Starstrider42

Go with the widest-angle dish that has sufficient range (in this case, the communotron 88-88). The narrower the angle, the farther you need to get from Kerbin before you can point the antenna at the planet and be guaranteed to have a satellite in the cone. While all the planets -- even Eve and Duna -- are far enough away that it's not a problem, the minimum range can cause trouble when you need to do course corrections. With the Communotron 88-88, you'll need to manually point the antenna at a specific satellite until you get about 5.7 million km away from Kerbin (assuming your interplanetary-capable comsats are in kerbostationary orbit).

I've since confirmed that FOV for Minmus is about 7 times that for Kerbin, and that the maximum altitude doesn't change at all, so the comments that it's the FOV that gets rescaled seem to be spot on. I'm not sure where the number 7 comes from, though: Minmus has 1/10 the radius of Kerbin, and 2.7% its SoI.

Yes, if you're careful. I think you're seeing a combination of two issues: 1. When you undock two ships for the first time, KSP tries to figure out what type each section should be. Your stage probably got classified as debris, which isn't shown on the tracking screen by default. Right-click on the "debris" button near the top of the tracking screen, and you should see it again. 2. You cannot control *any* vehicle unless it has either a manned command pod or a probe core. Did you remember to add a second probe core to the transfer stage? Note that you only need to solve the first issue if you just want to rendezvous and dock with the stage. The second only matters if you want to do burns with the detached stage.

You may be thinking of the extra research you get for recovering a craft that visited multiple bodies. This is completely separate (and usually much lower than) the research you get for actually doing experiments. So I'd say don't bother.

So the documentation is wrong and parameters *aren't* scaled to different planets? That does make my life easier... @Pondafarr: AFAIK, Scansat doesn't use conical FOVs or realistic scaling with distance from the surface. On Kerbin, at least, the "FOV" parameter is the width of the stripe in degrees of latitude, and it's a constant on-ground width anywhere between the optimal and maximum altitudes.

How does the scaling work? For example, if I'm trying to map the Mun (1/3 the radius of Kerbin, 3% its SoI), what are the optimal and maximum heights for the low-resolution radar?

Interesting, so the target ID's aren't unique to each save game. Good to know. Also, I can confirm the antennaRange property doesn't have to be set by hand.

I've gotten the exact same bug with ordinary probes, though I hadn't realized it was associated with RemoteTech (and yes, I have the hotfix installed). It seems to be a case of the flight UI not loading correctly for whatever reason. You can work around the problem by exiting to the main menu, then reloading your game. It seems to strike at random, so the odds that it will happen on two consecutive ship loads are pretty low.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound as rude as I did. This is one of the most fun mods out there, and I appreciate the trouble you've gone to to design and maintain it. I just figured that, since the mod is so well planned out, if I couldn't see a use for an antenna then I was probably missing something.

Stupid question, but I seem to be good at those. What is the CommTech EXP-VR-2T antenna good for? The way I see it, it's inferior to the Communotron 32 in just about every way: it has a shorter range, it's heavier, it's bulkier, and it sits higher on the tech tree. The one advantage it has is a lower power drain, but the Communotron's drain is easily affordable if you have some standard solar panels. So when or where are you supposed to prefer the CommTech as your omnidirectional antenna?

This is a known bug, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php?p=975761#post975761 and the following posts for more details.

Really? You deploy your parachute at 50 km, and it doesn't burn up?

A good rule of thumb in orbital maneuvering is that burns in the plane of your orbit almost always have the biggest effect on the opposite side of the planet, while burns out of the plane (i.e., inclination changes) have their biggest effect one quarter of the way around. That one rule covers most of the basic maneuvers you would want to do. For transfer orbits specifically, I suggest reading the Wiki: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Advanced_Orbiting. The Hohmann and Bi-Elliptical transfers are both quite handy, though the latter requires a bit of planning (i.e., setting multiple maneuver nodes, and considering the total delta-V of all of them).

Kerbal Engineer Redux (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/18230-0-23-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-2-3) does this automatically, and even divides its stats up by stages. So that's the easiest way to do it. If you want to calculate total mass without any mods, I think you'd have to do it by hand. See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/70637-Weights-and-Measures, where somebody asked a question very similar to yours.

Can you tell us specifically what antennas you have on each probe, which is pointed at what (EXACT text shown in the target selector, please), and what the distances/LOSs are between the two probes and between them and mission control (a map view screenshot will suffice)? This mod is all about the details.

I've found 30 km works well for everything from LKO to a direct return from Minmus. Another trick that I found extremely helpful when I was first learning Deadly Reentry was to attach a heat shield to the bottom of my Mk I pod. This doubled the amount of ablative material I had, essentially turning the pod's built-in heat shield into a backup in case the extra heat shield failed.

I haven't seen this specific issue, but KSP is known to be pretty buggy with large ships. Have you installed Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55657-0-23-Kerbal-Joint-Reinforcement-v2-0-2-4-14)?

You can fix this just by clicking "show all stages".

That sounds like a great solution. Thanks!

I had to do something similar when I first installed RemoteTech 2; I had a bunch of deep-space probes that I had to upgrade from the stock Communotron 16. Fortunately, it's not too hard if you're careful. Your first method should have left you with an antenna that "looks" like it's not attached, but is. In that case, simply tweak the position and rotation values until you get something that looks correct. If you're starting over from scratch, you may find it easier to keep the old antenna almost intact and only replace a few key values: name, mass, rTrf, ModuleAnimateGeneric, and ModuleRTAntenna. You definitely don't want to edit parent, srfN, or attN by hand; I don't think there's a way to do that that doesn't corrupt the ship's structure.

The science module's ability to make the "sample" experiments reusable is its main benefit, in my experience. But there is a way to make the transmission boost helpful. The key fact the module description doesn't tell you is that it only boosts transmission efficiency by 50%. For a surface sample, which normally has a transmission efficiency of 25%, that would go up to 37.5%. If you've already gotten more research out of it then that, then you can't transmit the sample, whether or not you have the lab. The most efficient use I've found for the lab module is to do an experiment/sample, use the transmission boost, then transmit it. Then repeat until even the boosted transmission is worthless, then save the data for carrying home. This strategy, though tedious, will give you the most science points overall because you've maximized the number of science points you had before you brought a full sample back with you. It still won't completely fill the experiment potential, but it should get close enough that grabbing the remaining 0.1 science points isn't really worth the effort.

There's a trick you can use if you've already designed your ship, though I think it might be a bug rather than intended behavior. Start your transmission, then turn on time warp. The rate of power generation will scale up, but the speed at which the antenna is transmitting won't. Unless you've got way too few solar panels, going up to 5x or 10x should slow the transmission speed enough that your ship can keep up.

In the Settings menu, under the Input/Other tab, there's a button labeled "EVAs auto-rotate to camera". Is that it?

Agreed. If you're not fond of mods, go with Kerbal Engineer. It's very easy to use (slap a part on your ship, and click buttons until you get the screen you want). MechJeb is much more powerful, but also much more complex, and it sounds like all you want is a way to calculate rocket specs without having to add up all the parts by hand.

Yes, it's a mod, RemoteTech 2 (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56399-0-23-RemoteTech-2-v1-3-3-Late-Christmas-Edition) Be aware, though, that launching your first unmanned rocket with this mod will be a bit of a challenge. Once you have at least one communications satellite in orbit, though, things get much easier.