Captain Sierra

Well, yes and no. TUBM has short hair.

Good GOD those are big! Who would ever need SRBs like that?

The exact north pole is seemingly devoid of air. I'm not sure how a lack of atmosphere would cause atmospheric overheating, but hey, this is KSP. Its surprised us before.

Meanwhile on MatoroIgnika's stream ... a heat shield survived two hours of aerobraking passes at Jool with zero ablator before finally exploding (when it did the rest of the craft went up almost instantaneously). Heat shields may need a tiny bit of work.

682: Back a pickup truck through the door like its the contractor loading area in home depot.

Now down to 8 points from my second green bar. I CAN TASTE IT!

I spend about 70% of my game time in the VAB and hyperedit testing things. I know a thing or two about minmaxing. Yes, that is the best way to design these things for a default career mode game. Now, if you're me, you have funds to burn. I choose to ignore most contracts so I usually adopt a 20% science-to-funds policy (means I need to collect more science to unlock everything) which I up to 100% after I finish the tech tree, and have my funds mult set to 500% (balanced out by a 600% funds penalty mult). Go big or go home.

If its anything to you, I vastly prefer the appearance of Mk2 toruses over Mk3.

It partly depends on what kind of physics you want to force-load. KSP calculates most physics on a per-part basis. There are a few exceptions to this (and more that are activated above a certain time warp value), with orbital pathing being one. Atmospheric drag, however, is not, to force-load that so craft which dip into the upper atmosphere experience orbital decay would apply the full physics impact of undergoing reentry with that vessel, plus whatever vessel you're currently flying. Now, your request of "force physics to calculate all the things all the time" would induce so much computational load, the game would grind to an unplayable halt. Unity 5 will allow for multithreading of physics in multi-craft situations (which means bases and other constructions are only limited by the largest single-vessel by part count instead of the total part count within physics range), but there's still limits and what you're considering is breaking those limits. TL;DR: the game doesnt calculate physics all the time for a reason. If you still want to know more, there's a few mods out there which force vessels to stay loaded (via a part hook). I suggest you take a peek at their source if thats your fancy.

IIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm squealing like a toddler right now and havent been this excited since ... well since the Mk4 dev releases game out and that wasnt too long ago. Dammit Nertea, I'd just calmed myself down from the Mk4 hype!

Funny, I'd taken to using it the opposite way. I consolidated all my vessel heat into the heat exchangers to centralize it, and then route it to my powerful radiator arrays. It kept the engine way cooler than it needed to be most of the time, but it did a damn good job of ensure I never once saw an overheat indicator.

The actuators nodes IIRC can be filled out with Infernal Robotics. the heat management nodes can be filled out with Heat Control (but WARNING: the release version is not yet functional in 1.0.4) I don't actually know what fills in advanced survivability. That particular node bugs me. Automation, probably MKS or Karbonite or something. - - - Updated - - - Electric engines fill out a different branch. Cryogenic Rockets and/or SpaceY would fill that node out.

I've adopted the practice of no longer deleting my KSP zip (I usually do fresh installs, and have continued to this time around due to broke patcher), so I can always refer to that as a backup for my SQUAD folder. I then proceed to molest the crap out of it. Though in fairness, I've been doing it less because if my improving skills with modulemanager (and editing GameData/Sierra's Stuff/Part Tweaks.cfg is easier than hunting down the configs in the labyrinth of GameData/Squad).

I found their existing size just fine. Maybe the small universals could get upscaled but everything else is solid. (disclaimer: this opinion is based on heat-control experience exclusively, as I avoid stock radiators like the frickin black plague) What are your thoughts on either a really large static or blanket-esque deployable (for those absurd 12-Colossus tugs) radiator? With the plugin I presume you're recompiling the existing plugin (or are you rewriting the radiator module to extend the default rather than be a from-scratch module?)

I assume every single one of your gloriously superior radiator models is coming back in the heavyweight version? (proceeds to throw a party)

Ya I know the C5 style cockpit is coming, but that's geared towards the full-sized bay cross section. I'm thinking more along the lines of something geared towards the "half-bay/luggage rack" we have under the crew cabin (cuz I routinely fit rovers in there to ferry crew and stuff). That and the current cockpit feels like there's a lot of space it takes up that isnt actually utilized.

So we have all this space below the crew cabins thats great for medium-ish rovers, lots of KIS containers, smaller cargo, etc. I find the cargo tail ramp to be overkill for unloading this and would rather make use of the space for something else (like fuel). Since I imagine the THunderhawk cockpit space is the same profile as the crew cabin, what about something like below? Everything below the cockpit section splits and hinges open laterally (alternate version perhaps since this means no 1.25m attach node on the front) like a clamshell, and a ramp lowers to unload. This area would need to get hollowed out. From above, this is where the splits would be. THe doors would have to go around the blister nodes. The green line is the hypothetical ramp. Just a $0.02 Nert.

It might be possible to stack them next to each other in the bay (it is measurably wider than it is tall). You can save a lot of space length-wise like that. Alternatively (I dont use MKS anymore so I dunno) it may be possible to place them vertically and you could even go so far as to VTOL drop them onto the target planet (thank you drop bays). Post pics. I look forward to seeing how you pack them in there.

I've found a trick using the EVAC-U-8 airlock piece from the space station pack. I'll post some pics of those up tomorrow to hopefully inspire some people.

"Yo dawg, I heard you like boosters ... so we put boosters on your boosters." That is ... big, very big. Exactly what goes in the fairing in terms of payload and how much is it gonna weigh to necessitate that launcher?

Being able to see what's going on would help a lot (as in, we need pics).

This was discussed in Nertea's WIP thread when this was in development. I do not remember what the actual consensus was on it. I personally feel it could be useful, particularly with the addition of a C-5 style cockpit.

I'd totally back this if it turned into a suggestion ... or is this already rebindable?

Yes. hiding the navball (either by the little arrow or numpad period) will prevent you from actually controlling the vessel at all (and even with it shown you cant stage which is annoying as all get out sometimes).

I think whats actually going on here is that TAB cycles bodies in map view. I was unaware the SHIFT key acted as a modifier on that. Things to be aware of: This is probably low-ish priority since the navball is hidden by default in map view (but you make a compelling point). Also, the backspace key auto-focuses the active vessel (and double clicking on a planet focuses it, but you probably knew that one).