Sky Vagrant

Got to 1000 Gamer Score on KSP (it's an Xbox thing):

Anyone considering attempting this challenge? Anything I can clarify?

Thanks! I was unaware of this setting. This makes it easier to assess the LoS category and I'll add a note about the default settings. BTW - I've decided that the default settings represent long-wave communications that either follow the surface or travel through it. So the default 0.9 occlusion isn't entirely unrealistic, and there is some evidence of ultra-low frequency waves traveling around the actual Moon.

The farside of the Mun is where most of us learn about comms relays - usually the hard way! It's easy enough to send a few sats to orbit the Mun and provide good relay coverage for the farside, but you could also land a network of relays to do the same thing at far greater cost! So why would you want a series of relays on the surface of the farside of the Mun? Well, as the analogy for the Earth's Moon, let's assume that stable orbits are a problem we want to work around, There's also the station-keeping that all real sats need to do with limited fuel. So there could be a real-world application if it could be done practically (which is doubtful with the cost and difficulty of landing). Here's my example of one such farside surface relay network: While I had fun doing these missions, I figured that others could do it better and I want to see that! I want to see your awesome deployers and your crazy comms towers. The basic challenge is fairly simple: create a Mun farside surface relay network that provides continuous contact (while behind the Mun) between Kerbin and a vessel in Mun orbit with an apoapsis below 15 km. You only need to do an equatorial relay network - i.e. you don't need to cover high inclinations. Land the network, post a pic or vid demonstrating that you are communicating through the surface relays, and claim your patch! One caveat, "Occlusion Modifier, Vac:" must be set to the default (0.90) or higher. (This is a setting from the start new game menu under the advanced game difficulty settings, so if you didn't touch those in your current game then it should be fine.) Now for some additional competition parameters! Most Hops Trophy: awarded for the vessel with a periapsis above 10 km that takes the most Mun surface hops to communicate back to Kerbin. You can set "Occlusion Modifier: Vac:" as high as you want for this challenge, but let us know what you set it to. Your network still needs to meet the criteria for the basic badge (i.e. must cover the entire farside for orbits above 10 km). Given that you will be able to communicate through a significant portion of the Mun's crust, the challenge will be in figuring out how to position the relays and your orbit far enough apart to force more hops. This is about the opposite of efficiency! Big Dropper Trophy: awarded for the mission that deliveries the highest number of landed relays deployed by one lander/skycrane (without resupplying the vessel with additional relays) LoS Decoration: Build a realistic line-of-sight (LoS) Mun farside network. The game might not make use of all your relays, but show us how they have LoS around the Mun. Set "Occlusion Modifier: Vac:" to 1.0 or higher in the advanced game difficulty settings (new game start) and then create a functioning surface relay network. Anyone that does this gets the basic patch with a special decoration for their achievement. Realistic Relay Trophy: Design the most realistic relay station. Stations on the real Moon would have to contend with high and low temps, would need to be low mass but very stable, and would need a realistic power source. Extra-Kerbin Decoration: Build a surface relay systems outside of Kerbin's SOI to either communicate back to Kerbin or to the primary body (e.g. Ike farside to Duna). Anyone that does this gets the basic patch with a special decoration for their achievement. For surface relays on bodies with atmospheres, the "Occlusion Modifier, Atm:" must be set to the default (0.75) or higher. I'll make the trophies and decorations if anyone earns them - or others could make them up if they don't like my patch. (This is the first challenge I've created, so please provide feedback and I'll add and adjust as needed.)

I put a network of surface (landed) relays on the farside of the Mun: And found a cool place in the process:

Nice work! In the vid there’s a point where the vessel’s shadow is at the bottom of the screen and looks like Tom Servo for a second. He didn’t have anything funny to say though.

When we got to Bop we switched to the Nemo II lander at the spacestation: Valentina on Bop (spoilers for the secrets of Bop): After drilling and refueling at the Bop stations, they headed to Laythe with full tanks and a few hundred units of ore to process on arrival. Spacestation cutaway shot: Then Valentina and Christiano transferred into a Lidenbrock III spaceplane and rendezvoused with the mining/refueling base in polar orbit. Engineer Christiano EVAed over to the base to land with it. My thought was that it could refuel itself and take little hops until it was in a good position. While it was a great lander/base for Laythe, it was not stable trying to hop. So I had to make several landing attempts until I got it to the right spot. After Christiano landed solo with an AI pilot, Valentina landed solo in the spaceplane. I'm not the best atmo pilot in KSP, but I'm a lot better after doing a few unimproved runway landings and takeoffs on Laythe: And here's a latter mission to the surface with some other Kerbal meeting up with Christiano: After I got confident with takeoffs and the SSTO flight pattern for Laythe exit, I managed to take a pretty good screenshot of assent: The last of the contracts above was completed when I got the giant part from Vall orbit all the way back to Kerbin's surface: After that it was all refueling runs to the surface until I had enough Lf to refuel my passenger transfer ship for the trip back to Kerbin. It took the data disc back too and an unmanned spaceplane from Kerbin went up to retrieve the disc, Valentian, and Christiano for their triumphant return home. Through the course of this mission, I realized that the "Breaking Ground" surface features don't appear until you create a new save file. So this is the last mission in this save. I might wait until KSP 2 at which point I plan to switch to my laptop, but I might get the urge before then to fire up KSP on my Xbox to build some ships I've been dreaming up. Either way, this mission was way too long and I'll only be doing single launch missions from here on out.

I have had this happen. I’m pretty sure it is from leaving and reentering physics range without reloading that physics frame. I would recommend making a save file when you land, making a save file when you get to the site and fulfill that part of the contract, switching to KSC, switching back to your EVAed Kerbal, and returning to your ship. If the ship is still floating, reload the save from after the contract fulfillment and head back to your ship.

You have accidentally set the trim. That’s what the purple makers represent. I think it gets set when you press in on the thumb stick while maneuvering. Since you also press in on the thumb stick to change cameras this can result in inadvertently setting the trim. I’d recommend going in to settings and turning trim off entirely. I did that a long time ago because I was having the same problem which I why I don’t remember exactly how it gets set.

Physics range should be 2.5km in space (25km on the ground). Make sure you aren’t time warping as you cross over 2.5km but then you should be able to time warp after that until just before 200m. On Xbox, if the glitch a happens the target craft will speed away when you get closer than 200m. I save at about 500m so I can reload if this happens. It never happens after the reload at 500m. Since I stopped time warping over the 2.5km barrier it has only happened rarely. So step-by-step: Stop time warp before 2.5km and don’t time warp until after you are closer than 2.5km Save game around 500m out Stop time warp before you cross over 200m and don’t resume until you are sure the glitch didn’t happen Load your save at 500m if needed

Wasn't quite ready to land Valentina on Bop. Needed to get some of my craft circling Laythe sorted out. I took the inflatable heat shield off of the big tank in the original post above (but I'm saving it to repurpose it later). I then refueled my "Columbia" station and got it down to low Laythe orbit to rendezvous and attach to the big tank. I dropped the four nuke engines I was using on it because this will be the station's final orbit and I needed to free up the one large docking port. And it was a good thing I did because the standard sized docking ports on the station aren't working anymore. All three have space tape (struts) attached to them. I was able to dock at these ports before, but now they don't work. But luckily the big tank that is now the station's base has two docking ports. As it is, I won't be bringing more than one vessel to the station at a time due to physics limits (too many parts). So it's all good and that's the fun of sending all this stuff at once and seeing if it all work - way to late to revert to the VAB!

Thanks!! It refueled quicker than I expected considering the small drills and small converter (but I wasn't really concerned with time at this point). Tylo has very rich ore. Lander has two fuel cell arrays tucked between the nacelles, so plenty of power for the small ISRU set up.

By the way, that's Valentia above next to the flag. This is her first landing in the Jool system. Now my mission is to land her on the other four moons (and I haven't landed anyone on Laythe yet). After mining/refueling, took off from Tylo and rendezvoused with the transport. Put all the Lf on the transport and ditched the lander. Also took the data disk (a probe core between two docking ports) so I could land it on all the other moons. When I get back to Kerbin the disc counts as a craft that landing on all five moons. Took transport back to Vall and mined/refueled there and got Valentina and the disc their landing. Then back to Pol to refuel a Jool sat that I wanted to send to Bop to look for mysteries. If you look close, all three inner moons are in this shot! While the scanner sat was at Pol, I found the rough location of an anomaly. It was high in the mountains and Valentina had to fly around looking for it. I was lucky with the monolith spawn on Vall, so the game made up for it by placing this one in a tough spot for landing. It never registered as a discovered green monolith for some reason. And then the game glitched and I had to reload and when I went back to the monolith is still didn't register. So I named it the "Green Meanie". After mining/refueling at Pol, I went to refuel the sat. It has a docking port for this purpose, but a piece of space tape stuck to the port after staging and it's useless. So I had to bring the claw. After that I sent the sat, the disc, and Valentina to Bop and sent Shaihulud (the lander pictured here) to Laythe to bring fuel to the masses. Did a bunch of other maneuver to refuel things, but basically all caught up now. Next time, I'll land Valentina on Bop and visit it's two anomalies.

Next I added fuel to my Tylo lander and made some landing attempts: That was actually a scary near miss! Gotta check what's in front of you when you start a burn. After a couple of failed attempts, I finally landed: Tylo is tough and if I go back I will use bigger engines - something like a 10+ TWR. But Tylo is also pretty dull, so I won't be going back in this mission.

Taking the photo on console is the easy part. Then you have to get it to your laptop/tablet. I play on Xbox and the Xbox app on PC is pretty good for this. Editing all the pictures so they aren't too dark to post is the real effort. [Unrelated Post Follows] Landed on Tylo. It's a pain and it's dull: