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Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey-CHAPTER 21 pg 18--He's a docking wizard! (there had to be a twist?)


Mister Dilsby

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5 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

It occurs to me that you can duplicate the mk3 cargo bay configs and then scale up the model. You wouldn't need custom meshes that way. Under the MODEL node just add "scale = 5, 5, 5" without the quotes. You'd get a bay that is 18.75m in diameter.

Appreciate the tip. Very tempting! I really just need to tweak it in the transverse direction, to get the wings in... hm...

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

And i bet my monies on Kerbals - in our worlds history, Proud Warrior Races tended to lose (badly) to much more diverse societies of merchants, builders, scientists and lazy, complaining masses of bread eaters.

Quite so. Of course, those "bread eaters" often won by force of arms--the citizen phalanx defeating the garishly-painted tribesmen longing for single combat. We'll have to see whether Kerbfleet can even go in that direction.

7 minutes ago, RocketSquid said:

I sense a great disturbance in the force... Almost as if Kuzzter will use TweakScale.

Most likely not. I really like the challenge of trying to do this with stock parts. The one part I'm thinking of modding is... well, i want to disable one of its features so it works better in the off-label role I intend to use it in. Cryptic enough? All will be revealed when I get around to posting the next section :)

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11 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Right on. Aggression does not necessarily imply courage, nor vice versa. In fact, quite often the two are mutually exclusive. Hooray for our 'lovable fools'! :D

I dunno about the mutually exclusive part there.  L'empereur Napoléon était à la fois agressif et courageux, n'est-ce pas?

I smell parallel universes coming.

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2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I dunno about the mutually exclusive part there.  L'empereur Napoléon était à la fois agressif et courageux, n'est-ce pas?

Yes, he certainly was both--but surely certainly you've known cowards who bullied the weak, and folks who were brave enough NOT to fight. I suppose 'often contrarily paired' might have been a better choice than 'often mutually exclusive'. 

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6 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Yes, he certainly was both--but surely certainly you've known cowards who bullied the weak, and folks who were brave enough NOT to fight. I suppose 'often contrarily paired' might have been a better choice than 'often mutually exclusive'. 

Sure, I've met both types but I have a different perspective based on my various vocations.  In today's society, the vast majority are not called upon to be brave very often or even at all.  Thus, you have cowardly bullies and quiet heroes, although usually not many of either.  However, I've spent the last 3 decades and change amongst those for whom a certain level of bravery is a daily job requirement.  Such vocations attract a different mentality (not necessarily better, but certainly different) than that suited to more sheltered living.  In my world, aggression and bravery are 2 parts of the same whole and it's hard to live very long without both in good measure.  In such jobs, victory (which usually equates with survival) comes from being aggressive enough to seize the initiative, to impose your will on the situation, and thus guide it to the desired conclusion.  This requires being brave enough to take the chances that are often necessary to implement this aggression, over and above the routine background level of bravery required to just be there to start with.  This is where expressions like "Do something, even if it's wrong", "the best defense is a good offense", and "he who hesitates is lost" all come from.

So, in your professional militaries and paramilitary things like cops and firefighters, you tend to have a large percentage of people who are both brave and aggressive, and because of this have high initiative.  They will size up the situation, figure out how to win, and then go for the jugular with everything they've got.  Hopefully they're also smart enough to know which chances are worth taking, which comes from good training and experience.  But the bottom line is, such an organization will usually bulldoze other groups who don't have the same mentality.  It's a case of wolves amongst sheep.  But it's all mental outlook.  It's not having a cult or code, it's not even individual prowess.  It's just seeing what needs to be done and doing it.

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Kerbfleet has a second advantage. Creative thinking, brave pilots who are used to adjusting to things on the fly. 

They may get caught with their suits down on the first interaction (bye bye some B-teamers), but once they understand the threat, they'll be able to think their way out of it. 

There may also be a Kermulan who has some sort of connection to them that neither understands, that defects over to their side and gives them a load of useful information. 

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28 minutes ago, Deutherius said:

KSS Framerate? So when the Kermulans inevitably show up with their flotila in the physics distance, Framerate is going to go... down? :D

Well, that'll be an interesting day.
 

1 hour ago, Torgo said:

Kerbfleet has a second advantage. Creative thinking, brave pilots who are used to adjusting to things on the fly. 

They may get caught with their suits down on the first interaction (bye bye some B-teamers), but once they understand the threat, they'll be able to think their way out of it. 

There may also be a Kermulan who has some sort of connection to them that neither understands, that defects over to their side and gives them a load of useful information.

Our heroes have certainly proved that they can think their way out of all sorts of difficulties.

btw - They are called Kerbulans.  Their last name is Kermulan.

Happy Concerned landings!

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5 hours ago, Torgo said:

Kerbfleet has a second advantage. Creative thinking, brave pilots who are used to adjusting to things on the fly. 

They may get caught with their suits down on the first interaction (bye bye some B-teamers), but once they understand the threat, they'll be able to think their way out of it. 

I really appreciate the faith you all have in Our Heroes to think their way out of any danger, even the bloaked and murderous kind. May they never disappoint!

1 hour ago, Starhawk said:

Excellent banter! :D   Dilsby is a great character.

Very impressive ascent!  You must have been reading this thread.

Thank you! Why yes, I think i might have seen that thread before :D Honestly I don't think the ascent would have been possible without the new Vector engine. I'm seeing thrust offsets fluctuate from 1 to 6 degrees as fuel mass shifts and various aero forces come into play. Even with ridiculous thrust vectoring and four large reaction wheels in the cargo bay, I have to manually throttle the dorsal engine (the one immediately abaft the bridge) in certain phases of the flight. 

2 hours ago, Willbl3pic said:

Wait, a whitesuit outranking and orange?

Yep, Kerbfleet is like that. If you're curious to know all the details of how this works, click the Kerbfleet link in my sig for the Canon page. If it's any consolation, remember that every first officer of every obscure, off-camera ship in Starfleet outranked the entire Enterprise bridge crew, excepting Kirk and Spock of course.

36 minutes ago, Interplanetary Engineer said:

Awesome as always! Can't wait to see the other landers ... any hints? :wink:

Well, I'm working on an alternate design for Tylo, but otherwise WYSIWYG.

14 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

[snip post on courage and aggression]

I just came back from boxing so I'm going to agree with you on at least one thing--it takes some courage to be aggressive when you know you're going to get counter-punched! Worked out with a couple of younger guys, both with a bit of a reach advantage on me. Was thinking about what you said while trying to get inside on them. Didn't always work, and more than once I lost my nerve in the middle of a combination, but you'll be pleased to know this old guy still knows a couple of tricks.:)

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8 hours ago, Torgo said:

They may get caught with their suits down on the first interaction (bye bye some B-teamers), but once they understand the threat, they'll be able to think their way out of it.

Hmm... @Kuzzter, do have any Kerbal models with red spacesuits? ;)

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Ooh, the Freddy Kruger Theorem! We just learned about this in Sociology: when something is perceived as real, it becomes real in its ramifications. Also known as the self-fulfilling prophecy or the Thomas Theorem.

I wonder what would happen if the Kerbals woke up holding onto a Kerbulan?

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