bitbucket

The horror....the horror.... It was back in the ancient days. No map, no timewarp, no planets, no moons, Kerbin didn't rotate, and landing on the permanently dark side would get your ship eaten by a grue. Took me four tries to get to orbit, and once you got there, there wasn't much to do there but watch your ship slowly go around in circles.

I have several lifter sub-assemblies saved and rated according to how much they can lift to orbit. I choose whatever's appropriate for the payload.

I haven't been real big on KSP lately but I'm trying to get back into it since my favorite mods are up to date and it doesn't look like a .25.1 that will break them again is imminent. So. Things I did lately. Kicked off the first leg of an interplanetary communication network. (I like RemoteTech. ) By the time interplanetary transfer windows open, this ship and its twin will be well on their way to the Kerbin-Kerbol L4/L5 points. Sent off an unmanned probe to swing by Eve for a gravity assist on the way to Moho. I nonetheless remain optimistic that its ion engines are up to the task of establishing an orbit when it gets there. A class A asteroid randomly appeared in Kerbin's SOI on a collision course. The boys in orange went to investigate the matter. The threat was mitigated. I expanded my RemoteTech communications network to the Mun in advanced of a manned mission. Science happened. Currently the need for more science to happen is in question as the tech tree is done and there were over 12,000 science points left over at the conclusion of this mission. Perhaps the sale of patents is warranted. Currently, plans within plans are being set into motion. As interplanetary transfer windows are still many days away, the intervening time will be spent expanding the comm network to Minmus, sciencing all the science out of Minmus with a followup mission, and building a permanent Munbase.

I play on a toaster of a computer. My mission timer is never green. It goes red above the 250-300 part threshold, or at 3x/4x physical warp with any amount of parts. I'm used to a feeble framerate so I don't really notice, but with large ships the physics is running at one-quarter speed or worse.

At the start of a new save, you're about 25 days (Earth time) past the optimum midpoint of a rapidly-closing Eve transfer window. If you rush the tech tree you can probably get something headed out that way without needing an unreasonable dV budget. The next optimum comes about 140-150 Earth days into the save, when you can get there for about 1000 dV less than a day-1 Eve launch.

I finished the tech tree in five launches without leaving low Kerbin orbit thanks to fulfilling about 16 part test contracts with Outsourcing R&D active. Yeah, I can see how the masochists are going to have issues with this. But me, it just means post-science-grind fun comes all that much sooner.

Yep, still good to go in 0.25; parts that don't depend on plugins are tough to break. I still use parts from some old 0.17-era part packs that still hold their own, though I've had to tweak the configs a bit over time.

This is why I turned building damage off.

It would go a long way just to have a few KSC personnel walking around between buildings.

I bought it through the KSP store as I dislike Steam's requirements of an active internet connection to do anything with any game you've acquired through it. I don't take my internet connection for granted.

I'd say I'm around 3.25  I do tend to over-engineer a bit, don't really care for planes at all, and every time I land something back on Kerbin I try to bring it down in the water just off the coast from KSC.

I do my best to ignore the neophilia.

I came up with a couple of unconventional solutions when dealing with interplanetary communications and the tiny phase angles of dishes: One, deep space relays in solar orbit: Bit of a mess, but what's going on is that I have two deep space relays (the station icon ships), a mission orbiting Eve waiting on a return window, a probe around Moho, a flotilla of ships heading for Duna, and a probe heading out to Jool. I launched two ships with a bunch of dishes (enough to point at every planet and then a couple more), then aimed to place them on pseudo-Lagrange points in Kerbin's orbit (yes, I know n-body isn't a thing) by putting them on solar orbits with 5/6 and 7/6 of Kerbin's orbital period, then re-circularizing their orbits when they come back to Kerbin's orbital distance. Interplanetary missions then point at one of the L4/L5 relays to stay in contact with Kerbin once they're outside omnidirectional antenna range, but too close for direct dish communication with Kerbin to be practical. Better a delay of a minute or two than no contact at all. Two, ground stations: Two of these abominations sit 120° east and west of KSC at 46° and 166° east longitude (the 166°E had to go about 15° south of the equator because ocean), with a third at KSC itself over by the tracking station. They took 20 parachutes to land safely and are running off a reactor part from a discontinued parts pack because that many dishes uses up a LOT of juice. As you might expect, they've got a dish pointing at every planet, the L4/L5 arrays, and a couple spare dishes to point at active interplanetary missions. And the local neighborhood before I started launching stuff out of the Kerbin system: There's a ring of six commsats in a 90 minute orbit to cover everything near Kerbin, uplinks to landed craft on Mun and Minmus, and three geosynchs over the ground stations. It's basically a Deep Space Network style setup; at least one and often two ground stations will always have a line of sight to anything in the solar systemâ€â€unless it's behind the sun, and then the L4/L5 relays have that covered.

I probably won't even update until the inevitable .25.1/.25.2 bugfixes, and we have a long enough period of version stability for the mods I hate to go without to be updated.

This will go in the "turn it off and forget it exists" category for me, but to each their own.

I always put that glory hog on long-term assignments. Like sitting idle in a crew cabin in a space station. Or planting flags on Duna. Or flying a one-way solar-escape mission. I mean, I can't just kill him. That would be too kind.

It's been quite a while since I've had to "get out and push." The one time I remember it happening was underestimating my delta-V budget on a return from Duna in 0.18, and the return capsule was 30 m/s short of what I needed to intersect Kerbin's atmosphere. A good hard jetpack-assisted shove saved the day.

I've landed unmanned probes on Tylo a couple of times (and even intact), with the expectation that they probably weren't leaving again. Laythe is just so much more interesting to me; what few manned missions I've sent out to Jool inevitably end up there to wait out the time until the return window.

I'm quite aware people have different preferences. Some people just want to min/max science, some like building crazy awesome ships, some like to tinker and experiment, some enjoy working under limits, some like pushing limits, some just want to retire in the sandbox and goof around. When a fanbase grows sufficiently large and diverse enough, it becomes impossible to please everyone in it, and it's only a matter of time before you get in-fighting over who plays it the "right" way when there isn't one. *coughminecraftcough* Sorry if I came off being critical, I'm just an old fogey who grew up in a time when differing opinions were at least tolerated. It's a fault of mine to assume people have thicker skin, and one I really need to deal with, when in this day and age many people would rather see someone who doesn't see eye-to-eye silenced rather than agree to disagree. I do see a lot of lack of self-direction in the younger generations, though. Can't really blame them, when they cut their gaming teeth on glowing checkpoints and flashing objectives and achievements for every little task; essentially a constant stream of positive feedback. It's as if when they hit the final goalpost and credits don't start rolling, they're lost on what to do next.

Finishing the tech tree isn't the end. It's the beginning! People who complain there's nothing left to do once everything is unlocked are seriously lacking some imagination.

I try to design everything so that spent stages fall back into the atmosphere or crash into the destination.

I've sent unmanned probes everywhere, but I've only landed Kerbals on the local moons, Duna/Ike, and Gilly.

I get the "rescue ______ from orbit" missions so often that I have a dedicated ship design for it. Can't really complain, I've gotten like 600k funds from doing it so much.

There is no "end" to it, but the only suitable "ultimate" mission is an interstellar one.

I think a few things as simple as performing a specific experiment type in a specific place (i.e., seismic sensor experiment on Mun's midlands) would fit in well enough with the current framework. Even sample return missions would at least give an incentive to bring something back.