Exposure

Is there anything in particular I should keep an eye out for? Decided to see if it would work in 1.3 and it seems ok so far, nothing particular out of place or whacky going on that I would expect from a planet pack integration gone poorly, but it's been a while since I played KSP, so I may be ignoring something obvious to others.

Any plans to let us add in exceptions for designated folders in a future update? For some reason the 3 man stock pod's textures "unloaded" for me even when I add it in the VAB or launch a rocket that uses it, but it works fine for every other part I try out, both with the other stock parts and parts from mods like Tantares or Near Future and SpaceY. Other than that, the mod's quite excellent, and I can always try doing a Gemini or Soyuz mun landing when I get that far in my career save. Might as well branch off from the usual Apollo-esque ones I usually do.

Perhaps time the change with the 1.1 update? The unity 5 upgrade is bound to break a lot of things, so people are probably going be starting new games when they get around to updating KSP for it.

The heatshields were made before 1.0 and thus are configured for Deadly Reentry only, so I just copy pasted SDHI's config and upped the resource amount to match the stock 3.75m heat shield like so: MODULE { // pyrolysisLossFactor changed from stock value of 10000 to 15000 // // Forum user johnsonwax explained that increasing this value allows more heat energy // to be removed per unit of Ablator, which essentially reduces overall Ablator consumption // // This fits the narrative of SDHI's PICA-X heat shield material being more durable than // whatever fictional material is used in stock // // NB johnsonwax noted that 20000 would make for a *very* durable heat shield, but // we agreed that this was probably too overpowered name = ModuleAblator ablativeResource = Ablator lossExp = -6000 lossConst = 1 pyrolysisLossFactor = 900 reentryConductivity = 0.01 ablationTempThresh = 500 } RESOURCE { name = Ablator amount = 1800 maxAmount = 1800 } I have absolutely no idea how actually balanced this is, so you might want to readjust it on your end. And the service modules should be scaling up in terms of fuel capacity when you scale them up to 3.75m size if you have Tweakscale installed. If they're not, you might want to install the latest version rather than the outdated one provided in the pack.

The first one is happening because the Taurus mod changed its folder name since Aerojet last updated, so at (wherever KSP is installed)\GameData\AerojetKerbodyne\Parts\TaurusExtras\AerojetTaurusUmbilicalMM.cfg... Change MODEL { model = R&SCapsuledyne/Parts/TaurusHCV/model scale = 1, 1, 1 } to MODEL { model = RSCapsuledyne/Parts/TaurusHCV/model scale = 1, 1, 1 } And it should load in the Taurus model just fine.

A note: the tweakscale value of 1.5 doesn't really seem to cut it with the latest versions of KSP. (I presume something changed from the last time the mod was updated). A value of 1.85 seems to be close enough for kerbal work when it comes to making a service module that fits on top of 3.75m wide designs like how the SDHI service module fits on top of 2.5m wide designs.

It's DECOUPLER_VERT for the vertical decoupler staging icon.

Does this apply to spaceplanes that launch via the runway as well?

It's not a concern for kerbals on EVA at all, as to quote the USI-LS thread:

Yeah on my tries afterwards it seems I just happened to got spectacularly lucky by the time I started staging the chutes (since the occluded effect goes away if the boost cover goes boom upon encountering terrain), with all the other ones giving out the same behaviour as regular staging.

I was, yeah. After switching to testing out the boost cover, I did get the behaviour of parachutes to just not functioning even when they ejected, unless I right clicked on the port and clicked on decouple node. In fact the rest of the pod seemed to remained occuluded from physics when I staged the cover, since MechJeb kept reporting a drag coefficient of zero while it kept accelerating absurdly fast all the way past mach 1 (or was it 2?) into the ground.

That's weird. I covered the pod and chute with the stock fairings both from a fairing starting point below it, and a fairing starting point attached to the chutes to test this out myself, and it works just fine with RealChutes once I eject the fairings. Are you using a different set of fairings?

You're thinking of the recent devnotes, specifically Harvester's section:

Did you check that they were *actually* broken? KSP will report that any mods that weren't designed with the current version in mind as potentially incompatible, but as the "potenitally" implies, it's not outright confirmation that they won't work. I had some 0.90 mods that were working fine that KSP 1.0 reported as potentially incompatible, for example. Heck, I have MechJeb as well and it still seems to be working just fine in 1.01 for me.

Ahhh. Thanks for correcting me NathanKell! In fact I didn't even realize fuel tanks specifically meant for cryogenic fuels were a thing.

Presuming you're using real fuels, it basically modifies the stock fuel and oxidizer, adds new fuels and oxidizers, along with making it so certain kind of engines can only use certain kinds of fuel. The latest version also changes ISP scaling so thrust is affected depending on altitude, not fuel flow. As an example of how you should use these fuels, I'll show you using a rocket I made. This Saturn V-esque rocket is carrying a Mun Lander + a Command/Service Module. The first stage is using Liquid Fuel (which I believe has been modified so it's basically RP-1) and Liquid Oxygen (which I shall refer to as LOX). While this makes it really heavy (the first stage makes up a great deal of the rocket's weight), this also gives the first stage a lot of thrust, and decent ISP at sea level. (Had I used hypergolic fuels, while it would still have lots of thrust if used in a vacuum, in a sea level launch like this it would be so underpowered it wouldn't be able to take off thanks to their abysmal ISP in atmo) The second stage uses Liquid Hydrogen (which I shall refer to as LH2) and LOX. Since LH2 is far less denser than Liquid Fuel, this means that it's much lighter than what the size would indicate, along with having a great ISP. Thrust is not as powerful as it could be compared to the Liquid Fuel/LOX option for that engine however. The third stage that does orbital insertion and trans munar injection is, again, LH2 and LOX. Same deal as the second stage. After that, the C/SM takes over for Munar Orbit with its hypergolic fuels of UDMH and...N2O4, I believe? As I noted before, hypergolic fueled engines don't really fare that well in atmospheres due to their abysmal ISPs at sea level. In a vacuum environment however, they are much better due to their much higher ISP there. There is something else I nearly forgot to mention. Due to how LOX and LH2 can only be liquids at very cold temperatures, they are considered cryogenic fuels. This has the side problem that since they require very low temperatures to stay liquid, once you move them out of the VAB the cryogenic fuels will start to slowly boil off. For lliftoff and insertion stages that are merely going to the Mun, the boiloff isn't too much of a problem to hinder you. If I had been using cryogenic fuels for my C/SM or lander however, I could have ran into the problem that the travel time required to reach the Mun might have made my landers too underfueled to actually make a landing thanks to boil off. By comparison, hypergolic fuels can remain liquid at much higher temperatures, so boil off isn't a problem. Hence why I'm using them for both the C/SM and the Munar lander. And if you don't understand this explanation, don't feel bad, I kinda suck at explaining things.

Took around...700m/s of delta-v for me IIRC? (If we're talking 20km or so high orbits anyway.) Of course, this may or may not be a major issue for my Apollo 11 mission using Sumghai's service module for the C/SM because it turns out I underjudged how much of an effect the lander's mass would have and I'm not sure if I have enough delta-V to even just return to a Kerbin orbit, much less come back on a reentry trajectory. Probably should have seen that coming now that I think about it, since my C/SM had around 1,800 m/s of delta-v compared to the Apollo CSM's 2,800 m/s... And on a sidenote towards NathanKell or anybody else who might be knowledgeable about it, what can I edit in the v5 configs so I can keep Minimus in the current orbit it's got in my save with v4?

I believe the limit is somewhere around...8 TB, I think. So probably not much of a limit to worry about unless the year is 2040 and one tries to install every mod for KSP ever made.

Is there any plan to "raise" the current camera ceiling in the VAB? Because I have a slight problem with my Saturn V-esque rocket: Believe it or not, I need to raise this thing further up so the launch clamps can work correctly instead of causing the entire thing to explode on launch when the physics loading gets to the part where the main engines are embedded in the launchpad and makes it go "You know what, I'm exploding everything."

Yes. I would be very surprised if it didn't since one of the things you really need to make Real Solar Systems work is FAR...

And I have to disagree with your earlier comment that reducing the gains would just result in career mode being a grind as well. If you reduce it too much like, say, to a tenth of the original values, yes, it would become a major chore. But from my experience a reducing to around somewhere between 70% and 50% for select science items, along with some balance changes like implementing a limit on how much science one can get from transmissions resulted in a generally fair paced advancement, not too slow to the point it felt like I was going need to do hundreds and hundreds of launches to get where, but I actually had to go places if I wanted to keep unlocking the high tier stuff. It's what motivated me to finally get around to planning, building, and actually doing a manned Duna landing and return and break my streak of staying within Kerbin's SoI for all manned missions each time I did a save, if only because I wanted some parts to improve my spaceplane. And it was fun having to deal with the constraints I had with designing the spacecrafts I would need. I mean I think career mode could still use a lot of improvements, but I think you're being a bit too pessimistic about it.

I believe so. The values also work with Real Solar Systems when applied to the Mk 1 pod from the tests I've done, so hopefully it'll work on the various other pods as well.

Heh, thanks for clearing that up, thought something was off when the given temperature exponent was resulting in shockwaves as hot as 30000 C. Now, while I think I can work out ablative shielding from your Gemini .cfg, will the non-ablative shielding need tweaks as well?

Ah. Never did much research about the X-15s so I didn't know that. I'll try experimenting with the various values then. See what makes things work with the given 1.17 exponent without everything exploding.

While 800 m/s may be pushing it a bit, since Kerbal rockets can be more durable compared to RL ones in my experience it seems like it should be a possible velocity. :/