problemecium

Raptor equivalent? Can I get some love for a Merlin equivalent? With a vacuum-optimized edition too of course

Okay let me try and talk you down. 1. You mentioned one of the ships comprises 340 parts. How many parts are there total in all of the structures you are trying to connect? Note that even with a 4.8 GHz CPU, 340 parts is close to what most players would consider the practical limit for a high FPS. 2. KSP is unlike most games as far as GPU usage goes. Most modern games are very heavy on graphics and visual effects, and they tend to contain large numbers of high-resolution models. KSP's part models are relatively simple and the stock game features very few eye-candy effects, so as a consequence KSP tends to be very light on GPU usage. However, every part in KSP contains a large amount of data about its motion, mass, connections to other parts, etc. and most of the calculations performed on these end up requiring data from every other part in the ship and must be performed in a specific order. Hence as the number of parts on a ship increases, the CPU usage increases geometrically. tl;dr: Your awesome GPU isn't going to help much in KSP. 3. As far as that "20% cpu usage," can you check to see whether your task manager or whatever is accurately reporting thread usage? Your setup sounds like it's hyperthreaded, so it's possible that 20% of the full CPU power is being used, but one thread on one of the cores is being run at full throttle. Sadly the only surefire way around this is to get an even faster processor, but you're unlikely to find anything above 4.8 GHz. 4. KSP isn't as old or simple as it looks. Remember Minecraft? It looks low-res, but that's merely the visual style. Computationally it's in the middle of the pack at worst. 5. Mods, especially complex ones like KIS and KAS, are notorious for reducing performance. The modders do their best, but every feature they add makes the game run that much slower. 6. You may actually be encountering log spam. Press Alt+F12 and look at the Console / Debug Log to see if it's showing repeated error messages. Occasionally when something breaks, particularly in a mod, the log gets flooded with error messages every frame, so not only is the game being tripped up by whatever the error is, it's being bogged down even more with producing debug messages and writing them to the disk repeatedly. If you happen to have a traditional hard drive, that last bit is going to hit particularly hard.

I've never had trouble with the junior docking ports. Sure, they're tiny and hence hard to click on a large spacecraft, but anything can be tiny if the craft is large enough, and likewise even a junior docking port isn't such a small target when the whole probe is smaller than a Mk1 pod ;P I'll have a look at the challenge and get back to you on it. I do confess that Mk3 spaceplanes remain a weak point of mine xD DISCLAIMER: As the observant might have noted, the most recent craft says "[1.2]" next to it, indicating it was made in the 1.2 prerelease. For some reason I only just the other day clued in that it'd be wise to mark the craft versions in the post. While I'm getting around to reorganizing the catalog again (ugh) and adding version numbers to the rest of the ships, consider nothing below the Spaceplane Hanger to have any sort of warranty or guarantee of function in the 1.2 prerelease (particularly because none of them are designed with CommNet in mind). Also I advise against attempting to load the Spaceplane Hanger or any newer ships in any KSP version older than the 1.2 prerelease.

I'm sad that the album you linked does not include any images of the actual cataclysmic collision. In lieu of this, is it possible for you to provide the scenario file for us to play ourselves?

Where are we on wheels? Bouncing up and down and flipping over is where. I keep building lightweight aircraft and the springs on the wheels are pushing back too hard and flipping the blasted things' noses up in the air >.<

The Applied Sciences division is excited to announce its newest (and possibly most horrifying) product, the Spaceplane Hanger! Fear not, I have not misspelled "hangar," but in fact have created a monstrous vehicle capable of dangling spaceplanes precariously above the ground as only a true hanger could: The Spaceplane Hanger features a high lift range and weight capacity, and it sports an extra command pod enabling Kerbals to oversee lifting operations from within the safety of the vehicle: DOWNLOAD | Imgur Album

My guess was that it was because @TapeGaming was adding single segments onto the end of the already very long station, and the docking port on the last segment was so far away from the root part of the station that Physics was partially disabled for the station, such that collisions remained functional but the docking ports did not. If this is the case then the solution would be to build two 500-meter segments and then join them together to complete the spine.

I suppose this is the part where someone asks about Hangar Extender and KSP 1.2. The GitHub page seems to have not been updated since KSP 1.0 and I don't see this listed on Curse. Has anyone had any luck or problems running this with the 1.2 prerelease?

Yesterday I launched my longest SSTO yet: It's not my largest per se, as it is is quite skinny and, being mostly empty, is far from my most massive ship so far, but it does take the cake as far as largest singular dimension goes. It was part of an attempt to succeed where @TapeGaming failed and build a 1km+ megastructure in orbit. Unfortunately it seems to have a problem with random self-perpetuating oscillations and I have since been forced to scrap this design.

I spent today running some experiments on the feasibility of this endeavor, with disappointing results. At first I tried building 100m segments and docking them in orbit. I constructed a launch vehicle which, after dozens of adjustments, had the right arrangement of struts to remain stable through launch and orbital insertion. When I rendesvoused two together, though, for some reason one of them started oscillating with increasing violence despite both craft being identical. Further tests revealed that when a long series of Mk3 cargo bays are chained together, for some reason small perturbations end up being amplified as they travel up and down the length of the craft. The effect is greatly reduced if all the cargo bays are empty such that the craft's total mass is low, but it appears that stability beyond this point depends on pure luck. Presuming that this was a flaw in the Mk3 cargo bay, I tried again with various Mk3 fuel tanks, to the same results. Wondering if this was a problem with the entire Mk3 fuselage family, I tried again with Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tanks (pictured; the thermal overlay is on to enhance visibility). Strangely enough the oscillation problem remained. The test vehicle split into two, and each half of it continued to squirm more and more violently until every fragment more than a few tanks long had exploded. What I think I have determined via these tests is that KSP's PhysX implementation lacks a failsafe to ensure that a force caused by another force is never greater in magnitude than the original force - this would also explain the odd behavior I've observed with landing gear wherein they start bouncing violently until the craft flips over ("wheels are fixed now" my butt). I'm given hope by @swjr-swis's example, but I remain mistrustful of the new auto-strut feature and have found that it has only partially helped in the designs I've tried so far.

I'm also on Team Deflation, but I hear the complaints about it being OP. I propose one or more of the following compromises: - Require a Kerbal to EVA and repack the shield a la a parachute - Have a cheaper, lighter heat shield that cannot deflate, and a heavier, more expensive shield unlocked later in the tech tree that can be deflated. - Put ablator in the inflatable shield. I don't entirely understand why it isn't there already. - Get really schwifty and have a completely different sort of part take the role of the deflatable heat shield: rather than inflate and deflate, have it fold and unfold with good old-fashioned hinges and motors/pneumatics/hydraulics. I'm imagining something with an array of triangular "petals" that fold down sideways, allowing the shield to transform between a shallow cone and a long, narrow pyramid. Or maybe instead of a contiguous shield have the new part be a surface-mounted flap that can shield parts behind it. As far as believability goes, perhaps the deflatable heat shield contains an arrangement of internal cables that can be reeled in so as to pack the shield while in a vacuum.

I've always just read it as "lathe."

Today I launched my biggest SSTO rocket ever: ...or at least my longest ever. It's certainly not the most massive, being mainly hollow, but at over 112 meters it sure was a challenge wrangling its inherent noodliness. I'm working on trying to succeed where TAPE Gaming failed and build a kilometer-long megastructure in orbit. This is one tenth of it xD

Actually several people, most famously Danny2462, have demonstrated that although 2.5km is the limit for physics simulation of separate vessels, any and all parts of the current vessel have physics applied regardless of distance - thus this is not a hard limit on vessel size at all. In fact no video I've seen has documented any hard limit on vessel size; once I saw someone (I believe Nexter's Lab) flying a USS Enterprise replica roughly the size of the Mun. EDIT: I have now watched the whole video and now I know what I'm doing in KSP today. Or at least whenever I get back to KSP since today my grandparents are in town, but you get the point xD

I'll be honest - I'm actually surprised so many people manage to put docking ports on backwards so often. I don't think I've ever done it o_O

I used to worry about this. Then I got gud skrub er, ahem. Well technically I did get better, but more relevantly, I recently took to a habit of packing the whole base in a tube and landing it all at once. Check my signature for some (old) examples.

I see why this has a purpose despite MechJeb's existence: MechJeb is a big, hulking, all-in-one "Do Everything" Jack-of-all-trades AI system, but this is a small, simple one-trick pony. Some of us like to install the big total conversion package to change everything at once and get tons of features, and some of us prefer to pick and choose what to install for what function (I'm in the latter group). For a comparison, think of KER versus a simple Delta-V readout as is often requested of the stock game.

You know... this thread seems so "duh" to me, having installed mods dozens of times and being computer-literate enough to have figured it out easily the first time, but... Perhaps the fact that you felt a need to make this thread is indicative of a design flaw in the KSP store, the game, the launcher, or the forum. Maybe one of those should have a big blinking button telling people how to install mods or something xD

I concur. I was just thinking earlier that Philae-style landing harpoons would be a good idea for places like Bop or Gilly. Yes, landing on them isn't hard, and bouncing IS fun, but sometimes we have better things to do than wait 15 minutes for the ship to settle down xD I dunno if this would be a Klaw sort of thing though, i.e. "Klaw Mk2" doesn't exactly seem like an appropriate name - particularly because the existing nomenclature strongly suggests it would simply be a Size 2 Klaw (not that that would be unwelcome for Class E asteroids, but that's another thing).

*raises hand* Unless someone else happened to also propose this, I believe I was the one who proposed the "simulation" idea you mentioned. More specifically it was for a "Simulator" building at KSC. Unfortunately I think that functionality is looking to be supplanted by the new Cheats menu and its "Set Orbit" feature.

Have we touched on why some Kerbulans are named So-and-so Kerbulan while others are named So-and-so Kermulan? Or did I miss something? And am I the only one who keeps getting tempted to read it as "Ker-Mulan?"

I too am in favor of such a feature. My PC can handle hundreds of parts, but having not shelled out for graphics hardware I have trouble when zillions of particles start showing up on screen.

The idea sounds wonderful, but I have concerns. If anyone else has been following the development of a game called "Space Engine" you've surely caught on to the ongoing issues regarding comet tails. Currently the science of volumetric rendering (stuff like clouds) is immature and many mainstream game engines offer very limited facilities for doing it. The most common technique is to just fudge it using a large number of particle sprites (2D images) overlayed on top of one another. KSP does this. The problem with doing that with comet tails arises when you get close to the comet - the tail itself appears huge from that distance, many times larger than the screen. Consequently the entire screen ends up covered in particle sprites, which is brutal on graphics cards - particularly "weaker" ones such as Intel's integrated chips. Long story short I fear that making decent-looking comets in KSP will entail either coming up with a very clever and difficult to code rendering system, or will simply murder everyone's computers.

Hmmm. At one point, at least, there were occasionally contracts for things like "Complete the Kerbin 3 Challenge" requiring a ship to visit the Mun and Minmus and then return to Kerbin, etc. I'm not sure whether they're still present now though.

Yes, and I took pride in being the 1337th person to click the link. Geez, imagine clicking the same link 1337 times... no way dude xD