Jool 500 Kolonization Challenge

[septemberWaves]

17 hours ago, Jetski said:

Accidentally accepted the Explore Duna contract against the rules of this challenge.

I removed that rule about only getting science from Jool because science isn't judged as part of the challenge so there's not much point in having that rule.

[Wardstone111]

Kerbalism may be good for the hard difficulty instead of remotetech and life support.

[Jetski]

OK, I've officially got the mods to start this challenge for real.  Sad story is that the wheel bugs have killed all the refueling bases I have built, so I'm just going to start the whole thing over.  It was only 16 separate ships convoying to Jool.  Sigh.  

Got a career up and running, 3 million or so funds and most of the tech tree should be enough to get me started.

Installed USI-LS, a ton of immersion mods, and I'm starting with MKS-Lite for the base construction.  Kerbal Alarm clock is not showing updated for 1.1 yet, so we'll see how complex I'm willing to get here

Edit: Interesting.  MKS-Lite looks like a good option for ground bases (allows closed loop LS if you get everything set up right), but transport to Jool system is still iffy.  New USI-LS for 1.1 uses 16.5 Supplies per Kerbal per day, so even a 3.75m supply container is barely enough to get a single Kerbal to Jool.  I may send my orange suits ahead to set up bases.

For now I just got all my commsats up into LKO (2 ships this time instead of 5, go 1.1!), and I'm playing around with the USI parts. For fun I set up a roving mining rig near the launchpad to generate extra cash by mining ExoticMinerals.  Not terribly lucrative but at least something's happening while I wait for a launch window.  Man, wheels are really glitchy in the new update.

Edited April 23, 2016 by Jetski

[septemberWaves]

12 hours ago, Jetski said:

OK, I've officially got the mods to start this challenge for real.  Sad story is that the wheel bugs have killed all the refueling bases I have built, so I'm just going to start the whole thing over.  It was only 16 separate ships convoying to Jool.  Sigh.

........

For now I just got all my commsats up into LKO (2 ships this time instead of 5, go 1.1!), and I'm playing around with the USI parts. For fun I set up a roving mining rig near the launchpad to generate extra cash by mining ExoticMinerals.

That's pretty unfortunate about the wheel bug. Still, on the bright side it'll allow you to potentially make improvements to your vehicles (including having life support already integrated into them without KIS/KAS).

Also, that's a clever way of generating funds.

CHALLENGE UPDATE

I am making a change to one of the vehicle specifications. Instead of 50 tonnes, the heavy cargo vehicles now only have to be able to transport 25 tonnes to/from the surface of Tylo or Laythe. This is because, after some reconsideration, I've concluded that for the average player, the challenge of constructing a cargo vehicle to reliably transport that much mass to/from the surface of those two moons is too great a challenge.

Edited April 23, 2016 by eloquentJane

[Jetski]

Literally hours of testing on the pad, and in orbit.  I have a ship (finally) that can get 6 Kerbals to Jool with a surplus of life support, and also made a minimal self-sustaining base setup.  I learned the MPL is a recycler, so it's supposed to reduce Supplies use in transit.  Add a greenhouse or two, and a TON of Fertilizer and Supplies and it might work.  The new USI-LS 16.2/day consumption rates are brutal.  

Even MKS Lite is a headache for putting together a base.  Just so many hidden undocumented tidbits (why does this part have 0% efficiency? Try random stuff until finding out a Kerbal needs to be on base). Unless someone else has managed it in 1.1, I think there's no unmanned way to make extra Supplies or Fertilizer. My plan had been to send out some production bases ahead so I would have a surplus in-system.  All methods of making Supplies require Mulch (made by a Kerbal), and all methods of making Fertilizer require a Kerbal present to operate the machinery (apparently).  Oh well.  I really wish there was a good place where the information on how USI-LS and MKS worked was in one place.  The wiki is a mishmash of outdated and incomplete info, and the forum(s) are hundreds of pages long (I know, I've read most of it).  

Anyway, the tentative plan is to drop mining/supply bases in ahead, then send a personnel ship (cycler with drop shuttles) with crews out to activate the bases.  Once my supply bases are up and running, I should be (very slowly) producing a surplus of life support in-system.  Hopefully I can scale it up for larger numbers.  I'll post more pics when I actually fly a mission.

[septemberWaves]

@Jetski It may take me a while because I have a lot of exams over the next couple of months, but now that the required mods are up and running I am beginning to experiment with the methods of creating renewable supplies for USI Life Support, and I will be updating the guide when I have a good idea of what works.

I'm also adding in DeepFreeze Continued now that it's been updated to help with interplanetary transports, and I'm unbanning Near Future Propulsion because, based on prices and the generally low thrust of the engines, I feel like it's balanced enough for this challenge.

[Jetski]

Flotilla is launched. 2 commsat swarm motherships, 3 logistics bases for Bop, Vall, and Pol, a utility lander, and most importantly, my first crew carrier.  Each 5 man base can land on its own power, and produce supplies, fertilizer, and isru if at least 1 kerbal is present.  Had to stagger the timing a little so crew arrives to a prebuild base, we will see if that works out. The crew carrier has 5 Kerbals for now, but if the design works I'll scale up to make a proper cycler with dropships.  First burn completed. 

By the way, after warping the 61 days to my window, I checked on my rare minerals miner and collected a cool 10.6 million funds profit from a 1.4 million mining rig. Turns out extremely large scale strip mining of Kerbin can pay off well.  Pain to put together but worth it.  Had to drive it out of physics range of the launch pad, was lagging my launches.

[Wardstone111]

Also started the challenge but I am still on very low kerbin orbit at the beginning of a career game.

Note: I am using connected living space because of CKAN, kerbalism instead of TAC, KER and RPR which are not on the list. These only make the game harder or provide information and do not add any extra parts (talk except kerbalism which adds food and oxygen containers and KER with it's information circuits. If you don't want me using any of these, I will remove them immediately.

One final note, a mod for you may want to add is Contatres which is a Tantares plugin.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Wardstone111
Just adding a note

[Luovahulluus]

Just to make sure, do i really need to make rovers that carry rovers to qualify even on the easy level? That seems kind of limiting. If I really need to transport multiple vehicles to a new location, can't I just drive them individually? Electric rovers have an unlimited range after all, if they can generate their own electicity. Or make a kOS script to make everyone follow the leader. I really like the idea of colonizing the Jool system, but this is a very specific vision of how it should be done. 

 

I also dislike repetition I need to do to set up the satellite networks etc. My game time is limited, and I'd rather do something I've never done before, instead of multiple very similar satellite launches/deployments. I'm not sure if I want to do all the categories fully, but I might give this a shot later. 

[septemberWaves]

@Luovahulluus Really the contracts I've set (such as the larger transports to carry round small vehicles as well as several crew) are things to complete in order to get points. You don't have to complete all of them to qualify but you need to at least attempt every category of the challenge. And the design specifications I provided were with various mods in mind (not that mods are absolutely required at Easy level but I wouldn't recommend doing this in stock). The larger transport vehicles in particular were initially intended as a way of having life support for very long missions as you can't usually fit enough in a small short-range vehicle. And in any case, I wanted to give some sense of realism to the colony. In reality, when people eventually go to colonize other worlds with hundreds of people, they'll need this sort of infrastructure, and much of it will be out of necessity for maintaining the colony.

I realise that this probably isn't a challenge for everyone, and some aspects can be a bit repetitive (I would encourage building different designs for bases and vehicles to keep it from being too monotonous), but really the scale is the main part of this challenge. Anyone can (with a bit of practise) land a small base and some rovers on any of the Joolian moons. It's really the scale of the operation that makes this a true challenge. It's also a challenge in design and planning: designing all of these various utilities to specification for this gargantuan colony's various needs, and planning how everything will work together to ensure functionality, safety, and above all success.

So to provide something which is probably more of a conclusive answer: no, you don't have to do absolutely everything in the challenge. And if you're not doing it to compete over the score you get, then there's no real need to fulfil every sub-quest (but really you should probably attempt most of them). You win if you make a self-sustaining colony of 500 kerbals in the Jool system in a semi-realistic fashion as intended by the layout of the challenge; at the most basic level that's all there is to it.

There is one final thing: I mentioned making different designs for bases and vehicles to keep things interesting. Well, I ideally want to encourage creativity and diversity with how people approach the challenge. It's meant to be a semi-realistic colonization program, but that certainly doesn't mean that everything has to be similar. All of the mods I've allowed are supposed to provide a good variety of options for how to approach each part of the challenge. USI is great for a lot of it (particularly the larger transport rovers), the Near Future mods are similarly good, and there could just as easily be any number of designs made out of the desire to either look good or just mess around (for example, I've thought of attempting to make an ion-levitation modular train for Pol and Bop; I have no idea how efficient or effective that'll be but I'll probably do it anyway). You don't have to complete everything that is laid out (unless you're trying to get all the points and/or complete certain CHALLENGES) but trying to do it all anyway definitely has the potential to be a lot of fun. Sure, it'll almost certainly take weeks or months to do everything, but it'll also provide the opportunity to try a lot of new things in the game, provided you have that sort of dedication and free time.

 

@Wardstone111 All of those mods are allowed. KER is a Mechjeb-style mod (and I said that similar mods to Mechjeb are allowed anyway), RPM is pretty much visual and any purely visual mods are allowed (plus I think RPM is a dependency for a couple of the spaceplane mods anyway). Connected Living Space I will add as it's a utility mod, as well as Contares since it's balanced enough for the challenge. After looking into Kerbalism a little more I've decided to add it in to the life support options (though I'm not sure about renewability with its resources).

[Jetski]

So I realized I was spamming this thread instead of posting a Mission Report

Here's the latest chapter.

 

I plan to try to intercept Jool tonight, so I'll try for another report after we see how that goes.  Badly, turns out.

First ship has arrived, read the report here, but we have encountered some setbacks.  I've lost control of the first logistics base, and things aren't looking good for the other 2, leaving me with no way to produce Supplies in-system.  Will my Kerbals survive until a proper LS-producing base arrive?  We shall see...

Edited April 26, 2016 by Jetski

[Ranows3]

Looks like fun.  Although, tbh, I haven't actually sent a mission (successfully) outside kerbin except for a mission to Duna even though the poor kerbal got abandoned after the 1.05 update dropped.

[RA3236]

8 hours ago, Jetski said:

So I realized I was spamming this thread instead of posting a Mission Report

Here's the latest chapter.

 

I plan to try to intercept Jool tonight, so I'll try for another report after we see how that goes.  Badly, turns out.

First ship has arrived, read the report here, but we have encountered some setbacks.  I've lost control of the first logistics base, and things aren't looking good for the other 2, leaving me with no way to produce Supplies in-system.  Will my Kerbals survive until a proper LS-producing base arrive?  We shall see...

Good thing I was about to unfollow?

[Luovahulluus]

@eloquentJane Thanks for the clarification. 

Edited April 26, 2016 by Luovahulluus

[problemecium]

...Now THIS is a challenge! I look forward to attempting it once I finally finish the original Jool-5 challenge xD

[Jetski]

Next chapter is up.

Deployed satellite networks around Vall, Pol, Laythe, and Jool.  I have actual points for the first time!

Current Score 11.67

[septemberWaves]

19 hours ago, parameciumkid said:

...Now THIS is a challenge! I look forward to attempting it once I finally finish the original Jool-5 challenge xD

Honestly I'm in the middle of my own Jool 5 challenge, amongst other things. I haven't done it yet largely because the last ship I designed for it (in 1.0.5) probably would've worked but it lagged so badly that it was unplayable; but also because since then I've been a bit addicted to spaceplanes now that I know how to make them. I'm attempting it again though now that I can mod the game to oblivion and make several-hundred-part ships, because I feel like it's an important achievement for me (I also want to use a spaceplane for Laythe since I can now).

Anyway though, good luck with Jool 5, and I'm looking forward to seeing your attempt at Jool 500!

[Jetski]

Next chapter is up.  Bop and Tylo commsats are all in place, and I built a proper Kolony ship!  Having fun with DeepFreeze mod and NFT, now the 100-passenger colony ship is in high Kerbin orbit waiting for more colonists to be ferried up to freeze.  Some other ships are almost to Jool as well

[RA3236]

I want to do this....

But my computer is never in GREEN physics bar without both VSR and DTL. Even then it mostly isn't.

So what I am suggesting: Make a Bad Computer mode, where only Ten kerbals have to land on each moon.

This mode is only for people with bad computers, especially like computers that do not meet minimum requirements, like mine. They need to submit their computer specs as to be allowed to complete this mode.

In advance:

Intel Core Duo T7700 @2.5GHZ. 

AMI Radeon HD 2600 @256MB

4GB memory.

8 years old.

 

[Luovahulluus]

After reading @Jetski's mission reports, I decided to give this challenge a go. I just installed 1.1 for the first time. I have previously played with mostly stock game, but now I installed almost all of the approved mods I could find on Ckan. I've never used a life support mod before, let's see how lost I will be with the USI mods…

Editor Extensions Redux has not been approved. I think it should be.

[Oafman]

OK, I like this a lot, but I have a bunch of questions and thoughts:

I can't see B9 mentioned anywhere. I'm thinking of the really big parts, which are useful for large scale missions like this. Another good mod for such stuff is Deep Space Exploration Vessels. They both include big engines which are very heavy and require a lot of power, but offer quite a bit of both thrust and efficiency. Are they good?

This challenge is demanding an awful lot of ships in flight. 8 comsats orbiting each moon is 40 ships, before even considering all the bases, rovers, transports, space stations etc etc. I've run into problems in the past (Kraken, crashes, lag) when I've had loads of ships in a given save file. I like running big missions like this but I've had to abandon quite a few because the save became unplayable . Perhaps there will be fewer problems in 1.1 with this, but I reckon it will still cause issues. Would you accept, with those 40 comsats as an example, putting them in orbit, using them to guide probes, then deleting them when the kerbals turn up and craft are manned? Just to keep the ship count down? And given how many active ships we're already going to have, the idea of redundancy to the extent of having almost twice that many ships seems unthinkable. 

Lifting 25t off Tylo is no picnic. But OK, doable. But the problem I have with it, is 'why?'. If I were to plan this whole mission, I can't think of a single good reason to have that kind of lifting capacity for Tylo. It's not like I'll be mining fuel there and putting it in orbit (that's what Vall exists for); the only thing I would ever want to launch from Tylo is kerbals. It feels like it's just there for the challenge, which maybe detracts a little from the overall concept.

I'm also unsure about deducting points based on money spent. Surely the point of this is to go as big as possible; send as many crazy ships and SSTOs and rovers and bases as you can. Rewarding thrift seems contrary to this principle. 

My problem with Keepfit is that I've always built centrifuges for long missions, but the mod doesn't recognise them. They're a huge amount of effort to build in space, and in reality would make a much greater difference than simply not cramming as many kerbals as poss into each pod, which is what that mod seems to reward. Instead of keep fit, could I apply a rule where any journey over 20 K-days requires 2 seats per kerbal, and requires centrifuge space for half of the crew at one time?

Finally, I think it's rather onerous to basically complete a full game in career mode before properly starting this challenge (this isn't something to attempt without all parts available). This whole thing will take forever as it is, without having to spend the usual period biome hopping around Minmus just to get to a position where you can start the challenge. 

 

I hope I don't sound too critical. This is a great idea, and well put together. But as someone who loves to attempt this kind of mission, and will hopefully attempt this challenge, I just wanted to share my thoughts. 

Edited April 28, 2016 by Oafman

[septemberWaves]

Potential Challenge Updates (in bold). Feedback appreciated.

@Oafman I'll take a look at the mods you mentioned. If they're balanced enough (I'm pretty sure B9 is, I know nothing about the other one currently) I'll add them in.

In order to keep the vessel count down, yes you can remove communication satellites, but keep in mind that if you're using RemoteTech you will require coverage anywhere that you're landing uncrewed vessels.

Why 25t of lifting capacity from Tylo? Well, there's a couple of reasons. The most practical one is that if you send your lifter as one of the earliest vehicles you send, you'll be able to use it as a skycrane, to transport most of your base modules and vehicles (assuming that they're not too awkwardly-shaped) down to the surface. The reason I say that that should be the capacity to lift from the surface as well is predominantly for semi-realism. Although in KSP you can get most resources on most planets and moons with a solid surface, in reality you'd likely be finding some resources in some places that are unavailable elsewhere, and would hence need to transport them between moons. There is also a practical application here in that, if you don't want to spend a long time driving around with a rover to get stuff from one Tylo base to another, or if you have cargo that's difficult to fit on the rover but can fit on the freighter, you can use it for that purpose as well.

Semi-realism is also the reason for trying to keep prices low. A colony is going to be enormously expensive, but it's still good to try to save money where you can (much like real-world space programs try to do when possible). Funds are theoretically infinite in-game but presumably the kerbals have some sort of economy (although considering the lack of any visible civilisation on Kerbin other than the KSC, hmmm...). Part of what makes this so challenging is building enormous things whilst trying to keep your endeavours profitable. Although, since you bring it up, I may separate scoring into points-based scoring and funds-based scoring rather than combining the two categories, though I'd like to get some more feedback as to whether or not I should.

I think I may remove KeepFit as a requirement for Hard mode. I wasn't fully sure about requiring it for Hard mode anyway, and now that I have some feedback and that I've looked a little more into how the mod works (I don't always have time to do this immediately but I try to find out a greater level of detail about the mods for the challenge when I do have the time), it doesn't seem like it should be an absolute necessity.

As for the career games, I did suggest having maximum returns on funds and science so that it's quicker to unlock everything. I still do like the idea of having to acquire some science data to progress though, because that'll give some purpose to all of the satellites and lander probes that get sent to the Jool system.

 

I appreciate the feedback, it helps me to improve the challenge.

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@Luovahulluus Thanks for telling me about that mod, it looks like exactly the sort of thing I want in the game. I think the current rule setup allows it anyway as it's a utility mod but I'll add it in specifically.

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@RA3236 This seems like a good idea. I'm not going to require that people submit their computer stats, because people might want to try something that's huge but not 500-kerbals-and-several-hundred-ships huge, regardless of their computer power. I think I'll split off into another thread for this smaller challenge, because I'll have to rethink achievements to make things more, well, achievable when you have less processing power or gameplay expertise. I will probably also add some unique aspects to this smaller challenge to make it into its own thing instead of just a toned-down Jool 500.

This might take me a couple of days to fully compile, but once I have done that I'll let you know (I'll also intralink it with this challenge thread and the guide thread).

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

Also, speaking of the guide thread, that should also be getting updated in the next couple of days. There's a couple of freight transport systems that I'd like to show off (once I refine the designs) as well as the explanations behind my design choices for them.

Edited April 28, 2016 by eloquentJane
Minor punctuation correction.

[septemberWaves]

Mods List Update

Just so that people know, I've now alphabetised the list of allowed mods, and provided links to the forum pages (or equivalent) for all of them.

[Jetski]

My two cents on the funds based scoring - if you are playing in Career mode funds are naturally difficult to obtain and will keep your ships and bases from being ridiculous.  Even my high-profit mining rig required quite a bit of thought, and a fair amount of in-game time to manage, much like if I were doing contracts or something.  Let the stock system handle the funds issues.  I would only base score on funds if it's a Sandbox attempt to prevent SpaceY spamming of the entire challenge in an afternoon.  If funds weren't part of the scoring, my attempt would look quite different

Edit: also, when in doubt, resist the urge to nerf the entire challenge - just add a lower tier for players who aren't up for the full version.  Sure, lots of the rules for this are difficult and potentially grindy.  It's a challenge - find a way to make it easier or more interesting!  Although I do agree that Keepfit is one of the main reasons I'm not attempting on Hard

 

 

Edited April 29, 2016 by Jetski

[Jhawk1099]

Well here it is... the first episode of hopefully a fun and entertaining challenge. All I get done is rescue a few people and get a comms network setup. I will make a fan-works thread and a link will be up either in this post or somewhere here. Anyway hope you guys enjoy and @eloquentJane what can I improve on?