Help with building colonies?

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

I would really like to build a colony, but I am not sure how to build it or how to put it in place. I would like to put it somewhere pretty like Jool, which has many moons to expand on and has Laythe which would be a prime place to put a colony, since it is likely that Kerbals could evolve to live on Laythe. I am not sure if I should bring up my colony parts one by one, or just build a colony ship. How do I get a Jool transfer? Is there anywhere better than Jool to place a colony? Why does SpellCheck want to correct Jool to Joel ?

If anyone with more experience with planetary bases and self-sustaining operations could help, I would appreciate it very much.

 

[purpleivan]

Laythe is a nice place for a colony... ocean, atmosphere, big planet to look at etc.

For a Jool transfer, I'd recommend this addon.

As for whether to send everyone on one ship or several, I guess it depends on how confident you are in being able to land separate ships in the same location, or whether the are mobile once landed.

[invision]

when kerblin is at 6 o' clock position and Jool  is at 2 o' clock go behind the dark side of kerblin and burn prograde until intercept

[Gargamel]

16 hours ago, Imperial Star Destroyer said:

Why does SpellCheck want to correct Jool to Joel

Because Jool is not a word in the English language, and it assumes that since you are capitalizing it, it is a proper noun. 

While Lathe is a nice place, I'd practice putting a colony on the Mun or Minmus first.  Jool's a really long way to go to realize you really borked up the design. 

[bigcalm]

Building a colony isn't a mission for the newcomer - practice sending probes elsewhere first.  And whilst Laythe is a great place to have a base, it's also pretty tough (see the mission linked in my signature) - a base on Pol or Vall is a better choice for access to the rest of the Joolian system. 

[The Aziz]

There are ways (m o d s) to build anything you want in place, only things you need to send there are materials and someone to build it. Only you can decide if it's worth it or not.

[Enceos]

I didn't go far yet, my kerbals started experimenting with full scale colonization on Minmus. I use MKS, EPL and USI Life Support mods.

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

14 hours ago, The Aziz said:There are ways (m o d s) to build anything you want in place, only things you need to send there are materials and someone to build it.

I would like to keep thing stock, I might try out some mods when I am more experienced.

On 6/17/2018 at 4:02 AM, bigcalm said:

Building a colony isn't a mission for the newcomer - practice sending probes elsewhere first.

Probes are booooooooooring. But ok, I will try.

On 6/17/2018 at 5:38 AM, Enceos said:

I didn't go far yet, my kerbals started experimenting with full scale colonization on Minmus. I use MKS, EPL and USI Life Support mods.

That looks cool!

 

Thanks for the help with building a colony! I appreciate all your help and suggestions. 

Thank you,

-Imperial Star Destroyer

 

[KerikBalm]

Are you using mods or stock? If you are using mods, which ones?

As far as stock: all a "colony" really needs is space for kerbals.

To have a practical colony serving a purpose, you'd want a spot with ore, some drills, an ISRU converter, and some power. Ideally its a place where you can easily get to orbit and back (or vice versa) in a single stage (which pretty much rules out the surface of Eve)... or at least down to the surface from orbit in a single stage (but not necessarily back). This makes Tylo not very desirable, as your colony won't be able to supply much fuel to other craft.

A colony on Mun or Minmus that serves to produce fuel is a good idea.

If you're doing career mode, a science lab and something to collect science is also a good idea. You can deploy your surface base in many ways, but I like to use mk3 cargobays and ramps.

Here's an example of a surface base I have on a scaled up Mun:

I'm going to add a greenhouse to it to allow it to produce food, and water drills to it, but that's not stock, and something like this will serve indefinitely if you don't play with life support mods.

Here's another modular base, deployable and recoverable from/to mk3 cargobays, that I was testing:

doing them in pieces can solve the problem of trying to land a big thing all at once:

^all stock except for the cylindrical TAC-life support parts

I have since made designs that don't involve part clipping, but if you go with rover-modules, you should get used to tweaking part placement with the rotate and offset tools

Test the designs before sending them, or you may find a lot of wasted effort when docking ports don't quite line up

Also, I'd recommend the Kerbal Plantary Base Systems mod/partpack.

[Enceos]

@Hummingbird Aerospace I also suggest KIS and KAS mods, they help a lot with attaching parts together in space. My stations and bases would have numerous docking ports and would be a big hassle to build without these mods. Reduction of part count increases game performance.

[Freshmeat]

Not to forget Konstruction to weld your parts together in situ.

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

19 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

 

 

Why is there a launchpad on the moon? Is it making history or an easteregg?

[KerikBalm]

Making history - I did say that pic was from testing.

It was for testing the modules before I actually sent them to Mun or another low-ish gravity place. Testing on Kerbin is nice, but sometimes the differences in gravity mean that suspensions will flex more or less, and the docking ports may not quite line up the same way on Kerbin as they do on Mun.

Before making history, I'd use a sandbox save and the cheat menu to put them in orbit, land them, assemble them, etc, but making history makes it easier.. I just made a really simple "mission" that I just use for testing on Mun.

The other pics where you can see the dropship with the mk3 cargobay and ramp were completely legitimate with no use of making history features of the alt-f12 cheat menu... and the only mods used were life support and Kopernicus to change up the KSP system (mainly making it 3x bigger) making everything more challenging than stock.

Edited June 19, 2018 by KerikBalm