Camaron

As it turns out, you CAN make a Kethane driller too big. Here's my experimental giant driller. 24 Nuclear engines and a KR-2L in the center. Eight drills, and the equivalent of 200 Generators. A capactity of almost 100,000 Fuel and 100,000 Kethane. It just finished bleeding the entire Kethane vein dry and still isn't full. So....

I have a finalized version of Emerald Grinder for you. As a note, feel free to name it whatever you want in your universe, same as the Titans. In case you missed it, here is the link to the Large Generators / Xenon Tanks / Batteries, which are necessary for Emerald Grinder. http://www./download/2p589le82qlxgce/Camaron_Edits_MMI.rar And here is the exact version of Kethane Mod I used with it: Kethane 0.8.5, just in case you want to be absolutely certain we have the same Kethane configs http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/23979-Kethane-Pack-0-8-5-Find-it-mine-it-burn-it!-0-23-5-(ARM)-compatibility-update And, of course, The craft itself: http://www./download/xnso6po6p5lly7s/Emerald_Grinder_Type_II_WL_B.rar The final Emerald Grinder has four small converters on it which will activate and refuel everything on the ship as it drills, when the drills are triggered. Likewise, the deactivate when the drills are retracted. It also has two more drills, two more G30 generators, double the SAS modules to combat it's cumbersome nature, and has had it's outer columns re-positioned so that the Landercan at the bottom is right above the ground - your kerbal can simply walk up to it and grab the ladder, no flying or jumping or other acrobatics. It launches with three probes bound to it. the probes can be used in polar orbit to do the Kethane scanning without bothering your massive primary ships to deal with polar orbiting. If you don't want probes, just rip them off in the editor. Action Controls: Gear: Toggle Legs Brakes: Deactivates all Converters 4 - Toggle Ion Engines. 5 - Toggle Nuclear Engines. 6 - Activate SAS Modules. 7 - Deactivate SAS Modules (Very important function when pairing to another bigger ship, so the crafts don't conflict.) 8 - Activate everything on the probe. 9 - Deploy Drills, activate Converters. 0 - Retract Drills, deactivate Converters. Tell me if you find any problems. Enjoy. Side Note - From what I can tell the Kethane Converters are both WAY off, mathematically speaking. Example - as it generates fuel from Kethane, my ship was gaining weight. And fast, too. Interestingly, the fuel is the closest-to-accurate of the bunch. The ratio on the Xenon is even worse, and the ratio on monoprop is just outright broken. What I'm getting at is this - how would you like if I figured out the appropriate weight ratios and reconfigure the converter's rates? If you like that idea, I'll do it. For the sake of keeping things matched, if you don't like that idea, I'll leave them alone.

Well for Gilly, Emerald Grinder can just turn its nukes off and use just the 12 Ion engines to get the accuracy it needs. Sounds to me like you're going to stick this right onto the Tri. If that's the case, you won't be needing the Tanker yet, since for all mission purposes, the Triskelion will essentially be the tanker. Just make sure that bad mother is outfitted with at least two of the large Kethane converters, but I recommend four. (that way you can activate each of them for one of the four fuels, and leave them that way, and your Triskelion will auto-convert everything it needs from the driller. They can convert more than one thing at a time, but there are losses when you do that, and it gets much slower, though that's probably irrelevant given that they work in time warp.) I'll polish up the Emerald Grinder over the next few hours and get a craft file online.

I've decided to go considerably larger with the Driller. Getting as much as possible in one go is a huge benefit. As long as the driller sticks with very low-gravity worlds, it can get pretty huge. Here's Emerald Grinder, which holds more Kethane that Titan Custom does. Which means redesign for Titan Custom... lol As it seems, Emerald Grinder + Giant Storage Station = infinitely reuseable Fuel Depot, which can reload anything it needs from the Kethane harvested by the Driller. I feel like the best option would be to design a new Tanker that is a sort of hybrid between Titan and Andromeda - In the sense that it shouldn't concern itself as much about getting fuel to its destination so mach as getting there with as much capacity as it can. I think One pair each around Minmus, Gilly, and Pol/Bop (dealer's choice) would effectively solve your Fuel Depot needs forever. I also feel like it would be wise to include a tiny scanning probe with the tanker for the purpose of giving itself a permanent polar orbit for full-surface scans. Given that the new Kethane Tanker won't be a Titan OR an Andromeda, that leaves naming up in the air.

I'm going to bed for now, but download that Electronics pack I linked earlier. Glad you like the new designs. Our "partnership" seems to work really well. I love building stuff, and always neglect to actually commit to an adventure, and you seem to prefer adventuring, and just want good crafts to do it with.

Here's mine. I call it the Tortoise. It is all stock-and-kethane, except for the Generators, which are perfect parallels to the weight and output of the stock generator. (in other words, 100% fair play) It effectively has 250 generators. If I put 250 stock generators on this, it would weigh exactly the same, and output exactly the same power. It's designed to work in tandem with a monstrous orbiting station which does all the conversion and storage work. The station carries over 120,000 units of both liquid fuel and kethane. The Tortoise can effectively fly itself to the ground, fill up, and re-orbit with plenty of room for error. It handles like a semi-truck hauling lead. Currently operates exclusively at Minmus.

So, I found one decent electric propulsion pack that had some big Xenon tanks, as well as some big generators and cool batteries. It also included engines, but I deleted them because they were some strange electric / Xenon / Rocket fuel freak hybrids that were very unbalanced and I didn't feel like figuring out how to re-balance them because they wouldn't help me anyway. So what I've done is, I opened up the configs of the other parts, and rebalanced the Tanks, Generators and Batteries to have the same weight-to-yield ratios as stock parts. In short, 100% fair-play, not stat-stretching. I've also given these parts tech tree places so that they may be used in Career mode. The largest Xenon Tank was put into a tech exclusive to Kethane, So it would only appear with Kethane mod. Incidentally, I've never mentioned it before, but I'm fairly advanced in the use of 3DS Max, and these mod parts were extremely simple to put together - just a model, textures, and a one-page spec sheet. I may very well produce my own mod from scratch before too long. Just gonna give this guy due credit, because he deserves it - ...and here's a link to my fixed up version: http://www./download/2p589le82qlxgce/Camaron_Edits_MMI.rar Here's what I came up with, using Kethane and Mythological Industries Mod: I call it "Titan Custom" Titan Custom carries 123,000 units of Liquid Fuel, and has capacity for up to 128,000 Kethane. Has the equivalent of 400 Generators. A Xenon Capacity of 76,8000, and Monopropellant capacity of 10.590. It has space for six Kerbals and good lighting for the docks. Edit: I've been playing with the Custom Titan because I figured there may be things I need to know about Kethane from firsthand use. So I built the Tortoise Driller, and put it all in action over Minmus. The Titan will undergo a few more changes based on what I've learned: mostly thet the Titan doesn't need four giant generators - two should be enough. Also, it needs one more heavy converter. That way you can set one each to each of the four conversion options and simply leave them that way, meaning the station should evenly and automatically convert Kethane to all four resources it can produce. Also, they just look amazing. Here they are paired over minmus.

Do you play Career or Sandbox?

This wasn't really meant for you... it would take something like six Titan Thirteen / Hexaflexagons to even load it. This was more of a test of how big I could make something. Every time I build some staggering monstrosity like this, I learn stuff that lets me go even bigger. I'll be starting on your thing tomorrow. It won't be this big, it will be a practical construct with lots of bells and whistles. Any mods out there with a good set of larger-scale Xenon tanks? Would be really nice if this ship could hold a great deal without racking up 900 parts in the process. Same as the Titans, parts count will be a huge factor in my design. Something as big as Andromeda M pretty much never moves again once you fill it up. It's fully fueled weight is several times heavier than a Class E Asteroid.. I'll still offer the craft to you, but don't try to take it outside Kerbin SOI without a whole lotta work. This is not a transporter/cruiser/starship. There are a few more things I want to do with this ship, so it's officially not complete. (Some fuel lines are less than optimal, stuff like that.)

I actually rather enjoy the idea. I've been considering trying Kethane for a long time now. We'll see what I can come up with. Earlier today I was building my largest Fuel Container Ship ever, Andromeda M. The M stands for "Million" (launches empty, gets refueled afterward method). I managed to blast into space a ship capable of containing 1,000,260 units of fuel, and 15,750 units of monoprop. It's an absolute behemoth and weighs in at just405 parts.It's empty weight is around 1,800 tons. I honestly did not expect this ship to pass the "Stand Up Test". I thought it would crumble under its massive, horizontally dense weight. Here's a small photo of the abomination now:

Do what I do. Never use it. Build another one. And another. And another....until Kerbin looks like Saturn.

I have debris persistence set to 0. That trash goes away afterward. I know it's a bit unrealistic, but it also clears up lag and memory. You could always add separatrons if you wanted realistic removal. Or just leave them attached. Or, if you like ultra-realism/challenges, build a Claw-based de-orbit ship that can forcibly throw away the trash. That might actually be kind of fun and interesting to build a proper multi-pass trash-clearing ship. Or even attach chutes. Recover all excess. Well, actually before tossing the launch boosters off, it's something like 2,900. But since they're essentially spent, and intended to be temporary, it doesn't make sense to count them. In the photographed Demonstration launch, two things happened. The photo showing the single-tank bottom boosters coming off in upper atmosphere is actually from my second (not third) launch attempt. I forgot to drop them entirely in the launch that was completed until the next stage was depleted. Who knows how mucn DV I lost from the extra 122 tons. Second, there was still around 5,000 fuel left in the boosters. I had the ship where I wanted it and just tossed the negligible (on the scale of Titan) remains. It was a very interesting challenge to learn how to effectively lift something of this monstrous scale. The new ARM update's physics has been infinitely indispensable to the attempt. I tried to fly an 1100-tonner in the previous version but it would never stay intact. Not only did I have to build several other generations of Titan to become familiar with the nuances, but in the last one, I even had to swipe a whackjob technique. Andromeda is only third-gen right now, because although it's even bigger, it's empty after launch. It's meant to be a storage depot which Titan can fill, with multiple passes. Andromeda III pictured earlier holds 589K Fuel, but only achieved its current orbit holding around 10,000. The idea is to essentially fuse the resources of several Titans into a single immense storage facility. While Titan has reached a point where I am satisfied, (who would be disappointed with 2,000 tons of fuel in one launch + a half-million orbit?) I feel I can still do more with Andromeda.

I'll have to download the Kethane mod and learn about that.

Come to think of it, Andromeda IV will definitely be bigger than the VAB. Anyone have a good recommendation for a VAB-expanding / Super VAB mod? I don't normally use any mod, but I can't build any bigger with the default VAB. I mean.... this is Andromeda III -

You know, I built that ship with an engine. Does it still have the engine? Also, great to see you're back! I've just built my new PC with more powerful components, and completed the Titan Thirteen. I was thinking, though, I wouldn't mind building you a new Giant fuel station built to spec. In other words, how much Xenon and Monoprop would you like with it? Would you rather have nuclear engines on it for self-relocation? Would you want the larger points on the center for balanced docking? Want lots of lights? Stuff like that. I'll fill your order. The latest 2,200 ton Titan only has two large Mono Tanks. I know that doesn't really fit your needs. Side note - I've seen it mentioned before. I think the intention of the Kethane Jets is to function on Eve and Duna where the Oxygen-breathers fail.

Nah. Just much, much bigger asparagus. The outer portions go right up to the VAB wall. Making it any bigger in stock KSP without a Spacepilot plugged in would have been very difficult.

I actually stole one of whackjob's signature methods. The rest of the struts are necessary to ward off the "SAS-Wobble-Kraken", as I call it. There's a strut binding the lower-level girders that was straight out of his own recent big project. If you look REEEALLY closely at the full-res version of the third-to-last photo, you can see the strut inside the lower girders. That's Whackjob's own trick.

Now that my new PC is built, I could reliably test-fly my latest ship. I had anticipated many, many failed launches at this scale, but I surprised myself. Launch one - missing one fuel link. Went to VAB and added missing link. Launch two - detached stage 5 too soon. Blew up the whole ship at 45km because I'm stupid. Prematurely dropping boosters = runaway missiles... Launch three - Success! No change from launch two except a little less stupidity on my part. The Titan Thirteen (Named for being the thirteenth Titan, not just to sound cool) Though it definitely does sound cool. A one-launch super-heavy Fuel Station Ship, carrying 170,000 units of fuel to an altitude of 500,000M-and-change. Consists of only 203 parts, so if you can handle a 1,012-part launcher, you can get a fairly lag-free Fuel Depot into orbit for all your excessive fuel needs! I'll upload the craft file and generalized flight instructions if you want it. Here's a launch album.

Great Hybrid. Here's my latest in Ion Ships: The Skorpion. It's capable of effectively moving at up to Class C Asteroids.

My recently developed Fuel Storage Station, Andromeda III. Capable of carrying up to 589,000 units of fuel.

I really like both of these last two submissions, but Spartwo, could we get a better view of the Ion drive parts? Other than the big solar, I can't see any of the major Ion components. (or is it clipped internally?)

Awesome! I never saw it coming. Thanks, iDan

Very "solid" advice, Rune. Funny how this thread goes dark for over a week, and then it just lights up again after I post my tiny ship dropping a wussy Class A around Mun.

This post hasn't seen a good new tug in a while. Here's my Ion Tug, tossing a Class A into a perfect equatorial 1M km orbit around Mun.

That satellite never saw it coming. Saturn finally looks the way it's supposed to once more.