What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

34 minutes ago, PTNLemay said:

Sigma!  That's the name.  I don't know why but in my latest install I simply couldn't get it to work.  I was on 1.7.3, started with it clean with no mods, but no matter what I would do the solar system stayed the normal size.  After reinstalling and trying again for the fourth time I just gave up.  It's a shame because once you play with the bigger system, the stock one looks comically small in comparison.

The planet pack JNSQ also rescales the system to 2.7x scale without needing Sigma dimensions.  Rescales all the stock planets and adds a few more.  I've only scratched the surface playing with that pack, but it is beautifully done.   

[michaelbezos1]

Quote

https://youtu.be/N4B38d3EUTo

in case movie does not work. 

 

[michaelbezos1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiH3Fazqnxk

here is second part of fitting model 

much coffee and flowers ;<

Keep things together. 

[N_Danger]

18 hours ago, PTNLemay said:

Have you tried one of those mods that makes the whole solar system bigger?  It's been so long since I tried it that I forgot the name, but it's quite fun.  I find that lowering the contract rewards (which is what the normal hard-mode does) just makes things more of a grind.  Perform 6 missions instead of 3 to save up enough money to move onto the next thing.  But with a larger solar system, all of the deltaV requirements become more intense.  It's a refreshingly different kind of increase in difficulty.

I have not tried a re-scaled solar system. My only concern is that kind of mod would involve too much fiddling around with. I am not well versed in coding. As this was my first try at a career game I may just restart and see how it goes. 

 I will keep your advice in mind though and take a look at what's out there.

 I am thinking about more/different planets though.

 

[Cavscout74]

26 minutes ago, N_Danger said:

I have not tried a re-scaled solar system. My only concern is that kind of mod would involve too much fiddling around with. I am not well versed in coding. As this was my first try at a career game I may just restart and see how it goes. 

 I will keep your advice in mind though and take a look at what's out there.

 I am thinking about more/different planets though.

That is another advantage of JNSQ (that I recommended to @PTNLemay a few posts up) - its a 2.7x stock scale which is challenging but doable for stock parts, resizes the stock planets and adds a few more.  No fiddling, no coding, it's all pretty easy, just install like any other mod (including dependencies), read the install directions (unlike me), and it should work.  Even my install mistake didn't keep it from running, just created some graphics issues that were easily fixed once the mod makers saw what I did wrong when I asked for help.  It does put a pretty big load on your computer, but still less than a RSS/RO install.

For stock scale, I usually run a hard career with only 20-30% science, funds slightly higher, and mostly just use the research labs for looks to keep from blowing through the tech tree before getting past Mun.  I also don't do serious biome hopping - I'll get data wherever I land, but I won't send a dedicated mission to farm every science point on Mun & Minmus.  I also use some mods (and a few MM patches) to extend the tech tree as well.

 

[Fraktal]

Launched and tested my first reusable Mun orbiter/lander craft.

Reusable as in, it's an Apollo-style four-component craft (from one end to the other, lander, science gear, orbiter, RCS-propelled reentry pod, each four freely detachable from each other) with enough spare dV for an aerobrake-assisted return to low Kerbin orbit, after which the lone crewman rides a reentry pod down while the rest of the craft remains in orbit to be refueled (and refurbished with a new reentry pod) for later use.

It's my first reusable design in years and the first non-SSTO one as well.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Fraktal

[Cavscout74]

What little KSP time I had today got my brave Duna explorers up to investigate an anomaly, then spent the night on site.  I got to sunrise before having to log off, so they won't get back to their outpost for another day.

Rolling across the red hills.  They got a late start, so they had to stop for the first night, only about 15km from the anomaly.

Getting an early start at dawn

That left them time to stop & pick the blueberries

First glimpse of the anomaly, a dot on a distant hill

Cresting the last hill before the anomaly, starting to get a little detail

 

Spoiler

Kelrik atop the anomaly with the rover parked at the base

 

[Angelo Kerman]

I made more progress on the crew module IVA:

[N_Danger]

58 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

 

For stock scale, I usually run a hard career with only 20-30% science, funds slightly higher, and mostly just use the research labs for looks to keep from blowing through the tech tree before getting past Mun.  I also don't do serious biome hopping - I'll get data wherever I land, but I won't send a dedicated mission to farm every science point on Mun & Minmus.  I also use some mods (and a few MM patches) to extend the tech tree as well.

 

 That was close to what I was thinking. I only visit a biome once myself. And I don't use the science lab in Kerbin's SOI and didn't use it at all this last play through except for looks on a space station. 

My only real issue is farming KSC and Kebin in general for science. When I do a science play thorough I give myself 150 science to start and then set science gain to 50%. I was going to drop it down further this time around. Maybe not as deep with the funds.

 

[TheNeutralCat]

I spent 30 minutes trying to land a small mining probe/fuel refining craft on minmus.
I finally "landed" it after a few quicksaves (I forgot reaction wheels so it took 30 seconds each time I wanted to point retrograde), but then lost probe signal and had to abandon the project.

Launching a new model with reaction wheels and antennas, maybe I can set up a minmus base? Or something else, I'm not sure what to do with the fuel once I refine it.

[Mortimer Kerman]

I try all the keys on my keyboard to try to open the interface of the OSE workshop

[Hoozemans]

Assemble this in orbit:

At 2 frames per second.

(That rotating ring affects the trajectory, by the way. Almost ended this little venture by smashing straight into Duna...)

Edited June 4, 2020 by Hoozemans
update

[RobertJPowell]

Sandboxed my way to a few replicas, using a few modded parts, landed on mun on what I thought was a test run but was in fact a live fire run (oops, thankfully all 3 made it home) and started to think about what I want to do next on my save.. thinking of setting up a multi sattelite home system relay netowrk

[Plane Crazy]

I built my first propeller plane today. I can't seem to find many good tutorials on this, and I don't have any control over the rpm or pitch. But it's a huge step forward!

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, Plane Crazy said:

I built my first propeller plane today. I can't seem to find many good tutorials on this, and I don't have any control over the rpm or pitch. But it's a huge step forward!

Keptin's guide is old, but it still gives you the valid basics. Your lack of pitch control is probably due to having the pitching surfaces on the same spatial plane as the main wings; if you can move them up closer to the fin and then tilt them back down to a relatively level position, that should help. So would adding a piece of structural fuselage immedately forward of your tail piece (i.e. lengthen the fuselage a bit). Barring that, moving the main wings groundward along the fuselage is another option.

RPM I can't help you on. I haven't played with Breaking Ground as yet (only relatively recently got a box with enough oomph to use it and I haven't had time to play in general lately), so I don't know how the stock props work.

[Plane Crazy]

1 hour ago, capi3101 said:

I built my first propeller plane today. I can't seem to find many good tutorials on this, and I don't have any control over the rpm or pitch. But it's a huge step forward!

Correction. By pitch, I mean propeller pitch. I haven't gotten quite figured out how to use the blades in conjunction with the KAL yet.

Thanks for the tips anyway, I'll certainly put them to use!

[KerikBalm]

21 hours ago, N_Danger said:

I have not tried a re-scaled solar system. My only concern is that kind of mod would involve too much fiddling around with. 

For me, when kopernicus is up to date with the version in use, its super easy.

Extract kopernicus to the game data folder. Extract sigmaDimensions to the game data folder.

Go into sigmadimensions and text edit the cfg file to the rescaling that you want.

Its self explanatory within the file, you just change a 1 to a 3 if you want a 3x rescale... But its a few values, since you can rescale SMA, radius of the bodies, and rotation times.

Then there are some other optional changes, like different rescaling for terrain hight, and atmosphere.

I play at 3x body radius, 3x SMA, 1.5x terrain heights, and 1.25x atmosphere height. Rotation period I have set at sqrt(3).

[PTNLemay]

On 6/3/2020 at 2:43 PM, Cavscout74 said:

The planet pack JNSQ also rescales the system to 2.7x scale without needing Sigma dimensions.  Rescales all the stock planets and adds a few more.  I've only scratched the surface playing with that pack, but it is beautifully done.   

Giving JNSQ a try, it does look quite fun.  It's weird getting back into a game where it takes 5 km/s to get into orbit.  Weird but fun.   All of my deltaV maps will be useless once again, lol.  The mod pack seems to recommend using Scatterer and Environmental Visual Enhancer.  And sure enough, without any visual enhancements the planets look a bit... grey.  But I've never had to use EVE before.  It mentions how there are lots of different "configurations" available.   If you're also using EVE, which one did you end up using?

[RoninFrog]

Maxed out the KSC in my No Contracts Career!

Notable landings (in order):

Mun in 30 parts.

Minmus without SAS or a pilot.

An unintentional Ike landing.

Duna in 30 parts.

Early career Eeloo landing.

2 kerbal Gilly landing.

Pol in one stage.

Tylo, also in the same stage.

Vall landing.  You get the Single Stage Jool 5 idea.

Laythe landing.

Final Bop landing.

Full mission report here!

[Cavscout74]

30 minutes ago, PTNLemay said:

Giving JNSQ a try, it does look quite fun.  It's weird getting back into a game where it takes 5 km/s to get into orbit.  Weird but fun.   All of my deltaV maps will be useless once again, lol.  The mod pack seems to recommend using Scatterer and Environmental Visual Enhancer.  And sure enough, without any visual enhancements the planets look a bit... grey.  But I've never had to use EVE before.  It mentions how there are lots of different "configurations" available.   If you're also using EVE, which one did you end up using?

JNSQ includes its own EVE config - that was actually the mistake I made on install, I copied over the config I was using from a stock game & it caused graphics glitches trying to fight the JNSQ-EVE config.   Also, they have their own complete dV map on the first page of the JNSQ thread.

 

In my stock career, my Duna crew finally arrived back at the outpost after several days cramped in the Buffalo-Duna rover investigating an anomaly and driving the full length of the western canyon.  They are getting a few less-cramped days at the outpost before they will be sent out again to check out another anomaly to the south.

Spoiler

Into the canyon with a nice view of Ike

Had some issues with the scanning arm - it would extend, turn the head around and retract without scanning.  Several attempts - with the rover turned to different positions - all failed.  Finally, Kelrik my engineer got out & removed then reattached the arm in a slightly different position and it started working.

After that it was just smooth sailing, south through the canyon then west back to the outpost

The four craft of my Moho support mission got underway finally.  There is no manned mission yet, but when there is, they will have a robust support infrastructure in place.  Only took shots of the two ouposts, but the crew station and the giant MoRo rover departed as well.

Finally, I lost my Laythe Glide-Rover after losing signal during atmospheric flight.  Designed to deliver a moderately sized rover safely to the surface, it lost signal a few minutes after the entry phase and was stuck in a steep descent.  Last images showed a beautiful sunset through the clouds.  Mission control had expected the recently arrived pair of long-range relays to provide sufficient signal strength to maintain control, but  both ended up in the wrong position.  More accurately, I wanted to land the darn thing and didn't have a lot of time, so I just did the reentry burn and didn't check where the relays were.  Three years and 2 days down the drain. 

[Hotel26]

6 hours ago, Plane Crazy said:

I haven't gotten quite figured out how to use the blades in conjunction with the KAL yet.

I'm assuming you have a reason to use KAL and that's fine.  I'm a neophyte in this area (stock props), but in my last effort, I bound rpm to the throttle and prop pitch (you probably know) can be controlled by the Authority Limiter -- you can visually check the pitch changes on the ground when you move A.L.  I bound that directly to I/K and that works well.  I run KER with acc. in the HUD and I'm thinking next time I fly this plane, I'll simply keep advancing pitch as airspeed increases in order to maintain peak acceleration.  In any case, without KER, it can be adjusted just to keep the airspeed ticking upward nicely.  You probably already know all this, but there'll be someone reading who doesn't (like me very recently).

Edited June 5, 2020 by Hotel26

[king of nowhere]

I got a mission to recover a piece of junk from orbit. I decided on a minimalistic approach: unmanned craft, no science, just the bare minimum. I take a robotic core, a cargo bay to store the piece safely, a robotic arm to grab the piece, a reaction wheel for better manuevering, some batteries and solar panels for energy. then i start adding engines. yet i have the lingering feeling i forgot something, but can't quite figure it out...

i launch on an intercept trajectory. for the first time i try to time my launch to the passing of the piece, instead of just launching and reaching the piece later. good success, i get on an intercept course early on. I close in, so far so good. the robotic arm has a malfunction in that the game figured out the wrong attach point, so i am unable to fully twist and extend it, but I'm still able to grab the piece and store it safely in the cargo bay... yay! time to go back to ground.

Only then do i realize what I forgot:

the parachute

I still managed to land with aerobraking and the remaining fuel. good thing the craft design was so light, it was able to brake in the atmosphere enough, and the rocket was powerful enough to slow it down for the last leg even if it was a vacuum-optimized one.

I pondered a bit on some great missions that had some big issues: the galileo mission, the rosetta landing on a comet. ultimately, an oft-forgotten part of rocket science is that you launch your big rocket, then you realize you forgot some essential bit, and the rest of the mission is figuring out how to salvage what you can with what you have

On 6/4/2020 at 2:44 PM, Hoozemans said:

Assemble this in orbit:

At 2 frames per second.

(That rotating ring affects the trajectory, by the way. Almost ended this little venture by smashing straight into Duna...)

how did you make the rotating ring? I can't figure out how to do that with the regular pieces. is that part of a mod?

[JorgeCS]

I don't know why, I remember when I was a kid and saw a Concorde on flight, live. So I decided to make my replica. Stock. and it was quite similar. And it flew. Obviously, as any brick with wings will fly in Stock  It was able to fly all the way around kerbin at Mach 2 and 19000m. 

But my surprise was when I tested it with FAR and didn't need to change anything at all... still could reach even more than Mach 3, reaching also 31km ceiling (no thrust anymore due to lack of oxigen). But for me, who used to try to make planes for FAR (and almost never succeeded), to see that a plane done just because, without FAR, works properly, doesn't show any red figures on the statistics, and can land properly... well, that kind of makes me a bit proud.

And yeah, the plane itself looks a bit like sh.... as I said, it is stock, wanted to make it as close as possible to the original (no, sorry, no sliding nose, tried to make it but it doesn´t work properly), so I used the big delta wings and strakes to have room for the fuel hahaha!  

 

Here is my last baby, the Konkorde Mk3:

 

And yes, I said it is stock, but in order to help keeping the original aesthetics, I used (just for the SPH shots) the front landing gear from Kerbal Foundries). But you can also both take off and land by just replacing it with a Large Landing Gear (yes, no steerable, so?) with no problem at all. Careful when taking off without steering in the front wheel with FAR tho...  it's a bit tricky with this plane

 

Here the full album:

https://imgur.com/gallery/wOmdwS8

 

Here the craft in KerbalX:

https://kerbalx.com/myrddin/Konkorde-Mk3

 

Sorry, maybe I shouldn't even publish this, but I'm quite hyped XD

 

Cheers!

J

[AnimaticalProductions]

Built a submarine that can hold 2 people, so that's cool I guess.

[Cavscout74]

Got some more rover exploration done on Duna today, then a few launches - another probe for Eeloo, then a combination snack supply and ore return lander was launched to Minmus.  It was quite a bit larger than my previous one, requiring a 5m launcher but it was fairly tail & skinny for a lander due to using fixed landing gear to clear the very large engine needed for the ore load it would be carrying.  As it turns out, too skinny.  On landing, it bounced, rolled over and nearly smashed both my crew return pod & Minmus rover.  Also, some idiot in the VAB installed the decoupler upside down, which didn't help anything.

More Duna roving to seek out another anomaly

Spoiler

 

This was probably doomed from the start, but I thought I could pull it off.  The upper white section (roughly from the bottom of the RCS ports and up) is full of snacks for the Minmus base.  The lower white section is empty, with room for up to 3100 ore (for a contract to return 2100 units from Minmus to Kerbin).  The middle section is just a fairing & decoupler, then the lower orange is LFO for the 3.75m vacuum engine.

It was a little sluggish, but I still thought it would work right up until it bounced & rolled.  I had to edit the shot to brighten it, but see how close it ended up to the crew pod & rover (on the far side of the fallen supply ship)

So, my choices are blow it in place and try another mission with a better design OR build a recovery vehicle, launch it to Minmus and attempt to pull/drag/push this thing back upright.

So, I just happened to have a wide, stable, and very strong rover I recently built for another mission.  Just strip off unneeded gear and replace it with some assorted robotics, a pair of KAS winches, and for good measure a grabbing unit in the tail

 

 

No time to test it tonight, but stay tuned......