adding new ones, which didn't exactly make me eager to come back. Finally, a lot of the info I've seen on KSP2 has me feeling lukewarm about it rather than excited. I hope I'm wrong, but that also contributes to my continued lack of forum participation.

The last steam sale I picked up Skyrim, and I've been sinking most of my time into that. I also picked up Teardown, which I've played a little but I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought. The missions are more timed puzzles than actually destroying anything so far. I'm not planning on refunding it, but I'm glad I got it on sale.

I've been messing around with Empyrion as well. Like XLJedi said, the game tends to lead you the wrong direction in the beginning. I had tried it and didn't do much with it till he gave me some advice and now its one of my main time sinks. Didn't hurt that I got extremely annoyed with my previous time sink (Stormworks), deleted my workshop creations for it & uninstalled the game. On an unrelated note, has anyone played Reentry: An Orbital Simulator?

Having "one ship fits all" like a lot of sci-fi is just that - sci-fi. For Earth (or any other oxygen-atmosphere body), HL/HL makes some sense if the engine tech was there (Skylon/SABRE) but anywhere else VL/VL is the only truly viable option until we get to a point where there are runways on the Moon or Mars. And to clarify, I define horizontal and vertical as being the primary velocity component not the craft orientation. A dedicated lander that is built horizontally but has vertically mounted rockets and no wheels is still a vertical launch/landing.

While realistic, I don't see that adding anything besides extra steps to build a complete rocket. For either probes or rovers, you are still going to stick them in either a spaceplane or rocket to get where they are going. If there is testing that needs to be done on the surface, the SPH or VAB work fine. If we actually had to build complex probes, wire them & test systems, then something like this might be useful, and that game might be fun but it wouldn't be KSP IMO. EDIT: It actually would be a little like Rover Mechanic Simulator

Personally I aim for closer to a 1.4-1.5 TWR first stage. For stock scale, usually that will clear or nearly clear the atmosphere and my second & higher stages I will stick with 0.5-1.

Just an FYI - this gets charged through Xsolla. So if (like me) you've never heard of them before and suddenly get a random notification that Xsolla charged $$ to your paypal account for a subscription it tends to cause some alarm. Especially when you are already battling other identity theft issues.

Generation Zero - robots take over Sweden in 1989. Might be the most beautiful game I've ever played. It makes me want to go visit Sweden:

As of 1.11 (?) it didn't work correctly. Most things still worked, but it caused issues with the construction mode and the MH round pods - when you decoupled the pod, it stayed "attached" to the base by what felt like an invisible rubber band. Went through a reentry with the spent stage staying exactly the same distance (~400m IIRC) from the pod the whole way, including floating in the air above the pod after splashdown. I haven't checked back in a while, so I don't know if the KJR folks ever were able to work it out.

I'll use three sometimes in the early career when limited to 30 parts, but any other time I'll use four if I use any. When I do use just three, it is almost always fixed fins for passive stability rather than controllable fins.

Do something like what I've been tinkering with: - JNSQ system - modified Tetrix Tech Tree - TacLS - Kerbal Launch Failure (or some other part failure mod) - Build time: I use a spreadsheet to calculate build time based on cost with reductions for reputation and building upgrades, but KCT works as well plus whatever part mods you want to include. Hard career settings with part pressure & g-force limits turned on, signal required for control & plasma blackout on. Adjust the money/science/rep rewards to taste. The 2.7x rescale from JNSQ makes everything I'm used to wrong. Think I have enough dV to reach orbit? Think again. Think I have plenty to get to/from Mun? Wrong. It has been a new learning experience. Also, JNSQ makes reentry actually dangerous for a change. Even Mun/Minmus returns, you're seeing >5000 m/s velocity as you enter the atmosphere. All the planets have been reworked to some degree, plus a set of new ones to explore as well. Granted it doesn't give a specific goal, but it does make the stock system feel new again. EDIT: I haven't tried 1.12, but JNSQ was still working fine in 1.10 & 1.11

Not on my game computer right now, but if I remember correctly - hit Esc, click settings, at the bottom is a button marked "advanced settings" or something like that. Click that & it will take you to the same settings windows you had when creating the save. One of those tabs has the "Fuel Transfer obeys crossfeed rules" option, near the bottom left on whichever tab it's on.

Am I the only one that half the announcements for KSP2 make me less enthusiastic for it?

If any group deserves a free copy of KSP 2, it would be some of the modders that have added so much to KSP1 over the years. And that is a small enough group that it shouldn't have a significant impact on income from the game.