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Superfluous J

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Everything posted by Superfluous J

  1. And here's the big problem with blowing up an entire planet. No self-respecting alien overlord would blow up *one* planet when he could instead render 400,000,000 planets uninhabitable for the same cost.
  2. I've never actually done the burn test. That is far more than I thought it would be!
  3. You "should" do whatever you're comfortable with. The dV savings for Olberth is there but it's not like you're going to save tons of dV. We're talking percentages here. If you do B, which I personally find easier, just make sure you leave Kerbin's SOI going BACKWARDS in relation to the Sun (ie, you should burn on the day side) to get to Eve (or Moho but you said Eve). For all other planets, you want to leave Kerbin's SOI going FORWARDS. The same goes for A, but as it's all one burn and you are able to get it to Eve I assume you already knew that The best way to see for yourself is to do both burns. Get your ship into orbit around Kerbin and then make a quick save. Do a big burn to get all the way to Eve, and then note how much fuel you have left. Then revert to your quick save and do it the other way, with 2 burns (1 to exit Kerbin's SOI, another to intersect Eve) and look how much fuel you have left. If the differece is significant enough to be important to you, then you have your answer.
  4. I understand your opinion and sympathize with it, especially because the confusion was caused by me. But the rules are there to create a consistent experience for everybody and if I make exceptions to them then they may as well not even be there. The exact height limit of the initial orbit is arbitrary (at 10k more than the atmosphere limit) but the rule itself *is* important. I don't want you to land any old thing on the ground. I want you to land something that is capable of going from being in orbit to not being in orbit without any decoupling. If you allow late decoupling it opens loopholes that I don't want there to be. I'm not good enough to do it but I imagine some trick where 1 part ends up surviving hitting the ground due to some trick I don't know about. Like I said, I understand and apologize that my poor wording caused the confusion that caused your entry to not count. And I'm sorry that the bad taste it left in your mouth has caused you to not care to try again.
  5. Any successful completion of the main goal in this challenge is laudable, and that's a very nicely done ship! If you just get it a little higher before starting you'll win the horizontal landing challenge (so far)!
  6. I wouldn't be surprised if you could use decoupler spam to get around the spirit of this competition, but I can't think of a way. Sure, you can use it to slow yourself down a ton, but you can do that in other ways already so I'm not sure what advantage it'd get you. You'd still have to get your 7 parts down through 70km of atmosphere (and 10km of space, because you can't do your decoupling when your periapsis - and therefore your ship - is below 80km) to land safely.
  7. While your plane is far closer to what I envisioned making this challenge, it actually also breaks rule #6 that I obviously worded horribly. You decoupled your retro burn package after your periapsis dropped below 80km (but while your plane was still over 80km, which the old wording of rule #6 implied). You've inspired me to create 2 winner ladders, though, one for vertical landing and another for horizontal (rolling) landing, because they are very different things that require very different approaches. I modified the rules, adding a "no kerbal EVA to push" rule. It is fraught with loopholes so I figured I'd just nip it in the bud. Using a decoupler to give you the final push to atmo is fine, so long as your periapsis is 80,000 meters or more when you do it. It may take a few orbits to come down, though
  8. I considered this and I've decided that no, I don't like it. If you want to do a trick to decouple a still-burning engine to slow yourself down even further, go ahead. However consider that an additional challenge to get what you want while remaining within the rules that really intended you to enter the atmosphere at near-orbital velocity.
  9. The two submitted entries got to the ground in about 5 minutes from entering atmosphere. Hm. I think that meets the rules but I honestly didn't think about it. Let me think some more. Our first winner! Sadly this does not count. You decoupled - I believe - AFTER your periapsis was under 80km. This breaks rule #6 (which I think I could have worded better): 6) You may not decouple, undock, or disconnect any pieces once you've left the 80-90km orbit. The plane in orbit must be the plane that descends and lands. If your periapsis is below 80km you've left the 80-90km orbit. I should have used the word periapsis and for that I apologize. I have modified the first post to make this more clear.
  10. I'm not against that. Consider it a thing and I'll update the first post when I have a bit more time on my hands. Thanks for that! I'm not comfortable saying you can consistently do it, but I'm willing to consider it. The rules are complicated enough and it seems that to allow for this I'd have to add several more rules. Something like: Alternatively, you can use HyperEdit to simply place yourself at a height of 80-90km over Kerbin in a sub-orbital trajectory of any kind. If you do this, however, you may not touch the controls at all after you've used HyperEdit.
  11. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that it's a problem that needs fixed. To me, though, it's one of the smallest problems with the mod. I'd like my stuff to not explode when it is built more than I'd like a new auger. And I'd like more attachment points for all the parts, and the smelter to not explode when it falls over. I mean, seriously. The thing looks like it's a solid block of cast iron.
  12. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying? Lifting the ship/plane/whatever to 80km isn't enough. Before you start this whole thing, you must be in ORBIT with a periapsis above 80km. That's rule/requirement #3 above.
  13. I'm doing something unique. I'm erasing all of my science points, tech tree unlocks, and science gained per planet (so zeroing out that part of the career) but am leaving all my ships in place. So as I'm re-sciencing myself I will be still able to use what I already have up there. Which will give me a significant leg up on getting more science but will allow me to experience the new way in which it's gained and used.
  14. Can a craft made out of pylons and girders reach the ground and not destroy those pylons and girders? The entire craft must survive re-entry AND landing. You can do anything you want so long as you don't control the ship once it drops below 70km, and so long as you don't decouple anything once the periapsis drops below 80km. So if you use a ton of fuel to kill your velocity to 0, you gotta bring that tank down with you. Or decouple it while it's still burning in a reproducible way which... well good luck with that.
  15. Unless it's Doctor Who and then they have British accents. Though one of my favorite lines in all of Sci Fi is from Eccleston's Doctor. Maybe even from the pilot episode. He tells Rose he's an alien and she asks, incredulously, "If you are an alien how come you sound like you're from the North?" and he replies, hurt and defensively, "Lots of planets have a North!" The nearest gravitational body or important object. Similar to the SOIs in KSP. If you're near Earth, you'd come to a stop relative to it, or its surface. If there's a space station or ship nearby, you'd do so relative to it. Granted, it'd be up to the pilot to make that decision and if he or she got it wrong...
  16. I can understand the need for aesthetics on the final product, but why can't you suspend your disbelief during the transfer stage and just let the auger clip into your ship while you're flying it to its destination? Though I do agree in principle. It shouldn't be that way. But because it *is* that way, I see no problem just assuming - during transport - that the auger bit just isn't there even though it looks like it is.
  17. I didn't buy the game on Steam but can't you disable auto-update on a per-game basis?
  18. Maybe they posted it there because they're really busy with KerbalKon and knew that within 10 seconds someone would post it here? You know the information now. What's the big deal where they said it or who saw it first?
  19. Why can't we have both? Click the stack, it opens. Double click an engine, it separates. Drag the stack (collapsed or open), it moves. Currently, dragging a collapsed stack does nothing which is counter-intuitive.
  20. Wow harsh words aimed at a build tool. I'd hate to see what you two say on the MechJeb threads. While I don't want this to lay my fuel lines for me, I don't see why a button that sets up the staging in the one, only, and single logical way they should be set up (once I lay the fuel lines) is so horrible. I mean, the game already guesses what the staging should be. Is that wrong, too? Why have staging at all, even? Is right-clicking and decoupling too hard for you? Putting decouplers in the correct stages is a pain in the ass and takes no skill once you've done it once. This tool removes a boring part of the game. Sounds good to me. Makes me wish someone would make a "launch clamps always in the first stage" mod.
  21. You can double click on any planet to bring it into focus, though sometimes you will accidentally switch to a ship or flag on the surface of that planet. Probably easier is to use TAB to go through everything. You can also use shift-tab but watch out. Shift is throttle up! EDIT: Ninja'd by someone who even included a link!
  22. I agree with all of these things. I hate how my space station is temporarily named "fuel tug" whenever my fuel tug is docked to it.
  23. I imagine the last thing they want is the chance of the whole team having to stop the Kon to go in and fix any bugs in the release - no matter how low a chance that is. If I had to guess, the Kon will be all about 0.23 and the release itself will come out (hopefully soon, even better immediately) after.
  24. I believe the default is to alert 1 minute before. Go into settings and you can change it to any amount of time. I leave peri/apo at 1 minute before (so I can align my ship if I need to), SOI changes at 0-hour, and maneuvers at 3 minutes before.
  25. While it doesn't work for intersects, if you click apoapsis/periapsis markers (and are a little lucky or persistent) the numbers they display will remain even when you move your mouse away. I have wished for some time that this was both easier and more consistent, and that you could do it with every other marker with hover numbers including intersect markers and ascending/decending node markers.
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