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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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had a couple minor issues today when catching an asteroid in my rss-kerbalism grand tour.

after a gravity assist from Jupiter, I could get an intercept with the asteroid at 3 km/s. slowing down the whole ship, and then spending another 3 km/s to get a new Jupiter intercept, would have been too expensive, so the plan was to reach the intercept, then send my Fat Man long range shuttle to actually rendez-vous.

All went well, until the kerbal came back with the precious asteroid sample. And upon returning in the crew cabin, lost it.

For you see, kerbalism divides science into data and samples. And both have dedicated storage systems, and it turns out Fat Man had no sample storage space, so it just could not hold the sample (Fat Man is supposed to carry around landers between the mothership in its high parking orbit and the low orbit of whatever planet/moon they are supposed to be landing on, and those landers have plenty of sample space, so this problem never came up before)

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A grand tour does not require collecting samples, and it doesn't even require landing on an asteroid. But I dedicated 50 years of this mission to getting that sample, and a lot of effort, so I didn't want to just throw it away. The only way to keep the sample was to travel with the kerbal on the ladder, so I set out to do just that. And started the 3 km/s burn to catch the mothership.

another complication of kerbalism is limited ignition time for the engines, so at some point I needed to send out my engineer to refurbish the engines. There I discovered the second problem: no more eva propellant.

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eva propellant is taken from the monopropellant storages of the ship; no monoprop, no eva jetpack. I didn't check before leaving, but apparently I only had 3  units. and my scientist got them all, because the first kerbal to go eva also gets as much propellant as is available.

I needed to get eva propellant to my engineer, to go fix the engines. but the only way to get eva propellant back into the ship was to send the scientist in, losing its precious sample.

Luckily, I also had a pilot on board, so I could arrange a 3 men swap. I sent out the pilot (without propellant, because there was none). I had him take the asteroid sample (eva kerbals can pass samples between them). then I sent back in the scientist, thus putting the propellant back into the ship. then I sent back in the engineer, and i sent it back out, and this time he got the propellant. Yay!  Good thing that ladder was long enough to hold three kerbals

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And that's it. four hours to rejoin the mothership. I spent those at 4x speed, because I can't time warp with the kerbal on a ladder - and didn't want to risk letting it go to time warp.

kerbalism adds mainly life support, so those EVA kerbals only have 2 hours of oxygen. But it was an easy fix; twice during the trip I sent out a new kerbal, swapped the sample, and sent the scientist inside the ship to get new air.

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I arrived without further accident, still clinging to the ladder.

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Managed to kill Val, again, with a mun landing gone wrong. not entirely my fault, SAS is acting weirdly, randomly disengaging doesn't help but its actively fighting user inputs half the time. landed though, just a bit sideways and attempting to correct this lead to a slight explosion during which time there was some slight death..

still, could be worse

probably

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I saw Hazegrayart's latest video. And I'm trying to create something loosely inspired by it in KSP.

 

Stay tuned

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I made an expendable version and a version with a reusable first stage. Based on my test, if it isn't a heavy lifter, it's very close to being a heavy lifter. I was able to send about 19.5 or so tons to LKO. I'm almost certain it can do more, especially the expendable version where you don't have to worry about boostback burns.

Craft files now available!:

https://kerbalx.com/ManateeAerospace/Kerstler-Star

https://kerbalx.com/ManateeAerospace/Kerstler-Star-Block-II

 

Edited by Blufor878
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"What??  You want to see my 'EVA Repair Kit'...?  Fine.  Here it is...     [jerk!]"

Spoiler

sed -i "s/isDamaged = True/isDamaged = False/g" saves/Orbit/quicksave.sfs

Time management and accurate goal setting at its finest.  :)

Edited by Hotel26
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Yep. Yet another week has passed. Got an image-heavy post ahead, y'all - not as bad as some of the folks who post on the forum, but still. Fair warning.

So at the tail end of my last post I mentioned that Jeb and Bill were getting close to doing a satellite repair mission aboard Genie 7 and that the Sandstone Xray 7 science gathering mission to Mün was rapidly approaching, and i mentioned the need to do a mission that would put a Mammoth engine on a high suborbital trajectory over Kerbin. Things after my last report did indeed proceed along those lines - Sandstone arrived at Mün and Val put the craft into a high polar orbit, beginning the process of collecting gravioli readings from all seventeen Münar biomes, a process that wouldn't conclude until this past Tuesday. With gravioli collected from both high and low orbit, Val proceeded to surface landings in the Farside Crater, Northwest Crater and Northern Basin before returning to Kerbin successfully, which also happened on Tuesday. Val's mission ultimately retreived 3,524 units of science and coupled with an effort to pick up some KSC science for another 469 science on Monday, I'm happy to report that with very few exceptions, my old spaceplane fleet is now out of mothballs. Focus has shifted to getting the rocket-based craft unlocked at this point, which will largely mean getting the 3.75-meter parts unlocked. I have a contract to get a space station over Kerbin up already; sure would like for it to be the orbital drydock...

The Genie 7 mission arrived at the damaged RSA Satellite 41-0 shortly after the Sandstone mission arrived at Mün. Jeb piloted the craft to a successful rendezvous.

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Those RSA guys sure know how to overengineer their crap, don't they?

Unfortunately, the mission had to be aborted for dumb reasons.

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So I need experience to repair the satellite, but to get experience I have to repair the satellite...

With their mission effectively scrubbed, Jeb deorbited the craft.

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Note to self: structural adapters not to be used as heat shields ever again...

The command module returned safely to Kerbin in the Grasslands 206 kilometers to the northwest of KSC after a fifteen-day flight, during which time the available technology had improved significantly - the Genie had already been retired from the inventory by the time Jeb and Bill returned. Bill's flight did earn him the 1-star XP rating he needed to actually do the job, but another mission to attempt the repair didn't get underway until just yesterday with Bill aboard the new Mr. Wizard 7 engineering craft. Rendezvous with the satellite is set for ten hours and 46 minutes.

The rolling around of the Scimobile on Monday gave me sufficient science points to unlock SAFER reactors, the last component I needed to bring the mighty Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter out of mothballs. Freshly returned from his repair mission, Jeb and Bob took off in a hunt for a baobab tree somewhere in Kerbin's Grasslands.

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Cue the Ride of the Valkyries.

The pair found one just seventeen klicks west-southwest of the space center. Bob got out and marked its position for a return flight before the pair returned the copter to KSC.

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"Bob and The Baobab Tree". Sounds like the name of a children's book.

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Here's your obligatory 'copter VAB roof landing for good measure.

Monday began with the design of a detachable Flatbed Rover, basically a flat controllable thing with wheels and a scanning arm. I rigged a way for the Echo Flyer to carry it to its underside and deploy it as payload at the baobab tree. Efforts to scan the tree for contract were a success.

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It took a couple of tries to get the design of the flatbed rover correct; the octagonal strut was needed to get it off the ground enough for the scanning arm to not whack the ground. Luckily the rover still fit on the underside of the Echo Flyer after it was added.

After that I decided to start working on some of the other contracts I had laying about. I began with the design of Doofus 7, an orbital probe to perform a MOLE Solar Observation experiment in orbit. I used the mission as an excuse to get the contract for the Mammoth engine done. Launch of the probe was a success, with it acheiving a roughly 119 kilometer equatorial orbit; the Mammoth was tested at 115k suborbital for the contract and I'm happy to report that I retreived the engine intact later on. The Kerbal Tour Bus Advanced 7 arrived at Mün on monday as well, putting down on the surface in the Midlands at 4°16’04”N x 172°18’29”E. The craft then launched and returned to Kerbin after an eight-hour flight, putting down in the water 1485 kilometers west of KSC and clearing three tourist contracts in the process.

Tuesday itself was spent largely getting missions underway. With Val's returned from Mün completed, I was able to unlock two key pieces of my old rocket fleet, namely the Bill Clinton 7 grabber probes and the Pink Noise 7 communications satellite clusters. I had a mission to grab a piece of junk from LKO, so a Clinton launched and successfully grabbed its target by the end of the day, ultimately returning its payload to KSC first thing yesterday.

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Put this thing down in the grass just east of Mission Control. Not sure I could've gotten that landing much closer...

A Pink Noise lanched soon thereafter, heading towards the Mün. It will arrive there after a three hour flight, at which time I'll busy myself putting it into the correct polar orbit to set up connections to CommNet. Next, I decided to get the rather ridiculous but high-paying mission to "colonize" Hadwin's Shipwreck in LMO underway, designing the Hurdy Gurdy 7 grabber craft. Said mission launched successfully and is now also on its way to Mün, expected to arrive in three hours. Yesterday also saw the initial mission to explore Minmus get underway, with the design of the Sandstone Yoke 7. The probe, whose mission is solely to conduct a flyby and return to Kerbin, launched successfully to LKO and then burned for Minmus. Arrival is scheduled for roughly forty-six hours henceforth. A Boop-Boop 7x probe was redesigned with a narrow-band scanned and then launched to LKO before proceeding to an 18,697.7- by 106.9-kilometer orbit at 9.31 degrees inclination, the first step towards putting it in a specific high orbit over Kerbin. Finally, having never actually been to Mün, Jeb boarded a Turdburglar 7 craft with five tourists and launched to Mün. The craft will arrive at its periapsis over Mün in eight hours.

Today is likely to see both satellite missions wrap up; I'm confident that Bill will be able to complete repairs to the RSA satellite and return while the Boop-Boop gets into position. I have a chemical analysis ongoing in a Mobile Lab craft next to the Runway that I'm hopeful will wrap up soon and I'm hoping the Solar Activity experiment will complete soon as well. I've analyzed a broken rover for a contract on the Münar surface and have determined it just needs a control part and maybe a reserve power supply, so I'll be organizing that mission as soon as Bill comes back. Other than that, my missions are going to be on hold until I can get the TBD craft fully unlocked and manned, which means I need both money and science; both are going to need Minmus landings taking place in the near future.


TL, DR: Finished Mün missions. Unlocked my favorite copter and found a baobab tree. Bunch of stuff got started.


 

Edited by capi3101
hit the post button before I was ready...
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Kinda messed around with the concept of ignore part counts entirely and just make ships look cool:

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I was going to do this to the dimension, but i suspect it would require at least 300 lights to do, so i sorta didnt bother as adding unnecessary crap to a 300 part ship is one thing, adding unnecessary crap to a 650 part ship, is not my idea of intelligent: )

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Since my last report we have seen the initiation of a number of new recruits, the return to Kerbin of a great hero, surface activity on Moho and 2 small but valiant robotic probes that have seen as much deep space as the most experienced Kerbonauts we have.

It started with a group of 8 applicants, all rescued from various locations in the Kerbin system who left for their Mun and Minmus initiations. This group consisted of one engineer, one scientist and six pilots and perhaps for that reason they decided to be a little more adventurous with their landing locations than most initiates. Their first destination was The Mun where they chose their landing spot near an anomaly spotted by the local MultiSkan observatory.

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These arches have been spotted before on the Mun's surface, nobody knows how they are formed. The group marked the location with a flag for future exploration or commercial development.

Meanwhile in orbit of Kerbin, the long awaited arrival of the first 5-star Kerbonaut Valentina Kerman was taking place. Not so long ago she was the only 5-star Kerbonaut but with the arrival of Jebediah Kerman's crew in the Duna system there have been three others, including Jeb himself. This however is the first time that a 5-star Kerbonaut has been present at Kerbin. She arrived at Kerbin Station where a space plane was already waiting to carry her down to the surface.

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She chose to fly the space plane down herself, remarkable since the design was not yet in use the last time she left Kerbin. She made a picture perfect landing and her co-pilot, a 3-star with much more experience in this model plane remarked he didn't have to assist her once. At the press conference of course the assorted astro-scribes, including yours truly, wanted to know how she managed to do it. She answered the trip back to Kerbin had been a long one and she had taken the time to read the plane's owner's manual, garnering approving nods from the ladies and bewildering looks from the gents in the audience.

Meanwhile at Moho, the crew of Sean's Cannery BottleCan Base finally decided it was time to put the bottle down, no pun intended. First the mining rovers were sent down by remote control.

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Apparently the reason for the long wait was that they wanted to make sure they had daylight during the landing. According to the scientist in the crew, it took them quite some time to even figure out which way Moho was rotating. You would think they had thought of that before leaving, but who am I to tell? After a soft landing in one of the Minor Craters along the equator the rovers were unloaded with the tried and tested "drop and pray" method.

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They were then used to remotely explore the crater area for a suitably flat location to land the base, which they found and marked using their powerful lights.

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Finally, the base was landed. Credit to the pilot, he did an excellent job hitting the marked spot.

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After the base had stabilized the miners were hooked up to it to fill the tanks with fuel, with a full tank the base can safely take off from the surface and reach the orbital Moho Station in case of an emergency. Later that same day a spokes-person for Sean's Cannery announced that their base was now open for visitors and they were able to provide fuel at highly competitive prices.

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The mission to Eeloo has reached their halfway point and made the necessary plane adjustments. This typically involves careful maneuvers and separation procedures to ensure that any spare tanks and stages will impact with the planetary body rather than shoot off into interplanetary space. In the case of Eeloo the adjustments are made at such a distance that even the slightest shock or touch during separation can wildly set a spare tank off course and miss the planet by a large distance. Fortunately the crew was able to pull it off perfectly and are sure to announce their arrival to Eeloo in almost two years time with a heavy bombardment of scrap metal.

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The crew of initiates had made their way to Minmus, and again they chose a more interesting location to put down their lander than the typical R&R mission to Minmus city that most crews of new Kerbonauts pick. They visited another anomaly detected by the Minmus MultiSkan observatory which turned out to be an identical mysterious monolith as can be found on the KSC grounds. They even needed the structure to prevent their lander from sliding down the hill on the slippery Minmus surface. Nice parking there!

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After marking the monolith they made their way back to orbit and were greeted back on Kerbin just over a week later with much compliments and back slapping.

Lastly I want to make mention of two missions that may seem less spectacular than the above because they don't involve those dastardly photogenic Kerbonauts we all admire and love, but rather their little robotic helpers. First there is the "Ultimate Gilly 6", an attempt to do a flyby of The Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Duna, Ike and Dres with a single vessel. This little nuklear engine powered probe reached the final destination of its mission, Dres, where it docked with the space station for a refueling and then was off on a very opportune return trajectory to Kerbin. It arrived with a great view on Dres' enormous canyon.

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The second, its bigger sibling perhaps, is the "Gilly 6 Expedition", an attempt to land on The Mun, Minmus, Moho, Gilly, Duna and Dres. After making landings on The Mun and Minmus this drone has now completed its landing on Gilly by docking with the surface mining station on the small moonlet. After a successful refueling it was put in an orbit around Eve from where it will make the trip to Moho at the next possible transfer window in about 150 days.

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The transfer window to Duna is fast approaching now, as well as the window from Duna back to Kerbin, which will allow the return of a large number of tourists that have piled up at this "Great Bottleneck" as the KSC tourist rep likes to refer to it. I expect I will soon be able to give an overview of the mission that will be sent to Duna, so stay tuned for my next report!

 

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3 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I have released my latest mod "The Belafonte"

I'M KING OF THE WORLD!

The ship is really great. I've rigged it for Bon Voyage travel 

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and I took a little trip down to Kola Island Naval Air Station 

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(I may never go to space again :) ) 

 

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Decided I'd try something novel today and only report on my activities this past 24 hours. Probably should've picked a more interesting day to talk about.

I was rather dismayed to discover that something had changed that made my TBD rovers not want to drive at all on Kerbin; I had fully intended to get construction started on South Base in my current save, but I couldn't get the thing to move faster than 0.1 m/s; not sure what exactly happened there, but in fairness it has been four versions since I've tried to deploy one. With that plan dead, I instead decided to spend the day getting CommNet links established over Kerbin and Mün. The Pink Noise 7 probe over Mün was adjusted to 241.6 kilometer polar flyby orbit, shortly after which the Hurdy Gurdy 7 craft carrying six colonists to Hadwin's Shipwreck arrived and an intercept was established. An adjustment was made to a Boop-Boop 7x probe on its way to fulfill a satellite contract, after which the Hurdy Gurdy's rendezvous with its target was set up. The Pink Noise probe over Mün hit its target orbit next and soon Muncomm Alpha was established in the proper orbit, releasing Muncomm Bravo and Muncomm Charlie, both of which burned for their respective proper orbital positions to set up a triangular link over Mün. I should now have full CommNet access anywhere on the Münar surface.

That job done, I set to work establishing the Kerbincomm network. A Pink Noise 7 probe was launched to a 776.6-kilometer equatorial apoapsis followed by a second such probe launched to a 110.80- by 110.4-kilometer orbit over the poles.

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I think Kerbin is the only planet in existence where the north pole is clearly labeled with a pucker mark...though you really have to be looking in this screenie. It's off to the left.

Kerbincomms Alpha, Bravo and Charlie were deployed once the probe carrier circularized its equatorial orbit, while the polar probe carrying Kerbincomms Delta, Echo and Foxtrot burned to raise its orbit up to the correct altitude (a ninety-minute orbital period up around 776.6 kilometers). Alpha, Delta and Bravo are currently in their correct orbital positions and I plan to get the other three in position as soon as I have time to do so today. Last thing that happened was the arrival of the Hurdy Gurdy at Hadwin's Shipwreck; the craft was successfully grabbed. I now face the problem of having one seat aboard the shipwreck and six kerbals to count as delivered, which I think is going to require that I ungrab and regrab with each kerbal in the single seat of Hadwin's Shipwreck at least once. I'll have to go back over the conditions of a colonization contract to be sure. That will likely take up my time today. I also still have the Sandstone Yoke mission heading towards Minmus, the Boop-Boop probe mission, a couple of science missions that are taking longer that expected and an ongoing tourist mission to Mün to deal with as well.



TL, DR: Deployed comm sats and not much else. Be happy I did a short post. For once.

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Leap of Faith core module and lander lifted to orbit. Both craft require fuel before departure. First interplanetary mission using Galileo's Planet Pack, target Niven. It has enough living space to sustain its 6 crew indefinitely (Kerbal Health mod), a radiation shelter for any solar storms that may arise, a science lab for data processing and medical facilities, and it should have enough dV to fly to Niven and return. I will tug along an ISRU lander to ensure its return, and extend the duration of the mission to collect additional science.

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Development of Starlaunch nears completion. Still some kinks to work out with reentry of the orbital vehicle, as the craft tends to nosedive even with airbrakes deployed: Likely a problem with using the MK3 fuselage parts. The first stage can lift close to 50 tons to orbit and then recover itself. Crew vehicle is 41 tons, leaving 9 tons of payload capacity in this configuration, demonstrated by the fuel tank in the bay.

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Developing a new super-heavy launch rocket with several competing goals:

  • Launch 150t to low Earth orbit;
  • Weigh less than 3000 tons total;
  • Use pre-tooled parts as much as possible to save money over tooling up large and expensive new parts.

After several failed attempts and realising that I wouldn't get close to that 150t goal, I eventually created this monstrosity that can manage 140t per launch:

7LgQ6ci.png

It has it all: asparagus-staged boosters with ugly carbuncles on the side to hold even more fuel for the six mighty F-1 engines, a core stage that air-lights like the Titan rockets with the big SRBs but which uses Soviet hypergolic upper stage engines and a hydrolox second stage to complete the propellant bingo. The good news is that almost all the parts used have already been tooled, with the exception of one fuel tank that's pretty cheap to tool and the new 3000-ton avionics which is decidedly not cheap to tool; the bad news is that it can only just make it to orbit with that 140 ton payload and with a launch mass of over 2990 tons there's virtually no scope for improvements.

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24 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Developing a new super-heavy launch rocket with several competing goals:

  • Launch 150t to low Earth orbit;
  • Weigh less than 3000 tons total;
  • Use pre-tooled parts as much as possible to save money over tooling up large and expensive new parts.

After several failed attempts and realising that I wouldn't get close to that 150t goal, I eventually created this monstrosity that can manage 140t per launch:

7LgQ6ci.png

It has it all: asparagus-staged boosters with ugly carbuncles on the side to hold even more fuel for the six mighty F-1 engines, a core stage that air-lights like the Titan rockets with the big SRBs but which uses Soviet hypergolic upper stage engines and a hydrolox second stage to complete the propellant bingo. The good news is that almost all the parts used have already been tooled, with the exception of one fuel tank that's pretty cheap to tool and the new 3000-ton avionics which is decidedly not cheap to tool; the bad news is that it can only just make it to orbit with that 140 ton payload and with a launch mass of over 2990 tons there's virtually no scope for improvements.

Don't feel bad, that is a neat launch vehicle. Also which parts mods are you using? I don't recognize some of these parts.

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Some of my fellow KSP players have been telling me to use TUFX. I installed it along with some other graphics mods and tools. I'm pretty happy with the results so far. Stay tuned.
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Edited by Blufor878
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Designed an amphibious tank. It's an ordinary medium tank of a mothballed, obsolete model with pontoons attached to it, allowing it to float, as well as a modern anti-tank missile launcher attached.

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Seen here alongside a more standard battle tank, the ATLT-94.

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Seen here floating. Now, a propulsion method...

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