king of nowhere

I've reached the point where this challenge is not particularly interesting to me alone. it's basically a matter of bringing isru equipment and refueling at every moon, or of bringing enough drop tanks. Unless there is something extra to spice it up I have then decided to try this challenge with kerbalism installed. I will have to partake in this multi-year mission while dealing with life support, radiation damage, mechanical failures. To provide life support and redundancies, my main ship is 3600 tons and 1200 parts. I am reporting my progress So far, I'm dealing very well with life support and failures, but it sems solar storms are frequent enough that the mission cannot be stretched over a few years, even with the best mitigation techniques available. crew stress is rising even faster, even though i provided them with a flying luxury resort. I wonder, in case I have to send my crew back and replace it with another, if i can get some honorary mention anyway

you have to set the pitch at 90 degrees, for some reason the engine thinks the default position for most rockets is horizontal

why not leave them there? there's not much else to do with them. i stopped playing career after i got to the point where there was no challenge, so i basically stopped playing with the stuff i don't need

I don't have programming skills. but i can provide feedback. So, I have my spaceship that run out of power. I'm trying to figure out why, it has 4 packs of fuel cells running and i disabled everything that i found, anyway, that's the downside of having a 1200 parts ship. problem is, kerbonauts died of cold. After 5 minutes! It would take far more than that for a spacecraft to cool down, especially a large one. kerbonauts dead because the ship was unpowered for 5 minutes is way too harsh

oh, i see. But no, no, no need to install any mod! I didn't even knew there was a dedicated mod (though, if i ever thought about it, i'd have guessed yes, because this game has a mod for everything) One can always open the transfer window planner tool on the internet browser. which, if you're playing from play station, you can do on your mobile phone. Granted, that bunch of data about ejection inclination and angle isn't very easy to replicate. but it at least gives some good indication on when you should make your launch, and what kind of deltaV cost you can expect. and you already know more or less in which direction to launch, so it's all about fiddling afterwards

that would be very explicative, if I had any idea what is twp. Anyway, i didn't say that the OP should use that. I said that perhaps you were supposed to. I suggested multiple ways, more or less accurate, in which one can find a transfer window. Perhaps nobody bothered to implement some calculator in the stock game because they said, there are so many methods available, those that reach that far will find something

I think you're supposed to mostly eyeball them. in most cases, they are large enough that launching a bit earlier or later won't make a big difference. that's why they are called transfer windows and not transfer pinholes. moho is a bit of an exception because it has a fast, eccentric, inclined orbit. or perhaps you are meant to look online at the various tools available. or to use mechjeb.

A couple of additional remarks: - the conditions to run experiments are hard to come by. I have deployed a scanner and tried a BEEP experiment, but it says invalid conditions. Except it does not say why those conditions are invalid and what should I do to make them good. A popup message stating "you need an orbit with such and such characteristics" would be helpful - now that the stock game implemented EVA repairs and repair kits, it would be nice to tie the kerbalism maintenance to them. Have the engineer need an eva repair kit to perform maintenance on the engines and such - i tested a ship around moho, and it never needed heat radiators. it should - battery power isn't enough to sustain my life support during occultation, so during the night i am turning on some fuel cells. by day i use electrolysis to get back the hydrogen and get ready for the next night. Every day i have to activate manually the electrolysis and shut down the fuel cells, and viceversa every night. is there a way to make this whole process authomatically? - pressurized tanks used for xenon are vastly more efficient than the stock xenon tanks. perhaps they should be equalized?

So, I actually went and completed the spaceship to try and make a grand tour with this mod. It has 1200 parts for 3600 tons. We'll see if it really is impossible to do complex, long term manned missions with this mod, or if it just takes an inordinate amount of effort. I think it will also be interesting for the mod builders, if they are considering some balance fixes. To see what happens when one tries really hard to overcome the obstacles set by this mod. So far (I am around Eve, though I only update the report in chunks), stress and radiations are growing much faster than anticipated. I went to Eve in 200 days, and I took already 10% radiation damage on the crew - despite max shielding and a whooping 9 active shields. It seems there are solar storms every week! I actually didn't knew to stay inside a planet's magnetosphere, and anyway I have some deltaV issues on going to Eve and back, but I may be able to manage with shorter flight times. What's surprising so far is stress! All my crew members are between 15 and 30% stress level. Despite living in a friggin flying luxury resort! I gave them every single comfort available. Even more than needed, actually. according to the VAB, they should last for 20 years. And yet, they are all very stressed already. Heck, jeb smashed a radiator in the very first day! (it could be fixed by an engineer). I have no idea what happens when I reach 100% stress, perhaps the mission can still continue. But I think stress should be toned down, at least if one has the level of luxury accomodations I have. And I haven't had a single malfunction yet. Ok, every critical component is high quality, and I send an engineer to inspect the engines after every use, but I'd still expect that with 64 solar panels, one or two should have some accidents already. It looks like I will probably have to send all the crew back home at some point and get some fresh kerbonauts to continue the trip, with the same ship. Which I would count as "partial success".

Part 2: Assembling the DREAM BIG When I started this task, I wasn't even sure it would be possible to make a ship as big as DREAM BIG without it getting eaten by some kraken. Especially because kerbalism seems to have some conflict with autostrutting. Thankfully, all went well. Eventually.

Ever since I learned about the kerbalism mod, I knew I wanted to try my hand at it after I’d be good enough at the stock game. And I wanted to create a big, self-sustaining spaceship. Always in the stock game I would have liked to make things elaborate, but had no reason for it. An external crew pod seat and an engine is already enough for a grand tour. I give my kerbals more luxurious accomodations, but aside from that, why bother? Kerbalism gives me exactly the excuse to do what I was looking for: make something big and majestic. And not just by adding parts that look good, but in a way that would have a purpose. First I experimented a bit with a career, but I soon got bored. Making routine missions in all safety is just not for me. Making a Mun landing with just a food canister and a couple oxygen tanks is not really different or more entertaining that playing the stock game. I need challenges. So I skipped directly to the prize. The mission purpose is to build a majestic spaceship called DREAM BIG and perform a grand tour with the kerbalism rules. There is one exception: I will use the stock ISRU functionality, but I will only refuel at Duna. I will liberally use save scumming to protect myself from failed manuevers (as I keep saying, I have no patience for making everything just so), but I will never use it to revert a malfunction. Or, if I do, I will admit the defeat. A spacewalk around the final version of the ship Well, that's one more reason to try. To make my mission reports easier to navigate, I'll try to organize stuff into collapsible chapters. 0) Why refueling only at Duna? Considerations on Kerbalism ISRU Part 1: Projecting the DREAM BIG 1.1) Home mothership 1.2) Dolphin escape pods 1.3) Digger mining vehicles 1.4) The Can lander 1.5) FU Eve lander 1.6) Trucker Moho transfer stage 1.7) Wing reconnaissance probes 1.8) DREAM BIG, fully assembled (and musing on realism) 1.9) Analysis: reliability and redundancies 1.10) Mission plan 1.11) Goals and success Outstanding success! Grand tour is completed successfully; DREAM BIG returns to Kerbin and it’s mostly in good conditions, ready to make the trip again with minimal resupplying. Complete success! Grand tour is completed successfully, and all the crew returns home in some way. Partial success! Grand tour is mostly completed, but one or two planets are skipped. Some inconvenience forces me to cut the mission short. All kerbins are safely returned home. Example: Time and malfunctions force me to skip Eeloo and Dres. Mixed success One or two kerbal die on the mission. The mission still reaches most of its objectives, though. Example: FU Eve explodes during reentry, killing a kerbonaut and forcing me to skip Eve and Laythe landing, but the rest of the mission goes fine. Mixed failure As mixed success, but with more casualties and/or more planets skipped. Example: FU Eve explodes, and I also have to skip Eeloo. Partial failure Several things go wrong; many kerbonauts die, and/or the tour fails to reach even half of its intended targets. Still there are some highlights to justify this not being a complete failure. I must at least reach Duna to qualify for this. Complete failure The tour doesn’t even come close to completion, and/or there are lots of casualties. To make an ass of myself I lose all the crew without even going far towards completing the objectives This is the first time I perform a challenge I'm not sure I can succeed at. Heck, I'm not even sure it can be succeeded in the first place. How well will I fare?

Are ships inside a planet's magnetopause protected from solar storms?

well, the report will be long and wordy and will wait tomorrow, but I can share some pics This is Home in all its illogic glory In more detail, the fuel tanks and shuttles greenhouses and various amenities the eve lander A perspective to fully appreciate the number and variety of service ships but i didn't really realize how goddamn BIG this thing is until I came to this last perspective: an EVA kerbonaut went to repair the engines, and upon coming back, it was faced by a wall of spaceship 1191 parts. 3662 tons when full For a moment it was even bigger, I sent a special fuel tank to replenish it, to start the voyage with full tanks. it's 400 tons of tanks, but it's dwarfed by the colossal ship

I will open a detailed mission report for it as soon as i have the whole thing assembled. Several people told me it's impossible to make a grand tour with kerbalism, and I intend to settle the matter one way or another. But first I want to have the whole ship assembled, because I wasn't sure the game would even be playable at all with it. Now I am quite optimistic. As long as I can deal with the roughly 5 frames per second, and the couple minutes load whenever the main ship comes into physical radius. I like my monstruosity enough to deal with that. the only thing I regret is not being able to put a gigantic "DREAM BIG" logo on it.

ok, putting some autostruts stabilized the structure against shaking. I hope it won't mess too badly with kerbalism. I felt safe in autostrutting to heavier, because 1) I have 4 S4-512 tanks on the main body that are, without competition, the biggest parts. no risk of priority being swapped 2) the heaviest parts were often quite far from the center. as in, the mining vehicles are attached through a docking port, and attached to that is an RGU, 2 food containers, one adapter, a crew pod, a crew living space, a convert-o-tron, and finally a big S3 tank. If I root the S3 tank to grandparent, I fear it may get strutted to a crew pod, or food container, with no gain; i need it strutted to the main body. Even then, I quickly speed up the game every time i finish manuevering, just to ensure there is no remaining structural stress. For now it's holding. i never had problems with shaking again. And I am almost done. I only need to attach 2 more pieces, a rather small one with 40 parts, and the big eve lander, that's a 200 parts behemot. On the plus side, Eve is my first stop, so I will drop that pretty fast. It still lags horribly, but there's not much to be done for it. It's less bad if I restart the pc regularly. Yes, the smart thing would be to not launch a ship so big. but as soon as i installed kerbalism, I wanted to see if I could run a grand tour mission, dealing with life support, radiations, and malfunctions all along the way. planning and anticipation have been obsessing me for the last couple of weeks, and I will see my dream to the end, successful or not. thanks everyone. any further advice would still be welcome

it's already in orbit. the biggest part i launched from the ground was 550 parts, reduced to 330 after staging. to that i added 4 refueling vehicles, because i will have to do a lot of refueling, and with a chance to blow up an engine at every trip i wanted backups. and 4 crew escape pods. and now I will need a few landers, but i'm mostly done

also, my behemot is making the game lagging hugely. which is absolutely expected, but not also when i'm not controlling it. i am in the space center, going from the tracking station to the vab, and still it lags hugely. why is that?

I have discovered that when it starts shaking, i can quickly speed up time to stop it. the loss of rotation upon speeding time is considered a bug, or an engine limitation at best, but in this case it's saving me. anything else?

I have a ship with 900 parts, and i'm afraid that count is going to become higher before it can become smaller. No, don't ask, I need ALL of them, and I already tried to keep the numbers down. I am using kerbalism, so I need to include extra redundancies in case something breaks. I really do need this huge thing. And I spent a couple weeks planning the mission, I'm not keen on giving it up. As you all know, ships with too many parts, especially when connected by docking ports, are prone to breaking. at some point some parts will start shaking, and the shaking will propagate to everything and get worse, until you lose some parts of the ship. turning SAS off helps, but only mildly. I'm not sure if autostrutting makes things better or worse, but it has some problems with kerbalism, so i'm trying to use it as little as possible. Any advice on how to handle ships with huge part count without them disassembling spontaneously? thanks

I've made extensive use of them, but they are quite complex. you need to do 3 main things . first thing to discuss is angle of attack. if your propeller blades are flat, you won't get any propulsion. in fact, they need to be angled just right, and the right angle changes with air speed. for this, you need to tie your blade angles to a KAL controller, and move the controller to change the blade angle during flight. i guess you'll also need instructions on the KAL controller... it's easier to do than to say it. You place the KAL anywhere on your vehicle, then you select it and open the editor. Now from the editor you go in the actions menu, and you select the blades. you select the angle of attack, and you put the two extreme values you want (you will have to experiment with those, they depend on how you made the propellers). Now you can open the KAL and mode the bar on it, and it will move all the propellers. Use f12 to activate aerodinamics show during flight, it will show you a bunch of blue, red and purple lines; you are looking at the purple ones, you want them to point forward. move the KAL to make them do so. if they always point backwards, you got the angle inverted. - Also, one propeller will cause your plane to spin. You need two propellers rotating in opposite directions, so their momentum will cancel - to accelerate the propellers with the normal accelerator, you have to go in the action menu, under "main accelerator", and select the propellers and their torque. I don't feel like i'm doing a good job of explaining. It's easier done than said. unforrtunately, very few people in this forum understand propellers, so not many to explain. feel free to ask clarifications

pictures?

I generally call stuff "mun lander", "laythe plane", "orbiter", or some other unimaginative things. sometimes random bouts of creativity strike me, and i give real names. they are generally caused by random though associations, they often are references to something and they generally refer to some actual traits of the ship. for example, a ship with a nuclear engine made to explore multiple planets was called Marco Polonium, joining the great explorer marco polo with nuclear power. or another whom i flooded with lights, i dubbed it flying christmas tree. but sometimes i am more serious, my latest mothership, built using the kerbalism mod in an attempt to have life support run for decades, I decided to call it Home, because that's what's supposed to be

hey, i was missing this key piece of question. and the answer is: depends. planes are different. some do require SAS on, but without pointing at any direction. some will need to point prograde, while others will become unstable if you try to do it. and others will have to be flown by hand. In any case, i've never seen stability assistance (as in, not trying to point at a specific direction, only to stand still) to do any harm

yes, of course. we mean to go slow when you touch. when you are still 50 meters from your target, you should go a bit faster

show us pictures. we can't see the problem if we can't see the craft