rottielover

So now that I've been playing KSP for several weeks, I started getting into all the cool mods. Besides the core mechjeb and alarm clock, I picked up KAS, Kethane, and ISA MapSat. I've been really getting into the Kethane mod, and built some simple small robotic landers that drill and refine Kethane into usable fuel. Unfortunately that's all those designs do. (It's a little like the Mars concept mission, send a robot to make fuel for the return trip). Anyway, I've seen screenshots of people using "trucks" and "mining rigs". So I designed my own modular "trucks" to drill and store Kethane (still working on what I'm going to do about a refinery.). So my heavy drilling rig (mechjeb) reports to weight in at 25 tons. Not only that but I built it "sideways" in the VAB. (Sorry I'm still pretty noobish at this point). I have some super heavy lifters, so orbit and transfer are no problem, landing these things without smashing into atomic particles, is a problem. Most of the designs I have stuck in my head right now would put the truck at the top, so once it's landed I can't get it down to the surface. If I try and build a huge skycrane, well that's just not gone very well at all.... It's one thing to land a cylander upright on some legs, it's totally another beast to land a sideways cylander with a "this way up" sign on it, correctly. Apologies for the long explanations, figured the more info I could spew into this the better.

As far as I can tell, the mosquito's are designed for the Kerbal to hang onto the ladder while you control it around. I'm going to see if I can find a way to put the command chair on it for a more secure Kerbal / rover connection. I've learned that this vehicle was designed with the Mun or maybe Duna in mind. I landed one on Minmus and have been having a hard time with control. Minmus's gravity is so slight that you can't hardly get any traction on the wheels. One trick is to use your RCS to "push down" on the wheels, but you run out of RCS fuel fast. I read a tip in another post, and plan to try this out: add an ion thruster to the top. The thruster should push just hard enough to give better traction. I highly recommend the KAS (Kerbal attachment system) addon for use with this rig. I've been able to "tie myself down" on minmus using the grappling hook. It's also going to make resupply a little easier since precision maneuvers are extremely difficult on this moon. Guess I should have gone to the mun with it or Duna.

I'll go try out the little "mosquito's" now and see if I can figure it out. If not I might mod the design slightly and add the command chair from mechjeb

Haven't tried the little ones just yet. I modified this lander by adding some other adding parts, specifically KAS (attachment system), escape pod, and Kethane. I landed the rover on minmus with little issue, once I was on the ground though... I landed on a slight slope but I can get the rover to stop moving! I finally got some control to around 0.2 m/s, and I ended up firing off two grappling hooks into the ground to hold steady. Any ideas? (Edit: I will try the parking break idea next time I play, thanks for that tip, I just missed it in the first read thru) Btw if your having trouble on launch: I noticed that the nav ball was pointed sideways not straight up and was causing me confusion. If you use mechjeb it's fatal. Right click another part facing up and use "control from here" until your nav ball is blue!

I just had to drop a note and say how COOL this thing is and how much fun it is to play. Thank you!!!

Well I managed to get my map sat to Eve.... After a few orbits at 350 to 450 km I decided to move my angle to a 90 (polar) to get mapping. After the burn I guess I was too excited about mapping it and I wasn't paying attention and my probe crashed into the surface (at least I got some readings on the other instruments). How frustrating.... Does anyone have a list of "rule of thumb" how much Dv you need to do various operations? Basically I'm trying to figure out how the heck I'm going to get everything mapped. I'm runing out of game time for tonight so I guess It's off to the Mun to map it...

After further reading I realized that picking the innermost planet was probably a mistake (its listed as one of the more challenging to get too). Looks like I need to crawl before I can walk then run. Guess its time to map Kebal's moons then maybe Duna or Eve. Get some more experience so to speak before going for Moho.

For some reason when I load this mod I can no longer see any of the planets or orbits in the Map screen. I have the following add-on's running: MechJeb2.0.8.0 , MechJeb Pods and Probes 0.20.0, Lazor Docking Cam, Subassembly Manager 0.1.2, CrewManifest 0.5.4.0, Kerbal Engineer 0.6.0.3 and MapSat's Dev release. Any idea's what might be going wrong, I'm just putting the protractor directory into the Game Data folder. The mod itself looks to be working just fine, it's just when I hit "M" to see the map, nothing but stars.

Clearly I have more reading to do. The last time I tried to send a probe to Moho I forgot to correct the plane and missed completely (passing under it by a good distance), funny thing is that I was pretty sure the Ap marker thing was right on the line when I started. On the manuver nodes, I figured out the green markers (basically speed) and the purple/pink ones are for the plane/tilt , but what do the blue ones do?

Thanks all so much. You've been very helpful. So much so that I was able to take the stock Z mapper satellite and turn it into an interplanetary probe with mapsat on it. Engineer claims the design has roughly 12 km/s Dv. I suppose it might be true. Anyway didn't do me a whole lot of good because for some reason I keep messing up the planet encounters. Either I end up missing completely or I end up getting to the encounter only to find a need a crazy amount of Dv to slow into an orbit. I've tried watching Manley's videos a few times, but I must be missin something with the "correction burn" part?

Well a quick update... I found and loaded up the Dev release of MapSat and I successfully mapped Kerbin, yea, go me! LOL Still much more testing to do I guess, and still much more forum searching...

Greetings! So I purchased off Steam a few days ago, have installed a half dozen mods (MechJeb, Engineer, Escape Pod, Orbital Fuel Station, etc). I have some general questions and searching the web has helped me, along with Scott Manley's YouTube videos, but I'm still running into a few things that I'm just not sure about. So I thought I would ask (in no particular order) to see what I'm missing. 1) Struts - I assumed that when you use a strut in conjunction with a radial decoupled that the struts would disconnect as well (tested and it worked), but I also had one design where the struts didn't disconnect when the separation fired. I ended up abandoning that design, but are there any instances where struts don't come apart? 2) Fuel Lines - I've had some issues getting fuel lines to connect, lots of "fiddling" usually solves it. One thing I'm not sure about is if they have any use beyond launch. IE: can u you use fuel lines on a space station to balance the fuel load between two tanks without having to manually transfer fuel? 3) Unmanned pods - I take it there is no other way to "un-man" a pod before launch other than to Eva and end then go back to the pad... Do you have to include a probe or remote unit in order to retain control or is the unmanned pod enough? 4) Space Station wiggle - I used the Orbital Fuel Station design (very nice btw) but at one point I didn't like the way the station was facing. I had two vehicles docked at the time and activated the RCS. Every thuster fired and the whole thing started to "shake". I killed RCS but after a little while one of the vehicles shook side to side so badly it ripped the docking port off the station and took some parts with. I'm assuming my screw up was that I should have undocked everything, then adjusted the station? 5) Docking ports as couplers? Can you "dock" two things together and send them up on your launch vehicles? Do/Can you use struts to stabilize that connection? 6) Rovers - Haven't used them yet, I was thinking about trying the stock rover out, but how do you put it into your lander?