chicknblender

Ivan Ivanovich: I solve the problem you're describing by putting parts inside of procedural fuselage fairings. Nathan: I have tried a few more lander probes with different (more standard) RCS configurations tonight, and I always run into the same problem with RCS acting up below ~750 m/s orbital velocity. I am wondering if perhaps I am the only one crazy enough to attempt landings with non-thrust-vectoring engines. I will be interested to learn if you can recreate the behavior or not.

Alright. For testing purposes, my current build looks like this: * fresh copy of KSP 0.24.2 (win64 build, all settings default) * RO plus all the required mods (latest versions of everything as of 1 hour ago) * HyperEdit * Absolutely nothing else. I then built a craft (file here) consisting of the OKTO2 probe core, the small RCS tank (hydrazine), and three symmetry-placed linear RCS ports. It looks like this. I then HyperEdited the craft to Moon orbit, activated RCS/SAS, turned to orbital retrograde, and held "H" to translate forward. Everything works fine at first, but when orbital velocity reaches about 750 m/s, attitude controls stop responding correctly although forward translation continues to work. If I get the craft turned back to prograde and can increase my orbital velocity back above 750 m/s, everything works as expected again. I confirmed the same behavior in high Kerbin orbit: above 750 m/s orbital velocity, all's fine. Decelerate to less than 750 m/s, RCS attitude inputs don't work. Accelerate back above 750 m/s, everything works again. I tested the analogous craft in stock KSP + HyperEdit, and the problem does not occur (at Kerbin anyway; Mun's orbital velocity is already less than 750 m/s so I couldn't test there). Any ideas? I am happy to assist with debug tests but I don't know where to go from here.

I am having a little problem with an RCS-based Moon lander. It's just a probe core and a procedural tank with 3 downward-facing linear RCS ports (functioning as both attitude control and thrust). It works fine at first, but after a minute or so of burning, the RCS ports start to malfunction. They still fire in sync when I press 'H' (i.e. , forward translation / fire engines), but they don't respond at all when I try to adjust my attitude. I still have more than half my propellant when this happens, and it happens with multiple different propellant types and RCS port configurations. I can post pictures/files if needed, but I wanted to see if there was an obvious reason for this behavior first.

NathanKell and RedAV8R: You know what would be awesome? Requiring Hullcam and then eliminating 3rd-person camera views except on EVA. Just a thought to add even more to the realism.

I might be the blind trying to lead the blind here, but I solved this problem by using procedural tanks and selecting the "service module" tank type. It can also be done with the stock RCS tanks. Just learning how to get the engines to fire has a pretty steep learning curve with this mod.

Thanks for the quick reply, good explanation, and the wonderful mod! I do think that I have been adding excessive RCS -- it's just too easy to add the quad thrusters with quad symmetry and that's what vanilla taught me to do. A question, though: do the reaction wheels have realistic power and mass? Because if they do, they still have a huge advantage over RCS since they consume no fuel. So why aren't they used more? Complexity/reliability? Cost? EDIT: First soft landing on the Moon! It's amazing how this mod resets all those old milestones.

Amazing mod! Thank you. Works OK for me in 0.24.2 with Realism Overhaul, but would love to see development continued.

Easy fix! Thanks. It's more like MJ freaks out with the RCS. It kinda eventually gets the attitude right, but not before burning an absurd amount of hydrazine, and even then it doesn't hold very well. If it was an actual physical device, I would say that the the gain was set too high. EDIT: Works OK with reaction wheels and RCS turned off. I guess I'll be adding back reaction wheels.

Hey Nathan, I have become obsessed with RO since we last talked. I am recurrently impressed with the high quality of of this mod. I just wanted to thank you, RedAV8R, and the authors of the various other mods involved for such an amazing product. KSP is new again! (Also, I can put off installing Orbiter for awhile longer. ) My biggest complaint, and it's a minor one, is that I have trouble getting MechJeb to perform attitude adjustments and burns correctly. Even the listed TWR is not always correct. I know that's really R4m0n's project, but I was curious if any of you had any comments on this. (I will admit that I have not read all 111 pages to see if this has been addressed before.)

Hey bhauth, did you ever have any success with this? The initial comment on Reddit that you linked to was from my post, and I have been seriously thinking about making this happen. I would love to hear what if anything you learned about this technique.

My thoughts exactly as I reviewed the album! Really gets you excited about actual space exploration. Personally, I think we both did an extremely good job within the rules of our own specific challenges. I don't envy the devs having to pick because the challenges have almost nothing in common with each other. At this point, I am just happy to have had the chance to meet and compete against such a great group of people. Hell, they *created* a good bit of what we all use to play every day. If we lose, it will be to very worthy competitors.

I have been looking for a mod that does exactly this! I would love to see this mod resurrected.

Aw come on, if "pico" or "nano" are involved, I will totally help you out this time.

If true, that would be incredibly exciting!! Can't wait to see what the last challenge is.

Our team got the first two legs fully docked to the center column (all ports connected). The last one doesn't want to squeeze in there fully. No complaints from our team though; we took it as part of the challenge.

You guys are thinking way to big for a mini-Arkingthaad!

Nothing's missing; it's a reference to the docking ports not all locking together. Honestly, it didn't slow us down too much in the end.

Well thanks for the competition on the first few rounds, guys. Rowsdower, what happens to our team now? I do not intend to stop competing. EDIT: Nevermind. Just now realized that this was a double elimination.

What makes you think that the navigators aren't stepping up for this challenge?

Has anyone managed to get the entire ship assembled with all docking ports connected correctly?

Now that is a truly evil idea.

Man I thought I was the only one. The challenge is reaffirming my decision to take screenshots instead of videos for most of my missions. And I'm not even doing the hard parts.

Now that voting is over for the first challenge, I wanted to post a reply to some of the comments about my team's map-view trophy: First, it was an unaltered in-game screenshot, not a composite image. It was created with a combination of savefile text editing and HyperEdit. For better or worse, no actual rocketry took place. That's a totally legitimate criticism, BUT don't underestimate (a) the artistic skill required to conceptually build a map-view trophy, and ( the orbital physics knowledge necessary to even know what numbers to put into HyperEdit. I am bragging on my teammates here because I had nothing to do with the nitty-gritty details. While it's true that we don't read good, we also took a risk as a team to try something outside the box. I figured that if HyperEdit was allowed, we needed to do something that was impressive even for HyperEdit. When I saw our competition, I was pretty worried that we were going to get eliminated first for this. All of the entries were stunning. My teammates have assured me that assembling the trophy was was rather arduous, and we are all looking forward to actually playing the game this round.

Wow. What an impressive set of submissions on both sides. Lots of different styles represented in hilarious and awesome ways.

Reddit vs. Forum doesn't even have an effect on the competition right now. A team from each side will be eliminated until there are only two teams left. That said, I amicably agree that all participants (and even non-participants) should refrain from attempts to identify the team associated with the entries until voting is complete.