FlamedSteak

I've been running this racket for a few weeks on Minmus. I love it, it's a heap of fun making short hops down to the surface and then processing the results in orbit and refuelling the station with a Kethane miner. Though I'm thinking when Duna and Eve biomes get added that mobile Science rovers are going to be the only effecient way of doing this, well maybe not Duna, but definitely on Eve.

I did a Duna probe on about my 5th career mission, it was meant to be an orbital probe but I ballsed up my aero brake going too deep into the atmosphere. Somehow I managed to get it down on the surface without breaking anything. Though I was certain I would crash heavily so I did all my science on the way down. Haven't done a manned mission yet, I tend to get a bit pedantically role player about the way manned missions are done....so I have to finish my long term minmus science program before I think about heading interplanetary.....and even then I'm going to do a Buzz Aldrin style remote base on Ike before doing a surface mission to Duna.

No, just set up for a full load. CoG changes don't seem to affect it any great deal on smaller craft. Though if you're pushing a monster around things tend to get a little trickier.

My first Mun landing was a apollo style command module/munar lander mission. So it was a do or die dock, I scraped through with a whiff of rcs left but I made it. The one thing rendezvous and docking teaches you is patience, it requires a different mind set from most games (go in full throttle and get it done as quickly as possible). It took me a good 10 docks to get a handle on the docking systems, and probably another 10-20 to get good at it. The best way to dock is to really rely on your instrumentation, visual indicators help but will cause you major problems if they're all you rely on.

Kw rocketry is one of the better part mods, it doesn't add anything that is overpowered and to be honest I have never felt the need to use the massive orange tank. Loaded it up once and thought "wow that's big" then put it back in the box. That being said, I'd say you switch gears from the ridiculous and become an efficientcy guy for a few missions. Set up a base outside of Kerbins SOI.

I'm still struggling with this. I can usually nail a target within a few kilometers on Duna, but on Kerbin I'm always over or undershoot by a good 300-1000 km.

Yep I always build at the target. You're limiting yourself building in LKO as you have to consider how you're going to move it.

After thoroughly exploring Minmus from an orbital station I think it's one of the under sung heroes of KSP. Its incredibly easy to get around and rendezvous on, it's also very pretty on the surface, which is more than can be said for most places.

I'll use boosters over the first 10,000 meters, then liquids from then on out. I treat solids like a farm animal, they're there to do some heavy lifting and then sod off.

That's more or less how I handle most interplanetary missions. Though since I downloaded KW Rocketry I have been moving away from doing LKO rendezvous' and launching everything at once.

I would be surprised if Duna biomes weren't in 0.24. Seems to me like they're doing one body per update. I do get the feeling that Squad want a finished product out ASAP now. I'm only expecting 2 or 3 more updates before they call Beta on KSP.

Anyone else notice that a singular LV-N will overheat above 47kn (approx) if you give it a large mass to push.

If you hold the shift key and the W, S, A or D key while on a ladder your kerbal will look in that direction.

I dunno, I think the science module and rapier deserve equal billing with the tweakables.

The good thing with Laythe (and Duna for that matter) on .23 is that you can tinker with 'chutes to deploy a bit higher up. Gives you a bit more leeway on your landing target if it's looking like you're going to overshoot it and a little more time to plan the final landing decelleration burn.

How many struts? You need a minimum of 4. If it still wobbles make it 6. If it still wobbles radially attach 4 girders and strut them up and down for extreme rigidity.

That's solar wind being deflected by Mercury's magnetic field that you would theoretically see on the dark side.

I sent a one way mission to Eeloo in 0.19; never been back. Though I'm going to start doing more missions to some of the less popular planets.

Kerbin's 8k mod texture is the one that makes me the most happy.

LV-N; "Because you can't get to where you want to be, without that wonderful ISP."

My first ever Mun landing in 0.18. Ecstasy from Jeb and reflective satisfaction from Bill.

It's all relative. Some would say a base is the greatest achievement. You could land a single enviropod on a planet and say you had a base, or you could land an interconnected set of enviropods and science labs and kethane miners and say you had a base. The same goes with any of the vessel badges, a station could be a single tank with a docking port on it. That being said; I'd always say the return chevron is the usually the hardest thing to achieve because it involves the most unknowns. You can launch something 20 times from Kerbin trialling a bunch of different parts. When you're off-planet though you only get the ship you sent, if it's underpowered or underfueled you don't have the opportunity to duck back into the VAB for a little fine tuning, you're stuck with it.

I'd love to see kerbal newspapers for major milestones (first spacewalk/orbit/landing etc) and city lights, but I worry actual buildings themselves will be more of an overhead (to both FPS and development) than they're worth. Maybe just a texture map to mark a city or something equally undemanding on hardware would satisfy.

Absolutely there should be a loss in conversion. Otherwise you'll be forever shifting points around which will render the purpose of having 3 or 4 currency types uttlerly moot. You might as well have one currency and have it cover everything, which is far simpler but utterly unfun.

I like the idea of reentry mechanics, but like others have mentioned they should be pretty forgiving. I'd say an entry angle of 45 degrees at 2000 m/s up to to 30 degrees at 7000 m/s would be sufficient to cover Kerbin, and then reduce or increase that dependant of atmospheric density. For example Eve would have a 20 degree angle at 7000 m/s down to 10 degrees for crazy speeds on the flip side Duna would be nearimpossible to burn up in.