LordFjord

I've always thought it's delicious Minmus icecream, but gravity? That's even better. Now we need a new lifesupport mod based on this theory.

I also don't understand these KSP is dead threads. There are fluctuations on user numbers and activity but thats natural, I dont see a decline. Also, with 1.0, I expect a lot of new people, ideas and general awesomeness.

And another work in progress heavy SSTO... I am beginning to like putting cargobays sideways - and attempting wo build some plane around it. This time in a different way as here. Only the middle column of tanks actually has fuel, it needs a lot more tweaking - but it got 2 full orange tanks to orbit. And that with 100 tons less plane as previously, so I am getting there. "only" 2 radial intakes per jet. It could barely reach orbit and it ran out of fuel. So I enabled infinite fuel cheat to attempt a landing. Well, see for yourself, I need practice with that

Here's my entry - an attempt to build something "stylish": the Avalon SSTO (yeah I am bad at names) It has a top and bottom MK2 cargobay, for this flight I filled both with a FL-400 and FL200 each. Could probably carry heavier stuff as well. Minor clipping, most notably the MK2 Bicoupler that connects the top and lower hull, but I emptied its tanks so it should be ok. My vote goes to Reistlyn's SSTO Noctuoidea-2. That's a tiny but badass plane.

A class C asteroid is quite massive, the wiki says 42.5 ~ 190.6 tons. Just build a rocket that can haul a comparable payload and tweak the engines / dV to your needs. If you have lots of time, then nukes work well (but will need loooooong burns), otherwise use some poddles, skippers, maybe mainsails if time is short and the rock is about to crash "soon". Aerobraking is perfectly possible with an asteroid, I also have heard that a large number of chutes works fine to land them Make sure to add some docking port to your grabber, in case you need to refuel it. That helped me to move some asteroids after catching them. The hardest part of catching asteroids is the capture itself, align orbits, good timing, ... once you have it grabbed its more or less just orbital maneuvers.

*squeeee* Grats Whackjob and nice to see you show up again. Would this be the right moment to build a whackjovian valentine day contest entry?

True, but in the case of KSP I got a whole lot more of game (speaking of fun, entertainment, relaxing and in this particular case: learning) back as compared to many other released games. Regarding merch: I would love to have some Kerbal plushies, a Jeb for junior and a Val for his little sister would be awesome.

Always nice to spread the word. And I can't await SPAZ2. Rebel Galaxy also looks fun, I have a weakness for 2D spacesims (longtime Starfleet Battles boardgame player here).

If you prefer a more "hardware" solution, I might suggest you to try it with Helium. I know I had a lot of fun with it

Now it can't be unseen anymore!

Can you give me more info on this? Maybe a screenshot before and after the auto-assignment with the IBA GUI visible on both shots. The auto assignment is the part of the mod that works most reliably, I did not have issues with it so far, also not on big or complicated vessels with many mixed engine and intake types. I will need to look into this, but an example screenshot could help here as well. A hint: you will usually never need the manual intake assignment if you use the auto-assign button and watch that the numbers of intakes per type and engines match. The only case where I could think of manual assignments being useful are: air-flow optimized staged engines / intakes or air-flow optimized shut off engines. Yes that is what it's supposed to do Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant by this.

Yep, thats perfectly right. Pointy end to ... somewhere. I remember someone actually launching that way - one moooooment <quick google> - here it is: I don't need to add that it is freaking amazing, awesome and totally Kerbal.

Here's a somewhat unusual "double breadbox" super-heavy SSTO design. 330 tons on the runway, 2 full orange tanks as cargo... and 2 boxes... Takeoff went fine with a bit help from the mainsails. Ascent went fine to 10km, from there the vernors had to help to keep it pointed up. Made up to 1600 m/s before I had to switch to rockets. 600 m/s dV in orbit - and horrible amounts of oxidizer left. Unloading the cargo was bad as I released both at once and I had no vernors for reverse-thrust. A bit rotating, shifting around finally did the job. Reentry was fine until ~10km, then the double breadbox decided to turn around. See pics for the most awesome landing I ever did in KSP

Ok, maybe not the most imaginative cargo, but probably very similar to what many others pack in there... all what you need for biome-hopping to gather all the science. It's a side view on this SSTO - I liked the twinhull-sideways-cargobay design.

Intake Build Aid 0.5 is now released, I just uploaded it to Kerbalstuff. In case you had 0.4, just overwrite all files. Changes: 0.5 (2015.02.12) ---------------- * Added toolbar button to toggle the GUI * GUI with a button that does the same as pressing F7 -> autobalance engines and intakes * GUI lists all engines with their total assigned intake area and the specific intakes which feed them * Removed shabby onscreen message after autobalance of engines and intakes * Modded engines that are engines and intakes in one are now supported - as long as they use the stock IntakeAir resource - for example KAX D-25 Radial Engines or Karbonite KLF-150R Radial Jet Engines * Lots of code cleanup A few words to the release: There is a known issue that causes the part coloring to stay until you restart KSP. It happens when a part is highlighted via shader and when you remove that part. I could reproduce it but couldn't fix it yet. Mod support: so far only stock resource using stuff is supported. Combined intake/engine parts work now, as long as they use stock resources. For example Karbonite IntakeAtm will not work for now (as in: will be ignored by the mod). But this will be supported "soon". I am trying to get some more mod support in, but in some cases (interstellar) its complicated to do so without a dependency to the mod. Enjoy, build some cool stuff with it. Let me know if there are issues with IBA. I'll upload some more pics to show in a bit.

Thanks for the quick reply. I already removed those checks, thanks for pointing that out (the first two queries didnt have them anymore, missed the last one). My problem is: what if the other mods do not use the ModuleReourceIntake or ModuleEngine types? From an interstellar intake's config: MODULE { name = AtmosphericIntake area = 0.04 } RESOURCE { name = IntakeAtm amount = 1 maxAmount = 1 } AtmosphericIntake is a custom resource type or am I wrong with it?

I have a question regarding best practice on making a mod support other mods without including 3rd party DLLs - which I do not want to do because of common sense and I can not do due to licensing. The following code is a method that helps me determine if a part is an intake, an airbreatherengine or both in case of modded engines. PartType is an enum that helps me processing all this. How could I make this support for example Karbonite or Interstellar? Folks have asked for it in the Intake Build Aid dev thread and I would like to support it if possible. My idea was to create resource-sets, one for the stock stuff and one for each modded resources and handle them independently. I'm stuck on how to implement this without the dependencies to the types. A search for these in the KSP directory would be possible, but then I would need to adjust the mod for each dependency changes. It would be better to be able to handle this in a generic way maybe via reflections. private PartType GetPartType( Part part ) { // find engines by ModuleEngines and ModuleEnginesFX module with intakeair propellant // this is for modded engines that are both intakes and engines in one part if ( ( ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleEnginesFX>().Any( x => x.propellants.Any( y => y.name == "IntakeAir" ) ) ) || ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleEngines>().Any( x => x.propellants.Any( y => y.name == "IntakeAir" ) ) ) ) && ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleResourceIntake>() != null && part.Modules.OfType<ModuleResourceIntake>().Any( x => x.resourceName == "IntakeAir" ) ) ) { return PartType.IntakeAndEngine; } // find engines by ModuleEngines and ModuleEnginesFX module with intakeair propellant else if ( ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleEnginesFX>().Any( x => x.propellants.Any( y => y.name == "IntakeAir" ) ) ) || ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleEngines>().Any( x => x.propellants.Any( y => y.name == "IntakeAir" ) ) ) ) { return PartType.AirBreatherEngine; } // find intakes by resource intakeair else if ( part.Modules.OfType<ModuleResourceIntake>() != null && part.Modules.OfType<ModuleResourceIntake>().Count() > 0 && part.Modules.OfType<ModuleResourceIntake>().Any( x => x.resourceName == "IntakeAir" ) ) { return PartType.Intake; } else { return PartType.SomethingElse; } } So in the end I would need to get the correct ModuleEngine and ModuleResourceIntake types and the resource names from the mods. From what I've seen with a quick look at Karbonite, it uses ModuleResourceIntake with resource name "IntakeAtm". So, how to get all this under the hood? Cheers, Fjord

It's been ages since I did a mission report, so time to change that. Parts and souposphere are all stock. Here's a nice small-sized longrange science SSTO. ~30 tons fully loaded, carries 2 cargobays full of SCIENCE. Enough whoomps to goto orbit with only a little help from rocket engines. 2.9k dV once in orbit, so plenty to do some biome hopping on Minmus or Mun. And all that with a stylish look that was totally not inspired by Romulan Warbirds. It demonstrates nicely that it isnt about the number of intakes per engine what matters but the equal intake distribution. 2 radial intakes per jet. (sorry that I forgot to take a screenie with some readouts while in orbit, I was too busy on EVA that I only noticed later, you have to take my word on that)

That backside cargobay and the buggy are absolutely brilliant! Great design. +rep

Thanks for the bugreport, I think I had that issue once but I have no idea how to reproduce it. Must be something with applying/removing the shaders to/from the parts. I have some more info on where this mod is going over here in the dev thread.

Intakes usually provide air up to roughly 35km, so as long as jets are running, keep them open. Between those 35km up to space, they would just create unnecessary drag if left open. That saves you a bit fuel. And I've also never thought about start intakes closed and open them when I really need them - which might be a good idea to save a bit more fuel in lower atmosphere. Could be useful for monstrous SSTOs with lots of intakes.

Here's a little sneak-peak of the current state: Toggle-able GUI from the toolbar (with a totally pro icon) that displays engines and their assigned intake. Stearwing before auto-assignment and selected left engine: Stearwing after auto-assignment and selected left engine:

Ah, some memories you have dug up there From time to time its nice to look at all the old stuff we've built and crashed. The "new" recover features kinda replaces what this challenge was about and the scoring system wasn't optimal (I don't think it needed one, a simple "yay I did it" was more than enough satisfaction). Regardless this was one of the most interesting challenges I've done so far, definitely the one where I learned the most. It would be interesting to set up a new heavy SSTO challenge with stock/NEAR/FAR - vertical/horizontal takeoff&landing categories.

Just a small update: I will do another update of the mod, regardless if it becomes obsolete or not with 1.0. It gets a toolbar icon in the editor that toggles a small GUI. It shows the current engine-intake groupings with the numbers for intake-area, so you can quickly see which engine gets how much air and if they are evenly distributed. A button on the top will do the same as the current "F7" - fix my intakes - Key. It will also support modded engines that are intakes and engines in one part (using stock resources). This already works so far, I can post a pic later tonight. I just need to figure out some stuff - like why the hell my toolbar button is white (despite of having an icon in theory), how to prevent click through of the GUI and quirks like that, maybe add some formatting and colors to the text so it does not look so dull. Or a warning if the assignment cannot distribute the air equally to all engines. Another cool thing would be to mouse-over a part in the list of engines/intakes and let the editor highlight the selected part. Eventually I will add an extendable definition of intake resources and engines propellants in the config file and treat them as "resource sets". This way one could easily provide the same functionality for: - stock intake air and liquidfuel - stock xenon and batt energy - karbonite intakeair and fuel - ...or whatever people come up with... engines that need air+LF+OX or any combinations of resources Is anyone using the manual intake assignment at all (the F8 thing)? I "could" try to add buttons to move the intake to the previous/next engine. I personally just use F7. Opinions?

Fuel flow rules have been researched extensively here. Its no easy topic though. However, what you can do to fix it easily, just pump around some fuel from the back to the front of your plane. You can do this in flight. That should help to stabilize it again and you won't need to rebuild or to change it. Google tossed me this that explains how to do that.