Van Disaster

Last time I bothered with career I had some extra experiments, and a surface science mod - that makes noodling around local to KSC quite useful and also gives enough ( with basic up & down rocketry ) to unlock basic aircraft, and then you can do it again with those - that's actually a much more logical progression. I didn't get to orbit for quite some time, meanwhile I'd flown all over the place.

I don't remember... bought at 0.18 perhaps, might have been before. The old "aero" was atrocious, within a couple of weeks I'd found whatever version of FAR was around then & was much happier.

Maybe a vickers or a spandau MG08? both about 500rpm also. Not sure why you'd use a lewis at that point though, pity we can't make a penalty for synchro gear.

I/O also covers network traffic, so you might notice some fun in online games. KSP, not really. I'm not sure what would happen if you used enough memory to start swapping heavily though ( that'd be slow enough as it is... ).

Ver' nice. Is the audio actually synced with the fire rate though? guns fire rate is kinda high if it is...

I thought I saw KSP on a best-seller list at some other online store very recently, I can't seem to find it again now though. Early Access model is fairly simple: it doesn't matter if you think the game is complete enough for you, you got your money's worth and you'd give out more cash for content, you are paying the developers to complete the product. It'd be like buying a car with most of the interior missing because the manufacturer hasn't stopped it rattling & there's wiring faults - it's driveable just fine, but it's not all there. Once the game is declared finished enough for release, then sales should be a reward for putting all that effort in, and *then* the dev can look at selling further content to pay for maintenance, and just to make good use of all that previous work too. There's obvious problems here: * There's no control over what makes the thing finished, it could be decided by marketing or even finance that whatever state the game is in is "finished". There is a control down the road though, because if it's not actually finished then DLC sales ( and further game sales ) are going to flop, and consumers are going to be up in arms too ( witness Project Cars... ). * Added to that there's the issue that even if it is in a state which could be called releaseable, it might not be a good product ( ie, not *really* "finished" ). That's more subjective & would be a matter for market forces to decide if there was any competition in this case. As it is we have KSP which I personally think is in a release state by now, but is a long way from what I'd call subjectively finished for reasons which people have brought up ever since science mode was introduced - and nothing else like it. * As something of a combo of the two, there's active plans to release something deliberately "unfinished" but EA playtested and sell the rest of it as DLC, and I'm sure I don't need to provide examples of that. I don't believe this happened KSP irrespective of it's jagged edges. IMO what's primarily missing in KSP is things to do when you've got somewhere - this is something which has been said right from the start, this is Kerbal Logistics Program, it certainly doesn't cover what actual space programs cover. I'm not sure how I'd feel about a planetary exploration DLC because I personally feel it's a feature which should have been there from the start, but I'm at least open to the idea of buying something if it brought significant new mechanics because I think Squad have tried and are still trying to do their best for this project. Why DLC and not straight into KSP2? do you want more things to do now or in 5 years time? game development is *so long* these days that "just" rolling out a new version doesn't really work unless you're someone like EA who can seemingly get away with just rebadging the same tat every year.

Was more a consideration of offset thrust than power - I seem to remember a 747 ended up in the grass recently because of FOD injestion on both engines on one side on it's takeoff roll, it hadn't even reached V1 & almost had an accident, apparently that is quite a hard situation to deal with. Admittedly there's no real rudder authority by then.

There have been many. Rockets have body lift too, any angled cylinder does. The problem you'll probably run into in KSP is stuff is a bit dense, and also there's no *proper* lifting body modelling as in treating the body as an aerofoil, just aero-planing. The ideal lifting body is a flying wing

Assymetric stuff works fine in FAR - Ferram won a dogfight contest with one, even. The last BAD-T had a craft that could still fight with one wing shot off. As long as the forces all balance out somehow you can make practically anything fly. Rutan's plane there isn't really *that* assymetric anyway ( I'd be interested how the front prop interacts with the rear one though ). Had to go way back to dig this up, but subsonic FAR flight hasn't changed that much.

Hearing "Mars" every time you entered Duna SoI would be a bit much, I think Maybe every time you tried aerobraking somewhere though....

Tried checking underground? that was a longstanding issue that I thought was fixed.

1440p has a usable UI and is a bit crisper ( especially with modded graphics ), so try that as a step-down instead of 1080p. My 1440p UI is still scaled at under 100%, but I am happy with small UI elements.

Rovers need a point to spending time moving around on a planet surface - it's not the fault of rovers, it's a long-standing issue with the game. Once you add a point, then suddenly mobile bases become useful things.

Having messed around a bit, this might actually be a nice intro to FAR if people are considering having a try: it's a simple challenge with a plane that has to fly in a straight line & pretty much at a steady height. If you do, a couple of things: * Make sure you've got enough fin: flying sideways causes unnecessary drag - might even do that in stock, but the flying forwards drag seems so huge it's hard to tell. You can see in the FAR window, just under Drag is SideForce; if that's not near zero that's a real unnecessary waste of engine thrust. * Have a look at the fourth panel in the FAR SPH dialog, and find the critical mach number. If you don't know how to minimise wave drag, just go a bit slower than that & make sure your AoA isn't too high ( which might mean extra wing ). As a general hint, making it longer helps quite a lot of the time, structural fuselages are only 0.1t now. * Try different intakes, some have more drag than others when open. You can go a lot further using FAR, so all the little details add up - which is why it's an interesting & different challenge to stock. As I said above, I took my FAR plane, removed FAR from the game, reset the control surface assignments and it just flew - so it's likely it'll work the other way these days, although you'll probably want a little refinement.

8t & thrust limited to 20%, whatever that works out at. Can hardly get off the runway, I know that much... Either way it's a terrible aircraft.

Yeah, having tried the same plane in current stock air, stock is still as ridiculously soupy as it ever was post 1.0 with default physics settings. Separate FAR table needed ( it's a good challenge in FAR too, just a bit different ). FAR endurance stuff tends to go on a bit - look at how much fuel was left, I got fed up with it & landed I think i won that one just out of bloody mindedness.

@Aetharan: quite possibly FAR, although I don't know enough about current stock aero to know how different they are ( for this sort of stuff, not terribly different anymore, I'd imagine ). We might need a seperate class for FAR - I'll give the craft a shot in stock aero sometime to compare. Otherwise, plenty of wing to get low AoA & high L/D, optimising transonic drag ( that is a FAR thing & quite an issue for endurance craft ), minimal thrust & lots of patience. Also make sure your craft has good static trim so it's not pitching up or down in cruise.

Strutting a triplane drives the part count through the roof, unfortunately ( as well as actually building triplane wings ). At least we only have two guns.

We may have to up the part limit a bit...

Neat. I've got a craft from an old circumnav challenge somewhere that's dying for reuse. So, FAR+5pax+low wingspan+supersonic ( what counts as supersonic btw? it varies with altitude ) would give 75 bonus? will get working. Edit: presumably part-clipping is honour-based? ie do it to make a nice shape, but don't be an ass and hide 500 wings somewhere. Last q: how about thrust-limiting bigger engines? Ed: preliminary investigatory flight: So that's 5234 + FAR + <15m wingspan + >4 crew and I guess - explosions: 5264. Now to build a real plane.

That would need it to know what an important part actually is, which goes a bit beyond just the autopilot. Could make it shoot at engines easily enough ( I will have a look at that, might simply be a case of taking an engine transform instead of CoM ) but anything else you'd have to mark up in a part config. Not sure how you'd mark up a wing root, shape recognition is a little way down the road I think... Anyone actually looked at how well WW1 aircraft guns were mounted? I have a suspicion they vibrated a fair bit, I bet they weren't terribly accurate.

Unsure about FAR wing interaction with those ( biplanes work if you can keep wings far enough apart at least ) - although I never did get a clear picture of FAR & close coupled wing interaction other than some loss of lift. In theory, absolutely for triplanes!

I love deadstick landings & generally I do land at idle, but there's enough chance of screwing up the last 25km that I tend to carry a jet anyway - ultra-annoying to nail the re-entry & then be a fraction low on energy on finals. For larger craft landing too fast is a killer, so energy management is quite critical.

You get some interesting aero balance issues creeping up at the end of Mach 4 - into Mach 5, I've found, I've had aircraft get unstable in pitch again around there even at low AoA; I'm sure this is either just drag-related or actually an effect of mach angle getting smaller, but it doesn't end going supersonic for sure. If you're going to use a discardable jet booster I'd recommend taking a Juno to space, it should be enough to propel an empty spaceplane once you've re-entered & is rather nice if you flub the re-entry or even just final approach. If you're going that way though why not go all the way & use a rocket booster, and just have a small final stage rocket engine on the orbiter. The expensive part is from 27km, which is around end of airbreathing, up to somewhere near orbital speed, and that's the part I apparently used to use discardable stages for if I look back at my last career run. Another way is to use wing-mounted discardable SRBs for that bit.

@AeroGav I seem to remember the panther & the little orange & white radial attach rocket engine was a usable combo for spaceplanes - the rocket engine is low enough profile that you can clip it into a less-than-1.25m tank, so it's not enormously draggy.. Strapping solids to the thing works too, obviously That is a B9 engine which I think is comparable to the Panther, but it could be the equivalent of the other supersonic jet. It's a pity minature rockets come so late, tiny spaceplanes would be so useful early on. One can into space and back with a Juno and the tiny orange rockets.