Ryu Gemini

Spaceplane wings are overrated. You don't need no stinkin' wings. .

No walkers today. But I am learning how to use infernal robotics as I am making an attempt to build Final Fantasy 7's Highwind airship. A mechanically accurate one that is. Which if you played the entire game has two times it changes, the last of which is the most drastic and involves fold-out wings (which themselves have fold-out winglets), a bridge that actually retracts upwards into the main body, and other fun stuff. Seriously, now that I have actually started to study that airship's design, I realize it is one of the most kerbal flying things I have ever seen. Edit: And yeah, the main transformation (the one most people remember) DEFINITELY looks like something kerbal. I'll have to use hinges for it though, and maybe those extending pistons. .

I was wondering recently... Specifically, wondering if I could manage to build the Highwind. Yes, the FF7 airship. And if so, if it is possible to add the alternate modes. You know, that thing it does whenever Cid decides to be Cid and press the big red button he doesn't know the function of. Naturally, it seems the way to start is to start with the ending piece (or rather, the airship's form as shown in the ending sequence of the game). Then build the main airship around it. And as the first "stage" put its props on. Unfortunately, most of the internet material on the subject is only default form highwind. This may be difficult. I have learned so far though that the main viewing area at the bottom is NOT, in fact, the Highwind's Bridge. Its the other thing, a little forward and above. Edit: Actually, it MIGHT be that part after all. The design of this thing makes no bloody sense. Edit: Oh NOW I see. In final form, the bridge retracts upwards to the main body of the ship! The more I look at this thing, the more I realize just how unbelievably kerbal that airship's design is. .

Well, since last night I was tired and didn't notice this thread was by the same person as the VTOL challenge thread, I decided that for the sake of not just dumping the same thing into both threads I ought to appologize by at least testing out the Science Train as it would be with pure helicopter-style. That is to say, I tore off the jet engines, threw a counterbalance on the back, and took it up to see what it did. Max altitude it can go with the firespitter VTOLs alone: About 6600ish. I considered making a dedicated copter, but then I read some of this thread and realized that these people actually know what they are doing. So I said "Fine! I'll make my OWN rotors! With blackjack! And Kerbals!" Unfortunately, kerbals are a poor building material, and I didn't have any cards around. Only infernal robotics parts. So I naturally did what most infernal robotics people do at some point, and try to make a helicopter with that. Presenting: The Failcopter! Capable of getting a fraction of a millimeter off the ground, and moving at a whopping 3 meters a second, this wonder of kerbal engineering can scare the crap out of its pilots even if they include Jebediah himself! And it can do so for almost a minute at full throttle before something crashes into the ground, sending the poor souls aboard hurtling across the spaceport in a wobbly (but now actually flying!), free-wheeling disaster with surprisingly good survival odds! Therefor allowing you to make them pilot it AGAIN! Notice: warranty void if it actually manages to get airborne. Or if you turn on the engines. Or if you even get in it. .

Did not make this for the challenge (or any challenge), but I may as well post it here too. Science Train V (Stable Edition), which is not so much a helicopter as it is a flying science station for nabbing science from different parts of Kerbin. It has no wings, after I couldn't for the life of me get it to stay even remotely stable with the damn things. It does have powerful engines though, and pointing the VTOL engines forwards and combining their thrust with the turbojets grants it enough push to get it to the altitude where the turbojets really do their thing (at which point its not really a helicopter anymore, admittedly). These two screenshots are the ones I just have lying around already, and are not intended as proof for any sort of challenge criteria. It must be landed vertically. The VTOL engines fortunately have a semi-automatic hover capability that can be set up with some work and a bunch of action groups, which make it easy to maintain altitude until you are stationary, so you can plop down the last 10 or so meters straight down. With that admittedly cheat-like function, I probably could land on that building. I did land on a mountaintop with a landing zone about twice its size at least, though I don't have a screenshot of that. It can achieve both altitude points if you allow the use of its jets. Otherwise, I am uncertain of its maximum VTOL-only altitude. It made it about 1/4 of the way around the planet (the polar region) before running below 1/3 fuel, at which point its balance started getting wonky and its massive array of torque wheels started no longer able to balance the thing. I am fairly sure I achieved that in less then 90 minutes, but again that was using turbojets. Once you get high enough and have some turbojets at their prime altitude, things like "wings" or "rotors" are merely shiny and unnecessary toys, admittedly, and you can just scream along the edges of the sky with a brick for all it matters, so long as said brick is pointed at the proper angle and has necessary torque to maintain that heading (my brick does with loads to spare, and is the only "plane" I've ever flown that can just pull a 90-degree turn at 20km cruise speeds and not give a crap about it). The jets are mounted on structural pieces though, I could probably increase range a bit if I swap them for actual fuel-containing hulls. I need to keep transferring fuel into that back-most tank to maintain balance until its the only tank left full. Probably cannot circumnavigate in one shot at present though. Not unless I add some big drop-tanks (should have enough lift to lift some though). It can seat 6 kerbins, 3 in that flying fortress cockpit, 2 in the science lab, and 1 in that chair I strapped to the side for the sake of SCIENCE! (it helps get readings of various sorts, mostly the "I should not be taking EVA reports under these conditions, please let me back in the plane!" ones). Again, not really intended for this challenge, but thought I'd just chime in since I coincidentally made the thing today. .

May as well throw mine in here, which I just made today. Probably violates some rule or another but here. It was first called Science Train. But it wasn't very good. So along came Science Train II (Flying edition). Unfortunately, while it did fly it tended to do so poorly. Hard to get spitfire VTOL engines to work with wings properly on large aircraft. End result, the Science Train V (Stable Edition). It flies great. Very stable, can maneuver very well, and Oh, almost forgot to mention that It has no wings! Yes, you read that right. No. Wings. And it still flies great without having to treat the thing like a rocket (though it has sufficient thrust and torque to go vertical at low altitudes). Actually, the lack of wings is quite useful in one regard. When it flames out and starts going into that annoying death spin, its back under control and pointing its original heading in 10 seconds. Or a different heading if I want to suddenly fly 90 degrees to the right for some reason. No flat lifting surfaces to be annoyed by crosswinds, and a bunch of torque wheels make this the best handling thing I ever made at high altitudes. The thing is incredible, I can tack against the wind at angles that would literally tear some of my other aircraft apart. Anywho, here's some images. So there you have it! Wings are overrated! Don't need no wings to make something that still flies like a plane!

Bad news. Spent a bunch of the day faffing about with a vehicle I called the Science Train. Which was basically all the science stuff I had unlocked in a big old train-shaped rover. Except being a rover, its not too useful unless I launch it somewhere. I had really only made it for kerbin though. So naturally, I decided it needed to fly. Fortunately, I have the spitfire parts mod installed, so I have a bunch of propeller stuff, including some really handy rotating VTOL engines. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get the damn thing stable with all the wings and the other stuff. Fortunately, wings are overrated. Honestly, its one of the best handling things I've ever flown, especially for its size (the reaction wheels help). I can let the jets flame out at high altitude, and stop its rotating and have it back and steady on its heading within like 10 seconds of said flameout. No spins of doom with this beauty. With a lot of torque and no weird flat lifting surfaces doing who knows what when flying at odd angles, it can tack against the wind in ways that would probably tear apart some of my winged aircraft. Speaking of wings being overrated, you could perhaps take up a challenge of making the best aircraft you can... that has no wings or control surfaces whatsoever. With the caveat that it must still be TREATED as if it were a plane by the pilot (i.e. take off from the runway, and fly up to the 20-something kilo mark where your jets run out of air). Naturally, the "plane" will need to be a VTOL or have some other means of getting off the runway without wings. Oh, and "best" aircraft can be quantified or qualified by you. You could go for a standard of going big, or you could try and make something cool and make it fly like a jet. Like a battleship or something. In fact, that gives me an idea. Since I have infernal robotics, and the "Science Train" was such a success, maybe I should actually try it in a battleship shape, and give said ship working turrets. Maybe. Maybe later though, can't keep distracting myself from making a blasted walker or something. Then I got bogged down in a rather, um, fun moon landing. Mainly because I refused to give up on landing an outdated lander (which I had just been upgrading the launcher for and throwing more stuff on rather then give it a proper re-design) on a slope a good deal too steep for it. Well, managed it finally. Actually, how's that for a challenge then? Steepest slope you can land a ship on. You may notice that when I finally got it, I had tried retracting one side's gear. So go a step further! Design a lander that is purposely assymetrical and slanted, perhaps to the point where it cannot even land on a flat surface due to being so specialized for its task. But not to despair! For just now, I finally decided to mess around with actual infernal robotics stuff! And my first attempt, thrown together in about 10 minutes of building, testing, and throwing struts around, shows promise! Its a "reinvent the wheel" type, mind you. As you can see, I went with perma-braked wheels in hopes of some more traction, though testing will be needed to tell if they actually are better then just jamming an I-beam into the ground. That green thing btw is a biplane cockpit from the spitfire pack. Open air controls just seemed fitting for something like this. Anywho, this thrown-together piece of junk managed to get up to about 7-8 m/s, purely from me rotating the cockpit and the heavy fuel tank attached to it, such that it was hanging off the front. Gravity pulls it down, and the wheel forward with it. I imagine it could be goaded into moving faster if I made it bigger. Also, if I were to send it to Eve somehow, since that planet has higher gravity. I've yet to land there though, to be honest. But that will have to wait till tomorrow. For now, sleepy sleep. And then tomorrow, need to learn how to use some of the robotic parts I haven't tried yet. But the fact that I was able to do something already with only the rotators is encouraging. Edit: Oh, last minute before bed idea for a quick little stand-alone challenge for a video. Build a plane that can land safely upside down. And then, of course, actually do it, perhaps from IVA/cockpit view. Shouldn't be too hard a challenge once you get used to flying upside down, but could still be worth a few laughs in youtube video format. .

I was actually thinking about that too (Kerbal physics just might be wonky enough for it to work!). I also was pondering whether kerbal physics would allow for perpetual motion machines of some sort. Non-infiniglide ones that is, like this wheel thing (wouldn't work with OUR physics, but even stock KSP can violate conservation of momentum by transferring fuel between two tanks at the end of a stick and rotating the ship 180 degrees between transfers) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perpetuum1.png Edit: Now THAT is an amusing quirk this forum applied to the link. Still works though. In fact, I was also thinking of maybe starting a proper Infernal Robotics challenge thread for this sort of thing. Didn't take long for me to consider I would need two score lists (trying to think like those people who look for every loophole for a while before making any challenge is a good idea), one for walkers and one for people who quite literally re-invent the wheel. That is, while powered wheel PARTS aren't allowed, infernal robotics does have some rotating things, so you could potentially make a wheel out of non-wheel parts). Actually, I could even potentially put on a third group for people who want to build siege weapons. Speaking of closing loopholes, I forgot to forbid infiniglide wing-flapping and separator ejection force abuse (which could be important as I specifically didn't forbid non-powered wheels). And on that note, powered wheels would be alright if you could prove that you didn't use the power at all during the run (for instance, if you did a video and had the brakes engaged for the entire time you were benchmarking your machine, along with it being visible that the wheels were not moving). The whole reason I made those special rules for wheels is because I know full well that it can be hard to get proper traction against the ground sometimes in KSP, even on Kerbin. Yet, I also note that those free-spinning aircraft wheels appear to generate an unusually high amount of friction, when compared with non-landing-gear parts. Especially when braking, as many plane designers who designed a top/front-heavy plane with the landing gear too far back have discovered. Anyway, I'll be messing around with the whole idea today, and depending on how viable it is, I may just fraps some quick demonstrations and set up a proper challenge thread. Edit: with sufficient reaction wheels to force it to stay upright, I wonder if it may even be possible to do a bipedal walker. The magic of SAS after all can potentially take the place of all the troublesome balance aspects of making a real-life bipedal walker. I'll have to test that too. .

Are you familiar with the Infernal Robotics mod? In that case, how about something like this: A walker challenge. Using infernal rocket parts and any other allowed parts you want (see below), get from point A to point B as fast as you can. A good measure for this would be from the start of the runway to the end of it, since you would likely want to build the thing in the aircraft hangar. Rules would of course be: No rockets, no jets, no ions, no propellers, no powered wheels (unpowered ones are fine and may actually help provide some traction with brakes on), no reaction wheel/sas torque rolling (you can use them to keep yourself upright though), etc. You must move using parts that change shape (i.e. infernal robotics).

I also like Krubals.

Put it off a while as B9 parts hasn't updated to 0.23 yet. Does it usually take this long? .

This is truly an awesome challenge. Why? Because all the rockets you guys are making are the truest "kerbal" rockets I have seen in some time. .

Got a little delayed in actually starting that idea up, but may get it set up sometime this week.

Someone get him a better computer so he can land 2000 kerbals on the mun. .

He literally flew a 7-building city to the moon. And then his kerbals, who were clearly spoiled rotten by him, decided it was too dusty. So they flew it back.

You just HAD to taunt the smidge! You just HAD to, didn't you?! NOW look what happened!

Ah, is that so. So are there any other really good parts mods then? Current list to look into: KW rocketry Novapunxh Kethane B9 Interstellar And the FAR and maybe Deadly Re-entry ones.

Disallow infiniglide then. .

I probably don't want to deal with kerbals being able to die without me doing anything. They have things hard enough as it is when I AM doing things. I may try deadly re-entry at some point, but will probably start with FAR alone. Interstellar seems like it might be a fun end-game sort of thing in career mode. What are some good parts mods for career mode, aside from Interstellar?

Since career mode is still being tweaked, but I still want to have fun with it anyway, I thought I'd try going full throttle into a whole bunch of mods for it. After all, it would let me learn about the mods I haven't experienced gradually via science unlocks and experimentation, while providing some interesting new fun in general. Just one problem. I haven't actually messed with too many mods outside of a couple basic ones like Mechjeb. So I humbly request the expertise of this board to come up with a good list of them for me to go for. Requirements are basically: -Properly compatible with career mode, which is to say that they can be unlocked in the tech tree and are done so in a suitable manner (so not everything unlocked in the first node). -Compatible with each other too. So that it works with other mods on the list. -Nothing TOO broken. Unless unlocking it is equally anti-broken. So I wouldn't mind getting parts that eventually let me get around anywhere with relative ease if said parts basically require me to have gone everywhere already and sucked up all the science to unlock. But basically, relatively balanced mods. I've heard good things about Kethane and that B9 pack (and saw comments indicating they are set up to work with career mode properly), so those two probably are a good start to the list. Also, would FAR be a good idea to test out along with whatever list I end up with, or would it potentially upset some of the balance a bit?

Oh no. I can already hear the roar of 1000 ton rocket masters sending up their massive strut and girder-filled monstrosities as they build some skyscraper at the limits of the game's rendering distance.

Perhaps there could be a stock division and a FAR division. .

Smidge: Here we go, I just got almost twice the previous guy's at 104. Later. Other guys: WTF? One of the other guys: Well, its hard, but I think I might just be able to get a couple dozen more...? Smidge: LOL Nope nope nope! 210 now! Just watch, someone will get 214, and then Smidge will get uppity again and make a 400 monster.

At the end there, I swear your poor pilot has a look like he just did something unmentionable in his pressure suit.

The recent update has improved the situation with regards to the ability for certain talented builders and fliers to max out their science in 3 missions, but has at the same time gone a little too far. A realistic one-way probe is of little use now due to the rather low returns it grants. Let us discuss how science gathering can be improved further. One idea would be to make it such that parts like the goo container and such are only able to transmit once, but are able to store up to X number of results before doing so (similarly to how a command pod can store multiple EVA reports and surface samples). Or alternatively, to have a set number of uses, but for that number to be greater than one. Does anyone else have ideas with regards to this? On a side note, I did have a thought with regards to the other side of science -the spending of it. Perhaps in addition to just parts, there could be "passive" things unlocked by some research nodes. For instance, an early node could unlock the EVA suits' "jetpacks" in addition to a few parts, before which they wouldn't have them. Some later nodes could increase the amount of fuel they have or their power (the current EVA pack would be near the end of the upgrade path with regards to power and fuel). Or perhaps the runway and spaceplane assembly building would not be built until you researched an early node dealing with aerospace. Another way to do it would be to have a separate dedicated tree to passive stuff, to give players a new science point sink. With some passives you unlock being EVA pack stuff, a runway/improvements to said runway's length/etc, increasing the size limit for vehicles you build in the VAB or SAB, etc. Perhaps some passives would unlock an improved variant of certain parts if the original was already available. For instance, an "improved scientific gear" type of passive science might unlock a "T2" science part for parts which have a higher science cap then the original (i.e. if you had already gotten all the science you can with the original materials bay, the T2 would be able to get some more science from that location), giving you a reason to send the new variant of the same experiment to a moon you've been before. So what are everyone's ideas on the science situation, and how might it be better improved?