Claw

Well now, that's an interesting trek. I'll be interested to see how long this takes. Good luck!

Those look great! Can you make the name text in all caps, like the others? (For some reason, Pol managed to get posted in mixed case, but the rest are upper case.) If it's too late, that's okay too. It's better than I can do. Thanks, and I did indeed. I hadn't been to Pol before, so it was a bit of a surprise when I arrived back at the start. haha

@SpaceplaneAddict Sure. I was just commenting that the kraken was eating my rover for a snack on Dres. I suppose I'll see about Tylo when I get there. Thanks for the warning!

I'm not sure such a thing exists. Dres was actually quite unforgiving. It vaporized my rover countless times without warning, often only leaving the rover's engine core or a wheel behind. Enough that I had to switch from equatorial to a polar route, and I stayed on the highlands as much as possible.

@damerell I'm not entirely sure. It's almost like the terrain height calculation is a bit off. I'm not sure if it has to do with that very steep cliff right there. I actually didn't remember hearing of this problem until I ran into it myself here. But then I saw it mentioned on the forum somewhere else also.

*shoves SM in a box* You are indeed correct. Some people seem to suffer from this bug a lot more than others. I've flown a lot of spaceplanes and only had it once that I can remember (triangular wing on a plane) and once in orbit (solar panel on a rocket). The only common theme seems to be triangular wing pieces, and (usually) leaving Kerbin's SOI and back without quickload. Also, given what I know about the claw bug, I imagine this is another one of those things that depends on some tight timing. In which case that makes it extremely difficult to replicate reliably.

It's a thought, but the only way I see political boundraies of any kind added to the game would be by happenstance if/when multiplayer is introduced. That would only happen if players are given different space complexes. And even then, any "politics" would likely come from players rather than a game mechanic.

First Joolian moon is complete. I've posted the mission report for my trip to Pol. It includes pictures for the Elcano challenge, but I'm posting the Jool-5 albums below (including the trip to Jool). Launch through arrival at Jool, in orbit around Laythe. The crew departs for Pol. And returning from Pol back to the mothership around Laythe.

Pol is up! The mission post also includes the Jool-5 pictures, but here's the Pol Elcano album.

Pol The scientists would have thought by now, after driving around so many worlds, they would have seen nearly everything. However, Pol has an interesting surprise in store, right at mission end. I’ve not actually been to Pol before, so this mission was a “first” for me for multiple reasons. The crew did look up the radius (40km) as a means to compare with Minmus’ radius (66km). Seems close enough, right? RIGHT?! Julella fully expects to have to drive quite a bit slower than top speed in order to not go suborbital in the rover. But, of course, the first step is getting there... The crew climbs aboard the tug, named Tin Poppy, and sets off for Pol. This first album is for Jool-5, showing the crew transferring from Laythe to Pol. This album shows the Elcano portion of the trip. The most annoying part was that a lot of the drive had to be done at night. The Kerbin return window is about 300 days away, and the crew couldn’t afford to halt the mission for weeks waiting for the sun to come up. In total, it took approximately eight hours of driving to get around Pol. And again for Jool-5...the return flight, where the crew gets to rest for a few days during the return, and for a bit aboard the Iron Narcissus.

They are actually stacked on their backs, rather than nose-to-nose. It was easier to attach them that way, and I didn't have to build up extra mounting points. It does, however, leave a decoupler mount head on the bottom of the rover. Turns out it gets scrapped off pretty early when driving. (Pol post incoming!)

Nice job, and the landing system looks neat. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! I think I'm going to need it. Right now that's last in my profile. Hopefully that choice won't come back to haunt me. Heh. I think this is the most complex mission I've tried to do. It was actually a struggle to keep the MOAR BOOSTERS monster at bay.

I think part of that has to do with the way KSP structures the data for KSC and similar locations. It's not particularly easy to mod in additional locations and I believe it's virtually impossible to add a building. It might also be worth pointing out that the forum is a rather small cross section of the player base. There is certainly a spread of thoughts on the "kerbal-esque" features of the game, but that debate would quickly derail this thread, which is about the structure of the KSC complex. So on that subject...I do like the idea of additional locations for probably two main reasons. Even having something simple like the island runway would be nice. Having small areas like this would be great for recovery, and would also be nice if you could spawn smaller craft from them (sort of like how the lower tier buildings work). It would be nice, when wanting to go flying or driving around, to be able to spawn in other locations. I suppose those other locations could also be chosen to give the player some new challenge to flying or getting to orbit.

That's a neat looking Mun buggy. Good luck and enjoy the sights!

@damerell That would be my preference as well, except I'm going to end up having to move the entire Mothership over to Tylo to deliver the lander and rover. I chose to put the Mothership around Laythe so that I can aerobrake the tug when it returns from the other moons back to the Mothership. The alternative is to beef up the tug so that it can carry the Tylo rover and crew vehicle, but then it starts getting really big. I think as it stands, I can't move the Mothership over to Tylo until I'm ready to do do Tylo and leave after. There just isn't enough fuel left to move it, and move it again. Or I could leave the Laythe boat in orbit around Laythe until it's time. Yeah, not an easy task though. What concerns me is if I get most (all) of the way through then hit a snag with Tylo. In that case, Elcano wins out. I'm not planning on starting the entire JoolCano over (and doing all that driving again).

That will be interesting. Maybe someone knows, but I'm not sure how much better it might be. Maybe better because the work can be handed off to another core, but maybe not because it still has to happen.

Update for my JoolCano-5 mission. The mission start post is finally up, and the crew has arrived safely in Laythe orbit. It covers from Launch, through Taylo and Laythe gravity assists, a powered Laythe capture, and some gentle aerobraking. No landings posted yet (though I have several done). Hopefully more updates soontm! Turns out the ship was simply too big to do real aerobraking. For some reason the LV-N at the core of the ship (not active) would get hot and explode, causing the rest of the ship to separate. The Mk3 crew cabin would also get very hot, but the engine would explode first, despite being at the core of the ship and behind several heat shields. Anyway, turns out I had extra fuel left over from launch, so I was able to complete a powered capture at Laythe to a highly elliptical orbit, then some gentle aerobraking to bring the orbit down.

Update for my JoolCano-5 mission. The mission start post is finally up, and the crew has arrived safely in Laythe orbit. This particular post is mostly for the Jool-5 proof.

The mission director gives the green light. JoolCano-5 (Combined Elcano and Jool-5 Challenge) The Voyage of the Iron Narcissus Begins Objective: Circumnavigate all five Joolian moons in one big mission. The Mothership, christened Iron Narcissus, has officially begun her journey to the Joolian system. This post marks the official start of the Jool-5 portion of my Elcano adventure, and is mostly to fulfill Jool-5 requirements. As such, this post (primarily for Jool 5 requirements) is probably going to be a little more picture heavy than I usually do for an Elcano mission, and it’s only going to cover the beginning of the mission (through arrival at Laythe). The Jool-5 Challenge requirements are such that most maneuvers and major events need to be documented. Also, I’m embarrassed to admit that some of these events took a few tries to get right. So hopefully I can stitch the right pictures together. Future posts might split the Jool-5 mission events out from the Elcano driving. This will hopefully make it easier to read and follow when verifying Jool-5 and Elcano rules are met. Now that all of the blabbering is done, let’s get to it. Iron Narcissus Statistics: The Mothership itself (all the stuff that will go to Jool) weighs in at 244 tons and 508 parts, including 18,200 units of LF for the Mothership’s eight nuclear engines. With the launcher, the full ship weighs 2,300 tons, and puts out almost 27,000 kN of thrust at launch. I also brought a new crew member along because the journey is so darn long, Marissa (a scientist). So the able crew of the Iron Narcissus sets as a crew of three: Julella (Pilot), Obemy (Engineer), and Marissa (scientist). I’ll leave the rest of the commentary for the album... Things I learned about the Iron Narccissus: Heat shields for aerobraking = wasted mass (the ship is simply too massive) Carrying fairings all the way to Jool = wasted mass (not needed since it couldn't aerobrake) AIRBRAKES = sort of wasted mass (again, couldn't really aerobrake), but worked as designed to keep the ship from flipping when aerobraking It's a good thing I way overpacked fuel. Turns out I needed every bit of gravity capture and reserve fuel to get established around Laythe. Next up is the landing and circumnavigation of Pol!

As stated, I'm going to be brutal with the moderation in this thread. I've deleted some posts and I'm going to point at the main post again. If an idea that you like has already been posted, you're better off clicking the "like this" button than adding a +1 to the thread. If your post disappeared, I'm sorry about that. I'm not removing it because of the ideas, but rather to streamline and keep to the intent of the thread. So please, keep your suggestions to one liners, and try to limit the idea to one main point per post. This needs to be a list to make it easier to prioritize and fix as things move along. @katateochi you have valid points. Please update your post accordingly because I don't want to remove it if I don't have to. You are free to post those ideas, but please trim them down to the essentials and split them up. I recommend posting your highest priority first. Cheers

@ChirsPine The launcher doesn't work, and (unfortunately) hasn't for a long time. Would be nice to either get it updated or delete it. Also, I've moved your question to the support area. Welcome to the forums!

Gah and nope. I guess I'm too late. How about Vanamonde?

I've posted a thread for forum feedback here. Please ensure you read the intent and rules of the thread before posting.

Yes indeed. (Not to be a downer...) English in the english sections, please...for future reference. But welcome to the forums!