The Dunatian - BRING HIM HOME

[Peder]

6 minutes ago, Mikki said:

Hi there @Peder

I have buildt this mission on a absolute 100% vanilla install to avoid any issues, i can only suggest to reset the mission after updating the base game.
You might also want to verify your game cache trough Steam...
I can not support issues on heavy modified installations for obvious reasons, and as far as i am aware of (Just tested it again) the mission does run on KSP 1.4.5 MH 1.4.
(Most recent)

I am planning a full test (including Dessert airfield recovery) sunday morning  to verify the intended behaviour.
Thank you nonetheless for pointing at possible trouble  I am investigating 

The habitat issue... i never thought about blowing it up... i allways transfer Bob to the exit pod...  Its not meant to blow the Greenhouse up....


First of all thank you for creating this amazing mission, many cool features such as using docking ports to "configure" and build your rover to drive from a-b.
Regarding the blowing up of the greenhouse... hmmmm so you are not supposed to do that  ha ha   well if it work it aint stupid as they say  LOL
I play vanilla ksp and no mods but i will try and validate the files and so on, and restart the mission.
Anyway cool mission, looking forward to the day i land with bob on kerbin  ;-)

 

[Mikki]

@Peder

I hope you can wrap your mind around this adventure. I have made this for seasoned players to challenge their knowledge. Good luck!

 

[Peder]

Hello again.

I have managed to compete most of the missions now such as resupplying the "mother ship" , and also landing the supplys about 4,5km from my base on duna.
And now i just need to drive the 64km to the rescue ship, and rendevuze with the mothership and that part will be a bit tricky depending on arrival angel of the ship, and how fast its going and such things. Just like with the supply ship that need to dock.
By the way I kept the supply ship docked to my ship so i have a huge amount of xenon fuel with me. .The rocket part I have send on a crash course with kerbin ;-)

I notised 3 things that i like to mention that is a bit comfusing in the mission.
1). It took some time to figure out how the base work and transfer my kerbal arround..  anyway figured it out.  ;-)
2): THe part where we have to build the first supply ship i find a bit comfusing.. When i get the mission i go to the hangar to build, but the mission tekst do not pop up..
But if i select the premade vehicle and launch it, then i get some message that i need to build the ship, and then i revert/recycle the ship and now inside of the hangar i get a popup saying something about do you want to continue the mission and then you load and lauch the ship.  I even think we need to right click the mission tekst to
get an option to build the ship.  anyway i find this part a little comfusing.
3). when i land the supply near 4,5 km from my base and dock my rover then i notised that I cannot transfer fuel.. I am not sure if a fuel line broke off when it land or something, but never the less i cannot transfer fuel ..  ( dont know if its a bug or my supply was damaged )  I have to say I filled up the tank in the supply ship
before I send it to duna and the extra weight also made it hard to dock with the rover but I manged to do it anyway... the extra weight could have damaged something so im unable to refuel.

ANyway, cool mission i love it..  And im about to drive the 64km to the rescue ship now... And the Kermes mother ship is on the way towards duna, however 1 year delayed since the resupply forced me to do some bad navigation errors.. But i managed to resupply ect, but it also delay my mission and trip to duna allot.
ANyway bob is NOT running out of potato chips, so he can wait 1 year to get rescued ;-)

PS:. thank you for over enginering the spaceships so they have much more fuel than needed, that really saved my kerbals and mission  he he
PPS.. as you know the trick to playing the mission is to follow the instructions 100% and taking one step at a time... I dident do that the first times i played there for i got stuck.
PPPS... i love the rovers and how you can attach "modules" to them and configure their abilities. that is cool

Edited August 10, 2018 by Peder

[Mikki]

@Peder, hi there

To your issues on fueltransfer: I have noticed that fueltransfer does not work if any resource miniscreen is pinned to the screen, like battery or fuelcellstatus or any other.
Did you check any dockingport for enabled crossflow... i guess you did. Tanks open?

Open tanks to connect with ALT+leftclick one by one.

Congrats for making a proper probedrop...  Keeping the DSN connection is tricky...

I decided to overengineer the vessels to around 120%, to give the player a certain amount of freedom in trajectory and strategy. In real life most stuff is buildt with safetymargin aswell.

Mentioned behaviour in the VAB is given by the software 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Mikki
empty space at the format

[Mizzda_Salvi]

Im sorry but I cant seem to take the required temp scan on duna. I simply cant find the 2HOT part anywhere.

[Mikki]

4 hours ago, Mizzda_Salvi said:

Im sorry but I cant seem to take the required temp scan on duna. I simply cant find the 2HOT part anywhere.

Spoiler

It is somewhere in the livingquarter, you can "EVA" into the habitats.  

And welcome to the forums!

Edited August 15, 2018 by Mikki

[Dexter_D]

On 8/14/2018 at 11:56 PM, Mizzda_Salvi said:

Im sorry but I cant seem to take the required temp scan on duna. I simply cant find the 2HOT part anywhere.

I had the same "issue" when I first played the mission, but figured it out quickly, and therefore I can tell it's findable.

[Hastermain]

Hi there,

I just started, and it says I don't have enough to build the Supply ship (it costs 188k, I have 50k). Is there any way to win some money or what?

Also, I try to finish the "Examine the DRV" - it's blue, I'm on the Shiny Rover, and I've already uninstalled all my mods through ckan so I don't get why it isn't accepted..

 

nevermind, I figured it out - I was docking with the Hab, and after that the mission wanted me to go with the Hab over to the waypoint!

Edited August 23, 2018 by Hastermain

[Mikki]

@Hastermain, hi there, glad you could figure it out.  Good luck!

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Mikki

[Dman979]

Congratulations on being September's Thread of the Month!

[mindstalker]

I can't find a docking port on the Kermes. How am I supposed to transfer fuel??

[Mikki]

8 hours ago, mindstalker said:

I can't find a docking port on the Kermes. How am I supposed to transfer fuel??

Hi there, it is somewhere in the midsection, a extendable one 

[Kerbinchaser]

Congrats on making it into PCGamer! That's amazing!!

 

P.S.

I love that DreamChaser.  

[Mikki]

10 hours ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Congrats on making it into PCGamer! That's amazing!!

P.S. I love that DreamChaser.

Thank you, i "cobbled" on this mission during holidays (about 130 and then some more hours ), a true work of my heart and assembled in a "binge" kind of speed, with frequent truely brutal playtesting and at one point a complete rebuild from scratch, i could have slapped myself into my face for my own stupidity...
I made quite alot of background investigation on the subject of the "The Martian" Cinematic and was focussed on a true Kerbal lore fitting adaption of the happenings, with a balanced but still challenging missionflow. There are so much constraints and edgecases to account, i was prettty much exhausted after finishing the final version... I`m really glad that it seems that people are challenged by this Mission, so my goal was met from my perspective.

Having me featured in the PC gamer magazine was simply unbelieveable, i am still amazed and feel honored to support KSP and SQUAD in some unexpected way. Cheerz! 

[mindstalker]

16 hours ago, Mikki said:

Hi there, it is somewhere in the midsection, a extendable one 

Yes, if figured it out myself. You "dock" to the extendable airlock.  It didn't look like a docking port, didn't realize it was one.

[Benarius]

I bought Kerbal a fee years back on steam but never played. The latest version is so much better that I got into it. WOW. I just spent the last 48 hours at least 36 of it checking it out and modding. And now this? I am gonna try this mod next weekend for sure. Maybe one day I will mod (blender & unity 5 geek myself) a story like e.g. Armageddon or Interstellar. Anybody intrested?

[Mikki]

I am playing my own mission during the last few weekends... 

...While escaping Duna with the Kres IV Ascendvehicle for a direct intercept with the Kermes which buzzes by the planet in ridiculous speed...

"What the hell am i doing here? It couldn`t be much more of a madness. But it works..." - just like in Andy Weirs Cinematic. Freaky.

I`m glad the DeltaV is sufficient for a solid and proper reenactment. 

To all who made it this far - sorry it`s still not over here. The crap steams strong until Kerbins Dessert runway... Bring him home!

 

[mindstalker]

The long drive to Kres IV was.. interesting...

Especially as I used the included resupply ship.

One word of caution, don't go too fast, those bumps can really throw you.

Edited September 11, 2018 by mindstalker

[Mikki]

16 hours ago, mindstalker said:

The long drive to Kres IV was.. interesting... (snip)

Hi there, glad you made it so far... The route to the abandoned emergency ascendvehicle... there are many ways to get there...
Going straight uphill with 6x6 drive is very energyhungry, i prefer going around the mountainrange on 4x4.
The Skiaparelli craterrim has only two entrances worth passing and the highlands between have some ugly drops which afford full attention...
I think its okay. going faster than 20 m/s isn`t recommended, even less is dangerous.
You can flip toppled rovers back to level; use gear, get out and push, take seat and extend the wheels again. Bob can do it:D
 

[mindstalker]

3 hours ago, Mikki said:

Hi there, glad you made it so far... The route to the abandoned emergency ascendvehicle... there are many ways to get there...
Going straight uphill with 6x6 drive is very energyhungry, i prefer going around the mountainrange on 4x4.
The Skiaparelli craterrim has only two entrances worth passing and the highlands between have some ugly drops which afford full attention...
I think its okay. going faster than 20 m/s isn`t recommended, even less is dangerous.
You can flip toppled rovers back to level; use gear, get out and push, take seat and extend the wheels again. Bob can do it:D
 

Yeah, I finished it last weekend.

Spoiler

 

One fun trick was that I "trimmed" my flight settings to drive me forward continuously just a few energy bits more than its refill value, and mostly made my way around the mountains occasionally switching it into full gear when I got bored.

The most difficult parts I think skill wise was getting the ascent craft to meet up with the Kermes. No SAS, and I couldn't wait and launch when I wanted to due to the line of sight constraints.

And landing on the Desert Runway,  of course I ended up doing it in the dark...

 

 

Edited September 12, 2018 by mindstalker

[Mikki]

@mindstalker

Warning, huge Spoiler:

You have being warned, don`t read until you have examined the emergency ascender...

No, don`t look! 

Spoiler

Okay, last chance.

Spoiler

There is a simple probecore on the Kres IV. Jeb or the KSC can assist, as long the probecore has electricity which is a tricky task, i could kick myself for this evil feature.

I told you now...

[DunnoAnyThing]

Any plans for uploading onto Kerbalx.com?

[Jeb'sNemesis]

Awesome work, thanks for doing this.  You should get commission, since I bought MH specifically to play this mission.

Piles of fun.  I ended up with some weird timings where I had to sit the Kermes in Duna orbit for 180 days before the resupply probe arrived (true to the book, my Rich Kerman Maneuver got me to Duna significantly faster than the Hohmann transfer that the probe took).  Then I screwed up the return trajectory and had to sit in between Kerbin & Duna for 2 years waiting for a transfer window home.

[Mikki]

On 9/18/2018 at 5:45 PM, DunnoAnyThing said:

Any plans for uploading onto Kerbalx.com?

Hi there, i never visit KerbalX, so, not in my scope.

11 hours ago, Jeb'sNemesis said:

Awesome work, thanks for doing this.  You should get commission, since I bought MH specifically to play this mission.

Piles of fun.  I ended up with some weird timings where I had to sit the Kermes in Duna orbit for 180 days before the resupply probe arrived (true to the book, my Rich Kerman Maneuver got me to Duna significantly faster than the Hohmann transfer that the probe took).  Then I screwed up the return trajectory and had to sit in between Kerbin & Duna for 2 years waiting for a transfer window home.

"Commission" is not in my scope, i am just glad to see that other people have fun on being "hardstuck" on Duna.
"The Martian" is a perfect background and fits somehow Kerbal lore very well,... i never thought that so much people would actually play this rather freaky mission... basically still a crazy thing for me. I think there are 99.9982% bader purchases around on Steam or elsewhere than buying "Making History"... 

Glad you like my Kerbal adaption of the Cinematic 

Oh, and welcome to the KSP Forums, one of the best communitys with members from all around the globe!

[Kevin Kyle]

I havent been playing for a good while now mostly just for lack of time. In fact, I havent played since just before Making History came out and all of that. But I always knew that there would be some awesome stuff coming this way since the Making History expansion was released. I expect to see a lot of really cool missions from the past, present and the future to come. So, when I stumbled across this I knew I was going to be playing again soon. So I have to give out a really big THANK YOU for all the time and effort you put into this. I downloaded and fired it up right away. Going to be having some fun today. TY so much and if your looking for encouragement to do the next one, go right ahead. I will be eagerly awaiting your next effort should you choose to accept this mission. (ya, thats right, Im a Mission Impossible fan)

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for stirring my interest again.

 

And for all you other wannabe authors out there, we all look forward to your efforts.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kevin Kyle