GoatRider

Edit: ninja'ed.

Somebody recently mentions a mod that streamlines science collection. It collects all the science you can at a location, with just a push of a button, without the tediousness of clicking on every instrument and running around collecting and resetting each one if you have a scientist. Does anybody remember which one that is? I'm thinking of grabbing it for my second career run-through.

When I captured an E asteroid, I was able to do long burns by making sure I was balanced exactly through the CoM of the asteroid, and also had a lot of verniors because even when you're exactly centered, you really aren't. Also, to re-center, I found it's just easier to un-grab, and re-grab. Swivelling the claw never seemed to work for me. I like how you have extra solar panels on the other side of the asteroid. I was always having to spin around to expose the panels on my ship when refueling. By the way, I left mine in about a 400km orbit of Mun in case I ever decide to use it for refuelling an interplanetary expedition.

MechJeb's landing guidance works pretty good, at least the "show predicted landing" feature. If you use landing guidance for your initial de-orbit burn to "KSP", the blue "X" will be right on KSP. If you leave it on when it hits the atmosphere it goes berserk and you won't get anywhere close, but if you turn it off it will land a little short when your parachutes open. So just turn on the "show landing prediction", and push the X a little out to sea, you can get very close.

"Da Klaw" is better known as the Advanced Grabbing Unit. It's intended for grabbing asteroids and also can be used for grabbing wayward spacecraft, or docking to something without a docking port.

When you answer your own question, you should link to where you found the answer.

I've noticed that waypoints for rover navigation don't end up where you click. After a lot of trial and mostly error, I've found you have to click about twice as far away from the waypoint that you want. I wouldn't be surprised if airplane autopilot works the same way.

Helmet light (and ship lighting) is U on my keyboard, and I haven't changed it from default.

Space stations are just big ships. Here's one that started as something to satisfy a "build a station in orbit of Minmus that can support 7 Kerbals and a science lab" contract, and then became the core of a station around Ike, with a mining lander to refuel on Ike, and a Duna lander for Science. I sent this on to Dres, and then just the core back to Kerbin. I was going to send it on to Jool, but I missed the launch window and the next one was 8 years out. I came back with 12 level 4 Kerbals.

Worked for me yesterday, it got me to 5 biomes on Eeloo. I was using waypoints, but didn't try speed/heading by itself.

Earlier in the thread someone mentioned "holy necro" when it came back from 6 months earlier. This was 3 1/2 years old! But it still happens. I made the mistake of accepting a contract for a retrograde orbit between Dres and Jool. I had to learn how to work with Xenon thrusters to get that one satisfied. The most common mistake I make is not having all the required science instruments.

Is this with a vehicle in flight? Try turning off all auto-struts, and then re-enabling them after the vehicle has settled down.

Thanks, it's a tiny button with a hover text of "Interior overlay", above the "add slot" and "remove slot" buttons.

What mod are you using to make these big windows?

OK, you've got me there. But then, why have time-warp in the game at all?

One thing that makes these surface-survey contracts so tedious is that hopping between them is below the no time-warp orbit level. Or if it's doable with a rover, you usually can't even physics-warp without the Kraken attacking. So it takes a ton of real-time.

You get a much better orbit around Kerbin if you wait until the plane of your polar orbit is tangent to the Mun orbit around Kerbin.

Yes, I'm using the strategy that converts all science to reputation. And I have 3 labs running. The one in Mun orbit and LKO are just about out of data, but the Minmus one went to Duna and then Dres and probably has enough data for eternity.

I thought that allowing them to expire was a "failure", which is usually much harsher. By the way, the only reason I'm trying to increase my reputation is that's the only thing left. I have plenty of cash and the science tree is full. I'm at 95%, and I read that it's asymptotic to 100%, so I'm not going to get there. I probably won't even hit 96% before I'm done landing kerbals on all of Jool's moons, it's been a long time since it bumped over from 94.

I have noticed that the penalty for cancelling an accepted contract is only -2, and you have to pay back the front money. And you have until the expiration to do it, which is a long way off usually. Thanks.

I would suggest playing through an unmodded career game, or at least lightly modded with nothing but MechJeb and Kerbal Alarm Clock. Watch Scott Manley's career walkthrough videos on youtube for tips on that. Then when you've got the hang of the game, start looking for interesting mods.

If you let an available contract expire, do you still get the same -1 reputation hit as declining it?

Check out this 6 hop relay to my lander on Pol:

All the hops need to be "Relay" and not "Direct". And the weakest link will be the link of the connection at the end.

Especially don't autostrut to heaviest when you're grabbing a big asteroid. I've had that go really nasty on me and rip apart my ship. Especially going in and out of time-warp, sometimes my ship was bent from the force of an autostrut that got calculated too short. The more of these struts you have, the more likely something will go wrong.