problemecium

Part 1: Construction Begins With a mere seven days or so before the Jool transfer window occurs, the space program is finally ready to begin their first interplanetary mission, a massive voyage to Jool, the goal being to visit all five of its moons, including landing on each and deploying two permanent stations. To accomplish this, many hours have been spent between missions designing the Kidonia, the largest interplanetary mothership ever constructed both in this incarnation of the space program and in my history of playing KSP. Kidonia is so named as a homage to "Sidonia," the titular spacecraft of the manga and anime series Knights of Sidonia (get the thread title now? xD), with which it shares some design elements and the trait of being really big. The ship is planned to be constructed in Kerbin orbit out of two major sections and a number of smaller modules. First to be launched is the largest and most expensive, the "core section," which contains the ship's central probe core, primary fuel reserve, secondary cargo bay array, and main solar array. The core section nearly crushed the launch pad under its incredible bulk, in excess of 1100 tons, but was just barely able to lift itself clear of the launch clamps and proceed into orbit: Orbit was achieved with a very slim fuel margin. I had originally intended to park the core section in a 70x70km orbit and later move it to a higher 320km orbit for most of the construction, but aerodynamic issues caused by the large decorative wings and the hollow cargo bays forced me into a steeper than ideal ascent, and I decided to push my apoapsis a little higher to provide a bit of a safety buffer. I ended up cutting it pretty close, but just managed to circularize at 80km with only a few hundred units of fuel left. P.S. Thanks to Geschosskopf for posting so soon so I could make a second post without it auto-merging with the first one ^^; To answer your question, they're mainly decorative, but do contain a bit of extra fuel and allow oddly-shaped companion ships to dock without colliding with the main hull, as will likely be illustrated later on. I also imagine them serving as some kind of heat sink.

SIGHTS OF KIDONIA The tale of Kidonia, its Brave Kerbal Crew, and Their Mission to Jool Herein is the epic tale of Kidonia, the mothership I have constructed to fulfill the Jool-5 Challenge (for those new here, the basic premise is to visit all of Jool's moons in a single mission). My previous attempt, Julia, was never able to go to Jool before the KSP 1.0 patch came out and introduced major changes that made me have to restart the mission (notably, LV-N engines no longer consume Oxidizer). So to make up for it, I resolved to make a new ship so mighty that it would make Julia look like a sepratron by comparison. Mission Log Slideshow (via Imgur): Screenshots, captions, and other details such as ship schematics shall be added as the mission progresses.

What I did in KSP today, part 2... KIDONIA HAS LAUNCHED!!!1!!!!111!! Images and captions will be added as the mission progresses, and I also plan to make a thread about it in Mission Reports.

A small, but still noteworthy accomplishment - today I successfully launched an orbital surveyor and surveyed an object (Kerbin) for the first time: It's a shy overdesigned, as it's a prototype for one I plan to bring to Jool. I might drive it over to the Mun and Minmus later.

336.1: After repeated delays due to political upheavals, construction of the Koyager is finally completed, and the ship bravely sets out on its maiden voyage to Eve. 337: The Great Kathedral of Khalesm is torn down to make room for the construction of Rockomax's newest and largest production plant.

http://s.imgur.com/images/logo-1200-630.jpg?2

-9 Go Team Zero!

Image is broken. Shoulda posted it somewhere that allows hotlinking ;P

It's pretty nice, but did you notice that the lander legs are mounted too high up to reach the ground? xD I find it helps to toggle the "Start Retracted" / "Start Deployed" states in the editor and/or "launch" the lander by itself and make sure it stands up straight on the pad.

I clicked "worst ever" just because I felt like as long as the option was there, someone had to pick it xD Really I think it looks fine. I like how it's a bit "stubby" and thus more "Kerbal-looking".

Welcome to the forum! For future reference, threads asking for help should either go in Gameplay Questions or, if it's about a bug, in one of the Support and Bug Reports subforums.

I have this problem too! I tried just stashing them all in my station so that new contracts wouldn't spawn, but... - new rescue contracts seem to continue spawning until you have four or five in progress at once - I ran out of money a couple times and had to go bring them home for funds - Most importantly: when you have five rescue contracts, fewer other contracts get offered. Combined with the Duna contracts I foolishly accepted at the beginning of the game, I always end up with so many in progress that I don't get offered any new ones. Thus in order to make any funds I have to complete something, which usually means bringing home rescuees, which in turn causes more rescue contracts to get offered...

I just pictured someone landing a little mining rig on the wiki and drilling into it to extract wiki-ore...

In every version of KSP for the last year or so, I have had one singular goal: go to Jool. So far I have failed in every version to make it before the next version comes out >.<

Meh. Minecraft killed my previous mouse by wearing out the left click button. I figure any mouse button only has so many clicks in it before it breaks, so it's no surprise that thousands upon thousands of right-clicks will eventually wear one out. Which makes me wonder - what do you mean by "kraken-proof?" Does your new mouse not use a switch?

After spending three days trying to undock my crew ferry from my station, I finally succeeded (no, that's not a typo. It really took three days to UNdock due to a docking port glitch I had to slog through the save file to fix), and sent it to high Kerbin orbit to retrieve a particularly hapless rescue contract Kerbal. Unfortunately, I underestimated just how far out he'd stranded himself from a dV perspective, and had to also send up a fuel tanker... blech. Filling and sending that left my station near empty, so I also launched a new fuel reserve for it. That and I sent a small probe to Minmus to sponge up some "high over Minmus" Science and began rescue missions for two Kerbals that had spawned in retrograde Munar orbit and at a high latitude on Minmus. And also sent a portable station on its way to the Mun... I guess I did a lot today xD

I did not observe this particular effect, but I have found that pitching up too far when using LV-Ns actually is counterproductive, as the LV-N lacks the TWR to "hover", so increasing speed is the only way to raise the apoapsis, and therefore you don't want to deviate more than about 30 degrees from prograde or you waste thrust pushing up and lose too much of the needed thrust pushing forward.

Does building a Katamari to recover abandoned rescuee capsules count?

I support this idea for its originality, but unfortunately for practical purposes I too am sticking with the Klaw. Klaw has bugs you say? Yes, but they can usually be avoided pretty easily, and so do normal docking ports ;P

BRILLIANT!!!1! I'm officially adding this to my mental list of "legendary silly craft to show people new to KSP" xD

Wow, nice. I was wondering at first why you were using a Mammoth for the interplanetary transfer, but then you pulled a switcheroo and made the mothership be the lander! O.O Very clever and surprisingly effective.

4000 units of LiquidFuel isn't hard for a station around Kerbin. You'll probably end up needing to build it that big eventually when you want to refuel large ships. Now 4000 units on a Mun base is something I have trouble understanding...

I play KSP. The Kraken plays KSP. I hate the Kraken...

None - I usually play pure vanilla stock for the first week or so whenever a new KSP comes out. However, the first mods I generally install and use the most are the following: Kerbal Alarm Clock - so I can run multiple missions at once and not miss important events like SOI changes and periapses. HyperEdit - for Kraken management and the occasional "simulation". NavBall Docking Alignment Indicator - I prefer this to the more popular windowed one, as I don't need the extra precision and it gives me fewer things to watch while approaching. Kerbal Engineer - to make sure my latest mothership has enough delta-V, or that my latest Tylo lander has a high enough TWR.