the_bT

Keep in mind that many of the limitations of the editor are not enforced in the craft files. Additionally, they contain floating point values, which might end up slightly different on processors with different architectures. I am no expert but I suspect tablets do not use X86 based processors? If more than one program for creating these files would exist, much care would need to be taken to keep the files compatible and consistent. If you cannot trust that the craft files from the tablet app work and are the same when transferred to PC, what is the appeal? Sounds like asking for trouble for not much benefit tbh...

I decided, if there are 2 categories to race in, I race in both. So I fitted Wheesley engines to the Fusion R2. I had to remove 2 repulsors because the Wheesleys were unable to support 4 at once. I also removed the ram intakes as I don't really need them. Thus the Fusion R2.w was created. W is for Wheesley instead of ... well... Whiplash. I am that stupid. Shut up. Race: Time: 2:29.96 I figured there was no rule against picking up speed before starting the race so I did that. I discovered later that this burned to much of my batteries so I had to adjust some repulsor settings mid flight to avoid running out of juice. Managed to make it across the line though so all is well.

I use 2 control surfaces with a rating of 0.18 each. One for pitch and one for yaw. They are near the back clipped into the tank for lack of a better place to stick them. Control surfaces will only help to recover from a flip, not avoid the initial impulse though...

As 2 engines are allowed, I use 2 Whiplash Turbo Ramjets. Gotta go fast! Behold the Fusion R2: Time: 1:38.18 I use Kerbal Foundries beta 1.8g. The repulsors in 1.9a seem to behave really weird for me. In any case, due to the higher speed and higher fuel mass for 2 engines, I had to increase the number of repulsors to keep the craft from hitting the ground. I decided to arrange them in a wing like configuration near the center of mass to avoid the tail-strike front-flip effect that can occur with repulsors that are far behind the CoM.

Well I did not technically copy your design, I merely used the same basic formula that is cockpit, fuel, engine, two repulsors somewhere, air intakes as needed, nothing else. In any case, I would not have felt comfortable entering a race in it anyway. I had some trouble balancing the intakes after I went from one to three. I had them fairly far back, which as it turns out makes them act as stabilizers due to the lift force they generate when at high speed. This was a problem with just one at the top, keeping me from turning tight. I did not realize it was the air intakes fault though, thinking it to be an inevitable result of being very fast. With 3 at 120° around the craft however, it kept the thing dead straight, yaw and pitch, when at speed. As this had not been the case with just one I realized this was related to the body lift of the intakes. Moving them forward so this force has less of a lever around the CoM reduces their stabilizing effect to near zero, instead, they limit drifting, which is nice. Additionally, if you look closely, you will notice that my intakes are placed backwards, which does limit their intake a bit, but reduces air resistance to almost nothing. If oriented this way, their air resistance is even lower then when they are closed. The limited air intake seems negligible compared to the lowered drag, at least at or near sea level. Finally, the repulsor configuration follows from the simple fact that there is no other place to stick them easily. At least not without adding extra parts which will add drag and weight. Additionally, it seems that the wing configuration increases the shock your craft can take because it is easier to hit the ground with both at the same time. With a bicycle configuration, you will usually hit the ground back first. Also of concern is hitting a bump only with the back repulsor because this can lead to an inconvenient front flip. Objectively, between the two cardinal twin configuration, wing is just better. It might be harder to fly and balance out, but if you manage to it will be faster. In the end, there is bound to be an optimal design and it is bound to consist of a very limited number of parts. There are only so many ways to stick them together My craft is made up from 12 parts: 1 cockpit 1 battery pack 2 small tanks 2 sas units 1 whiplash turbojet 2 repulsors 3 structural intakes I probably could exchange the small rocket fuel tanks for one liquid only tank but it would entail a complete rebalancing so why bother...

Damn you're quick. Had to build a new speeder, the red one has to much crap hanging all over it, no way it could go that fast... Took some inspiration from one of your earlier videos, seems there is not much room for design at this level. To beat that time the craft has to go up to 400m/s without problem and much faster on the straight. Could not find a general design that would fit the bill better than yours. The result is this: I tried my best to get as much ground contact as possible, but it was pointless. Could barely make sure to touch down once between gates. I made it through in 1:38 (0:22 to 2:00) like this... (see edit below) Top speed across the plains towards the finish line got up to 834 m/s, this design of yours is crazy fast Just to clarify: I'm leaving town on Thursday morning early and will not return until the 9th of August or so. No access to a computer that can run KSP during the trip unfortunately. So if the challenge goes up next weekend, I can't be in it. If it goes up in the first half of the week I think I can work something out. Edit: Tried to reproduce the time of 1:38 and couldn't, the craft simply won't go as fast as it did in my earlier attempt. It tops out at 440m/s when it went beyond 800 before. I'm not sure why but I suspect the cheat menu to be involved. In the video I took, the infinite fuel cheat seems to be active. In any case, did 2 more laps confirmed cheat free and made it through in 2:02 and 1:58. Both laps were legal within the drafted rules, with at least one ground contact between each gate and passing the gates lower than the line between the tips of the pylons. One more Edit: I figured out why the infinite fuel cheat made the craft go faster, the engine was not getting enough air without it. I have fixed that and got my time down to 1:41 again. BTW how did you time yourself to a tenth of a second? Video: Now I realize I'm airborne like half the time, but what can a Kerbal do?

Entry: 5 min 44 seconds. I originally planned to make it a nice cargo plane like thing, however, the big wings suck at combining them so I gave up on that idea... You don't need that many parachutes to drop 72 tons

I just found out that I will not likely be able to compete in next weeks race However, I already built a craft that is legal within the drafted rules and tried how fast it will go. Made it through the Black Krags course in 3:23 using stock Aero. I present, the R3b-SC Land-Speeder: As I may no longer use fairings to hide the repulsors away, I had to get creative. I tried to avoid clipping parts into each other as much as possible while still make it look good. Red paint is to make it faster. Additional speed enhancements include but are not limited to playing to the pilot continuously.

Hey, thanks man! I managed to get it working! The problem was that mk1InlineCockpit is still named Mark2Cockpit in its config file. Thus MM patches that are aimed at the new name will not be applied to it. I managed to work that out by going through the KSP.log Your explanation how the mask works is most helpful as well. I assumed this is how it would work but it is nice to have some confirmation. Additionally, it seems that the masks have to be upside down, not sure why, maybe my dds importer flips the original textures? Is not a problem though, easy enough to fix. Thanks again!

Can someone explain how to change the mask a part uses? I made a mask for the standard stock inline mk1 cockpit that should not paint the cockpit glass, but in game the part continues to use baseall_paint. I can't work out where this comes from. I have looked through all cfgs in the Kerbpaint folder, none mention the part(mk1InlineCockpit), a few mention baseall_paint but all for different parts. I made my own cfg and put this in it: @PART[mk1InlineCockpit] { MODULE { name = ModulePaintable Texture = mk1InlineCockpit_paint Shader = BumpSpec DeepReplace = true } } No dice Additionally, what colors to put into the masks for primary, secondary and tertiary? Is it Red, Green and Blue? I tried to Google this but I keep ending up on the op of this thread Cheers.

I'm using Nvidia Shadowplay or whatever its called. It is part of the experience software that comes with the driver. However, I have basically no idea what I'm doing. It took a bit of tinkering to get it to work but now it does what it is told. I have decided to leave it at that The files are very large so I assume they are uncompressed, my 20ish minute video was about 5 GB. I use Movie maker to do some very basic editing and export which brings the filesize down considerably. I believe this is achieved by applying magic.

Next race at Black Krags sounds awesome! Dunno if I will stick to FAR though, 2 control surfaces only is harsh. In any case... Race you there! Everything that qualified for round one goes. Last one at Krags buys the Food. I'm serious, my time is 19 Minutes 14 Seconds from KSC Runway to Black Krags Start Gate. PS: Don't

Please don't rule out all control surfaces. While that may work, its a horrible solution to the problem. In other news, I seems that kOS a: can load files on launch now and b: a script that limits thrust based on radar altitude is apparently not hard to write. I just tested one and it works well. From 0 to 10 meters above ground you get 100% thrust, above that it fades to 0 linearly at 25 meters. It does not rule out powered flight, but I want to see the pilot that stays close to 10m radar alt at full speed without hitting the ground Script is here, copy into a new file: boot_thrust_limiter.ks in KSP_win\Ships\Script and select as boot file on a kOS module. (like so, works only if file name starts with boot) This is all that needs to be done to activate this, apart from installing kOS of course.

I just had an idea: use kOS and make a small script that puts all engines thrust limiters to 0 whenever the repulsors are not repulsing. That would make powered flight impossible and give you an incentive to stay on the ground, but still allow jumps. It would add another mod to the list and complicates the launch of your craft somewhat on the other hand. At lease if kOS modules still can't auto load scrips at startup.

After much trail and error, I present the Dartshark: I'm not sure if the craft is legal to be honest. The anti-grav pads are shielded from the airflow behind fairings which is a bit exploity but allows breaking the sound barrier. Additionally I have a couple of AV-R8 Winglets on there... I am not sure what their lift rating is. I don't think this applies when you use FAR. I need them to keep the craft on the ground. This thing is capable to take of from a plane surface on body lift alone, at high enough speeds even against the down force provided by the winglets. Engine remain 2 down-scaled turbojets. In any case: my time in this, should it be legal, would be 3:40, highest speed 510 m/s.

I did some more testing and have found two things: 1. I copied my craft into a stock install to compare FAR against stock aero. FAR does make a significant difference, however, it does not make you universally faster. In stock my time is over 9 minutes! With the engines on my design, I can go up to 280m/s (sea level) in FAR but only about half of that in stock. Normal sized turbojets (~5x stronger) on the other hand, get up to almost 500m/s top speed at sea level in stock. In FAR, engines of that size crash you into the sound barrier. So In conclusion, FAR favors lighter designs with small engines which are easier to get through the land bit, but limit your top speed to 300 or so m/s*. Stock offers the possibility to go faster, but you need big engines and enough fuel to feed them. This will make the craft heavy. As the track is 60ish % over water without tight turns, I assume stock might be quicker than FAR, if you can get through the rough bit. *unless you can use repulsors inside fairings, didn't test that... 2. Cockpit view makes this challenge even better! Check it out yo: - - - Updated - - - I just tested repulsors under fairings in a design suitable for supersonic speeds. Works, is insanely fast in a straight line, breaks up due to aerodynamic stress a lot. As soon as you get airborne it tries to flip and if it does you are dead. Love it XD

Downloading nao... In all seriousness though, I did consider getting it to control a bunch of side facing engines to keep the drifting in check and maybe downfacing ones to cushion landings after a jump. But then I didn't bother because that would probably take forever to figure out. And what kind of engine to use? Jets react to slow, rockets would use too much fuel. Also, I discovered, when using FAR you are not likely going faster than mach 1. The surface mounted repulsors cause way to much trans-sonic drag to go faster. Even if you engines can push that hard, it will just rip the craft to pieces Drag for my craft looks like this (red line): As you can see, drag more than triples between mach 0.8 and 1.0

So, to make it as clear as possible: This was done with FAR installed. It did not seem to make the challenge much easier, in fact, my first few crafts had a tendency to do this stunt, which is not very helpful Because of this, I have build my craft without wings of any form, resulting in something that looks like a 1920 race car. Which is cool! I use 2 stock turbojets that are tweakscaled to 0.625. They provide a combined thrust of about 40 kN when stationary and go up 80 kN at top speed (sea level). If that is too much I could run again with thrust limiter. The only other mod parts on my craft are the anti-grav motors and 2 auxiliary power units. Everything else is stock. My time is 4 minutes 50 seconds (from 2:09 to 6:59): Craft and pilot after race I did use my engines to generate lift a couple of times, hope that is allowed PS: Watching my own (very first ever) video, I just realized that I absolutely need a mod that makes water spray when you fly very close to water... Does something like this exist?

Going to try this, don't know if I can manage a video though... I have FAR installed, is it allowed?

As a veteran myself (I think I qualify, I saw the strut-genesis ) I'd like to add the following: The last time I had a tricked out, fully modded install was 0.23.5, playing that to death and beyond I got incredibly bored of the game and decided to move on for a while. I have only very recently returned to the game. I have briefly tried the new aero-dynamics, they seemed OK. I installed FAR shortly thereafter, mostly because that's how the kool kerbals (dutch) roll. The new heat mechanic seems interesting but it seems to have problems on a similar scale as part joints before they got sorted out. I mean, it seems there is a lot of unwritten laws you have to keep in mind to make a vessel that does not explode itself on the launch pad 2 frames seconds after it was loaded. I have build at least 2 vessels that had parts that heat up immediately and without obvious reason until explosion. I have no clue why but I'm gonna find out I guess. Heat and Aero needed to put in properly, without those the game could not be called complete. And they need to be in stock, a space game cannot rely on mods for the reentry phase of a space flight. Bugs were inevitable with systems of that magnitude and in time they will be fixed, so what? I had a look around the mining, it might have a few interesting applications, I don't know yet. It's the only new feature I did not see coming. Overall, I find the latest additions far more entertaining than career mode and contracts. But that might be just my taste.

I built this: Can't decide if stupid or genius... probably stupid though It tried to kill me only three times on final approach... Well and twice while taking off. The one time in cruise, that doesn't count.

Single Ion engine + solar panels seems to be the way to go for stock parts, almost made it to the 1000 km mark 100 +997 km +1 Kerbal -36 Parts -9 Mass -18 Height -36 Width -41 Length = 958 I flew a pretty random course alternating directions between north-west and south-west to keep under the sun. Ended up at the KSC2 site after fuel ran out. The tiny rover wheels are useless as landing gear, they broke on take off and left me with no real chance to land safely. There were no survivors. But that isn't strictly necessary to enter into the competition right?

SHOOOOOM! (meet the new kerbtrak express train) My monorail project from a while ago pumped up on kerbtown

The other thread about the Ho 229 inspired me, built one myself! Not stock this time, almost completely made from B9 parts and clipping like a maniac. Check out the intakes The fuel tank wings don't wing so I clipped some wings into them. And then some more to make it look right. And then some to make it fly right. Ran outta space after that.... It likes to completely obliterate itself on take of... after that it sort of flies fine. As in there is a chance you'll live... Edit: that is with FAR (who installs B9 without FAR anyways?)

I'm going to build my mono rail, you can't stop me with your non flipping high speed rovers