Raptor9

Unfortunately I've been really busy with work and haven't had a chance to mess around with it very much. I spent about an hour the other night experimenting with the robotics, but that's it. Hopefully I'll get some more KSP time soon. I've already had plenty of ideas of how these robotics can revolutionize a lot of my strategies. However, I am cautious to modify any existing designs prematurely. My designs are thoroughly tested and proven to varying degrees, with the more complex architectures heavily reliant on multiple craft to work properly. What makes this DLC different from the majority of the Making History parts and a lot of the previous new base game parts are the fact the robotics and surface experiment/cargo containers add new functionalities that will undoubtedly need a few refinements in the near future now that they are out among the masses. Any implementation of these into my catalog will be more deliberate and gradual than previous KSP updates. I hesitate to say this (because as you know I try to refrain from talking too much about projects I'm working on), but there is something else I want to focus on that I was wanting to publish, even before the Breaking Ground DLC was announced. That is my priority right now whenever I get back to KSP.

With any of the modules that use the 'LV Lift Rack' to place them on the surface, whether it be the Airlock modules, LR-3 rovers, etc, after you have them safely on the surface use the ABORT action group to detach the equipment from the 'LV Lift Rack'. Reference the BM module graphics for additional information such as action groups.

I figure there are going to soon be a LOT of Mechs and AT-AT/AT-ST walkers on KerbalX.

Per your usual videos, this one has the cringey, edge-of-the-seat precision flying; sleek, innovative designs; and some comical events...(who needed those solar panels anyway). Great video as usual @Cupcake...

Oh boy, the Kraken will soon feast...

I see what you did there... But in all seriousness, I love all the new science equipment shown so far. These will not only make surface activities more fun, but with the amount of experiments to run (including long-term data collection), I'm thinking the establishment of surface bases will be even more practical to maximize science gains. Dedicated parts for surface base construction would probably be useful too... (as I cough in a very unsubtle way)

I like KSP in the fact it seems casual, while implementing elements of realism...or rather it's a realistic spaceflight game, while keeping some gameplay aspects casual. It all comes down to a subjective definition of those two terms. KSP in my opinion achieves a good balance when realistic aspects of spaceflight are there, but the minute details of the aspect are implied and don't require attention from the gamer. An example is the comm network. You need it to relay data around celestial bodies due to line-of-sight limitations, and dedicated tech to operate as relays vs a simple transmitter, etc. However it stops short of getting into spectrum management, solar interference, signal delay, and physically having to point the dish at your destination.

Yeah, I don't play KSP or publish craft based on how other people feel about my reasons or design choices. I don't judge anyone else for deciding differently how they spend their money, but I don't play my copy of KSP based on how other people think I should either. In the end, I believe you should play KSP in a manner that inspires your curiosity and creativity.

I love Dunkin Donuts...unfortunately we don't have any where I live though. Well, obviously I will be looking to add those to the LV-1 series of landers, since they are the Apollo-inspired landers. As for the rest of the landers, we will have to see how the final mechanics are designed for transporting and deploying the new experiments. I'm just glad we will have more to do on the surfaces themselves. I'm not gonna promise anything, since I don't want to make any assumptions on what will be possible with the DLC. We can only speculate. I will say that the first atmospheric tech I will be looking into for feasibility will be vertical lift in the form of helicopters or tiltrotors. Legitimate swing-wing jets like the X-12 and C7 140 may also be possible. These are all ideas I've considered this week. It would be nice to have those features for everything you listed, especially if I could make the double-length Gigantor XL solar arrays be fold-able/extend-able for the 'Pioneer Station' ISS-analogue. That way I could ditch the SM-MSAT's and have the SM-TP2S2 and SM-TP3S3 have everything in one module to make the massive solar arrays. As mentioned, we will have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Best Jeb analogy yet! I am rolling.

I thought your national pride was Tim Hortons? Funny story, I had never heard of it until a couple years ago. I was checking into a hotel in Edmonton and asked the desk clerk if Tim Hortons was a popular restaurant in the Canada or something because I was seeing them everywhere. I'll never forget the look the guy gave me. I think it was a mix of shock and pity.

Don't get me wrong, having my plans preempted by Squad releasing more content isn't a bad thing in my mind. It just means that anything that was close to being released will have to be re-visited, at least in lieu of updating it later and creating more work for myself. I've given this some more thought, and that may not be the case. Regarding the SVR-20, I assume you mean the possibility of adding a robotic arm (RMS)? It really comes down to the size and nature of the DLC's smaller robotic parts and such; we'll just have to see. I don't want to make any assumptions on the capabilities or limitations of the robotics. Regarding the LV-3 landers, about the only thing I see myself doing is adding a legitimate deployable ramp for the LV-3B's rover. But that depends on the load-bearing capacity of the hinges to hold a ramp with an ER-3 rover on it. I'd like to keep the LV-3A as a simple crew transport/science lander, and I don't see myself changing how the Base Modules are deployed off the LV-3C/D cargo landers. The original prototype iterations of the LV-3D in fact had deployable ramps, but the ramps actually weren't the problem. It was the various ways I tested to get them down the ramps that encountered issues. You would need wheels on the modules obviously; but whether you had the modules self-drive themselves down or pull them down with an LR-3-style rover, the only way it worked out was to have a ramp that had a very shallow deployed angle to the surface. Even with a short lander like the LV-3D, this required a rather long ramp, and made it very impractical and cumbersome. In my opinion, the most ideal way to offload cargo from the top of a "vertical" lander is using a winch/crane system. Since I don't see winches in our immediate future (assumption), a simple, controlled rocket thruster hop is the simplest way to reduce complexity of offloading the modules at the landing site. And the propellant tanks double as storage for outpost fuel cells. Really, the only extra parts that aren't used after placing the base modules on the surface are the rocket engines themselves, or the lift rack assemblies (but you can easily get rid of those).

Sunday night I update 195 out of the 243 craft files on KerbalX to 1.7.0. Monday morning I read that there's a new DLC coming out in 24 days.

The "early access players get free DLC" and the "DLC isn't worth X number of funds" arguments will always continue I'm sure, but I guess I'll toss in my own 2 funds. In order to (hopefully) prevent any false information from being propagated any more than it has already (like the last time a DLC was announced) I'll reiterate what @razark already mentioned: the early access players DID NOT receive the DLC for free because they are special, or because it was a reward for investing in KSP so early. It was a legal decision based on a poorly-worded clause in one of the earliest EULA's. No more, no less. Squad (or rather, their publisher) doesn't charge players for DLC's because they are greedy people. They are running a business, and businesses require a recurring revenue stream to stay open. It's the way the world works. I mowed lawns for people as a kid. Did I charge money? Absolutely, because I had to pay for gas for the mower, maintenance, and so I could save whatever slim profit margin I had left so I could buy comic books and Reese's peanut butter cups.

Without knowing how fast those servos can change their speed (again, assumptions/speculation) you potentially are in the same situation as the jet VTOL method, in that you are waiting for the rotation speed to spool up and spool down. That's why I suggest the control surface deflection method, it could *potentially* be more responsive and precise. I'm quite familiar with the intricacies of rotorcraft physics. I doubt that would be a reasonable implementation since KSP physics might treat cyclic feathering differently than real-life, not to mention getting into gyroscopic precession and all those other aerodynamic properties of helo blade systems. I think it would just be easier to link to the throttle input for collective increase/decrease, and let reaction wheels act as the attitude control mechanism; for lack of a more fleshed out aerodynamic physics simulation in stock KSP.

@SQUAD (or @nestor), I noticed that the imgur hi-res album shots displays a quad-copter with what seems to be rotating servo motors of some sort. My suggestion (if not already considered/implemented) is that aerodynamic control surfaces have an option to be linked to throttle input via the PAW, similar to the Deploy function but scaled via the throttle setting through the allowable deploy range limiter. Example: Four spinning servo motors, and each have four control surfaces attached, each with a *potential* "Control by throttle" option enabled in the Part Action Window, and deploy limit set to 75%. As the throttle is increased, all control surfaces increase pitch uniformly through their respective limiter settings. When throttle is at 100%, the control surfaces are at 75% deflection, when the throttle is cut to 0%, the control surfaces return to 0% deflection. My reasoning is this: 1) Historically when making a jet-powered VTOL in KSP the vertical thrust to increase/decrease lift has a slow response time while waiting for the engine to spool up/down. Since control surfaces react much more quickly to control inputs, having the option to link them to the throttle would result in much more responsive lift thrust for better controllability. 2) When making propeller/rotor-based craft, users will often adjust lift produced by spinning control surfaces by having the PAW's pinned and adjusting the deploy limiter range to increase/decrease lift in a similar manner; however with craft that have more than one prop/rotor system (like that quadcopter), this must be done one rotor at a time, leading to moments of asymmetric thrust, not to mention a very clunky and imprecise method for controlling a craft. In essence, I am referring to how helicopters and similar craft manage vertical lift in real-life. The engines maintain the rotor at a constant RPM, and the rotor blades themselves adjust their pitch to quickly and precisely increase/decrease vertical lift. I'm obviously making a lot of assumptions on how these rotating parts would/would not work (or if this was even possible to be coded into the aero control surfaces), but I wanted to bring up this functionality because I believe it to be very important if someone wanted to make rotor-based craft in KSP like that quadcopter.

Well it looks like my break from KSP the past several weeks is going to be coming to a rapid end. Question, If I throw a Kerbal into that "cryo-volcano on Vall" that you all mentioned, will he be ejected into a suborbital trajectory? And with those hinges and rotating joints, looks like stock props, helicopters and tilt-rotors might finally become a thing. Oh man...the possibilities. And it comes out in 24 days?! WHAT?!

After a lot of tediousness, 80% of the catalog has been updated to 1.7.0, mainly to address the changes to the RCS and Vernor thruster model revisions. Thankfully (and I do mean thankfully), the singular Linear RCS port was a straight drop-in replacement...the idea of having to replace all of those throughout my catalog makes me shutter. The rest will come eventually as I am sort of on a KSP break again. The main reason I decided to update what I have was after discovering a couple designs that were defective. The 'Scout-Outrider' probe's staging was messed up, the EV-3 NTR stages' RCS axis assignments were seriously borked (not sure how that happened), and the behavior of my EV-2 LES shrouds changed in 1.7. This amounted to quite a few designs that needed to be updated, so I just bit the bullet and did a bunch more while I had KSP booted up. The last thing I wanted to mention is that if any of my graphics display a legacy part on them that has since received a revision, the graphic just hasn't been updated. The version number of the craft on KerbalX should indicate what parts it has. If a craft has 1.7.0 as its version number, it has received any applicable part updates up to that version, despite what the graphics may display. You will find a lot of legacy parts on my graphics since I am not gonna redo every graphic every three months to keep them up-to-date with simple part revisions. One such example is my EV-1A 'Skiff' on the 'Arrow 3' launcher. The upper stage still has the legacy, gold-foil-wrapped LV-909 Terrier engine on it; however it does in fact have the new LV-909 model on the craft.

I played around with it in it's early days, but it never had a significant impact on my gameplay either way. I don't consider it a cheat; I consider it an extension of the stock gameplay mechanic for vessel recovery. Click the magic green button at the top of your screen when landed on Kerbin and your Kerbals and capsule are essentially picked up by recovery assets and transported back to the KSC. For a reduction in refunds of course to cover the implied resource impact of such an employment of recovery assets. Not to mention the Recovery Transponder strategy in the admin building. To me Stage Recovery is no different than these other "implied space program operations" that run in the background to support the main form of gameplay.

Nope. While the spacecraft and rockets that you listed are certainly significant and interesting in their own right, within my KSP play style they would simply duplicate capability that I possess with existing rocket lifters. I've made prototypes of Falcon 9 and New Glenn analogue rockets before, and they only ended up saving me a few thousand funds per launch compared to relatively inexpensive and expendable rockets (using the stock career settings). Adding on to that the additional time it takes to recover the rocket every...single...launch...and my motivation to launch anything is quickly overcome by the tediousness of it all. I would rather spend my KSP time exploring deep space or other planetary bodies. I've been playing KSP since early alpha days, so I've probably conducted thousands of rocket launches to Kerbin orbit. I don't need any more time spent on that element of this game.

Yeah; I always believe that the primary reason to build anything that specific in KSP is whether it provides you the inspiration to do it. Whenever I build things out of more necessity than inspiration it usually turns out like crap. And thus far I haven't been inspired by Lockheed's lunar landers like I was with their MADV. However, I have wanted for some time to build a "vertical"-style crew lander that is dual-use for Vall and Tylo. The idea is a relatively large lander that is single stage, with the dV to make a round-trip to the surface of Vall and back to orbit without refueling. For Tylo, it would have enough dV to land on Tylo, after which it would be refueled on the surface prior to ascent. If it ends up looking like the single-stage Lockheed lander from last year, so be it.

If you're asking if I plan on building either of them, the answer would be no. I already have several Mun-capable landers, both single- and two-stage, from 2x Kerbal to 5x Kerbal capacity. I briefly looked at a scaled-down, fuselage-stripped version of my LV-7A as a larger single-stage lander that would give a larger propellant margin compared to the LV-2C, but in the end I determined that the LV-3A and HLV-5A already fulfill that requirement since their two-stage modes aren't always necessary for the Mun.

@prototype, the purpose behind "soft" depreciating parts (in that they are hidden from view in the VAB/SPH, but still present in the game) is so that it doesn't break your existing saved games. This allows you to still use any existing craft that are in orbit, landed, etc. However, any parts that receive a revamp should be considered on a temporary grace period before their older versions are "fully" depreciated (removed from the game entirely, as is the case with those zDepreciated parts in the changelog). The parts that were fully depreciated in the 1.7 update have been "soft"-depreciated for over a year (since March 2018), meaning that players had a full year to gradually phase in craft with the updated parts into their save. Once parts are fully-depreciated, this allows them to be removed from the KSP folders, reducing the overall memory footprint. Since you said you only play stock, you essentially have two options: 1) remain on 1.6.1 until you are finished with your current save, or 2) before deleting your pre-1.7 KSP install, replace those depreciated parts on any existing craft in the VAB/SPH, launch (or Alt-F12) the replacement craft to the older craft's location, and once you have phased in all the new parts, then upgrade to 1.7.0. As it stands, any part that has received a revamp since 1.4 or later should be considered on a similar temporary grace period, but will eventually be removed from the game entirely. So it is wise to upgrade craft sooner rather than later.

No thank you. However, if it were to be included, I would ask that it be a toggle in the settings, separate from the other launch sites like Dessert and Woomerang.

'Vernor' thruster, O-10 'Puff', 24-77 'Twitch', LV-1 'Ant', LV-1R 'Spider', and of course the RV-105 4-way RCS thruster like you said. At least that's what they've announced. They may sneak some surprises in with the release; who knows?