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Vanamonde

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Posts posted by Vanamonde

  1. The center of lift is even with the center of mass in the vertical plane. That has no inherent stability and the vehicle is as likely roll as not. Try making the wings shoulder-mounted so that the weight is hanging from the wings, and the plane will have a slight but helpful tendency to stay upright. I don't see an obvious cause for unwanted yaw, though. Perhaps make the tail boom longer so that the control surfaces are working over a longer lever?

  2. Hey Victus. I moved your post to its own thread. Welcome to the forum. :)

    By the way, you should be able to start new threads by clocking on the "+ post new thread" button on the upper left (below the header) of the sub-forum pages.

  3. Docking ports are stronger than a lot of people will tell you they are, but any mass that is only secured at one end has the potential to start swinging like a pendulum. And the more massive it is, the bigger a problem that will be. This is a ship I built a while back that is similar in size to yours, and also assembled with medium docking rings:

    sUtb3xD.png

    The core and side tank mounts are all one piece, and the tanks themselves are smaller. It experienced a bit of oscillation, but nothing bad enough to damage the ship or make steering difficult. The trick is to keep the size of the swinging masses to a minimum, and cross-brace them wherever you can.

    Incidentally, that design evolved into this one,

    mQnVyQh.png

    which launches as one piece and is very stable structurally. The struts between the engine stacks keep the ship rigid.

  4. Okay, how about another trick? :) Aim him where you want him, hold down the W key, and without letting up on W, alt-tab out of the game. He should continue to walk in that direction indefinitely, covering the distance while you do other things, even if you alt-tab back. The downside is that there's a trick to making him stop as well. He won't unless you hold S to bring him to a halt, then return to the space center without letting up on S. When you resume-flight him again, he will respond normally. Kind of a pain, it's true, but less tedious than holding W for several hours. :D

  5. This is the second warning to discuss the subject and not other members. If you feel someone is being rude, that's not an excuse to be rude back. Hit the "report post" button and let the moderators deal with it. If this does keep up, we'll start handing out infractions, and if necessary, lock the thread.

  6. I disagree with many of your points, Sauron.

    Putting parts in the tech tree roughly in the order that they were introduced to the game is incredibly lazy.

    I don't know where this idea came from, but the tech tree does not recapitulate the game's part development history.
    RCS and control surfaces are utterly worthless in stock except for the very last phases of docking.

    Control surfaces are useful in aircraft at all times, launch-to-orbit for larger rockets, and during flights at Eve, Duna, and Laythe. RCS can be used to make fine course corrections even for large ships if you burn early, and can provide the main and only propulsion for small probes. For example, from a mothership in Jool orbit, I have landed RCS probes on several of the moons.

    ZbtDe.jpg

    Currently there is no conceivable reason to use probes and no reason to try early 1-way unmanned missions.

    Because people keep saying this, I decided to test the idea. I played a campaign almost entirely with probes and cleared the tech tree despite the fact that all probes I sent farther than Kerbin's moons transmitted their data and were not recovered. The problem is not in the way that the game is designed, but in the erroneous preconception many players have that collecting anything less than 100% of the available science at a destination is a waste of time. There is more than enough potential science in the game to clear the tech tree, and you don't need to collect every bit of it to do so.
    This is a result of the above issue. All-in-one missions are forced down our throats, and as a result landers are built to carry every possible piece of equipment imaginable.

    If you are going to send a mission, though, it makes sense to carry as much useful payload as possible. This is, after all, what real space agencies do. No launch wastefully carries only one experiment. This is a matter of efficiency rather than game design.
    getting into orbit is not so hard that you should spoon feed people with soil samples on Kerbin.

    Goddard and the others spent decades launching rockets before anybody got close to achieving orbit. In KSP, the main science to be had from these flights is from soil samples because, unlike real-world rocket history, there isn't any radiation or other sorts of research to be done. It could just as easily be simulated by some other means, but soil samples is the one the Squad guys went with. It works as well as any other simulated area of research.
    Also, stuff like goo should really be a once per planet deal rather than something repeated for every biome.

    How are the Kerbals going to know that until they perform the experiments? :)
    A General Unwillingness to Make Iterative Changes to Game Balance

    There's not a lot of point in continually making fine adjustments to something that is going to receive major adjustments later, and much of the game is still in a preliminary state.
  7. There is a trick to covering long distances on light-grav worlds. Jump, turn on the RCS pack, build up some speed, and then let your guy slide and bounce as far as he can. Repeat as needed. Faster than walking and doesn't use up all your RCS at once. Do remember to save your progress periodically, though, as a bad bounce can make him go poof.

    Anyway, welcome to the forum. :)

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