ncw33

Yes, whether venting or just hydrogen getting out through valves.

Really? With the default science scaling, you'll max out the tech tree if you do the main missions (ie not the hard ones like Eve) + one biome from Eeloo, Dres, one or two moons of Jool (not all). You really don't need to scrape every nook and cranny - one landing per celestial body is more than enough to complete the tech tree.

I've had success with this technique: Use a fairing, don't construct it yet Place one of the half-pipe cargo trusses on the fairing. Building lander within the cargo truss Place fuel & engines below the fairing Then close the fairing around the cargo Finally - TRICK! - place the capsule on top of the cargo truss, clipped into the top of the fairing The trick is that the game won't let you close the fairing if it collides with anything. So remove the top stages, close the fairing, them pop them back on (clipping into the fairing). Easy peasy hack.

Agreed, there's abundant science at the default reward scaling. I finished Tier 4 and have maybe ~30K science extra that I can't spend, all from a sample-return trip to Dres, plus all the mission-derived science (so landing & returning from Mün, Minmus, Duna, Tylo - bringing back science since I was there). And I haven't visited Eve, Moho, or Eeloo at all yet.

I try launches without cheating - then if parts explode on ascent (especially inside a fairing!) I just re-do the launch with thermals disabled in the settings.

KSP has never been about a "realistic" approach. Just as with KSP1, the core vision is to strike a balance between realism and gameplay fun. There are so many examples of this: Arbitrary engine throttling Zero-delay engine startup Sub-m/s burn accuracy Overpowered reaction wheels (with no need to use RCS to spin down the wheels) No fuel escape on multiyear voyages No snacks for the crew!! And so on. Not needing line-of-sight for commnet is just one tiny issue in the bigger balance between fun/easy, realism/simplified, big-picture-flying/resource-micromanagement. You might disagree about commnet, but the approach is really very consistent with all the other KSP features.

When you say "hundreds of m/s radial" presumably you mean moving the start time off the manoeuvre node? The departure burn is always 100% prograde in your kerbin orbit ... (or prograde plus a little normal). I've resorted to eyeballing all the transfers, which is pretty accurate and doesn't lose much efficiency (the old alexmoon plots confirm that there is a bit of a window for departure, without much penalty).

I slightly dispute that launcher engines are "dumb". Are F-1, Raptor-2, or RS-25, or BE-4 "dumb"? All of them are not arguably not vacuum engines (which you call "fancy"). Exotic power source to get high V_e (like Dawn) - that's fancy. But putting a longer engine bell on a keralox engine isn't really dumb vs fancy, is it?

Come on, give them a break @HebaruSan. Here's your explanation: they're unlikely to be lazy, they're clearly not stupid, so presumably they're busy or distracted, maybe on the mountain of work for Colonies. Little bits of polish take time - especially when it's the entire game that needs polish, not just one small mod. Don't say they're "supposedly a UI/UX team".

Exclusive news report! Our brave Kerbonauts have returned from Jool. Since year 25, Jeb, Val, Bill, and Bob have been bravely exploring the Jool system. Now they return to tell their tale! The journey begins The trip consisted of two launches, both launched on the same day of the Jool transfer window in year 25. The launch vehicles were similar: a 6× Vector lower stage, with SRBs; a SWERV transfer stage, and a payload on top. The first launch (below) contained an unmanned (or so we thought!) Tylo lander, with a Mk-1 lander can on top of an ascent stage, a payload bay for science, and a descent stage to be dropped just before landing the upper stage. The robotic upper stage was sent from a 120km circular orbit on a fairly unremarkable transfer to Jool, in fact, not even using up all the Methalox: Bill says, "we slapped the rocket together according to Jeb's design, without precalculating the δv. Naturally we ended up with 800m/s too much Methalox and about 1000m/s too little Hydrogen. But our fuel tanks have remarkably little fuel boil-off so who cares!" Next, the crewed stage launched (below). The lower stages were the same, with an upper stage consisting of a Mk-3 capsule, a docking port, and a honking big Tuba engine. We put an Orbital Science module in the cargo bay. In true Kerbal style, Jeb says: "I used some parts from my junkyard to build a fairing over the docking port on the nose, because Bob said he needed to make 2000 more scientific discoveries before he could work out how to put a hatch over the docking port. I don't know what 2000 discoveries means, but my fairing worked fine". Val commented, "I put plenty of fuel in the crewed stage, so that we could refuel the lander as we visited different Joolian müns. After the Tylo ascent, the lander will definitely need a refill, but the upper stage (that we didn't expend on Tylo) will have plenty of capacity to hop around the other müns." Our Kerbonauts made another unremarkable transfer, pretty efficient with the outward trajectory from Kerbin almost parallel to Kerbin. Val chose to include a radial component in the ejection burn, as she normally does, to reduce the relative inclination for later. Val admits, "I'm still waiting for Bob to learn how to calculate transfer angles, so I eyeballed the transfer window in the Tracking Station. Honestly, when our KSC GUI gets that update we'll all be glad. It's remarkable how much δv you waste on radial adjustments if you've 5-10° out in the transfers." For the interest of our readers, Jeb insists on showing you his mid-course corrections, for both the lander and crewed capsule in their convoy. The editor apologises that we didn't have time to commission high-quality infographics. The mid-course correction to Jool is done at the AN, and here we spent some δv on adjusting the encounter to get a nice flyby of Tylo, on the near side of Jool, for both vehicles. Although the KSC GUI doesn't show it very well, we have got a free Jool capture for each vehicle. Arrival at Jool Finally, many months (many müns?) later, our Kerbonauts arrived at Jool. Jeb apologises that he forgot to capture the manoeuvres performed there! Jeb does not believe that it is efficient to do a capture burn around Tylo. Instead he does a zero-burn flypast of Tylo to reach an elliptical Jool orbit with roughly the same semi-major axis to Tylo (with RCS adjustments perhaps to get the inclination to zero on the way past). Then, Jeb burns at Jool Ap/Pe to "rendezvous" with Tylo (waiting one orbit of Jool...) and the capture burn around Tylo is then very cheap. Both our vehicles reach Tylo orbit, then rendezvous, and dock. Val did remember to grab some pictures of this, at least (using her magic camera mounted goodness-knows-where outside the ship). We transferred the remaining Hydrogen into a single tank, using an EVA to set up one of Bob's long cryogenic fuel hoses that was stored somewhere on board, then jettisoned the SWERV that we didn't need. Disaster strikes! Now at this point, our crew made a surprise discovery. Bob was on the "uncrewed" lander! Cheeky stowaway... after testing our rockets a few times, he must have snuck on board. [Editor: yes, doing "Revert to VAB" can repopulate your Kerbals... watch out!] So, the crew chanted "Kraken's fate, kraken's fate, kraken's fate" [Editor: Alt+F8] until he disappeared back to Kerbin in a puff of magic Kraken dust. Too much time was spent on this mission to start again [Ed: I have no shame working around a bug with F8]. Descent to Tylo Tim C bravely used his lower-stage Trumpet to do a tiny de-orbit burn, then a 2000m/s suicide burn on a precise trajectory to reach the source of a strange signal. The lower stage, thankfully, had about 1000m/s of extra fuel. Tim C knew that Tylo needed "2000 down, 2000 up" but budgeted an extra 1000 for hovering around near the ground to adjust the precision landing. Tim C adds, "Bill, you'd better work out how to add targets to our navball fast, or I'm going to go crazy. Even 1000m/s of wasted δv on the wretched landing was only just enough to get close to the target. We worked our RCS to the max on some crazy switches between horizontal and vertical burns to move a few km closer to the target while minimizing time spent hovering." But, we did it: Disaster strikes again! To take a sample from the monument, Tim C had to go on an EVA to walk a few 100m closer. But his feet got stuck in the Tylo regolith! Totally stuck. After lots of fiddling with his suit controls [Ed: timewarp] Tim C gave up again and chanted "Kraken Fate" until he teleported close enough to grab a sample, then headed back to the lander the same way. [Ed: yes really, no shame using F8 if the Kerbals can't walk on flat ground.] Transfer to Pol After docking and refueling the lander, the crew headed out to Pol, using the last of the Hydrogen and then moving on to the Tuba's big Methalox tank. There were not many opportunities to save (or waste) fuel on the way, so it was a gentle ride. Tim C landed on each biome of Pol (only one shown below for brevity): Then, Tim C entered a polar orbit at 4km Ap/Pe and started looking for fun objects to explore. One was found rather quickly: One took an incredibly long time to find: [Ed: the timewarp speeds are ludicrously limiting on Pol. We need to be able to orbit faster if we're going to stand a chance of finding all the discoverables without cheating for coords from Discord.] The journey home Finally, our crew re-united, ditched the lander, and with the weight saved from that, had plenty of fuel left to return. Val comments: "I was sad not to be allowed to land on this trip. But next time I'll get my chance!" After a standard return transfer (after a long wait!) Jeb & Val made the following small mid-course correction burn. And here they are, the brave heros! [Editor's appendix - Bugs/issues encountered] Issues with "Revert to VAB" changing the Kerbal complement of capsules Couldn't use the SWERV layout I wanted due to δv bugs Encounters sometimes not showing up properly made it hard to get the free capture from Tylo Lack of UI for transfers a bit of a pain. Also Manoeuvre mod is a must. Lack of navball assist on Tylo monument landing a total pain. Not enough δv to hover while trying to move closer. Kerbals can't walk on Tylo? Timewarp limits made Pol discoverables a total pain. Lots of savefile issues. I encountered the infamous "Landed state in orbit" bug, and some weird ones where vessels disappeared or had their orbits badly messed up (into crashing trajectories) on save/load. I also had the "vessel throttle set to max on switching vessel" bug. I upvoted all the relevant bugs, as usual.

You can get a lot of science from Science Jr (and Jr Jr - they are the same experiment). But completing the missions gives a lot of science too. Just visit a few bodies with probes. You can get to Tier 4 with one unmanned and one manned visit to each body, completing the missions as you go. You don't ever need to visit more than one biome on each body (unless you want to). When you get to Dres (go there before Jool or Eeloo!), it does help to visit all 5 biomes, because then you'll complete Tier 4 straight away in one trip (Dres science is very overpowered).

WOW! This is an awesome trick. It also fixes quite a lot of glitches when exiting time warp. Example: my landers often fly up into the air (at 5m/s, and 45° angle) when I switch from 2x to 1x warp. Some really bad effect when physics kicks in on the legs. But when I use your trick to exit warp, the bug doesn't happen. So thank you, that's a super-useful trick to have in my pocket for situations.

In my experience, warp with Xenon does work, I was doing that last week on a probe-to-Eeloo mission. In fact, the ion engines can't really be used without warp, since it takes sooo long for the burns. You either have to burn far far out from a planet (assume you won't get any Oberth effect); or else do the burn in many many passes at periapsis (only works for departure burns, not capture burns).

I thought rovers in KSP2 were fun. But then - I hit the killer bug on Tylo: My poor little Kerbal (Tim C) couldn't even walk at all anywhere that I could find on Tylo. Based on my experience, if they can fix that one single I'd be happy with the rovers experience. As it is, I'm now scared to plan a mission that even involves walking.

More concretely: for LIL CHONKER you either need to dock in orbit (launch the chonker empty, refuel it in orbit); or wait until you get "L" sized parts. Doing it with M-only parts, single-launch, is exceedingly hard. Just leave it until later when you get L engines if you don't fancy the struggle.