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Is braking ground coming to console

[Edit: For the updated stand-alone version of this tutorial, go here] So I started off getting my video recording & editing software back so I could make an animated GIF for reddit to showcase my robotics powered rover deployment system. But of course I ended up remembered how much fun doing videos can be, and wanted to share the method I found that took my programming time from 3+ hours to less than 1, so the 6+ hours I'd spent programming the arm & doing a comedy showcase GIF ended up spiraling into another 8+ hour editing session. I think it's my most polished video thus far; spent sooo much time working on the timing and ironically half way through editing I realised that if I used THE SAME METHOD that worked so well for the robotics programming I'd be done already. It was nice though, got the last bit done far faster ^^ Well, enjoy, I hope it is useful!

Level: Intermediate/Advanced Craft used to illustrate this tutorial: BAK-52NS Version history: 1.2 - Updated with a note on 1.7.3 built-in rotor and propeller blades 1.1 - Updated with better rotors, thanks to a tip from @Hotel26 1.0 - Original version About this tutorial This tutorial is a basic primer on stock helicopters made with parts from the Breaking Ground DLC. It does not discuss pre-Breaking Ground stock rotary motors, nor helicopters made with mod parts. I have limited experience with both and it would expand the scope of the tutorial rather too much. I also do not claim to being the inventor of any of the construction techniques or principles discussed here; a quite a bit I have discovered on my own, and a quite a bit I have picked up around the forums. If you feel you ought to be credited, please say so and I'll add you. What's a helicopter? A helicopter is an aircraft that flies by producing lift from one or more powered rotary wings, or rotors. If the rotor is not powered it is not a helicopter, it is an autogyro; they are also very cool but out of scope of this tutorial. And if the rotor is not used to produce lift but for some other purpose -- thrust, for example -- then it is not a helicopter either. Helicopters can have other forms of propulsion as well: real-life choppers with jet engines bolted on exist and work well. If it's necessary to make the distinction, they are known as compound helicopters. This is a helicopter. It's the BAK-52NS. This variant uses hydraulically sprung and damped landing skids instead of wheels, making precision landings easy...ish. How is it different from an airplane? Airplanes fly by producing lift from airflow around wings. They need to be moving forward to do this and stay in the air. With helicopters, the spinning rotor moves the lifting surface through the air, producing lift. This allows them to hover. However, the big rotating propeller on top of the craft produces a whole set of complications, many of which are shared by kerbal helicopters and human ones; others however are specific to one or the other because kerbal physics aren't quite like real-life physics, and stock kerbals lack certain highly useful bits and pieces used to make human choppers more manageable. On the other hand, kerbals have some amazingly powerful components to build with. Cyclic and Collective Another obvious difference between a plane and a helicopter is how they're controlled. Planes are controlled by moving control surfaces -- rudder, ailerons, elevators, and canards -- which modify the lift produced by each lifting surface, applying forces to the plane and causing it to turn. Pull the stick back, and the control surfaces move to produce more lift near the nose and less lift near the tail, pitching the nose up; push it right, and port control surfaces move to produce more lift while starboard ones produce less, causing the plane to roll to the right. Since helicopters need to be controllable even when they're hovering, they work differently. The primary controls on a chopper are cyclic and collective. Cyclic means adjusting the pitch of the rotor blades differently depending where they are in the cycle of rotation. Imagine that your chopper sits in the middle of a clock face, nose pointing at 12 o'clock. Now, if you want to pitch up, you will want the blades to increase their pitch as they near the 12 o'clock position, and decrease their pitch as they near six o'clock, thereby producing more lift towards the front and less towards the back. You'll also want to adjust cyclic as you start going faster: if your rotor spins counterclockwise, the blades at three o'clock will have a faster airflow over them than the blades at 9 o'clock, because the airflow from your forward motion will get added to the airflow produced by the rotor's rotation. This means you'll want increased pitch around 9 o'clock and decreased pitch around 3 o'clock, or else your craft will roll to the left. This makes helicopters rather hard to fly in real life as well as on Kerbin. What's more, kerbals have no direct control over cyclic: instead, when you adjust the pitch, yaw, or roll, the magic control surfaces try to figure out what you want them to do. This works acceptably with regular aircraft; with helicopters, not so much. So cyclic control on Kerbin is crude at best and you will need partial or total workarounds for this. ~ * ~ UPDATE: FooFighter has built a working swash plate with collective and cyclic control. If you want to make a realistic helicopter that is controlled without reaction wheels, now it's possible! https://kerbalx.com/FooFighter/Swashplate ~ * ~ Collective is a much simpler proposition: it just means the average blade pitch on the rotor. Increase collective and the rotor produces more lift, causing you to gain altitude. Increase it more and your motor will run out of torque to spin the rotor: the RPM will drop and eventually the rotor won't be able to produce any more lift. You'll leap up and then drop down again. Increase it too much, and your rotor will stall, causing you to plummet rather precipitately. And conversely, decrease collective to descend and reduce the torque needed to spin the rotor, allowing it to rotate faster. Collective gives really fine control over hover, and makes a helicopter extremely responsive in vertical motion, comparable in KSP only to a wildly overpowered rocket-powered VTOL. Thankfully, it is possible to make a really nice collective in kerbal helicopters. Perhaps surprisingly, hover on a helicopter isn't actually controlled by throttle. The motor's job is just to keep the rotor spinning; collective and cyclic do the rest. Torque effects In addition to the asymmetrical aerodynamic effects described above, rotorcraft have one more issue to contend with: torque. Spinning up a rotor and, when flying, pushing against the air to produce lift requires torque. Because Sir Isaac Newton is no fun with his laws of motion, this torque will have to get transferred somewhere in an equal but opposing manner. If you don't want your helicopter to spin in the opposite direction of the rotor, you will have to find some way to balance out the torque produced by spinning the rotor. Most real-life helicopters do this with a tail rotor: the helicopter has a pretty long tail which works like a lever arm, and at the tip of the tail is a propeller producing thrust in the opposite direction of the main rotor's torque. The pilot controls the pitch of the tail rotor using yaw controls, and will in fact be continuously adjusting it in different flight conditions (unless he has a computer to do it for him). Sadly, this does not work all that well in KSP. It is possible to make a smallish single-rotor/tail-rotor that is somewhat controllable, but it is hard, it won't be all that easy to fly, and it will very likely require a lot of reaction wheels to paper things over. That's why we're going to discuss a different type of helicopter here: one that flies with twin coaxial contra-rotating rotors. This solution neatly balances out the asymmetrical torque and aerodynamic effects, making for a stable, neutral basis for your craft. By all means attempt to make a conventional main rotor/tail rotor helicopter. Just expect it to be quite hard! This has real-life counterparts as well, notably the Soviet/Russian Kamov Ka-50 and its relatives, and the solution is used there for the same reason it works for kerbals. It makes the craft stabler and easier to fly. By Dmitriy Pichugin - http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia---Air/Kamov-Ka-50/0920728/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5896037 The coaxial contra-rotating twin rotor powertrain The simplest kerbal rotorcraft powertrain uses a similar solution as in the Ka-50. Kerbals have the advantage of having incredibly powerful, yet compact electric motors that can be placed anywhere, so that's what we're going to do. The powertrain only consists of two parts: at the top a motor (the standard or heavy electric rotor work well for most craft), and below it, a flat servo with its motor disengaged (with no motor at all). The rotor blades attach to the motor above, and the freewheeling servo (or the bottom half of the motor) below. When you spin up the motor, the torque will be evenly split between the two rotors, which will start spinning in opposite directions. Note: this isn't the only way to make a contra-rotating powertrain; you can also use two electric motors surface-mounted to a base, then gizmoed into being coaxial; in this case, each motor will be spinning its own rotor. It has twice the power. For most purposes, the single-motor/freewheel solution is sufficient, however, and has the advantage of being simpler and stabler. Collective Since KSP 1.7.3, Breaking Ground includes propeller and rotor blades as parts. Clip them onto a motor, deploy them, and bind their authority limit to an axis group to control collective (e.g. up/down). Note that they come in clockwise and counterclockwise variants: if building a contra-rotating powertrain, be sure to use mirrored variants for each rotor so that the marking decals point the same way on each, and set the deploy direction on each of them so that adjusting collective up increases pitch on both of them. When building your own rotors (see below), mount an elevon on a servo as pictured above, limit the servo's angle to some relatively sane values, and bind it to an axis group as above. Rotor design The built-in rotor and propeller blades differ greatly in performance from ones made from elevons. They are much more powerful in the lower atmosphere, producing a great deal more thrust/lift. However, their performance drops off much more abruptly and their service ceiling is much lower. A craft powered with a rotor made from elevons can reach 20 km on Kerbin and operate easily on Duna. Therefore, for such special off-world uses, hand-built rotors still have a niche. With rotors, light weight is everything, so use the lightest components available for the job. Your rotor blades should be control surfaces -- FAT-455 for bigger rotors, elevons of various sizes for smaller ones. Here's the best way I know to make a rotor: Place servos onto the motor or the freewheel in radial symmetry. Small ones work most of the time; for very big rotors you might want to use larger sizes. Attach a control surface to the servo and rotate it to the correct orientation. Hold down the shift key and offset it outwards to your desired radius. Set the angle restrictions on the servo. Values of about 12 to about 35 degrees depending on rotor size work for me. If making a bigger rotor, add a second control surface and repeat step 3 for it. Optional: add a strut connector from the servo to the nearest control surface. It won't do anything much but it will make it look better. Copy the entire blade assembly onto your other power element and turn it upside down. Assign servo angle on both sets of servos to up/down, reversing one of them. Important: Disable yaw control on all the control surfaces on your rotor, leaving pitch and roll enabled. Powering it Rotorcraft require electricity to run the powertrain (and also operate collective). Small craft like the BAK-52NS "Kranefly" above could actually run just on a pair of the larger solar panels, or you could bring enough batteries to give you the endurance you want, but the all-around easiest solution is to use fuel cells as above: the golden tank contains enough fuel to fly the Kranefly for probably longer than you have patience, and it only needs a few cells to run. For the heavy rotors you pretty much have to use fuel cells; a pair of large fuel cell arrays is sufficient to power a single heavy electric motor. Controlling it You can set up whatever control scheme you like of course, but I have found the following to work for most things: Action group 1 Toggle fuel cells and engage motor(s) Main throttle[1] Adjust engine torque (you'll want this at maximum most of the time) Up/Down axis Adjust collective (K increases pitch, I decreases pitch -- this places them at the same positions on your right hand as pitch on your left) [1] Since 1.7.2, F/B in 1.7.0-1.7.1 Additionally, brake will apply brake on the motor driving the rotor. Because you have a freewheel between the rotors and the craft's body, this means you can stop the rotor very quickly by disengaging the motor (action group 1) and hitting the brakes -- both rotors will stop with the torque canceled out between them. The magic of reaction wheels Kerbals may not have cyclic but by the Kraken's tentacles they have reaction wheels. You can paper over minor misbehaviours in the craft by adding some reaction wheels... sometimes quite a lot really. Don't feel bad, it's a kerbal solution. Tuning it The powertrain described above is fairly docile and you can stick it on top of the centre of mass of pretty much any craft light enough for it to lift, and it will fly and hover. Getting it to fly well is a different kettle of fish altogether. If there is a science to tuning kerbal rotorcraft I haven't discovered it -- all of my tuning has been through trial and error. I suspect the unpredictability is due to the way KSP translates control inputs into control surface positions on the rotor, which is a bit on the flaky side: Change the number of rotor blades. I've had good results with rotors from 2 to 6 blades. More blades require more power but run smoother. Adjust blade length. Larger rotors are more efficient but less stable unless you feed them with more power. Move rotor forward/aft. Moving it forward and back changes the craft's tendency to pitch forward or back as you increase/decrease collective; it also changes its sensitivity to roll and yaw controls although I have no idea exactly why and how. Even tiny adjustments can make massive differences; less than a "click" of snap-to motion can completely change the handling characteristics of a chopper. I suspect this is due to the way the rotor blades respond to your control inputs. Move rotor up/down. Up tends to make the chopper more stable but less responsive to control inputs, down does the opposite. It's quite possible to make a really numb chopper that only goes up and down and barely even responds to pitch, roll, or yaw controls! Tilt rotor forward. It does something so it's worth a try. Adjust control authority. Less authority means less judder but less control; more does the opposite (and might cause blade stalls which is no fun at all). Adjust the craft's centre of mass. Generally speaking you will want a high centre of mass, close to the rotor: this is why the fuel tank is right below the powertrain in the BAK-52 above. Add or remove reaction wheels. Tip: Tune with SAS off. You might find that your chopper flies rather pleasantly without it in fact! Flying it To fly a helicopter, spin up the rotors with collective at zero, engines at maximum torque. Then increase collective until it takes off. Pitch to accelerate, slow down, or fly backwards; roll to fly sideways, yaw to spin around. When you're moving forward at a decent pace airplane-like aerodynamics start to enter the picture which is fun and different. Developing it further The basic Ka-50 style craft plan is just one possibility among many. Once you've got the power train figured out, you can make bigger ones and smaller ones, choppers powered by more than one set of rotors in a variety of configurations, tilt rotors with heavy servos making for an Osprey-style VTOL craft, and so on. You can stick on a jet or two just below the rotor assembly to make it go faster -- making fast choppers is a completely different and much harder challenge than making fast planes, since the limiting factor is stability rather than thrust to weight ratio; you will need to design rather different rotors for choppers that go very fast. You can also attempt different solutions altogether, like with non-coaxial contra-rotating rotors, or even attempting a main rotor/tail rotor style craft. There's a lot of room for tuning in rotor design as well, and if you feel the stock electrics don't quite produce the oomph you want, research turboprops and start breaking records (ht: @Azimech). You might have to get creative to find a practical use for helicopters in career missions but they are a lot of fun to build and, eventually, to fly. There are at least two helipads on the KSC just begging to be used, so go out and use them!

Hey guys.A few hours ago, I successfully purchase DLC: making history at the KSP homepage.But, some reason, I cannot download DLC.It doesn't appear at the accounts/your orders tab.Where can I find downloads DLC?

Intro: So hear me out. The best way to get people back in the game is to make something new. Although I'm loving that they are making mods like infernal robotics a supported function of the game, it doesn't change the fact that a lot of us have been using those features for years. Same with the deployable experiments. everything added since the late stages of early access have been mods with the exception of their first dlc (which felt more like a groundwork than an actual feature in my book). With that said, there is one area of the content market that hasn't been touched, career mode and science mode. Besides for the rearrangement of the tec tree and the addition of a few new missions here and there, not much has changed. I've also thought the way these features have been implemented seemed a little shallow. What I want to suggest is a new overhaul for these two modes. The first part of this is looking at how it works in the real world. Science: (Continuing the comment the next day. Thought I would post it up here to avoid confusion) Problems with science: In real life, there isn't the direct correlation seen in ksp between science as we see it in the game and the advancements made in technology. The relationship in real life is 90% of the time closer to finding new problems we have to solve. This is never a problem in ksp because we are given all the information about all the star, all the planets and everything in between. what is the point of bringing a barometer to a planet where you already know everything about its atmosphere? In the real world, we had tests to see if space was a vacuum, we had to run many tests to see if we could pressurize a capsule, and we had little idea about any of the stuff we know until we sent something there to test it (Think about our recent visit of Pluto). Problems with technological advancements: The other problem with how career mode/science mode was made was almost systemic. I feel like what was implemented wasn't there original gameplan. I've come to this conclusion because of how little their parts actually fit into the tec tree idea they have implemented. The tec in the game was not designed to go into a tec tree. For the most part, the "tec level" is based on the size of a part and not actually how much knowledge was needed to build it. What I want to see is the implementation of iterative designs. My solution: Basically, you start out with a lot of junk parts. These parts look bad, don't work well, probably fail in environments outside of Kerbin sea level, and for good measure, have a base fail chance. Along with taking missions to study your solar system (of which you know nothing about), you would also take missions from your science team to help them improve your parts. unlike the test missions given off now. These missions would give you credits towards upgrading our parts. Along with these missions to give you credits. there would be general things like allowing engines to work in a vacuum, water, restart, throttle, etc. (All things we had to learn, and are still learning, in the field). This science would be collected by doing things like the barometric test and temperature tests we see in KSP today. A good way to think of this is the first capsule ou send to space should always be empty. It needs to be tested first. Without things like this, this game is missing out on some of the best parts of our job in exploring the world and beyond! Career: Problems with Career & the suggested improvements: The main problem with the career is how lightweight it really is. There is very little to it, and it's hard to actually mess up. This is fine for some, but I think a lot of us were originally hoping for a bit more. A lot of what makes career modes great is the management. You need to be able to see your expenses and take risks. Squad tried to implement this before launch with that one building no one ever clicks on but it really doesn't work that well. a career mode should revolve around time and funds managment. You should see how much it costs to maintain a team of engineers as well as how long it takes to build a rocket. An alarm clock and construction time should be implemented. You should be able to speed up the construction of a craft with part failure chance going up. you should be able to fire staff to lower your costs and hire them as needed. There should be a monthly/yearly expense report. These features would go a long way to making career mode a better mode. A few more ideas would be including things like kerbal konstructs, allowing you to spend money to build more launch pads as well as just more infrastructure. I don't like that particular mod too much because of how messy it looks but a lighter version of it could go a long way. The main point I would say is to look at a game like X-COM. It has a solid management system that would work beautifully in a game like KSP. even the kerbal upgrade sstem could be improved along the same lines.

Had a contract pop up to test an engine at the launch pad, seems to be a part in the DLC pack as it’s not present in the game I have, even in sandbox mode. anyone else had this?

Brand new downloadable content for Kerbal Space Program is on its way! Filled with new content and features, Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion will give new meaning to the Kerbal scientific endeavours. Breaking Ground is all about exploration, experimentation, and technological breakthroughs. Study the soaring plume of a cryovolcano on Vall, mysterious craters on Moho, and even more new features on all of the other moons and planets of the Solar System. Deploy experiments for the long-term study of Minmus and let them collect data while you explore further sights. Test your creativity with a new suite of robotics parts. Breaking Ground will help you and the Kerbals reach new horizons, all in the name of Science! These are the most significant features coming to Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion. Robotic Parts Brand new robotic will add a whole new level of creativity to your craft. These parts will include some new control mechanics and let you create all sorts of inventive vehicles and crazy contraptions to aid the Kerbals in exploring their Universe! Surface Features Scattered across the Kerbin System, you’ll find interesting Surface Features, like mineral formations, meteors, craters, and some even more curious planetary features. Study them and collect valuable scientific data with a brand-new Rover Arm! Deployed Science Bring equipment for experiments with you from Kerbin and deploy them on the surface of a celestial body to take measurements over time. Set up a science station and put your crew to work. From seismometers to weather stations, there are plenty experiments for you to try out! New Space Suit Kerbals are also getting a fresh new space suit to wear for their scientific endeavors! This sleek futuristic suit will make your Kerbals look flashy while they explore the canyons of Duna, the shores of Laythe, or any other exotic destination. Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion will be released on May 30th for PC for $14.99 USD. And yes, we’re keeping our promise that all players who purchased the game through April 2013 will receive the expansion for free. We’ll provide more details on how that will work before launch. Do you want to learn more about Breaking Ground? Then make sure to stay tuned for our next KSP Loading… where we’ll take a deep dive into the content and features of Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion! Happy launchings! P.S.: Click here to see the full High-Res screenshot album.

So its been out offically for 1 year. The DLC of Making History. Besides Using The DLC parts, why does almost no one use making history for making missions now? Is it not good enough, or does it have too many problems?

I had an idea and want to suggest it: a DLC similar to Making History, but instead of the past of spaceflight, the future of spaceflight. It would have parts themed after upcoming rockets in the future, and would add parts that also are in use today, such as proper landing legs for rockets.

So as someone that's not generally fond of the way the gaming industry has been going I'm a bit surprised to be saying this but, has there been any talk I've missed on another KSP expansion? KSP is one of the few games I'd consider making a exception on most of my DLC related rules for.

A couple of months ago, I made a DLC poll; this is part two for more clarification.

This is a poll for your opinion on the new DLC

I've heard there are some of cool new parts, and there is the really cool mission maker (which i am extremely interested in). But is it worth $14.99? I have $20 in steam money and was wondering if this at all would be worth it. Heck, is it even good? Would it even be worth picking it up at a steam sale?

Hello, the separating of the FLC-1000 fuel tank from making history. For those of you who don't know, the fuel tank looks like the Soyuz Side booster. When I separate the tank (any decoupler, 0% force) it spins a little. to confirm this, I set up just a random craft with 1 attached with a decoupler with it's force to 0% and cheated it into orbit. I separated them and sure enough, it spins. I found out why. The COM for it is wayyyy of center. Is there any way to fix this? Let me know if there is.

I've been playing ksp for about half a year now (and i am still horrible at the game) and i am thinking of getting the Making History DLC, mainly to replicate the Saturn V rocket as it has a special place in my heart) but. is it really worth it? All though its only 15$ , i don't want to buy something that isn't that useful.

Yesterday, I did find the time to eventually try out the new parts that came with the DLC and I must say that really like the new soyuz russian style pods. Best thing is that there's now a 2 crew pod available (through DLC). So I am curious - do you use the new DLC parts along with stock in your latest creations or do you go for stock-only parts, even with DLC installed?

Hi, here is my KSP Mission builder tutorial series for KSP Making History expansion. Here I will be covering how to create missions, how to edit mission parameters, test etc Episode 01 - Simple Rescue Mission (Basics) Episode 02 - Pre-made Craft & Part Failures Episode 03 - Adding Flavor with Catch All Nodes Reserved for future use

I post this in case anyone else ran into this problem and have been pulling out their hair over it. If you ever make the mistake of trying to remove a node by dragging it off the edge of the screen back to the left panel (because your instincts have been trained to do this by the VAB editor's way to remove a part), if you aren't careful it can hide the node very far off-screen where you think it's been deleted but it hasn't. It's still present and affecting your mission graph but not being drawn where you can see it. I did this ages ago to remove a node, but it was still there. So I had a hidden "always true, catch-all" node painted at coordinate(-5994.02539, 202.246094). That's several screenfulls of width past the left of the screen. No matter how far out I zoom, or how I pan the view, it never allows me to pan far enough to the left to see it, so I was ignorant of its existence. Since it was the reason the rest of my mission didn't work, being unaware that it exists made it impossible to diagnose anything. I finally got suspicious when the mission status during runtime kept saying I was on the node called "Always True", when I no longer had any nodes called "Always True", having given all my nodes more descriptive names, not the default names. Then I saw where it said I had 32 nodes in the mission loading screen, and I counted carefully, and every count I did by hand showed only 31 nodes, not 32. Finally I looked at the actual text file "persistent.mission" and only by doing that was I finally able to see the extra node that wasn't drawing in the editor.

( EDIT: I reported this as a Bug before, but it turns out it's just a very unintuitively weird choice for the defaults in the Spawn Vessel details. I just found a checkbox in the Spawn Vessel details for "Focus on Vessel". It turns out that turning this checkbox on gets rid of this "bug", but why on earth isn't it the default to make building and spawning a vessel from the VAB behave just like it does in the game? Why go out of the way to find the option and change it in order to achieve the default behavior that matches how the rest of the game works? Shouldn't switching to the vessel after building it be the normal way? The default way? Note, it was so weird, I thought it was a bug, which is why I posted the text below originally.) --------- Original Post Message follows Below this line ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bug: A spawn Vessel node has the player click on the VAB and build their own vessel, but then when they launch it, the game doesn't switch focus to the vessel they just spawned like the game is supposed to. Instead it leaves their spawned vessel sitting on the launchpad while it focuses on some other vessel in orbit that has nothing to do with what they just did. To Cause it: Your mission has to populate the solar system with at least one pre-made vessel before the player builds their vessel in the VAB. Then the game will always focus on that pre-made vessel instead of what the player launches. To help the developers diagnose the problem I reduced it down to the minimum example that demonstrates it. I can reproduce this bug with a very small mission, that only has these 4 nodes with no branching, like this: Start Node (does nothing, no details or docked nodes) ---. | .----------------------------------------------------' | `--> Spawn Vessel Node, a mission-built premade vessel in orbit of Kerbin. ---. | .-----------------------------------------------------------------------' | `--> Spawn Vessel Node, A player-built vessel they make in the VAB. --. | .---------------------------------------------------------------' | `--> Always True Node, just a dummy placeholder for where the rest of the mission will be later. Note, I get the exact same bug if I "dock" those two Spawn Vessel Nodes into the Start Node. The problem seems to be that when you leave the VAB and launch the vessel, it focuses on the first vessel defined in the mission, even when that's not the one the player just launched. When the mission first starts and the player has not built their vessel yet, it makes sense to focus on the pre-made vessel in orbit. That doesn't feel like a bug at all. It makes sense because it has to put the player *somewhere*. The bug is that it keeps doing this every time you launch from the VAB, even if it's no longer the start of the mission anymore.

When testing a run through a mission in the mission editor, it would be really helpful to be able to see which state of the state machine it is currently sitting in. I think that would help me debug a lot of problems. But I'm not sure how to do this. Is there a feature that will show me this? It would be the state-machine equivalent of when a debugger highlights the current line of code as you step through a program. I suspect a lot of my problems are that the state machine isn't in the state I thought it would be at this point in the mission, but I don't know which state it's actually in instead of the one I expected.

I'm having a hard time with the mission editor because anything that is vessel-dependant (i.e. check if vessel is landed, but only this one specific vessel, not just any vessel) has that pull-down list of vessels to pick from but the list is wrong and acting like it's off by one. Example, the list contains these items in this order: Any Ole Sciency [a little probe with some science instruments that I spawn for the mission] Trash Collector [the player-made ship that they will be expected to build as one of the first nodes of the mission graph] Voss Talk 2 [an abandoned ship with broken engine] ComSat1 [a geosyncronous satellite] SpyLab [an abandoned science lab station] Trash Collector [YES, this one appears twice in the list like this, at the top and at the bottom] When I try to pick "Any", and save the mission, when I return to the mission it has changed the selection to "Ole Sciency". When I try to pick "Trash Collector", and save the mission, when I return to the mission it has changed the selection to "ComSat1" instead. Also, I can use the little 3D viewer tool to pick the vessel and that looks right at first, until I save and come back, and then it's switched the vessel to another one again.

Original tutorial on my website: https://goo.gl/iKnDfp Graphic Mods: SVE forum: https://goo.gl/cn1JwC SVE download link: https://goo.gl/Qpd3Bi SVE Textures: https://goo.gl/hJkXEx EVE Download: https://goo.gl/a4NPTM Scatterer: https://goo.gl/Jb9vGg Kopernicus: https://goo.gl/3CCizu SVT (planet textures): https://goo.gl/g5CgZv SVT Comparison: https://goo.gl/6riT8W Stock Part Revamp (better part textures): https://goo.gl/JCDmZQ Stock Part Revamp comparison photos: https://goo.gl/btPr3b Real Plume: https://goo.gl/XbjjPS Smoke Screen: https://goo.gl/SiHBEU Raster Prop Monitor: https://goo.gl/omVt5V Texture Replacer: https://goo.gl/dLNu4V Skybox (download from dropbox): https://goo.gl/dzGmaE Other skybox (not used in video): https://goo.gl/hMRjZY Galileo's Sun Flares: https://goo.gl/fu9eV5 Installation: First of all you have to open up KSP installation directory. To do it open up steam, right click to kerbal space program, properties, local file and browse local files. I highly recommending you to make clean ksp installation just for this purpose. And all downloaded mods you will be putting into GameData folder. (Default KSP location is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData) So let’s start by downloading first mod called scatterer which will add some awesome looking fog, reflection of water with waves and much more. So if you have it downloaded you will now need something which can work with archives, for example WinRAR or 7-Zip. So open up that downloaded scatter file and copy inside of a folder gamedata into KSP gamedata directory. Scatterer: https://goo.gl/Jb9vGg Next up will be mod SVE or Stock Visual Enhancements. So download the base mod also with textures. From SVE textures you can choose between high, medium and low resolution textures but I will use high resolution. SVE forum: https://goo.gl/cn1JwC SVE download link: https://goo.gl/Qpd3Bi SVE Textures: https://goo.gl/hJkXEx Then you will also need to download EVE or Environmental Visual Enhancements but do not download configs. There are config files already in scatterer so if you will download and use both you will end up with overlaying textures and very bad performance. But if you will don’t have any clouds after I will show you all these steps you can try downloading EVE with configs. It may fix the clouds in some cases. EVE Download: https://goo.gl/a4NPTM So let’s install these mods. First one will be EVE, again open it up and extract its content inside the KSP gamedata directory. Do the same thing for SVE and SVE textures. Next mod will be Texture Replacer which was surprisingly updated and we will be using it for changing the skybox. So download it from GitHub then open it up and extract it into KSP gamedata directory. Texture Replacer: https://goo.gl/dLNu4V For that better skybox I will be using Rareden’s real 8k skybox. You can download it from dropbox also link will be in the video description. If you want to use different skybox you can but you need .jpg or .png file types. From what I know texture replacer will not work with for example, .dds files. There is also another skybox mod available but as I said it was not working for me, but you can give it a shot. To install it copy all photos inside the texture replacer/default folder. Skybox (download from dropbox): https://goo.gl/dzGmaE Other skybox (not used in video): https://goo.gl/hMRjZY Next up we have Galileo’s Sun Flares which will make the Sun or in KSP Kerbol looks much better and you will also have that nice realistic lens flare effect. To download it you can choose from a lot of different colors. And then just extract it into gamedata directory as every other mod. Galileo's Sun Flares: https://goo.gl/fu9eV5 Now let’s install mod Kopernicus which is for modifying planet textures and other stuff. Again download it and then extract everything to gamedata directory. Kopernicus: https://goo.gl/3CCizu To install better planet or terrain textures download SVT or Stock Visual Terrain and extract it inside the gamedata folder. SVT (planet textures): https://goo.gl/g5CgZv SVT Comparison: https://goo.gl/6riT8W Now if you want some realistic engine effects, you can install mod Real Plume along with Smoke Screen. But the new KSP 1.4 with updated unity particles is already very good. So it is optional if you want to use it. But to install it download the latest real plume and smoke screen. And extract everything from Smoke Screen to gamedata directory but from Real Plume extract only Real Plume and Real Plume-Stock, do not extract smoke creen from real plume because it is outdated. Real Plume: https://goo.gl/XbjjPS Smoke Screen: https://goo.gl/SiHBEU Another mod called Raster Prop Monitor will make cockpits look much better and it will add functional displays. Installation is again the same. Extract JSI folder to gamedata directory. Raster Prop Monitor: https://goo.gl/omVt5V To improve stock part textures, you can use this quite old mod called Stock part revamp and surprisingly version for ksp 1.2 it is working totally fine even on 1.4.1. So download it and now pay attention because from my old videos I know that this mod was causing a lot of problems because it was not installed properly. So when you will download it inside stock revamp master folder is folder gamedata, ignore all other files and folders only one important is gamedata which you need to copy into KSP installation gamedata folder. And now you should be done with the installation. Stock Part Revamp (better part textures): https://goo.gl/JCDmZQ Stock Part Revamp comparison photos: https://goo.gl/btPr3b Now I like to launch KSP from launcher only for the first time to set graphic preset to maximum and then you must use 64bit ksp launcher called KSP x64 located in the installation folder or you can just use steam and select 64bit version during the launch. If you will don’t use 64-bit version game will be probably crashing or it will don’t work at all. If you did everything correctly now you should have awesome looking kerbal space program. I want to mention that all new parts even from DLC are working totally fine so you can still change the color. Your Gamedata folder should look like this:

Having spent days now trying to get golds on the newly added missions, I am frustrated. I understand the mission logic, but obviously not the actual calculations. I dissect the mission initially in the builder, going through the nodes and taking note of the score additions and modifications and what I need to get those, and also what to avoid. I some cases I feel I have a 'perfect' run, however, when the finally tally comes it seems to make no sense compared to what it should. The final scoring needs to be MUCH CLEARER, especially with missed objectives that you thought you achieved. Can someone please tell me how to get the official answer? Because emailing support goes does no good. I wanted to start creating my own missions to finally recreate some of the classic challenges of the forums, but I am extremely discouraged.

There are 3 ways I can think of that a vessel becomes gone: 1 - Destroyed. 2 - Splashed or Landed and then recovered. 3 - Merged into another craft via docking. I can't figure out, after several hours of trying, how to form test that can detect if a vessel is gone and *not care* which reason there is that it's gone. Alternatively, if I could test a simple dumb count of how many vessels exist, period, that would give me what I need too. What I'm trying to do is make a mission that does "space junk clearing". It will spawn a few vessels in orbit for the player to try to recover, then later end the mission only after there's no vessels left in orbit. I don't care about the order they get taken care of. The mission score is based on whether you've made profit on the recovery costs that exceeds the money you spent building rockets. I figured out how to score based on recovery cost/profit - I just can't figure out how on earth to trigger the end of the mission by detecting that all vessels aren't in orbit anymore, since there's so many different ways for a vessel to stop existing and I can't quite work out how to cover all of them. The ugly problem is that if the player docks with the satellite and then brings it down to a soft landing, it's no longer *that* vessel anymore - it has become part of the recovery vessel, so any triggers based on *that* vessel being landed aren't going to be true.

I figured out how to make things that happen automatically at the start in parallel to the Start Node. You find one of the nodes that allows you to checkbox "Catch All Node" (why don't they all? dunno) and then chain the other things you want to have happen off of that. Doing this I am able to set the player's starting funds for the mission. Except, that's not how to set the player's *actual* starting funds, because none of that runs until after the player designs the first vessel and launches it from the VAB. Only after the player uses the launch button does the mission truly "start" and the Catch All Node fires off. Since my goal is to make their initial vessel dip into those starting funds, I want to set the player starting funds *before* they click "launch" from the VAB. How do I do that? I can limit the vessel's allowed cost, but I cannot seem to change the fact that you always start with exactly 100,000 funds in every mission.