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Momma don't let your babies grow up to fly planes on potatoes


Red Shirt

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So I haven't flown planes much in a long time. Thought for fun I would grab a stock spaceplane and try out some new to me features in MJ. I never could get the altitude hold to work but that isn't why I'm posting. The plane flew beautifully on its own and required little attention. I could not get it to space and eventually turned and headed back to land at KSC

Here is the meat of my post. I ran out of fuel just shy of the runway and reverted out. As I did, I noticed it stated length of flight was about 17 minutes. I had been watching TV while playing. Over one and a half hours had passed. :0.0:  I have an SVE/Scatterer install on my potato laptop. I knew it added time to my rocket launches. I think real time to orbit generally runs 8-12 minutes. I'm ok with that as the view is amazing. 

Apparently I have my limits. I just don't enjoy flying planes because it takes forever but the alternative is boring views. Since I'm not going to get a better laptop, looks like I am abandoning planes again.

Not looking for advice. Just felt like sharing.

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I too find flying aeroplanes boring.  30 seconds of interest on takeoff, 2 nail-biting minutes on landing, and however many minutes of waiting while hitting 's' as you want inbetween.

If only there was a way to get them to their destination faster, so you could just go do what you want then recover.

planespace.jpg

A smidgen less than entirely successful at that but far from boring.  Maybe if I depended on parachute landing...

Edited by Corona688
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Most of my planes get to orbit on 2-4x timewarp... maybe 10 minutes real time from launch to circularising for most of em.

...admittedly there will be 10+ practise launches before I settle on a design, but if you love KSP it is totes worth investing in the hardware to run it reasonably :) 

(Reasonably meaning that spaceplanes over ~100 external parts will still chug on pretty much any computer in the world, but you can make a pretty decent craft within that limit.) 

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Spaceplanes are cool and open up new possibilities but I really want the next version of KSP (if there is one) to have a fully featured autopilot*, like MechJeb but more reliable. One that can control rockets and spaceplanes, and can handle landing on planets with atmosphere as well. I enjoy building stuff and orbital maneuvers but take offs and landings are a chore that I never really enjoyed. MJ works fine on air-less planets but I was never able to land reliably on Duna. Maybe I'm just too stupid to play KSP.

Said autopilot would also perform maneuvers in the background so I can focus on something else while my n+1 supply vessel is getting to orbit.

*before any reality fan freaks out, this would have the option to be disabled in difficulty settings.

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2 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Hey @Red Shirt, if you wanna feel better, check out @Zeiss Ikon's post in the Gameplay Questions subforum. He's got a laptop that's having issues with 30-part rockets. So it could definitely be worse. :)

Wow, he's not even running any eye candy mods. I run mine on max resolution with most settings either on default or kicked up a notch. I do use a cooling fan under my laptop. I do have integrated graphics so looking up helps on rocket launch. 

16 minutes ago, Kerbital said:

MJ works fine on air-less planets but I was never able to land reliably on Duna

Design for higher TWR or check your chutes - which work but not easily on Duna.

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Are you playing on battery? You might want to plug into the wall and check your power settings to make sure your processor isn't being throttled in order to get your battery to last longer.
Even if you're plugged in you might want to check those settings. Some manufacturers don't ever kick into "High Performance" even when plugged into the wall. Check your GPU drivers as well (if you have them), you can also have it turn off power throttling for KSP.

May help may not.

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I just came here for the Ed Bruce references. Veni vidi like. Planes are more fun than rockets because they're more eco friendly in a pixel world that does not care if you litter the orbits to create The Kessler syndrome.

 

All my rockets drain my credits

And credits are the things I really love to keep

All my rockets drain my credits

And that's why I only use planes you see

Edited by mystik
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11 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Hey @Red Shirt, if you wanna feel better, check out @Zeiss Ikon's post in the Gameplay Questions subforum. He's got a laptop that's having issues with 30-part rockets. So it could definitely be worse. :)

Well, for what it's worth, my laptop gets intermittent yellow clock on a vessel in space with 30 parts.  It's only with spaceplanes that I've noticed the other bit, and still haven't isolated whether it's GPU, CPU, RAM, or thermal limits.

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Just to say that KSP can use up whatever you throw at it, there is no magic PC that can handle any craft.

I have an [email protected], 24GB RAM, SSD@500MB/sec and I am having to be careful just how many mods I load because I am running out of RAM (sometimes KSP is using 20GB out of 24GB), visiting some stations in my save slows my computer to a crawl. I do not imagine moving to a newer Unity will affect this very much because I am just supersaturating KSP, it is an issue with how I am treating KSP as opposed to KSP not being efficient enough.

I am thinking of moving KSP to the 32GB machine just to get a bit of headroom.

I think my point is, however large your glass, it is always possible to fill it.

That said, I think the minimum spec for KSP should be a machine capable enough so that a user can fly a 30 part craft anywhere without slowdown. Of course it will run on lower spec but you should not expect a green timer if you do.

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15 hours ago, Kerbital said:

MJ works fine on air-less planets but I was never able to land reliably on Duna.

You need enough engines to push you faster than 0.3g, and enough fuel to not run out on the way down.  That's what really matters, and if it's not good enough for Mechjeb, that's Mechjeb's problem.

15 hours ago, Kerbital said:

Maybe I'm just too stupid to play KSP.

These fancy mechjebs, flunjers, capdabblers, and smendlers occasionally make the game harder, not easier.  They follow the curve of maximum efficiency, which means riding the ragged edge between touchdown and lithobraking -- and anything which violates your autopilot's hardcoded assumptions, be it atmosphere model or unusual craft design, can cause catastrophic results.  Not because these things are so difficult, but just because that's the way it flies.

You don't have to fly that way.  Not even NASA does real suicide burns, not unless they have crash cushions.

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On 06/12/2017 at 9:19 PM, Red Shirt said:

So I haven't flown planes much in a long time. Thought for fun I would grab a stock spaceplane and try out some new to me features in MJ. I never could get the altitude hold to work but that isn't why I'm posting

I've been meaning to ask on the MJ forums but basically I have a LOT of issues with the mod not working as described. Nothing major, but little thing like being in orbit, asking MJ to land at the KSC and it actually landing at the exact opposite side of the planet... rover autopilot being a bit... iffy? Amongst others that I cannot remember right now. 

But yeah.. thats a HUGE difference between RT and in game time. You should consider removing Scatterer... yeah its beautiful but I decided its not worth the fps hit on my also potato machine :(

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7 hours ago, MR L A said:

I've been meaning to ask on the MJ forums but basically I have a LOT of issues with the mod not working as described. Nothing major, but little thing like being in orbit, asking MJ to land at the KSC and it actually landing at the exact opposite side of the planet... rover autopilot being a bit... iffy? Amongst others that I cannot remember right now. 

But yeah.. thats a HUGE difference between RT and in game time. You should consider removing Scatterer... yeah its beautiful but I decided its not worth the fps hit on my also potato machine :(

If you find bugs, make a bug report, supply your logs, they will be addressed.

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On 12/6/2017 at 8:01 PM, Red Shirt said:

Design for higher TWR or check your chutes - which work but not easily on Duna.

It seems to me that MJ doesn't account for air drag. It always lands way short of the target if it enters atmosphere.

17 hours ago, MR L A said:

I've been meaning to ask on the MJ forums but basically I have a LOT of issues with the mod not working as described. Nothing major, but little thing like being in orbit, asking MJ to land at the KSC and it actually landing at the exact opposite side of the planet... rover autopilot being a bit... iffy? Amongst others that I cannot remember right now. 

But yeah.. thats a HUGE difference between RT and in game time. You should consider removing Scatterer... yeah its beautiful but I decided its not worth the fps hit on my also potato machine :(

I had the problem with MJ trying to land on the opposite side of a planet. This seems to be related to 1.3.1. The dev version of MJ fixed this for me:

https://ksp.sarbian.com/jenkins/job/MechJeb2-Dev/

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