Let the base-building begin!

[MPDerksen]

1.  when a mission refers to a station (orbital or base) that "supports 5 Kerbals", does it mean total number of seats?  Could be as lame as 5 lander cans docked together, right?  

2.  I assume you cannot dock/mate/attach parts once they are landed, so whatever I construct has to be built in Mun orbit, then descended as a single entity?  Is there a tutorial on this?

3.  Is it typical to build a station with a probe core and some RCS control?  

4.  Do we like having fuel storage in orbit, but fairly useless on a base station?

(I think you can tell what stage of Career mode I'm in)  

[GuyWithGlasses]

26 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

1.  when a mission refers to a station (orbital or base) that "supports 5 Kerbals", does it mean total number of seats?  Could be as lame as 5 lander cans docked together, right?  

2.  I assume you cannot dock/mate/attach parts once they are landed, so whatever I construct has to be built in Mun orbit, then descended as a single entity?  Is there a tutorial on this?

3.  Is it typical to build a station with a probe core and some RCS control?  

4.  Do we like having fuel storage in orbit, but fairly useless on a base station?

(I think you can tell what stage of Career mode I'm in)  

 

1. Yes, even you can launch different parts and dock afterwars (but all the launches must have been done after you accept the contract).

2. No, you can docked landed: in sotck putting wheels to the parts and docking (but its a bit tricky). Another pleople uses KIS/KAS mod and uses KIS pipes to glue the parts together,

3. Yeah, and a laboratory for gathering sciencie, for example.

4. For me, yes. But its your playstile what matters. For example, my fuel depot scheme is:

 Gather the ore in mum: I prefer mum against mimmus cause  the time travel from mum to kerbin is lower. As Im very bad at precision landing, my ship gathers ore and convert to LF+ox, and rendervous with my low-orbit base in mum. From the mum (with another ship) I tranfer the fuel to my LKO base.

Other players do it totally different; you put an ore converter in the surface and all the ships that have to refuel, lands near and are filled with the surface ore converter.

 

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by GuyWithGlasses

[Lunar Sea]

1. Yes, total seats inside any combination of modules that hold kerbals (command modules, passenger containers, science lab). It could totally be 5 lander cans attached together.

2. No, you can totally dock on the surface, but docking in a g-field is much trickier than in orbit. Definitely advanced kerbaling at that point. Otherwise, yes, you'd have to assemble in orbit and land the whole thing.

3. Definitely, it's nice to be able to manage the station when it's unpopulated.

4. If you get to the point where rovers and other craft can dock to the base it is definitely not useless.

[Snark]

20 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

1.  when a mission refers to a station (orbital or base) that "supports 5 Kerbals", does it mean total number of seats?  Could be as lame as 5 lander cans docked together, right?

Correct.  Total seating capacity.

Note that it only cares about capacity, not having crew, unless the contract explicitly says "have a pilot on the station" or whatever.  If the contract doesn't specify crew, you don't need any-- you could launch it uncrewed and it would still satisfy the condition. 

21 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

2.  I assume you cannot dock/mate/attach parts once they are landed, so whatever I construct has to be built in Mun orbit, then descended as a single entity?

It doesn't care whether they're in orbit or landed or whatever, at least in terms of where construction takes place.  For example, if it says "have a base with capacity 9 kerbals landed on Minmus", that means all of the following are examples of what would work:

• You build a single-piece ship with 9 crew slots, and land it on Minmus.
• You build a 5-seat ship, launch it to orbit.  You build a 4-seat ship, launch it to orbit.  Dock them together in orbit, then land in one piece on Minmus.
• You build a 5-seat ship, land it on Minmus.  You build a 4-seat ship, land it on Minmus next to the first ship.  Dock them together as they're sitting on the surface.

In short:  all the contract cares about is that you have a ship that satisfies all the current conditions-- not how you got there.  (Just make sure, if you're docking things together, that all the pieces involved were launched after you accepted the contract; otherwise it won't count, because when you dock things together, all the parts have their timestamp reset to the oldest among them.)

24 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

3.  Is it typical to build a station with a probe core and some RCS control?

It's totally up to you, depending on what your intentions are.

For example, I nearly always put a probe core on mine, but don't put RCS on it.  That's because I'm usually just building it so I can rake in the cash from a station contract, and I don't have any use for the station once I've gotten the payoff (other than perhaps using it as a comm relay).  So I want to launch it uncrewed (so I don't have the hassle of retrieving it), which means putting a probe core on-- and I don't put RCS on, because I have no intention of ever docking anything to it.

On the other hand, if I'm ever building a station that I actually want to use, as a station?  Then yes, I always put a probe core on (just so I have the ability to maneuver when it has nobody aboard), and I usually put RCS on it because it might come in handy at some point.

So it's all a matter of what your intended purpose for the station is.

28 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

4.  Do we like having fuel storage in orbit, but fairly useless on a base station?

Again, totally depends on what your purpose is.  Different players have different play styles.  When I do use space stations, "orbital fuel depot" is my most common use, so I usually put _lots_ of storage space on those.

As for surface bases, mostly I don't bother with them.  When I do build with them, it's usually because I'm using some mod that facilitates them (like KAS) and/or gives them some purpose (like Extraplanetary Launchpads)-- in which case I do give them fuel tankage, depending on purpose and usage.  (A mining base that can refuel ships that land there has a good use for fuel tanks-- build up the supply locally.)