Colonel_Panic

you could call it the explode-o-matic.

Thanks I guess. and only if you don't care about framerate, sadly. :c I'm still really hoping they release an update to unity 4 so I can take advantage of my other 5 CPU cores that are just sitting idle right now. Otherwise I'm going to have to scale it down to make it usable.

Not enough. I did it on a holiday afternoon.

So I did finish what I had been working on. The part count is below 1000, but still higher than I was aiming for... that said, I can knock it down by 1/3 just by removing one of the two drydocks, which cuts the lag in half. It launches in 28 pieces (though some pieces are light enough to be launched 2 or 4 at a time) and supports a maximum crew of 134 (no more than 56 should be permanently stationed here, however, as this is the maximum capacity the station is capable of returning to kerbin without a shuttle in an emergency) It carries enough fuel to serve as a one-stop refit and resupply station for the entire fleet, and can fit a cruiser in each drydock, probably even my heavy carriers (though the unimaginable lagfest that would ensue from THAT would probably cause kerbin to collapse into a singulagrity.) It weighs in at 370 tons dry, 837 tons including its fuel reserves, and is 100% stock. I quicksave every time I want to so much as nudge it back to the normal, because the slightest movement makes the crew modules and power masts thrash like gallopin' gertie (though it has yet to shake itself apart, it's nerve-wracking as hell) I plan to launch and assemble one of these with only one of the hangars and use it to assemble, refit, and store modular components of the new interplanetary omni-lander I'm planning. Basically it never has to land on Kerbin once in space, gets refueled and modules swapped out as necessary for different missions, so I can upgrade it without ever re-launching. The dock includes enough clamp ports to hold on to modules not in use, and station a set of tugs and assemblers as well. images follow.

Leading the Way to a Better Future.

I have something pretty massive in the works right now, but the plan is to design it from the ground up to be as light as possible on part count and structural nodes, so hopefully it will be usable in orbit. I just plan to use a lot of really BIG and HEAVY parts. Thanks to the new docking ports, I should be able to join bigger things now without introducing a lot of smaller things into trying to hold them together. will see.

It sho8uldnt be a big problem. I can design the lander to have a weight difference from the smaller lander roughly equivalent to one or two crew modules, and then just leave the ones from that side of the station behind at the drydock. I might for the mission end up swapping some of them for furl tanks, too, and can do a dry vs wet weight calculation before sending them up for retrofit. Yeah, I know it's more efficient (aka, 'better') to offload the intensive maneuvering on the smaller craft. I wanted to do it this way to prove it could be done, and to test the ultimate capabilities of my mothership. I am in effect using the mothership -as- a tug for the landers on this mission, it's just a very large tug with a lot more dry weight. Part of the scope of the mission is going to be just having that station full of science kerbals in orbit over each moon during the landings. Your idea of parking at laythe though is a good one with a lot of merit for the aerobraking capability. I think ultimately I may need to send a full-fledged space dock to laythe orbit there to further research missions in the area.

Well, in theory... all you really need to do is hit a phase window to Eve that puts your eve flyby near the ascending or descending node of moho's orbit... then hit an inclination entering Eve's SOI that will spit you back out on moho's plane, and then wait for an opportunity to perform a hohmann transfer to moho from kerbol orbit. It would undeniably be hard to do, but it's definitely doable... your kerbals might put on a few years in the cooler while they're waiting in the process, too. EDIT: If I ever do a return trip to moho I probably will do this... and if I'm successful I'll post a tutorial on how to pull it off.

Good Lord, excellent post, thanks! It does look like I'll need to refit my station for longer range, possibly swapping out the outer crew modules for more fuel tanks. I know 9000 isn't unrealistic to attain if your wet:dry weight ratio is high enough, but it's definitely nearing the point of diminishing returns... this will be very hard indeed to carry out successfully under my current plan. EDIT: I had planned to bring one heavy lander and one light lander, but truth be told my estimation for a vall landing was closer to 5500 than 3000, so I may be able to slim it down more.. leaving the lander behind, or perhaps... and here's a slick idea... making a heavy lander stage for the light lander, and staging it on vall ascent to return only the light lander to the ship, giving me 2 light landers top carry on to bop and pol, could work very nicely. EDIT 2: Wouldn't trying to capture on a higher orbit require a lot more delta-v than a low orbit for vall? I know I can for example dispatch my lander as soon as entering vall's SOI to do the plane change maneuver and save fuel there (can do the same with the station), though after doing that I'd have the lander and station on different planes, which could take a lot to get back from. I guess I don't know how the delta-v cost of a low vs high holding orbit works out, though I guess the d-v I expend in a high capture orbit, I might save on escape again to the next moon? It's something to consider, just requires thinking a lot about the lander's capability and how to balance it all with the station's.

I did attempt a moho flyby earlier to deposit a refueling tanker in orbit... but I found it was impossible to reach given my non-ideal departure window against moho's inclination, even given my NINE THOUSAND delta-v of the tanker. I failed to complete the circularizing burn, so I have an empty tanker probe just floating around an eccentric orbit of moho now. It is without question the most difficult planetoid to reach in the kerbol system. I might have to find some special departure window when the orbital plane is easier to reach from kerbin.

Nope, I actually went back and undocked it after I took that picture and moved it to the other side, to offset the balance a bit better.

I see someone has discovered that with MechJeb, EVERY rocket is 100% reusable. I've actually considered putting a parachute and probe core on every final stage and then using MJ to try and peg the landing at some random specific location on Kerbin so I can have a 'rocket graveyard' dumping grounds of orbital debris.

I think I know why this happens. The game records where you place the first end of the strut with relation to the attached part, but then it records where it attaches -to- as a vector with relation to the command module or center of the ship... therefore if you're attaching a subassembly to something that has sufficiently different geometry than the ship you took it off of, the endpoints of the struts and fuel lines will not connect, or will connect in the wrong places. I don't know if there's a good workaround for this, unfortunately, you may just have to deal with it.

So I'm actually now thinking of ditching this plan and starting a newer, even more ambitious project to create an omnilander capable of reaching, landing on and returning to kerbin from every body in the kerbol system (excepting Eve and Jool) using only orbitally-refittable parts, and assembling an orbital assembly platform capable of servicing it between missions and storing/refueling all the parts necessary for the refits.

Hey, I got it to work on mine, and yes it appears Mod Manager was the culprit. I disabled it in MM, then manually installed it by copying the entire Innsewerants Space Agency folder to "G:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Innsewerants Space Agency\" and now it works fine. I'm using steam and MechJeb2 on Windows 7 x64

That thing is fantastic and inspiring! I'm going to have to see if I can build something like that with stock parts now. Only problem I really forsee is struts aren't long enough to connect dock ends together at the scale I need. One thing you might consider for escape is redesigning your crew modules to decouple independently, then just attach a couple parachutes, a probe core (for hitchiker containers), a round RCS tank and a linear RCS thruster to each. Then the crew modules can act as an escape vessel on their own (although, probably at the cost of destroying your station if you use them to tie the thing together) I did a similar thing with my Ambition-class frigate, adding 3 escape pods for the foreward crew module, but making the main crew module ejectable (unfortunately, it needed more reinforcement or better parachute attachment, but that's another issue). It has enough RCS to de-orbit on its own, but it's more spectacular to eject during re-entry.

I need to check this. I'm using mod manager so it could be a modmanager compatibility issue. If so, could we get a mod manager compatible version? pretty please?

You're linking your local directories. Try uploading to http://postimg.org and using their provided forum hotlinks.

Yeah, this. More than likely your browser is reading it as a .craft but displaying it as text when you click on it. You can "save this page as" and dump it in your SPH folder, or, right-click the link to the file and save-as to the same.

Thanks! I have to try that next time. EDIT: Rep+ It's double-tap spacebar to switch between toggling between rotation/translation and having translation made default and needing to hold spacebar down to rotate. This should really be in the key bindings wiki.

Nice, yeah, KSP isn't very GPU intensive. Do you have 8+ gigs of RAM? I'd suggest upgrading if not since KSP likes to have a full 4 to itself. Other than that you might try turning off hyperthreading on your 3770k. I have a 3930k and with HT off I clock around 4 GHz and KSP seems to run well for the most part, never using more than about 18% CPU (1 core), especially since the last update. I get maybe 16fps with this launcher. (though as low as 2-3 with my Ambition-class frigate... absurd part and node counts, ho!) I have MJ on the main capsule, but did not think to add one to the tug. That said, a couple early difficulties notwithstanding (the main capsule is heavy and tends to cause RCS thrash with the ASAS or MJ on) getting the rest into place was pretty straightforward, if time consuming, without MJ. The trick with pretty much everything, especially the escape pods, is to attach the tug to a free docking port and then 'control from here' the docking port on the part you wish to attach, then just stay in chase camera mode and control it as if you're docking the part with a tug attached, rather than the tug with a part attached. IFR works pretty well if you just eyeball it to get as close to parallel as possible, then nudge (using precision controls) it gently in translation, slow enough for the internal gyros to keep up and keep it pointing the right way under ASAS. Also, it's easier to attach the hub with attached command module to the box end with the rest of the parts, than to attach the box end to the hub and command module. Just pop it off, twist, switch to control from the docking port, and guide it on. EDIT: I got it all assembled! Hardest part was chasing down the box and dragging it back over to the station to reattach it after all was said and done. You have no translation with the thing thanks to all your RCS being at the very end of your moment of inertia, and it had drifted away by around 3km by the time I got around to it... next time will have to see if I ca reattach it somewhere temporarily while working ont he rest of the station... if there is a next time. That was hard, and took probably an hour and a half all told to assemble.

could also be a change in drag. might want to double-check your intake management.

Is there a better way you'd suggest doing this so I can deploy and recover each lander in the process?

haha, yeah the reason I haven't restarted the game is I'm kinda zooming toward the station now with another piece of the station, and I don't want to fire it back up and be either clipped into the now exploding station, or a million miles away with no engine and only 20u of RCS fuel. I completed the docking using the above (didn't know about the h and n keys which is why I havent done it that way before). my log file is... 64 MB. What part should I be looking for exactly? haha.