Claw

This is a pretty good technique too, although I haven't used it as much. The orbits and orientations are still moving in the same way, it's just that all that movement is being translated into roll instead of yaw/pitch, which is often easier to deal with. It also depends on where the docking ports are.

You can get around this one by editing the part.cfg for the gear and changing to mass = 0. No more lies from the SPH/VAB.

Heh. And I was all proud of myself for assembling a 600ish ton station (1300t wet). I never have MJ do docking for me, but I did let it try on one of the modules for that job. I too found it did a bit sub-standard. It practically dumped all the mono overboard as it crashed my lab into the power module. Perhpas it's because I don't know how to use MJ to dock. Personally I find that approaching a little faster works better for me. I find if my orbits are really misaligned and I approach slowly, I end up spending a lot of time reorienting the craft to burn and keep the approach path (prograde) on the target indicator. I keep my speed up around 40-50 m/s at 1km, keep the engines pointed toward the target, and do very light burns to keep the retrograde marker lined up on target. Then there's no need to flip the ship to stop. Just a nice steady but expedient approach. Once down to 200ish m apart, I make sure the vellocity is down below 2 m/s. Much less than that if the module is bigger and takes time to flip. Although I should say that I do most large rendezvous without monopro, and pick up docking tugs when I arrive. But then again, I haven't docked an 800t module yet.

Perhaps there's another place to have the "stock vs. FAR" debate other than a "please help" thread.

Haha, so very true and easy to forget on a plane.

FAR is definitely someting to consider, but not required if you prefer stock.

Heya, and welcome! I remember finding KSP and feeling exactly the same way. I still have a copy of the original SimCity and up. I am also mostly a stock player. I would highly recommend playing it clean, for at least a little while before you pop any mods in there. However, if you are only looking to install a mod or two then here are my suggestions. They don't really effect gameplay, but they make it a little easier to design, build, fly, and run a space program. The first mod I would recommend is something that displays a craft's stats. The exact one will depend on how much "help" you want, but I'll list two common ones so you can decide. They list things like deltaV (a measure of how much maneuvering you can do) and thrust-to-weight ratio, among a huge list of other stats. 1A) MechJeb 2.0 - MJ for short. I use this one because I prefer the look of the interface. MJ also includes an autopilot. For this reason, some people think it's cheatery. I rarely use the autopilot, so whatever. However, I would say if you use this addon, avoid the temptation to let it do all the flying if you get stuck. Although the autopilot feature does make a nice teaching tool on occasion. It is not, however, always the best at flying. 1B) Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER) - Provides just about all of the same stats as MJ, but no autopilot. If you are afraid of being tempted by MJ's autopilot, than this mod is very similar. Without the autopilot, KER carries less "cheater-pants" baggage. 2) Kerbal Alarm - This is handy because you can use it to set reminders to pay attention to specific craft. It is really helpful when running several missions at the same time. For example, if you are playing with a craft and have an interplanetary capture coming up another craft, you can use the alarm to remind you so that you don't miss your orbital capture. (Or so you don't time warp past it, which is really annoying.) Those mods don't change stock in any way, except to add a couple parts for MJ and/or KER. Alarm is just a little button in the corner of the screen. I use MJ and Alarm to make design and flight management easier. Other common/popular mods that aren't sci-fi-esque (which I haven't used): - Ferram Aerospace Research (FAR) - overhaul of the stock aerodynamics. Forces you to create more aerodynamic rockets, aircraft, and spaceplanes. - Procedural Fairings (PF) - Creates nice fairing coverings for your rockets. Pretty much necessary if you use FAR. - Tactical Life Support (TAC LS, or just TAC) - Forces you to bring food/water/air along with for your kerbals. No more decades long orbits in just a space suit... - Kerbal Attachment System (KAS) - provides options for attaching/removing things in flight with kerbals on EVA. Also adds some parts like winches. There are a huge amount of mods. So what mod to use really depends on what you are interested in doing with KSP. That is why I recommend playing it without mods for a bit before you pick some. Find out what interests you. Visuals? Airplane parts? Physics improvements? There are sooooo many including clouds, cities, helicopters. It's actually sort of unbelievable. The other advantage to playing stock first is that you can extend replayability for a long time by adding mods in later, after you figure out all the basics and tricks. Anyway, I think this post has gotten way to long. Hopefully I didn't get ninja'd.

Yeah, I would say the same. After my first Mun landing, I started building my ships a bit wider until I got more practice. I still prefer them to be (proportionally) a bit wide when I can get away with it.

Are you using any mods? And when the craft touched down on the ground, did anything break off? Two things: 1) Make sure that whatever experiment you are doing, you haven't done it a bunch already. If you already did those experiments, you wont get much (if any) science. 2) If things do break off of your ship, but aren't destroyed, you can still recover the debris and get the science. You can recover debris the same way you do any other vessel. Just remember to turn on the filter at the top of the screen if you use the tracking station or map mode. As for a "reliable way," I would say you either have a mod that is interfering or something else is going slightly wrong. If you safely land a vessel with science on board, you don't have to do anything special to recover the science other than clicking on the "Recover Vessel" button. Make sure you are not "Terminating." That simply deletes the flight.

Here we go. It took me a few minutes to find these. This article by Keptin is really good at explaining the basics of aero. If you don't know this info, it'll be really important to avoinding hours of frustration. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures I also wrote an in-game companion to show most of the ideas from Keptin's article. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial As you get some practice, you can dig around in "The Drawing Board" (Specialists thread) to find links to more good SSTO space plane design articles. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28352-The-Drawing-Board-A-library-of-tutorials-and-other-useful-information

Well, here are some basic rules of thumb that I found are a good place to start. Plus they provide some flexibility when designing. You sort of iterate your way througn them, adding and adjusting as you build. - 1 TurboJet for every 12 tons. Max of 1 per 15 tons. - 150 units of fuel per TurboJet. Add more or less as your skills allow. - 3 ram intakes per TurboJet. Minimum of 1 per TurboJet, Maximum of whatever you want. But as you add more, you have to double the amount to see much difference. - 0.5 lift rating per ton. Minimum will depend on your TWR, maximum of 1.0 lift per ton. (More than that adds a lof of drag and weight for not much help in lift.) The way these rules of thumb work out is that if you increase something in one area, you can decrease something in another area. - For eample, if you are using a turbojet and your craft is only 7 tons, you need less fuel and/or lift rating. Or maybe use just 1 or 2 intakes. I also find it's important to have some idea of what you want to do. At least some rough idea of cargo payloads, range, orbital altitudes, and all that. Of course, you can always just build a plane for the sake of building a plane.

Not to derail (or start a mod war), but I bet for each mod you could find a person who would say "I love it!" I love MechJeb. I think it's great for many reasons and I don't even use most of it's capabilities. There are lots of people who don't like it at all. I certainly don't want to punch them in the face. (Yes, a joke. I know.) I'm not saying "don't include LS." I'm just saying that people have different play styles and it's pretty darn hard to pick and choose the game's core elements while still making it accessible. (Perhaps beginner/intermediate/advance modes would help.) (/end tangent)

Like Pecan says, nearly every mod has been updated to go in the GameData folder. Main Game Folder - Has the config file, version file, and executable. GameData - Contains all the stock parts, graphics, sonds, etc in the Squad and NASAmission folders. Stores just about all mods too. So...most of the game's data. Inside each of the GameData sub-folders there are more folders. Most of these are self explanitory, such as "Parts" or "Sounds". Inside the Parts are more directories with all the parts models, textures, and each part's "part.cfg" which defines how it acts. saves - Your save games stored in directories. Each directory has the save files, an SPH directory with your SPH ships, and a VAB directory with VAB ships. screenshots - Where in-game tanken screen shots are written. KSP_Data/Launcher_Data - some more internal game resources. Ships - A folder containing sub-folders (SPH & VAB) with all the stock ships. Copy your craft files into here if you have something you want available to all your saves. Most of the rest of the directories are old holdovers from previous versions. For the most part, they are empty and the contents have been moved into the GameData folder. Not sure if that's what you're looking for.

Glad we could answer your question! Science is one of those things everyone likes to complicate with a lot of "what if" and "how to." At the base level it's pretty easy. It's just poorly documented. (The wiki KSP science page is a good source.) So, with the primary question answered, time to complicate it some! It's probably important to remember that nobody is making you go to each place more than once. Actually, nobody is making you go in the first place. Also, the game is still deeply in design so I think science is far from balanced/complete. However, I don't mind that they did a diminishing returns because it sort of does three things. 1) If you are happy to get the main science and move on, you can do that. 2) If you want to revisit a location, there is still at least some science, which gives at least a small extra reason to go back. 4) It actually takes four experiments to get all the data. For people who are really obsessive compulsive (such as those people who are bothered by the fact that I started this line with a 4 instead of a 3) it can be satisfying to really want to squeeze out every bit, even if it's only 0.7 more science. As for me, instead of taking two pods or just accepting 1 set of data and returning twice, I tend to double up on the experiments AND the flights. Which means I do visit each biome twice, but I'm carrying multiple sets of equipment. Now I have two options. 1) Send two missions on the same profile to the same locations. They each do 1 round of science in 2 biomes/conditions and can store all data in their respective pod. This gets me 4 missions worth of data, provides redundancy, and provides flexibility to change the mission if needed. 2) Send one ship with multiple experiments to a single location. Do the experiments and store the data. Jettison the collected set of experiments (for weight) and keep the copies in the second set of experiment modules. Return it all to Kerbin. I'm becoming a big fan of #1. It provides all kinds of opportunities to practice other skills besides just getting the science.

Hi Disiuze, and welcome to the forums! There are lots of ways to make larger sized tanks with clusters of smaller ones. My favorite recent technique is to start with a large part as the base or top. Then I make a core using the long modular girder and attach another large part to the end of that. On one of those long, end pieces, I will place some of the small cubic struts with symmetry on. This provides a place to attach the smaller parts. Once your fuel tanks are on the cubic strut nodes, run struts from the tank's opposite end to the core girder (or large endcap piece) for strength. If you are making a large fuel tank, don't forget to run fuel lines where needed. The exact fuel flow will depend on the parts construction. edit: Here are some example sceenshots of another thing I was working on. It demonstrates what I posted above.

Hello and welcome back! Probably two big things in the last few updates is the addition of science (which is sometimes confusing), and the newest asteroid rendezvous mission (ARM). It's not exactly a "mission," but they added near-Kerbin asteroids, some larger parts, and the ability to claw onto those asteroids to push them around.

Keep at it! I'm sure you'll find a way!

Haha. Yes, I was going to post that each launch has an army of people behind it. All using sliderules and computers to ensure the launch is planned and simulated in great detail. I am but one simpleton who is pretty happy when my rocket simply gets into orbit. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes not.

You can store two (or more) goo samples in the pod, so long as they are from different conditions. It needs to be a different biome, altitude, surface, or whatever. Just so long as it is different in some way. This is true for ALL experiments. The only catch for Goo and SciJr is that you either need multiple experiment modules, or bring a lab so you can clean and reuse them. All of the other experiments can be used repeatedly without cleaning. (You must remember to collect your data first too, before doing the next experiment.)

If you are just looking for a quicklook cheat sheet, you can also use many of the deltaV maps. Several list approximate flight times. Do make sure that the time setting you are using in KSP (Kerbin vs Earth time) matches the deltaV map, or you might run into a problem.

I got your message. I'm glad your guys are all fixed up! You can change the prefix by editing the first post and clicking "Go Advanced". You can then chage with the dropdown and save. Threads don't get locked up too often around here.

Yes to most of what you said. If you take a measurement/report/whatever you can use that experiment again provided you collect it via EVA with a kerbal. Kerbals can store repeat experiments (i.e. from the same biome/conditions). However, if you try to store repeats into a pod, it will only let you keep one of each experiment/conditions. Pods can store an unlimited number of experiments, so long as they are from different circumstances (again, different biome, conditions, whatever). Once you collect the science from an experiment, it is ready for immediate reuse. The only exception is the SciJr and the Goo. After their science has been collected, you have to clean it with a lab module before you can use it again. By the way, you can store multiple crew reports too. You need to send your kerbal EVA to collect it after making the report. But then you can go back inside and do another.

Ahh, now I see your thread. Sorry I missed it earlier. Based on the pictures and what you describe, it looks very much like you need to update your KSP version. Make sure you have 0.23.5.464. You can verify your version by going to your KSP directory and opening the file called "buildID.txt". The first line should say "build id = 464". If it says something else, then you need to download the latest KSP via Steam or on your account at www.kerbalspaceprogram.com . Simply updating will usually fix up your kerbals. If they aren't fixed after you update, THEN do the directions in my thread. Oh yes, and when you update I would recommend installing it to a new directory, instead of overwriting your existing directory. After install, COPY your save games from the old KSP directory to the new KSP directory. If you are using steam, then back up your save games first. If you do the fixes in my thread but haven't updated KSP, the fixes probably won't work.

Probably because the game is deeply in development and the antennas are nowhere near balanced yet. The antennas don't effect how much science can be transmitted, only how fast (I think) and how much power they consume during transmission. The resulting science points gained are a percentage cap based on which experiment is being transmitted.