Starwind - Ended (due to the Kraken)

[fulgur]

The Origin of this Thread (BORING INFORMATION):

I wanted to post about my new career mode save with both MH and BG, as I thought we (that is, me + whoever decides to read my undoubtably poorly written mission report) would find it interesting to learn about the application of the robotic parts to career mode. I was going to post about it earlier, but I thought it might be nice to write about it a little. So I made up a vague storyline referencing something (if you get it I will give you rep) and somehow, I ended up with a not-half-bad graphic-novel style mission report.

Mods List (SLIGHTLY LESS BORING INFORMATION):

I am playing on Moderate difficulty (one harder than Normal), mainly meaning that I have to pay to research a part once I have unlocked it with science. I am also playing with a few mods installed. Here are the ones which impact gameplay:

- Both DLCs

- KAC, Transfer Window Planner, KER and Trajectories: Essential for any KSP play-through.

- Stock Visual Enhancements and Scatterer: So my pictures are less boring.

- KAS and KIS: In order that I can flat-pack rovers.

- SCANsat: To give more purpose to probes and to add a little challenge. Also because I like the maps.

- ReStock and ReStock+ : To make the parts look better (in my opinion) and to add some parts I feel were missing.

- USI-LS: In order to make longer duration missions harder (but not impossible).

- K&K Planetary Base Systems - they have a nice Extraplanetary Launchpad and an Algae Farm which turns Ore -> Fertiliser (+Mulch -> Supplies).

- OSE Workshop - to produce spare parts if, like I invariably will, I forget antennae.

- MIP (Modification of Inner Planets) - To add a couple more destinations. You will see them as the story progresses.

- NF Solar and Electrics - Because USI-LS makes me use a load more EC. And (stock) solar doesn't work so well at Jool. Also NF Solar is *really cool*.

- Heat Control - Because NF Electric makes loads of extra heat.

- MkIV Spaceplanes - I HATE ROCKETS and now I can fly bigger payloads into orbit without them.

- Kerbal Atomics - I love these 2.5m NERVAs.

I am also imposing the restriction upon myself that there may only be 1 rocket launched per day.

Chapter List (NOT VERY BORING INFORMATION):

Links to Imgur albums. Only finished chapters included.

Chapter 1 - Professional Kludges

Chapter 2 - I Need to Do More Calculations

Chapter 3 - Designing and Refining

The beginning! (NOT VERY BORING STORY):

Tune in next time for me going to the Mun and getting orbital science. Or don't. (Tune in, that is. I will be getting the orbital science anyway, and you cannot stop me. Muahahahaha.)

 

Edited September 15, 2019 by fulgur
must do more calcs

[fulgur]

Sorry for the double post, but as there was not a reply...

Today, we go on a VERY BORING tourist flight!

Luckily for my reader (in the singular), I limited it to 1 page. Then I did a slightly-less-boring Munar flyby.

Tune in next time for a Munar Probe!

[fulgur]

Hello, non-existent readers of this thread, and welcome to another couple of pages of Contracts, Contracts and Yet More Contracts.

Firstly, a contract for ScanSat:

Next, a couple of tourists:

Now off to rescue 2 stranded kerbals (how did they even get to orbit? We only did it half a solar-eclipse-cycle (hereafter munth) ago!)

And now a taster of What I Will Have Done By Tomorrow But Am Too Lazy To Do Tonight:

I wanted Gene to make a joke about melted cheese in the last panel, but there was not enough space.

Tune in tomorrow for a Mun mission! And then tomorrow for a Mun lander! And also tomorrow there will be a docking! But not today, I need to get the port alignment indicator (you know, the one which #ShouldBeStock).

[KerballingSmasher]

ME LIKE STORY. Story GOOD.

[fulgur]

Hello, reader (voc. sing.), and here are 2 more pages!

I have done more flying, rendez-vous-ing and docking the craft together and flying them into Low Munar Orbit. With all 3 recyclers drawing a combined total of 1.5EC/s, I have enough snacks to leave them there for 37 more days if I want. I should have done more panels, but I ran out of time.

(The booster on these craft is a load of 1.875m tanks, with 7x Torch 0.625m lifter engines from Restock+, as I don't have any 1.875m engines unlocked yet. Restock+ is a collection of parts which are missing from stock. Restock+ is really useful for my Slightly Modded (TM) career mode.)

Tune in next time for a Mun landing!

[KerballingSmasher]

Nice! TO THE MUN!

[fulgur]

Unfortunately, I appear to have a bug or something which does not allow me to transfer fuel. Anyone know if that's a feature of a mod I use, or whether it is merely a bug?

I do have enough fuel to do several biomes, but as I have limited √s, I really wanted my craft to be reusable, like I designed them to be.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot that Resource Transfer is unlocked by upgrading R&D for some reason.

Edited June 27, 2019 by fulgur

[fulgur]

I've managed to make these panels earlier today, as I was already in LMO and just had to land.

If anyone decides to look through this because it has BG in the title and they want to know about their career mode, here is something I found out today:

You can pick up bits of Mun Stone etc. without the R&D upgrade required to take surface samples!

Anyway, tune in next time for Return to Kerbin, and possibly even Minmus!

[Shmauck]

I just love the comic strip way of telling your story!

[fulgur]

Actually, I stole it from the Kerbfleet series by Kuzzter. With the same speech bubble colours and everything!

(Well, they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...)

[fulgur]

This morning I managed to make some more panels, detailing what I did last night after I posted the last update. Because, now I have two readers! (acc. pl.)

The beepy probe is actually intelligent. However it will not have the ability to speak until I stop finding it funny to have a beepy probe.

*** I hereby declare that this seems like a good point to end Chapter 1. Chapter 2 will culminate in a Space Station. Yay docking! ***

Tune in next time for boring rescues, a boring tanker flight (to the Cygnus I) and maybe a Minmus expedition! (Or maybe I will not be able to do that today and do it tomorrow instead.)

Edited June 28, 2019 by fulgur
I hereby declare this chapter finished!

[fulgur]

Can anyone diagnose this? I can transfer resources on both sides of the docking port, but they do not go through it. R&D level 2.

 

 

[fulgur]

Sorry, no update today. I'm designing something to go to Minmus, fill up several tonnes of empty Cygnus, and come home again. The new chapter, entitled I Need To Do More Calculations, is about me not checking the dV of a Cygnus with a Lyra attached. Plus, I can't use many 2.5m parts - significantly, I have zero engines - and so whatever I design for the tanker will have to be 1.875m. So all in all, I only managed to prepare 1 page of comic today. Sorry, my readers (nom. pl.).

[fulgur]

Managed to do it without a tanker, because character development.

(Actually, I wasn't aiming anywhere in particular. Minmus is very forgiving.)

I was going to leave you with the cliffhanger of How will they get home? but it's just Minmus. Barely 1000m/s from Kerbin. So instead, I left you with the cliffhanger of Will they burn up and die? I haven't tried it yet.

Tune in next time for them potentially burning up and dying! Also for the science experiment box potentially burning up and me being about a thousand science down.

[Nnimrod]

Are those mun rocks you found stock?

[fulgur]

They are from the Breaking Ground DLC. So yes, stock, but not vanilla.

[fulgur]

Today, we return! With Minmus science and an audacious new plan!

I am currently designing launchers for the component parts. I'm going to have to launch them empty and fill them up with lots of tanker flights. Meanwhile, I'm also probably going to go get some Science! in the background. I am also trying to develop a nuclear vessel which looks cool without long Mk2 tanks. I have 4 Munar rescues to take care of.

Tomorrow: Launches! More launches! Even more launches! Probably lots of docking!

[arctangent]

On 6/28/2019 at 5:51 PM, fulgur said:

I can transfer resources on both sides of the docking port, but they do not go through it

Dunno if you worked this out already, but it's a difficulty setting. "Resource Transfer Obeys Crossfeed Rules" is enabled by default on Moderate and Hard.

Edited July 2, 2019 by arctangent
correct name of difficulty seeing

[fulgur]

1. Thank you Arctangent! I already worked out that you cannot transfer through heat shields (as evidenced by the first page of Ch2).

2. I have not done much KSP playing today. My limited time was constrained by the fact that I had a vision! The future of this save! In short, I have a plot. And what a plot it is!

For this I will need:

Kopernicus - has not yet updated to 1.7.2, unlikely to do so due to the immanence of .3 - for the Outer Planets, Rald and maybe Valentine's Star

OSE Workshop - I haven't actually checked this, but it is likely to become important

Some mod which adds a way to turn Ore (or some other mine-able resource) into Fertiliser (Fertiliser + Mulch => Supplies), for self-sufficient bases.

Some construction mod, which adds some kind of launchpad. I don't want to go down the Extraplanetary Launchpads route as I don't want all the myriad resource streams.

Do any of my readers (gen. pl.) know any mods I could use?

EDIT: Okay, after re-reading my favourite mission reports' threads (specifically, the Jool Odyssey) and trawling through some discussions about the merits of various mods on other threads, I have downloaded some more mods! Hooray!

- K&K Planetary Bases - adds the Ore -> Fertiliser in the form of Algae Farms, and a cool launchpad texture. Also makes base building so much easier!

- OSE Workshop, to fix ships when I break their solar panels or (invariably) forget something important.

- Simple Construction - Adds the simple chain Ore -> Metal -> RocketParts, and also lets me launch stuff by my upcoming bases, via the aforementioned K&KPBS.

EDIT: I might be able to get something to you. I designed the Cygnus II (NERVA powered) to complete 'rescue in Munar orbit' contracts. So now I need to launch it and then launch a tanker. Because all 3000+ units LF plus about 1000 OX severely tax my new βροντη booster. That is, bronte, or thunder. Because the ships are Latin, so the boosters are Greek. Maybe the spaceplanes should be Sanskrit? (Don't worry, they won't be. I can't read Sanskrit. Yet.) EDIT EDIT: Nope. Not today.

Edited July 3, 2019 by fulgur

[demon_313]

Oh no... I found the end?...

Looking forward to more.

[fulgur]

I'm very sorry, but time has again defeated me. I have launched the Cygnus II and collected all the rescues from the Mun. Tomorrow, I will turn it into a couple of pages. I'm really pleased about how this ship has turned out, it has a pretty high TWR with the NERVAs and even higher with the Poodle.

Launched on D37. Tanker flight on D38, not shown because I hate tanker flights. I think this ship looks cool. What do you think?

EDIT: Time has defeated me again today, I have to go somewhere and won't be back until late. I have done only 1.5 pages. There will be some actual posting tomorrow! I promise!

EDIT EDIT: Also, here is what has been distracting me. Probes and rovers.

Trying to scan stuff on an incline, with only the small rover wheels. A couple of times, I flipped it upside down, and it STILL said 'Rover moved, aborting scan'. I managed to wedge the rover against the rocks eventually, grabbing some scans.

Edited July 6, 2019 by fulgur
time has defeated me. gotta do better next time.

[fulgur]

Finally! This thread is not dead! I merely got sidetracked sending mapping probes & rovers to the Mun & Minmus.

Tune in next time for... probably, a load of flights to make a station in a 250km orbit. Either that, or some pages about the Beepy Probe.

Edited July 6, 2019 by fulgur

[Fenisse]

Love the unique comic approach you've taken. Keep this up! 

[fulgur]

It's not exactly unique. To be precise, I copied it from Kerbfleet (DOB etc) including speech bubble colours. (Yellow for pilots, red for engineers, blue for scientists and green for Command pilots. White for Gene, Wernher etc, pale green for Mort, black for probes, purple for tourists...)

Although I didn't borrow the ranks from Kerbfleet, because they are American. And I am British (emphasizing Britain as a whole), so I am using British ranks.

Edited July 6, 2019 by fulgur

[fulgur]

Here is Beepy Probe! Beeping its way to transmit temperature readings across (one area of) the Mun, grabbing temp and pressure readings from the Lowlands, Midland Craters, Highlands and finally the Canyons. It was going to do the East Farside Crater, but driving for hours at 10m/s is really really boring. So I just grabbed enough science to unlock the beige rover wheels (the ones which ship with the retractable ones).

Also, anyone know if there are any more formations than just the stones, the Mun crater and the bigger Mun crater? Or the sandstone and the Olivine formation on Minmus?

Tune in next time for (finally) the construction of Weather Station!