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Tristavius

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Everything posted by Tristavius

  1. You actually sound really quite stern at his squandering of Kerbals!
  2. Common problem. Try switching to tracking control and back to the ship, fixes 90%+ of the time. (forces physics reload I would guess)
  3. Love it, but how on earth are you getting the symbols in question?
  4. I also don't like to lose Kerbals. So far the only deaths have been on kerbin itself... happy to say the only 'loss' I had what one stranded in EVA in a highly eccentric Duna orbit, but he was eventually rescued But yeah, having to provide oxygen for the little buggers would make them much less... appealing.
  5. Of course there's also a naming convention among the actual craft names as well... not one that makes sense, but just to give it something of a pattern... My manned landers have been named after UK cities (usually ones I've lived in)... Aberdeen, Leicester, Oxford etc My probes have had more descriptive names based on what they do... Cartographer, Surveyor, Pathfinder, Navigator etc My manned mid-sized rovers have been named after dangerous fish... Barracuda, Piranha, Swordfish etc My tugs and delivery craft have been named after large mammals (mostly bears)... Kodiak, Grizzly, Rhino etc My motherships have been named more whimsically My SSTO series has been named after 'spirits'... Banshee, Specter, Wraith etc To be honest I've built so few unmanned landers or rovers I can't even remember what the hell I called them - I prefer to jump right into large manned crafts.
  6. Indeed, if you're not in favor of Mechjeb, then ISA Mapsat is a good bet. As I prefer to keep all but my mapping probes 100% stock I don't actually install the receiver on any vehicle, but if I want a co-ordinate I can switch to the mapping probe, find the spot I want and pick out features in the terrain to guide me in. Then switch back to my craft and land based on what I observed.
  7. Indeed I do, though not as thorough as yours - I may need to update it! [AAA] BBB-C D... (E...) Where [A] is added on the few occasions I use a mod part (very rare for me); [KET] Kethane, [iSA] ISA Mapsat, etc BBB is a 3 letter code for the craft type; SAT (Satellite), ROV (Rover), STA (Station), TUG (Tug), LAN (Lander) etc C is either K (Kerbal controlled) or R (robot controlled) D is the name if the of the vehicle, usually followed by Roman Numerals for the version number E is the final destination of the craft So for example ROV-K Swordfish III (Eeloo) is a Kerbal controlled 'Swordfish' rover (3rd version) I'm currently dispatching to Eeloo [iSA] SAT-R Cartographer II (Tylo) is an unmanned 'Cartographer' probe (2nd version) around Tylo, using one or more parts from the ISA Mapsat mod
  8. I wonder if it would be possible to catch up with, get within a few kilometers of and then rescue a Kerbal on a system escape trajectory....
  9. Indeed, I didn't get the option to have a signature for about a week, don't know if this was time based, post based or admin acceptance based. Just keep looking, it'll show up
  10. Docking 150 tons of fuel with a 3-way adapter to a station already massing in excess of 300 tons without effective RCS and about 1 FPS. While drunk. Man that took some careful 0.1m/s approaching.
  11. I always use just above 120km so as to be able to use 100x time warp and allow the inbound ship to be able to drop it's periapsis as low as 75km and catch up at a good speed (I always prefer the inbound ship to be chasing target rather than the other way round). In short, lower is technically better, but very inconvenient, so find a good balance which in my opinion is just above 120km.
  12. Some of the oddities in here are rather awe-inspiring.
  13. As ever, Scott Manley has a good video on the subject...
  14. Start with Kerbin orbit. Refueling at Minmus and sling shotting round Kerbin can result in a craft leaving Kerbin SOI with the vast majority of it's tanks full, but it's a hard trick to learn, needs a much greater understanding of the mechanics and there's a lot more to go wrong. You of course also have to set up a supply chain to refuel at Minmus (unless your a modder using Kethane in which case it becomes a lot more viable). Kerbin orbit will do you fine to get anywhere you want to go. Once you've done a ton of interplanetary transfers and are very familiar with the principals, when you're bored some night then go and learn the more advanced tricks
  15. When two ships join through docking they automatically become one vessel. As MRab2 said, you may need to manually shut down some engines, RCS ports and so on for the craft being carried. A 'mothership' carrying one or more smaller crafts (landers, rovers, satellites etc) is a common approach to interplanetary travel. The mothership can contain most of the fuel and the engines for the transfer, along with power generation and Kerbal storage. The best best is to launch it into low Kerbin orbit, launch and dock your smaller crafts then refuel them all. Your landers can be made with the minimum delta v required to land and take off from your target world and can be disposed of if you wish once they've accomplished their mission (better not to drag any dead weight back to Kerbin at the end). For example I recently went to collect a whole load of stranded Kerbals on Duna. I had a large carrier ship with a lander, a manned rover and 2 satellites in tow. The rover was depployed to go and round up the Kerbals and bring them to the lander, which made several trips to ferry them all back to the mothership (refueling from the mothership each time). The rover was left abandoned when the last man left and the lander was also ditched in orbit once they'd all returned. The satellites were launched to Duna and Ike polar orbits. The mothership then returned them all to a Kerbin space station where they all boarded a space plane to return them to KSC. The mothership was again refueled and was ready for it's next cargo and mission.
  16. Don't suppose anyone has any info on how to attach things inside cargo bays? Try as I might I just can't get any larger items inside (even if they should easily fit)... nothing will snap to the correct clip points.
  17. Wow, my laptop is ancient and my load time with a fair few mods is no more than 60 seconds. Must be some epicly old hardware!
  18. And as many others have said, don't rush it -that's the key.
  19. Really not that bad on a maneuverable ship. Although RCS is brilliant for correcting the final approach (and the actual docking) once you really understand what you're seeing on the nav ball, you can get your final approach corrections right just by burning to push/pull your periapsis/apoapsis as needed. You need to be able to flip your ship for this, or have liquid engines pointing both directions like my tugs do. For the actual last few hundred meters docking maneuver, with ships in the proper orientation again you can successfully make the connection without ever touching RCS, though you need either a very fast turning ship or bi-directional engines. I've had to do this on a few different occasions. Some of my heavier station parts just simply can't be moved with RCS so I was forced to design a tug to do this without their help. My light tug which moves small tanks around my station and to nearby ships also has no rcs and needs to be flown manually (very hard actually) and finally I recently collected a Duna lander with my mothership and had forgotten to add RCS to the lander, so again it was a no RCS job, and actually it was very, very simple.
  20. Very nice writeup... I've had very successful RCS usage but you've added two things to my own knowledge... firstly adding the translation-only ring along the middle and secondly the gravity hack for testing!
  21. Awesome! Shall look forward to it! Now of course I'll actually have to do a grand tour!
  22. For mid-sized rovers there's nothing wrong with landing them veridically... I've deployed a design like this on almost every world in the system. The image below is my new version (slightly longer, a bigger wheel base and a few other tweaks) which I landed on Duna for trials last night. The frame starts with 3 tanks on each of the 3 arms.. this picture isn't great as I ejected the 3rd at some point when it emptied, but forgot to eject the second before landing (this thing has enough delta v to go anywhere, so Duna barely emptied 1 tank on each). It's only supposed to land with 1 tank left, regardless of how many were actually used or they get in the rovers way. It lands upright and then releases the rover in one of three methods... Ideally I land in the correct orientation on a slight slope which causes the rover to fall forwards onto its wheels once released Or when it's released I use the rovers top RCS to push it forward and again falls on its wheels Or at worst the frame can be sacrificed and two engines turned off, the third can then topple the frame over, once again landing the rover on it's wheels On paper it may not look as efficient as ramps and skyframes but the landing system has got me almost everywhere incredibly easily. The frame also contains a 1-man pod to return to orbit (in the 3300 delta v range, so works on most worlds) If there's plenty of fuel on the nukes the whole thing can lift off on most worlds, then deploy the pod later if needed.
  23. Loving the grand tour shield... hopefully we might see it in the online generator soon?
  24. Out of interest, what image upload do you use? This seems to be a regular problem for me being unable to see some people's image posts... I suspect it's probably one particular image site being blocked by the United Arab Emirates.
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