First Mission

[Oykib]

So I got the DLC and I am trying to complete the first mission (dawn of the space age). It has me building a basic rocket but it gives me a limit of 3.3t. I put the probe on top and there is only one engine available. That one engine will put me over the weight. Does anyone have suggestions to get around this?

[Snark]

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

2 hours ago, Oykib said:

So I got the DLC and I am trying to complete the first mission (dawn of the space age). It has me building a basic rocket but it gives me a limit of 3.3t. I put the probe on top and there is only one engine available. That one engine will put me over the weight. Does anyone have suggestions to get around this?

The "we might not have enough fuel" clue they give you is, well, the clue. 

You can't use that one engine with a full load of fuel.  Reduce the fuel content so you can squeak under the 3.3t limit and there ya go.

[Oykib]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

The "we might not have enough fuel" clue they give you is, well, the clue. 

You can't use that one engine with a full load of fuel.  Reduce the fuel content so you can squeak under the 3.3t limit and there ya go.

I didn't know you could use partial solid rockets.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Oykib said:

I didn't know you could use partial solid rockets.

Yep, it's always been a thing.  There's just generally never any reason why you'd want to (other than, perhaps, Sepratrons, depending on circumstances).

Basically, any resource can be adjusted to be a partial amount in the vehicle editor.

[OhioBob]

There may be another way in which you can save a small amount of mass (and money).  Are you using a Mk1 command pod?  Many of the command pods contain a small amount of monopropellant, which can be removed if you don't need it.  Just like changing the propellant mass in the solid rocket booster, right-click on the part in the editor and move the slider.  For monopropellant, just take the slider down to zero.  For a Mk1 it only saves only 40 kg, but every little bit helps.

[Snark]

4 hours ago, OhioBob said:

There may be another way in which you can save a small amount of mass (and money).  Are you using a Mk1 command pod?  Many of the command pods contain a small amount of monopropellant, which can be removed if you don't need it.  Just like changing the propellant mass in the solid rocket booster, right-click on the part in the editor and move the slider.  For monopropellant, just take the slider down to zero.  For a Mk1 it only saves only 40 kg, but every little bit helps.

Yep, but in this particular case, it's a mission that's deliberately designed to limit the player to only a very tiny set of bare-bones parts, and there's only one engine available (an SRB), and having even one of it puts the player over the mass limit.  It's literally physically impossible to launch a flyable ship for that mission without reducing the solid fuel in the booster.

40 kg of monoprop wouldn't help-- and in this case happens to be moot anyway because the Mk1 pod isn't available, the player has to use a Stayputnik and nothing else.

Certainly the above suggestion is good advice in general ... it just happens not to apply to this particular  Making History mission.

[bewing]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

Yep, it's always been a thing.  There's just generally never any reason why you'd want to

 

Well, I almost always mess with the fuel in my SRBs. For doing contracts at the beginning of the game, you want to be able to set how high you go, at what speed. For your very first launch, you just want your rocket to barely get off the ground, really. Sometimes when a contract says to activate an SRB at a particular altitude, you don't want it to do anything at all -- so you take all the fuel out. But yes, that's one of the purposes of the first flight of mission#1 -- to give players a little nudge that they can adjust SRB fuel levels.