Jacke

@JAFO, I've got a question about what settings should be allowed for 2 Game Difficulty settings I see on my KSP 1.11.1 install (with both Making History and Breaking Ground). They're not on the images for the top 3 Caveman Difficulties, probably because in 2019 (when the images were uploaded) they were either not included or Expansion-only. At least one still requires Making History. They're on the lower left of the Basic view and are both disabled by default for all 4 standard Difficulties. I know "Allow other Launchsites" is from Making History and it enables the Launch Button to select alternate locations. In the VAB, besides KSC, the Dessert Launch Site and Woomerang Launch Site can be selected. In the SPH, Island Airfield and the Dessert Airfield are also available. Because this would give trivially easy access to another 4 Areas for Science, similar to the 11 current KSC Areas (each returning up to 3.81 Science in an NCD Career), as well as putting many other Kerbin biomes within easier reach, I would imagine "Allow other Launchsites" will be disallowed. I'm unfamiliar with the other one, "Persist Kerbal Inventory Loadout", and I wonder what it does.

Soldiers sing many songs and it's unfortunate (but understandable) some get attached to rather unpleasant politics. Some even get appropriated. For example, "Horst-Wessel-Lied", the pedant Party Anthem, took its melody from an Imperial German Navy song of World War 1, so good luck singing the original without being linked to its odious descendant. And much like military uniforms, they get inherited across nations, because, like "Erika", they speak to the common experience of the life of the soldier. Lale Anderson's recording of "Lili Marleen" was broadcasted by the Wehrmacht-controlled Radio Belgrade and was appreciated by all in arms on all sides who heard it.

That's exactly the point I'd gotten to in my aborted NCD campaign, last Mission used a testing Terrier to do a Mun flyby. I'd gotten enough to unlock another node and it was a tossup between 4 Advanced Rocketry (Terrier etc.) and 4 Basic Science (Science parts, 1st Battery, 1st Relay Antenna, etc.). Be real sure you've gotten all KSC and Kerbin Science that's easily available. Some biomes are hard to get to, like the Badlands or the variant spots for more Splashed situations. But there's still a lot besides, which is part of what pushed me to produce and update my Science Checklists. In KSC's 11 Areas and 5 Structures (buildings your craft has to be touching), including Materials Study there's total 53.61 Science for an NCD Career. Each Area biome includes a razor thin “Flying Low over...” situation that the bouncing of a Roller or a Kerbal can get if you've put up the PAW for the Flying-Low-per-biome Science Experiments: Crew Report, EVA Report, and Temperature Scan. If you send a mission to the Island Airfield (as I did here), that Area adds another 3.81 NCD Science. The other 3 Bases are harder to get to, but Baikerbanur and the Dessert Site have 2 Areas each for 7.62 total each. Mind you, you'll need a well-designed Roller to land a Science Jr at any of them without breaking it.

Thanks for pointing that out, @paul_c. I knew about the completion bar for experiments that need multiple passes being awkward to read and always looked at the numbers. But I've often designed for Science return rather than transmission due to the losses in transmission. I'll likely take a gander on the actual numbers in game and to do that I think I'll have to include an antenna with some connectivity. Like many "recent" features, I've not used KerbNet to any great degree. Something to include with my about-to-start Caveman Topaz Career. Transmission losses in KSP are one of my peeves with the game. Completely understandable for many cases, but not in the implemented numbers. Simple data like temperature and pressure have 50% losses ?!? Only Crew Reports, EVA Reports, and the new EVA Science Kit Experiments have 100%. And some of the worse base transmission losses are present on the highest tech experiments. And no way in the stock game to improve them. And to change them needs a coded mod, which I'm not set up to produce. Unless they are actually squirrelled away in a config file that I can change with a ModuleManager script.

LOL! I've missed them. I've got everything that's in the base game. GameData/Squad/Resources/ScienceDefs.cfg That's the parameters for the base game experiments (except the % transmissibility, which is squirrelled away someplace else). There's 18 of them (which include Asteroid Samples and 4 types of Comet Samples). But looking at the wiki article for Science, I've missed the Breaking Ground experiments at the bottom. Which use this file. GameData/SquadExpansion/Serenity/Resources/ScienceDefs.cfg A quick check shows some of them are useable in a Caveman Career. And that they can be exhausted, which means I need to include them. They're also quite fiddly and will need a decent amount of space to display them well. Which will be tricky for the more crowded pages, so I'll need to be very tricksey meself to fit them in. This will take a bit of time. Thanks for pointing them out, @Blaarkies!

Thanks to fellow Caveman @Blaarkies for pointing out I'm missing the Breaking Ground experiments. It'll take a while figuring them out and fitting them into the more crowded pages. so Breaking Ground experiment inclusion coming soon!

I've updated my KSP Science Checklist for KSP 1.11. The only things added that comes under the Caveman Challenge are EVA Science Kit Experiments, but that only comes in after unlocking a Tier 5 Tech node. Topic link to the download in my signature below. I extensively cover all the Science available on Kerbin and within the KSC. I use it to keep a running tally of what I've extracted and to find what's still out there.

Released version 20210219a Updated release: added EVA Science Kit Experiments, Comet Samples, Magnetometer; adjusted layout

First thing, like it says on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC. Next, you'll have to give us a lot more information for anyone to have any hope of helping you. The first link in my signature is to a page with troubleshooting information. It also says how to find the your game logs which you'll have to provide to get more focused help. Here's some quick things to help. I'm assuming you docked successfully before adding this mod, Ven's Stock Part Revamp, to a current KSP install. And now you can't dock in either a new or pre-existing savegame. There can be many reasons for this. KSP is currently version 1.11.1. This mod was made for KSP 1.2.2, 4 years ago. A lot has changed since then. Virtually all mods from 1.2.2 would need significant changes to properly work in 1.11.1. For 1.11.1, only mods from 1.8.0 and later are likely to work without changes. Other possibilities are this mod was installed incorrectly or has a conflict with another mod. Note that any mod called a revamp does a lot of stuff and can sometimes have issues, especially with other mods. What I'm going to suggest to you is to remove this mod and check to see if you can dock. Then I'm going to suggest you replace it with a very similar mod that is completely current. It's another parts revamp, but it's current and has a community of developers and users who can help you. @Isla De Malta, let us know how things work out for you!

Alas, not completely. Read some more and you'll see he currently doesn't have a computer capable of running KSP. We will have to wait and hope.

EDIT: I'd wrote the following and was then busy with the rest of this post.... Hmmm. Thinking of the physics.... Not sure, but some thought has me thinking that's right. In torques, think of the reaction wheels having to turn the rocket. Centre of mass being farther from the centre of rotation means the effective moment of inertia is greater. Which would mean the reaction wheels are less effective. To get it right, I think I'd have to move from using torques to using forces. Or remember/rederive the frame transformations of torques. Either way or even another way, too much physics for now. EDIT: ...when I see @Blaarkies has a good summation with better words. I also vaguely remember Scott Manley talking about it, but also can't find where. However, reality is often somewhat moot in KSP. How did Squad code their reaction wheels? Does distance from the CoM matter or not? Anyhoo, busy working on my Science Checklists. I've got a bit of info I can share on it. I'd gone through the formulae very carefully two years ago. And I've got through them again adding the missing experiments to Kerbin, including the totals for Recovery of Vessels from Flying, Sub-orbit, and Orbiting Kerbin. Some numbers for 100% Science Return: Experiment Kerbin KSC Areas KSC Structures Experiment Total Recovery 27.6 27.6 Crew Reports 94.0 55.0 7.5 156.5 EVA Reports 230.4 88.0 12.0 330.4 Mystery Goo 153.4 42.9 19.5 215.8 Temperature 150.4 88.0 12.0 250.4 Pressure 141.6 39.6 18.0 199.2 Material Studies 377.6 105.6 48.0 531.2 EVA Science 120.0 120.0 Grand Totals 1295.0 419.1 117.0 1831.1 60% of 1831.1 is 1098.66. Even a Topaz Career is within 100 Science of completing just with the Science in the Kerbin SOI excluding Mun and Minmus. Of course, getting all those Kerbin biomes and situations might be harder than throwing in two or three Mun Flybys, consider Topaz would need at least one. I've also decided I really do need to do a non-NCD Caveman Career. I just don't know enough about how to put together more advanced Caveman launch vehicles and spacecraft to properly judge which Tech are really critical in advancing the career. Not to mention needing practice in Caveman Mission operations. With mine and other's experience of running NCD Careers, I could even do harder things considering an NCD Career will follow. So, to choose, become one with the Caveman. Which to pick between pretty rocks Apatite and Topaz? Pick bigger one! Bigger on Badge!

What @The Doodling Astronaut said. I just came back to KSP meself under a week ago. Going through past stuff, went to see what you've been up to. And said.... "Damn. @Triop hasn't been around for a while. Damn." But you're back! Ummmm.... This one? No, not enough. This one. Barely enough. That sucks dude. Here's hoping you get a KSPable computer soon.

BTW, I'm finding I'm needing to do a lot of fiddling to get my Science Checklists up to KSP 1.11 completion. Once I do, they'll be better than ever! But right now, I see the quick typo fix done earlier today heartily introduced its own typo in the form of a broken header on Mun's page. Fixed and now version 20210217b is available. Again, only a typo fix. True KSP 1.11 Science compliance coming soon! ACK! I'm only likely to do one just to get me name independently inscribed on the cave wall. And to sport that cool, cool badge in at least one form . AAACCCKKK!!! Don't jinx me, man! I want a challenge that will have me thoroughly learn KSP as it is right now and many operations manually in detail that I'm either rusty or inexperienced with. Caveman NCD is a parkour marathon in stages. Needs to be eased into it again before I take that flying leap. I think you're thinking of the fallacy of having the rocket engine up higher, as in Robert Goddard's early designs (picture in the spoiler below), would allow the rocket to having passive directional stability. They often didn't because most times there wasn't enough drag on the lower portion to move the centre of pressure far enough aft of the centre of gravity. Moving the thrust source had no effect, just moving its mass. My Mission 11 rocket (again picture in the spoiler) likely has its centre-of-mass below mid-length, as I believe the Mk1 Pod and the Science Bay mass less than the T30 near the bottom. 2nd Stage's Terrier, just above mid-length, would offset that somewhat. And as the fuel of the 1st Stage is burned off, I think the centre of mass would move up a bit. I'm unsure where the centre of pressure would be, but a rule-of-thumb is it's in the centre of a lengthwise cross-section. Which puts it very near the centre-of-mass. That should make its static stability low. The Mk1 Pod's reaction wheel should act at the centre of the pod. So it has a good lever arm with respect to the rocket centre-of-mass, around which it should normally act. Now transferring a torque on the Mk1 Pod to the whole rocket is a bit tricky, especially if it bends. But I think there is a benefit from the length of that lever arm. To the best of my recollection, I had no issues controlling the rocket during flight. (I did need more practice to get it to orbit efficiently, thought.)

Released version 20210217b Corrected release (fixed mangled header on Mun's page) Again, no changes in values or formulae. After thoroughly checking, I've found my Science Checklists are missing several experiments since KSP 1.6. EVA Science Kit Experiments Comet Samples for 4 period varieties of Comets Magnetometer Reports I'm in the process of adding them in as well as tweaking some of the older experiments. This requires me to rearrange most of the pages of the Checklists, so it'll be a while before I get a version out with these changes.

I think the key Science number near here is 130. It allows all of T3 except T3 Stability (which can be delayed) and both T4 Advanced Rocketry for the Terrier, T400 Tank, etc, and T4 Basic Science for the Science Jr and the other Science goodies. With those, can push for 90 more Science to get T5 Miniaturization and the Docking Port Jr and other bits. And for most of the rest, @IncongruousGoat covered much the same. Too slow making new posts by chipping out stones! I go for the T30 over the T45. The T30 costs less, masses less, has better Atmospheric and Vacuum Thrust, and better Atmospheric Isp. The T45 only edges out the T30 on Vacuum Isp, with 320s over the T30's 310s. But with the T45 being 0.25t more massive, in most cases even on an upper stage, the T30 will be the better choice. My Mission 11 Mun Flyby rocket used a T30 on the 1st stage and a Terrier (under test) on the 2nd. Being long, the Mk1 Pod's reaction wheel had a long lever arm during the 1st stage burn. If I had to design without the Terrier, I'd still go for a T30 on the 2nd Stage. Mind you, this is all unrealistic, another victim of Squad just not knowing Rocketry at the start and making those crazy strong unrealistic reaction wheels. Large gimballed engines were developed in the late 1950's, with ungimballed engines only used in legacy designs like the R7 and in combination with gimballed engines, like on the Saturn 1's S1 stage, the Saturn 1B's S1B stage, and the Saturn 5's S1C stage. Spacecraft themselves I believed used ungimballed engines mostly for reliability. But maneuvering except for some satellites is all RCS. I've got to leave this one be, else the craziness of the stock Tech tree and what is where will start getting to me. Again. That's 6500 dV on the whole LV+Spacecraft. In 18t/30 parts. Without a Docking Port. Wow. That one I'd like to see the details on it. And what Tech nodes it needs. I'd need to get better at Caveman orbital launches (Mission 11's was...I wrote 3815m/s but looking at the screenshots, says about 4075m/s). Better aim on Caveman Trans-Mun Injections too (may have underburnt this one with 878m/s, but I was going for a set apoapsis that was good). The Contracts to "Survey <location> over <altitude>" are great, as any altitude over that's still in the SOI works. I've seen in other Careers, often someone gets left up in a Polar orbit with the appropriate gear just to milk them without needing a new launch. 19 !?! Good! Because I've only done around 5ish Mun+Minmus landings. All un-Kerballed before CommNet with many nav aids, though the landings were manual. (Only Kerballed one was on a simulation flight that broke off its engine on landing.) Though getting a good Caveman Trans-Minmus Injection is going to be my challenge. Had a tough enough time doing it Caveman for Mun and it wasn't a good one either.

When Imgur becomes more reliable, you should review my aborted NCD Career. The Imgur Image Galleries have notes on all the screenshots included. In 11 Missions (1 of which was a duplicate Roller because I'd missed Science with the preceding Roller Mission), I got to 87.2 Science, I had: All T2 Nodes T3 General Rocketry, T3 Survivability And 47.2 Science to spend, likely either T4 Advanced Rocketry or T4 Basic Science. I'm not sure if one of those is a dangerous route, but I think my career could have pursued either. There's another key factor with NCD Careers: Contract play. With Reputation in the gutter (highest I saw was -983), there's no problem cancelling contracts. The right Contracts get the funds to fly the missions. The right Contracts get extra Science points that can make the difference between unlocking now or later. The right Test Contracts give parts not unlocked yet early, like how I got the Terrier engine for the Mission 11 Mun flyby. Planning out the Contracts means even with a maximum of 2 accepted, a single mission can complete several. Mission 11 did 3. That's one of the reasons I did my Science Checklists, to know what was were and what I did and didn't do. On top of that, I had my log and records of the Missions I flew. Very interesting. But I've noticed a stumbling block. Getting T5 Miniaturization and access to the Docking Port Jr. Without that, can't assemble either on the ground or in space. My Mission 11 Mun flyby rocket was already at the limit, 17.93t and 30 parts. If I unlocked T4 Basic Science, I need nearly 90 Science more to get T5 Miniaturization. But now without the Terrier engine, although I would have the parts available from T4 Basic Science. Would have the Science Jr. Still some Kerbin science available on the earlier experiments too. Looks like this part of getting through a NCD Career is a rather challenging part. And makes me think this is where I need to go, a new NCD career. Because even with Diamond there wouldn't be this sort of challenge at this point.

I'm not sure. I'm sorely tempted. But an NCD Career is a long haul. My 2019 NCD career went idle after 11 missions and 87.5 Science. About 7.39% of the way to completion. Back in 2019, I managed a Caveman Mun flyby. In non-career test flights, I've flown with a Kerbals on the outside to orbit and back. In the Community Caveman Jool-5, I didn't do any of the design, but I flew one of the component spacecraft to orbit, rendezvous, and docking, as well as performed part of the return encounter with Kerbin, where I learned to timewarp with an external Kerbal (usually let them drift away then track them down to recover). And I've never gone Interplanetary in KSP. I understand the science and the practice of how to do it manually. But it's one thing to know and another to do. And it's not just doing these once. NCD is grind, grind, grind the tough rocks down. Grind for funds, grind for biomes, grind to put together rockets either on the ground or in Kerbin orbit. So, I'm not sure about doing a Caveman NCD Career. But I look at the effects of lower Science returns and I think there's a big difference even with respect to a Diamond Career. I might try to knock off a quick Caveman Career, like Apatite or Topaz, for the most Caveman of reasons. I like how the rocks Apatite and Topaz look. I'm really interested in hearing how things are current in KSP 1.11 on this topics: Ground assembly Orbital assemble Timewarping with outside Kerbals The new stuff added from KSP 1.8 on. Bugs to watch out for!

Thanks! In ScienceDefs.cfg, it has a situationMask of 63 and a biomeMask of 0, which means it's global and can be done Surface Landed, Surface Splashed, Flying Low, Flying High, Space Low, and Space High. baseValue and ScienceCap is 25, so it's like the first run of a Materials Studies in the Science Jr, also 25. I have been approaching Caveman always with a pilot in control--or passively steered and Bob to push the Staging button--and returning Science with the spacecraft. I had done a quick look at transmission and saw the relay situation got as crazy as you found. I've not played with the stock CommNet so I'm unsure how it would interact with the Caveman Career limitations. I'd be interested in hearing other Cavemen's details on how well they did with unkerballed probes and perhaps Science transmission. What I discovered going over the Caveman Science numbers on my Checklists, which are calculated by formulae in the background from all the appropriate science numbers imported from KSP, is.... ...even at 10% Science return in a NCD Caveman campaign, if you go for all available Science in all situations and biomes possible on Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.... ...you can get the 1184 Science points to complete the Tech Tree to all Tier 5 nodes. Even with nothing from Contract Science. Gives 1203.45 Science at 10% return. Mind you, this is EVERYTHING, from Kerbin, KSC Areas and Structures, Mun, and Minmus. That doesn't include the 3 non-KSC Areas (Baikerbanur, Baikerbanur LaunchPad, Island Airfield) or 3 Making History non-KSC Areas (Dessert Airfield, Dessert Launch Site, Woomerang Launch Site), each of which can return 3.81 Science at 10% return. Also doesn't include EVA Science Kit Experiments, which I'm in the process of adding. The big stumbling block to a Kerbin-SOI only NCD Career is it has to include: All EVA Science with a Kerbal (likely ol' Scientist Bob ) on the outside of the spacecraft from Launch to the end of Science gathering. All Materials Studies with the bulky Science Jr. And a lot of biomes to grind, 11 on Kerbin, 17 on Mun, 9 on Minmus. Some of them, like Kerbin's Badlands, relatively small targets. Even with the difficulty of Caveman Interplanetary, I can see why NCD almost demands it. @IncongruousGoat did a massive orbital construction to do enough Duna+Ike Science to complete his NCD career and I can see why.

I have seen both from my previous NCD career. A nice addition but not that much. What are the limitations on EVA Experiments? How much are the Kits? What Tech Node unlocks, other unlocks are needed? Thanks!

What Tech node and other things unlock EVA Experiments, @paul c? I can't find information on that. Looks like I better check ScienceDefs.cfg. Ah, EVA Science Kit Experiments are just a single run per situation, not per biome. And looks like I've got a lot of Science to add onto the Checklists, but only EVA Science Kits could be Caveman accessible. EVA Science Kit Experiments (all 6 Situations, no biomes) Comets in 4 period varieties (per comet, needs Level 3 Tracking Station) Magnetometer (Space Low and Space High, no biomes, needs Tier 7 Tech Node unlocked) Gives me something to do in my leisure hours.

I was just looking over my Checklists and of course found some typos I just had to fix. So I rolled out a new version. Images coming soon whenever the Intrawebs stops crushing Imgur to ineffectiveness. (My Imgur galleries in my 2019 NCD Career topic won't work until then either.)

Released version 20210217a Fixed some typos in the notes. No changes in values or formulae.

Over the past week I've been getting back into KSP. Last thing I did of any note was my minor parts in the Community Caveman Jool-5. Prior to that was an aborted Caveman NCD attempt in KSP 1.6.1 in 2019. I detailed what I did so others may find it helpful. Did manage to earn 87.2 Science at 10% reward in the 11 missions. Some of the missions were rather...unique. Like my Mission 10, a rocket glider carrying a Caveman Roller to the Island Airfield. I did produce a set of updated Science Checklists with many added Caveman notes (see the link in my signature), the major source originally being @JAFO's KSP 1.4 Checklists. I did a quick check and they should be good still. There's a lot of Science out there! Anyhoo, I decided to come back to the Caveman Challenge for KSP 1.11.1. I am a bit concerned about all the bugs I'm hearing about with 1.11 and even 1.11.1 added. But that's what the Caveman Challenge is good at doing, getting in touch with the KSP base game bugs and all. I'm interested in how Caveman is different under the updated Challenge under KSP 1.11.x. The DLC Expansions are now allowed. But I'm seeing them not show a lot of significant part changes until the later Tier 4 and 5 nodes. Except for the Vostok/Voskhod inspired command pods. Which I wonder if the advantages outweigh their disadvantages to using the standard Mk 1 Command Pod. I'll finished with a mod suggestion to improve the naming of screenshots and--if allowed--quicksaves, both in one post. As it's past the Unity change with KSP 1.8, it should work in 1.11.

Imagine your spacecraft is somehow circling around a space station in orbit around Kerbin and you get the analogy to an Interplanetary Transfer. You have to align in two ways: Where in the orbit around Kerbin. Where in the circling around the space station. And those #1 and #2 align with the Times #1 and #2 in my explanation above. In reality, the spacecraft isn't circling around a space station, so Time #2 isn't a factor. The other difference is in delta-V magnitude. Once you get enough delta-V to do a Hohmann Transfer from Kerbin parking orbit to Mun or Minmus, it's not much more to do a Free-Return Trajectory to Mun or a Fast Transfer (long Elliptical) to Minmus, which is how I do them respectively. The Free-Return Trajectory is great for Mun flybys that return to the vicinity of Kerbin without another major thrust maneuver. By the time I fly to Minmus, it's going to be with an orbiter / lander and often there's resources on the spacecraft that are better to minimize by shortening the flight time. In both cases the spacecraft reserve delta-V is about the same size as the difference between a Hohmann Transfer and the faster trajectories, so it's not hard to tweak the design for a bit more delta-V. Once it's Interplanetary, the minimum delta-V values for a Hohmann Transfer are much larger and those for other transfers even moreso. There's no equivalent of the Free-Return Trajectory because Kerbin won't be in the right place upon return; to do a Duna flyby and return to Kerbin needs a special orbit that goes beyond Duna and needs to allow for the effect of the Duna flyby and is a bit tricky. And to do a Fast Transfer sees the delta-V requirements quickly become too much. Extra and reserve delta-V are for widening the Launch Window. Going after a difficult target like Moho, on a significantly elliptical orbit with significant inclination, make the nuances worse. Finding the minimal delta-V in a combination of maneuvers is hard. Slight changes in a burn or what sequences of burns are done can greatly increase or decrease the delta-V required. The usual approach here is a lot of reserve delta-V and aim to do each maneuver as best as possible but having the delta-V to take what can be achieved. Often KSP is played without any life-support or other flight-time constraints, so using multiple orbits and passes to minimize delta-V is common. Once there's any factor which makes time matter, like life-support, radiation, etc., things are rather different. My use of Fast Transfers to Minmus comes from my years of playing Better Than Starting Manned, where the Minmus missions were done before any solar panels were unlocked and the lifetime of the craft was down to how long the batteries could run a probe core. However, a Minmus Fast Transfer isn't that much more delta-V than a Hohmann Transfer (about an added 500m/s).

EVA fuel refills are supposed to be drawn from the Monoprop on the spacecraft. There was also a bug fixed with 1.11.1.