pluto101

I was in the middle of planning a grand scientific Joolean expedition when the update dropped, with no transmission of physical experiments (i.e., materials labs and goo pods). Most of the update makes such a mission MUCH simpler. I had a whole modular science pack scheme that involved six materials labs/goo pods per moon, with the lander switching each pod out before landing on a new body via docking. Now I can just transfer my data and scrub w/ the ML. Like I said, much simpler. However, now I'm confused about how to maximize the efficiency of science extraction for a given biome. Previously, I would transmission spam digital experiments, and make two physical measurements. This netted me 100% of potential digital data, and maybe 90% of potential physical data, which I was satisfied with. Now, however, it appears that if I store my digital data, upon return to Kerbin I can retrieve 90-95% of potential retrievable science. This is fine - it makes my life easy, I only need to take one measurement per biome. The materials labs and goo pods appear to behave differently. I can only store one piece of data per biome for each science part, however storing this data will only net me ~80% of potential data for that biome upon returning to Kerbin. If I take two samples per biome, I could transmit one and store the other. However, there seems to be only a 5% difference in final science yield. Transmitting an additional sample first barely affects the amount of science extracted. So, is there anyway I can store more than one identical measurement in a single mission? Is there a cap on the amount of science retrievable in one mission? How does the game calculate your science yield, and how to maximize it per mission?

I'm not going to address the rest of your complaints in detail (some valid, most ignorant), but seriously? You've never worked a job that had paid vacation? Pretty sure 2 weeks a year is standard in the US (it's what I have), and internationally the standard is more like 4-6. Even beyond that, if devs are working 12-hr days before a patch release, then in every job I've worked that means you get the right to either overtime (if hourly) or time off (if salary). That kind of entitled attitude really gets at me. If you've never worked in a paid vacation environment, then stop complaining about others' vacation time and start examining why you don't have any.

Oh, huh. You know, I encountered a similar problem in a rig I put together this weekend. I found that placing that final rung at a 45 degree angle seemed to allow Jeb to make it over that last ridge.

I was actually pretty impressed with how accurate the movie was overall. They really only made one error, and it was an intentional one for integral story purposes - namely, that everything in LEO seems to be on the same orbit and within 100km of everything else. That debris cloud would be very possible in a retrograde orbit (side note: while the relative speed would be so large you couldn't see the debris coming, you can't blame the creators for fudging that). I went into the movie wondering if they'd have audible explosions in space. Given that low bar, I was blown away at Gravity's realism.

Kerbal's have poor lateral dexterity, and don't do a good job at grabbing onto ladders that are even slightly to the side of the ladder they're currently on. Your poor Kerbal is getting stuck on the handholds on your X8 tank, and thus can't reach the capsule. I'd suggest keeping your hand holds in a straight line to the top of that X8 fuel tank, and from there your kerbal should be able to walk into the capsule. I'd also suggest testing this on the launchpad, though it looks like you've started to do that now.

What gets me is that they've been "pathing" properly. Every single strut just decided to break upon reload of the ship.

Scogdog, Unfortunately, I wasn't done strutting, and I'm fairly certain the ship will fall apart on the pad. I can't tell what has and hasn't been strutted yet, since I can't see where my struts are. Sirrobert, it's not a subassembly, and unfortunately I'm incorporating as much in orbit docking as I can manage. This is just the Eve return stage, it will dock with a Eve transport stage once in orbit. If I can get it in orbit. numerobis, it's an interesting idea, but I don't see that error when I load the ship up. Instead, I get lots of "Skipped rendering frame because Gfxdevice is in invalid state" error spam. I see that error in other contexts too, but I've never been able to figure out what it means. aven17, I haven't touched a thing. My struts and fuel lines went from 100% connected to 0% connected without warning. Anybody else recognize this error? -Joe

Help! So, I'm half way through the tech tree, and I thought it'd be "fun" to complete the tree in one go. So, I'm building an Eve lander/Gilly lander mission w/ Rockomax-32s, LV-T30s, Skippers, and LV-909s. I actually think I have a workable design. Or, at least I did. I was almost done strutting the damn thing up. When I went to finish today, I saw this: Every single strut and fuel line has become a nub. I don't know if I have the fortitude to re-strut and re-line all 57 stages of this thing. Does anybody know what's going on here, and if it's reversible? Thanks.

2d, 22h, 2m, 1s This was great. My first attempt at wrtiting this post was screwed up, so I'm just going to keep it short: I flew a plane for the first time! Crashed at first, landed on the 2nd try. Realized that the Minmus-Munar transfer ship had lots of delta-V, so changed my trajectory from a 5 day transfer to a 1 day transfer. Large burn at the end, lots of fun. If I had done something similar from the Mun to Minmus, I might have been able to take the number 1 slot! Oh well.

"Yeah, that rocket design is efficient, but it doesn't look very rocket-y. Let's make it longer, and take out some of the staging."

Make sure during launch you're not encountering any structural failures in your tanks, and that your engines aren't overheating. Double and triple check your fuel lines. Sometimes Control-Z can cause fuel lines to disconnect. Your design, if the picture above is accurate, should work. Things like this can happen if you have a fuel line loop, which is easy to accidentally introduce when you're setting up an asparagus system.

While I don't think I've figured out how to ensure tanks are evenly drained, I do know a way to ensure multiple stacks all run out of fuel at the same time. Lets say you have three tanks (it can be any number of tanks), and you want any engines attached to those tanks (lets say one engine per tank, attached at the bottom) to drain from those three tanks evenly. What you need is a choke point. Most likely, you have one central tank. This tank generally serves as the best point for your choke point. In order for your three tanks to drain evenly, attach a fuel line from your two side tanks to the central tank. Then, attach a fuel line from your central fuel tank to your side engines. The engines will use fuel from the fuel line before they use fuel from the stack. So, all three engines are drawing from the central tank, which is in turn drawing first from the side tanks. During flight, your side tanks drain first, then your central tank. However, all three engines will tap out at the same time. I use a modified version of this in the final stage of my heavy lifter (650 tons to LKO w/ about 350 delta V to spare; pics forthcoming, once I can get the strutting right to ensure stability during launch). In that setup, I have a central tank w/ a Mainsail and six side tanks w/ Mainsails. My asparagus boosters surrounding this final stage drain into the central tank. The central tank then has fuel lines radially coming out into the side tanks. The side tanks then have six fuel lines leading to the central mainsail. The central tank drains first. Once it is finished, the side tanks drain. The central Mainsail continues to draw fuel from the side tanks once the central tank is finished, and all seven engines run out of fuel at the same time. Because all fuel lines are symmetrical, the center of mass never wavers from the center of the ship.