GregroxMun

Whirligig World 0.3 has been released. Github broke so I don't have a nice and complete changelog. But we do now have clouds and new planets and a lot of work and time.

Telescopic image of the giant planet Tyepolbynar. Historical records show that water and oxygen was detected during at least one transit by Kerbin telescopes (thought to be from one of its moons), but it was abandoned as a destination because it was so hot! Tyepolbynar has four known satellites. Jifgif is just a small chunk in a low orbit, Aerious seems to be a captured asteroid. But between the two are some rounded bodies. Imterril is pale blue in color, while Tannor is a bright white. Calculations of its temperature based upon its reflectivity suggest that, despite the Tyepolbynar system being significantly closer to the Sun than Mesbin, Tannor could be made up of white ice. This is one of the best pictures the Mesbin Space Program has of Tannor. There doesn't seem to be a significant atmosphere. Imterril, meanwhile, is covered in clouds. The blue we see could be water ocean like what we see on Kerbmun, but it could be the blue Rayleigh scattering from a thick atmosphere. Telescopic pictures of Jifgif and Aerious are limited to pixelated blobs.

That's great and fine and all but you still didn't fix the swapped Wolfhound and Skiff stats.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/87dtij/mod_idea_reversed_kerbol_system/ /u/darwinpatrick inspirede me to make a mod that reverses the solar system... but I think I'll let him finish it.

Here's one of the new worlds coming in 0.3. Its name is Oshan It is based upon Chris Wayan's Oisin alongside its parent body which we will be seeing more of in the future. (Valyr) Oshan orbits between the minor moons Plaph and Fophie, at around 4 times the Kerbin-Mun distance. It is a body which is very much a hybrid of Duna and Europa. Europa's ocean is there, frozen under a much thinner crust. It has four times the atmosphere of Mars, and much of it is nitrogen, but there is some oxygen in there too. But slowly the ice and water of Oshan has been dwindling away under the harsh UV rays of Kaywell's star. As a result, the continents of red-brown have slowly been emerging. They're proper continents too--there's enough tidal interaction going on here for not just cryotectonics, but real tectonics to crack the ice. Though most of the ice cracking is from the slow flowing of the ice. Mesbin Space Program's finest telescopic images of Oshan.

Coming soon: A pretty big update. I will be showing more later. For now, here are the minor bodies of Whirligig World. You may see a couple of new planets in the background of these images. More on these later.

There is one part of Eve that may be of some interest.

Kopernicus's last major update broke Minmus. (And everything with VertexPlanet). To fix, create a .cfg file in KSP/GameData called "VertexPlanetFix.cfg," open it with a text editor such as notepad, and copy the following into it: @Kopernicus:FINAL { @Body,* { @PQS { @Mods { @VertexPlanet,* { @SharpnessNoise { @Noise { |Noise = Noise:RidgedMultifractal octaves = #$octaveCount$ } } } } } } } Or download the config here. (Clicking this link leads to a direct download) This config was written by @Thomas P. as a temporary fix. Any planet modders out there probably shouldn't use this as a permanent fix. I will have a proper fix ready for the next update of AKR. Note, it still won't work in 1.4.1 until Kopernicus updates.

Change 280 to 200. Also remember that TWR diminishes with Isp. So if you have an engine that is 400s in space but 300 on the ground, that is not as good as an engine of the same thrust rating that has an Isp of 300 on the ground and 350 in space. So 280 under 400 would pretty much cripple the Skiff in the air, 200 would cripple it further and be accurate to its basis. So 200 seconds would be my revision. You can't have an extremely low surface Isp for a second stage engine because there's still some air when it starts and you don't want it to start with a horrible Isp and TWR even though you're 20 km up.

The skiff in my suggestion has pretty much same characteristics there as the Wolfhound does now. The Skiff shouldn't be a lifting engine. And neither should the Wolfhound. They are both based upon vacuum engines and the description of the Skiff refers to being used in vacuum--despite its Isp being mediocre for a vacuum engine. The wolfhound would still have a higher Isp, almost as good TWR as the Terrier, and you don't need a lot of thrust in space. Terrier has 0.5t and 60kN thrust. And the Wolfhound would still be good as a vacuum engine goes. But I would be willing to accept a higher TWR for the wolfhound. Not more than the Poodle though. Even just looking at the Wolfhound you can tell it should be a low thrust engine. Its bell is huge, sure, but the actual combustion chamber is pretty tiny. Engine Isp and masses in KSP is fine already as it is. But they are generally worse than real rocket engines which use fuel of about the same density. The problem is that with the Skiff (or as it is now, the Wolfhound), the Isp and fuel energy density is better than the real world, which you do not want. Rocket parts need to have worse performance than real engines because the delta-v needed to do anything is roughly 1/3rd as much as you need in the real world. I don't see how my point isn't getting across. Yes. The cosmetics change is neccesary because Making History's parts are based upon real engines and currently they are the wrong way around. Literally it seems that what happened is that they were already switched by accident in development. The bare minimum for me is that they simply unswitch them.

I have perhaps not made it obvious but my point is really a gameplay concern. 412s Isp with a dense fuel is wrong for realistic reasons, BUT those same reasons make it overpowered for gameplay reasons. In KSP we really need engines that are at least a little bit inferior to their real counterparts. This is because of the 1/10th scale stock system. This is done by using low efficiency engines of fairly high mass. With an engine using "realistic" hydrogen+oxygen specific impulse of over 400 seconds, such an engine performs incredibly better than real engines. This is not a realism problem. It is a gameplay problem. Engines should generally be worse than their real counterparts, or rockets either get short and stubby or far too powerful for their size. The engine not only performs better when attached to a rocket than it would in real life, it performs better than any other engine in the game. In real life, Hydrogen/Oxygen rockets have a tradeoff from Kerosene/Oxygen or Hydrazine/N2O4. The hydrogen is big and bulky and thus you can not fit nearly as much of its mass into the same space as you could Kerosene or Hydrazine. But of course LH2 and LOx are a tremendously efficient fuel to make up for it. And the lightness of the fuel does have an upside--the thrust to weight ratio for the same amount of delta-v is higher. I propose two options for the question depending upon whether you think my argument about Isp is valid or not. I have no strong opinion on their relative position in the tech tree, though the Skiff should be sure to join the F-1alike Mastodon. OPTION ONE: Balanced as it is now, but with the bug fixed Skiff: Mass: 2.5 tons. Vacuum thrust: 375 kN. Specific Impulse: 280-412s. Reasonably accurate to the J-2 Engine, but overpowered as LiquidFuel gains a huge amount of energy density. Wolfhound: Mass: 0.8 ton. Vacuum thrust: 90 kN. Specific Impulse: 90-365s. High Isp to reflect its nozzle size, but still clearly a hydrazine or kerosene engine. Lower thrust. Still more powerful in Kerbal-scale than its real world counterpart is in real scale. Somewhere between Poodle and Terrier. OPTION TWO: Rebalanced to account for KSP fuel density Skiff: Mass: 2.5 tons. Vacuum thrust: 460 kN. Specific Impulse: 280-373s. Still the highest specific impulse engine aside from the Nerv and Dawn, but with an Isp within the realm of plausibility for the fuel densities in the game and not too overpowered from a game balance standpoint. Wolfhound: Same as above. I want to make this absolutely clear. It is not a balance issue that the Skiff and the Wolfhound have been swapped. As far as I can tell even their masses should be swapped for one another. So if you ignore the historical background and appearance of their models entirely, this is not a game balance problem. However, the way they are implemented now, trying to build the Saturn V with Skiffs on the rocket and a Wolfhound on the CSM will result in a rocket that behaves differently than it should. I firmly believe that it was a simple mistake on the part of the developers, and that this was not intentional. And further, though I have lingered on the point about fuel density and specific impulse more, simply because I feel it deserves explanation, the fact that the stats of the Skiff and the Wolfhound are switched is of far greater importance. I believe it is reasonable to be of the opinion that 412s is not ridiculously overpowered. But to be of the opinion that the Skiff and the Wolfhound are both fine as they are seems to be pointless and unreasonable. I started this thread and its title before I discovered that Skiff and Wolfhound were swapped. After I submit this reply I will edit the post title from "Wolfhound is ridiculously overpowered and is swapped with the skiff" to "The Wolfhound and the Skiff's stats seem to be switched."

The facts: The actual Service Propulsion System of the Apollo C/SM was a small low-efficiency hypergolic engine with 91 kN thrust and a specific impulse of 319 seconds. The J-2 rocket engine on the Saturn V was a high efficiency rocket engine with 421 seconds Isp, and 486 kN of thrust. The Wolfhound is the in-game SPS analogue. It has an Isp of 412 seconds and a thrust of 375 kN. The Skiff is the in-game J-2 analogue. It has an Isp of 330 seconds and a thrust of 300 kN--barely better than the LV-T30 Reliant. The in-game description describes it as having "high vacuum efficiency" and as being "powerful." I do believe Squad have mixed up the stats for the Wolfhound and the Skiff. But there is a deeper issue which is less obvious. In KSP, the densities of the LiquidFuel we use are comparable to the densities of Kerosene or Hydrazine. These are medium-to-low efficiency fuels and the engines in-game are pretty much balanced around that sort of fuel. Fuel density plays a huge role in rocket design. Bigger tanks are needed to store Hydrogen and Oxygen than Hydrazine and N2O4 in real life. The argument for or against having swappable fuels is not one I want to have right now, but what is important is that 412 or 421 seconds of specific impulse with KSP fuel density is far outside the realm of realism and game balance. 412s Isp with a high thrust to weight ratio results in an engine which may rival the nuclear thermal rocket LV-N "Nerv." Higher thrust, twice the propellant density (LV-Ns can only use LiquidFuel--and actually unless the LV-N is secretly an open cycle gas core NTR running on hydrazine it is a bit overpowered too) At the very least a fix patch needs to swap the characteristics of the Skiff and the Wolfhound, that much is clear. But arguably even then the skiff should be buffed. EDIT: Also the "fixed" Wolfhound's TWR is far too high. The SPS is 91 kN for what should be a larger engine, versus 375 or 300 kN. TLDR: The bug is that the Skiff and the Wolfhound are very obviously swapped with their Masses, Thrusts, and Specific Impulses. The design flaw: The Wolfhound (which should be the Skiff) is super overpowered because it uses low-density high efficiency with high-density fuel--essentially packing more delta-v into a given space. From a realism and a gameplay standpoint both.

Yes and no. KSP doesn't support multi-body gravity so it can't do non-conic (circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola) orbits. But trojans are elliptical/circular orbits. They have the same semi-major-axis or orbital radius and a similar inclination, but they are 60 degrees ahead of or behind in the planet's orbit. (meanAnomalyAtEpochD, argumentOfPeriapsisD, and longitudeOfAscendingNode should sum to be 60 degrees less or more than the sum values from the parent body. I think. More reliably, if the Mean Anomaly, Argument of Periapsis, and Lognitude of Ascending Node are set to the same value for both bodies, changing only one of them by 60 degrees will result in a trojan or greek) KSP does support trojans. A trojan moon would not be a subsatellite, it would be another moon orbiting 60 degrees behind or ahead. It's very simple. Now in KSP, trojans aren't more stable than putting the other moon anywhere else along the same orbit, but for realism's sake L4 and L5 should be the only orbits used. Hildas are the rounded triangle. (Not sure if the actual orbit itself of these asteroids are rounded triangles (I seem to remember seeing an animation of them that shows they are), it may actually be an emergent property of a more complicated orbit) KSP can't do those without Principia.

Easily reproducable. Go to the Making History Discussion forums, click on a post, you should see it. Then log out, and go back. It should now be hidden--you don't have permission. I assume this is in error.

No I'm not because that's not what I'm saying. The Russians eventually switched over to the capsule shape too with Soyuz. It's not the American way, it's just the way that Americans tried first.