Domfluff

Oh yes, and in terms of "first module" - it does make sense to me for this to primarily be a habitat (which can be built upon to extend it's capabilities), but it should definitely be a probe control point (one pilot?) - being able to control unmanned supply missions in their terminal phase on the far side of the Mun (or wherever) can be a pretty big deal.

Yup. Obviously they're all using the same source material, but I think it's useful to get an idea as to where they fit. Flat circles and domes seem to be the most common shapes, and obviously DIY kits (and filling out with Machinery) are the MKS vectors into that.

# Tried to find things that look like they mesh with MKS parts, like the Duna module above. Then there's Moon, of course:

In terms of "what first", I've been finding it useful to build pre-fabricated modules in the earlier stages - e.g., a habitat module, an engineering module and a science module, each consisting of various Ranger/Duna/Tundra parts. These increase in number as the complexity grows, and resources are needed from further afield ("Logistics module" becomes important), so my idea of later game MKS parts are for a fairly small number of very integrated parts, that would probably be built in-situ. The first would be a habitat module for X Kerbals, and include habitation and greenhouse functions, which might need extension with earlier parts. I do like the idea that later initial bases could be basic workshop chains, to build more advanced modules in-situ.

Concept art The module to the right is an inflatable temporary shelter, building the more permanent base to the left. I'm not sure about this stylistically, mind you, but it absolutely fits the MKS progression.

Obviously FFT is very much a work in progress, so it's more than fine if this doesn't exist, but is there currently any way in-game to know what amount of cooling a propulsion system requires?

I'm not sure I've actually said this to you at any point, but KSP for me has been "KSP with Nertea's and Roverdude's mods" for years now. They're an intrinsic part of the game for me, and that's amazing. So... thanks

Awesome, thank you.

Magnetic scoop looks amazing. How are you planning on implementing this? If I recall correctly, the Buzzard Ramjet concept has a number of issues, not least of which is that you need to get up to a significant fraction of C before it starts doing anything useful.

Roverdude has mentioned that the intention is for DIY kits to be built in-situ with MKS, presumably at more advanced levels of base building. Producing kerbals in-situ (families!) has also been mentioned as part of the roadmap - presumably as the end-goal of an MKS Kolony. In general, I've always seen MKS as a process of gradually gaining independence from Kerbin. You're quite right that both of the above are necessary for that.

I'm very happy with the reduced hab time you get now - if you wanted to tweak this, I think I'd personally rather you moved one of the mini cupola's down in the tech tree (or some other simple hab solution, like a BEAM-like mini inflatable), rather than changing the core value. Since CTT hasn't been updated, I'm waiting for that to get a really good feel of the new parts in context.

The wiki (through github) are usually pretty good - this update was larger than most, so the wiki is more out of date than usual at the moment. It's pretty common for MKS documentation to lag behind the state of the mod though, once you get up to speed with the basics, the tooltips in-game are sometimes the best way to work out anything. Roverdude's twitch stream includes some career streams, and they can be useful to see things in action. There are also a few youtube lets plays focused on building MKS bases.

Yup, each seat is 30 days per kerbal, so a four kerbal capsule with two crew = 120 days/2 = 60 days hab time (and home time). Some craft (dedicated hab modules, like the stock Hitchhiker pod) also add bonus months on top of that. Some parts (dedicated quality-of-life parts, like the stock Cupola module) then add a multiplier on top of that. All of the above are visible in the VAB.

Kerbals have a clock, based on the best vessel they've ever been in, and this can never be restored (only extended by moving into a nicer ship). If you had two Mk1 command pods far enough apart, if you moved a kerbal from one to the other their Hab time would reset to 30 days, but the Home time would remain at 30 days minus current mission elapsed time. The consequences are whatever you set them to be, but they turn into a tourist by default.

I think the point really was that USI-LS ties into something Harvester said was a guideline - which was something like "no failure after the few minutes should be unrecoverable". The point being, even running out of fuel in Eeloo orbit can be saved with a sufficiently insane rescue mission, if you had the inclination to do that. A "realistic" life support system would presumably punish you fatally with running out of supplies, whereas USI-LS (by default) does not. There's no coming back from that, and with the distances and timescales involved, this would usually work out as a loss of mission, regardless of how many hours you put into it. You can take exception with that concept (and alter it through mods or configuration files), but that does seem to be the core of many of the decisions in the stock game. The other interpretation is in defining what "stock-like" means for KSP. I'm usually of the opinion that "stock-like" means that you still have to deal with all the same problems as in the real world, but perhaps these are abstracted or glossed over. Ion engines are sufficiently low power/high efficiency to get the point across, without requiring you to run your machine continuously for months to make use of them. What I really appreciate from USI-LS are the habitation mechanics. Managing supplies are one thing, but ensuring that Kerbals have enough living space for transit forces you to solve a number of real-life problems with designing Duna/Mars architecture, etc.

1) I'm a big fan of greebles in general, so the more exposed tanks and structure the better, to my tastes. Obviously that's more work, so feel free to disregard It's also one of the things that makes the Russian-like modules somewhat distinct from the US-like modules, at least from a distance - the Russian stuff does look like it's designed for function over form in most cases. 2) With regards to "function over form", windows are an extravagance. Some, certainly, but space is a place to work. The ST-DOS-FEM module would be the exception to that, of course. 3) I'd expect at least ST-DOS-COM (since that's intended as a space station core) to have an integral antenna, as well as ST-DOS-TKS (which can work as a space station by itself). I don't think it's really required for the other parts. How does KSP handle antenna priority at the moment? It would suck if you built something MIR-like, and it tried to use all of them at once...

Roverdude's Akademy part (UKS) has 12 crew, of which two can be scientists in the lab (and the lab has larger data/science storage, but that's neither here nor there) No idea how it decides which crew use, mind you. Part .cfg:

I don't believe that's possible, but the way I think you'd actually do that (in terms of a functional USI-LS part at least) is to have each section have a part of the eventual hab values - e.g., if the ring had six elements, and each had two crew slots, +5 Kerbalmonths and a hab multiplier of 0.5 (so, 1.5 in effect), then the effective "final" station would have +30 kerbalmonths, a hab multiplier of 1 + (6*0.5) = 4 and 12 crew spaces in total. (Actually, tempted to teach myself how to mod to do this, since I think this could be useful) Now, as previously stated, I think I'd prefer a rigid station to be built this way, but if Shadowmage is deciding between a single rigid part or a single inflatable part (which perfectly sensible), then I think I'd much rather go for a massive inflatable, since it should be launchable, for varying degrees of apocalyptic rocket (but still plausible - anything up to a 200 ton payload is probably "fine" from a launchpad. Obviously, Sea Dragon, Project Orion, etc. etc. are exceptions to this, but then there are good reasons for that.

Understood (and fine, obviously), but I wasn't referring to a multi-part centrifuge, so much as a multi-part wheel station i.e., Point being you could divide each wheel into (say) twelve curved segments, brought up individually, but welded together into a single part in orbit. There wouldn't need to be an animation for the actual wheel, since the whole station would be turning. Now... I think I'd much rather have a single inflatable than a single solid torus part, but if there was a solid torus space station that existed, then something like the above would make more sense to me than having to create the whole thing all at once.

To be honest, I think I'd be happy with the largest torus being over 100 tons. Personally, I usually find the standard rocket classifications (Mass-to-LEO/LKO of 2 tons for "small", 2-20 tons for "medium", 20-50 tons for "heavy", and 50-150 tons as "superheavy") are pretty useful in KSP - 2 tons is plenty for most unmanned probes and Project Mercury/Gemini, Medium will give you enough for a one-kerbal direct ascent Mun lander, Heavy really starts to be needed for landing multiple crew and building significant space stations, or assembling interplanetary craft in orbit (but you can get by with a medium launcher if you're careful). Superheavies tend to be a luxury, useful mostly for modded parts (e.g., base parts, big nuclear reactors) and/or extravagant, late game missions that can afford to avoid orbit assembly. It also tends to be very difficult to build superheavies with 2.5m parts, so you're usually looking at the 3.75m and 5m diameter to open these up. With that in mind, a 100+ ton payload is fine I think. It's more than manageable in KSP generally, and means you need large-scale parts to launch it. It should also be really, really useful. If you are applying mod modifiers for counteracting gravity, then this should have an amazing modifier... but launching and propelling this is going to be a pain, as it should be. Still, advanced propulsion and deep, deep space exploration would be the goal here. * I think if you're set on the largest torus being a single, solid piece (in keeping with the rest of the mod), then I think an inflatable is the way to go. EPL is great (and Roverdude keeps threatening to build his own at some point), but an inflatable is still buildable in-situ, and this way you're not requiring another mod (or type of mod) for your parts to work.

Is there an elegant way to patch in the configurable containers for the Heavy and Interim Upper stage parts? (The fixed ones with the integrated engines, not the engineless upper stage parts, which already have these). The problem here is that Orion + Interim stage in KSP has plenty of dV for a Mun/Minmus transfer, so this is fine, but the Heavy Upper Stage part has 2,000-2,500m/s dV on top of that, so it's only useful for travelling interplanetary. Without a zero boil-off option, that means most of the capability is just wasted. I've considered just taking an empty ZBO hydrogen tank, and pumping the hydrogen unused in the transit burn into there for storage (should work fine), but that doesn't seem like the intended use here.

Incidentally, assuming I haven't made some stupid error with the volume calculations, it does mean that a torus is really inefficient in terms of habitable volume (which isn't surprising I suppose). That does mean that the multiplier effect for countering zero-g should possibly be the main effect of the torus, whereas the inflatable habs would give more of a bonus to habitation time.

1) I like the idea of both, actually, with the rigid part being late-game, but offering a far more permanent habitat. I'm still not sure I really like the idea of one solid part though - sections that can weld together would be one thing (and would end up looking like 2001, whilst simultaneously showing why spinning an incomplete wheel is a *really* bad idea), but that might be personal preference. I think if I had to choose one it would be inflatable-only. 2) Okay, feel free to check my maths here. I'm not going to Kerbal-scale anything, which may be the wrong thing to do. Also the assumptions made here can be terrible, and I'm liable to forget how to count without warning. We'll assume a Bigelow B330 is an even 20 tons, and when expanded can be considered to be a cylinder with height 13.7m, diameter 6.7m and thickness of 0.46m. The volume of the cylinder as a whole is (V= pi r^2 h) = 483.01 m^3 Volume of air is 359.47 m^3 (Yeah, I know it's supposed to be 330m^3, I'm just going by their numbers) So volume of "structure" is (483.01 - 359.47) = 123.54 m^3 Density therefore is rho = 20,000 / 123.54 = 161.89 kg / m^3 With the (presumably fairly wrong) assumption that the density of the transhab layers remain fairly consistent throughout the sizes. *** Torus volume is V = (pi r^2)(2 pi R) (r and R are major and minor radii) The Nautilus-X Centrifuge (probably the second size up) was supposed to have a 12m diameter (ignoring that I don't actually see how this works out to something plausible). Assuming you need to stand up, that's a 1.8m internal space (Six foot. Similar to a submarine, I'd have problems), with two 0.46m walls. That makes r = 1.36m and R = 4.64m Solid doughnut V = 169.4m^3 air R is the same, air r = 0.9 Volume of air = 74.19m^3 So structural volume = 95.21m^3 Assuming it's all made out of the same stuff: 161.89 = Mass / 95.21 or the second-largest torus should be 15413.5 kg or so. Halving this is pretty normal for KSP (since Kerbals are half-sized), so I think a 7.5 ton Torus should be fine here, as you've suggested. 3) I'm really not sure about whether Greenhouses are desired or needed. Between USI-LS and Kolonization there are quite a few options for this, so that might be a little superfluous (unlike strictly-hab parts, which are in short supply). 4) Still strongly believe that the tori should primarily provide hab multipliers - for any serious deep space exploration in KSP, multipliers are vital, and there aren't many good options. Having hab multiplier = anti-gravity is a good shorthand, I think, since it means that anything going out beyond Duna will likely take a larger torus (for Dave and Frank to run around in). I do like the idea that large torus parts serve dual roles - they can be near-Kerbin space habitats/hotels/space camps (the Tourism Contract Pack for one gives you good reasons to lift 15+ Kerbals at a time, and anything that involves serious colonisation would require large amounts of kerbals-per-ship), but they can also serve as deep space exploration with a small crew. The nice thing about USI-LS is that this is how the crew spaces work - so leaving seats free is an elegant way to change the part's use. In terms of crew sizes, four to six is pretty normal I think. Four allows for two scientists, one engineer and one pilot which is pretty good for most things, but especially with UKS this can balloon pretty fast - Pilots are used for proxy logistics, Engineers for transmitting power, etc. Indeed, there are (somewhat hidden) efficiency losses for having less than five kerbals bimbling around a base. Obviously the usage examples above are mostly from my games, and may not be applicable more broadly. Still, they're the only examples I have, so I don't think it hurts to give them. The B330 module is supposed to have a six person crew, and I don't think that's a bad reference point. 5) Perhaps the storage % can be hidden slightly by increasing the default amount of hypergolics on board? This is assuming that you're including the kind of integrated RCS that the Bigelow modules are supposed to have. I think that's always going to be a problem though. It's fine when the space can be used for inventory space, supplies or whatever, but you have to fill it with *something* I suppose. Is it possible to leave them with some amount of empty space? (I.e., start with the "battery" mostly empty).

After the last few weeks, I now have no idea how I did anything without those saddle truss parts. New models and textures are looking great.