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Tobmaster

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Posts posted by Tobmaster

  1. Attention all pilots! The KSC is looking for up and coming pilots who can get the most space going value out of Cargo SSTOs... The main focus will be on efficient passenger transfers and large cargo deliveries of about 36 tons.

    Your mission is to send an SSTO spaceplane to approximately 100kmx100km Orbit (AP must be at or above 100km, PE within 5km of AP) around Kerbin in the most fuel efficient way you can muster.

    Rules:

    1. You must get at least 2880 liquid fuel and 3520 Units of oxidizer into orbit in a deliverable container - one orange tank worth.
    2. Spaceplane should be below 400 parts
    3. Space plane should not lose any parts along the way except for delivering payload (in accordance to the scoring below)
    4. Do not use cheat like items like hacking gravity, inf fuel, hacking parts... etc

    Scoring:

    1. One point will be awarded for every usable unit of liquid fuel in 100kmx100km orbit; above the required fuel (2880 units) to be countable as points, the liquid fuel must be accompanied by oxidizer of proper ratio.

    2. You can be awarded bonus points if you demonstrate a decent use for the remaining fuel:

    • 50 points for delivering full fuel tanks to orbital station (detachable fuel tanks of at least the required fuel, ie orange tank, etc)
    • 75 points, each, for orbiting any other celestial body (must be fully captured in orbit around claimed body)
    • 100 points for safe return of each Kerbal to Kerbin's surface - you may launch with an empty cockpit and pick up a passenger along the way if you desire (no spamming seats for extra bonuses)
    • 100 points for 100% safe landing on Kerbin - no lost parts
    • 100 points for versatility of your craft - what else can it haul - can be proved over a number of missions
    • 250 points for reaching SOI of a planet other than Kerbin
    • 300 points for full orbit capture around a planet other than Kerbin
    • up to 500 points for entertaining 'shenanigans' along the way - to be determined by my grading of your entertainment factor.

    Show enough screenshots to backup your claims

    My entry: Is the 'Space Pterodactyl'

    Download the craft file here.

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    381 parts

    delivered to 100kmx97km with

    Oxidizer= 4556

    Liquid Fuel = 3741

    Oxidizer x .82(rounded) = 3735 - lesser of this number or liquid fuel will be your points minus the required 2880 so that makes it 855

    Points: 1205

    855 fuel points

    50 station fuel delivery

    100 versatility

    200 for 2 kerbals return to Kerbin

    I wont be super strict, so have fun

    Stock Leader Board:

    1. Tobmaster - 1205


    Modded Leader Board:




  2. I'm 31 and do two completely unrelated things in KSP - make plausible spaceplanes and orbital monstrosities.

    Usual Design process for monstrosities

    1. Create something neat and fun to go to space
    2. Strap on fuel tanks and engines/boosters to get it to orbit
    3. Fail to get to orbit
    4. ADD MORE BOOSTERS
    5. Repeat steps 3 & 4
    6. when fps turns into a slide show, divide payload and dock to single piece in orbit

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  3. This was a complete pain! I spent too many hours to make a KAS only manned rover scale the VAB since I decided using robotics would be too easy. So I eventually made it... only took 13 minutes and 11 seconds... Spent countless attempts with MK1 and decided to revise the design in MK 2 just to fight the lip of the VAB.
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    Fun Challenge, thanks for posting.

    Made MK3 of my grappler rover to increase climbing efficiency - 6:37 on the clock. Celebrated the good speed with a Kerbal bungee jump off the VAB - added screenshots to my previous submission's gallery Just a tad up the page

  4. Alright, now that we got the challenge a bit more manageable... Here is as close as I could get:

    1064 Parts with SSTO's

    Can Hold (some are in the SSTO's)

    21120 Liquid Fuel

    25080 Oxidizer

    20720 Electric

    4700 Mono-propellant

    14 Kerbals are on board, including the SSTO Pilots. The nose section of the carrier craft is two detachable multipurpose orbital crafts which could be used as an orbital transport (6 passengers), escape pod, station tug, etc. No missiles are on board since I can't handle the lag of a 1000+ ship right now, but there are docking ports on the side meant to house them (or I could have modified the front spikes into missiles) - or if we could build 2000+ part ships, two carriers could dock side by side... anyways, it was definitely a challenge to get it all set up and it won't win any beauty pageants..

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  5. My thought is that holding 4 ssto's may be a little much in part count wise. My go to SSTO is a tad under 100 parts so that would put this thing over 400 parts just with the planes (my SSTO may be bigger than it needs to be but still). Then your LFO requirements are about 4 orange tanks - plus hiding the carrier bay with panels... etc The part count will be massive. I've built 1000+ things before but it can get excruciating.

    My suggestion: Require a 2 bay carrier capable of orbital maneuvers to most planetary systems with half the other requirements and then give bonus points "if" someone can build a structure as massive as you were thinking of. Other than running onto a part count issue, it sound like fun

  6. All depends. I really like vanilla, but colonizing laythe with bobcat H.O.M.E modules and a KAS crane system was loads of fun too. I haven't started to get into kethane yet since I am really wanting to wait for vanilla resources but it looks sweet.

    My favorite mod would have to be KAS - works so well to move things around and I will be checking out the remote launch pad and mission controller before long.

    Basically, whatever lets you have the most fun.

    ...Later

  7. Select the object as a target so the pink indicators show up; they are indicators for the location of your target and the speed indicated above the navball is relative to the object. Since you're already close enough, you just need to kill your speed by using rcs thrust while pointing retrograde - if you aren't familiar with it, click on the docking mode and play around with it. Sometimes docking makes you want to bash your head on the keyboard, but it is a satisfying experience when it links up.

  8. Over the weekend, Monday, May 27th to be exact, a three member team decided to attempt a mission control style multiplayer game with the Telemachus Mod. It was quite interesting. 1001sd, AustralianFries, and I took part in this mission. I acted as pilot and was stuck in IVA mode only while the other two would call out Ap and PE values, times to Ap and Pe and so on from the data transmitted through the Telemachus mod.

    The ship I took for the mission was an excellent design, for landing on minmus, but had a few shortcomings for a munar landing, largest of which was a improperly designed lander leaving too little fuel for reentry to Kerbin's SOI from Mun. In hindsight, a few simple modifications could have been done to make a smoother experience, but all in all it was a success, mostly due to the inadvertent use of KAS on a staged part close to the munar surface allowing the refueling of the craft for the return trip.

    Mission Details. Taking off from KSC was a simple task using the onboard instruments, the altimeter was priceless, throughout the entire mission. During the turn for orbit around kerbin, the Ap altitude was called out until a lofty 300,000m AP was achieved. Accelerating the time warp, while getting a countdown of time to Ap, we got close to Ap,. There, a burn was started bringing up the Pe above Kerbin and continued to burn to intersect Mun's path at about 12,000,000m. Without using map view, we had to proceed like a rendezvous attempt and circularize our orbit a tad smaller than Mun's, at about 11,000,000m, still within Munar SOI and just wait with time warp enabled. Angling the small window of the mk1 craft to visually determine how close we were getting, all that could really be said is: "Well, its getting closer." Once the orbital velocity switched to reference Mun, we dropped from time warp and made our orbital adjustment burn until we had a Pe value on the chart... Now started the hard part.

    Normally landing on the darkside of Mun is dangerous/ PITA, but there was really no difference when confined to IVA and off we went to burn for landing with only the altimeter to go by. When the landing burn started, I then realized the flaw in my landing vehicle's dv and had to take the command vehicle down to the surface without separating, but this section had no landing legs, meaning I needed to jettison it with enough time to recover with the smaller lander and put it down. I took the decent slow and when within just a few meters of the surface, the secondary module was released, but caused major instability with the tiny landing craft and the fact that the small craft had no sas. Using the 6 radial engines, I had to boost higher to recover which caused me to burn off much needed fuel. It was at this time that I was informed that telemetry data went dark... Well, that command module contained the antenna for the telemachus mod, overlooked detail #2. Luckily that wasn't completely overlooked as I had placed a secondary antenna on the mini lander. Once that was brought online, after touching down, and time warp accelerated so there was sun to charge the batteries for it to transmit, it was time to take off. Without knowing exactly where we were, I received information earlier that were were almost perfectly equatorial, Bob went EVA to get a look at the location of Kerbin so we had a rough guess of where to go.

    screenshot260_zps16a05405.png

    Once the burn started I realized that big dv mistake was major, we didn't have enough fuel to make it into munar orbit and I had to reload from F9 to rethink the situation. Luckily, the secondary module landed with the fuel tank still intact just a few meters away. Thinking about my options, Bob was sent to push the tank closer to the lander in hopes of somehow being able to use the docking clamp to transfer fuel, that was when he noticed that a KAS winch was attached to the secondary module and it could be used to transfer fuel the few meters. Now with a full tank, Bob climbed aboard and took off for home. Once in munar orbit, the burn to Kerbin was started once the planet disappeared behind Mun, real scientific.

    Early during this burn it was noticed that a retrograde burn increased Ap, which ended up being a retrograde orbit. Coming in retrograde was extiting and we hit Kerbin atmosphere at only a touch over 3300m/s. All I got from mission control was: "You're at 90,000m... uh 3000m! Deploy the chutes!" Once the chutes were deployed, Bob woke up from his brain damaging deceleration to a soft landing on the surface of Kerbin, just one continent to the east of KSC.

    screenshot261_zpse39bb138.png

    All in all, it was great fun, but the resolution of the IVA navball needs to be better, it is hard to be as accurate as the exterior navball. THis is definitely something everyone should try at least once.

  9. Thank you all for for letting me know it was just me, it got me to browsing my computer and I found there was a screwed up part that I made my spaceplane with in .19 Not sure how it got messed up, maybe something I downloaded to play with that replaced a stock part. Either way, a few more tons of engines and boosters and we are back in orbit and to Minmus. This one was my fault for not paying attention to parts downloaded, but i did notice the behavior in turbo jet flameout is just a tad more predictable, although that could just be me too.

    screenshot222_zps798c31ea.png

    Mergel Kerman sends his thanks from Minmus

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