Lightwarrior

It seems like this depends on efficiency. If you try monopropellant 0.625 thruster will use 6+ GW. Probably effective power is limited, not total. Della, Yes, it seems that Vista is one of the best options for big ships. The only thing that can be slightly better in some cases is thermal nozzle with upgraded antimatter reactor. Also it can be powered by relatively small/light 2.5m fusion reactor or even 1.25m antimatter reactor. Its size cause more problems than power requirements.

It is really cool that there is a working drag chute, finaly. But had strange problem with them, if i place multiple chutes (either using symmetry or not) they deploy at slightly different time which is absolutely critical for a landing plane and usually causes unplanned rapid disassembly. Is this intended behavior and if it is, is there any way to avoid this? Or it is only possible to use single drag chute?

Fuel for reactors is UF4 now, you probably loaded old craft? Antimatter containment can be powered by either megajoules or EC, if i remember correctly it is 1KW for small bottle, 40Kw for 1.25m tank, 100KW for 2.5m tank, but i may be wrong with exact numbers. Anyway it is very small amount of power if you have any reactor. Also 2 gigantor solar panels in kerbin orbit are enough to power 1.25m tank with EC, but you will have problems with high timewarps because of how resource (EC) consumption works in KSP (or you will need a lot of batteries).

If it says 0.133/day it will generate 0.133/day... And those messages are per lab i think, so if you will check your R&D you probably got ~24 science. Also it is very inefficient, you can get comparable amount of science if you land 2 labs on something like Ike.

Encountered another bug with direct conversion generators. I was trying to build spaceplane based on 2.5m fusion reactor and did not want to include 2.5m generator. I used 0.625m reactor+generator instead, which was intended to use he-3 to generate enough power for big reactor to run. But... it turned out that generator is using charged particles from big reactor, it will show things like "maximum power 11.78MW, current power 46.4MW" and run just fine in D/T fuel mode. And it also work fine with small reactor disabled or fuel deprived.

Yes. But those "charged particles" produced still go to waste heat if not used.

There is probably nothing wrong here. When your transmitters are off all those 40% goes to heat. When you turn transmitters on you start using those power with very high efficiency (85% for direct conversion generators) and obviously get less heat because now this power is used instead of just heating radiators. This is by the way one of big disadvantages of this reactors - very high idle power output.

The idea to colect something from jool atmosphere is cool, yes. But now it just does not work. I tried to get some fuel from it some time ago (before he-3 was added) and... yes, it can be done. But it is totally unpractical. And problem here is not the difficulty, but the amount of real time you need to spend there to get reasonable amounts of resources.

And you will still get tiny amounts. Or i am wrong? ... I think tritium decay not working on off-focus vessels is just a bug, and if/when it will be fixed there will be relatively easy way to get he-3. Also AMI reactor is so much better then all you can get before upgraded antimatter reactors, that it makes it worth of effort.

Speaking of harvesting He-3 (or anything else) from jool atmosphere... it seems useles idea just because you have no timewarp there, you need to control the craft (can not go AFK), so you will get tiny amount of resources spending a lot of time there. Also it seems that the only way to use something requiring He-3 (while tritium decay only work on focused vessel) is just to take a lot of tritium. Sure you will need crazy (and unpractical) amounts to power AMI reactor at 100% power constantly, but if you keep this vessel focused during transfer you will get relatively large amounts of he-3. Sadly it limits the ability to control multiple missions at the same time, but it seems to be the only working way. The only problem this update can cause are nuclear fuel storage containers. If you have them somewhere you will need to launch new ones after update because old ones will have 1000 times smaller storage than it should. You also will have problems loading saved crafts with this containers (and also with all other HexCan containers from interstellar like lithium, D/T, He-3 etc...) in VAB/SPH (already launched crafts will load fine). Also about IR Telescope. Is it totally useless to send it to those 550AU unmanned? I just do not want to send kerbals there, because they obviously will have no chance to return, and it seems that during few years needed to reach this distance telescope without EVA maintenance will become useless.

You will not see any specific "upgrade node", you should read first post carefully, there is info which upgrades require which node unlocked. You also can read in part description what is the difference between upgraded/non-upgaded part.

Actually it is stock game that is still unbalanced. If you will play full stock you can unlock whole science tree without ever leaving kerbin system. And more, you can get those ~10k of science from mun in single mission. Or even easier - from minmus. I actually got to nuclear propulsion node just from mun and minmus with those 4x prices and only stock instruments. After this it really does not matter are impactors OP or not, are labs OP or not, the whole system is unbalanced right now. Probably future stock updates will change this. And right now impactors are fun. Not because of science but because they are just diffrerent from stock science system and created new problems to solve.

IMO it is better to add 0.625 reactor to one of the probes, Communotron 16 require 5EC/mit, there seem to be 10mit/1science, so to transmit 1000 science you will need 50000EC. Way too much to store in batteries or generate by RTG. And you will probably get more than 1000 science.

This seem to be already answered, but i will just add that... I do not think they really have to be around the equator, they just need too be far enough from each other, ideally evenly distributed along the surface of the planet. I placed them around the equator just because i wanted to save fuel and time, reducing amount of maneuvers required to both land and then take off/return to the mothership. I landed bigger manned lander on pole just because it has way more fuel/dV and i thought it will be as far from those probes on equator as i can get. BTW those "stayputnik+4 separatrons" impactors proved to be really good, the only problem i had is too high dV (and insane acceleration) and lack of control, so i accidentally reversed orbit instead of deorbiting first time. And smashing those stayputnik's into the surface just feels good This was the only available probe core for long time so now i really hate this thing

I am really surprised that i got maximum science from single impact, because i just landed those probes from high equatorial orbit one after another (with some small corrections of cource) and then landed manned lander with another sensor on pole. It is relatively easy, i thought i will have to do it much more precise to get maximum science. Also antimatter initiated reactor is awesome. Its something average between fusion and antimatter, relatively low resource consumtion rate and ability to throttle down to almost zero power production allow to use it for long missions without shutting it down during transfers and without any secondary power system. It can also be left running at full power for few days without exhausting all resources, unlike antimatter reactors. BTW it seems that Uranium Nitride consumption rate is wrong. Tested it in sandbox and i had to burn ~1000 DT/He-3 to use 0.01 Uranium Nitride. Either built in storage is too large or consumption rate is too low.

Actually i just edited tree.cfg to multiply all node costs by 4. It made things far more interesting and balanced. Without it all tree can be unlocked without living kerbin system, just on mun and minmus, even without labs and impactors. This seems like stock problem either than interstellar. Also yes, using life support mod makes things a bit harder with labs, you need to be carefull, or you will force yourself to deliver supplies constantly instead of doing something less routine. As for impactors... they are still much more challenging than stock experiments, i had to deploy 8 different crafts in orbit/on surface of eeloo (2 power relays, 4 probes with accelerometers, manned lander, and mothership which is also transmitting power for probes/lander) and bring something i can crash into surface multiple times. And then i will need to dock all this things back together... This is much more fun than just landing, clicking few buttons and returning to kerbin.

Finaly tested impactors on Eeloo and... absolutely insane amount of science: And after 3 more impacts it was ~10k science total. Noticed no problems with how impactors work, but is not it too much science from just single experiment? Also it required ~5 minutes to transfer, and such long transfer will probably fail (run out of power) if you have no reactor/microwave receiver on transmitting vessel.

NeoAcario, Yes, minor probably, and i am sure they will be fixed. It is just frustrating a bit when such issues make otherwise good design totally unusable. Also there is another issue that reactors will only shut down because they ran out of fuel when you switch to this vessel... it is partally compensating reprocession problem, but it just feels wrong to abuse this... BTW probably Laythe is a good location to place dusty plasma reactors because you can get Ammonia there. You will probably still have to transfer it manually, but it is better than delivering it from kerbin. The only drawback is that you will need more relays and big receivers.

NeoAcario, There is one problem because i did not use them. When Uranium Nitride storage is full production still consume UF4/Amminia but obviously produce no Uranium Nitride. This, along with Actinides reprocession not working off-focus make self-sufficient power stations almost impossible, sadly. Also tritium=>He-3 decay not working off-focus make it almost impossible to produce He-3 without just warping few years with some vessel with lots of tritium stored. I hope some day this problems will be solved...

xfrankie, Yes, tried this also... and strange thing is that even if you will disable transmitter reactor sometimes fails at maximum timewarp. I think it is not caused by transmitter at all, because transmitter has lower priority and should never cause reactor shutdown. I defenitely remember it worked better in 0.10.2... strange... Also yes, fission reactors are better for power transmission, not only because they have no such problems and can produce lots of tritium, they also can run almost forever while landed on surface of some planet/moon, just add a refinery and few tanks for depleted fuel and thats it, reactor is self-sufficient. You only need to replace those tanks when they are full. Add: Also tested it again, and tritium=>He-3 decay and nuclear fuel reprocession does not work on off-focus vessels. Just left those transmitter with refineries/tritium breeding for ~1 year and it ran out of fuel (reactors are full of actinides) and produced ~3000 tritium and 0 He-3. I turned on fusion reactor on rover to provide power for refineries, turned on reprocessing and it cleared actinides in ~2 days, also producing ~2 He-3...

This may be called "known bug", transmitter will try to transmit power based on both generators maximum power which will cause it to transfer more than is produced. You can just use single generator.... probably thermal, and you will not have this problem. Also fusion reactors will not produce any tritium/he-3, they will use all tritium they breed, for tritium/he-3 production you'd better use fission reactors.

Yes, but it tells nothing usefull while still at ~1AU, and it is probably better to complete burn while still there... Also i think it cannot be changed/corrected, so it has to be used as is...

Not Helium-3, just Liquid Helium, why will you ever use He-3 to cool something? Also it says "liquid helium deprived" on launchpad...

Main problem i see with IR telescope is that there are no ingame tools to plan this maneuver. Game just shows "escape trajectory from Sun" and thats all, you do not know how much more speed you need to gain and how long it will take.

Still experiencing some strange behaviour of nuclear fuel reprocession. It starts and work without an issue until i switch to another craft or just go to space center. The problem is - when i switch back to vessel which is reprocessing fuel the process is interrupted (and message is displayed that fuel cannot be reprocessed) and need to be started again. Also new warning about fusion reactor plasma heating is a bit annoying, in some cases, for example when power is being transmitted using microwave transceiver, it will stay on screen forever.