What did you do in KSP1 today?

[DerekL1963]

If you've been following the Heisenberg mod or my Airship Adventures thread...  you've seen all the hard work from me and @Angel-125 (especially Angel in patching bugs in Heisenberg, a huge shout out !) over the last week-and-some.

Today:



Proof of concept.  You can fly a dirigible on Duna.

Still a ton of practical problems and mission techniques to sort out though....

[Geonovast]

Jeb crashed a plane into the SPH and accidentally invented perpetual motion.  (6 minutes later, it's still going)

edit: What is this place?

 

 

22 minutes of around, and around, and around and counting...

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by Geonovast

[qzgy]

Played more RSS/RO today. Its quite fun. HOWEVER - after maybe closing the game weirdly, the save is completely bugged out, with all the archived contracts being marked as "failed" and also all money/rep/science significantly lower. Oh and even funner, no reliable saves/backups (though I'll surely be making them from now on....). Then after attempting to fix the problem, whatever contract progression has happened is now erased.....

EDIT: - Using the debug menu I basically "recompleted" all the contracts I did (or at least think I did) and cheated myself back into the same position I was in...

I hope this doesn't happen again....

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by qzgy

[CatastrophicFailure]

@qzgy backups, backups, and more backups. I use a mod that’s constantly saving a rotating backup series, plus frequent “master saves” of my own. Saved my bacon more than once, super-modded installs like RO are really prone to clusterplotzing like that. 

And remember, it’s not cheating if the game cheats first. 

[qzgy]

1 minute ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@qzgy backups, backups, and more backups. I use a mod that’s constantly saving a rotating backup series, plus frequent “master saves” of my own. Saved my bacon more than once, super-modded installs like RO are really prone to clusterplotzing like that. 

And remember, it’s not cheating if the game cheats first. 

Fair enough point . Can you direct me to that auto backup mod?

Edited April 6, 2018 by qzgy

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Fair enough point . Can you direct me to that auto backup mod?

I’ll have to get back to you on that in the morning, the cat has installed himself on my lap for tonite so I won’t be going anywhere for a while.  

[qzgy]

Just now, CatastrophicFailure said:

I’ll have to get back to you on that in the morning, the cat has installed himself on my lap for tonite so I won’t be going anywhere for a while.  

Ok that works for me. Pet the cat for me willya?

[jack gamer]

I'm building a Duna base, its not finished yet, I only have one more to put.

[DunaRocketeer]

The first of hopefully three landings over the next couple of days: A Universal Transporter craft named Dan Dare touched down in a new Duna Lowlands location. I was surprised to the extent that this vehicle could fly in the Dunan atmosphere, as previous design iterations used much smaller wings. At one point, just before the final descent, it even climbed!

The Dan Dare will soon be joined by Steve Zodiac and Buck Rogers, which are currently in orbit of the planet. The three vehicles will set up the infrastructure needed for base construction before returning to the KSC runway.

[InterplanetJanet]

On 4/6/2018 at 1:45 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

And remember, it’s not cheating if the game cheats first. 

That is a Rule To Live By!

On 4/6/2018 at 1:51 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

I’ll have to get back to you on that in the morning, the cat has installed himself on my lap for tonite so I won’t be going anywhere for a while.  

Oh good, I'm not the only one who thinks their purpose in life is to be exothermic cat furniture.

ObTopical:

So spending six hours to play less than five minutes is Not Fun IMO... and then I tried a test of a couple of craft in the sandbox, and MechJeb assured me that he could aim them so they would make it to Minmus, which turned out to once again be a rank lie - does this sound like the middle of an abusive relationship to anyone else? - but I thought I could make it work with another further-out-than-Mun orbit before a correcting burn, and somewhere in the timewarping my craft slammed into the Mun at high speed without slowing the warp down enough to let me do anything - but it sure did pause for a long time, as if to show me just how f___ed things were going to get in the next physics/collision calculation. Then the splody happened (not even interesting, so no pix).

And I started wondering - probably during one of those loooooooong waits for KSP to finish digesting something, or to barf - "What would it be like to start a fresh game, with my about one hundred and ninety and I'm not exaggerating mods, now that I know how to make some of them work?" Then I thought, "Heck, it's not like I'm throwing the Big Game away! Let's go play a bit!"

So I started a new science game.

Then I found out I was actually missing the Mk1 command pod!  But I had ... {play dramatic_flourish_in_minor_chords.wav} other choices available....

{play dramatic_thunderclap.wav} {play maniacal_laughter_extended.wav}

----------------------------------- :D ------------------------------------------

Spoiler

 

Boo yai!

Sadly, the Tweakscaled Flea kept it 'sort of' controlled. Apparently it wasn't too balanced... and I didn't have fins.

It's just a shame that it doesn't seem to have "Crew Hatch" anywhere. But hey, that's why we have cardboard space boxes, right?

I also counted up, and my tech tree with current mods installed takes a grand total of 67,913 Science to completely unlock.  Um. This is gonna take a while.

Edited April 11, 2018 by InterplanetJanet
Image links from Imgur need '.png' to show up. Duh.

[Kebab Kerman]

Am I the only one who wants jet engine damage effects?

 

 

EDIT: I've been thinking, and what if somebody make an in-game modding thing? I mean, you can model and code your parts in-game! (end of edit)

Because I made a thread for it. Look at the newest reply, it has a better idea of what we could do.

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by Kebab Kerman

[MaxwellsDemon]

Managed to get a series of commsats into orbit.   Playing without the extra tracking stations, I ran into some interesting difficulties getting non-piloted things into orbit...  I'd go to circularize and I was already out of comm range!  The bootstrap solution seemed to be a large set of cheap commsats in a low (75 km) equatorial orbit, because I could get them circularized before they flew out of range.  The orbits aren't perfectly synched, so I launched more than strictly necessary to cover the otherwise-inevitable gaps.   It's clearly a stopgap solution until I can get some kerbosynchronous commsats up there, but at least that will be possible now!

After the volley of commsats, I sent Val on a victory lap.  Now that I've gotten to the point where I can have the basic solar panels, I'm not so dependent on battery life, so she set a "new" (for this campaign) endurance record of 3 days (18 hours).

Fulfilled a bunch of small contracts (mostly pad tests) to build up cash to upgrade R&D.  Scratching to get that 451K funds early in the campaign can be a chore...

[KingDominoIII]

Played some KSP this morning. Managed a sea landing of my stranded cargo spaceplane the Elongated Muskrat. A wing was flung out of the solar system at billions of meters per second.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Managed to get a series of commsats into orbit.   Playing without the extra tracking stations, I ran into some interesting difficulties getting non-piloted things into orbit...  I'd go to circularize and I was already out of comm range!  The bootstrap solution seemed to be a large set of cheap commsats in a low (75 km) equatorial orbit, because I could get them circularized before they flew out of range.  The orbits aren't perfectly synched, so I launched more than strictly necessary to cover the otherwise-inevitable gaps.   It's clearly a stopgap solution until I can get some kerbosynchronous commsats up there, but at least that will be possible now!

One trick is to launch a relay bird and circularize low (as you did), then the next time it's in comms increase it's AP (I usually went up to about 500km) then circularize again when the Ap is in comms.  Then do the same with a second one at about 490km (so it has a different orbital period).   Lather, rinse, repeat as many times as desired - I usually went with four birds.  Each subsequent bird gets easier as previous birds give wider/more comm windows.  The truly brave can be playing comm billiards with all the birds in orbit at once, leaping from one to the next as they come into comms...

Another trick is to add one or two relay birds in high (750-1000km) polar orbits to this constellation.

[MaxwellsDemon]

4 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

One trick is to launch a relay bird and circularize low (as you did), then the next time it's in comms increase it's AP

I considered this but decided against; the first-gen commsats are based on the Stayputnik, and making stable maneuvers without SAS is tricky.   Once I get the tech, I'll be putting up the second-generation commsats with better orbits.   (That's why I made 'em cheap and disposable.)

Edited April 6, 2018 by MaxwellsDemon

[HafCoJoe]

8 hours ago, DunaRocketeer said:

The first of hopefully three landings over the next couple of days: A Universal Transporter craft named Dan Dare touched down in a new Duna Lowlands location. I was surprised to the extent that this vehicle could fly in the Dunan atmosphere, as previous design iterations used much smaller wings. At one point, just before the final descent, it even climbed!

The Dan Dare will soon be joined by Steve Zodiac and Buck Rogers, which are currently in orbit of the planet. The three vehicles will set up the infrastructure needed for base construction before returning to the KSC runway.

Ha! Now those are some names I haven't heard in a while! Beautiful craft too, never thought I'd see a Skylon look so good landed vertically... Looks a tad like the tintin classic rocket, actually.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Avera9eJoe
spelling, accursed phone!

[HalcyonSon]

On 4/4/2018 at 6:46 PM, Cavscout74 said:

That looks like an absurd amount of fun.  I wonder if it's possible using stock parts?  Could probably get by with a pair of canards and separatrons...  Ion engines may be enough for something that small even in atmo...

Edited April 6, 2018 by HalcyonSon

[qzgy]

6 hours ago, InterplanetJanet said:

hating forum software at this moment  really hating it   give me plain HTML any day  Inside-outside or something.   With parachutes.  Boo yai!  That fifth rocket actually worked to aim it! Who needs RCS or gimbals or fins!

direct image links and/or bbcode are your friend here. no need for html.see a tiny image for tiny fonts.or just copy the image location. like i did with your gif.

Edited April 6, 2018 by qzgy

[CatastrophicFailure]

9 hours ago, qzgy said:

Fair enough point . Can you direct me to that auto backup mod?

Looked over my game folder, and I can’t find it. . I think such functionality may be in built to KSP now, buried somewhere in the settings. Will have to poke around when I can actually run the game. 

I have used SAVE in previous saves, and it does the same, maybe better, and works with 1.4.2. 

Sleepy cat tax:

Spoiler

 

[DunaRocketeer]

2 hours ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Ha! Now those are some names I haven't heard in a while! Beautiful craft too, never thought I'd see a Skylon look so good landed vertically... Looks a tad like the tintin classic rocket, actually.

Thanks! I come from a family of scifi nerds, so it was inevitable that I'd start naming things after all those old classics :). In many ways, I think KSP embodies the charm of those old stories. I think the wing pods of this ship have something of the XL5 about them!

[HafCoJoe]

41 minutes ago, DunaRocketeer said:

Thanks! I come from a family of scifi nerds, so it was inevitable that I'd start naming things after all those old classics :). In many ways, I think KSP embodies the charm of those old stories. I think the wing pods of this ship have something of the XL5 about them!

Man... That launch sequence will be forever in my memory

[DoctorDavinci]

 

[Geonovast]

Jeb tried to take this nuclear powered electric prop hybrid to orbit.  It didn't work.  Did better than expected, though.

Bailed out about 25k up.

[Norcalplanner]

Continued exploration in my 2.5x GPP career, in what is rapidly turning into the Karborundum Space Program.

We landed a probe on Geminus, getting a good view of Gratian.

 

That was followed by launching and fueling up a mid-size ESLD jump beacon.  It'll wait for the next transfer window to Gratian.

 

A large ESLD jump beacon, fully fueled with Karborundum, departed for Grannus at high speed.

 

Lastly, the Karborundum-powered Thalia Express crew transport arrived at Thalia...

 

... and eventually docked with the combined orbital station / Karborundum miner.  Now Galileo, Jade, Sigma, and Bobert have a way to get home.

[Ace in Space]

Today the first phase of the journey to Dres began. Things started getting pretty chaotic pretty fast. This was by far the most frantic section simply because, with everything in LKO, I didn't have a whole lot of time between maneuvers, and all these orbit lines and the tracking station's tendency to flash back and forth between MET and time to maneuver made it hard to see who was next. A couple crafts ended up overshooting their maneuvers. The good news is that being in LKO means getting another shot at the maneuver about a half hour later.

The chaos was amplified by the fact that I noticed possibly the dumbest mistake I've made in KSP so far, right in the middle of it, and had to make emergency corrections. I had apparently forgotten to refill one of the tanks on Anger's rover after draining it for delta-V calculation. The tank that was supposed to hold the majority of the travel stage fuel.

Thankfully I noticed this before it got too far away from Kerbin, so I was able to hastily bring it back down into a lopsided orbit instead of slingshotting off the Mun. Unfortunately, the rover isn't intended or equipped to re-enter the atmosphere, so it had to simply stay in orbit to wait for a rescue that couldn't be sent immediately because mission control was way too busy juggling the rest of this mess. Anger's reaction to this situation was predictable.

Meanwhile, spam from the Gilly Station contract was accumulating:

Once that had been cleared out (it really needs a "delete all" button), and everyone else was on their way to the Mun, Valentina was sent in Pendragon I to rescue Anger. It should be noted that while it is technically an SSTO, Pendragon I only barely gets into orbit. So she had to intercept the Kerbin Space Station to dock and refuel before she could even attempt to rendezvous with Anger. So it took a while before we got him back. On a side note, Val needed every last drop of fuel in the station, so having that failed fuel tank in orbit is going to come in handy for filling it back up.

By the time Anger had been recovered, everyone else was already flying by the Mun. With one exception.

We seem to have lost a Comm Sat. I am legitimately unsure whether its periapsis was too low and it crashed into the Mun, or if it just fell into the Shadow Realm. At this point, with the track record this space program has, these are equally probable scenarios.

But of the eleven crafts launched at once, with all the multitasking that entails, I'd say getting nine of them successfully onto a Munar flyby into Kerbolar orbit is pretty good, especially since no kerbals were lost. I intend to launch a new rover (with a full fuel tank this time) and a replacement comm sat tomorrow. In the mean time, because the delta-V budget is tight and I measured how much would be needed for each step, I'm actually tracking delta-v usage for each craft. My initially measured value for this step was 861m/s. All but one of them went a little over-budget on this round, but since many of them had additional fuel left over from their ascent stage, I don't see this as a problem. In all the chaos, I failed to write down how much delta-v comm sat 3 used, so I just averaged the other comm sats.

	Drill	Tank	Conv.	Hab.	Sci.	Com2	Com3	Com4	Com5
Initial Delta-V	5172+	6229-	5289	5211	5198+	5224+	5224+	5224+	5224+
Used This Step	870	878	870	858	866	878	???	875	875
Current Delta-V	4302+	5351-	4419	4353	4332+	4346+	4348+	4349+	4349+

Since the estimated amount of delta-v needed for the rest of the journey is 4306m/s, things look promising so far, despite the chaotic start. Given that the drill had some ascent fuel left over, I don't think it's actually dropped below this threshold. We shall see.