cantab

My first and last foray into RSS/RO, a Voyager replica intended to do Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto. Dealing with RO along with RT2 was just frustrating more than anything, I came to realise RT2 actually does *not* work at all well with RO. I only achieved a distant flyby of Jupiter, missing my assist to Saturn, and then gave up on the project. The most difficult thing I actually succeeded in though - possibly an EVA landing on Minmus and return to the orbiter with *no* informational mods. If you have KER and NavHUD and whatever then EVA landings are easy, but without them with only the limited information the stock game gives it's a whole different ball game and real seat-of-the-pants stuff. Also up there is my Tylo lander. The actual landing wasn't too bad, only took two attempts, but getting the ship out to Tylo in the first place was a complete pig, involving my biggest launch ever to refuel the thing in LKO. After all, this was the lander: Straight-on view by cantab314, on Flickr

Random overheats. And predictable but plainly WRONG overheats, like things exploding when sat on the launchpad. And game performance taking a nosedive compare to .90 because of the sh...oddy thermal system wasting CPU cycles. Honestly, as a long-time FAR user I consider KSP 1.0 the worst major release since I bought the game at 0.23.

I'm sure Unity 5.2 is too late for KSP 1.1. But point updates of Unity have usually made it into KSP as a matter of course, so it will probably be seen in KSP 1.2. And yeah, KSP wants a lot of optimisation, along with some other things. Ultimately I think that while Squad have an inspired and visionary game designer, they have for much of KSP's development been getting by with mediocre programmers and artists.

Nice work. I've taken to playing no quickloads, barring for bugs, myself. It really puts the pressure on to nail things first time, and have an idea of what to do if stuff goes wrong. That said, I do use the "Ignore Max Temperature" cheat a lot, because the heating system is so buggy and FAR makes it even worse.

You could get that information if you could observe cues that the laser weapon gives before it fires. For example that it's pointing right at you, or perhaps that it warms up slightly as components are activated. Naturally weapon designers would try and minimise such cues, but that's why back on page one I referred to lasers being "much more difficult to evade" and didn't claim such evasion was impossible.EDIT: Regarding radiation, ultimately in the long run you have to emit what you generate as heat. You can change the spectrum, you might even vary it in different directions, but you need to keep the energy balance or your ship is going to heat up inside. Computers will generate heat, people will (on the order of 100 Watts per person), power systems will, and so on.

The small scale of Kerbin impacts here I feel. The payload in its fairing is going to have high drag-to-mass compared to the lifter stages which will reduce stability. Real rockets have small payloads on top of big launchers, KSP rockets have much bigger payloads compared to the launchers. (Though I do wonder if real hydrolox upper stages also have high drag-to-mass.) If you replicated a real rocket in KSP I would expect it to launch nicely - and take the payload to Duna and back!

I think that one really depends on the goals of the war. If the goal is simple mass slaughter that will be achieved in the first attack, and if the target hasn't also given thought to such a war it's likely to be entirely one-sided, while if they have MAD may ensure.If on the other hand the goal is to take over or exploit the other ship then it's one of the rare cases I'd expect boarding actions. It would be sensible to open with a covert op, assuming the target is amenable to peaceful newcomes, but once the war goes "open" any boarding ships will become targets, and most space combat would grow from efforts to attack and defend them. That might involve attack craft, defensive escorts, and so on, or it might involve covering fire from the generation ship and then counter-battery fire from its opposite number. It's possible that overhanging such a war will be the threat of either side "going nuclear", which ought to encourage restraint.

One more thing to consider: depending on the timeframe of this contract, the kind of other missions you're doing, and your tolerance for long burns, it may be an option to wait until you unlock ions then brute force it. Getting 20-25 km/s out of ion engines is fairly straightforward.

I wonder if that changes in enlarged solar systems. With such an enlarged system the upper stage has more delta-V to provide at a relatively low TWR and so the Nerv could be applicable. The real NERVA was planned as an upper stage engine.

The most efficient way will be a Jool gravity assist. Key is to enter a transfer orbit with an apoapsis somewhat beyond Jool's, so that your trajectory crosses Jool's instead of just touching it. The next most efficient will be to push your Sun apoapsis way far out, like beyond Jool's orbit far out, and reverse direction there and get your periapsis touching the target orbit. The further the apoapsis is the less the delta-V needed but the longer the flight takes, make sure the contract doesn't expire! The delta-V requirement is the delta-V to escape the Sun from Kerbin, plus 41% of the orbital speed at your target orbit's distance from the Sun, plus a margin for the orbital reversal and safety. Estimate that target orbital speed based on the speeds of the planets' orbits.

Knowing the atmosphere curve will help. By 5 km up your engines are already closer to vacuum than sea-level performance. By about 11 km they're 90% of the way to their vacuum performance. So atmosphere figures are only relevant pretty low down.

Yeah, getting them into space in the first place. I find that my payload should not be significantly wider than my launcher or I'll have stability problems. A wide launcher for a wide payload is an obvious option though it might be overpowered in thrust and dV terms. Otherwise big fins on the rocket's core stage help. Launching the lander "sideways" is indeed a good way to get a large but low profile lander that's easier to launch, but designing such a lander can be trickier. RCS Build Aid will help a lot along with good use of the offset tool. Such landers can be a bit trickier to fly too, since they'll turn much more easily in some directions than others, it's nothing major but takes a little getting used to.

The fuel-efficient way to depart is to leave Minmus's SOI and put your periapsis low over Kerbin, then burn at that periapsis to get on your interplanetary trajectory. Of course that takes some planning. You'll need to wait for Minmus to move into position so your periapsis is in about the right place, there's some room for error but not by much. Departure timing should be fine for all destinations but Moho. Done well, that burn at periapsis is about 800 m/s less than if you departed directly from LKO, which means you can use a smaller interplanetary ship. Of course if fuel isn't an issue *cough* ions *cough* you can go straight from Minmus orbit.

To clarify, then, I'm confident the blind spot can be made small with equipment designed and operated to reduce it. With our current telescopes we're super-cautious, not pointing them anywhere remotely near the Sun just in case something goes wrong and they get destroyed. A system with the specific goal of surveying the whole solar system would be pointed much closer to the Sun (though probably not at it). Getting that hunk of metal moving might not be so cheap. If it's been mined on a large planet or moon then it has to get from the surface to orbital or escape speed. If it's mined on a small asteroid then that mining operation is automatically a large militarily-relevant installation in space, it might as well be armed itself or otherwise protected. Maybe, maybe not. There's an argument that once you're in space it's stupid to plonk yourself back down in some deep gravity well, and space habitats built from material mined from smaller asteroids are better than trying to colonise large planets or moons. I think whether such habitats become widespread will depend on how interest and investment in space colonisation compares to developments in space launch technology. If getting off the surface of Mars is cheap and easy by the time colonisation is a big thing then there might be no space habitats, if it's expensive and hard there might be no Mars colonies. Reality is under no obligation to be interesting. Stories are though; if you're writing hard sci-fi you might reasonably opt for observation of the solar system to be spotty to allow threats to be missed.EDIT: Once a war is underway, it's plausible that sensors will be the early targets. Take out your enemy's telescopes and it becomes easier to hide bigger threats from them.

Specialised equipment can, but simpler is to put some equipment away from Earth. In any case the "blind spot" will be relatively small and difficult if not impossible for an enemy to really exploit.

To an extent. If there's a distinction I'd say that a missile is expendable while a drone is reusable. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pumped_laser is a common idea, but I'm sure there are other plausible ways to make an inexpensive, powerful, limited-firings laser suitable for a warhead. That seems a short-sighted view. From that kind of warfare it's a simple step to start putting defensive weapons in orbit, where they can engage hostile ships and missiles before they get too close to the planet. And then hey presto, space battles!As for the other topic of discussion, it's an observed law that any discussion of space warfare inevitably degenerates into a discussion of stealth in space.

The idea of a missile that itself fires a laser or similar, though, is a fairly common one and I feel pretty sound.

Were you still in timewarp?

Space stations here too. With the addition of the Interim Solar Array my Harvester Station is fully operational with research being conducted on board. It's also already a lagfest. I want that interim array replaced already. Might get KIS then I can fit some proper solar panels to the station core instead of docking an array.

Been having troubles with engines counted as occluded, seemingly randomly sometimes but not always when I go to the ship. Any workarounds for this, like a way to make engines activate and thrust ignoring that they're supposedly blocked?

That's always depressing. Keep a cool head and take your troubleshooting step by step. Consider stripping things back. Motherboard, CPU, and beeper alone should produce a "no memory" beep code. If not you know it's one of those or the power supply at fault.

I got hit by the Mun orbit shift issue in NH 1.6.4 with Kopernicus 0.3.1. My lander was suffering phantom rotation so I went back to the space centre then back to the lander. The lander on its suborbital trajectory, a station in a 30 km 33 degree inclined orbit, and a probe in a higher polar orbit had all had their orbits shifted. Not sure what I can do to help. I might be able to post before and after saves if you think that's useful.

It's a cool idea, but probably not correct. Stealth in space is generally regarded as very difficult if not impossible. Spacecraft will be warm and their radiation visible, and when engines are thrusting that's massively multiplied. Observing an exhaust plume allows the mass and course of the spacecraft making it to be inferred even if the spacecraft itself isn't directly detected.

Usually I do destination orbit rendezvous *a la* Apollo. A single ship goes out from Kerbin and enters orbit round the destination, a lander detaches and lands then returns the Kerbals to the main ship.

OK, technically true, but I assumed the rider "in a reasonable number of launches" was implied.