mpink

How do you launch multiple craft from one pad at the same time ? Hi. I am an old ksp player and I am trying to play an 18 T / 30 Part stock career mode game. My 1st return probe mun lander involves 5 separate craft and to avoid the "Clear Launch Pad" problem I am currently driving them all to the crawler way. This is very time consuming and annoying. I have tried various different google searches but can not seam to find a simple solution. I have also had a good look in the settings/physics/save files but cant seam to find anything relevant. So i am also curious now as to where the defining values for the different levels of Pad & VAB are hiding ? (Size, Mass & Part limit values) It would be nice to upgrade the look of my pad whilst keeping the limits in place. Any mod ideas, setting names or thoughts of any kind would be much appreciated. Thanks very much.

Hi there and welcome to the career mode hotseat challenge. The idea is that you download the latest save game directory, present a mission plan (as to claim the seat before flying any long missions) fly a mission and then upload your save directory and make a report. I find Dropbox very handy for shearing files like this. I say directory as i would like to test your craft and we may like some shared parts/craft as the game develops. I strongly suggest saving craft using the naming system of MissionNumber(3 digets) - ForumName - CraftName. So my 1st mission shall have a craft named "001 - MPink - Experimental 5K VTOL" and you will only need to remember a mission number in order to find a craft you may want to use again later (+ alphabetical mission order sorting). Rules The career mode is running in hard mode but with a few added restrictions to make it more interesting. 1) As you may have spotted all craft must be 100% reusable. By that i mean all craft parts should theoretically be 100% recoverable (land on the pad or runway) but i understand that sometimes things don't go as planed . This adds some difficulty with some missions as testing decouplers at low altitudes is as good as impossible and early exploration missions are extremely difficult to return from. Theoretically we could collect old satellites later in the game using retrieval craft. Having extra fuel on them to help with making a return rondaview would go a very long way to convince me that you haven't just chucked it into space and forgotten about it. 2) No pilot purchase. When your dead your dead. We should be able to rescue a few pilots hear and there but i doubt we shall ever produce a colony. 3) No contract skipping. Canceling a contract is different and allowed as it has a financial penalty and sometimes you might just take a contract to unlock a part you need for another mission but clicking the X on a mission you dont like the look of is just cheating. 4) only one launch per turn. Some missions may need multiple launches that require the next player to continue where you left off. An exception to this is placing a target on the pad as to help guide you back home. This can be done when your over the 30K mark and helps hugely with guiding you back home. Using and empty decopler on the pad results in an explosion but yes you can place a target on the pad at launch time too, It just needs to be 2 parts and have some mass to it. 5) No double seating. After you have flown a mission You must wait for another player to fly before taking the seat again. Mods Im more of a stock player myself but see no reason why you cant use a mod just as long as the save can still run in a stock version afterwards. No longterm craft with parts that are not stock. When we get to some serious missions I think Kerbal Engineer will be a must. Scoring Im intending to keep a score of the missions and try to rate them all. This may be complicated and depend a lot on my mood though so you must understand its just a bit of fun. Max 10 points for accomplishing your mission objective (gaining science, cash & crew). Max 10 points for presentation of report. Im going to try a make a video for every mission I do using afterburner to capture then VLC to encode and youtube to edit. I see no reason why a few screen shots with some well thought out words wouldn't get a good score too though. Its all about telling the story. Max 10 points for your piloting awesomeness. Im not sure what will be good enough for a 10 at this stage or even how I might judge it without a video. My thoughts are to test the craft made and compare it to what you have done. Some craft are just impossible to fly so may score high for just not killing everyone. Recovering from an accident would be a great way to score points hear but then your likely to lose some in other areas for that. Bonuses 1 SemiBull = Landing just off the center of the landing pad. 2 BullsEye = Landing exactly in the center of the pad. 5 Deadeye = Landing in the center of the pad from orbit. 2 Cleaner = Returning a craft/part left by someone else but only after your primary mission is done. 5 VomitComet = Making a flight with no chance of using SAS. -2 Junker = Some part of your craft was not recovered. -10 Destroyer = Crashing a perfectly good craft or trying to land on a building and breaking it. -15 Killer = You ended a pilots life. Im sure there shall be more so if you can think of a reason your flight deserves extra points then you should state it in your report. Leaderboard 1) 14 - MPink - Mission 001 2) 3) 4) 5) Bare with me as i do the 1st mission to demonstrate. humm so you cant make double posts and self bump your own thread now then. Ill just have to hope that people are willing comment and chat as we get this thing started. - - - Updated - - - Mission 001 Plan Reach the 5K mark and bring home some much needed cash/science while demonstrating that it is possible to land back on the pad. We need at least 5 science to open the next tech so I shall try "Launch new Vesal" + "Set Altitude Record" for an expected return of just under 4K and at least 3 science. Starting with 10K cash and 0 science/reputation (before excepting contracts or doing anything) at Year 1 Day 1 0H 0M. There shall be a small gap while I attempt the mission but I shale return with the save file shortly. - - - Updated - - - Mission 001 Report Mission 001 Save File jeb achieved both missions and done some science landing back on the pad safely. He generated 12.4 Science and upped the cash to 15,286 so managed to bring home 1K more than i was expecting he managed all this in about 2mins of game time but it sure seamed like longer to me. - - - Updated - - - Judging Mission 001 Well ill give the mission a score of 4. It achieved all the goals it set out to but only bringing back 12.4 science on the first mission isnt hugely helpfully. For the report ill give a 5. The mouse pointer is missing there wasn't any commentary or story telling and the music just overruns a little. On the upside though it dose demonstrate using cockpit mode to get better accuracy with the navball. Piloting will get you a 4. At 5K you can still do this all by eye and don't need SAS at all. I should have hit the black dot exactly at this range with that much fuel and how hard is flying in a straight line anyways. +1 for a BullsEye (ill count the whole grey circle as a bull and it should be about the same size as the mesh on the next pad) for a Total of 14 Points

I found the Girder Segment very handy in career mode. on my 1st mission i added extra parachutes using them as mounts. On my 2nd mission i used them to connect 6 engines to an X200-8 fuel tank producing an expensive and dangerous version of a mainsail. The Girder Segment has a very strange fuel flow that only works in one direction when using surface attachment so it can be very handy for making drive sections.

I most certainly am interested thanks Im not sure at this point that its going to be at the same level as what i was thinking as we seam to have a very different idea as to when errors could happen and what they should be but then i have only just read about it and not played it so i should go investigate..............

Hi there I was watching the and they mentioned the problems of trying to launch a rocket with 30 engines and how the chance of problems drastically increases with more engines.This got me thinking about an engine failure mod and how much it would change the early stages of career mode. So the theory gos a bit like this. When you light up an engine a random number is produced to see if something gos wrong. If a problem is detected a second number is generated to determine what the problem is from an engine specific error table. For the moment im just thinking about engine problems and not trying to make a mock-up of the error tables. A single Engine Error may trigger multiple engine problems that may change in severity over time so at this point im just trying to think of the simple problems that may happen and would love your help with suggestions. All Engines Explode - The engine just explodes (Part.explode()) Liquid Engines Overheat - The engine generates more heat so it will explode if you dont reduce the thrust (ModuleEngines.heatProduction). Thrust Limit - The engine is limited to a maximum % thrust so you must re-balance the craft in flight (ModuleEngines.thrustPercentage.maxValue). Efficiency Problem - Lowering the ISP by a small amount would result in a fuel balance problem that cant be fixed by simple thrust adjustment on other engines (ModuleEngines.atmosphereCurve[]). Hydraulic Leak - The engines gimbal slows down until it locks into place (ModuleGimbal.gimbalResponseSpeed (Could be overridden by using lock gimbal button and forcing downward thrust again)). Stuck Valve - The engines throttle gets stuck at its current setting and so dosnt change with the throttle control (ModuleEngines.engineAccelerationSpeed ModuleEngines.engineDecelerationSpeed). Damaged Ignitor - Prevents the engine from restarting if it is shutoff (ModuleEngines.allowRestart). Solid Engines Cracked Seal - The engine has a random crack causing thrust to escape. To do this i would randomly place a hacked sepratron and reduce the fuel and thrust values of the original engine. Broken Nozzle - This is just a combination of Efficiency Problem and Thrust Limit but combined in a way as to maintain the same burn time with reduced thrust. I have thrown together a basic test mod implementing the Explode result as it is the easiest to program and tested this with the LV30 and LV45 in the early stage career mode. I have found it changed my design style and launch method a bit as I now have my launch towers on a separate stage so i can test my engines on low power before launching. I also try harder to not layer my rocket with extra engines in separate stages as i know there is a chance they will pop when i light them up. The final change its forced on me is to maintain a low level of thrust for the full orbital insertion as apposed to reaching a targeted speed and shutting the engines off until AP is reached. Just for fun hears the chance table for 30 engines each having a 5% chance of error Engines | Chance Change | Chance Of Error ---------------------------------------------- 1 | 5.00% | 5.00% 2 | 4.75% | 9.75% 3 | 4.51% | 14.26% 4 | 4.29% | 18.55% 5 | 4.07% | 22.62% 6 | 3.87% | 26.49% 7 | 3.68% | 30.17% 8 | 3.49% | 33.66% 9 | 3.32% | 36.98% 10 | 3.15% | 40.13% 11 | 2.99% | 43.12% 12 | 2.84% | 45.96% 13 | 2.70% | 48.67% 14 | 2.57% | 51.23% 15 | 2.44% | 53.67% 16 | 2.32% | 55.99% 17 | 2.20% | 58.19% 18 | 2.09% | 60.28% 19 | 1.99% | 62.26% 20 | 1.89% | 64.15% 21 | 1.79% | 65.94% 22 | 1.70% | 67.65% 23 | 1.62% | 69.26% 24 | 1.54% | 70.80% 25 | 1.46% | 72.26% 26 | 1.39% | 73.65% 27 | 1.32% | 74.97% 28 | 1.25% | 76.22% 29 | 1.19% | 77.41% 30 | 1.13% | 78.54% I am testing with a 5% error chance and trying to do Mun flybys using a 19 engine design. The 1st stage of 12 booster engines has had problems a few times and i can just shut off the opposite engine and still reach orbit with no problems. If the 2nd or 3rd stage engine breaks on ignition it is a fail and we have to shutdown and recover. Iv not had the 3rd stage engine break whilst attempting reentry yet but 5% is a bit steep so it will happen one day.

Thanks. That is about what i expected its just the Altitude score i find a bit confusing. i think ill have to collect all those distinctions just for the sake of it. As for Relaunching, Well im 100% certain i can do it but ill probably take a week or 2 fiddling with things. I tested the HLS with a tailless configuration and a pair of quad docked top and bottom boosters. The fuel line system is something of a maze but all went as planed and seams to work. Is there any rule against refueling ? Im assuming that i cant just refuel at an orbital fuel dump or else we could go almost anywhere with just a little planing ? Then im wondering how this would relate to Relaunching as i could place fuel in the 1st launch to get the 2nd payload to the Mun but it would all be fuel from one single mission ? Humm yeah well that sounds confusing .

Oh shuttles...... Can i play Pnk Engineering proudly presents the HLS Tweed. A heavy lift shuttle that can place an orange tank into LKO and return return safely. Its a bit lame not putting doors on or even a belly but what can i say.... i was having flashbacks of thunderbird 2. Errr im not too sure how this scoring works yet but that is a 36.05T payload into an 86K-184K Kerbin orbit. LOL sounds like fun but i have a question 1st. When i land my next shuttle and manage to get it back on the pad pointing at the sky with a new payload in it and new boosters strapped to it, Will you give me any more points for the 2nd payload delivery and how would the scoring for that work ?

Oh I think all stock shuttle builders have had those unable to redock days. Do you get any attraction ? You just have to keep trying until it all works out. Just a slight bit of clipping or angle mismatch can give you a very bad day. A small problem with my shuttle means the crew are trapped in there pod. This is a shame as I'd love to plant a flag on minmus. This makes for an interesting landing and reentry procedure. I need to redo the nose for a better look anyways so I might have an attempt at a single part sliding door. Oh thats cute. I love the boostets with the solid bottoms and those nose cones.

Pnk Engineering is proud to present the CSS Stour The Constructable Space Shuttle is an attempt to make a stable shuttle system that can be transported and launched from wherever you please. In its first few tests it happily places 22.5T into LKO. It is totally stock but I use hyper edit to fuel the craft when it has been constructed. The odd payload is due to a challenge entry where fuel mass didn't count towards payload points so i just filled it with the heaviest things i could find . The zip file contains a persistent save file identical to the start of the video and a number of SPH craft and some subassemblys. The SPH has 2 very useful craft test craft. CSS Stour (Landing Practice) is a stripped down version that can reach 10K meters before running out of fuel (Perfect for practicing landings). CSS Stour (Launch Test) is a fully constructed and ready to launch version of the shuttle. Reentry Reentry can be a bit tricky but i suggest placing your PE just above the island to the right of the KSC at 37.2K meters and then maintain a 15 degrees nose up. Any less than 15 degrees and the tail will burn up so when you hit 30K try and maintain 20 degrees. The glide slope is very shallow and has 3 points for checking your position. The main target is to hit 30K and the start of reentry effects as you hit the landmass that KSC is on. As you leave the landmass before that you should be at about 39K. This is where deceleration starts to take effect and is your last chance to correct using engines. Its about 90 seconds from hear untill the next checkpoint. The end of the landmass prior to this one is about the start of the atmosphere and you should be at 47K. You will decelerate by around 150 M/S by the time you hit the next check point so wings arnt going to do very much at this point but they may make a small difference and small changes at this point make for large changes in your landing zone. After reentry effects have stopped at about 20k and before you hit the soup 10K you should use all your remaining fuel. The engines will help to shallow out you glide slope and if you still have the mass of the fuel when you hit the soup you will just fall instead of gliding. In this uncut landing video you can see a demonstration of me coming in too step and correcting the slope using the check point system. I think the problem was due to not doing the deorbit burn on the opposite side of the planet to the KSC. There are also some very confusing readings on the nav ball due to it changing to target mode and me not noticing. Hot Keys. 1) Undock cargo bay doors. 2) Toggle door wheals. 3) Toggle payload wheals. 4) Toggle booster/shuttle wheals. 6) Undock Jet sled / Construction plates. 7) Toggle jet sled wheels. 8) Toggle forward jet engines. 9) Toggle Backward jet engines. Tips for construction The sled needs to drop half a meter to connect with the Construction Plates so you need to get the hang of rolling whilst toggling the wheals (7). The back booster and shuttle have a slight mismatch in height that needs to be corrected by changing to the back booster and toggling its wheals. This makes the first docking very hard but it is doable. This unedited construction video demonstrates shows the entire construction with all the problems of docking. I am fairly certain that all problems with primary and secondary docking ports and fuel flow are now fixed but iv only done two constructions of the Stour and so theres is always a chance something like this may happen again. If you detect a problem below 10K i strongly suggest cutting the engines and dropping the boosters and tanks. At 10K you should have more than enough fuel in the shuttle to turn around and land back on the runway. I had already rendered and uploaded the construction videos as prof for a challenge so I did every thing i could to make orbit. That early version just had too many fuel flow problems though so was doomed.

Pnk Engineering proudly presents the CSS Stour. Stour you say........ what happened to the Derwent you say..... :Cough :Cough The Stour successfully made orbit with 59.38T and returned to the hanger at KSC. Unfortunately it was still carrying 522 units of fuel and 760 units of oxidizer witch in my book adds up to 6.41T. So with a Medium payload of 52.97 + 10 points for a 3rd stage + 25 points for returning i calculate a total of 299.85 points . Its very late and iv had a long day so im calling that a win on the bases of building on the pad, but im sure ttnarg wont give up and will find a way to get his idea working . There is also a full 15 minutes unedited version of the construction with all the docking problems for you entertainment / education. Oh the Derwent........ Well it had problems....... The booster fuel pipes added to maintain flow in the case of primary docking on the wings....... was bad . Even worse though was that i didnt notice that radial decoplers have cross feed ! This resulted in the new fuel pipes on the wing docking ports pulling fuel from the tanks that the wings were attached too . So i now present the death of the Derwent (All Hands Survived). I see a lot of room for improvement of the CSS series. I think if i had the patients it could make a hard entry but it would take a long time. It might be able to do a Mun flyby with minimal changes so i will looking into that. I also have the CIS (Constructable Interplanetary Shuttle) upgrade to the CSS planed out in my head and the CFS (Constructable Freight Shuttle) in low altitude landing tests. Im thinking i should test the CIS first as the upgrade would be transferable to the CFS and im not sure i would want to make the latter if it cant go off world. The Supper heavy lifter is still a long way off im afraid but it always sits in the back of my mind prodding at me. Im sure i can make a 100T hard lifter although i know i could score more making other craft. Breaking the 100T mark is a personal goal for me .

Thanks Mainly it was a test of my new GFX card. The cargo doors wasnt too hard. I have tried horizontal doors in the past but they are a nightmare. The hardest thing is balancing the wings as to be able to pull out of a 45 degree dive at 200/MS in less than 300 meters whilst not flipping out of control and crashing tail 1st. This also means it can maintain 20 degrees nose up on reentry. I think i said something about a supper heavy lifter a few months ago. I have an image of a test flight you might like too see. I made that hover plugin as i thought i would be able to build higher using a vertical build system. It turns out though that 3 orange tanks is about the limit of what my reinforced large docking port can take . Oh and then there is the the difficulty in trying to move a layer containing 9 orange tanks :rofl Iv still got some ideas about a stock only supper heavy lifter but ill keep them to myself for the moment. The CSS Derwent had its 1st successful test flight (including construction) today and a full video should be ready for the submission by Friday night. It most certainly can and will be constructed on the pad. I think i will release the ship and construction system somewhere too. I remember seeing a shuttle thread in the exchange section some time ago. There is still the possibility of having the primary docking port on a wing and so iv got some more pipes to add just in case this ever happens. Hummm.... I cant help but have thoughts about building off world now. Duna seams a little thin on the atmospheric side but both eve and Laythe could support parachute drops of components. I think it would take more than 1 craft for the construction though as you would need to roll the components into an upright position before starting the build. :daydreams seeing a shuttle aerobraking around jool would be very cool.

Oh Ship..... Well done ttnarg, excellent vessel. I so should have checked for new posts before working so hard at my next entry. What can i say, I just didnt think there was anyone else crazy enough to give this a serious try. The construction phase is still all in my head but im sure it wouldn't have been to hard compared to the rest of the build so far. It was going to be a constructable shuttle system. In the demo video it delivers 42.24T to orbit. I was planing to enter at medium and claim top position at all levels so with -4.27T of fuel it would have been 189.85 points in payload. Well it still makes for an interesting video if youv got 8 mins to waste. I dont know what to do now though. A redesign for a 100T Freight Shuttle could be interesting. On the other hand though cupcake could always introduce a new 2X points bonus for landing back at KSC (exact point from where your meant to start) and then it might be worth me making the constructor.

Lol yeah only Kethane, Engineer and AHS myself. Iv tried to stay away from mods to keep my lag under control. Iv bumped into the mem limit in other threads before http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43600-Allowing-KSP-to-use-more-than-4gb-of-memory As for lag well..... iv only just grabbed myself a gfx card (was using an inbuilt) so im used to it and even with the card my comp cant seam to get the physics over 0.3X-0.4X My main lunch system is running around 700 parts and drops down to 0.25X at the moment but compered to what it was before the 0.23 physics update it feels very smooth to me. In the older versions i had to reduce the physics frames and could not build over 200 parts without explosions. Iv got to try videoing a launch of the 5 orange tank Fuel Transport System. Its a true monster .

Yeah its my attempt at balancing and so dosnt have much of a place in real life. The mass of the small AHS is based on the Advanced Stabilizer (0.5T with a 9MS crash tolerance). As the Small AHS has a 30MS tolerance it seams fair to be 1.5T ? Im not claiming that the computer system is heavy just the container. Following this though the Large AHS should probably only be around 1.4T as the larger default control system is only 0.2T but this seams a bit unfair as it has a 60/MS tolerance with 6 node attachments and crossfead ability. Yeah true i was just trying to link systems to provide a reason for adding sensors to your craft. I think in real life i would want at least 3 or more gravity and accelerometer sensors but yeah to make things easier to use i should include them in the AHS. Thanks it also has the advantage of not loading any extra models or textures so shouldn't waste any memory (Theres often talk of a memory limit when using lots and lots of plugins) To reduce heat you must place parts onto the Part producing heat and these connected parts absorb heat and convert it into light dissipating it. Iv been using it to build my space stations without using RCS thrusters/tanks and iv been building a small 70T kethane mine on minmus. The plugin has become stupidly complex and should probably be broken into 2 different systems. After linking vertical speed control into the RCS forward/backward keys i just had to add a full RCS style control and they are most defiantly 2 different systems/plugins and should be split. So what im thinking is ill try to integrate engines into the default RCS systems and remove the complicated direction setup for the engines. Then i will add a simple on/off tweak for setting if an engine should be used to Hover. My biggest concern now though is not breaking my test colony but then i could just hack my save file and fix any compatibility problems. So far the colony consist of 7 parts. One of them is my low grav constructor better seen on the 2nd image attached to the stations core. It has been painful to get this far but the more it hurts me the faster ill get around to fixing it.

Yeah i had the same problem. Half a full orange tank makes a huge impact force even at 1-2 M/S. Have you tryed using runners like my entry dose ? Watching the video will show them off in action (1st post). Not just do they help align for docking but they also take most of the impact in the suspension whilst correcting your angle so you hover towards the center point. Then on top of all of that i think i tested a 3X runner system with 3X mainsails pointing down at max throttle and the connection still did not break (well until the fuel run out and the suspension/clipping fired the engines into the sky).