The KSP Caveman Challenge 1.3.x - 1.10.x [re-booted]

[Muetdhiver]

I have done on pad assembly many times for caveman plays.

1) using orbital assembly is the best way in 90% of the case. Faster, easier and cheaper.

2) mass fraction of such pad assembled rockets is poor due the atrocious woblyness requiring *ahem* suboptimal gravity turns.

3) if you do need a payload above 4t then go for it. But it is a nutty thing

btw, there are ship files for a pad assembled rocket in the github repo of the community jool5 caveman insanity. It might prove usefull to you. It was used to lift the core engine/docking hub of the jool ship.

Despite all their troubles and ugly, I love those silly things.

And yes, if you play with MH the bobcat is amazing. Not in the sense that allows to lift more mass to LKO, but in the sense that it allows to use more parts for the payload since the reliant+3-4 sparks+3-4 nosecones becomes a bobcat plus the 1.875 to 1.25 m tank, a net gain of 5-7 parts...

Edited October 22, 2020 by Muetdhiver

[king of nowhere]

never noticed this before, i'll give it a try. at highest difficulty, of course, because i tied too much of my self-worth to videogames and i pull stunts to stave off my insecurity i don't do things halfway

looks like there is a simple way to finish it regardless of difficulty: wait for your contracts to expire until you get the "test stuff on the launchpad". those always give free money. but it would not be in the spirit of the challenge, so i'll try to do it honestly

Edited October 22, 2020 by king of nowhere

[Mr. Peabody]

On 10/22/2020 at 4:32 PM, king of nowhere said:

never noticed this before, i'll give it a try. at highest difficulty, of course, because i tied too much of my self-worth to videogames and i pull stunts to stave off my insecurity i don't do things halfway

looks like there is a simple way to finish it regardless of difficulty: wait for your contracts to expire until you get the "test stuff on the launchpad". those always give free money. but it would not be in the spirit of the challenge, so i'll try to do it honestly

One does not simply "wait for contracts to expire." 

Indeed, for most difficulty levels the main challenge is to design vessels capable of gathering the science necessary to unlock the tech tree nodes within the design constraints of the level 1 VAB/SPH, viz. an 18 ton weight limit and 30x part count limit.

On another note, I observe that the forum update has broken the topic page. This problem will be remediated post-haste. 

[king of nowhere]

11 hours ago, Mr. Peabody said:

 

Indeed, for most difficulty levels the main challenge is to design vessels capable of gathering the science necessary to unlock the tech tree nodes within the design constraints of the level 1 VAB/SPH, viz. an 18 ton weight limit and 30x part count limit.

 

I am starting to realize. A mun mission with all buildins level 1 is doable, but i may have to manage it without even a terrier engine. i was thinking it would be easy to do by assembling ships in orbit, but docking ports are still far away in the tech tree. and i can't even get spacewalk reports, or surface samples, nor can i refresh the mystery  goo.

i will probably fail at the hardest level i set

[IncongruousGoat]

7 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

and i can't even get spacewalk reports

It's totally possible to get EVA science in a caveman run - you just need to be slightly more creative about how you do it than you would normally. The trick here is that Kerbals can still exit vehicles while on the surface of Kerbin, and there's nothing stopping you from having a Kerbal ride a ladder on the side of your rocket into space. Heck, @dvader once took an EVA Kerbal all the way to Bop, riding on the outside of the ship the whole way.

In practice it's more complicated than "just ride a ladder", of course, but if you look back through this thread there are plenty of working designs you can examine.

 

EDIT: For NCD in general, my best advice is to look at the entries that already exist. There's no shame in learning from and improving on previous attempts, successful and unsuccessful, and this thread is a gold mine of lateral thinking and creative solutions.

Edited October 24, 2020 by IncongruousGoat

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

There's no shame in learning from and improving on previous attempts, successful and unsuccessful, and this thread is a gold mine of lateral thinking and creative solutions.

there's a fine line to walk there. learning from previous attempts is all good and well, but if i take too much out of them, i'm no longer trying the challenge, i'm merely following instructions. and if i know a working design made by someone else, i can't bring myself to not use it. so i prefer to stay mostly in the blind, at least as long as i can go forward on my own.

anyway, a pc problem is preventing me from using ksp for at least a few more days. i'll see later how well i handle myself in this.

bby the way, i just remembered that there's a policy that converts part of your money to science. with that, and just "test part on the launchpad" contract, it should be possible to "win" the challenge without much difficulty. not much fun to it, though

[fourfa]

Go ahead and try it, if you think it’ll work.  You might find that admin strategies effectiveness scale with reputation, and in harder versions of caveman, rep is extremely hard to come by.

[Superfluous J]

17 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

bby the way, i just remembered that there's a policy that converts part of your money to science. with that, and just "test part on the launchpad" contract, it should be possible to "win" the challenge without much difficulty. not much fun to it, though

If no one's done it yet, there's at least the fun of proving the theory.

Caveman runs - for all the talk about them being low-science - are all about using the scientific method of theory, testing, and discovery.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Superfluous J

[fourfa]

I'm sure this isn't an original approach, but I've been having tons of fun with it in my early-NCD run: the Biome Bomber.  A ballistically-deployed steerable glider, for targeted early rare-biome science collection.  Pilot in front, scientist in back, fly over the desired biome and pop chutes.  I was able to hit the island runway, landed/splashed Deserts, and splashed Grasslands on the west coast of Kerbal Africa (WSW of KSC).  That was enough to finally earn the Science Jr, and refit the Bomber for materials bay collections (nice gentle 4m/s descent with 3 mains).  A few different configurations:

* PS: not for suborbital flights; the fins will burn off.  I don't even have Stability yet!  I'll try suborbitals once I get the AV-T1 wings, for Badlands and polar targets.

Edited October 25, 2020 by fourfa

[king of nowhere]

so, i thought the major problem would be low science, but it isn't even that.

it's not being able to reload. within a few hours, i already accidentally killed both my pilots.

now, i could circumvent the ban on reloading games. the game still lets you save, it just doesn't let you reload. but all you have to do is delete the "persistent" save and rename your quicksave as "persistent".

But i feel that would disqualify me from the achievement, wouldn't it?

[JAFO]

On 10/27/2020 at 7:58 AM, king of nowhere said:

But i feel that would disqualify me from the achievement, wouldn't it?

Indeed it would. And I feel your pain over killing your pilots already.

But then, you did intentionally start out choosing the "Nintendo hard" option. Nobody will think less of you if you choose to take on a lower difficulty setting option just to get a feel for things, before going all out.

[king of nowhere]

14 hours ago, JAFO said:

Indeed it would. And I feel your pain over killing your pilots already.

But then, you did intentionally start out choosing the "Nintendo hard" option. Nobody will think less of you if you choose to take on a lower difficulty setting option just to get a feel for things, before going all out.

my problem is, i can't take not reloading. this is a game and i will always seek to push limits. safety requires triple-checking everything, never doing anything risky. it's boring. it's good for real life, where you most definitely can't reload, you have a single game that can last up to a century, and you don't want to cut it short. but i can't game this way. and so i have the occasional accident. if i wasn't allowed to reload, i wouldn't pass even at the easiest level.

on the other hand, i am reasonably confident that, if i could reload, i could succeed at the hardest level. trying at an easier level when i am allowed to reload would be too easy for everything else.

 

maybe i will try to check if it is feasible to just get science from policies. otherwise, i may just give up on the challenge.

Edited October 29, 2020 by king of nowhere

[RoninFrog]

Here's the start of my caveman career.  I'm gonna just do the Normal career difficulty.  I do have MH and BG installed, but I'm not going to use any of the features.

There's a lot of stuff in the spoiler.

Spoiler

Launch 1!  Science roller with Jeb and Bob.

Science!  The KSC staff now know what the KSC looks like.  So they decide to invent liquid fuel.

Here's an actual rocket!  

Spaaaaaace!

More science.

Hmmm.  Maybe build an orbital rocket next?

Pfft, no!  Let's go to the Mun!  It looks like a roll of triple-stuf oreos on top.

The droptanks have been dropped.

Burning for orbit on cookie power!  I can relate to this rocket.  Have you ever had oreos for dinner?

Collisionless freefall achieved. 

There's only one problem:  There aren't enough oreos left to get to the Mun and back.  (2200 m/s)  Whatever.  Minmus it is, then!

That looks pretty close.

Hey hey!  Got an encounter!

Low Minmus orbit:

Landing near a biome division to try to maximize science:

Science time!  It's really too bad Jeb can't get out of the pod, since most of the science comes from outside.

That trajectory looks pretty close.  I have a lot of fuel left so it will be easy to fix the trajectory.

A proper rocket design doesn't have a heat shield.  An even better design doesn't detatch the booster.

There's a decent science haul!

Hmm...  Should I research some more nodes?  Hmmm...   ...   Nope!  I'm goin' to the Mun!  Yes, it's gonna work this time.

This is looking pretty good!

Burning for orbit:

Oh yeah! Orbit with 2600 m/s! 

Lemme see...  That is exactly 40 m/s short of the dV map reading, and that's with ideal piloting.  And I'm in a slightly inclined orbit.  I'm still totally doing it.

I sure do wish I had patched conics.

Well, it wasn't the best transfer.  I think it will still work.

Here's a slightly lower orbit:

It's gonna work.  I can feel it.

Landed with 860 m/s left!  That is, um, 30 m/s short.  At least 30 m/s short is better than 40 m/s.

271 m/s in orbit, hm?  From past Mun trips, that is exactly enough to return to Kerbin.

Okay, Jeb!  Give it all you got!

Yeah!  Zero m/s left!  Couldn't have been better with a maneuver node.

Reentry:

Phew!  What a Mun mission.

Science time!  Probably over half way, now.

I think I'll research some nodes now.

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by RoninFrog

[RoninFrog]

On 10/24/2020 at 9:37 AM, IncongruousGoat said:

The trick here is that Kerbals can still exit vehicles while on the surface of Kerbin, and there's nothing stopping you from having a Kerbal ride a ladder on the side of your rocket into space.

True that.

[JAFO]

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

my problem is, i can't take not reloading. 
...
if i wasn't allowed to reload, i wouldn't pass even at the easiest level.
...
i am reasonably confident that, if i could reload, i could succeed at the hardest level.
...
maybe i will try to check if it is feasible to just get science from policies. otherwise, i may just give up on the challenge.

Ok.. I think I see the problem.

Tell you what. Don't give up entirely. But do take a break from KSP. Instead, go and play The Long Dark for a while. But not in Story mode. Just play Survival (sandbox) mode. Survival Mode is basically Ironman mode. There is no reloading. But don't try to start on the most difficult (Interloper) mode. When they first come to TLD, lots of "Tough Guys" try to begin on the hardest mode "I've played plenty of survival games before, I know what I'm doing!" . But they all give it up after a while and go back to an easier mode to learn how to play the game. The learning curve is, in some ways, as steep as KSP, and until you know your way around, you tend to die a lot. But each death teaches you something new. So each re-play, you last longer than the one before.

If any game can get you over this hangup about reloading, perma-death, etc, it's The Long Dark. Perma-death is something to embrace, not something to run and hide from. And once you've learned to embrace it, come back to the Caveman Challenge.

(Oh yeah.. The Long Dark is currently on sale on Steam for 66% off!)

Edited October 29, 2020 by JAFO

[JAFO]

4 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

Here's the start of my caveman career.  I'm gonna just do the Normal career difficulty.  I do have MH and BG installed, but I'm not going to use any of the features.

There's a lot of stuff in the spoiler.

Well done @RoninFrog!

That's two fantastic accomplishments right there.

Firstly, very few cavemen attempt a crewed return mission to Minmus. I'm pretty sure there are still less than half a dozen of us.

Secondly, (and someone correct me if I'm wrong here) I think this is the very first successful crewed return Mun mission! To the best of my knowledge, they've all been either one-way trips or probe missions. If it IS the very first, to my mind, that's worthy of an Order of the Trilobite award.

[IncongruousGoat]

5 hours ago, JAFO said:

Secondly, (and someone correct me if I'm wrong here) I think this is the very first successful crewed return Mun mission! To the best of my knowledge, they've all been either one-way trips or probe missions. If it IS the very first, to my mind, that's worthy of an Order of the Trilobite award.

It's (at least) the third. Both @zanie420 and I flew crewed Mun return missions during our NCD runs. Still very impressive, though. Caveman crewed Mun is no mean feat.

[JAFO]

9 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

It's (at least) the third. Both @zanie420 and I flew crewed Mun return missions during our NCD runs. Still very impressive, though. Caveman crewed Mun is no mean feat.

Ahh.. I somehow missed (or more likely, forgot) those.. I'll have to go check them out. But yes, still very impressive.

[RoninFrog]

Here's the second half of my Caveman Career.  I probably should've tried for a more difficult level.

Spoiler

Time for Jeb to go on a Minmus science bombing run!  I'm hoping to hit at least four biomes with Thermometer/Barometer and Crew Report.  That should about do it for this career.  The picture's just a little dark; it's got a Oreo Bomber launch stage with a different payload.

Bye bye, booster!

With Jeb in orbit, it's time to launch a big droptank.  Yes...  Docking without maneuver nodes, target setting, intersects...  Sounds like fun!

Hmmm.  Maybe this was a bad idea.

3... 2... 1... Burn now!

Oh man.  This is the epitome of "eyeballing it".

Yeah!  Intersect within physics range!

Ha!  Told you it would work!  The big thing on top is the droptank (and the droptank's booster), and the thing on the bottom is Jeb's capsule.

Burning for Minmus!  Why does everything always have to be so dark?

That ought to do.

Captured into a very elliptical orbit:

Midlands first.  They're kind of everywhere, so it shouldn't really matter where I land.

There goes the droptank.  It's the one good picture I have of it, so look at it good.

Landed!  Let's see how far 2 km/s will get me.

Hop, hop, hop:

Spoiler

Back into Minmus orbit:

Nope!  One more biome. 

Okay, orbit for reals.  The only biome not visited was the poles.

Burning for Kerbin:

Oh, look at that beautiful science!

Reentry was exciting:

Spoiler

Hmmm.  I guess the battery doesn't want to come back to Kerbin.  Oh well, I don't need it anymore!

Oop, there goes the thermometer!  I didn't need it anyway.  I can see the barometer's about to go to...

Nobody loves you, little barometer!

Oh lookie!  Is little Jebbykins scared of the explosions, heh?  Who's a scared little kerbonaut, heh?

Touchdown successful.

Well, yep, in the words of the goblin king (Hobbit), "That'll do it!"

Clicky clicky clicky clicky clicky done!

I've finished the Normal (Apatite) Caveman challenge.

[ManEatingApe]

19 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

<snip>...maybe i will try to check if it is feasible to just get science from policies...<snip>

I'd highly recommend trying this challenge at a slightly easier (but still difficult compared to regular KSP) level to figuratively warm up. As @JAFO and @IncongruousGoat have mentioned the constraints encourage creativity and the skills you learn in economy of design will transfer well to other KSP areas. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, it's a lot of fun!

14 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

Here's the start of my caveman career.  I'm gonna just do the Normal career difficulty.  I do have MH and BG installed, but I'm not going to use any of the features.

There's a lot of stuff in the spoiler.

Nice work on the Mun mission. That was really on a knife's edge of resource consumption and additionally (within the low tech limit of Caveman) you did it with with lower tech of just a Terrier. The Minmus biome hopper was a nifty finish.

11 hours ago, JAFO said:

<snip> But do take a break from KSP. Instead, go and play The Long Dark for a while. <snip>

Sold! To be thematically appropriate I will try playing it on Halloween night. Alone. At night. In the dark. Oh wait...

Edited October 30, 2020 by ManEatingApe

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

Sold! To be thematically appropriate I will try playing it on Halloween night. Alone. At night. In the dark. Oh wait...

You may want to not try and take on the current TLD Halloween challenge, DarkWalker. Without knowing the various maps well (to say nothing of the game mechanics), it will probably be incredibly frustrating. (But you do have two weeks to try and get up to speed before the challenge ends!)

Edited October 30, 2020 by JAFO

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

I'd highly recommend trying this challenge at a slightly easier (but still difficult compared to regular KSP) level to figuratively warm up. As @JAFO and @IncongruousGoat have mentioned the constraints encourage creativity and the skills you learn in economy of design will transfer well to other KSP areas. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, it's a lot of fun!

the constraints encourage creativity and economy of design.

being unable to reload doesn't, have anything to do with it. in fact, being unable to reload actively discourages creativity, because i must stick to proven, tried-and-true designs and mission profiles, for i cannot risk a failure.

14 hours ago, JAFO said:

Ok.. I think I see the problem.

Tell you what. Don't give up entirely. But do take a break from KSP. Instead, go and play The Long Dark for a while.

Ok. I think I see the problem.

We have very different concepts of fun.

I don't like survival, and I don't like grinding. Striving to do something hard is fun. Something that I can get right 90% of times is too easy. Striving to practice that easy thing so that I can do it right 100% of times instead of just 90% is not fun for me. It is a chore. Doing something easy, many times, but you have to get it right every time, is a good description for most jobs.

And 90% success is still way too low for a career.

Furthermore, assume i have this challenge running for weeks, dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay.... and near the end i misclick something and lose it all. how is that fun?  how could i relax and enjoy the game when i'm under this constant pressure that the slightest mistake would ruin weeks of careful work?

It's just not my cup of tea. I need things to be hard enough that I have a real chance of failing, and this only works if I can afford to fail.

17 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

Here's the start of my caveman career.  I'm gonna just do the Normal career difficulty.  I do have MH and BG installed, but I'm not going to use any of the features.

There's a lot of stuff in the spoiler.

 

that roller is a brilliant idea. I was wondering how to collect science from the ksc without having rover wheels available, and this is a brilliant solution. I'm going to copy it

[fourfa]

For what it's worth - I'm playing NCD but with reverts and saves turned on.  #1 - my Mac install has a bug where contracts sometimes insta-fail when accepting, wiping out all rep and funds.  I flatly refuse to put time into this game without the ability to revert this bug.  #2 - I find this game fun and a good use of my time when I can revert, and I do not if I can't.  I have proven this to myself enough times that I don't need to keep testing it.  Your mileage will vary.  So I come here to this thread to get inspired by others and share things I learn, but not to document for badges and leaderboards as my setup isn't compliant with the agreed rules.  No big deal to me!  I'm finding NCD + reverts to be great fun, super challenging, lots to learn, but not grindy and unpleasant.

Anyway on to the sharing - there were some questions about fragile KSC science rollers being too risky.  How about these armored rollers, protected by 8x clipped girders:

I had tons of luck with these, no explosions.  If you don't have batteries yet then you might need multiple runs to cover the whole KSC and all the microbiomes.  The second one was particularly good at spending a lot of time just barely off the ground, to collect those elusive "flying low at [KSC microbiome]" crew and temp reports.

Re: crewed Minmus landings - I succeeded with this simple design. 

Burned straight from Minmus intercept to a mountain landing (Lowlands biome however), then burned from surface straight to Minmus escape heading directly east (about 400m/s burn) with enough dV to adjust for 45km Kerbin periapsis plus.... 15m/s left over.  Okay, that margin might be too narrow for safety - but as I've recently learned, this twin-Thud booster is considerably less efficient than a single-Reliant, so there is probably +100m/s margin there.  Heck, you don't really need the science box either (capsule was taken from a version with a Science Jr below the decoupler, and I had a Goo explode on a previous mission)

Another tip I've learned recently for early Mun flyby missions: setting your Mun intercept Ap inside the Mun's orbit will put you in a prograde pass, Ap outside the Mun's orbit will give you a retrograde pass.  Now with normal KSP, maneuver nodes + patched conics, that retrograde pass can be tweaked ever so gently to give you a safe free-return trajectory.  Never going to happen in Caveman, and I usually end up with Pe buried deep in Kerbin or up high halfway to Mun - both requiring expensive correction burns. 

The prograde pass however will slingshot, throwing you out higher.  At that high Ap (and correspondingly slower orbital velocity), corrections are VERY cheap.  The downsides: 25+ day mission instead of ~2 days; and if you set your Pe at the Mun too low (like 6km) you can accidentally get a slingshot out of Kerbin SOI...  Just inside the Mun-low 60km boundary is always safe though.

EDIT - another tip I forgot: the '#' on right click menus in VAB/SPH switches from quantized sliders to numerical input.  I often find when building boosters, that a particular tick is over the 18T limit, but the next tick down is considerably under the limit.  Switch to # mode, and you can type in any arbitrary number and slowly converge on exactly 18T.  Just grab your calculator and remember that the right amount of oxidizer is 11/9ths of the LF quantity.  It's a small tweak but sometimes it matters...

Edited October 30, 2020 by fourfa

[JAFO]

7 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Ok. I think I see the problem.

We have very different concepts of fun.

I don't like survival, and I don't like grinding.

Touché.. very well said.

Well sir, I shall wish you all the best. See what @fourfa has written above, and well done on being willing to borrow the idea of the science roller.. truly one of the great early caveman inventions, that we pretty much all make use of. Don't be afraid to look back through the 3(?) Caveman threads, looking for inspiration in other ways. There's no need to re-invent the wheel, after all.. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by JAFO

[king of nowhere]

i tried to use silly contracts of testing stuff on the launchpad or in low flights.

all was going well. i had reached 20k funds.

then a bug struck. i took on a contract, and it was declared failed immediately. i'm not sure what happened exactly that caused me to lose it, anyway i lost all my money.

I'm sure this would be a case where reloading is justified. but i wasn't expecting it, so i have no save to produce