Fraktal
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Posts posted by Fraktal
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I use angle of incidence all the time for my smaller planes, usually combined with 1°-2° built-in trim for my tainfins/canards and a separate elevon pair used exclusively as flaps for takeoff/landing. However, this craft's wings are made up of three parts, of whom two (the main wing root and the forward wing strake, I literally don't have enough room on the fuselage for more) are attached directly to the fuselage rather than each other, so I don't have a single wing root I can simply pitch a degree or two to give the entire wing built-in incidence with a smooth look.
This plane usually has less than 0.5° AoA during low-altitude supersonic flight, climbing over time due to Kerbin's curvature and SAS not liking each other.
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8 hours ago, IronMaiden said:
The Reliant wouldn't be a good idea, Panthers can get you up to at least 900m/s and 15km. At this point Terriers are near max Isp and are thrusty enough to get a well designed plane into orbit, the Reliant would just be useless, inefficient mass.
I was planning to include the Reliant specifically to bridge the gap between the Panthers running out of air at around 900 m/s and the Terriers not having enough raw power to even defeat the drag I was still having at 30 km altitude. My AoA was above 10° at apoapsis.
The plan was to use the Panthers in wet mode to get going as fast as I can, switch over to the Reliant once the Panthers run out of air to power through the remaining drag and give myself enough time to apoapse so that the Terriers can take over and finish circularization.
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Having unlocked Mk2 parts and the Panther in my long-time save, I did some plane engineering today. One of the test flights involving a twin-engine plane resulted in the fuselage snapping in half along the cargo bay during a high-g turn at Mach 1.5, separating the cockpit from the rest of the plane. I nearly reverted when it occurred to me that duh, the kerbals have parachutes. It needs to be mentioned that the last time I tried out the parachute was right after it was introduced into the game and the kerbal died on impact. This time, however, it was 100% success: first Val bailed out and popped her chute, then Jeb followed after about ten seconds of freefalling inside the cockpit later. Jeb landed in the water first, followed about half a minute later by Val, about 680 meters apart from each other.
If anything, I'm having more trouble with figuring out the steering of my planes. At low altitude they turn so sharply that I can literally snap the plane in half if I don't just tap the pitch buttons, at high altitude they don't turn at all and instead tend to go into flatspins. One time I tried to do an Immelmann turn at 23 km altitude and the plane literally STOPPED (as in, 0.0 m/s surface-relative speed!) instead of the prograde vector following which way the nose was pointing.
I'm also considering trying to see whether I can build an SSTO without ramjets. Will two Panthers, one Reliant and two Terriers be enough? Two Panthers and two Terriers took me up to around 30 km before the Terriers ran out of fuel and the game crashed before I could try again.
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You can do this with the CommNet Constellation mod. If you're not familiar with it, it allows you to set different frequencies for your antennas to use. Two antennas can only talk to each other if they're using the same frequency (everything uses frequency 0 by default) and relay satellites only relay between different frequencies if they have an antenna for each frequency. DSNs can talk to any frequency, but you can disable specific frequencies so that the DSN won't talk to antennas on those frequencies directly, only through a relay.
- Create a new frequency for the rover's use.
- Set the rover's antenna to the frequency you created.
- Set the DSN to not talk to the rover's frequency. You'll have to do it for the entire DSN, not just the KSC.
- Set at least one antenna on the relay satellite to the rover's frequency.
- Set the rest of the relay satellite's antennas to frequency 0 (or any other frequency the DSN is talking to).
This way the rover won't talk to the DSN directly whatsoever, even if Kerbin is visible and in range. It will only talk to Kerbin via the relay. Keep in mind, however, that your signal strength won't be as high via the relay because multiple antennas on the same vessel only combine their power if they're on the same frequency and you'll need at least one antenna to communicate with the rover instead of the DSN.
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2 hours ago, Grogs said:
On low gravity worlds like Minmus, you might consider a design that lands with a regular rocket on the tail and then tips forward onto wheels/landing gear. You may still need some small engines on the front to tip the nose back up for liftoff.
Last time I built a Mun-capable SSTO (Whiplash/Nerv), I mounted a monoprop tank and a few Puffs to the bottom. I handled the deorbit and descent with the Nerv main engines then when I was about 500 meters above the surface and descending slowly, I flipped over belly-first, extended the landing wheels and used the Puffs to VTOL down. For takeoff, I expended the rest of the monoprop with the Puffs to give myself a kick upwards and get rid of the monoprop's dead weight, then fired the Nervs horizontally to begin circularization, rather than try to do a takeoff roll on the Nervs alone and risk crashing/tailstriking due to uneven terrain.
In munar gravity, achieving >1 TWR with Puffs requires so little thrust that the reaction wheels I included for maintaining a belly-first reentry profile were more than enough to cancel out any torque the Puffs might've caused.
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The symmetry mode switches because you're mousing over a part that was attached with 2X symmetry.
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4 hours ago, steve_v said:
Real aircraft don't have SAS anyway.
Real aircraft do, on the other hand, have fly-by-wire avionics.
And KSP aircraft kinda do require SAS to stay level over long distances because setting trim in the SPH to keep the plane level during subsonic flight causes nose-up at supersonic speeds and vice versa, optimizing for level flight at supersonic causes nose-down while still subsonic.
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4 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:
You do realize that this type of decision also affects the top end of the player base?
In what way beyond what they already have with mods? You already have what you want as an optional feature from the community, why insist that it must be compulsorily shoved down on everyone's throats?
4 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:There comes a point when you have to make a hard decision, and a low number like 500 pales to insignificance compares to the over 1,000,000 other players out there
We could have an entire galactic civilization's number of KSP players on the high end for all I care. I refuse to frak over anyone and "there's more of us" is not an excuse.
I know what I said is controversial among players who have the means to own high-end hardware, but let's not start tearing into each other over it because this isn't a democracy where whichever camp yells the loudest wins it all. The decision over whether to make such an important change ultimately rests with Squad, not the community. We can ask them for features but they're in no way obligated to comply, just like how they haven't yet made life support stock despite unceasing demands to that end every couple of months.
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1 hour ago, kedrednael said:
Because the amount of parts it takes
Hence why I said make the single part be a NERV cluster. We already have multi-nozzle engines and one of them (Poodle) is even a vacuum-spec high-impulse engine, so there's a precedent.
7 hours ago, catloaf said:only effect 500 people
Which is still 500 people too much in my books.
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On 9/4/2020 at 12:44 AM, catloaf said:
Also a 2.5 meter nerv.
Why not just make it multiple NERVs clustered together inside a 2.5m shroud?
22 hours ago, SpaceFace545 said:I think we need a graphics overhaul, the little texture changes are fine but it still looks like a game from the 2000’s. Simplerockets 2 looks amazing and it’s graphics are streamlined enough to work on a phone. I think we should get a kerbal version of scatterer. No clouds cause I like to think kerbin has a thin and whispy atmosphere due to its small size but, just water that looks like water and lighting effects.
This came up about a year or so ago but my response to any cosmetic changes that substantially raise the game's hardware requirements is a definite "no". KSP is already a tough enough nut to run with satisfactory performance on old hardware as it is.
Should there be mods that make the game prettier? By all means, people whose rigs can take the nicer graphics should have every bit as much fun with the game as everyone else. Make it stock and lock people with potato rigs like non-gaming laptops out from being able to play at all? Hell no. Touching up the planets' surface is fine and I think the skybox should get a touch-up too, but no making the game require 2-3-4 generations newer video cards.
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10 hours ago, hemeac said:
If you are going down that route on, may be worth following
Oh wow, I'm actually being referenced?!
Well. If that's the case, I'm available for a second opinion if you need an ear to toss your ideas at, @Starseeker
10 hours ago, Starseeker said:That definitely seems interesting, though it follows some different paths than I am. For example, all the lengths of a given diameter are going to be available in one node, the logic being it's much easier to make a longer tank than a wider one.
Which indeed makes sense. My logic for arranging the tank lengths the way I did was:
- Giving the second smallest tank to the basic gimbal engine and the second largest tank to the no-gimbal power engine was so that researching the power engine also allows the player to lower their launcher's part count. Lower part count is a good thing.
- Giving the smallest tank to the high impulse engine was because the engine's high efficiency means you don't always need the bigger tank. Having the small tank means you can better control how much fuel you want your upper stage to carry.
- Putting the largest tank on a separate node was so that the player can optionally expend additional science to lower their launcher's part count even more.
The base idea is to make it so that that none of the tanks are obsolete right from the get-go due to something even better being unlocked at the same time. All of them have a purpose at the point they're unlocked in.
And now that you mention it, giving the Stayputnik SAS as a part upgrade once the OKTO is unlocked makes sense, I just don't have any experience with part upgrades.
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2 hours ago, kspnerd122 said:
I feel like we should have more rover parts, also GIVE ROVERS A USE, Give rewards for driving over a planet, give contracts to land a rover on a planet or moon(these would not occur for gilly, bop, or pol, as they are too small for rovers), but maybe give a contract that says, land an unmanned rover on duna, it must have an antenna and the ability to generate power, it also must have X science equipment on it(NO SCIENCE JR OR MYSTERY GOO), also we need rover specific experiments, the contracts could say, land a rover and then visit these locations and do a rover specific experiment, also this would add so much to KSP.
Agreed. One contract idea that comes to mind is "collect science here with a rover that landed at least X distance away and covered that distance on wheels" (ie. no powered biome hopping allowed).
Or "collect X type of science from every biome on this celestial body using unmanned craft only". Slow, but gives a really big payoff if you actually do successfully waste your time on it.
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3 hours ago, tosha said:
Also making History Engines need to be nerfed, and/or stock engines buffed. It's not fair that you can get (in the case of the wolfhound much) better engines than in stock, all just by paying $15
You're missing the fact that the Wolfhound is at the end of the tech tree, so you'll get it later than its stock counterpart in terms of size. That balances it out because you still need to use the Poodle until you reach that point. I genuinely can't see why people are so upset at the Wolfhound's high Isp when it's late-game. Of course it's gonna be powerful. Shall we now nerf the Nerv and the RAPIER as well?
And I personally feel that more than one Making History engine is actually underpowered. At the 1.875m diameter, the Bobcat isn't enough to launch even a Mun lander in one stack and you can't cluster more than two per stack without clipping, the Kodiak is flat-out USELESS at the point you get it and once again limited to two per stack before it starts clipping, the Cheetah is unlocked too late to be useful as a middle ground between Terrier and Poodle it should be.
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Me, I flat-out don't give a damn what Elon does between rocket launches. Partially because I'm against the whole "ostracize this person for all eternity, waah waah waah!" thing that's all too prevalent these days whenever anyone steps out of line for what's considered politically correct and partially because if Squad would really care about this sort of thing, they wouldn't have included Making History's Soviet-themed parts after what happened to Komarov due to the Party wanting a PR stunt for Lenin's birthday and wouldn't have included the Big-S parts either after the deaths of the Challenger crew due to NASA managers rushing the launch. Allowing those but excluding SpaceX would be a colossal double standard, no matter how much of an idiot Elon makes of himself.
Anyway. Things I'd like to have in future updates:
- Landing gear than can fully retract into the fuselage, yes. It could work as either legged variants for existing fuel tanks, or as radially attached parts that invisibly clip into the stack while retracted. I think this latter one would be easier to implement.
- Give the existing landing legs variants that allow the player to choose between horizontal and vertical clearance - that is, allow the legs to reach out further away from the lander, increasing the size of the ground contact area for better stability on a slope but at the cost of the landing leg not being as tall, meaning you have to choose between increased stability or decreased chance of tailstriking on touchdown. If that's not an option, then just give several variants with different leg lengths.
- Speaking of which. A structural rail part of variable length and possibly width, designed to be mounted radially so that if whatever engine you're using on your lander is too big for your landing legs (ex. LT-05 versus Terrier, LT-1 versus Poodle), you can offset the landing leg downwards to reach the ground without half of the landing leg's mounting visibly hanging in the air.
- Visual overhaul for the Reliant and the Swivel. Pretty much all the other engines got a pretty-up so far, so why not these two?
- Visual overhaul for plane parts. The Mk1 cockpits and crew cabin, the intake and the Mk0 tank are the ones most in need of retexturing. To a lesser extent the Mk1 tank needs something done with the texture as well, since it almost always ends up rotated in weird ways when radially attaching it. Wings would also be good with a smooth all-white texture as an alternative to the current black-trimmed-hodgepodge one.
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Drop tank parts for planes that have built-in radial decouplers and do not cause horribad drag like a standard decoupler would, optionally with an advanced tweakable that automatically stages off the tank once it's empty at the cost of the player not being able to drop it manually anymore.
- And if we're already at it, how about some conformal fuel tanks?
- A quality-of-life mechanism for making it easier to snap elevons onto wings with minimal clipping regardless of wing orientation.
- Fixing the MEM's off-center CoM. It's been years, Squad, what's keeping you?
- Let the player fine-tune how far apart the dynamic attachment points are on an Engine Plate. It's annoying when two engines are not enough thrust but adding a third causes the engine bells to clip into each other.
- Alternate configurations of the existing vacuum engines that also double as size adapters. I'm thinking something like an upside-down FL-A5/FL-A10/R-type adapter with half a dozen or so exhaust nozzles at the circumference (visually firing diagonally outwards rather than downwards but the thrust vector points downwards) rather than one or two bells in the middle, leaving enough room in the center for an inline attachment node.
- Merge the 1x6 and 3x2 solar panels into a single part as variants, along with a few more possible combinations.
- Inline solar panel part. Basically a quarter-length Structural Fuselage with four OX-STAT panels equidistantly integrated into its circumference, sunken into the surface deep enough to seamlessly maintain the 1.25m diameter with no extra drag. Optionally, it can also close shutters over the panels to disable power generation but withstand reentry heat better. Of course, the integrated nature of the panels means no sun tracking.
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Zero-gee passenger cabins in more sizes.
- 1.25m has the Mk1 crew cabin, but its interior is very much not that of a zero-gee cabin. I'm thinking a fairly minimalist cabin with a one-guy-behind-the-other sitting arrangement, similar to the Mk2 inline cockpit or the KV-2 pod. Optionally, the cabin's diameter is slightly larger than 1.25m, about the same as if the Mk1 lander can was circular rather than octagonal.
- For 1.875m, I'm thinking a three-seater cabin where the passengers are sitting either facing outwards, back-to-back with each other, or rest their backs against the rear of the cabin with their heads pointing inwards in a trefoil formation. Refer to the Ares capsule in The Martian to see what I'm thinking of.
- For 3.75m, I'm thinking something similar to the Hitchhiker Storage Module but with a double-deck internal design similar to the science lab, with three seats per deck and a ladder in the middle of the IVA space.
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And if we're already at crew arrangements, how about a late-game high-visibility 1.25m command pod, something like an External Command Seat sitting in a spherical glass dome the size of a KV pod for 360° panoramic visibility?
- Which way the seat is oriented relative to the pod's attachment point (ie. whether the attachment point is behind, below or even above the seat) is an advanced tweakable.
- No top attachment node and nothing can be radially attached to the pod.
- No monopropellant storage and no built-in reaction wheel because there's visibly no space for it.
- Slightly lower than average impact tolerance due to the outer hull literally being made of glass.
- Heat tolerance about on par with the Mk1 lander can due to all the glass, plus the canopy is slightly wider than 1.25m so shielding it during reentry is difficult. Optionally, the part would also have a shutter-like heatshield that covers the canopy from the bottom up when deployed, making the pod as heat-resistant as the Mk1 command pod at the cost of losing the visibility.
- Not sure if the canopy would also function as an EVA hatch. If it does and the above heatshield is implemented, buttoning up disables the hatch.
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After thinking over the feedback I got in this thread, I started a separate project for cleaning up the tech tree. This time, I'm not adding or removing nodes or connection between nodes; all that changes is which part is on which node, trying to follow a methodology that's both logical and convenient for the player. It's still a work in progress, but some of the things I already came up with:
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Start node contains the Mk1 command pod, the Mite, the small parachute and the thermometer. Nothing else.
- No Modular Girder Segment because it frankly doesn't have much purpose here beyond as an alternative to the service bay, ie. putting it between the command pod and the parachute, then mounting all science gear on the girder rather than the command pod so that it doesn't burn off during reentry from contact heat transfer from the command pod.
- No KV-1 pod because it's completely uncontrollable at this point.
- Basic Fin is nudged one tech level later.
- Flea is nudged one tech level later. The Mite is here instead because frankly, it doesn't have much purpose otherwise. Same reason why the Shrimp is now tier 2 (Engineering 101).
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The Rocketry line of nodes now include more than just the engines.
- Decouplers are handed out in the same node as the first engine matching their radial size. Radial decouplers are also unlocked in this line, as SRB size increases (Kickback/Pollux unlocks the strutted decoupler at tier 5, Thoroughbred unlocks the hydraulic manifold at tier 6). Stack separators are unlocked on the Construction line of nodes.
- Mid-size fuel tanks, adapters and Making History engine plates are also paired together with the first engine of the same size so that the player can start using their shiny new parts immediately, rather than having to buy another node first. The 5m engine plate is the sole exception, found on the final Fuel Systems node in tier 8.
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Access to the Making History engines is now much quicker.
- Stock: first medium tanks on tier 4, Bobcat on tier 5, Cheetah, Kodiak and medium-size engine plate on tier 6.
- New: first medium tanks and Kodiak on tier 3 (same as Reliant), Bobcat and medium-size engine plate on tier 4 (same as Terrier), Cheetah, Pollux, large-size engine plate and medium-to-large adapter tank on tier 5 (same as Poodle and Kickback).
- The Skiff, the Wolfhound and the Mastodon were left as they are for now.
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The Precision line was shuffled around as well.
- Stock: Spark, Ant, Baguette and Oscar-B on tier 5, Twitch, Spider, Puff, Dumpling and Doughnut on tier 6.
- New: Spark, Twitch, Puff and Baguette on tier 5, Ant, Spider, Dumpling and Oscar-B on tier 6. Sepratron was moved to the Rocketry line on tier 6 (same node as Mainsail), the Thud, the tiny-size decoupler and the FL-A5 and 10 adapters plus the Making History medium-to-tiny adapter tank have all been moved here to tier 5. To facilitate the earlier use of the Puff, the tier 5 Fuel Systems node now unlocks the first inline monoprop tank.
- Only the largest fuel tanks of each size category are in the Fuel Systems line of nodes, rather than all tanks after small-size. The inline RCS tanks are now also here, spanning across the entire line with one tank per tech level ordered by size.
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Construction line:
- 1.25m fairing is unlocked on tier 4 rather than tier 5 to make it easier to launch the KV pods and the Mk1 lander can.
- All fairings, stack separators, heat shields and almost all docking clamps (with the exceptions of the Mk2 one and the Making History inflatable one) are now in this line. Making History structural tubes are distributed as one part per node, in order of increasing diameter. Same with the flag parts introduced in KSP 1.10.
- Station components are available from tier 6 onwards and you get the more useful ones (radial attachment point, six-way connector) sooner.
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Control parts:
- The KV-1 unlocks in tier 3, on the same node as the first nose cone. The tiny reaction wheel has also been moved to this node, one tier earlier, so that these two parts can be used together as they are meant to be.
- The Stayputnik is still in tier 4, but on the Flight Control node rather than the Basic Science node. The same node also includes the KV-2 pod, the Z-100 battery and the surface-mount Communotron, but not the standard Communotron (that one's on Basic Science).
- The OKTO is still in tier 5, but on the Advanced Flight Control node, right next to the second reaction wheel and the Stratus MP tanks.
- The QBE is brought forward to tier 5 to the Miniaturization node (where the Clamp-o-tron Jr. used to be), right next to the HG-5 relay, the tiny decoupler and stack separator and the tiny flag.
- The Mk1 lander can is now in the Landing node rather than the Advanced Flight control node, still on tier 5. On the same node are the smaller extending ladder, the micro landing strut and the long-range searchlight, all for building that Mun lander.
- The HECS is on the same node as in the stock tech tree but is accompanied by only the antenna parts, the structural cruft was tossed out of the node.
- The Making History Mk2 command pod is now on tier 5 on the Space Exploration node (same as the Hitchhiker Storage Module), along with the matching-size heat shield, service module and the inflatable airlock (which is something like tier 7 in the stock tech tree). This is also the node for the short-range searchlight.
- The Mk1-3 command pod was left where it is, but the cupola module was split off to Advanced Exploration (still on tier 6) along with the External Command Seat (which was brought one tier forward). The Mk2 lander can, on the other hand, was pushed up to tier 7 (Heavy Landing), sharing a node with the KV-3 pod and the LT-2 landing strut.
- The MEM is now on the node (Advanced Landing) directly between the Mk1 lander can and the Mk2 lander can, rather than on the same node as the Mk1-3 pod. It shares the node with the longer extending ladder and the LT-1 landing strut.
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For solar panels:
- Tier 5 unlocks both the OX-STAT and the OX-STAT-XL.
- Tier 6 unlocks only the extend-only solar arrays.
- Tier 7 keeps the Gigantor and the fuel cell.
- Tier 8 is where the extend-and-retract solar arrays are unlocked, alongside the Fuel Cell Array.
- Tier 9 keeps the RTG.
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For science:
- Start unlocks the Thermometer.
- Engineering 101 (tier 2) unlocks the barometer.
- Basic Science (tier 4) unlocks the Mystery Goo.
- Space Exploration (tier 5) unlocks the accelerometer.
- Advanced Exploration (tier 6) unlocks the atmospheric sensor.
- Field Science (tier 7) unlocks the gravioli detector, the materials bay and the science lab. The SENTINEL Telescope and the Survey Scanner were left where they are.
- Advanced Science Tech (tier 8) unlocks the magnetometer, sharing the node with basic ISRU and the Surface Scanner.
- Experimental Science (tier 9) has the heavy-duty ISRU and the Narrow-Band Scanner.
- I haven't touched the aircraft nodes yet, but one thing I'm definitely going to do is merging the aircraft landing gear into the aircraft nodes rather than the Landing nodes. Probably also going to shuffle the radial intakes over to the Aerodynamics line rather than the Aircraft line, since that's their alleged purpose.
Like I said, it's still a work in progress. But since this one doesn't add/remove any nodes or node connections, it should be compatible with mods that extend the stock tech tree.
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Start node contains the Mk1 command pod, the Mite, the small parachute and the thermometer. Nothing else.
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Among other things, I'm still yet to figure out how to put a KV-3 pod on the Mun with the same tech as my other landers. Damn thing is heavy; using the same launcher as the rest of my Mun rockets leaves me 500 m/s short. And I'm also currently waiting on a Duna transfer window in order to launch my first manned mission outside Kerbin's SOI (or to be exact, the first one that didn't return into the SOI after a few minutes). Oh, and I gotta do my first career game too sometime in the future.
Hence why I said I got things to do. The great majority of that 1000 hours I spent in the VAB re-re-re-re-re-redesigning all my stuff over and over and over again, not in flight.
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As of today, I officially have 1003 hours clocked in the game according to Steam.
Still got plenty of things to do.
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That's not a heat shield, that's a fairing base. This is a heat shield. It keeps flipping over because the fairing base has huge drag due to its blunt shape.
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The ones I linked above are Mk1-sized.
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Refueling on the ground is not quite possible in stock unless you're a king at messing with landing gear settings to make a docking port in the cargo bay be at just the right altitude for the tanker to touch it. Same with payload loading.
Refueling in space, prior to coming down for the next launch, is easy.
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The primary reason why I have so many nodes is because I really dislike it when 5+ unrelated parts get stuffed into the same node simply because there's no dedicated node for any of them. Not to mention some nodes getting only 3 parts while others get 10+, with zero rhyme or reason.
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19 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:
One problem I have with all tech trees is that mods either aren't in the tree, or are in odd places.
Balancing a tech tree for every possible mod in existence is pretty much impossible. The very fact that mods tend to have different ideas about how the game should be means that literally any approach to making your tech tree steps on someone's toes.
Not to mention that making a tech tree compatible with every mod in existence requires keeping track of every single mod's development to add compatibility to anything new. Not everyone is a multitasking god like you.
20 hours ago, Xt007 said:One as a strict play this way gatekeeper, or as a freeform progression style.
I was going for the second approach, via decoupling the research paths of unrelated parts from each other so that people can pick and choose what they want. For example, you no longer have to unlock Mk2 plane parts to get the Panther, or launch clamps and struts to get a body for Mk1 planes that isn't a fuel tank so heavy the early wings can barely lift it, etc.
The logic I followed for some of the part placements in nodes:
- If you take a closer look, you'll see that all Making History parts are either on their own nodes or nodes that also contain stock parts and none of the stock parts depend on nodes that contain only MH parts. This is so that nodes that only contain Making History parts can be hidden on the R&D screen if the player doesn't have Making History installed. MH does not alter the tech tree, only extends it with optional side-branches. I would've done the same with Breaking Ground but once again, I don't have that DLC myself and the wiki doesn't have a part list either.
- Putting a Stayputnik anywhere other than the Start node would make it useless because literally everything else is better.
- Same with the Mite and Shrimp SRBs. There's pretty much zero use for them beyond sounding rockets as compared to, say, the Hammer, which is still good for some extra delta-V when launching a lightweight satellite into orbit.
- Putting the tiny reaction wheel to the same node as the Stayputnik is required due to the fact that you have literally no other way to aim the rocket prior to gimbaled engines and movable fins.
- Putting basic ISRU before the sensors that let you tell where the best ore yield is found on Duna is entirely intentional. This way, ISRU is available earlier but is kinda an inefficient hit-or-miss until you research it fully. The Survey Antenna being where it is is so that the player can get the survey data on their first flight to Duna, rather than having to return later on.
- Making the OKTO a prerequisite of manned flight but NOT giving the Z-100 battery yet is meant to allow the player to use the OKTO as a nav computer for their early 1-seater manned craft, allowing the player to fly their Scientists while still having basic SAS. The QBE being unlocked parallel to manned flight is so that it can take over the OKTO for this purpose.
- Delaying the availability of the KV reentry pods is done on purpose. In the stock tech tree, the KV-1 is completely unusable at the point where you get it due to 1) lack of a reaction wheel or RCS to steer it without wasting fuel and 2) lack of a fairing to offset its enormous drag. The first reaction wheel is unlocked alongside the KV-2, making the KV-1 immediately obsolete for all purposes other than its lower weight compared to the Mk1 pod. Here, by the time you have the KV-1 you already have reaction wheels, and it's unlocked at the same time as the 1.25m fairing, so you can actually use it immediately. The KV-2 and KV-3 pods are put on their own nodes as a case of "unlock them if you need them, feel free to ignore them otherwise".
- Putting the first ladder and landing strut on the same node as the Mk1 lander can is for the player's convenience, seeing how orbital craft don't require either. Putting the ladder on an entirely separate node in the stock tech tree was always mildly annoying for me and handing over the landing strut way before the player is in a position to even consider going to the Mun just flat-out didn't make sense.
- Putting the two lights on separate nodes is based on what feels to be their best use: long-range lights for lighting up the ground at night to either locate a landing site or let kerbals on EVA find the lander in the dark, short-range lights as a "docking port is over here" navigational aid when docking over the night side.
- Engine-tank pairings all follow the same logic: gimballed medium engine gets the second smallest tank to start with, non-gimballed power engine gets the second biggest tank since it can lift more weight, high-impulse vacuum engine gets the smallest tank since it's the most efficient one, biggest tank is on a separate node so that the increased structural stability and reduced part count is an optional purchase.
- Wing parts are noded in order of how much lift they provide. Wing Connector parts are noded parallel to matching-size Structural Wings. I originally intended to put jet engines and intakes on separate nodes from each other. For the name of the node that unlocks the RAPIER, credits go to Project ACES.
- Decouplers and separators being on different nodes is due to the fact that you don't need stack separators anywhere near as often as decouplers.
- The surface-mount Communotron being on a different node than the standard Communotron is due to its non-combinable nature allowing the logical progression of using the non-combinable antenna to let your unmanned craft go beyond LKO but still in level 1 DSN range, then giving the combinable antenna at the same time as the HG-5 so that you can use combinability to get a decent signal strength via HG-5 relay sats while out of LOS for the DSN.
20 hours ago, Xt007 said:don't like the idea I can get into orbit with a flying potatoe rocket early on.
In the stock tech tree, I found the greatest challenge at the tech level immediately following Start to be able to squeeze enough delta-V out of FL-T100 tanks without going past 30 parts. Once you unlock the FL-T200, the challenge becomes being able to squeeze enough delta-V out of Swivels and Reliants to reach orbit without going past 18 tons. Once the Terrier is in play, you can handle a munar flyby within both of these limits and only need to upgrade your facilities in order to launch a munar lander.
So yeah, the level 1 limitations for the VAB and Launch Pad are actually well thought-out as far as the stock tech tree goes. Me, I'm giving the FL-T200 first so that the VAB limit isn't as strict that you need to decide between one more fuel tank or one more goo canister so that you don't need a second flight to max out your low orbit science.
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Added the Pollux (parallel to the Kickback), the Vector (follows up on the Mammoth), the inline reaction wheels (tiny one is on Start, small one is derived from the OKTO and the large one from the small one) and the thermometer (Start node) to the tree. I also made it so that the Dart now requires the Vector rather than the Rhino.
I'm considering moving the Mk1 Lander Can and related tech one tech level later because right now, you'd get it before the Terrier. But then again, you also get the Spark at the same time as the Lander Can so it's not like we don't have a high-impulse engine early on.
When I started planning this out, it was originally going to start with the Mk1 Command Pod on the Start node, just like in stock, immediately followed by the Stayputnik on a node called Automation whose description would explicitly state that the Stayputnik, Z-100 battery and small reaction wheel were ripped straight out of a Mk1 pod.
What did you do in KSP1 today?
in KSP1 Discussion
Posted · Edited by Fraktal
I can't fly at all without SAS.
Gave it another try just now. One short Mk2 tank's worth of liquid fuel for the Panthers, the "Mk2 to dual 1.25m" adapter and two FL-T800 tanks' worth of LF/OX for the Terriers.
Currently testing a more aggressive ascent profile to see if that'll do the trick. Latest flight ran out of fuel at 2079 m/s at 46.7 km altitude after I forgot to retract my flaps until I reached Mach 2, which might be why I ended up a few hundred m/s short.