Jarin

Not unless it's somehow removed itself from the ability to switch between it with the bracket keys. Also I renamed my existing stakes. Fresh install did not work. Two origin stakes still offset 2-3 meters down. Small constructions appear below-ground and fall into the void.

The problem does remain that two "orign" stakes worked without any issue until my last patching. I'm gonna try a clean install of EL and report back tomorrow or tuesday.

Would distance traveled in the f3 menu do? Just have to track it every couple seconds.

A graph that is widely misunderstood by the inexperienced is still a graph that could be improved, as others including its creator have recognized. There's no superiority points to be won here with saying that you understood it on first glance.

I really don't like this image. That climb to orbit line makes people think they need to haul back on the stick and climb like a rocket.

Even with friction control tweaking, every single craft I make will pull left on acceleration. I can correct it with enough yaw control, but it's completely invariable by type of craft. No matter what I make, or how its wheels are attached, or how many wheels it has (up to 8), it still slowly drifts left while accelerating along the runway.

Yeah, that's about what I figured the answer would be. Bah. I did the hard part, I got to it and bumped a claw into it. I'm just gonna scoop it with my inflatable heat-shield, crash both into minmus, and alt-f12 the contract completed. I won't get recovery refund on kerbin, but whatever.

Largely your ascent being too aggressive. You want to burn as close to horizontal as possible while not losing lift. Gravity losses are a SSTO's worst enemy. You want to be pitching no more than about 10°, as well as running on air-breathing mode to 1500m/s. Your rapiers should only be there to give you a kick towards orbital speeds so your nukes can carry you the rest of the way. The less Ox you can get away with carrying, the more dV you have on the nukes once you get to orbit. Speaking of nukes, I only see two in those screenshots. That means your space TWR is going to be abysmal with a craft that large. I assume that's also why "engage the nukes" was not step 6 on your listed ascent profile. Toss a couple more on there and drop some whiplash weight. With a good ascent profile, 14 rapiers should have NO trouble carrying you to the edge of space. So, just to clarify, the details will change depending on craft and pilot, so I'll keep it to basic principles, but your general flight path should look like this: 1. Get the rapiers up to speed. Some people do this at sea-level, some at 10-15km. It doesn't much matter. Just run level at a convenient altitude until you're passing mach 2 or so. 2. Shallow ascent. You want to hit 1500m/s before 25km altitude, which is where the rapiers start faltering. A 35° ascent is for rockets and hot-rods, not utility SSTOs. This should also help your stability; I suspect you're stalling and dragging through the upper atmosphere. 3. Engage the nukes before rapier changeover. They're plenty useful at 20km on up, and that extra thrust can let your air-breathers get a bit more run-time. 4. Keeping at 10° AoA or less, accelerate on nukes and LFO rapiers. If you have KER, keep an eye on the AP on the HUD. As long as it's going up, you're fine. Don't worry if your Ox runs out around 40km; just keep riding those nukes; you should have enough speed that your AP will still be climbing. Your major design concerns are balancing how much Ox you carry, and how much engine weight with nukes. Without a .craft file to tweak I can't give the best advice here.

I've mostly just moved away from Canards entirely since they just seem to lead to my aircraft being less stable in general. I suppose that's why they're less common in reality as well, aside from craft with computer-assisted stability (which SAS really... isn't). Computer-assisted stability is AA, which can make just about any monstrosity fly nicely.

All I had was two origin stakes, which has never given me trouble in the past. Latest build materialized was notably shorter, and appeared fully below the ground, so it seems like it's an issue with vertical offset, not center of mass. I'll see if the -Y stake fixes things. Edit: NOPE. This time it appeared below ground and sideways.

So I got a contract to return a part from Minmus orbit to Kerbin. Pretty routine, I'd done several of these before and had a nice purpose-built retrieval craft. Ran across a little hiccup on this latest one though. The bloody claw Will. Not. Attach. I've tried grabbing the wheel, I tried grabbing the attachment plate, but still no luck. I know the big RoveMax wheels have odd surface-attachment rules, is there something about them that prevents claw-locking? *sigh* I'm gonna have to rebuild my dang retriever with KAS and a magnet now, aren't I?

Not without modding. There's probably a plugin to RPM that has this potential, but stock your best bet is just putting them on action-groups. You can still use those from IVA.

... huh, so that's why my last spaceplane got all flip-happy on re-entry.

I'm a huge fan of SSTO spaceplanes, especially after running a plane-only career in 1.2. With a bit of work, you can make SSTO planes do just about anything. There's a lot of trade-offs though, so it depends on what your goals are. If you just need a bit more dV to reach orbit (and since you're not opposed to staging), you could strap on some LF drop tanks to get you through the ascent phase, then mostly carry LFO on the plane itself for the last sprint to orbit after ditching the extra weight.

Easier than savefile editing, the alt+f12 menu lets you mark a quest as completed, so you can just do that after you've completed every other quest criteria.

Alright @allista, I get to continue being the problem user here. I've got a new weird bug, and absolutely no proper reproduction steps! This is an orbit around the dark side of minmus, about 7km altitude. At the time of the screenshot, I'd *just* clicked "brake near target" approaching some debris I had a contract to retrieve. The instant I clicked, KSP froze completely; looked like another infinite-loop calculation. This the low altitude biting me again, you think? You might be able to tell from the screenshot that this was a really aggressive rendezvous, since the orbit line is one-way (on an escape vector out of minmus SOI)

I'm having an issue with a survey-stake construction appearing with the combined "origin" point apparently being its center of mass, so its half stuck in the ground and explodes as soon as physics loads. Any idea where I should start looking for an issue (or even what info to provide for better troubleshooting)? It's a small tail-sitter built in the SPH, constructed on Minmus' greater flats. I'd try to put a vertical-axis stake somewhere, but I can't put survey stakes on constructions, and there's no hills in physics range.

Just wanted to make a note here. In all my post-1.2 testing, as long as you're above 22km or so, gravity losses almost always outweigh drag, so the faster you're going horizontally, the better. Even if this means staying in the atmosphere longer. My most efficient runs, I actually get my PE above 0 while still below 40km in altitude. My circularization burns barely exist. This does, of course, depend on having a low-drag aircraft, but if you're following prograde, even mk2 parts are pretty low-drag.

Yeah, I actually went and did some research on the Mercury guidance systems after posting. If you're really arguing for realism, every pod should at least have a "hold stable" SAS option built in. The rest would need better computers, or pilots.

The T button needs an onboard control computer. Like a probe core. Without that, you're relying on the pilot's hands on the stick. Either yours or Jeb's.

A month or so ago, in the parallel universe where the devs on that project didn't leave. They also have the Porjket part revamp released stock.

June 2013. Ah well. Like everything else, I will wait for reviews before purchasing, but I'll keep a cautious optimism in the meantime.

With the disclaimer that it's partly personal preference, I'd say go with Kerbal Engineer.

I'm pretty sure the pilot needs to be with the large guidance unit, and can control smaller units within range.

Does the combination of "only update when I launch the game" and launching the game directly from the KSP_x64.exe shortcut avoid updates?