sturmhauke

There are different templates that it chooses from as part of the random selection. The labels don't have any significance, they're just something to identify the mission location.

Shuttles combine the aerodynamics of a brick, inconvenience of off-axis thrust, relatively low payload fraction, and awkward staging into one slightly ridiculous package! But we love them anyway. Don't feel bad if you get it wrong the first several dozen times. Shuttles are the hardest realistic-ish things to fly in this game.

Hmm. Sending a shuttle directly to another star system seems out of scope, even for KSP. But perhaps you could use a shuttle to construct an interstellar vehicle, and then take it along... that might be best left to another thread though.

Maybe if you want to use the Minmus mission parameters for Enceladus and the Laythe parameters for Titan, that could work. I might make new badges anyway. If anyone else wants to do new missions involving planet mods, post your ideas! We'll figure something out.

Powered landings are fine, as long as the orbiter lands horizontally like a plane. But consider the extra mass you have to carry around in fuel, and jet engines if you're using those. It's easier to fly at the end, but it also means you need a larger, more powerful launch vehicle.

I'd probably make a custom badge, honestly. Minmus is approximately the same difficulty as Mun, and Jool... isn't. (Or Sarnus, if you're using OPM). Maybe tooling around on Europa is similar to Minmus, but getting there is a completely different story. I think for overall missions parameters, the Jool series is a better fit. I'm wrapping up my interviews and should be receiving an offer soon. On the one hand, I'll be busy with my new job (unless something terrible happens), but on the other hand I won't be doing endless practice drills and should have some time for badges and new missions and stuff. Badge looks good! Sorry, I forgot to mention this earlier but I compiled some finished badges a while back. I'll send you the links.

"Semantic versioning" is only a guideline, not an ironclad law of the universe. Besides, KSP 2 is a new game, with new code and assets, and presumably different game rules as well. Calling it KSP v2.0.0 isn't even really correct. It should be KSP2 v1.0.0

I do plan on reviewing everything just to see where we're at, but yeah I'll take that into consideration. In the meantime I've got more data structures, algorithms, and high level architecture to brush up on.

As I've mentioned before, I'm very busy in RL at the moment. @Artienia has been helping with moderation duties. One of us will review your submission as soon as we can. We appreciate your patience.

LOL, yeah I've used that one plenty of times myself. Anyway, we'll review your submission and let you know.

The Test Pilot missions are not just on Kerbin though, and are also not part of the standard progression. I think they should stay where they are.

I've been giving this some thought. I think the sensible solution is that the parts used should have stockalike balance relative to the planet mod to qualify for "stock". So for instance, a mod like OPM that adds planets to the stock system, or GPP that replaces it with stock scale planets (in the default config), should use the standard stock parts list. For an upscaled planet pack like JNSQ, GPP with an alternate config, etc., stock parts are effectively somewhat closer to real life performance, making missions a bit harder than stock. Perhaps I could make some laurels or something to signify the higher difficulty. Using a mod like SMURFF to rebalance parts to stockalike would be permissible. In any of these scenarios, using a combination of mods to get modestly higher performance than stockalike would put the mission into the modded category. Using massively higher performance mods would still be disallowed. I have read up on all these different mods, but I haven't actually used any of them myself. I'm open to feedback on specific configs and such. And finally, @Entropian deserves special commendation for doing RSS with standard stock parts, which is way more difficult than any of these. Even RSS-RO would have been easier than that. And so, I present the Skunkworks badge! Congratulations!

Both, really, but yeah that's weird. Are you using autostruts? Sometimes too many autostruts can cause phantom stresses, especially if any autostruts cross the decoupler.

I've found that if you clip the separators too far into other parts, it can cause collisions at the moment of separation that the game wasn't checking for before separation.

For my STS-1T mission, I throttled down the carrier plane and went into a shallow dive before releasing the orbiter. I also mounted the orbiter pitched up slightly so it would naturally have more lift on release. Here's a link: Er, wait no that's the wrong one. Here: