Mischief

Yeah, the toroidal SAS looks *awesome*. Not suitable for 'smaller' (as in under 200, maybe even 400 ton ships or anything long and narrow) ships. I've yet to get enough karborundum together to use a torch drive. I've tried gathering Karborundum from the Sun but it's simply too slow and the proximity of the Sun (which drags my ship down into a decaying orbit) too twitchy to do effectively. I'm looking at an Eeloo mining trip but I'm not big on time acceleration and so that's going to be way after I get to and from Duna/Eve/everywhere else. I know I can find some on the surface of Eve but getting it back into orbit is, again, a questionable proposition. Which is all appropriate given the power of it. It makes a good long-term goal. Going to use one to power my asteroid-ship Cities In Flight!

Zip not available on github? Only source code.

No... but I do build them I just think of it as an aggressive weight-loss regimen. We're just going to help him shed a few thousand unwanted pounds *and turn it into rocket fuel and space ships*.

Okay, so you've got a big update coming on the 1st. I just managed (with about 7 hours of wiggling) to get a big, fat class E into a viable orbit. I have Big Plans for him, I'm going to love him and pet him and hold him and squeeze him and make him into the greatest flying super-base EVER. While I know we have a torch ship coming, what else is going on? Should I hold off and just let him cool until after the 1st or is the AMT part of the constellation just getting a PNG brushup and that's all (if need be)? Do I wait or should I just go ahead and pop the cork on this bad boy and gut him to make a nuclear powered inter planetary jack-o-lantern of sorts?

I use TAC-LS and the mounts on either side of the StarLifter are perfect for life support. In fact I've got three StarLifter ships going to Duna to install a colony, orbital station and EPL - all of which have over 1100 days of life support with them plus, of course, the setup to build self-sustaining life support systems for the orbital and surface stations in situ. Lighter and more efficient than trying to pack the whole thing there. The SAS is more than powerful enough. I've had no issue with it. If I want RCS I put a Badger unit fore and aft; it's got the RCS units and monoprop built into it.

We need this TODAY. Or TOMORROW. I have to work on the 1st. I have time today to finish up the deployment of my ships towards Duna and get some probes off to Eve, Moho and Jool - and perhaps start planning a manned Moho mission for a more permanent station there to facilitate regular Karborundum collection from the sun. Of course, more stations means more 'standardizing' of my Kerbonaut population so I've got enough smart ones available and easy to find. That's a nice term for recruiting dozens and dozens and sending the stupid ones to their deaths. Currently I'm averaging 2 per block of 25 actually reaches Kerbol escape velocity and ends up on target to leave the solar system. At some point, somewhere, some day, it's going to really confuse some starfaring alien race. "Clearly this had some sort of religious significance! Some sort of sacrifice to the space gods!" "That, or they just used their stupid volunteers to test Karbonite rocket speed instability to keep the roster compact for filling large stations and EPLs."

Struggled with this one for a while. Put the engines on as the furthest outside points. As in furthest from the center. For fuel consumption you can use TAC fuel balancer or personally I just use 2x fuel lines. Each fuel system has one fuel line going to the 'central' (whatever the center one feeding your primary engine is) and one fuel line going BACK From it. If you have fuel lines and only going one way that causes those fuel sources to be used first. If you have fuel lines going TO and FROM your radial fuel supplies then all your fuel gets drained at the same rate. That provided me balance for VTOL and regular flight, with and without cargo. Also build the ship without the cargo in it, then add your payload. If the payload is uneven I put the cargo in weighted aft and put a small fuel tank with the correct weight of fuel attached to a docking port on the ships nose, then turn off resource passing through the docking port so the tank doesn't get emptied. After I deploy the payload I turn resource transfer on and move the fuel from the tank into my central fuel tank (so I haven't just wasted the weight) and undock the tank. I've wasted at most 100 funds or so on just the empty tank that way and kept ship balance.

moar rockets - always needs moar rockets

Engine lighter, or more thrust then? Currently they're inferior to some stock engines for deep space transit, which removes the point of having them, and they are cool and a cool concept.

Hey boss, can you look at the numbers for making liquid H lighter? While playing with builds I found out I can get way more dv using stock KR-2Ls and LFO than the super-nukes. Not saying tweak the nukes as that could be seen as unbalanced. Just make their unique fuel lighter so they are still preferable to an LFO setup for deep space transit.

I picked this mod up on a lark. Now I consider it indispensable. So much so that I've stuck Jeb, Bob and Bill on a rover at KSC so they're not in my list getting in the way of my otherwise mortal Kerbals, risking everything for a shot at fame and fortune. I picked up Texture Replacer and figured out how to set up custom suits and heads for my brave Kerbonauts and change their names into something more memorable. I spend significant time deciding who goes on what mission based on this history and collection of ribbons. Funny as it sounds, it's made the game a lot more fun for me. It's not just about getting to Duna - it's about who's going to get the ribbon for being the first Kerbal (in this playthrough) to get to Duna. My decorated hero doesn't get assigned to warming a seat on a resupply station, he's doing rescue missions and planting flags and training up for his big missions. Thanks for the mod, it's a ton of fun.

That mini-claw is so awesome I'm going to use it as a hood ornament on all my 5m freight transport ships

Karbonite is good for bigger ships - with small ships, tiny stuff, I find mono prop engines way better. You can easily make a tiny lander with the full science suite and 3k dv that uses mp. Land, get science, return to mother ship, offload, clean with science lab, rinse and repeat. Karbonite engines rock for Eve landers and bigger ships with heavy loads and long return troops so you can pack just fuel to go there, refuel in situ without a big distiller, go home. You can also hopscotch karbonite hotspots for a long term explorer. Science landers though? Light enough that I recommend mp.

I did the patch but not the patch patch!You are a gentleman and a scholar, thank you.

Thanks for the update on approximate time we're getting, well, a new update I've got scansats en route to Duna, they'll be there a month before my colony ships show up and I've about got the kinks worked out of those. Pioneer modules; they're terribly useful in and of themselves and when put in the racks it makes the docking port/module/pioneer module/landing base stack with tires they're close enough to the bottom that when I land the whole chunk and release them it doesn't blow out the tires. It's a bit tall and so is tippy on those wheels but otherwise it's rock solid. In fact the ability to put KAS stuff in those base sections is letting me balance weight between module sections better. More importantly... 60 days from a class E asteroid coming into Kerbin SOI! He's 28 million kilometers from Kerbin but with the new huge 5m ship parts I can get a 13k dv beast of a rock mover out there, hook up the Jaw and squeeze that huge rock/tiny moon into Kerbin orbit and make my dream asteroid base/pimp pad for touring the whole system! Now I know I've got a couple of weeks to get stuff lined up before the next load of goodies shows up and I can adjust my plans from there. On a related note I've got EPL now and am having trouble getting recycling to work. It says that you normally need Kethane to get recycling to work; I've got the Karbonite patch for it instead, does that not work to convert stuff into metal/parts? It vapes stuff but I get no metal/scrap/rocket parts. Is that a EPL issue or is it tied to the Karbonite patch for it?

Spent all day playing with the new toys and trying things like a sort of scatter-shot deployment, etc. Finally actually came down to this: Use docking collars because a decoupler effectively shoots the thing at the ground hard enough to bust all the tires As a deployment method though it's been rock solid. A little bit of work balancing the weight between the MKS modules (because some filthy sadist made many of them different weights ) but I'm finding I can get a solid balance with KAS components in the base section. Right now my problem is the tires; those are actually too fragile, I've had to go up to the TR-2Ls - which are too wide to fit there without hitting the module next to them. Now though I'm just down to fine-tuning the module builds. My intent is to play out the Duna colony mission with no restarts so I'm wanting to get everything just perfect. This whole release though is rock solid awesome. I've got a functional (if slow) single massive ship that can take 12 modules (or 10 modules plus logistics and storage) to Duna and deploy them in a tight cluster; I'll be able to break them off in series of 4. I've already started work on a 'recycle rover' that works with EPL that will go around to the lander frames and recycle them into components. All in a few ships with manageable part counts. FTT and exploration plus MKS/OKS has really put the careful buildout and exploration back into KSP for me. Thank you, it's all much appreciated.

Like Christmas every day, boss. I scorched the old FTT, installed fresh with this one, absolutely no issues. It was in hopes of this day that I built a station in orbit with Extraplanetary Launchpads; huge vessels are insane to try and hump up into orbit from a ground launch. Better to mine and refine metal for rocket parts and use MKS/OKS logistics module to get that to an orbital construction facility and slap that bad boy together in drydock. Now I can have one massive StarLifter nuke its cookies over to Duna and say 'OH HAI ALSO I BROUGHT YOU SOME COLONY' and just plop the whole thing down. Hmm... currently the best option for refuling though is going to be building new tanks full and then using KAS to move the juice over? Is LH2 going to be mined separately or refined from existing resources (like water, which we already have drills/etc for)?

Any general ETA on the new toys? Week, two weeks, two months? I've got my main station and EPL built around Kerbin and am starting to build my Duna Colony Fleet. These new toys will make a *dramatic* difference in what I make and how. I don't want to spend 100 hours creating a locust cloud of 20 ships just in time to have the goodies to pile it into 4 clusters

I've actually switched back to x86 and had to trim a bunch of mods - none of which are yours and this sort of stuff is why. Probably the easiest example is that I used to get all my early Mun/Minmus science via probe shotgun method; drop about a dozen probes with the science gear on each of them, one per biome and each with extra fuel. Then a lander would go to each location, use KAS to drain the fuel as well as an EVA to collect the science from each probe. The fuel would be enough to get me to the next probe and I'd have to clumsily hopscotch my way from biome to biome. it generally took me about a day each and was a big reason I hated restarts. It was a great way to get enough science to max out all research but it was time consuming and cost close to 700k total each so I also had to grind tons and tons of rescues and missions to afford them. Now I've got a little mono-prop lander that packs about 2500 dV. It's fast, nimble, fun to pilot and quite capable of skipping down to the Mun or Minmus, collecting all the science, then bopping back up to dock with a larger ship with a science lab. I had literally never used a science lab before; they seemed pointless and fuel inefficient. I have RCS stocked on the main ship to refuel the lander (it's about 400 dV per biome on Minmus to land then take off and dock again, close to 1000 on the Mun). Now I dock, move all the science over, clean the Science Jr and goo pods then bop back down to the next biome. It also takes me about 4 hours each on the Mun and Minmus. Also, airbags. Airbags on the end of girders are the best, most reliable landing gear for a large ship in the game now. I have a couple on every single ship for emergencies; larger ships have 8. 4 to land on, 4 radial up near the command pod in case I tip over on landing. Cargo containers too. Cheap, well balanced and a convenience size I mount them with radial decouplers and pack them with LFO then fuel line them to the main lifter. Lets me build with a shorter overall rocket which makes it more maneuverable and stable and they are easy, reliable and cheap to eject. Derp pods for lost Kerbal recovery are a must-have. I captured an asteroid once when the patch came out. After that I ignored them. Now I excitedly check regularly, hoping to catch a Class E or D with an early encounter so I get start working on my masterpiece; a massive asteroid mounted station with mass drivers (and soon huge nukes!!!!!!!!) to take the Grand Tour and go all Johnny Appleseed through the Kerbol system with EPLs and bases. Seriously would not enjoy this game a fraction as much without the stuff you do. Your hard work is greatly appreciated.

I like the cockpit. Especially for a huge ship we need something big and dramatic and space-opera style. We have plenty of Apollo-style ones and some sleek fighter-style ones and the Cupola. We need something that looks like a *Bridge*. The stuff you're making is for massive ships; how about something like that with a crew complement room of like 5? Big view port, wide and a bit deep. 3.75 nukes are for gigantic ships taking long trips. You need a Star Trek/Star Wars style bridge to do that, not locked in a can for 6 months. I like the cockpit; hell, I'd even like it a little bigger. It's not meant to be aerodynamic, it's meant to be comfortable to drive a giant ship with 10,000 sqft of cargo across the solar system in. It's a step in moving beyond 'expendable' ship designs, which I'm all for.

Bigger is better. You know... you could totally make a massive station-ship with those. I'm going to capture and empty a Class E, stack it with hab mods and station goodies and strap those bad boys onto it. You gotta let me choke LiquidHydrogen out of asteroids with In fact if memory serves asteroids are a prime target for hydrogen (and helium) mining. Catch a big rock, slam the Jaw on it, gorge on that sweet, sweet LH2, strap on GNRs (Giant Nuclear Rockets, because what could be more KSP than that?) and tour the solar system like a plague of locusts via Honey Badgers packing mining modules. Serious RoverDude, you make glorious stuff that is pretty much a 'must have'. You keep having ideas and making stuff, we'll keep playing with it.

Which reddit? I don't normally go there for KSP stuff there seems to be a bunch of subs for it. I took a bunch of snaps of that guy; what he lacked in intelligence he seemed to make up for in a sense of self-preservation. The blonde girl next to him though, the whole time she's thinking this is the best ride EVER. By sheer luck the second run got far higher up before splitting - I was amazed at how far some of them got: Two of them look like they'll actually pass Dunas orbit, one will actually shave inside Eves orbit. They'll all be quite, quite dead thanks to TALC of course but these guys may technically be the first Kerbals to venture completely beyond Kerbins SOI in this playthough. I took a ton of screenshots, this ended up my favorite. I'm calling it 'The Commute'.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. In fact with the OKS/MKS mod needing smart Kerbals I find myself having to recruit tons of really stupid ones to get a few smart ones. So, two birds with one stone... For the second test batch I found it hilarious that the guy in the middle clearly knows this isn't a good idea and he is in a Bad Place. Boy, they hit about 1,000 m/s and they're just uncontrollable. For the first 8km or so on most payloads though they're not a bad choice; with the ability to tweak the fuel payload in them I'm finding with a little practice they're a cheap way to pile on that extra 600-1k dV you need for getting some of the bigger payloads you need up. They've got an excellent T/W ratio and the rocket is generally cheaper than the separator. You just can't use them on light/fast payloads or you're going to have a bad time. For big, slow, heavy payloads though they are an excellent booster choice. For just hucking a Kerbal into space though, that's never going to stop being funny.

What I'm running into in an inability to get a moderate sized payload to orbit via VTOL start, I've got to get anything reasonably big up via vertical standard launch. I'm willing to say the issue is likely more about my build than anything else; I've gone for something based on the one you've got on the front page video. It's just not got the UMPH for orbit. Trying to put together a Honey Badger that is functionally perpetual; it doesn't need 'recovered'. If I'm going to send a payload to the moon I build it, cart it out, put it in the Honey Badger, fuel that bad boy up and huck it at the moon. All the other components work perfectly for that; the design and form factor is ideal. Just need to get the logistics of a VTOL SSTO that takes off and lands via VTOL. The fans are perfect for that; you get low enough and you've got a steady cushion of thrust. I'll keep chewing on it.

Love the form factor on the Honey Badger. Wish you'd do a texture pack; the way you've got clear little markers to help line stuff up for radial attachment to the various components makes me wince when I have to try and slap boosters on a regular engine now and just eyeball it. Only thing I would ask about is that while I get why the total thrust of the fans got toned down on the very large ones can you increase the altitude at which their power falls off? I'm loving the crap out of the small and medium ones for making roust-about transports for Kerbin and will do the same once I get tucked in on Duna, Eve and Laythe. For the Honey Badger though the fans and the generator are simply too heavy to balance out the low altitude and relatively slow speed of getting there they provide for the weight on an actual trans-SOI trip. If I want to send the Honey Badger to the moon I need to recover it and rebuild it for vertical launch. Even with 4 fans and 2 generators though it's too big with too much surface area to be stable at the low altitudes it can fly at anyway. I totally get that it essentially provides near endless lift with the fans and 2 generators (years worth of fuel in them that can be replenished) and you don't want that to turn into something super-powered. However for those of us who use FAR it's hard to get anything close to the needed use out of them save for a few narrow jobs; if they could keep their same lifting power but take that up to more like 10k then the heavy tonnage pays for itself in getting you an altitude head start with an SSTO. Which is, for me anyway, sorta the goal. I'd love a VTOL SSTO Honey Badger that can carry a payload to the Mun; even if it's got to stop on the Mun to grub up some Karbonite to turn into fuel for the return trip. Currently that's just not possible. Is that by design or because I use FAR? Either way, for the very largest fans being able to go up higher would both make the fans worth keeping on an SSTO design (thus making the Honey Badger something to keep around perpetually and refuel instead of a single-shot ship, recovered and rebuilt for every mission) as well as letting people with FAR take their big rigs up high enough that drag doesn't make them unmanageable to move around effectively.