[1.0.5]SKY - Scale-up Kerbalism for You - Kopernicus Rescale [v2.0]

[SkyRex94]

SKY - Scale-up Kerbalism for You - v2.0.1

Now Joint Venture with New Horizons!

Pre-1.0 : I was undecided which RSS config I really like to choose for my new Career and came to the conclusion, that none of the existing ones is exactly as I would like my game to be. So I decided to make my own RSS config and while I'm at it I can also share it with you, maybe someone else also has my taste of gameplay.

So what have I done and what is 'Kerbalism'? : Kerbalism is a mixture of Realism to a certain degree and the the Kerbal Universe. All stock parts shall still be senseful usable, but your rockets shall look realistic and the distances of the planets shall look believable, it should have a semi-realistic sense of challenge, the surface shall look good, but also a low orbit shall look good. Impossible? No, I found a sweet spot where at least I am quite happy with the result.

All Planets where scaled up with a factor of 5

All Distances where scaled up with a factor of 7

5x rescale is a pretty realistic sweetspot if your playing with stock engines and fuels. Rockets are properly sized and a low orbit looks properly low. At the same time playabilty is still there without getting to tedious (a launch to LKO takes ca. 6min compared to 10-11min in real). Additionally I found a way to deal with the washed out terrain. The KSC got moved to a much more interesting location than stock, where the planet looks very nice.

7 is bigger than 5 that means the proportions of the view have changed. Kerbin-Moon relation now looks a lot more realistic(-ish) . Space feels properly big with this. Additionally it pushes the difficulty further up than what 5x rescale would do alone. Which also adds to properly sized rockets for appropiate tasks, while also having nice looking planets. Indeed, if you don't use procedural Parts or Real Fuels, you will need a Saturn V to get two Kerbals to the moon in Apollo style.

So in a Stock/Distances/Sizes manner this is a 1/7/5 scale reconfig.

LKO speed is about 5200 m/s. DeltaV to LKO is around 6500-7000 m/s

Mun Orbit speed is just above 1200m/s.

LKO Mun Transfer needs ca. 2100m/s + capture burn.

Pictures from 2.0:

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IF you just want the rescale without the planets, just delete the corresponding folder in SKY and you'll get only the 1/7/5 rescale.

Additional changes:

This has tranferred from RSS to Kopernicus. This makes loading faster and opens possibilities for new planets. Additionally to a 2nd Gas Giant I moved some stock planets around, which where kinda uninteresting before to give them more interest.

Joint Venture with New Horizons:

New Horizons is a Planet Pack for Kopernicus by KillAshley, and some of its Planets where sized up changed slightly and integrated into SKY. This creates a more fleshed out solar system with new challenges. Planets marked with (NH) are originally from New Horizons (although they are sized up and sometimes changed slightly)

The solar system in SKY:

Ernus(NH): 1st planet, very close to the sun with a burned off side and very steep cliffs and hot temperatures. Very hostile, you have been warned.

Moho: 2nd Planet

Eve: 3rd Planet

Kerbin: 4th Planet

-Mun:

-Minmus: got a changed orbit, 1:1 ressonance with the Mun but polar orbit and highly elliptical making it harder to reach than the Mun.

Duna: 5th Planet

- Gilly: Dunas inner moon. Has kept its 1x Scale to keep it bumpy . its Orbit is very close to the far bigger Duna , providing Awesome View.

- Ike:

Dres:Not a planet, but the biggest planetoid in the asteroid belt. is orbited by two smaller asteroids.

- Oree (NH): small asteroid

- Aptur (NH): slightly bigger small asteroid

Jool: 6th Planet

- Laythe

- Vall

- Tylo

- Bop

- Pol

Syterion (SKY unique): 7th Planet. Syterion is the 2nd Gas Giant . It is nearly twice as far as Jool, a little bigger , and with a custom blue skin (Thanks goes to Felsmak, who created the Texture and is a really talented person for those things. ) It also has Rings created with Kopernicus now.

- Pitch (SKY unique): Syterions innermost moon, inside the rings. Very very dark surface, making it almost impossible to see during nighttime. Lights are very recommended for your landers.

- Eeloo: Scaled and moved into Syterions orbit. (2nd) moon of Syterion. (Analouge to Enceladus)

- Etal (NH): very interesting surface structure.

- Eli (NH): changed to a green color, making it more unique. Smaragds are probably common here.

- Xentex (SKY unique): Syterions 5th moon and by far the biggest of them. It has a lot of mountain ranges and even supports some lakes on the surface (although propably not containing water). The atmosphere ranges up to 350000m and the density at sea level is huge (modelled after real-life-Titan-atmosphere) This is the Titan analouge for KSP and something that was really missing. The views from here onto Syterion and its other moons are just marvelous

- Astid (NH): small chunk of rock propably created during the impact on Dersos.

- Dersos (NH): featuring a very interesting surface, with half of the planet covered in a burned crater of a huge impact. (Analouge to real life Iapetus)

Vanor (NH) and Arin (NH): 8th Planet, well its more of a binary planetary System of Vanor and Arin. Vanor, a gas giant, captured the huge Arin long time ago forming a binary System of two Planets at the same Orbit.

- Serran (NH): inner moon of Vanor, heated up by tidal forces and propably supporting plants coloring the surface and creating oxygen in the atmosphere.

- Titanus (NH): A huge cold lifeless planet with a thick atmosphere, like the brother of Eve. Was propably a planet itself befor it got captured by Vanor ending up in a retrograde orbit around it and forming its outer moon.

- Atell (NH): Arins own moon, sitting right in the gap of its ring-system. A lifeless but colorful rock.

Ete (NH): A comet, and the furthest out object from the sun. ellipitical orbit goes in and down to Duna before it flies off into darkness again. Nice blue color.

Special thanks to KillAshley for creating the New Horizons Planets and supporting the idea of an integration into SKY. Check out New Horizons if you just want new planets and no rescale, or just to acknoledge the origin of some of this content.

New Horizons

NEW CHALLENGES in SKY:

- Titan-like moon with super high atmosphere. Landing is super super easy, but getting into orbit is extremely difficult with a normal rocket.

- Retrograde moon: Think about this if aiming for it while entering Vanors Orbit. Makes things like a round Trip more difficult.

- Ring-Object: Encounter with Pitch is hard, because its so deep in Syterions Gravity well. And landing is even harder if you forgot your landing-lights.

- Darkness: see Pitch above.

- Burned Planet: watch your heat and bring radiator if going to Ernus.

- Comet-intercept: getting there is the challenge here.

Changelog:

2.0.1: new Kopernicus compatibility and Gilly fix

2.0  : New Horizons Joint Venture , 5x rescale , Moons Pitch and Xantex , new Launch location, new Minmus orbit

-----------------------------
Verion 0.1: initial WP showcase

0.2: moved Bop to Duna and Gilly to Syterion, made Eeloo orbit retrograde and refined some orbit and atmo-values.

0.5: Made Minmus a comet. refined some values.

1.0: First release, tested if everything works as intended
1.0.1: Added a Ring System to Syterion. slightly changes

1.1: Laythe is Titan like. Pol is Io like with super thin super hot atmo. Minmus is a Trojan moon. Added Descriptions. Dres is now retrograde

1.2: Sun got 7x Size to bring the planets years back into reasonable amounts of time, and minmus got 2x size to make encounters easier with a bigger SOI

1.5 Beta: transferred to Kopernicus. Planets are only upsized by 3.7, accounting 1.0 balanced ISPs. Gilly to Duna, Laythe back to Jool. Syterion is no longer an 'Ike' but a proper new planet.
1.5: updated Kopernicus, Moho and Tylo properly scaled now.

Download:

Dropbox

KerbalStuff--not updating for me--still 0.90

will try getting it to work when I'm back home.

Go into RemoteTech_Settings.cfg and replace the GroundStations block with this one:

{
STATION
{
Guid = 5105f5a9-d628-41c6-ad4b-21154e8fc488
Name = Mission Control
Latitude = -19.2711
Longitude = 64.2777
Height = 75
Body = 1
MarkColor = 0,0.2,1,1
Antennas
{
ANTENNA
{
Omni = 7.5E+08
}
}
}
}

GroundStations

CHALLENGE:

Everybody who posts a mission log of a succesful Syterion-7 mission (analouge to the famous Jool-5) will get a special mentioning and highlighting here.

Licence: CC-BY-NC-SA

Includes Kopernicus.

Known Bugs:

Cheers

SkyRex94

Edited November 18, 2015 by SkyRex94

[SkyRex94]

Updated the Config. Added Volumetric Rings to Syterion with the help of EVE. Added pics of them too, and moved the KSC back to its original Cape, because of the better flat location for it, but it's still angeled and moved slightly.

[SkyRex94]

I've an idea and a question to everyone who's tried my system.

I think Syterion looks pretty good with the rings, but Pol , being a Titan analouge and having a dense atmo, doesn't really satisfy me.

I found out that Minmus actually works good together with EVE, allowing to apply dense clouds.

I'm currently thinking of changing Pol for Minmus and making Minmus a Titan-like moon around Syterion, additionally it would allow easier career progress if you, like me, don't want to miss any Explore-Contracts, since Syterion and therefor minmus is a lot easier to reach than a Comet's orbit.

Also the amount of Minmus Biomes fits a lot better onto a big moon and its flats make good for frozen lakes.

IF I might do that, what shall happen to Pol? Either back to Jool, OR a Pluto like dwarf planet, OR Pol becomes a comet.

P.S: I'm also keen to see any posts here regarding your experience with the config, like the 7/4 rescale and the enhanced challenges.

[The Destroyer]

Sounds interesting, I like it!

[Ascension Islander]

I'd say keep Pol back at Jool. I know I always enjoy playing the gravity-assist game with maneuver nodes at Jool, and having more moons to dance around only makes it more fun.

[SkyRex94]

I'd say keep Pol back at Jool. I know I always enjoy playing the gravity-assist game with maneuver nodes at Jool, and having more moons to dance around only makes it more fun.

Gravity assist with Pol?! You know how big Pol is?

So I internally tried to make Minmus a Titan Analouge. But it doesn't really look good on the surface. This is the Problem with scaling up small bodies.

Vall is also no option since it has the same cloud bug as pol.

Laythe and Tylo are also pretty unique challenges already so I keep them at Jool.

Dres might be an option, but I'd like to keep its appearance since its one of the least visited bodies and transforming it to an Iapetus like moon might increase the will to go there.

suggestions?

Edited February 13, 2015 by SkyRex94

[TonyC]

Great mod ! Definitely trying this ! (I started losing interest in KSP some time ago)

It orbits Retrograde and pretty close, offering a hole new Challenge. 2nd moon of Syterion.

Hole ?

[SkyRex94]

Great mod ! Definitely trying this ! (I started losing interest in KSP some time ago)

Hole ?

oh yeah, corrected to whole, not-a-native-speaker-excusion...

BUT: Update 1.1 is nearly ready, so if ANYBODY uses this (which is not so clear, judging by the number of posts in this thread) here is a briefing what 1.1 will change:

I made up my mind that I don't want a Titan Analouge to look... meh...

So the only real option for a Titan like body was Laythe. Laythe was often visited anyway and pretty easy to land and start from.

-Laythe will be the 3rd moon of Syterion now, with 300km Atmo height. (I would like to remove the Oxygen but apparently that can't be done with RSS)

-Pol got upsized to 1500km radius and replace Laythes location at Jool. It's a volcanic moon having a very thin but super hot atmosphere. The idea is that you have to either build your lander with heat resistent parts or land higher than a certain altitude. Some sort of Io-analouge now.

- Eeloo orbits Prograde and Dres orbits retrograde now. A captured object wouldn't be perfectly aligned so the Triton role fits to Dres better. Also it adds a little more to unloved Dres. (what do you think of this change?)

-Bop's orbit around Duna has been a little increased.

- Minmus is no longer a comet. Minmus is one of the first Explore contracts in Career, so I wanted it to be in some reach, and a comet isn't really. Also a comet might end up like original Eeloo: the challenge is to get there but once you're there its pretty lonely. SO, more exiting I made Minmus stock sized and a Trojan Moon of Kerbin! That means it shares Kerbins orbit but doesn't really orbit Kerbin but the Sun. From Kerbin it appears to have a Horsehoe orbit shape. And I think the Trojan Moon solution is brilliant. Getting to the Mun is now easier than getting to Minmus (what I wanted) but getting to Minmus is still easier than getting to Duna ( which is exactly the gap where career wants minmus to be) I personally think a Trojan moon has a lot more gameplay value than a comet.

Still have to get the hot-thin-atmo on Pol to work, run into some issues there, but apart from that it's nearly ready.

[Ascension Islander]

Quick question: Am I supposed to be seeing the stock RSS launch sites? The ones based on Earth?

[SkyRex94]

Quick question: Am I supposed to be seeing the stock RSS launch sites? The ones based on Earth?

No you aren't . You don't install RSS before. Just install this, it comes with RSS included. You only need to install EVE before if you want the Rings.

[Ascension Islander]

Ah, yep, that was it. Thanks!

[SkyRex94]

Update 1.1 is nearly ready, so if ANYBODY uses this (which is not so clear, judging by the number of posts in this thread) here is a briefing what 1.1 will change:

I made up my mind that I don't want a Titan Analouge to look... meh...

So the only real option for a Titan like body was Laythe. Laythe was often visited anyway and pretty easy to land and start from.

-Laythe will be the 3rd moon of Syterion now, with 300km Atmo height. (I would like to remove the Oxygen but apparently that can't be done with RSS)

-Pol got upsized to 1500km radius and replace Laythes location at Jool. It's a volcanic moon having a very thin but super hot atmosphere. The idea is that you have to either build your lander with heat resistent parts or land higher than a certain altitude. Some sort of Io-analouge now.

- Eeloo orbits Prograde and Dres orbits retrograde now. A captured object wouldn't be perfectly aligned so the Triton role fits to Dres better. Also it adds a little more to unloved Dres. (what do you think of this change?)

-Bop's orbit around Duna has been a little increased.

- Minmus is no longer a comet. Minmus is one of the first Explore contracts in Career, so I wanted it to be in some reach, and a comet isn't really. Also a comet might end up like original Eeloo: the challenge is to get there but once you're there its pretty lonely. SO, more exiting I made Minmus stock sized and a Trojan Moon of Kerbin! That means it shares Kerbins orbit but doesn't really orbit Kerbin but the Sun. From Kerbin it appears to have a Horsehoe orbit shape. And I think the Trojan Moon solution is brilliant. Getting to the Mun is now easier than getting to Minmus (what I wanted) but getting to Minmus is still easier than getting to Duna ( which is exactly the gap where career wants minmus to be) I personally think a Trojan moon has a lot more gameplay value than a comet.

Still have to get the hot-thin-atmo on Pol to work, run into some issues there, but apart from that it's nearly ready.

v1.1 is up and ready!

Huge thanks to Starwaster who found and fixed a bug in the RSS .dll, which bugged the heating of Pol. Now the super hot Atmo works as it should.

Other changes you can read above.

pictures are already up, View on imgur directly if the OP embeded hasn't updated yet

Enjoy and post experiences!

Cheers

SkyRex94

Edited February 16, 2015 by SkyRex94

[Lucius]

Wow VERY interesting stuff here so far.

I do like that 3.2 scale means you can pretty much reuse all the stock pieces without going too crazy/using realism overhaul. So don't wander too far from your 4 scale, it definitely appeals. Really lets you still feel "kerbally" rather than getting too dense into realism.

However that IS indeed something i've often felt lacked in the 3.2 config, is the distance between planets. Its like you read my mind!

Going to give this a download right now and really get into the guts of it, but for what its worth: Don't give this one up! I REALLY like what you're going for here, and it's a little ambition of mine to introduce sort of a "realism LITE" mode that i think would suit rescales like this fantastically. Keep slugging away, and especially dont give up on this one once 1.0 finally comes out. Very interested to see this keep evolving!

**Edit** Also, is this on CKAN? Is there any way you can GET it on CKAN? Might not hurt for exposure either.

[Lucius]

Hey again, have spent a good few days playing (pics to follow) with the mod, have the following to say discussion-wise:

LOOKS fantastic. You're right when you say you have a good balance of PQS and landscale to planet scale, everything looks good and works well.

FEELS good, especially the distance between planets. I have to say right off the bat, the best possible decision was having a different scale for the planets than for the planet distances. Makes a world of difference IMHO. Makes moons and space travel feel FAR rather than the "fun but too simple" distance of stock.

WORKS ... okay. My one gripe and maybe an area i would approach myself is the planet scale. Let me use Beale's Tantares pack as an example: To me, the only reason not to go with a full size RSS config is to avoid having to reconfigure the fuel capacity of your tanks and your engines and blah blah all of the touchy modding to make things fit your new world. It is to discourage riding a single SRB to space, but encourage using stock parts. This world just feels SLIGHTLY too big to get away with any of Beale's Launchers delivering their intended cargo into orbit. Everything needs to be just a bit too much bigger than feels "real". I havnt tried it with FASA, but for stock and tantares you're on a knife's edge if you want to use the rockets for things like mun missions etc. I can only imagine the rockets necessary to reach Jool.

Thats not to be discouraging or insulting, i actually very much enjoyed this configuration immensely, and i really hope you dont abandon it. But it might have worked better as a 3.6/7 or similar. Just for the purpose of discussion!

[SkyRex94]

Hey again, have spent a good few days playing (pics to follow) with the mod, have the following to say discussion-wise:

LOOKS fantastic. You're right when you say you have a good balance of PQS and landscale to planet scale, everything looks good and works well.

FEELS good, especially the distance between planets. I have to say right off the bat, the best possible decision was having a different scale for the planets than for the planet distances. Makes a world of difference IMHO. Makes moons and space travel feel FAR rather than the "fun but too simple" distance of stock.

WORKS ... okay. My one gripe and maybe an area i would approach myself is the planet scale. Let me use Beale's Tantares pack as an example: To me, the only reason not to go with a full size RSS config is to avoid having to reconfigure the fuel capacity of your tanks and your engines and blah blah all of the touchy modding to make things fit your new world. It is to discourage riding a single SRB to space, but encourage using stock parts. This world just feels SLIGHTLY too big to get away with any of Beale's Launchers delivering their intended cargo into orbit. Everything needs to be just a bit too much bigger than feels "real". I havnt tried it with FASA, but for stock and tantares you're on a knife's edge if you want to use the rockets for things like mun missions etc. I can only imagine the rockets necessary to reach Jool.

Thats not to be discouraging or insulting, i actually very much enjoyed this configuration immensely, and i really hope you dont abandon it. But it might have worked better as a 3.6/7 or similar. Just for the purpose of discussion!

I'm really happy you like it so far and you share my opinion of two different scales for distances and planets. For the rocket sizes I have to say I'm more on the other edge: I feel it's barely enough to make your stock rocket feel real but I can't go 5x because there the PQS starts to look unpleasant to me.

I'm currently playing Career and have already done manned Mun and manned Minmus missions, all with one single launch per mission and without access to the high end tech. If you'd like I can post some screens of my designs and what they are capable of?

Edited February 26, 2015 by SkyRex94

[Lucius]

Yeah i might've spoken too soon, testing out Beale's new N1 for instance still takes a small craft and lander to Mun and back.

But lemme emphasize again, i REALLY enjoy it. And you're right its right on the threshold where much more would affect PQS value.

I'm kinda saving taking too many screenshots until i have my new little idea more fleshed out but, i would LOVE to see more pictures. Even better, i'd love to have you post them on Reddit. I genuinely really enjoy this mod, and can only hope more people find it man. Keep it up!

Also i mean i know you know your own mod but lemme emphasize what i REALLY like here:

The new planets are a creative use of existing assets. No insane new kittopia installs or anything is necessary. You made a deeper "system" out of resources that, i agree, i was barely visiting myself (though i know everyone plays the game differently so it may not be everyone's thing). But yeah, Amazing choice.

The size, ESPECIALLY the planet distances, very solid choice. I think if the dV charts still bug you, maybe the logical step is increasing planet distances a touch more, to 4/8? not sure what the orbital limits are here.

If you keep up with the mod i'd LOVE to show you what i'm trying to cook up, maybe even if you wanted to have your own "Tech tree" to go with the mod, just a simple idea to combat exactly what you're talking about: decade-centric tech levels with missions dedicated to their tech: Sounding Rockets, Unmanned Satellites, Manned orbital missions, Manned Lunar Missions, Manned habitation. Only problem is i'm in HEAVY exams right now so i don't get to do nearly as much as i'd like to it day by day. But the idea might be just what you're looking for, a sort of RP-0 of your own, without the finnicky resizing etc of RSS.

Oh and btw dont know if you noticed or not, but i found this config through the front page of RSS, so make sure and give a big shout-out to NathanKell for the exposure. And yeah lets see more pictures!

[Ascension Islander]

Just want to poke my head in and say that I've been thoroughly enjoying this mod. This is by far the best combination of rescaling out there.

[Lord Aurelius]

I've been looking for a good RSS config, this one looks quite interesting, I'll definitely give it a try.

Are you planning on adjusting any of the science values/messages to reflect the changes you've made?

[Ascension Islander]

Oh and Kerbostationary orbit is exactly 10,480.335km (10h 43m 59s orbital period). Maybe you could throw that in the release post?

Update: I was wrong again. See below.

Edited March 5, 2015 by Ascension Islander
Incorrectly assumed 12h day, corrected

[SkyRex94]

I've been looking for a good RSS config, this one looks quite interesting, I'll definitely give it a try.

Are you planning on adjusting any of the science values/messages to reflect the changes you've made?

I intended this to be as lightweight as possible, adjusting the messages requires another mod to do so. So probably not, but it's not that bad, most of them seem roughly to fit still (speaking of the changed planets)

Oh and Kerbostationary orbit is exactly 10,480.335km (10h 43m 59s orbital period). Maybe you could throw that in the release post?

Are you still using 1.0? I've changed the rotation of Kerbin to exactly 12h, specifically to make this easier. Height is around 11kkm for KSO.

[SkyRex94]

Updated the config, view Changelog for the two adjustments

[Ascension Islander]

Are you still using 1.0? I've changed the rotation of Kerbin to exactly 12h, specifically to make this easier. Height is around 11kkm for KSO.

I guess so

[spacecookie]

Hello, thank you very much I don't play anymore without this mod As I have never been good to land anywhere else than kerbin, this mod gives a lot more challenge to the casual things I do ingame, like launching probes, satellites spacecrafts and stations around kerbin low orbit !

Anyway, you gave us the sexiest planet I've seen in this game so far, I needed to go to it with hyperedit!

Again, Thank ya !

[SkyRex94]

Hello, thank you very much I don't play anymore without this mod As I have never been good to land anywhere else than kerbin, this mod gives a lot more challenge to the casual things I do ingame, like launching probes, satellites spacecrafts and stations around kerbin low orbit !

Anyway, you gave us the sexiest planet I've seen in this game so far, I needed to go to it with hyperedit!

http://i.imgur.com/Aplw9DN.png

Again, Thank ya !

I'm glad you like it, and yes i'm also in love with how Syterion (the second GP) turned out to look (Credit for the Texture goes to Felsmak)

[Whirligig Girl]

Hey, I'm wondering how the heat mechanic on Pol works exactly. I'm trying to get Moho's heat back to it's old glorious burn, but my messing around with the temperaturecurve stuff yielded nothing. And yes, I did actually add an atmosphere to Moho.