CoriW

There was this one time back before 0.19 (before rover wheels) when I sent a rover to Gilly powered by an Ion Engine... It was a terrible idea, that rover was going sub-orbital every time it hit a small bump! xD

Whoa that... Would confuse me if I ever used it myself. Well, at least it would at first, I'm sure I'd get used to it after awhile, on the other hand your method takes up a lot less text space. Hmm, your method just made me realize something about my own method... My method doesn't in any way record where the vessel or vehicle has been, only where it is assigned to at that particular moment in time... Although 95% of my vessels are intended to stay in one place (Satellites, Space Stations, Depots, Rovers, and Bases), the only ones that do interplanetary are the "Ships" and in those cases I have the "type" set to IPL (Interplanetary), though if they travel around too much I'd probably never be able to recall everywhere that it had been... Cool method, thanks for sharing!

Whatever suits you best, right? On a side note I'm like the complete opposite, I like to use probes whenever possible, I think it's primarily because I don't want to risk losing a Kerbal... I sort of have a rule about not losing or killing any of my Kerbals. Other than that I also use Deadly Reentry and a life support plugin (Ioncross Crew Support) so probes are much more practical for me than dealing with deadly fireballs, oxygen, and CO2 levels, but then again I also use the RemoteTech mod which can give probes their own challenges as well... Man, I don't like to make things easy on myself do I...? xD

Hmm, I like yours a lot, your right in some cases it's not as thorough as mine, but I think it does a very good job of being informative enough. I really like the roman numeral bit and how you also specify whether it is manned or unmanned, it also looks a lot cleaner and much less "technical" than mine does. With mine I have trouble because I want to include like all the info I possibly can without running out of space for the name in the tracking station, as for mods I don't think I'd ever be able to list all the mods a ship uses because although I don't have a ton of mods I have enough that I'd run out of room pretty quick if I started listing them. xD On the note of your system though I think I'm going to add the manned or unmanned specification to my formatting for Rovers and Ships, thanks for the idea!

I quite enjoyed reading that, thanks for sharing!

Hello, so recently I thought to myself, that because we don't have that tracking station ship filter quite yet, that it would be a good idea to come up with a sort of "format" to use while naming my ships so that I can quickly look through the names and figure out which one I need to switch to. This however is only really useful once I've accumulated enough ships, stations, satellites, rovers, etc. Here's a C&P of my formatting list for different types of vessels and vehicles. [B]Satellites -> BODY - TYPE - SAT - ALT - ###[/B] BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL TYPE - COM (Communication), MRK (Marker), KTN (Kethane), RLY (Relay), MAP (Mapping), TLS (Telescope) ALT - SFC (Surface), 001K, 010K, 100K, 1_0K ### - 000, 001, 002 (Satellite ID for assigned Altitude) [B]Space Stations -> BODY - NAME - SS - ALT - ###[/B] BODY - BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL NAME - (Space Station design name) ALT - 001K, 010K, 100K, 1_0K ### - 000, 001, 002 (Space Station ID for assigned Altitude) [B]Depots -> BODY - TYPE - DPT - ALT - ###[/B] BODY - BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL TYPE - RCS, FUEL, BOTH, KTHN, OXGN ALT - SFC (Surface), 001K, 010K, 100K, 1_0K ### - 000, 001, 002 (Depot ID for assigned Body or Altitude) [B]Rovers -> BODY - NAME - ROV - CMD - ###[/B] BODY - BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL NAME - (Rover design name, restricted to 6 characters) CMD - K (Kerbal), P (Probe) ### - 000, 001, 002 (Rover ID for assigned Body) [B]Bases -> BODY - NAME - BASE - ###[/B] BODY - BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL NAME - (Base design name, restricted to 6 characters) ### - 000, 001, 002 (Base ID for assigned Body) [B]Ships -> BODY - NAME - TYPE - CMD - ###[/B] BODY - BODY - MOH, EVE, GIL, KER, MUN, MIN, DUN, IKE, DRE, JOO, LAY, VAL, TYL, BOP, POL, EEL NAME - (Ship design name, restricted to 6 characters) TYPE - SHTL (Shuttle), LNDR (Lander), IPL (Interplanetary), TNKR (Tanker), FRTR (Freighter), TPRT (Transport) CMD - K (Kerbal), P (Probe) ### - 000, 001, 002 (Ship ID for assigned Body) So I was also kind of wondering, does anybody else use some sort of "format" for naming their ships? If so I'd love to hear about it.

Yeah, that's completely understandable, I just seen the opportunity to mention a little fun fact.

You know, the real ISS is at an inclination of 51.6 degrees!

So recently I've been thinking about the mods and plugins that I have, and how I really don't like it when they add any parts to the game. It's pretty much due to past experiences when I've had an awesome ship that had like 1 non-stock part on it, I get rid of the mod or plugin associated with that part, and my ship disappears... Until earlier today I came across a plugin for a mod. The plugin was MechJeb Command Pods and Probes and pretty much what it does, is let the stock Command Pods and Probes have the built-in ability to use MechJeb. Now I don't use MechJeb much, and even less because you have to attach a non-stock part to a vessel to use it, so I went ahead and gave the plugin a look. After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that I was going to install this plugin, but the only issue was that since I have RemoteTech and Ioncross Crew Support, both my Command Pods and Probes already had plugin properties saved in their part.cfg files, and if I just dropped the zip for MechJeb Command Pods and Probes into my KSP folder, it would completely overwrite the other plugins. So what I decided to do was go into the part.cfg files and see just exactly what this plugin was adding to the parts, then transfer the properties over manually. As I was doing this however I came to a (for me) rather surprising discovery about the plugin, that all it was doing was adding the same properties that are in the MechJeb part into the Command Pods and Probes. Now... With this in mind, I have come to an amazing conclusion that will help drastically with my fear of non-stock parts. The conclusion is... Don't use non-stock parts! Yes, this is a rather obvious way to solve a fear of non-stock parts, but there's more... Instead of using these non-stock parts that are for plugins such as MechJeb, Protractor and Logomatic, I can instead move the functionality of these non-stock parts into stock parts! ITS AMAZING! Well, there is my little awesome discovery for the day, if anyone wants to share their opinions on the matter I would love to hear them.

3 Bill's in orbit... Win!

Yeah I forgot when I made this thread that it was still pre-release, I'll just make my own windows then.

The Vessel, Surface, and Orbit info panels were there before (In the same version I'm using now.) so they should still be there. EDIT: Actually it may have been 2.0.6 I was using before... Hmm... EDIT2: I just went and checked the MechJeb change log, and it says nothing about removing those windows in 2.0.7, meaning they should be there still. Yeah I'm using MechJeb 2.0.7, and I did close the game before deleting the plugindata folder. I have also just uninstalled and re-installed the mod entirely and it's still not showing those panels.

Just tried that, the problem is still persisting.

Solution: Re-create the windows using the Custom Window Editor, MechJeb 2 is still in a pre-release state so there may be the occasional bug. Pretty much exactly what the title of this thread says, they're just not there... At all. I'm using MechJeb 2.0.7. Has anybody else had this issue or have any idea how to fix it?

So I just found the mod MechJeb Command Pods & Probes although I had to go into the part.cfg files and integrate the changes manually into my parts because of another mod is already using the command pods. But something I noticed while I was doing so, is that the only change it seemed to make to the parts was changing the general parameter setting called "module" from "CommandPod" to "MuMechJebPod" and well, I was wondering if this can just be done normally or if I need that mod in order to actually make the command pods work as MechJeb units? The reason I'm curious about this is because the mod has no dll's with it, so I can only assume MechJeb has this functionality built in already? EDIT: So after some reading and some testing I found out that the mod doesn't actually work with MechJeb 2.0.7, but also along the way found out that by leaving the module as "CommandPod" and adding this to the bottom of the part.cfg for the command pods I can activate MechJeb with the pods. MODULE { name = MechJebCore } I would assume this should work with any part.

Oh, thanks for the clarification, I knew there was a difference but didn't really know what that difference was until you explained it. Wait how do I find out what it's ram usage is currently? Do I just run it and check the task manager or something? (I don't usually pay attention to how much ram stuff is using.)

Oh this trailer should definitely be an official trailer! It almost brought a tear to my eye... Beautiful!

Well I used to play completely stock and was very hesitant to try out mods because I was afraid it might make the game too easy for me or just clutter up my parts list. Eventually of course I decided to try one mod out, MechJeb (Go figure, right?) however I didn't actually use it for it's autopilot, I just sort of love how it puts all the info I should know on the screen for me. But now I have come to a bit of a dilemma... The problem is, MechJeb was like a "gateway" mod because after I got it, I got another mod, then another, and another, and the list just kept getting bigger and bigger as time went on... (For example I just got 3 more mods today!) Of course this isn't really posing a problem as of this current moment in time since I avoid mods that make things too easy or clutter up the parts list. Really I am just concerned that one day I'll have some 50 item long mod list, and even though I'm only at 18 mods currently, I'm already finding myself asking the question "How many mods is too many mods?" because I really don't want to get too detached from stock. So I guess really the question here is, in your opinion, what do you think is too many mods? And just for the sake of the topic I'm going to go ahead and list all of my current mods below, under basic categories of why I got them. Convenience CrewManifest Haystack KerbalAlarmClock SubassemblyLoader Quantum Struts Actions on the Fly Information Enginner Redux MechJeb Protractor Logomatic Gameplay Kethane Challenge DeadlyReentry Ioncross Crew Support RemoteTech RemoteTech Probe Compatibility Other Fairing Factory ISA Mapsat Kerbal Attachment System

Like it says, it should still work just fine. Although since I have the 0.19 zip file still I just copied the original docking ports back in just in case.

UPDATE: So I went ahead and re-added the LazorDockingCam mod, and it turns out... It wasn't the "Pixel Light Count" and "Shadow Cascade" after all! So it turns out my initial suspicion of the Lazor mod lagging the game when loading in other vessels was correct, as soon as I re-added the mod and tried a rendezvous it took a whole 45 seconds to load in the other ship. So all in all, as much as I love the docking cam... I'm going to have to get rid of it.

Does anybody remember reading HarvesteR's blog post called "A rant about development asymptotes"? Well, in that blog post HarvesteR spoke about how when a game first starts and is in it's earlier versions, not much effort has to be put into making the game in order to get fairly large features added to the game, but as you get further into development the same amount of effort as earlier now only gets a smaller feature added to the game. So from my point of view, it looks like Squad hiring these modders is their way to compensate for this issue because once it gets to that point where they're using 100% of their effort and it's only getting smaller features into the game, there's a problem. The problem is that because they're using 100% of their combined effort there is no possible way to increase their effort in order to get a bigger feature into the game. So the solution is... Hire another person. Say the dev team has 4 people on it (Just using this number as an example for easy math), that means that with 100% effort output each person accounts for 25% of that effort, so if they hire a 5th person, that means that each person now only accounts for 20% of the total effort output. As a result of this, what was previously 100% effort output being used to add features, it is now only 80%, this means that they have a whole additional 20% that they can add to their current output of effort for adding larger features to the game. I really hope that makes sense, I'm honestly not sure if it does or not. xD

Well, I know for sure my computer can handle up to around 200 parts on screen and stay "green", and at around 300 parts is when I start to get any noticeable fps drop (down to probably around 20fps at that point) And the ships I'm testing this with at the moment are 7 parts and 65 parts, so like I said "relatively small". Although, I've been doing some testing for a little while now (Just changing stuff and sending up Shuttles to my Space Station.) and I am happy to say that I have found the solution! Well, sort of... So the first thing I thought to do was remove my romfarer mods, and while I was at it I went and checked my settings, and turned down my "Pixel Light Count" and "Shadow Cascades" (Previously at 16 and 8, which I changed to 8 and 4, respectively.) and when I went up with the next shuttle, rather than having the usual loading time upwards of 30 seconds, I only had to wait about 1 second! So now I know it was either the romfarer mods, or the settings... The next step is to re-add the romfarer mods and see if the delay changed, but I suspect it was just the settings all along.

Right so, the thing is, everything mentioned so far I indeed am already aware of, the problem is that this wasn't happening to me until I got a bunch of mods... I don't have my graphics set really high, and the ships are relatively small, so because this wasn't happening before I got the mods I have to conclude that it's a mod. EDIT: Either that or I was just lucky my game wasn't doing it before and a mod made the game realize it's not optimized yet... xD I'll keep investigating the mods.

Solution: Turn down the "Pixel Light Count" and "Shadow Cascades" in the KSP settings menu. Solution Edit: It also appears any Lazor mods will also cause this issue. So recently I've been delving into a bunch of different mods mostly just to see what they're like and figure out which ones I want to keep. But I've begun to notice that whenever I rendezvous with another vessel so that I can dock to it, as soon as I get within about 2.3km of the other vessel, the game freezes for upwards of 30 seconds and then resumes. Although this is the distance that it loads the other ships physics and whatnot, I've never seen the game freeze up like this while loading other vessels physics, and it's extremely irritating especially when I'm trying to land near another vessel on a planet or moon. Because of this starting to happen with my addition of mods to the game, I'm about 99.98% sure it's a mod that's causing this to happen, but before I go removing mods to see which one it is I want to just get a general idea about any mods that are known specifically to cause this problem or similar problems. So what I'm going to do is list all of the mods I use below and it would be great if anybody could let me know if they've had or heard of similar issues with any of the following mods or if there are any issues in general I should know about with any of them. Kethane MechJeb QuantumStrut SubassemblyLoader DeadlyReentry Haystack CrewManifest EngineerRedux IoncrossCrewSupport Protractor RemoteTech RomfarerLazorDockingCam RomfarerRoboticArmsPack KerbalAttachmentSystem KerbalAlarmClock FairingFactory So this is my list of mods, and while typing this list up I have a growing suspicion that it may be the Romfarer mods that are causing my particular issue, although I am not sure of it yet. The reason would be because the Romfarer mods come with the ability to change the distance at which other vessels are loaded at in flight and even though I have it set to "default" this may be the cause of the issue... I'll check this when I can and report back later. Even with that being said I'd still like to know about any issues with any of the mods listed above and would greatly appreciate the heads up if anybody knows about any.

Well, my list is mostly my own, though I have gotten some idea's from this thread that I like and have added them to my list as well. General 1) No Kerbal Losses. (This requirement must be met at all costs, it is a sad day when a Kerbal dies.) 2) Minimal Debris. (Must avoid littering space with Debris if possible.) 3) Reusable. (All components must be re-used if at all possible, and if not they must make a successful parachute landing on Kerbin.) 4) Only allowed to use the "End Flight" button if the component is landed on Kerbin. (If there are Kerbals aboard it must be on the continent KSC is on.) Rocket and Ship 5) All rockets must adhere to aerodynamics as they are in the FAR plugin. 6) All components and capsules intended for re-entry must be able to survive re-entry as it is in the Deadly Re-entry plugin. 7) No SRB's (Solid Rocket Booster) on any manned launch. (All though this says nothing about using an SRB on a manned mission AFTER launch... *wink*) 8) Limited asparagus staging. (Limited to 4 boosters, no more.) 9) All manned missions must have a launch escape system. 10) 1 and 3 man command pods must have basic maneuvering and de-orbit capability as just a pod. (RCS for maneuverability, and Sepratrons for de-orbit burn.) Power 11) Every ship needs some means of regenerating power. (Solar Panels or RTG's.) 12) Manned missions MUST has at least one Solar Panel. 13) RTG's on manned vessels must be at least 3 parts away from any Kerbal compartment such as command pods and hitchhiker storage containers. 14) RTG's on manned vessels must have an emergency ejection system. (In case of emergency... Press big red button.) Planets and Moons 15) There must be at least one satellite orbiting a planet or moon before a manned mission can be sent to that planet or moon. 16) A probe or rover must be landed on a planet or moon before a manned landing can take place. 17) A manned landing mission must have taken place on a planet or moon before a base can be established there. ("Manned landing" also includes the return trip, so Eve will be a pain to get a base on.) Life Support I must thank "AmpsterMan" for this idea, I really like it. Life support is as follows - 1 Man Command Pod 1 Kerbal - 4 Days - 2 Man Lander Can 2 Kerbals - 8 Days 1 Kerbal - 16 Days - 3 Man Command Pod 3 Kerbals - 12 Days 2 Kerbals - 18 Days 1 Kerbal - 36 Days - 4 Man Hitchhiker Storage (Maximum of 2 on a ship) 4 Kerbals - 45 Days 3 Kerbals - 60 Days 2 Kerbals - 90 Days 1 Kerbal - 180 Days 18) Kerbals must have adequate life support. 19) There must be at least 20 monopropellant on board per Kerbal. (I figure monopropellant is the closest resource to "oxygen" that I can get for the moment.) 20) Life support timer gets reset to 0 and monopropellant requirement is dropped while landed on Kerbin, Duna, Eve, and Laythe. (I know Eve doesn't actually have air, but I just go with atmo vs no atmo.) 21) Bases and Space Stations must have at least 2 hitchhiker storage containers and adequate storage for 750 monopropellant. 22) Space Stations, as well as Bases on a planet or moon with no atmosphere must have a "resupply" mission sent as well as on board crew cycled every 6 months. (In-game time of course.) Other than that I'd like to say I use RemoteTech as well, makes things much more interesting and challenging. EDIT: So soon after adding the life support idea to my list of house rules... I found a fairly awesome little life support plugin for 0.19 that's actually really customizable as well. Ioncross Crew Support Plugin