Aeroboi

The Geo ID. More specifically. When the signal can't travel in a direct line from one vessel to another without the direct line dipping below sea level altitude. In other words, if the signal can travel in a direct line without going below 0 meters you will get a signal when a hill or even a mountain is in between. Furthermore, I always make sure I have global coverage since it isn't particularly hard to send 3 small satellites using a relatively small rocket even early on, but that depends on how good you are at building in early career. In sandbox I make sure I always take those sats with me if it is my first mission to Duna for example.

That depends, in fact the radiators will completely shield everything behind them. Using only Oscar-B or the 0.625m MH fuel tanks a large heatshield will engulve all the tanks and protect everything as long as the heatshield is facing the wind. Like a proper space plane it would have either fins or enough reaction wheels to stay in the proper orientation. Since it has 2500k resistance it would be more heat resistant then a regular 2400k space plane which most are. So you'd be better of. Practically, it's kind of pointless

How does it work? Does it copy the flight commands using a specified cargo and then actually fly the vessel itself? The reason I ask, I have a space plane that toggles mid center engines on/off in the upper atmosphere for pitch control, many of my spaceplanes don't have this by the way, but some do. So if I use action group in actual flight to switch engines on/off will this mod simulate that behavior or does it only serve simple space planes without action group usage?

The payload plane can land on water and takeoff again, it only has to decouple from the carrier space plane at a 3-4000m hill to get down there. So I'll be doing L5

This is very easy. I found out rotating landing gear 90 degrees with friction set to 5.0 will nearly anchor a vessel, if placed properly would not tip over but nearly immediately stop on landing. Just wanted to let you know, I guess that's outside the scope. I guess in order for one to win is having over equipped wings and mostly gear to break once stopped.

Adding to all this, what people sometimes forget is that new contracts are added as time goes on. So if you have a vessel enroute to a destination to fulfill one, you get there and complete the contract then it is possible a new contract is given in the same SOI or even planet/moon so you can then even add more contracts before the mission ends.

The best way is to use Tylo as a gravity assist to lower Jool Apoapsis, if possible do it a 2nd time at laythe or again Tylo. Space planes could be like the space shuttle is typically, use a pitch angle of 10-55degrees over the horizon once in the atmosphere. The high attitude angle will then decelerate the orbital speed in the upper atmosphere. If you design a space plane properly most of your parts will be 2400K resistant and the other parts are in cargo bays. In that case I wouldn't worry about aerobraking issues at all and you should have no worries.

I'm aware of this, that's why it's mandatory to use RTG"s or Fuel cells. I haven't seen solar panels on Stratzenblitz's spinning solar station either. I'm a big fan of fuel cells to be honest. Use one to several RTG's for static energy generation, keep at that if that's the only power requirement needed. If needing more then use fuel cells. People severely underestimate the efficiency of a fuel cell. It's not like it's going to cut Dv by a landslide using them to produce a required charge, albeit that I assume you have a large fraction of fuel with you. If you need to run systems like science on such a space station you can always use a Plethora of battery banks with a few rtg's to fill up the power over time to do experiments. Also, what is close to the Sun? Closest? Yes, solar panels melt! Does it have to be closest? It's quite a feet to haul massive shipment into a circular ecliptic plane inside the orbit of Moho to begin with. And the Sun looks big enough at that distance to be glazed with amazement. Picking a closest point will decide the challenge in that we will upscale our rockets more and more to a point where we will use to much parts anyway. Personally I like to keep the part count low so a station just within Moho orbit seems like a respectable solar station for a community challenge.

Even without electricity in the battery banks (partially stored by a fuel cell) you use stored electric charge as it fills up, so completely cancelling the battery containers to fill up should workaround that problem. Besides that, in fact your using a second energy source "electric charge" next to the LF/O the dumpling offers, so in a way it isn't dumpling only since a secondary part provides the EC. Using stored electric charge would be cheating since you will loose speed with depleted electric charge and you'll have less momentum going down a hill, therefore less speed and distance covered over a average time span. Because in a way, the battery capacity is the capacitor for when the fuel cells can't provide enough power. So instead, use enough fuel cells to sustain uphill climb, and fairly so since fuel cells aren't empty weight. In a sense of relation a fuel cell rover with battery banks would be a hybrid car. Hybrid being driven through 2 methods in this case energy storage next to using the dumpling only. I guess it depends where the philosphy lies in the eyes of the OP.

That depends on the challenge, does it have to be hard? Pol is basically a mini minmus and many challenges go to minmus to make things easy with a scoring system for payload or doing multiple things the challenges requests. Therefore a Pol mission can be hard if you intend to do big stuff on the surface, or at least harder. If your intention is a hard challenge all around then anything Laythe related that goes from the ocean floor all into space and Tylo obviously is the prime hardest destination. I also like Val, it is boring but rather unique in it's coloring and low hilled landscape compared to other bodies.

I got a few space station idea's here and a makeover of the leveling system. So far there are lousy space station contracts. What I would like to suggest... Being able to train any kerbal on space stations. If i.e. a engineer in on board and he stays at the space station for 2 years he will advance a level but he won't be able to advance another level for a following 5 years. This is to make sure you don't abuse it so you make kerbals stay in space stations only and it's a neat secondary way to level up Kerbals. For a scientist to level up a MPL must be part of the station. Adding to the 5 year rule, If a kerbal advanced level on a station and remains at that or any other station before heading either to kerbin or a ground base nearby he wont be able to advance another level. The idea being is to give kerbals a normal bio rhythm. Normally you don't only spend time in orbit, you get to land from time to time. When training and getting better at something involves normal lifestyle, at least, as normal as a kerbal lifestyle can be at a lonely surface base. This would mean a kerbal would want to at least stay 2 years at the surface after he/she leveled up to give resting time. The contract system should supply plenty of these contracts. The amount of kerbals per each contract to be transported will be based upon the crew capacity of a formerly used transport vessel near the SOI of that station. Let's say you have a Duna space station and you have formerly used a 8 crew lander on Duna then the game knows your capable of making a 8 crew duna lander and it will pump out the contract requirement to transport 8 of those kerbals from that space station to a Duna surface base but no more then those 8 kerbals in order to direct the difficulty based on the experience of the player. Instead of specifying the kerbal names you should have free choice which 8 on those station would be transported. Otherwise large stations or many stations in over crowded SOI's would be hard to manage. Make the rule apply universally outside the contract system. So you can manage this freely even if the contract system lacks to produce the contracts themselves. Of course, transporting kerbals from stations outside the contract system won't get you any rewards. Adjusting the fund difficulty slider at the career start should determine the balance of your own gameplay. If your 8 crew duna lander is a re-usable SSTO then you'll spend less and with that experience you'd set the income slider lower. Adding to that, make contracts to transport kerbals from one station to another, contracts should spawn so that stations are listed closest to the existing station the target kerbal is living at. When accepting the contract the target kerbal must hop to that other station, however, if he doesn't and the contract fails the kerbal wont add up days to his/her experience and he will have to wait 3 years to make use of station leveling again including the contract penalty received with it. Make contracts to transport Kerbals Make station requirements random as they are now but create a modular contract requirement setup. What does that mean? Well, if a station contract is made make it so that the contract states you "could" take 5000units of liquid fuel to a space station, however it should have a second or even third alternative, for instance, take a module with a capacity for 25 Kerbals. Taking the 25 kerbals is easier as it's lighter weight, but involves more capsules so you'll have a bulkier/draggier rocket with higher part count, or you decide to take up the fuel. Doing any of both or multiple alternatives should complete the contract. Within the alternative options throw in some Squad chosen exotics, like, use a specific totally random crew capsule of a given amount on top of the general modules primary and secondary alternative types. This is so randomness can add particularly creativity to your own making. Sometimes, a random card is the right card, and sometimes you lack your own creativity and an random option can be quite unique if own intuition fails at times. Such a contract system involves your freedom of choice how to equip the space station but involves those typical contact requirements that enforce you to equip it with anything useful, but freely chosen for the particular station you wish to add to without over complexing the current contract system further. Add contracts to move a space station, the rewards for the contract are more excessive because it could be harder. It is your logic to accept, if your space station is to asymmetrical you may not want to accept. Part of it involves you take up the required parts like having a particular engine that isn't currently part of the vessel and must therefore be launched. Otherwise the space station wasn't a station to begin with as it had it's own propulsion for starters. Part of the contract could involve changing the space station orbit, or move it to another SOI within the current system. Modify contract requirements based on funds and science score. What does that involve? Well, if you have open tech nodes and the required R&D facility level to unlock those but you are absolutely scarce on science points, well, make it so that the contract system throws most of those science experiments into the contract mix. Some give plenty for orbital survey's and eva contracts so have these contracts boosted up with science rewards based on reputation. On the other hand, if you are scarce on funds make it so that the contract requirement states that you must use a rocket with a particular lowest cost available engine or suffer administrative cost. So use a reliant over a swivel and only use solid rockets as boosters if necessary, that or stay under a specified launch cost or have reduced contract income. That enforces people to be more creative with their early rocket designs. That also learns people who are simplistic to improve their creativity by holding on to a particular rocket design such a system should direct. Word catches. Add "expectation" catches to the difficulty sliders in the career creation menu. So far plenty of new and professional players have set a general score on how difficulty is perceived. If not anyone then Squad should have the information from the player base to determine the difficulty spectrum from A to Z. When creating a career game the "Funds" difficulty slider is set at 100% default. Make it so that there are catching sayings when sliding from 10% to 1000%. As a few examples, if you were to set it at 10% as almost nobody does there should be a catch saying "You haul asteroids from Eve" On the other hand, if it were 40% it would say "re-usable rocket engineer" If it were 100% it would say "you forgot to adjust this setting" If it were 200% it would say "you are intending to make things easy?" If it were 1000% it would say "Why are you playing career anyway?" To be more direct, the sayings should make sense. Have semi arbitrary but user based catch lines that kind of gives away the expected difficulty when using that option by referring to a catch line that gives away a expected play style. For 40% funds I expect you make re-usable rockets to get into a expected career pace duration. This give general consensus about the direction on how to setup your career properly based on your experience. The same should be applied to the science and reputation sliders. Part of why career is sometimes outside the pleasurable experience is because people fail to set it up properly even although the career system in it's intirety is at fault here. I don't know how Squad formerly expected the contract system to evolve, but they haven't made it clear how they'd envisioned the current career system to be played or did any effort to learn how to set it up properly based on how they currently constructed it.

What I mean is that a strut part isn't a dedicated method by which side boosters are supported in real life. There aren't strut lines hanging of the top of a rocket to hold up the boosters. Instead mechanisms or bolts are used to seperate a booster. Attaching fuel tanks directly to a center tank should simulate whole structural integrity because a rocket with 2 boosters should be integral without lines helding it together. Therefore autostrut is the proper method to discard ever needing the strut connector. Only when it's necessary use the strut connector, at least that's my opinion. Some people may find them look cool.

While struts add drag It seems the cross angle matters so placing it as much vertical and as short as possible should help (which is best anyway) I also heard but I am not sure that the parent attachment part of the strut connector influences the drag. If that part is a nosecone or a wing piece then drag would have been less. I think this is proper, lage cillindrical tubes create drag vortexes and increase as you fly faster. For that matter, using no struts and attaching mk3 fuel tanks together and they'll hang as if they were loose. Using autostruts when necessary it's like bolting the fuel tanks on, and only the strut connector is used when necessary. Also, the shock cone intake seems to do best for minimizing drag at super/hypersonic speed. Use it coupled with the 2.5 to 1.25m adapter and you will have the most aerodynamic shape. If you have Making history for 1.875m the FL-C1000 fuel tank seems to be the best shape. Furthermore, what people always forget to mention is the amounts of stacks used. If you have a 1.25m fuselage but you require 2 engines it's better to use a adapter on the back then to create a second fuel tank. If you have a space plane with 3 fuel tanks (1 center and 2 parallel) and you require more then 3 engines you'll also use adapters. Also, drag also depends on the rear tapered ends. If it's only engines on the rear attachment nodes it is influenced by the engines, some give more drag. When using the R.A.P.I.E.R.S. you can use the reversed nosecone trick to minimize drag further. Furthermore, while wing incidence helps you want to calibrate it so that the prograde reticle is at the horizon when you are at the crucial 400m/s mark. While some just take a simple ballpark of 3 degrees while 4 or 5 might be better. That means you'll break past 400m/s easier and also use less fuel.

Correction, the second smallest is Pol. Have you ever tried this before. As you might notice the rover wheels have max motor speeds and ultimately impact damage. Rover wheels need ground traction to accelerate. If you use Pol and Gilly (the smallest rocks in the solar system) you could get into orbit on motor speeds. On Pol this will be next to impossible since the TR-2L wheels don't go much faster then 100m/s, however, you can use reaction torque to rotate the vessel and try to catapult of the ground using high impact tolerant landing gear when nearing this velocity. Then you still have the problem of delivering the final kick. If you hop on the surface accelerating then at some point you will fly off and coast to Apoapsis, but periapsis is still as high as the hill you launched of from. So for orbital insertion you'll again have to catapult by decoupling the vessel like in stratzenblitz's video to orbit on jet engines only video, although less drastic since Pol isn't that massive, this being said I think Minmus can be done through this method also.

@Johnster_Space_Program I'm trying to make a tsto, a rocket carrier plane carrying another rocket plane with ISRU. The idea being to land the large rocket plane at 3-4000m, detach the smaller plane, glide/fly it down to sea level to do experiments, then fly back to the carrier plane to re-dock, fill it up using isru and travel to another BIOME. The thing is, you want people to land below 2500m, does the fulfillment still count if I land higher, decouple a 2nd plane to get down there. Mind you that I can land the larger rocket plane near sea level but my action radius is severely diminished when willing to biome hop, do you mind?

Also know that any form of clipping causes more framerate issues, these clipped parts can be minor. Also, the amount of engines influences framerates a lot, so if your using a lot of vectors maybe mammoths is a better choice. Not to break your game, I would want to agree that such a setting might be appropriate for you or anyone else. But so far, all video's posted by other members had this issue. IIRCbradlywhistance did the Eve stock prop SSTO and he required 14 hours of filming. What you want to do is make sure your vessel flies good to begin with. I advise to hyperedit test larger vessels methodically by creating one step by step while testing such vessels to make sure I don't make engineering mistakes. What I always do for larger spaceplanes is first make the fuselage, cockpit, engines and wheels and then test gravity drops (to simulate fuselage and landing gear rigidity), if it is not good enough I try different autostrut settings, another root part or using different attachment methods to see how strong I can make my fuselage. Then I do pitching tests by first attaching the rear horizontal/vertical stabiliser and trying different engines combinations for the best takeoff roll. Then I attach the wings, if you need large wings it is best to place each segment one by one to the fuselage for best strength. That makes sure wings can hold up under stress much better. Just make sure they're spaced wide as they might clip. Then I make sure the wing looks good enough, having more wings near the heavy dry mass section. That means a rear delta wing for rear engine space planes or a mid wing for craft with engines at the middle. Then I do high maneuvering tests to see if the wings hold up. Then I attach cargo and try a race to orbit. If anything fails on the way up I go back to the editor, adjust anything that needs adjusting and go for a 2nd try, one that's usually succesful. This way you make sure you don't forget a step and have a malfunctioning plane. If you intend to record it is your management to get the vessel working, hence it's why people are willing to showcase their designs. Also, a faster graphics card makes faster recording also, make sure you have one.

Just out of curiosity, for what do you need this? If you tell us, maybe I can see what your after and if there's anything you could do alternatively. I don't expect your willing to hit the moon surface at 5km/s and expect the vessel to withstand. Remember that KSP works by part impact damage and joint rigidity (part connections) Ignore damage makes it so parts "cannot explode" however, the culprit being that ksp load physics frame by frame. If you are to hit a surface (mun) at several km/s then the 1 second timeframe when hitting the surface will cause the vessel to sink down the surface. In KSP nothing can be below a surface and survive and anything that does explodes. In case of joint rigidity, well, the joint connection cheat seems to make the joints unbreakable but it will still deform the vessel. If you are to hit the surface at very high speeds the physics timeframe will cause a part of the vessel to sink further down the surface (the heavier side like a heavier middle fuel section) or a frontal section if you are to hit the surface with the front nosecone. In that case the joints will deform at the joints where the impact or weight of the vessels is situated. So a 200G impact will deform loose wheels, or the heavy structure to which it is hanging, in case of a fuel tank dominated large rocket or space plane the joints at the heavy fuel tanks will deform. The joints will not reset but keep in place at the deformity caused by the impact. Under some autostrut settings and impact angles you might get many forms of kraken when trying to do so.

@Angeltxilon You can use the bettertimewarpmod... You can use a custom physics timewarp up to 100x If your vessel is properly autostrutted, not to long, wide or tall and not overly complex I find I can use 100x often without kraken. That means a TWR 0.05 vessel travelling at 100x is as if you were accelerating at 5 TWR in real seconds. I once did a continuous burn from kerbin orbit to Duna orbit without ever stopping the engine from kerbin orbit to duna capture. If you got more complex vessels which are properly autostrutted 20x should be possible in most cases. What allows up to 100x timewarp depends on how parts are strutted so use hyperedit to test various autostrut option, that often works.

Is this for career with selected parts or sandbox with every part available. In case of the former, what nodes are unlocked? In any case, at kerbalx you can find vessels. Search "minmus" with a selection for "rockets" only and you should find plenty I presume. If your using Steam then there's also Steam workshop to find vessels.

Fun challenge, this seems rather fun and will see if I can properly mess up any of the planes I've got. Is this the invention of multiplayer

Fair point, as it happens I try to avoid this All I can say is to recommend the same, although proper landing legs are hard to come by to protect them so we need these first perhaps. But how long have we asked for better ones... proper guess I guess, that has been long

Well, some people like to throw one or two dozen lights on their craft, then wonder why their vessel runs sluggish. But that is over the top in my opinion. For functionality I'd use 3 lights to look in front, in front and below and directly below. Then a light to visualize every angle of the spacecraft, these are 6 points. Using more then 1 light to illuminate on side of the craft usually overcasts the light so much the vessel becomes bright white. That looks stupid to begin with and I always seemed weird when I looked at these ships. The last reason for a added light is at a docking port with which you would connect. Let's say these are 2 then that adds 2 more lights. So that's 11 total, that's shouldn't cripple most computers plus several of those 11 could be landing gear lights. If it were a craft without docking ports that would be 9 parts. Also it is the spotlight ray that mostly cripples the performance. Neon or other forms of low level cosmetical light would only be there to add colors, airplane lights or other such things. That would have less effect on performance. Also it would be a good idea to add a toggle to the current lights for different colors so we don't need extra parts. To be blunt, I like the models of the current lights although the part textures could have an update. Maybe have a truss option like on the MH engines so they can have the rail and the feet of the Mk1 and Mk2 taken off. Also have texture selections for the light as on the MH parts so you can turn the black casing into white, grey or any alternative form. One thing I dislike about these lights is that the stock fuselage colors are mostly white with black thrown in on the stripes while the casings for the mk1 and mk2 lights are light dark, may I suggest we get a white option.

@Stone Blue OSE works with litres for volume and requires a dedicated container to store it. I don't think it has a container to store a orion drive engine, but you can experiment and try

This! There are 2 things though I have a objection with, that is aside from the idea in general. The only objection is fixing engine bells. Does that seem reasonable? AFAIK, the alloy of a engine bell is specifically casted so it can withstand the pressures, besides, a engine bell has just the proper weight to impact the pressures it is designed for. In direct translation, the thickness and the alloy strength is as strong and sturdy to survive mission elapsed time, in some cases they're reusable, in other cases they're specifically made to last multiple flights as on spaceX rockets. Furthermore, if the contour of a engine bell isn't perfectly concave the gasses can over pressure causing ripture and explode as the combustion will travel internally. For that matter, real engines and engine repairs are tested in facilities for months. So Bill taking a fix out of his backpack to repair a engine in good hopes he did it right with a wishful intention to departure from Eeloo to Kerbin seems like a very bad idea. For that matter, some engines are unreachable when they're up high, so if I require a repair on Tylo I need a seperate ladder just to reach the engine on one side, and then operate into it with no scaffolding or other ways of machining (forget tools or devices, engine repairs require machines and energy tools not lying around) On top of that Bill would do it in a click and that is that just because he has 10 points to his name. But if you find this is within the cartoony style of KSP I don't have absolute objection but it would seem outside the scope either way IMO.

This is KSP, not build your own engine simulator. Also the technical outside the box kind of creations are aside selected for some people that are interested in this. AFAIK, aside from prop planes, custom engines, mechanical bearings and cog's in general they are build and showcased as work of art. Never have I seen a custom made fan that could make a airplane, I've only seen a custom turbofan made boat created by azimech and it didn't moved particularly fast and the engine was huge. Unless you've progressed further that is. Also, a special fairing part for engine housing.... why? It would just be another fairing type part only to be named differently. If the fairing part works for this why ask for a substitute. What's better about a specific alternative housing shell next to fairings? It already functions to use it as a engine housing so it's good at that. Furthermore, you don't have to just add moar engines. You should search youtube for Beaucoupzero and watch his builds. As you'll see he slightly clips several engines together, then uses tail connectors and a fairing shell to make it look as a single engine block. It's still rapier engines and whiplashes but you can attach, combine clip them to look as a different engines alltogether. Creativity sparks wonders!