[I give you... the biggest #&@% carrier ever to have lagged a lag.]

good one! impressive. can you give us a link without a launch vehicle, so i can launch it with hyperedit

You can strip the boosters off it in the VAB if you really want, though it won't do a whole lot. Surprisingly it seems to be even harder on the physics engine when it's in space, though as long as you don't dock anything with it... I just kinda deal with the lag. I might look into some ways of optimizing the game to make it more manageable in the future if I want to do an actual mission with the thing.

How about you upload the ship so others can mess with it?

I will soon, probably next day or two. I need to finish ironing out a couple minor bugs first, and I'm busy with other things at the moment.

That's a very impressive ship, I saved the screenshots to my KSP folder because it looks awesome too. What kind of AA did you use?

8x but I don't think it's impacting my performance, since my GPU handles that, and the main issue is the CPU load of running the physics simulation.

If you really want I can take some better screenshots without the HUD later after I get those .craft files up. These were just kinda rushed while getting it up there.

P.S. Thanks, I put a lot of effort into making it aesthetic in the design phase.

[I give you... the biggest #&@% carrier ever to have lagged a lag.]

1,060 parts and 800 tons on the pad, 270 tons fully loaded and fueled in orbit, more lag than a counterstrike tournament sponsored by AOL dialup.

~5,000 final stage ÃŽâ€v, 3,775 ÃŽâ€v with 4 fully fueled fighters, and somewhere around 7,000 ÃŽâ€v if you don't care about the fighters being fully fueled when you get to your destination.

This impressive frigate carries:

13 crew including 4 fighter pilots

3 single kerbalnaut escape pods

1 jettisonable 6-kerbalnaut crew module lander

4 SSTO fighters (creatively referred to as x-wings)

4 deep space ion probes

6 communications satellites

6 orbital kill vehicles (for defense against the space kraken, they say.)

2 skycrane deployable rovers

My beastly 6-core 4GHz machine with 32 gigs of RAM is no match for it, and it chugs away at around 2 FPS once fully loaded in orbit. I don't care though because it's friggin awesome!

This thing is so massive, that I had to invent a new, more massive refueling tanker with 2 XL tanks and 2 large RCS tanks to cut down on the orbital rendezvous trips. It turns out that docking with that flying hippo train at 2 FPS is not fun and takes a bloody hour.

Video:

I have the .craft file for the x-wing ready, but can't find a way to attach it to the post? is there a way to do this?

I'm still getting the bugs ironed out of the frigate, will upload that one once I do.

[Hardware vs. part count]

Hi,

I have a 6-core i7 3930k with 32GB of RAM.

I get around 4-6 frames per second with a 1000-piece ship, and 2 frames per second with my 1800+ piece 270-ton fully loaded carrier.

That's the worst I've ever gotten. Most ships <400 pieces don't bring my game down by more than 20%.

[Hidden Fuel Tutorial - More Fuel in 5 Steps]

This isn't without its downside. Any fuel tank you cannot see from the outside, is a fuel tank you cannot refuel at a rendezvous. And it's not like you're actually benefitting from this in any way. The weight is still there. It's no more efficient... oh, and it might break things.

But sure, if you want, I guess.

P.S., the toroidal fuel tank is actually designed to be 'nested' into other parts. You can wedge one between two fuel tanks, or a fuel tank and pod, engine, etc... and it will be hidden for just that extra little bit of fuel. It also looks nice exposed tucked into the top or bottom of a radial fuel tank.

[SSTO Fuel Issues]

Spaceplanes are great for one thing: SSTO. They're light, re-useable, and they consume very little fuel on the ascent to orbit. However, because so much of their design is dependent on atmosphere for them to benefit at the cost of other things like weight, they are not great for landing on and returning from the mun, sorry. It doesn't mean it can't be done--it can, but it would be very very difficult and inefficient.

The bets tips I can suggest are to think light, shed all unnecessary weight, minimize your engine count--you'll want 3 for best symmetry--, use a lot of air intakes (2 per engine is a good start, no need to spam them), and use rocket fuel instead of jet fuel (jet engines can burn it, leaving only some leftover oxidizer. this saves the weight of carrying a jet fuel tank, and also means you won't have extra jet fuel left over you can't use in orbit)

For very small spaceplanes, 1 jet engine and 2 small rockets will do. For large ones, I might suggest 2 jet engines and 1 big rocket, or a nuclear one if you can swing it for those long trips.

I recommend only using enough wings to land your plane safely. More adds weight and you don't need it for powered ascent with an SSTO capable engine configuration, but too little means you can't slow down enough to land safely without dropping out of the sky.

[RCS Thruster Positioning Tips?]

I'm actually planning on working on and submitting a youtube tutorial that covers this subject, probably up in next few days. In the meantime, use these tips:

1) if your craft is intended for docking (the dock-er, rather than the dock-ee) you should keep that in mind in its overall construction, not just in placement of RCS thrusters.

2) you want all of your expendable resources (fuel) of each type centered at the ship's overall center of gravity, or as close to it as possible. This ensures that as you deplete your fuel, the ship's center of gravity does not shift, and therefore its handlign will not be thrown off. For a cylindrical ship for example, try to place a single fuel tank at the center with an RCS tank on either side, and pick an engine that counterbalances the weight of your command pod and other accessories at the other end.

3) don't use 4-way RCS thruster blocks for translation. They give too much spin torque and your SAS system will tend to oversteer, and so will you, resulting ina lot of wobbling and thrashing.

4) place linear RCS ports in quad symmetry at the ship's center of gravity (use the center of gravity display option in the VAB) for translation, and more in quad symmetry equidistant from the center above and below for rotation + translation. Place small girder blocks around the center of gravity and use them to mount more RCS ports facing to the front and rear, so you have forward/back translation. For very massive ships you may want to use a couple 4-way RCS thruster blocks around the middle for extra spin torque if you don't have enough.

Just keep ASAS on while translating. The ASAS will fight the tendency to pitch/roll/yaw via a combination of reaction wheel + RCS so you can just translate without giving a damn about RCS block placement

that or cause it to wobble uncontrollably

[The great space plane challenge]

Is MJ OK? I have an x-wing SSTO I already made which I can use for this, but I don't want to give up my R2D2!

[[Stock Only] Single Launch Eve Landing/Return Mission]

First off, does anyone know the minimum delta-v requirement for taking off from an equatorial plateau on Eve?

This should be doable, and I will soon attempt it (and I swear to you I shall succeed) following the single-launch only rule. I'll get to explaining how in a moment, but first let's talk some theoreticals about this problem and how it could be done better outside the scope of our available parts.

Eve has a thick atmosphere lacking in oxygen so our available air-breathing engines are no good. However, it is combustible on its own, and should require only an oxidizer to make an eve-atmosphere-breathing engine... and if you use rocket fuel to power air-breathing engines for your kerbin ascent, you'll have oxidizer left over without needing to carry a bunch of extra fuel with you. This would change the equation to trivialize the delta-v problem and make it instead a problem of meticulous design and testing of spaceplanes for eve. There is not yet a stock part for this... but there should be. In fact, I would suggest to the developers if any are reading this, that the high-altitude low-efficiency jet engines in the game now should be able to operate on eve, using oxidizer as fuel instead of liquid fuel, while still operating on kerbin as they do now. From an engineering standpoint, such an engine would be possible to make, just wouldn't necessarily be as efficient. You could then with some smart engine and fuel management, do the round trip without a ton of weight.

Now, as for how to complete this challenge using only our currently available stock parts... I would question only one rule. If, it is acceptable to perform an orbital rendezvous during the mission, under the strict condition that it remain as a single launch (aka, you don't get to dock with anything you didn't bring with you in the first launch), then I would approach it as such:

1) design a staged eve ascent rocket that meets ONLY the bare minimum delta v requirement to get into low Eve orbit with an rcs tank, small docking port, and only minimal orbital maneuvering fuel to spare. most critical part: optimize the f*** out of this. Make it as small and lightweight as possible, getting no spare fuel into eve orbit. Do NOT bring an escape booster, or engine, only enough for the ascent and circularization of your orbit. Include a decoupler to drop the final stage and fuel tank, leaving only the pod and clamp-o-tron, maybe a solar panel.

2) design a lander stage, separate from the ascent stage. Use structural trusses to connect parachute and lander legs together into one detachable unit, which will act as a launch pad for the eve ascent rocket. Give it some small permanently attached fuel tanks and rockets for the deorbit and braking maneuver. You will leave the whole thing on the surface when you launch.

3) design an ejection and capture stage. This part is also critical to optimize. It should use asparagus staging of small fuel tanks around a single nuclear engine to provide enough delta-v to escape kerbin and reach eve with the lander and ascent booster, saving only one small tank of fuel. It should attach to the inverted lander via the clamp-o-tron on the capsule, using structural braces connecting to the lander frame. The second to last stage should have 2 additional nuclear engines to help with the kerbin escape burn carrying the lander. Also give this stage a couple radial parachutes near the top.

4) design a kerbin ascent stage capable of getting the whole thing into kerbin orbit. This part is a relatively straightforward brute force approach with asparagus staging. Use of excessive solid fuel boosters to clear the pad can't hurt either.

The mission:

1) ascend to kerbin orbit. If there is leftover fuel in the ascent booster, save it to assist in the ejection burn. Otherwise discard it while it's still on the edge of a suborbital trajectory to avoid putting the junk in orbit.

2) time your ejection burn. Stage off the fuel tanks as they empty to save weight. hit your aerobraking mark as early as possible once escaping kerbin's SOI.

3) fine tune your eve capture to hit an aerobraking mark that will put you in a very low orbit as close to a 90 degree orbital trajectory as possible. Use a second aerobraking maneuver to bring the apoapsis down further if it's too high, before circularizing.

4) decouple from the ejection and capture stage, leaving whatever's left of it it in orbit, and perform a retrograde burn with the lander, aiming for a plateau. Deploy your parachutes and lander legs as soon as is feasible. I hope you brought enough.

5) land on eve, find your pie tin, chill for a while basking in the purple haze. Smoke if you got em.

6) when the launch window comes around to return to kerbin, time your launch to rendezvous with the ejection and capture stage still in orbit.

7) dock with the ejection stage, and transfer all remaining fuel from your ascent booster into the ejection stage's remaining tank(s), then decouple from your ascent booster and fuel/rcs tanks.

8) perform your ejection burn. It should be easy with the 1 nuclear rocket and remaining fuel since you are carrying only your command pod.

9) plan a future mission to land a large capsule with THREE kerbals on eve and return for the next challenge.

Why this works: Your eve escape burn requires a ton of delta-v, and every ounce of weight you need to take back up into orbit from the surface will count against you tenfold in your ascent. By leaving your return fuel and rocket in orbit, you not only save the small amount of weight of carrying an extra booster from kerbin, but shave off 90% of the weight you need to carry back up from the Eve surface, and that will make all the difference in the world. As anyone can tell you: never move it twice if you only have to move it once.

I'm going to get started planning this mission soon, and I'm very confident in my ability to pull it off. I can already get THREE XL fuel tanks into kerbin orbit in a single launch, and that constitutes, as a single stage, 13,000+ delta-v with a nuclear engine. Staged properly, it's more than enough fuel to do the job. Wish me luck.

P.S., I don't care that I'm violating the letter of the rules as you laid out in the initial post. I'm thinking outside the box, and still adhering to them in spirit. It will be a single launch with no refueling stops. Trivial next to my mission to carry 4 SSTO spaceplanes, 2 rovers and 16 satellites to laythe at once and then return home with the lot of it like I was never there. http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/597003505302668172/DDF267A4244C6D5B8B613469B6BEE1DE01E277F8/

[How to place tanks radially in 0.18.4+ and the 0.18.3 Demo.]

I find I have better luck if I'm viewing the decoupler from a steep angle from above (when attaching the tanks near the top of the decoupler) or below *when attaching them from the bottom) so that your cursor is over the decoupler, but NOT over the tank behind it. If you have issues attaching the tanks at the point on the decoupler you're aiming for, try dropping the tank somewhere free-floating, then picking it back up again from another point, effectively 'grabbing' it from a point higher up or lower down its length, allowing you to reposition your cursor for better placement. As always use symmetry to place as many tanks at once to avoid balance issues. Deal with the staging issues later.