sibrit

Far more important than whether you get the DLC for free, or the value of paid DLC in KSP, or the state of KSP as a game; do we have any update on the expected release date?

In the Advanced Construction training exercise, Wernher von Kerman gets the player to reduce the Thrust Limiter on the "Swivel" to 65% and on the two "Hammer"s to 50%. I know from experience that this will reduce the TWR and increase DV of those engines but there is no indication in the VAB that this is what is happening. Why not 75% or 50% for the "Swivel"? Its effects are apparent in the next Training exercise "Go For Orbit" in that it means you can keep the throttle on max rather than adjusting it during launch to keep your speed below the burn limit caused by atmospheric drag, but if it's training it should explain why it's getting the player to do something.

Since updating to 1.1.0 (on 1230 now but this was an update from 1.0.5), this is a new problem that seems to come and go. The 2 times I distinctly remember seeing it was when I was deleting a disconnected part from the VAB. KSP itself stops working suddenly, so there is no crash log. Any suggestions as to how I might gather more crash data to pass to Squad for review?

Would it just be an indicator on the NavBall (that either SAS can follow or you can manually adjust the trajectory of the rocket?), or are you intending to have some sort of "fly through the rings" type thing, which now that I mention it would probably be a bit crazy given the multitude of viewing options... Would it be based on the 3/4 throttle setting that is default for a launch? Does it take into account cutting back on the throttle to avoid terminal velocity shock? Is the throttle even part of the "follow me"? OK. I really want to see how it would work now, because I've never considered putting a craft into LKO as simple as keeping it pointed in the right direction...

Since KSP knows if you broke something (enough for it to show up on the F3 flight summary list), it could just say "Condolences. You've crashed on the Mun." And then you get a Contract to rescue whoever was left stranded, assuming they were not consumed in a ball of fire...

Since we already have the craft problem list (The one that tells you that an engine is decoupled before it is used, or you have landing gear but no ladder, etc.), why not show this list when launching a craft that has unresolved issues with options to return to the VAB/SPH to fix it, continue as is, or turn off the warning completely? Heck, even I sometimes hit space to launch and the parachutes open...

Actually, since I had been docking in the shadow of Kerbin I hadn't seen it, but in the harsh light of Kerbol I noticed that the rotational alignment was off by a little bit. Enough for it not to dock all of the ports. Looking at this picture, the engine section (left side of the pic) is fully docked to the fuel section, which is full docked to the science section, which is partly docked to the habitat section, which is fully docked to the bow section, where each section is using 7 senior docking ports. I read about the Docking Port Alignment mod but I run stock except for the Flight Engineer, which I only use in the VAB to ensure I get the necessary delta-v for my stages and during launch so I don't have to keep switching to map view to see what my apoapsis is.

I'm putting together a large ship with everything needed for an extended mission to Jool and it's satellites. Each section is essentially a Rockomax sized core with 6 Kerbodyne S3-3600 tanks on the outside connected to the core using the regular sized modular girder segment. At both ends of each tank is an ADTP-2-3 adapter and a Clamp-O-Tron Sr. docking port. The core is sized using a variety of parts so that the Clamp-O-Tron Sr. docking ports for the center align with the outer 6 ports. So far I've sent up 5 different sections that either have 7 ports on one end only or 7 ports on each end. I've successfully docked the engine section to the fuel section to the science section and am now adding in the habitat section, but for the life of me I cannot get it to dock all 7 ports. it always seems to trigger the docking process from the 2 right-hand ports leaving the other 4 outer ports and the central port undocked. I've read that there is a docking port state of "Acquire" which would cause those ports to try and connect with the one next to it. Is this the best way to get all the ports docked? I wish there was a right-click option to dock adjacent ports that currently only show as "Control from here".

Even knowing COM and COL, and making sure they were correctly placed, most of my spaceplane designs wouldn't get off the ground by themselves. They only flew because the runway dropped out from beneath them. And then I had to keep them level with only minor attitude adjustments or they just flipped and went into a spin. Certainly I haven't been able to fly one as I would a normal flight simulator, even with SAS turned off. The controls are not fine enough and using the rudder would turn it a little way, then it would stop, then continue turning. I believe some of this is due to incomplete aerodynamics modelling in KSP.

The CPU is handling all the physics calculations for the "focused" vehicle, and I doubt the component models are complex enough to use up a tonne of memory, so processor speed is the biggest factor in determining gameplay rate. I don't know whether KSP makes use of multiple cores. If it did, then more cores would also improve performance. You could try setting the KSP process Priority to higher than Normal, but you run the risk of making your PC unstable.

If Squad implement a career mode where we have to pay for the components we use, then I can see a reason to re-use the lifter, otherwise just dump it. You would be using a lot of fuel unnecessarily getting those mainsails into orbit. I had put together a lifter using orange tanks and mainsails where I could recover them once they parachuted down, but I could only ever save the one I was focused on. The others were on rails and just crashed into Kerbin.

I've been able to get the couplers to cover 3 engines by switching to triple symmetry setting (X and Shift-X to cycle) when putting on the engines, and again for the separators, but when you add another inverted stack tri-coupler/tri-adapter it will only "connect" via one of the 3 connection points, which means you cannot do a physics warp or it'll send your ship into a spin (the 2 unconnected sides will "compress", putting the COM over to one side). It's the only real gripe I have with the VAB.

Mun certainly has different areas. I think at last count I had 8 flags on Mun for different craters, like Farside East Crater, West Crater, Twin Craters, etc. All these different areas get you more science and you can accumulate a lot over time by sending a Kerman to each crater to do an EVA, collect a soil sample, crew report, materials bay, goo container, et. al., using the basic components that you get early on. But returning them to Kerbin is difficult until you get some sort of docking component, so I think it might be best to do flybys of Eve, Minimus, Duna, and the others to get one before going to Mun, to maximise your science by returning the samples to Kerbin.

Without mods, it's basically timing and learning from trial and error. Once my ship has entered the Eve soi, I tend to burn until I get an equatorial orbit that has a periapsis at around 95km so that I skim through the upper atmosphere. Usually this is a very elongated orbit so it can make several passes before aerobraking causes a decent. Then with an eye on where I want to land, I burn retrograde at apoapsis to get my periapsis altitude to between 30km & 60km. The lower the altitude, the stronger the aerobraking effect. You also need to take the planetary rotation into account in that if you set up the maneuver so that your touchdown is on your required point, by the time you get there Eve has rotated east by several degrees so that you end up landing far west of where you wanted to be. This is why having a decent engine is useful, as you can either burn retrograde if it looks like you're going to overshoot, or a vertical burn to "float" over to your landing spot.