Claw

It's on my list, though I couldn't guess as to when it might get looked at. :/

My Moho mission is up! It was quite a ride. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I wish the terrain had a bit more shades of color to it, but the relief of the terrain was quite nice (for the most part). The first launch was a failure, partly due to fuel constraints and partly due to bad pilotage. After adding a few moar boosters, the crew was on their way with the rover. They even took a tour of the Mohole. Here's the mission album

I think it took me about sixty hours in-game, though I was not able to sustain 50m/s the whole time. By pure math, it would take about 11 hours of real time at 50m/s and 2x warp. I had to repeat several legs of the journey due to crashes, and probably averaged about 20m/s. I can't recall off hand if I was able to go 2x or 3x most of the way. It was extraordinarily painful. Quite frankly, Tylo is pretty low on my list of enjoyable drives. But everyone is different, and enjoys different things, so maybe it'll be your kind of thing. Yes, that's right. Only brief jumps are allowed. There's no definition of brief, but I'd say sailing over the tops of craters might not qualify as brief (since most craters are pretty large).

A Bright Future After returning from their most recent adventure at the furthest reaches of the solar system, the intrepid threesome gear up for a new excursion to the Sun’s closest companion. The mission director set his sights on Moho, directing the engineers to spin up another launch system capable of delivering the worlds’ renowned Geep. Julella (pilot) salivates at the opportunity to navigate a (potentially) more interesting celestial body. While Eeloo was a novel sight, it didn’t really satisfy Julella’s driving muscles. Obemy (engineer), on the other hand, seemed less enthused about driving backwards around another planet. He did see some wheel repair action on Eeloo, but more importantly, he took some notes on how to improve the Geep after the most recent phase shift in universal physics. Marissa (scientist) is looking forward to more Collins duty aboard the orbiter, despite the relatively cramped quarters as compared to the Iron Narcissus (Jool mothership). ----- So this is another one of my missions that’s been done for a little bit now (though not as long as Eeloo). I did learn from the rover on Eeloo, which lived through a couple version updates. The wheels, while not extremely susceptible, would still go inactive when hitting bumps a bit too hard. To help prevent that, I moved a few components inward and pulled the wheels down, back, and out slightly from the chassis. When viewed from most angles, I think the change is imperceptible. If I zoom in close from the front, the slight gaps become apparent. Some quick testing in the western KSC hills shows a marked reduction in wheel-blockage over the previous design. So with that, most of the engineering work for Moho was done. The engineers added a little bit of extra fuel to the rover delivery system, and deemed the ascent craft “good enough” (though the thrust-to-weight ratio was a little suspect). Turns out the crew was already within ten days of the next Moho transfer window, so the rocket was launched without delay. Admittedly, the first trip to Moho was an abject failure and the entire delivery system went zinging past Moho (which might be of little surprise to those who have visited Moho before). The pilots with their bruised egos blamed a lack of fuel, but ultimately there was a bit of poor pilotage as well. (The above is the successful mission vehicle.) So the second attempt was launched under the guise of “Moar Boosters” and away they went. The ejection was much better planned, and the ship arrived with quite an excess of fuel. While not really an issue, it felt a bit wasteful to essentially jettison a huge amount of fuel in order to extract the rover. Lesson learned: Don’t be impatient. The terrain was more entertaining to drive than Eeloo (dare I say, it might have been enjoyable ). Julella insisted on a polar route, since she heard “the Mohole is an absolute must see.” The crew was pleasantly surprised to discover the terrain leading up to the North Pole was not nearly as jagged as a few other places they’ve been (*cough* Duna *cough*). They also took some sight-seeing excursions to several of the craters (which Eeloo has a decided lack of). Here are the mission pictures. Not too much crazy to show during the drive itself... All-in-all, the northern hemisphere was a bit rough to travel on, providing enough variety to be challenging but not so much that it was utterly destructive. The southern hemisphere was much smoother and the Geep made quite good time. Marissa also noted that in several places the crew had to be careful where they stopped. Sometimes the rover would spontaneously launch into the air, usually when one of the crew was EVA and looking around. It’s unclear if this was related to the terrain or some other magical force.

Thanks. And yes indeed, they are the same crew that has done all of my Elcano missions.

Yes, it is most definitely tied to frame rate. Some info is getting double processed, which means that it's basically getting turned on and back off in the same frame. Sometimes toggled multiple times, which adds to the random nature.

Logs and moar data. Just like the previous "crash in editor" issue, details are extremely important in replicating these "random" type of issues. It sometimes takes a lot of different folks sharing their experience to really nail the issue. Cheers, -Claw

The fixed gear had to have part of the model removed to prevent some other wheels issues. This has, unfortunately, had the side effect of causing offset gizmo attachment issues. If desired, you can increase the max allowable offset by editing the settings.cfg. There's an option in there named something like FINE_OFFSET (I forget the exact name offhand) that defaults to 0.2. If you increase that, then you can have a higher amount of offset if you hold SHIFT while dragging the offset handles. Cheers, -Claw

Sorry, didn't mean to ignore this thread. The "Disable Ground Crew" turns off all the animations, but doesn't turn off the accent lighting on the walls. The add-on does turn off those lights as well, so it sounds like those lights might be hitting some systems a bit harder than others. The good news is that those lights are receiving attention. In the mean time, let me know if the add-on isn't working well for folks in 1.1.3 and I can recompile. Cheers, -Claw

There were some definite stability issues that are fixed in the most recent version, specifically that were causing random crashing. As sal suggests, please give 1.1.3 a try. I recommend keeping a backup of your save as you update. Cheers, -Claw

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to show when there are cheaters about! How about adding moar pings to @Red Iron Crown?

I see the problem here, thanks for pointing it out! It should still work, but might be worse for some folks than for others. I'll see about adding a fix to my stock bug fix pack.

I believe I've located the problem here. I will try to work up a fix, and maybe a utility to help fix stuck ports in-game.

Please provide more specifics. In general, orbital stability has been reportedly better on 1.1.3. "It's worse for me" is somewhat useful, but doesn't allow us to actually look into the issue. A save file is the best bet for this case, or maybe a .craft file. Cheers

I've looked into the issue and I believe I've found the culprit that's causing ports to be unable to undock (at least the particular case that's been pointed out to me). I should be able to work up an add-on fix for it, but might be a couple days. As with everything...too much to do and not enough time.

My Eeloo mission is up. Nothing too horribly exciting about this particular journey, which is also nice from time to time.

The Dirty Snowball So it was finally time to bite the bullet and do the distant, cold, lonely, bland...Eeloo. (I actually had this one done a while ago, but just now got around to posting it.) Given it's size, I elected to keep the same rover for Eeloo and give it a try under 1.1.3. It's been a bit since I've done a long term mission with the wheels, let alone with the new wheels. After a little bit of testing, and some additional accessories attached to the basic rover (so the crew could land and take off again), the intrepid threesome set off for Eeloo. Unfortunately Eeloo isn't too terribly exciting (at least not to me). The mission itself was rather uneventful, and I carried more than enough fuel to make up for lazy interplanetary travel... I think the white terrain does make for some nice pictures, but I didn't post too many of those (I don't think I did, anyway). I think Eeloo taught me that I actually do like to have a bit of relief to the terrain. I like to have something to plan around and something to actually steer through.

Well, we don't necessarily comment on everything we read. There are several threads and PMs flying around about this. I'm not sure what you want me to say, since there's already a mechanic in place to turn it all off. You just have to go in and do it. In fact, I thought someone already created an MM file to do just that.

Looking forward to it.

Whoops, I almost forgot to add you to the front page! Congrats again.

I actually enjoyed Kerbin, though maybe that's because I did it early on and I didn't just race around the planet. I did some shore hopping along the way (for refuel), and I've previously driven from KSC to the North Pole. There is some really nice scenery, and I saw a lot of stuff that I would never have seen if all I did was rockets and short range plane building (which is also it's own brand of fun ). Tylo, that was the most boring for me...by far. It's as large as Kerbin without as much terrain variation. And the terrain itself has some difficulties which require constant attention to the rover to reduce (can't prevent) catastrophes, and put some limitations on phys-warp. That was a long...long drive.

I did not run into any invisi-terrain when driving, though it became apparent when I returned to my landing sight. I did run into some issues when landing, but none when driving. (Though obviously my experience doesn't mean that's how it would be for everyone.) I would say just use caution if you save with crew members off of the rover. Edit: I should also mention, it wasn't the low gravity of Pol I was referring to, but that the terrain itself is a little more extreme. It's definitely a change compared to Eeloo.

I ran into some difficulties on Dres (it kept blowing up my rover) but others look like they've had an easier time. Dres isn't too hard to drive and has some interesting landscape. Pol also has some pretty interesting landscape to explore, but comes with some of it's own driving challenges.

Honestly it looks like you did great for a first Elcano. Your craft is pretty straight forward, so there's not too much to pick apart on it. Eeloo has a bit lower gravity, so personally on your next trip I might protect the RTGs a bit more so they don't get broken off. However, you have a nice wide wheel base, and with 1.1.3 craft aren't as flip happy as they were in 1.0.5, so that might not be as much of an issue for your design on the higher g worlds.

@HoloYolo No big rush. Take your time and enjoy it when you're ready. It's certainly easy to burn out on Elcano missions. They can be a bit...demanding... That badge looks good on ya. You guys are making me nostalgic. I need to post up some of my recent travels. I've got a couple completions to add (this challenge had slowed down for a while).