TWB: The World Beyond - colonizing Shima (Traverse System)

[Cataclism]

 

Hello, guys!
No, this is NOT a review and, even if the developers of the mod hadn´t said it´s not yet for a review, I wouldn´t dare to create one.
I just felt like sharing such a fun experience I´ve had, now that I´ve finally been able to try "TheWorld Beyond" on KSP 1.5.1. I lived it!, and I still haven´t tried the advanced textures pack.
I believe this is the right place to post, so I won´t mess the MOD thread, as well as don´t mess the "What did you do in KSP today".
Here´s is the small, first report.
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Oh, I forgot to say: despite the fact I ALWAYS use infinite propellent when I travel beyond Duna/Eve (mostly due to lack of a better computer for bigger vessels), before the first travel I´ve only cheated a couple of probes to Dawn, just to simulate how would a stock probe/small vessel perform in that system.
My first expedition has just been launched to Traverse system (I liked everything I´ve red about this system on the tracking station´s information!), with a few kerbonauts and a dozen kind of probes to eject towards several planets.
And I´ve finally noticed that Dawn system actually DOES appear both in Eng.Redux and Alarm Clock - that´s great! The transfer window seems to happen twice an year.

I had stabilished a space station in the outer orbit of Jool, to use it as a preparation-and-jump point to Dawn/Traverse, but I don´t think was a good idea: the burns I´ve been doing end up to be cheaper AND quicker startin from a high orbit on Kerbin.
Maybe it would be better to set a space station around the sun itself, so the inclination would not change at the burning time, which use to be a problem when one leaves a planet´s Sphere Of Influence.

Bellow are my numbers (approximately), thus far.

Expedition to Traverse System (the official and first; there are two others already burning away from Kerbol by now).
-Kerbin orbit: ~300Km;
-First interstellar burn: ~7,600m/s (a single transfer burn, no Oberth, calculated with help of Porkchop selection by MechJeb, at the suggested transfer window [Alarm clock AND Engineer redux], which was 140 days away);
-First adjustment burn to Dawn: ~600m/s (250 days later, at 31.5MKm from Kerbol [looking from above, it would be just at Dres circumference, but 42degrees inclined {the relative inclination of Dawn}]);
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-40 years (yeah, FORTY YEARS!) later...
--Another correction burn: ~2,250m/s(Prograde 1315Dv, Normal 1770Dv, Anti-Radial 435Dv [-ish])
---This last burn (which I haven´t reached yet) is supposed to give me a Dawn encounter in 124 years and, if I don´t perform any other burn, a Traverse encounter 10 years later, which will took me to a 138MKm Traverse-periapsis half year later.

A lot of time for snacks, books and 'schnaps'.
Let´s wait and have fun!
(As I don´t use any kind of survivabillity mods, I HOPE no one dies - nor get crazy and try to eat each other - during the journey)

 

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A few real-time hours later....
Well, I´ve spent more than SIX HOURS dedicated to time warping and adjusting maneuvers.... and still hadn´t reached the first Dawn Periapsis, after which I´d still need ten years-ish traveling towards Traverse.  But, I´ve got it!
Considering the exhaustive process, the Kerbonauts - whom had everything they needed stocked on the big ship, enough to survive for several years, decided to start a new home on the Traverse System - specially considering the extreme difficulty on traveling from Kerbal´s sun to Dawn´s systems.


The first planet they visited - the gorgeous Shima! -  has many moons, as at least one of them - Pooh - has the conditions for sustaining their lives. As I believe the Kerbals do not need any kind of... "interaction" to reproduce, due to their original main looks, and maybe they just replicate themselves, something like the amoebas :-D , they´re now, officially, a new-breed-to-be, which should be known as the "Shimals" (or "Shimalings").

As the Shima´s moons SOIs seem not to allow a stationary orbit, I´ll  let a complete space station on the highest circumference as possible, and MAYBE a ground station. So, every time I need to carry science back or upgrade the kerbals.... sorry, the shimals´ experience (not only thru the LAB), I´ll bring´em to the Pooh´s orbit, then cheat-orbit to Kerbin, land, upgrade/research and, when they need to fly again, lift-off from Kerbin and cheat-rendezvous them back to Shima.

If you guys don´t mind, I´ll try and keep this updated every week, so to encourage people on Earth (and Kerbal!) to discover those beyond systems.

 

 

 

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Edited November 20, 2018 by Cataclism

[The-Doctor]

Following

[Cataclism]

You know, I believe I´ve made it perfectly clear how astonished I was regarding this mod - its numbers, creativity, visuals, well-written and complete information, etc... But I´m even more surprised now that I´ve started to perform science on the various biomes on every celestial body that the Shimals or the probes visit.
The ideas for the biome´s names are awesome! These people put some serious brains on it; GREAT!
One could, I believe, greatly improve their brain capacity on trying to memorize every single name of the biomes they explore. ;-D

 

Crannel has some shallow waters. Can´t wait to send manned vessels down there!

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The Interstellar_Expedition_Delta was sent to Overture.
The exploration of Overture´s surroundings was exhaustive! Lesser orbited than Shima, Overture seems to me like a more selfish planet: it takes good care in a closer look of its orbiting moon(s).
Beautiful, awesome! No changes on that. But a misplaced burn to its neighborhoods may be... unadvised.
First things first: I believe the system "Overture-> Collide-> Parallel-> Tack" is the most prettiest ans funniest mess of orbital bodies I´ve ever seen!
While I was wondering why would one of the moons be called "Collide", my probe suddenly explodes during the autowarp, just at the time it reached Collide´s high space! After two retries (quickload), I realized the problem was the same as is many of other "strange" happenings in my gameplays: a bloody-moron for pilot.
Collide´s showed me a very cool-badass way to explain its name: its moon, "Parallel" (yeah! Parallel is a moon of Collide [which is already a moon], but has ALSO its own moon, named "Tack"!!!), its moon has an extremely huge chance to hit unaware vessels or even probes that get capture by Collide´s SOI. Maybe is that, or maybe it´s just some kind of bug if you timewarp too fast into there. The truth is: be cautious, be patient, or be blown.
My first successful attempt to reach Collide´s SOI made me feel like I was a Hydrogen atom inside a nuclear reactor: surrounded by possibilities of crashing and smashing everywhere \o/ !

 

Well, the Interstellar_Expedition_Gamma has arrived at "Rin", the second to last moon of the planet "Sora". Beautiful! Beautiful planet, beautiful moon, as usual for this mod *.* .
The kind of unusual thing that I didn´t expect about this celestial body is its incredible low space diameter: 8,000Km. As I maneuvered the adjustments burn to planning on stop my timewarp and circularize at a 3,000Km periapsis - where I expected to perform some high space science -, I still haven´t studied Rin´s high orbit.
A big area to perform all kinds of science and S.C.A.N. maneuvers, though. Cool!

Time to land at Rin, a small gas moon (cool!!!). In better words, time to DIVE in Rin (somehow like Jool, thru which I´ve never sent down a suicide probe). The planet has a violent and heavy atmosphere. I let the probe going down by its own willing (after it has opened the parachutes), but at the 600meters high, I decided to cut the chutes and leave it at a free fall, ´cause the speed was bellow 2m/s. The pressure was tremendous (almost 12ATM [more than 1,100KPa]). You can somehow follow its descent thru the screenshots.

Thank krakeness for the infinite propellent! An inclination change from 99 to 0 degrees at Sora´s vicinity (495Km high [the atmosphere begins at 100Km]) would take more than 6,200Dv! The burn would take too long due to my engine mount (a 'Skipper' in the middle and four 'Skiffs' surrounding it), so I´ve decided first raise the apoapsis and just then change the inclination (to allow me to travel around Sora´s space).



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A quick exploration thru the three moons of Rin: "Mabel" (the inner-atmospheric one), "Ranco" and "Ori, both small  and with a nice silver/shinning-white surface. As they´ve said in the moon´s description: you HAVE to bring sunglasses!
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So, I´ve reached Sora´s inner moon, "Mabel". A small, Kerbin-alike atmospheric celestial body, with all those kinds of natural enviroments known back there, in Kerbin.

I´ve paused my play at Mabel, for now. After I perform a little more explorations on Sora´s moons, I hope to bring and "set camp" my new space station, built almost entirely with SSTU (low-parts cost) and specially for this use.
As my "new-Kerbin" is the planet Shima, the sp.station´s already orbiting it, in a circumference outside all its moons, waiting for the chosen target.
Mabel is probably my best choice: with friendly 10Km atmosphere - and 1ATM gravity -, easy to reach and easy to travel from. It seems to me just like Minmus, but with a Kerbin-alike enviroment.

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Both Interstellar_Explorers - Delta and Gamma - are on their way back to Shima Space Station (a few hundred days of travel ahead). Time for the crew to take a break and study all that accumulated science that wasn´t able to be transmited back.
Explorer_Kappa is still a few dozens days of reaching its destination, the planet "Amaterasu".
In the meanwhile, I need to retire the current set for these explorers. I need a more effective design, which is not only both faster AND quicker, but can also carry at least six landing and S.C.A.N. probes within.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Cataclism

[Cataclism]

Landing over the mysterious "Sector#1" biome.... O.ô

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The new, custom-made SSTU-parts SpaceStation (6 kerbonauts at main capsule, 3scientists at the 1,000 scienceLAB and 50 pax space on the deployable and rotatory station)

Edited November 25, 2018 by Cataclism

[Cataclism]

I should have mentioned it before.
As for information, in this gameplay I´m going in my first Science mode. I realised the quantity of active vessels (at tracking station) seems to permanently counts in the calculations, so at the time I had more than 40 comm/relay sats in my previous career mode, besides a dozen space stations, the game was TOO slow.
So, when I have decided to begin the interstellar travel, I used a little bit of that cheat-role-play: I´ve set all the sattelite´s range modifiers to the maximum, and removed all kinds of blocking for the signals (all of this in the settings menu) - except for the plasma one, which is cool and the most realistic one. I know it´s not the same but, considering that my previous network was running pretty smooth and I hardly had any place with no communication signals, this new choice may simulate that, without all the weight of those heavy-parts sattelites.
...
For those whom like the science itself, I must say that the Traverse system is very, very generous! I don´t carry too many equipments on my probes: mistery goo, gravmax, two-hot, barometer, magneticBoom (DMagic) and the two main SCANsat ones. Besides, I´ve got two active manned space LABs, which must return me something around 2,500 science/year each.
That said, when I left "Kerbol" towards Dawn/Traverse I had 55,000 science to spare, and almost the entirely Community TechTree researched. Now that more than eight years have passed on Traverse, I completed the R&D and still have more than 130,000 science.

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This sunday, the Interstellar Explorer Kappa has arrived at Anan... Amerat... Amaet... A-M-A-T-E-R-A-S-U! "Amaterasu"! After many, many days of travel, it´s the first visited planet by this expedition, after Shima, of course - the motherplanet of our new home, the moon called Pooh.
Considering the other two expeditions, who have explored Sora and Overture (and now are setting their return to Shima), Expedition Kappa would seem to have many less work to do (Amaterasu has only two moons - "Hakurei" and "Jeanne"). Big mistake to think like that!
All the three celestial bodies have atmosphere, so I was planning on the shimals to try to expend a little more time landind, unlike the other two teams, that have keeped their orbits and waited to recover the signal from the landed probes. The name "Amaterasu" seems powerful to me, and one of the first conclusions I had when I arrived at it was "damn, I should have picked THIS as our new home!". It would have been a bad idea...
The planet itself is showing its frightful side: I´ve already blown the two landing probes I had brought within the cargo bay, due to the strong 1,21g gravity (ASL) and a very heavy 1,5atm pressure, which means the probes could barely reach the upper kilometers of the atmosphere before to explode. Then, I´ve finally managed to land a third one. This planet will need a long, strategic time on planning its further exploration...

...

Traverse is part of some kind of a quad-system, but it´s a binary system itself. At Amaterasu´s surface, the closest to Traverse planet I´ve had visited so far, was now possible to see "Fragment", the little red star which forms the binary with Traverse.

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Jeanne is so good-looking, easy to land and full of natural biomes, that I´ve decided it´s going to be the place for our new space station (the one´s already waiting around Shima).

 

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Arriving at "Promise", one of the inner planets of Traverse, I decided to not circularize it and use the current re-adjusted burn to go and meet "Raem", the single moon of this planet. Cool, man! If the spread-word about Minmus tells about a giant ice cream, what would kerbals say about Raem?
"Does the concept of a so-called ""twin-moon"" even make sense?" A good, goooood place to pay a visit.
I´ve made a mistake with my first probe and ejected the engines before the landing. I was afraid the thin atmosphere would not be enough to hold the chutes and the probe would just smash into the ground. My calculations, as usuallly happens, were wrong. Using a big Mk16-XL, one Mk2 and two drogues Mk12, the landing was pretty smooth and clean, hiting the surface at only 4m/s.
A bunch hotter than the previous visited space bodies, Raem, much closer to the sun allows us a nice view from the couple-sun, "Fragment", over the sky.
Again, I like the way the biomes were named. I mean, the moon is called RAEM, but the ones on the blue surface are REM (Rem Lowland, Rem Dunes, etc.), while the ones on the pink side are RAM (Ram Fields, Ram Dunes, etc.).
I´ve also noticed a few high-holes from the air, which made me remember the "Mohohohohole", that crazy, white mouth down there, in Moho. They must be further investigate by a future manned expedition...

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From Raem, we burned back to its motherplanet, Promise. So blue... so much water... nice! I shall bring some creatures to swimm in Promise. I prom... swear that!
Promise has shallow waters too, just like I´ve seen in Crannel. Thank you, developers! Weeeeeee!!! \o/
In the pictures, you may notice that the three "stars" are aligned in the sky. That means "you´re going down". :-P
Landings, landings, than diving the empty probe carrier into its final moments. But, as I still had an avaiable probe, I´ve changed my mind and sent it straight to the sun, just to see how close to Traverse OR Fragment it can get.
Time to pay attention to the other probe-probers.

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Status: planning to build a waterpark on Daedalus and a "magma resort" on Seraph. :-D

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Today, another of the probes´ prober has reached "Seraph", the single moon of "Adeon". Wow! This moon is so red and hot... it matches the vessel textures!
And, again, I enjoyed a LOT the description of this piece of rock. Some doubts of the far Shima´s scientists must be solved with the probes, as the high space temperature is around 260K, while it seems to increase beyond 380K at the the surface!
Sending the first probe... and It "luckly" ends up landing on a very high slope. For a few meters, MechJeb and the parachutes have holded it up and steady, on a 1m/s descent. Then, the chutes have been auto-cutted, and the probe began a free fall rolling, exploding along the hill until a single structural piece remained intact. Which was good enough: I´ve found more shallow... "waters"? Or lava? Thrilling!!!

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Stormy skies on Kerbal (which now is running as if it was Pooh....) and the busy schedule for the Traverse probes.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Cataclism

[Cataclism]

While arriving at the two inner-most planets - "Labyrinth" and "Bishamonten" -, those whom haven´t mastered their journeys towards planets like Moho (me, for instance...) will pay the price for that. Despite I´ve used the average window transfer (which is quite often), I´ve performed a single bunr, while it would probably better to have burned to periapsis Traverse (the sun) as a middle-course, and just then to perform another lowering orbit burn to reach the planets instead.
To make it worse, in the middle journeys I´ve performed some corrective burnings, which must have increased my orbital velocities even more (I prefer to reach the celestial bodies at an angle around 80 degrees, instead of the equator, cause that way the SCANsats will have a better amplitude and radius thru every orbital period).
Circularizing both the planets´ high orbits took me a LOT of fuel and time: above 8,500Dv and more than 4,500Dv; Again, "Viva la gasolina infinita!"

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Very nice places to go, anyway! But I probably won´t set any bases in that direction, regardless all the cool stuff one can see over there, for the same reason I´ve ever disliked to travel to Moho: I like much better to travel away from the sun. It may take a longer time, but the burnings are easier and more precise.

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Matterhorn, instead, have attracted me very much! But its upper atmosphere is a little more dangerous than the other ones I´ve explored. Still, as I´m already setting a space station and base on the nearby space, it won´t be hard to pay a visit more often.

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While attempting to land on Labyrinth, there is Fragment trying to eclispe Traverse!
In the tracking station, the list of the current flights: the lander symbols are not actual lander, but probes showing ideal places for an eventual future base.
 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Cataclism

[Cataclism]

Well, our probes have finally reached "Daedalus" and "Odin", the outter planets in Traverse system. In fact, there is another celestial body, which is a crazy asteroid/planet that has an amazingly hyperbolic orbit, and crosses thru Overture every... 1,200 years! It´s so, so far away, under both bigs excentricity and inclination, that I won´t even bother about it.
Let the 10th Shimals generation deal with it on the far future.
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Daedalus and Odin are both alone in their spaces, with no moons attached. Both under a lot ice, and full of ice mountains everywhere. Cool!
Maybe our sponsors, the companies that have spent a BIG money to dispatch the kerbals out here, will like the idea of bringing out here the Winter-K´ex Games!
Is really nice to compare both the extremes of Traverse: Adeon, full of hot and sanded lakes - and beaches, why not? -, and Odin, full of frosty shores and... beaches, as well. Personally, I´d ratter remain on the ice!

....
I´ve propably missed two or three celestial bodies, but I believe more than 95% of the Traverse binary system has been visited. No, NOT explored, ´cause only about 30 probes have been sent down thru the surfaces.
Now, it´s time to set up a few space stations, on strategical planets/moons, gather all the acquired knowledge and begin the colonizing. I´m pretty sure it will take more than 50 Kerbal-years to just have a basic system properly working on a few planets, but that´s gonna be fun.
Let´s get to work!

[Cataclism]

Landing on Jeanne, the main moon of Amaterasu.

 

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After a few failures, a almost-successful landing on Matterhorn. Heavy gravity and thick atmosphere there, but my favorite planet so far, though. I was never good descending into Eve, but I believe those whom´ve mastered that stock planet should do fine here.

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by Cataclism

[Cataclism]

A much easier landing on Jeanne:
 

 

[Cataclism]

Hello, travellers!
Two videos of my latest landings on Jeanne and Pooh. As my previous "base" was a loss, landed in a very bad, inclined spot, I had to rescue my crew back to the space station and plan a new base down there. Some of the screenshots show the basic procedure just to replace the main relay antennae, which had misteriously disappeared after I reloaded the game.
So, I´ve just downloaded Umbra Space technologies (all that Kolonization and good stuff), which I had never tested ´cause my previous installation on 1.4.5 wasn´t properly working. I´ve decided to build some kind of Ranger/Karibou base - and I like it!
But, here a small, old-fashioned advice: remember to READ the manuals. I always use to do but, in this case, in my eager to test that very cool new stuff, I didn´t pay enough attention to those lines which clearly say that the Ranger inflatables WILL recquire some materials to even deploy, as well and engineer on EVA.
As I´ve turned off the option "consume materials" on the settings, AND the deployment seemed to be properly working on the VAB, I was stupid enough to NOT test these functions outside BEFORE the maiden launch. And so, I´ve got screwed!
Now, with nothing much to do in agriculture and workshop fields, those cretin kerbonauts will have to try and spend some time fishing on the relatively nearby lakes of Jeanne I´ve seen from low flight. Bummer!
So, I may hear "hoy!, why don´t you just send a resupply flight?". Well, I could never - EVER! - perform a successful landing near the points I´d wish in any atmospheric planets, and I doubt I could do it in Jeanne. I may try downloading some SSTO cargo planes and see what happes, as I suck as an aeroplane constructor.

[Cataclism]

Hello!
As most of the planets and moons I intend to explore on TRaverse System are atmospherics, it´s time for a change: I´m a big fan of moon, with no atmosphere. Now, I´ll need an elevator for use on atmospheric bases.
 

 

[Cataclism]

Hello, there!

Taking a little more serious the "colonization", and also exploring a little better the hot, lava world called Seraph. Very cool!

[AstralWither]

ignore this post

Edited December 12, 2018 by AstralWither

[Cataclism]

Hello!
Oh, had I fixed all the issues and glitches between the visual enhancements mods before, there would be a set of even better pictures than those above!

Here come a few more, with EVE + Scatterer + SVE properly working with the TWB visuals pack.