Sophistry

Erm, any idea when the IR telescopes will be fixed? xD. And does the grav-lensing mission work even though the deep-field survey mission is bugged? Great mod by the way!

This basically . Situations I always qsave beforehand off the top of my head: before upgrading Computer Cores in Interstellar, 'cause those things are expensive and I don't want to lose all that science if Jeb sneezes and rips all the radiators off or I've somehow launched it with only a day's worth of reactor mass etc. . Before aerobraking, because normally by the time I realise I've made a mistake the whole mission is doomed. I tend to also save before de-orbiting over Kerbin.

Bonus points if you build a racetrack to run them on too

Oh thanks, I'll have a try

That looks like a really interesting solution; I'm using nuclear engines on my over-engineered skycrane, but due to the length of them I decided to land my mobile base on its butt and then tip over to rove. I think I'm going to steal your concept and try it myself though . I did try ion craft, but I'm not that good at balancing power, mass and engine power/range!

Did you play the correct music during the launch?

... Ahem Quietly removes all evidence of my 'slight design flaw' Oh look at that, it works now!

This is just the rover component; currently the VTOL part which I detached is more of a really beefy skycrane. Here we are: I don't think it's either of these, as I've experimented with using the skycrane to take almost all the weight off of the wheels and it still doesn't move. And all the wheels seem to be turning in the same direction.

Thanks for the responses; seeing some very interesting ideas Well I had a go at building a large lander/rover/mobile first structure for a base, but for some reason the thing won't move; the wheels just spin and nothing happens ): There is sufficient ground clearance and the brake isn't on, so I'm confused! I think what I'm going to do is (if I can get it to work) use the Land-base-rover-thing to find a good base building site and/or an interesting feature to build next to, then muck around building a base, and drop in a variety of different transport solutions like ion bikes, rovers of various sizes, ultra-low orbit spacecraft etc. That way I have a fleet of options to use and discover what I like best to use. On this basis I think the base might end up being a 'proving ground' for various surface-exploration craft, which would be cool .

I liberally use Quicksaving and Revert - in career mode If I'm prototyping designs, I feel better about Reverting, because in my head it's not an actual launch, it's a computer model used in the design process. But I'm willing to use things like Q-save and Revert to save missions when they meet catastrophic problems that would scrub the mission and/or result in a fatality. So despite the fact I have made fatal mistakes, I've not actually technically ever lost a Kerbonaut. My only excuse is that I don't have much time to play, and I'd rather spend it doing interesting things rather than starting missions from scratch. Although I feel I'm missing out on part of the experience by avoiding failure >:

For those who want a second solar system, I wonder if the way forward is to make the Kerbol system a detached binary star system; that way you could make another "solar system" around the other star, and have it a lot closer than a proper "other solar system" would be. The main point is it would be reachable in a reasonable timeframe and did not require KSP to include some kind of FTL.

From watching the video I think your issues are the slow speed you're going at combined with the fact you're using RCS to turn. In similar situations I turn RCS off when I rotate my ship, because it can build a slight velocity; the multiple vectors that all the slight RCS spurts create is what is making the prograde indicator go ballistic. My suspicion is reinforced by the RCS set up on the station: that lifter rocket still attached doesn't have RCS thrusters by the looks of it. Without equal placement of RCS on each side of the centre of mass, all your RCS use will change your vector slightly. Try using RCS only for translation, on the lander, and stick to using reaction wheels on the station until you stage off that large fuel tank: try it and see, at the very least to rule it out

I don't use either, but if I did it'd be Kerbal Engineer, and that'd be what I would want any stock Dv indicator to emulate. To me, MechJeb seems like its meant for people who are already good at manoeuvres to pass off routine tasks to the autopilot, letting them concentrate on other aspects of the game; although I feel I am good at manoeuvers, I am not at the point where they are entirely routine. The second use I see for mechjeb is in a testing role: enabling you to compare two designs or something with as few variables as possible.

I don't mind a long mission; this is more of a little side-project to provide a change of pace while I work on the infrastructure-building for a big mission to Jool I'm planning; as such it won't all be happening in one go, I'll be going back and forth. Science is also kind of a secondary goal; the capability to (relatively) quickly visually survey the Mun's surface, but very thoroughly, is what I'm after I've done a little experiment, and the tiny unmanned ion-power craft I sent as a proof-of-concept over didn't have a high enough TWR: while of course it flew, I found myself having to concentrate more on making lots of small course corrections to keep myself up, and when I spotted something that I wanted to land next to, I couldn't kill my velocity quick enough and flew quite a way past it. I could have flown lower and slower, but I was trying to maximise the amount of time I spent visually scanning the surface. And as for the orbital fuel depot, I'd want to build a surface facility instead; partly because the Jool mission prep involves a lot of orbital RVing, and again I want a change of pace, but mostly because I don't think I can explore properly at orbital altitude and velocity. A landed base would also give me a good reference point for me to work out what I've explored and what I haven't. Cool station Demian_Travis Indeed I can land precisesly, G'th . a VTOL would indeed make more sense on Minmus, as I wouldn't need to travel nearly as fast to keep in the air. Thanks for the ideas so far

Hello chaps and chapesses, I want to go on a Easter egg/interesting feature hunting trip on the Mun, but I'm stumped as to what kind of craft to use. I'm also toying with the idea of using the occasion as an excuse for trying my hand at establishing a permanent base (to support the operation). However, I'm unsure if it'd be useful enough to be worth it - I like my vanity projects to have at least a little real utility, if only because it gives me more excuses to visit the folly As I see it, I have two options, a VTOL or a rover. Or maybe a hideously over engineered mash up of the two. I'm looking to bounce some ideas around to hopefully spark some inspiration. The advantages of the VTOL - although it'd essentially be a low-flying lander - would be I can cover ground more quickly, and surface topography wouldn't slow or hinder me, although because I'd be looking out for interesting features to examine, I wouldn't want to go too fast, which relates to the main disadvantage I see: such a craft would rely on finite resources, and the relative slowness (my sub-orbital hops would have to relatively slow and low) and repeated landings would mean I run the risk of running out of fuel and leaving my craft an expensive bit of junk. Even with a supporting base/fuel dump, I'd have to keep returning to refuel, and the base would probably require many supply runs. With a rover, the resource problem is solved: as long as I have some solar panels, my rover's range is effectively infinite. The problem then arises that rovers are, compared to a low-flying spacecraft, rather slow to cover ground. Also that mountain which to the VTOL would just mean a slight course adjustment means a long detour or a risky climb. Also, I hear that you have to rebind keys or something to prevent flipping, or use docking mode: is there anything basic about KSP rovers I really need to know before I try one? If I tried a mash-up of both, would I need legs as well as wheels? That is to say, are wheels tough enough to land on? While using it, what should the ratio of flying to driving be etc? I'd probably want to make it a manned mission, so I have a kerbonaut on hand to fix landing legs or wheels, but beyond that I'm not even sure of what size of craft to use in each case; part of me is considering trying more of a "mobile base" approach with a rover, and this would probably be the scenario where making it a VTOL as well would probably work. However, would a small rover be less likely to suffer damage? What are the pros/cons of each wheel type? As you can see, while I consider myself a pretty competent player, this is not an area I have much experience with, so any help would be appreciated. Side note: it's a career save but I've unlocked all parts. Spending payload tonnage on science equipment would be nice to fill out the archives completely, but not essential. Also I run stock.

Is it just me, or does he sound far more Scottish in his videos as opposed to his livestreaming?

Well that was a short mystery! Watching that video, I suspect it's a bit of both the infiglider glitch, and the wings bending. Mostly the wings bending though: I spammed Q/E to flap the control surfaces without changing anything else, and the velocity change was nothing like what I'm seeing when I pull up.

Were you trying to build an imperial star destroyer?! xD What is that? Also it has happened to me on one occasion, affecting two craft: both were on their way to Duna, a couple of weeks apart... And then the game screen went black with madly scrolling altimeter. Confused, I reloaded the game, to find that every single part on both craft had experienced such personal space issues they had flown apart, some of them at several times the speed of light! They were both only about 80 part ships too D: Obviously the kraken wanted a couple of bitesized snacks.

Having just completed a manned return mission to Duna, I thought I'd do something a bit different to what I normally do, so I went into the Spaceplane hangar, and built something that was the result of half-hearted stabs at three different challenges: 1) I saw an ion-powered aircraft in one of Scott Manley's videos, and thought "huh, looks interesting" 2) I wanted a long-range aircraft to have a go at overflying some of the easter eggs on Kerbin 3) I wanted to have a very half-hearted stab at making an SSTO I also wanted to build it so the thermo generators supplied just enough power that it could cruise and not expend any reserve energy: the only bit of this which succeeded Behold the result, and tremble: Now, I'm not especially proud of this craft (not my finest moment at all, but I think it at least LOOKS kind of cool) and normally I wouldn't share it, except for the fact it seems to break physics: If you pull up hard by about 30 degrees, then drop the nose back to level at once (but don't let the craft drop altitude) you end the manoeuvre with extra altitude AND extra speed. The quantity of each you gain appears proportional to the speed you were going at when you started, so by chaining these moves together so far I've gained 40m/s and about 200m. Of course I begin bleeding off the speed if I break the combo, but it's a neat thing all the same. The only thing I can think might be going on is that the wings may be doing something weird: they bend alarmingly when you do these climbs. Also there is sufficient power for the ion drives, so it's not that I'm getting extra exposure on solar panels or anything. So discuss, and help me explain why my mad invention breaks KSP's physics!

The thing is, this is not information the game doesn't already give you! It just gives it you in chunks, so you have to sit down with a calculator and work it out yourself. All a Dv indicator would do is mean I won't have to keep two internet windows open while I play, one to the parts list on the wiki (to work out dry weight on the fly) and to an online Dv calculator. I'm not asking for the game to add anything really: I just want the game to take the numbers it already gives me, and do the sums itself! You seem to think a Dv indicator would change the basic flow of the game somehow: it really wouldn't. A value for the delta-v of a craft, when viewed in isolation, is useless unless you've found out the Dv requirements for your planned mission, either by experimentation or looking it up online. If you're the kind of person who just builds and sees what sticks, you aren't going to know those facts; all the change the people who play like that will experience will be the opportunity to look at the Dv readout and think "Awesome, look how much ridiculous power my rocket has!" And why should the minority get to control the majority? You're asking 85% of players to be inconvenienced so 15% can keep going as they are. And while opt in and opt out are different, let's examine the effort someone would have to do to do each: To opt in you currently have to install a mod, which involves faffing around doing stuff I don't really get (as I said before, not a technical person in any way). Also, mods lag behind updates, so after each update there could be days or over a week when people can't play KSP in the way they want anyway, so if they did want to play they have to revert to pre-mod Dv calculation again. To opt out, someone would have to click a checkbox in the options. Job done. So you're asking 9 out of 10 people (near as damn it) to go through extra work, lose time playing KSP, and be generally shafted, so the tenth doesn't have to click a box in the options?

Your map analogy is flawed, and over-simplifies things. You assume all single-player FPS do not have such a map, when some do when it serves the mechanics of the game For example, there's an old stealth-focussed FPS I like called I.G.I. 2. It features sprawling levels filled with enemies you have to get through, and the "map" screen displays all enemies who are visible from a birds-eye view (ie. 90% of them). Now, you COULD instead spent 10 minutes hiking up one of the hills in the level, get out a pair of binoculars, and then spend an hour of real time tracking each individual pack of guards. The information is useful and does not remove challenge from the game, because it enables you to plan your strategy and get information you need like the paths of enemy patrols while outdoors, but all it does is give you information you can get in other ways, in a manner which is less time consuming and simple for the player. A better comparison to FPS mechanics would be "why do a vast majority of FPS games have crosshairs?" In a world without crosshairs, you could still use two thin strips of masking tape on your screen to do the same thing (trust me, back in the days when X3 Reunion was a system shredder for some people, one of the most touted ways to increase your frames per second was to disable the HUD and use exactly that trick). But they are included in games because the majority of people who play that game want that easier, simpler way of accessing that information. And your point about a majority not always being correct is also a logical fallacy: this is not a question of right and wrong! This is a subjective decision based on personal preference. The personal preference of the majority is in favour of the feature, so it should be included. I do however think that concerns about cluttering the currently-neat interface, and confusing new players is a valid one. The people who would benefit from this change would be players with middling levels of experience (like myself). To generalise and speculate: People who have less experience NEED, I think, to build that "instinct" about what aspects of rocket design work and which don't. Their concerns are probably more structural than anything else. Also they are unlikely to have gone interplanetary, so if they strand someone due to a lack of Dv, it's still relatively easy to get them back, and a failed mission means a relatively small amount of real time has been wasted. By the time you begin going interplanetary, you tend to be skilled enough that the things you learned when you were new become routine: this is the point where I think most people start installing mods like KER and MechJeb, because they simplify the building block skills and activites, letting you concentrate on the stuff that's more fun. For the record, I still run stock because I'm lazy and not a technical person. Also at this stage, needing to know Dv is far more important, because a mission that gets stranded it's much harder to return them. A failed mission can also mean wasted real-time of several hours, especially if you launched your mission in several bits and docked them in orbit before sending them off. People more skilled than me can either already easily do the things a Dv indicator would help with, and/or have put mods in the game, so it would be useless to them. If then a substantial chunk of players would not find it a useful feature, I definitely agree there should be some way of switching it off or hiding it. If this chunk was not a minority, I would say "ok, let's leave it as a modded feature, because there is no point wasting developer time on something which will not benefit most people." However, the poll above shows that amongst the forum community the majority of people would benefit from it.

I have three hours to finish my dissertation, and I'm on here, and earlier I built an asteroid base. I empathise xD

To be fair, like gorging oneself on Dundee cake while my flatmates were away, this sin was more along the lines of "I feel I shouldn't be doing this, but it's a guilty pleasure and no-ones telling me to do otherwise"

I use a 6-section asparagus booster (now with the new parts) to lift EVERYTHING into orbit, no matter how small and when I'm lifting something small I don't bother to keep the speed down for an efficient assent, I only do that with the payloads the lifter was actually designed for. for example I once used the asparagus monstrosity to lift a single mk.1 command pod and a parachute into orbit I try to build my space stations in one payload, no matter how large, because if I can't line things up *perfectly* it drives me insane But I'm getting better at this, mostly by designing my station modules so they're supposed to be 45 degrees out of sync, which is a lot less noticeable when I screw up. I often build my planes/spaceplanes so that the cockpit decouples and lands by parachute because searching for a flat landing strip somewhere that isn't the space centre or the airfield on the island (or just designing a VTOL) is too much effort I always return from the Mun or Minmus by just killing my sideways velocity, relying on gravity and trusting in parachutes to get me home safe because I can't be bothered with the whole sensible re-entry vector shenanigans. In my last save, I built a mobile lab station in Munar orbit just because I wanted to use the mobile processing lab (despite the fact it served no purpose where it was placed) but accidentally entombed Bob in the cupola module with an RCS block, realising only too late. The station was far too heavy to land, and so he was still there when I ended that save and started again for 0.23.5 - although in my head Bob got home safe, because when he was no longer part of the game he could just smash the glass on his cupola module to reach the rescue ship.

+1 to this really. Although I found out a few hours ago, rocketpilot, that if you "launch" the craft (place it on the launch pad) and then go to the map screen and click the 'i' screen for your craft, it'll tell you the full weight., and so calculating the dry mass is a lot easier. Although yes, dry and full mass DEFINITELY needs to be displayed in the VAB. Although I voted "yes" to the poll, I'd prefer it if the game just included the tools to make calculating Dv ourselves a lot simpler, like for instance giving dry/full mass. I also think that giving the masses would be a neater UI choice, and would be less terrifying to new players by much less explanation ("WHAT'S THAT TRIANGLE? WHY IS IT NEXT TO A V? *sobbing noises*)