Jasonden

Good idea for a challenge in the new 0.90! But why evaluate based on mass? That's something that we did Back In The Day before kerbucks --- I don't see that it makes any sense anymore. Why not optimize cost instead? Just an idea. And could there be different leaderboards at different tech levels, maybe, too? Like I'd be interested to know who can do the best at just Tech Levels 3 & 4 as well, for instance Is it even possible on Tech Level 3? How about 2?

Aha -- that makes more sense. I had set them both to max . . . That makes some sense, at least, in that they're decorrelated. Thanks for cluing me in!

Me too! I'm really missing vertical snap, radial attachment, and up to 50x symmetry . . . Hard to go back to the Old Way once you've had this mod!

Wow, dude -- nice! I love the Laythe seaplane. And that 70-km rover drive on Tylo: epic!

Ugh -- why all this effort on biomes on Kerbin? The game's Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbin Geological Survey . . .

I love the new biomes -- very cool, I've been frustrated by their lack for years. But (and there had to be a 'but' didn't there?) . . . How come there's only like 4 or 5 biomes at Duna? I have to admit to have been a little disappointed when I arrived there in my new 0.90 career game last night. I mean, shouldn't there be more biomes on Duna than there are on Ike? (This is not an argument to descope Ike biomes, they're great!).

Are they the same multipliers as for science?

Yah there seems to be something weird. With 10% funds it's already 10x harder to upgrade facilities. But then they've gone and made the upgrades 10x more expensive, too -- this seems like too much of a good thing IMHO. 10% funds on contracts will make it very hard already to upgrade facilities, and therefore you probably don't need the upgrades to be 10x more expensive, too . . .

Oh thank you, thank you! I'd been spoiled by PreciseNode for so long that I was struggling relearning how to use those old analog maneuver nodes. Now I can come back out of the Dark Ages!

Okay, was working on this in 0.25 and had visited and nearly-fully-scienced the entire system, but still didn't complete the tech tree. Here's where I ended up: There was probably some more that I could do -- advanced stuff back at the Mun for instance -- but was plateauing off on the science. I tried this challenge in 0.90 and with the building upgrades it's just not possible. I quickly ran out of things to do without EVA and with an 18t ship limit. Money wasn't an issue per se, just the inability to buy buildings. EDIT: Okay, I started a new game with normal (i.e., 1.0x instead of 0.1x) funds. And the weird thing is that now the prices of building upgrades have all come down by a factor of 10 too. Is this a bug? I mean, if the financial rewards are only 10% in hard mode, then why make the buildings 10x more expensive TOO?

Landing on a dish -- had to time warp until they pointed closer to the zenith -- otherwise too hard! Kadvent 1: Then finished off the rest of them -- Kadvent 2:

I've been into fully-reusable Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) rockets these days, what with the Easy-Normal-Hard-Absurd-Hard challenge. The idea is that instead of the more-efficient ascent path with a gravity turn, I instead have two stages: one to lift up to 100km altitude, and then a separate stage to burn tangentially to get into orbit. The advantage here is that then the first stage will fall right back onto KSC for 98% recovery, and the second stage can be brought back to land on the pad or the runway after an orbit for 100% cost recovery. I've done versions that recover the first stage at 100%, too, but that tends to be stressful Here's a typical mission profile to launch to orbit: I'm hoping that this will help me if there are any challenges to minimize total cost. But really I've been building expendable boosters for over a year now, but these guys are novel to me Here's my lineup of boosters, then, from 0.7t to 170t capability to orbit:

Sounds like fun!

Ah; less dV for a landing mission, I should have said! Not sure about what the minimum might be. I will post pics of my minmus and Mun rockets tonight maybe -- I have a SpaceX-like re-use strategy going on

Great! Thanks for this -- I don't fly spaceplanes, but am interested in the nose cones and adapters. How do I install it again?

Yes, they do have an effect -- a negative one. Try launching the same ship with and without a nose cone and see which one goes further.

Here's a rocket-based entry. 26.9t, all-RCS, precision landing on the pad.

Wow, does this mod actually make nose cones useful? Given that the nose cones have drag of just 0.1 instead of 0.2, if they're full of fuel they should have less drag than the equivalent cylindrical tank.

Restarted myself, without the use of Strategies since they pretty much break things. And this time I went to Minmus first instead of the Mun. This worked great -- the science multiplier there is higher, it requires less dV to get to, and you can hop between biomes to get more samples and science from a single mission.

Boy, you got it. Even as tight as funds are, this breaks it open. It's still kind of challenging with the science strategies, but it was WAY harder trying to make science on just 10% all the time.

Yah that's crazy dude -- no margin for error. Good luck though!

Based on the color change in the plume right preceding the explosion could be a busted transfer pipe or valve in the RP-1, causing a fuel-rich condition just prior to the explosion. Could be the AJ-26, could be the lower end of the tank system. Have to say that it looks bad for the AJ-26 tho.

Quicksaving is necessary, I've found. For whatever reason when I use the persistent.sfs sometimes when I go back to my missions the Kraken eats them, whereas using quicksaves the spacecraft themselves are much more stable. Does this not happen to you? Maybe it's my setup or my mods or something that's causing it . . . I do use Editor Extensions to attach things radially sometimes, which might be correlated with the issue.

Okay, I see what you mean, now. I did a Munar free-return mission and got the "Plant a flag on the Mun" and "return data from space around the Mun" contracts once I entered the Mun's SOI. Not as lucrative as "Explore the Mun", but good enough to make a good profit on my cheap free-return mission. I don't see why I wouldn't be able to do at least as well with an orbiter or lander. I did get "Explore Ike" now. So . . . interesting. Maybe I'll do that next before Minmus In other news, I signed up for 10% outsourced R&D, which is probably as overpowered in your challenge as in the normal game. I'm hoping, anyway! This is a fun challenge; I'm enjoying the constraints.

Aha -- nice! I'll give that a shot! Wasn't ballsy enough myself to spend my only remaining money without a contract, but that's a great idea.