MrOnak

I gave KMP (the latest devel version as per May 7th or so) a try with a friend last night. The KMP-Server is unmodded. My friend glitched out while on EVA in the sense that he not only lost hold of the ladder as it happens every now and then but suddenly he was 1.3 kms or-so away from the craft, unable to close the gap. The rocket seemed to retreat with the same speed from him, no matter how much he used the jetpack fuel. Has anyone had this? Anyway, I decided to launch a rescue mission and got my command capsule with 2 empty seats right next to him. As he tried to slowly glide onto the hatch he just slid thru the whole command pod, and came out on the other side. A few seconds later he suddenly was 700m away from the pod. In both cases his Kerbal "blinked" to the new location, no accelleration or anything noticable. He was near the pod one second and hundreds of meters away the next, with very small relative speed (10m/s or so, nothing that explains the sudden change in position). I guess both instances are somewhat related. Any clue what might have happened? Another question: Although on his attempt to board my capsule he literaly slid right thru the hatch he didn't get the "[F] grab" prompt and even pressing F without the prompt didn't make him grab the pod. My vessel was set to public BUT at the time of the docking the "lock public / private" popup thingy on the right of the sceen wouldn't show up. As a first time KMP user this is all very weird - any insights would be greatly appreciated . On a different note, how exactly does the /register [username] [token] command work? I've tried various tokens (passwords?) consisting of trivial letters only but the server always says "supplied token is invalid". That aside, what's the actual benefit of registering users? I'm asuming this will allow "private" vessels to be owner-controlled only after a reconnect? Is there anything else to it? Thanks in advance

It pales in comparison to some of the stuff posted in this thread but this one is mine, all mine I present, the Sagan Kethane Refinery (and the little rover that built the whole thing) Built with my own twist of the Modular Base Creation Kit, all parts were made from scratch (although some are 100% copies), but using the Interstellar mod, RemoteTech and others that allowed for some changes.

I'm not sure if that rules the Grand Tour as a whole out but the wiki says this about Eeloo: "It [Eeloo] is the seventh and farthest planet from Kerbol most of the time, though its orbit intersects Jool's, passing in front of it for a minority of its revolution period. The two planets are locked in a 3:2 resonance, which, coupled with their different inclinations, ensures they cannot collide. "

Thats a very good point Jouni, virtually every part on small probes except the control & propulsion systems is now irrelevant in terms of weight, that trivializes small probe design and delivery to a point where... well... it's trivial *duh*. I like KSP to a large extend because it is not easy and hence, it is very rewarding. Sure once you figure out a probe design that works you save it as subassembly and re-use it in good engineering stick-with-what-you-know-works spirit but getting there now is really easy. As I pointed out in an earlier post, an ion engine that counters the gravity of Duna or Mun is over the top. I'm all for a general buff to the ion engine to make it more interesting but with the addition of the massless energy system it went too far.

Well I agree on what you're trying to say and I'm sure most people didn't build stuff around ion engines before this update - the long burn times were very painful indeed. So the idea of buffing the ion engines was a good one. However, I just flew a single Kerbal from LKO to Duna on a single Xenon tank and I landed (softly) on the surface. See gallery above. Ion engines shouldn't be able to counter gravity on any body (maybe except Gilly but I'm not even sure about that one). We have the tiny LFO engines for those stunts already. In my 0.23.0 career I make heavy use of LV-1 engines, the Oscar-B tanks and the PB-NUK thermoelectric generators for probes and light unmanned landers. I'm 100% certain I can make a very similar lander (less solar / batteries of course) based on the LV-1 and Oscar-B with roughly the same weight that can also safely land a Kerbal on Duna after I get it there. That's the thing. The ion craft gets itself there and can go home. So yeah. Good intentions but they went to far IMHO. Not sure how much of that stunt (the Duna landing on a single ion engine) was made possible by the now-massless electric system but the overall effect is very drastic. While fun, I'm not sure if it doesn't destroy the place the tiny liquid fuel setup has at the moment.

The title of this thread is "Do you consider ions + massless electric systems an exploit?". Well... lets just say they're unbalanced. <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/xgml8/embed"></iframe> That was imense fun though

I'm probably quite late at the attempt but erm... Those NASA parts... I mean... wow... (the four dots in front of the 140 ton lander are the crew and a flag)

Sure its legit

Yeah I know... a 'legit' option within the game would be fabulous though. You can always scan Kerbin and do a quick hop to a kethane deposit nearby but still, its a bit tedious to test a engineering problem rather than a whole lander / station / base design so I thought I'd just bring the idea up. I don't see any game-breaking advantages with a tiny deposit since as I said, fuel on Kerbin is free in the VAB.

I have a small request... Due to the way the Kethane refinery units work I'm always doubtful whether or not my craft will actually create fuel from the mined Kethane. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sent a miner to Minmus / Mun only to find out that for some part alignment reason or the other the Kethane doesn't get converted. Hence, the idea: Why not add a (miniscule) amount of Kethane to the tile on which the KSC is located? The real-game use of Kethane on Kerbin is neglectible (at least until fuel costs money in KSP ) but having a minor deposit at the doorstep would make prototyping craft much much easier.

Inspired by the original designs in this thread I decided to make my own (just because building stuff in KSP is as much fun for me as it is to fly / land / crash things). A lot of the items (trusses, especially) turned out to be more or less exact replicas of their originals but since I'm using Interstellar, Kethane and RemoteTech I changed a few things around to make use of the additional options. This is my Kethane mining station prototype, assembled just next to the launchpad. Time to bring this thing to Minmus TONS of thanks for the inspiration to Temstar! This will definitely extend my current career by quite a bit. I already spotted flattish area on Ike that has Kethane

Jeb, Bob and the two mission specialists Phil and Danrod Kerman just finished their Ike insertion. Time for a new signature! Oh... is that the time? damnnnnnnnnnnnit....

@Amaroq: Yes that seems to be what you guys want . That plus a part that I can add to my unmanned probes that gives me the flightEngineer seperately is what I would love hehe. Sorry if I come across as picky, but I really think having options is good

Yeah, thats what I consider overpowered . Not saying "I'm right and you're not", this just shows different playstyles. The only thing I find Gigantors useful for is ion probes and Kethane miners but hey that's me. If I feel generous I put 4 X-STAT solar panels on probes and maybe 4 of the small batteries - thats enough to last thru the night in orbit around any of the bodies in the Kerbin influence. Since I unlocked it I ditch the solar panels and only put 2 of the stock thermoelectric generators on. The seismic detector probe in question (landing stage only) had three thermoelectric generators one Z-200 battery and weighed about 650kgs all inclusive. So yeah, in hindsight thats a WAY underpowered but that's exactly my point. Since science transmission usually restarts once the batteries have a bit of juice it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't even mind the manned "rescue" mission to pick the science up but that not working as well is a bit harsh - but like I wrote in my OP that is hopefully a bug.

I just landed in the Minmus flats, hoping for the best. The refinery in the picture was sent purely to convert water into liquid fuel / oxidiser so that was successful. Where I landed there is indeed some water to be mined. Not sure whether I got lucky or it is evenly spread. didn't check the files beforehand. I have a similar albeit robotic refinery on Minmus with the purpose of mining Uranium to get UF4. That one has the Gamma Ray Spectrometer on board so I can see the uranium pockets. I almost managed to land inside one of the bubbles but even next to it there is some Uranium. Not sure how much higher the concentration is inside the bubble but I'm not going to attempt landing this top heavy son of a preacherman again As for the other resources, I don't have a need for them yet so I can't really comment on that.

@Amaroq: I know what you mean. But knowing me, if I have KER on a satellite that is part of a geostationary network and I find out that one day one of the sats has for some weird reason wandered off its intended position I know I'd use KER to have the orbital periods of all satellites match before I realize "hey that's a probe, it shouldn't have KER". Probably thats just me though

Some observations about the Double-C Seismic instrument. I'm playing the pre-ARM 0.23 with the 0.10.3 version of Interstellar, if things have changed since then consider this post redundant . First of all let me say that I really enjoy the more difficult / complicated way to get science out of that instrument. Adds another layer to the game, which is always nice. The amount of power the transmission needs is insane though. There is virtually no way to transmit the science on a "standard" solar powered probe. Of course one can always build huge contraptions to provide enough juice but I'm talking about a reasonable probe. The instrument virtually requires a reactor, or the probe to come home to Kerbin. Why I'm saying this is because I found that unlike other instruments, the transmission doesn't seem to continue after the batteries have sufficiently recharged. So once the batteries are drained, that's it, the WarpPlugin.cfg value switches to transmitted = true and its over. Searching this thread it seemed to have worked (people have mentioned using time warp to "cheat" a bit on energy consumption) earlier but at least for me, it doesn't. Not sure that is intended. I also found out that the science from the instrument can't be picked up by a Kerbal on EVA. I had this happen to my Mun detector (insufficiently solar-equipped, see above) where I sent a pickup mission only to find out that I couldn't get the science out of the instruments thru Kerbal. That's definitely not fun. I saw a post somewhere concerning the magnetometer science not being allowed to be picked up thru EVA being a bug, so I'll assume the same is the case here, just letting you know. Next, I have a nuclear powered rover with a Double C on board on the surface of Kerbin with antennas and everything. I thought to be incredible smart since I make a point of crashing the last ascend stage of virtually all rockets back on Kerbin to avoid debris. Free science, right? Doesn't seem to be the case. When I switch to the burned out fuel tank / engine / fin assembly (no power, no control) and watch it crash it doesn't get registered by the Double C. Again, not sure if that's intended behaviour. Last, sometimes when I read the seismic reports on a probe and click the green "store experiment" button in the popup, it seems that the "transmitted" value in the WarpPlugin.cfg is incorrectly being set to "true". Not 100% sure how to reproduce it but I had several cases where the sequence of "impact -> switch to detector -> read -> store -> switch to next impactor" caused the first impact to be set to transmitted = true while that was not the case. Again, great twist on the instrument but it could use some tweaking in my opinion.

Just installed the latest Texture Management on the pre-ARM version 0.23 of KSP and it seems to run fine (not tested in depth yet). 600mb memory saves, woot Thanks again

Ah thats awesome news, thanks

Sorry if this has been asked before but does the current version of this support the 0.23 pre-ARM version of KSP? I start running into out-of-memory crashes... Thanks a lot.

Heh, the atmospheric density scale is non-essential anyways, just thought I'd mention it. Looking forward to future fixes Question, the original Telemachus has the option to show readings from the sensors (temperature, pressure, ...) when installed... any plans to add those to the MKON GUI?

Refering to the discussion about one page ago about using the parts... I like having the option to not have KER on a craft. I do use the "6S Service Compartment Tubes" mod though and thus have a place to store the recorder inside the circumference of the rocket without "messing up" the looks. I never use the two "computer chip" thingies as they're simply too big. The thing for me is usually that I use KER during the ascend from Kerbin and maybe later during landings / ascends. I almost never install KER on probes such as satellites and robotic landers. Adds a bit of a challenge to the whole thing I guess. Manned vessels always have KER since, well... they'll be talking to mission control anyway. So if there'd be a decision to make (not saying there should be!) whether or not the parts should stay, I'd say yes. But a model overhaul might be good. All models are quite big and I do agree with a poster above that the chips don't fit the game estetics very well.

That mod is amazing! Small bugs I found (Win 7 64 bit, latest Firefox): - The atmospheric density scale is way off. it reaches the left most edge (space) at around 22000m above ground. - The warp display doesn't change at all. It doesn't toggle between physical / rails warp and I always seem to get the "1x" amount of green arrows, independent on the actual setting in game. Also one observation... the fact that the 100% setting on the throttle display is on the left side is very counter-intuitive in my humble opinion. Wouldn't it make more sense on the right side? Awesome mod! keep it going

One suggestion, sorry if this has come up in the past... It would be really helpful if the KAS strut end points could be connected from inside the VAB. Yes I know, the vanilla struts do exactly that. However I find myself in the situation that I need structural stability (for launch only) between two parts of a ship that will be undocked once in orbit, only to be re-strutted later in the mission. So what I have to do is use normal struts for launch (which leave the ugly knobs once decoupled) AND carry a set of KAS struts to reconnect the two parts later. Hence, being able to connect the KAS strut end points in VAB would make everything neater.

@MinerKerb: That is unfortunatelly how Kethane works at the moment. It will only put fuel / oxidiser in the tank connected directly to the converter unit. All else has to be arranged like you did, with KAS fuel pipes or alternatives. I believe you can use the stock fuel lines as well but point them in reverse - arrows on the lines pointing to the fuel tank connected to the converter. Since like Alexander pointed out the converter acts as a reverse engine you should end up with fuel being spread out to the tanks that are further out. However I haven't tried that myself - since Kethane mining takes a bit of time anyway I don't mind alt-clicking on tanks to distribute the fuel manually.