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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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35 minutes ago, SkyRender said:

Always interesting to see how others design their craft.  Other than the most basic designs, no two designers seem to think alike!  Also, what are those three lines?  A mod part, I presume?

The plasma wave instrument (three rods/antennas), the telescope (white tube with blue horizontal lines to the right) and the magnetometer (girder extension behind the white tube) are three experiments from the DMagic Orbital Science mod.   It adds a number of additional science experiments for your sciencing needs.

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10 hours ago, SkyRender said:

Can't speak for this user, but when I do this sort of thing I use the Pencil Sketch rendering option in Paint.net and then use some color and thickness manipulation shenanigans to make it look like a blueprint drawing.  A simple blueprint background behind that, then an overlay texture filter to make it look a bit rumpled, and there you go.

EDIT: An example!  I added some coffee stains too.  Fonts are Sergoe Script and Sergoe Print.  Arrows are done with hand-adjusted bezier curve lines.

Thank you, it would seem we do things very similarly! I'd like to share some of the fancy pants stuff I did because I wasted far too much time on getting it right... :) 

I actually made the blueprint background layer myself — it's fairly simple, just make a rectangle filled with custom pattern. In my case the pattern is 30*30 px squares with 1-pixel thick edges with a slight blue tint. The table is assembed out of similar rectangles, but without the pattern. 

For projections I used KVV. I just remove the background, use "Find edges" filter or an alternative to get a blueprint-like look, invert the colors (as in a negative) and set the blend mode to "Screen" and boom — an awesome orthographic projection by hitting just fifteen keys in the right order :) 

Then I write inscriptions and draw arrows by hand. I'm told it's very pleasant to do on a graphics tablet, but I make do with a mouse with low DPI and a pencil-like brush. I dare say it is superior to using regular fonts, albeit more time-consuming. 

All that's left is smack a seal and write specifications in the table. Finally, in my overlay layers group, aside for rumpled paper texture I also added an almost transparent polar gradient to simulate lighting and do some vibrance adjustments. It takes ten mins per blueprint, tops, but initial time investment is fairly large. 

I hope it's been useful to you, @Rakete, and big thanks to @SkyRender for sharing their blueprint making process! Also, could someone here link the guide to blueprints in GIMP? I remember it was done as an album on Imgur, it's very thorough and I'd recommend it to anyone — it's the best place to get started on blueprint making.
 

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13 hours ago, SkyRender said:

Always interesting to see how others design their craft.  Other than the most basic designs, no two designers seem to think alike!  Also, what are those three lines?  A mod part, I presume?

It is a Radio Plasma Wave Sensor(RPWS) experiment from @DMagic's Orbital Science mod.

 

 

It is a mod with different science parts and experiments. One of my first mods installed in a playthrough . 

In my experience you will want to turn down the science gain in career to balance out the additional parts for a good playthrough if you use this mod.

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I embraced liquid fuel boosters to throw hauler/tanker in orbit (with some additional cargo on top for minor mission):

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And they fly cocertly same time looking better and wasting only those mamoth engines mounted on engine plat with fuel line.

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So I get to fuel only booster that drain oxygen empty from main rocket, and only mamooth engine is throw away from engine plate on its fuel line:

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This work great when I can deliver huge amount of fuel from da Mun.

All this in preparation for EVE gigantic base/rover on big skid wheels that can already land there without heatshields, but throwing it away from Kerbin is more complicated then landing on Eve. And expensive.

 

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I have been working on getting stuff imported to new computer. Good news is chrome is installed and that's about it. But I have a new video for the start of this year, happy new year:

 

Edited by Guest
video first failed to link
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I am making an Interstellar colonization ship, the HPICV-6 "Pentalis Star".

unknown-134.pngunknown-54.pngunknown-129.png

8,500 tons, 30m diameter, 130 meters long, propulsion provided by three Orion Drives and one Alcubierre Drive, a capacity of around one hundred places, a place for a payload of 20m long, this vessel is perfect for colonizing exoplanets (HPICV stands for Hybrid Propulsion Interstellar Colonization Vehicle)

This ship took me several hours to make it, and I used a GameData folder of 8Gb.

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In trying another career in 1.11 mostly stock aside from eye candy and a few utility mods, I am building my first horizontal mining rig in 3 modules.  Having a realism mindset, my self made rules prohibit outlandish fairing sizes (as much as possible).  Utilizing the new build in situ feature, I'm landing my modules, unloading them with a crane, adding wheels and them connect them via docking ports.  I'm really enjoying the challenge.  While I'm not an expert on the robot parts, my first ever crane seems to work well enough for my situation.  I'm including a 60 minute video of the module two mission in which at the point right before connecting the first and second modules, I lost comms.  As the module starts to roll away, the brave engineer manages to hold the it in place until comms can be reestablished.  Its also at night for the added challenge in landing.  I was thinking I could use the already landed craft's lights as reference but should have had landing lights on the ship itself.  That would have made a huge difference.

 

The pictures are from module one, the video is module two.

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minmus_fuel1.png

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Giving my current Minmus miner one last run for its money before it gets replaced by a contractually obligated variant.  That thing was a disaster, I sent it up originally without a docking port for the rover to attach to and intending to fulfill an oddball contract that it couldn't because it didn't house 5 Kerbals.  Here's hoping its replacement is less absurd.

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So I had a contract show up to do a spacewalk in orbit around Minmus in my expanded Caveman career (I took a copy of the completed challenge save and am now using that as an overall "do this stuff" career).  So I took a rocket I know can land on Minmus, loaded up Valentina, and sent her on her way.  Got to a Pe of about 1.3 million miles and did the spacewalk; contract completed.  No worries, and I decide while I'm there, I'm going to land and collect some science points.  I use MechJeb and land in the midland's (Negan's Place).  I do all the science stuff, and I send Valentina onto the surface to do an EVA report and collect a surface sample.  We're all done, and I'm ready to head home.

Or am I?  As Valentina is bounding her way back to the ship, I see what looks like a rock jutting out of the surface.  I know that there are contracts to grab a green sandstone, so I figure I'll go investigate; if it turns out that's what it is, I can head home, accept the contract, and then come right back because I know where it is.  Valentina gets about 2 steps away from the ship, and...

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Valentina disappeared in a cloud of smoke, just like that, without warning.  So now my ship is stranded on Minmus, with no way to get it home unless I can somehow connect a probe to it without docking ports.  There goes all the science I collected, and now I have to wait 2 hours for poor Valentina to respawn at the Astronaut Complex.

The kraken, it seems, was hungry today.  And the only thing it wanted was Valentina's blood.

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5 hours ago, Joker58th said:

Utilizing the new build in situ feature, I'm landing my modules, unloading them with a crane, adding wheels and them connect them via docking ports.  I'm really enjoying the challenge.

I dint know there is other way to build the base untill I seen kerbmadnes people posting here :)

But to stick to realism You can roll these parts. On Earth we roll such construction (like drums for water refining are 8-12m long 3m diameter and made of 316L so quite dense) by hands on even floor using ropes to secure they do not go away and stop them using (let me refer to translator) wedges (I hop it is a propper name for block or triangle piece stopping a roll).

For sure You can do this on da Mun. We have tricks in engineering.

Idea of doing it with machines is great and let us forget about Mun dust scratching everything and coming in between every conection.

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Sunlight came to Munar base and housekeeping started - I colect scrap from around:

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Building piepes to maintain more rocket that swarming this fuel station (cost cutting - rockets do barely to LKO and then get refueled from da Mun):

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Orange rocket on left is rebuilded (from very antique fuel delivery) here on site from the point of struts up (it is why there are struts - I hade to put a docking port there, because of limitation in 1.11).

Soviet capsule on top is another rocket docket to this one for landing (tourists) that had same cargo (and lying beside this rocket) and not enough fuel (cost cutting) for landing (it was quite tiny) and detached using this capsule feature for staging. Now tourist go for Minmus orbit and than this fuel rocket will toss them in Kerbins atmosphere.

Here is a whole base:

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Some vehicles ready for future shipment awaiting 3.3km away (not only those visible in view) to not cause phy invoking Kraken.

KIS/KAS is awesome for buildng "part to heavy, bring more Kerbals" it helps a lot.

 

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I finished working on the rocket for my Mun landing program. It ended up as some kind of three-way forbidden lovechild of SLS, Energia, and Atlas-Centaur. I gave it a custom raceway and ullage motors to make it more interesting.

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Here's a video of stage separation:

Nertea makes some mean-lookin engines.

Edited by BadOaks
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3 hours ago, eberkain said:

Trying to figure out a better way to move heavy stuff. 

Vehicle that are lifting do not have suspension behind tire pressure (and they have high pressure and small amount of air with lot of rubber in wheels) - I guess it do not work with this phy - just put a structural part instead of wheels when lifting..

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4 hours ago, eberkain said:

Trying to figure out a better way to move heavy stuff.

You need a counterbalance.  That can be done in two ways: you can either introduce a counterweight system (usually a pair of fuel tanks that have a full tank between them does the trick; just shift the liquid to the side that needs more weight), or add large alligator hinges to all sides to use the ground itself as a stabilizing force.  Since you're trying to move something, I would advise the former.

Edited by SkyRender
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39 minutes ago, SkyRender said:

You need a counterbalance.  That can be done in two ways: you can either introduce a counterweight system (usually a pair of fuel tanks that have a full tank between them does the trick; just shift the liquid to the side that needs more weight), or add large alligator hinges to all sides to use the ground itself as a stabilizing force.  Since you're trying to move something, I would advise the former.

This is my current crane for moving stuff around, but its such a mess with all the robotics being so sloppy.  Especially if the payload is 20t+

atvgjbo.jpgI want to figure out a way to move base modules around that doesn't suffer from all the problems this has.  The wheels are terrible, the crane arm is jank AF, and its like 40 parts. 

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You're running into an age-old issue, and the main reason why construction cranes are usually stationary.  This is why buildings are constructed from smaller pieces, and the really big stuff is carted over on flatbeds and then lifted via a stationary crane.  You may want to consider a strategy along those lines, in fact: get the base pieces where you need them via flatbed rover, have your crane lock itself to the ground with hinges when it's in position, and then lift and transfer on site.

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10 minutes ago, SkyRender said:

You're running into an age-old issue, and the main reason why construction cranes are usually stationary.  This is why buildings are constructed from smaller pieces, and the really big stuff is carted over on flatbeds and then lifted via a stationary crane.  You may want to consider a strategy along those lines, in fact: get the base pieces where you need them via flatbed rover, have your crane lock itself to the ground with hinges when it's in position, and then lift and transfer on site.

That has been on my mind, erecting a stationary crane and using it for a base project, but is there a good way to anchor it to the ground?  Just make a wide heavy base? 

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Just now, eberkain said:

That has been on my mind, erecting a stationary crane and using it for a base project, but is there a good way to anchor it to the ground?  Just make a wide heavy base? 

A wide base is best, yes.  You can force it with aforementioned massive alligator hinges, thus letting you keep a low profile the rest of the time.  Or if you're feeling adventurous, you could make a skycrane system and bypass the whole mundane construction techniques.  That, however, requires serious precision landing skills.

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I didn't realize it at first, but I actually performed a successful lithobraking!

see, i was landing this thing on eve

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according to the plan, once the chutes are deployed, i would get rid of the thermal shields. the process, however, is hazardous, because those thermal shields float as well as a rocket descending on a chute. they fly around close to the rocket, just fast enough to cause critical damage if they hit (as the rocket must leave eve, any kind of damage is critical).

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if i survived, i would complete the landing with some rocket braking. i don't want to land on the thermal shields because i am worried about them causing problems when i launch again.

but i thought, 18 m/s is not very fast. i can survive, with some cushioning. and here i have 4 large thermal shields that i want to get rid of anyway... with some luck, they will explode and cushion the rest of the ship.

i didn't snap pictures of the event. i didn't really think it would work. but hey, it actually did! i lost the shields, and nothing else.

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so there it is, intentional successful lithobraking. I ended up not needing the engine after all.

 

I also learned that when departing from eve, one should never have some lateral boosters in the first stage. once released, they kept colliding with the main body and destroying the ship. to prevent that, i had to stop the engines and slow down. eve's atmosphere is really a major pain in the ass. if there is a next time (bad planet! I hate you!) I will pile up the second stage directly on top of the first, so there should be no risk for spent tanks to crash into my rocket.

also, no matter how attractive the idea of recling looks, i won't ever use the laythe lander as last stage of the eve lander. those lateral tanks on top are intended to provide a wide base for landing at laythe, and they work for the task, but they create a lot of aerodinamic instability while on eve. as for the saving, the laythe stage totals 11 tons, and it's bigger than needed for eve. i could use a smaller stage for eve, and it would let me save much more than that in the total mass of the lander.

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Yesterday I had a ship land on Minmus, and the Kraken attacked, swallowing Valentina whole.  So today, I sent a rescue mission to get the now-abandoned ship so I could get the science out of it.  Here is the abandoned Explorer V.

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And a shot of Explorer V-R, the rescue ship, landed about 20 meters from the stranded Explorer V.  I put a lander can and a probe core on this and sent it to Minmus with Jeb.

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Jeb got in the stranded Explorer V and got it back to Kerbin safe and sound, allowing me to claim 350 total science points.

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So tomorrow I was planning on flying the rescue ship back to Kerbin, but something felt off.  So I fired up KSP, and sure enough...I forgot to put an antenna on the rescue ship.  So now it's stranded on Minmus with 2189 dV of fuel.  No science gadgets, so I'm not worried about losing it.  In fact, I'm trying to get to a place where I can send rovers and build a base, and because for some odd reason I had Jeb put a flag down on his way to Explorer V, I now have a target to land at to send rovers and such.  So I think I'll leave it up there for now...at least until I can either attach an antenna to it OR get another pilot up there to bring that puppy home with some soil samples.

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