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When your missions usually fails?


Nansuchao

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Looking here and there through the forum, I heard about Kerbals stranded on moons, planets or in deep space for a great variety of reasons.

Usually it happens to me (not so often) for a wrong suicide burn, that destroy part of the lander, like engines or landing legs. But never was without fuel in deep space or trying to make an orbital maneuver.

So, what's about you? When your missions usually fails and how often?

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Yesterday I made a successful manned Eve flyby mission, where the gravity of Eve slingshots me back to Kerbin.

Today, I tried to do the same thing with Duna. After tweaking around with the Duna periapsis to plan my return trajectory, I found out that Duna's gravity is too small to sling me back to the correct solar orbit that would get me back to Kerbin's nowhere-near-closest-approach position and I didn't have enough dV left to boost me to this orbit. Bill and Bob flew past Duna, then entered a solar orbit that touches the orbital height and inclination of Kerbin, but Kerbin is nowhere nearby.

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Well, few minutes after launch, you can easily revert with no great worries, few minutes before completion, if you don't use F5 it's a really sad thing.

It happened to me just with 1.02 few days ago... A perfect Mun fly-by with a lot of SCIENCE gathered. During reentry my ship burned for no apparent reason. I had not quicksaved, cause... Just a fast fly/by. What could possibly gone wrong?

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My most recent fail is an Eve lander with drills too far up, so they do not rech the ground. I have not decided yet, how to rescue it ;)

Most fails are in an easy game mode (aka. with quicksaves), as I prefer to try and repair then. In hard game modes (no quicksave, 20%-30% reward settings) about half of my fails are bugs. As long as we do not have failing parts, I see that as an alternative, so I keep them without quicksaves. Out of fuel rarely happens, as I tend to have much infrastructure.

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My missions fail in one of two places...

#1. Kerbin Orbit, when I use almost all my fuel achieving orbit and realize "this thing is not making it to Duna" and then de-orbit and try again...

#2. On the final descent, when we fail to take action at Step 1, and realize much to late... "this thing is not landing in one piece 0_0"

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This is a good idea for a thread, I'd love to see a chart of the most common points of failure in KSP. It might tell us something amusing about human nature. ;)

I'd rank my failure occurrence in this order:

1. Right at launch usually due to either a lack of struts or air intakes.

2. Landing, always easy to mess up.

3. During mid voyage course corrections, usually because I don't have as much fuel as I think.

4. Either forgetting to add solar panels or more commonly forgetting to deploy them.

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With RT, I'm likely to do at least one of the following

1. Forgot to attach launch antenna

2. Forgot to activate main antenna after the stage with launch antenna is decoupled

3. When going interplanetary, set the dish antenna to target Kerbin, and then connection lost after omni antenna goes out of range - due to being too close to Kerbin (thus cone range is only covering a small area of Kerbin, not even the whole planet, let alone your relay network)

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Before installing KER my most common failure was at 50 000m into ascent from Kerin (too low TWR in the sustainer; many a craft failed to achieve orbit but were well tested for re-entry)

Now it is landing on the target body; particularly galling is realizing the landing gear is upside down .

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Well, in the beginning Mechjeb or Ker are absolutely needed, or it's easy to not reach orbit/target.

After a while, you can make simple launches without them.

For example, I can easily build a Mun/Minmus mission without info, but surely not a Duna/Eve whatever else flight.

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So far, most common for me is "wrong ascent trajectory", since my fuel-to-orbit is rather delicately balanced. Second to that is probably "oops, I shouldn't have tried to do this one more suborbital hop" :rolleyes:

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For me, another way of fail is aerobraking. First time to Eve, was: ok, low my periapsis to 80 km, aerobrake and orbital insertion, that's the plan. I had Far and DRE installed, so... Nothing survived... Sad moment

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I usually fail at the design, it's more important when do I notice it. :P

Last time I already landed a mobile-lab on Duna when I realized that I didn't connect the main fuel-tank of the return-stage to the engines. Ahh well, at least they'll provide science while the rescue-mission arrives. Hope the drilling equipment will reach down enough, as an ISRU-refueling is included in the process. Ahh, and I hope resources are nearby, as the first mission took the wrong kind of scanning equipment.

4. Either forgetting to add solar panels or more commonly forgetting to deploy them.
Kerbals on EVA can deploy the panels when you run out of charge. That feature saved me multiple times.
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Kerbals on EVA can deploy the panels when you run out of charge. That feature saved me multiple times.

Thanks for the tip! Good to know, but it wouldn't have helped me, I always make that mistake with probes. Kerbal-rated craft I'm more careful with. :)

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I commonly have problems on ascent where I'll jettison an engine structure once its fuel is spent up, and it'll angle inwards, collide with another part, and destroy the whole craft. The first time it happened was spectacular: I jettisoned an SRB, which hit the central fuel tank. The main engine on the bottom kept going up and destroyed every other part of the craft from the bottom up.

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All the failures happen in the VAB. (By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail)

Assuming you have average piloting skills,

if:

1. you're careful with your DESIGN (know your delta V and fuel requirements)

2. you TEST your equipment extensively at the KSC (or Mun or Minus)

3. you PRACTICE the entire mission at the KSC (or Mun or Minus)

then all my missions go off without a hitch. (ok maybe one hitch)

- - - Updated - - -

Nothing is more terrifying, when you land on the Mun after few tries, open service-bay to do some experiments, but doors touch the fuel tanks and destroy your vehicle completely.

testing, Testing, TESTING!!!!

Edited by Brainlord Mesomorph
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For missions beyond Kerbin moons, using KER or MechJeb is a must to ensure proper TWR and Delta V. My recent failure was due to new game behavior; sent a probe to Eve with just enough DV to aerobrake to orbit and return. But I installed unshielded solar panels, so before hitting Eve atmosphere, I realized they don't retract. Entered atmosphere in the sun, panels got ripped off and swung around to the dark side. Didn't think to cut off the electrics because I was peed, and it died while finishing orbit on the dark side...

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I know what i'm about to say is sad......really sad....but:

I've been to Eve, Moho, Minmus, Duna, Jool, Dres and Eeloo and all other moons and returned(not in one go of course), but i never have actually landed succesefuly on the Mun.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And yeah back to mission failiures:

1. I forget air intakes

2. Don't add enough struts or boosters

3. Overestimate the amount of dV i have or i just don't pay attention to Kerbal Engineer

4. Forgetting those damn solar panels(thank god they made the PB-NUK)

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My most recent mission failures are due to spaceplanes. In two missions I have lost three 'rescued' Kerbals due to really bad re-entry into the atmosphere. In both cases I did manage to wrest control of the plane back, but by then I was over the ocean without fuel, and no way to make it to land. Splash down killed the rescuees, but the rescuers somehow survived.

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