Esme

First impressions (bog-standard unmodded KSP 0.24): Thought I;d give teh contract system a gio, even though it wasn't something that I'd been interested in. The positive news - I found it reasonably fun! The bad - I'm puzzled. I've taken teh test an LVT 45 engine, and have flown it within the parameters stated twice, then staged it (it was fitted with chutres), and brought the capsule down safely. The chutes on the '45 stage certainly seemed to be having SOME effect as they instantly deployed and the capsule fell past it at quite a speed, until I deployed the capsule's chute. And on one of the flights, the last stage came down within 950m of the capsule, and clearly fully deployed chutes a few seconds after the capsule did. Yet I have not yet got contract complete for the engine test. Mind you, I've been presuming that the engineers will get the data they need on recovery of the engine - perhaps, I'm incorrect in this? So - what PRECISELY do I have to do to fulfill the contract, aside from fly the engine within the given parameters? Other than that... Mildly disappointed not to see sattellites available at the start, some form of wheels too. I am seeing improved performance on my usual settings, but those are very low. I know there's quite a way to go before the 1.0 release, but I do think it;d be a mistake to simply have the default settings be 'everything graphic fantastically high', as this could deter people who, like myself, simply can't afford the kind of PC that can run KSP with everything turned up to 11. KSP looks great even with things turned way down! I'd suggest low default settings and a big button asking if people want to try even better graphics, or some such. Doing it the other way around risks causing PC's to lock up if KSP is started on the high settings (as I did very first time I ran it), which could get newcomers thinking they can't run it at all.

Ah, thank you. I have no such account, never felt the need. I might look into it just for KSP, but for now, no pics from me, then. If you don't mind my asking, how did you customise your Kerbals? As for the anomaly - I have no idea if it's an Easter egg or just a graphics glitch. I only saw it the once, for something under half a minute. At first, it just appeared to be a black square around my target, it was only when I zoomed in from inside the cockpit that it looked like a dark column with a lip on the top. The size I was guestimating from how big my remote kethane landers look compared to the target icon at extreme visual range. I also have no idea if anybody else has seen such a thing. I only know that I've never seen anything like it before. And Bill having rescued Jebediah, it's certainly not there now (Bill had to drive through where the column appeared to be).

On Friday 11th, Jebediah was on Minmus at roughly 21degS 10.8deg E heading NE to go sample the sloped there, when suddenly what looked like a huge cylindrical building appeared between the base of the hills and the lake horizon (ie: the base of the thing was out of sight due to the curvature of the surface of the lake). The top of the thing had a definite lip to it, as if it were topped by a short cylinder slightly wider thn the main cylinder. Colour very dark greyish-black. Size - estimated at 30-50 metres tall and wide, but this was only a guess. Seen from 2.8km I used cockpit view to zoom in on the thing, but sadly didnt think to grab a screenpic whilst in close-up. I do have one pic from the exterior view (but no idea how to post pics here). I couldn't help thinking that the thing looked somewhat like the base of a huuuge artillery shell. Which made me wonder whether some Kerbals having been reading Jules Verne... - moments after I took teh screenpic I have, the thing vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and seconds later, Jeb's rover (of a reliable standard type I use a lot on Minmus) started playing up, eventually rolling and destroying most of itself, although the cabin and Jeb survived. Bill has just arrived in a two-man rescue ship and there is no sign of the circular column. Very peculiar...

Thanks all that responded!

MarvinKitFox, thank you, but you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions, and ignoring that I asked whether anyone knows of a techtree that gives rover and probe parts early. That's it. Which makes the bulk of your post , frankly, irrelevant. So, thanks for responding, but you're off on the wrong tangent there.

I don't understand why no-one seems to be considering aerospike engines to make sure they get as much efficiency as possible. (As an aside, I wish that plug-nozzle engine in stock was properly named so, and that we instead had (a) a proper aerospike (where gases from the turbopumps create the pointy bit of the 'spike' and ( that the game allowed aerospike engines in anything other than the 1st stage of a ship. As far as I'm aware, there's no reason this shouldn't be possible (NB: I am not an expert in these matters - for all I know there might be perfectly good reasons why aerospikes aren't actually practical. But as well as more conventional ships, I would also love to build something along these lines: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/pegvtovl.htm. I'v tried, using lots of little radial engines, but I think the way drag works in-game militattes against that being terribly effective. Or maybe I'm jst quite bad at efficient designs!)

Claw, thank you! Whilst I understand the physics of objects falling under gravity, I had no prior knowledge of how best to de-orbit on airless worlds, read about killing horizontal velocity first, found it worked a treat on Minmus, then found it didn't work so well (for me, leastways) with the Mun. I'll see how much trying the retrograde vector decelleration helps my landings. Might just be enough to help me out of the rut, so to speak. Pecan - aye, but if it's anything like Mars' atmosphere (no, don't tell me, please!) it's likely to be rather thin - and it has a stronger gravitational field than the Mun. I'm thinking that until I can land reliably on the Mun there's not much point my trying to land on Duna. (added in edit: Pecan - I noticed your tutorial link a little late. I shall look it up with interest as soon as I have time, thank you! Anyway, I think I'll leave this as unanswered for another day or two, just in case anyone has any other suggestions re tech trees, then close it.

Well, the thing is, if I land somewhere, I want to explore it! And as for Duna, that's my ultimate goal (I want to set up a base/colony there, eventually), but I wanted to get the hang of landing on the Mun before attempting a Duna landing (and I don;t want to see too much of Duna beforehand so that when I eventually do explore it, it's all new to me). I did manage about an orbit and a half of Eve with a probe once, but generally I haven't paid much attention to sorting interplanetary launches yet. I had no idea that Gilly was that easy, hmmn.. that's a definite possibility then, thank you!

Thank you Roadstock; I'd gained the impression that the first two necessitated using a resized solar system; if they don't then I'll take a closer look at them.

Ah! Thank you, Claw, I had indeed been trying to halt sideways velocity first then worry about the vertical - which, of course, means I have a heckuva lot less time to do anything about my descent. I'm guessing then, that I should instead decelerate along my velocity vector as I descend, so that I'm slowing both horizontally and vertically at the same time?

Breakthrough, thank you for your response. The jump from doing landings in Minmus' low gravity to that of the Mun certainly was a bit of a hurdle for me - it took me a long time to judge Munar landings well, plus I'd been getting away with rather inefficient designs at Minmus, so when I tried the Mun, well I needed some help (which I then received, hereabouts. :-) ). Anyway, nowadays - yes, I can do things pretty efficently at Minmus, but as noted earlier, I quite like doing things like starting a base going and then exploring across the surface, rather than hopping about (which I can do, and occasionally do do, but only when I get really impatient). I can even land on the Mun (generally). But it's durned frustrating not being able to take a rover with me, and irritating that I don't have the option early on to send probes (lighter, and so easier to send places). As for 'misunderstanding game mechanics' - possibly - it was a while before I realised that one can collect more than one EVA report per mission (because you can only do one crew report, I simply assumed you can only do one EVA report. Finding out that isn't so has helped!). Just in case anyone's wondering - I do understand the physics involved perfectly well, but judging the appropriate point to start ones burn to slow your descent in heavier gravity - that, I'm not so good at judging, but it IS slowly improving. Posting pictures wouldn't be informative in this instance, breakthrough. In essence, I'm wanting to find a tech tree that better suits my expectations/the way that I want to play so that I have more choice early on, eg: Send a probe or a manned ship? Create a 'hopper' to visit several biomes or take a rover? When it comes to the Mun, I have a definite preference for wanting to be able to take a rover, yet with the tech trees I've tried so far, there seems almost no point to rovers, as by the time you can build them, you can probably get by without them. Hence my question! :-)

Apologies if this isn't the best place for this question. Whilst I've been playing KSP for some months, and have played it a heckuva lot in those months (I'm the patient kind with a touch of role-player that really doesn't mind looong rover journeys across Minmus to rescue that crashed Kerbonaut and bring them back to base - that kind of thing..) I am evidently not, by many people's standards, very good at KSP*, and always seem to be struggling to collect enough science points to enable me to be able to get the bits that will then allow me to do stuff that others seem to do with ease with less powerful bits and pieces. This to the extent that so far, if I start a new game, I appear to be doomed to HAVING to head for Minmus first to collect as much science as I can before I can even sensibly think of attempting the Mun, let alone setting up a base there (Munar landings - well, yes, I CAN manage them, these days, but I only manage to land about half of them, whereas on Minmus my crash rate is now extremely low, haven't crashed anything there in ages). So - my question - is there a tech tree that (a) will let me have rover wheels and probes early ( let me sensibly get 2.5m parts a little earlier with suitable engines © WITHOUT having to go 'full realism' (ie: I'm quite happy with the default Kerbol system at default scaling, thank you) I've tried stock, KSP Interstellar and the one I'm currently trying which is Yargnit's (scratch that - I've now started another new one today, trying Majir's) I do also play with mods (main ones being KAS, KW Rocketry, KSP Interstellar - not that I've ever unlocked more than a part or two of the latter, but one day! :-} - plus one or other of the helper programs like Mechjeb, VOID, KER). *which doesn't in itself bother me. It's the getting stuck in a pretty narrow rut in early gameplay that is bothering me, not how well I can do stuff compared to others. Hey, someone has to make the rest of you look good, no? :-)

If the Mun was the only satellite of Kerbin, there's a good chance I'd have given up on the game by now, and I've been playing less than a year. Whilst I'm aware that there are folk who can gather huge amounts of Science in just a few missions, I am not one of them (hey, someone's got to make you look good, no?! :-) ). My personal record is a smidge over 600 points, with my second-best attempt being something over 200 - both on Minmus. The main problems that I face are lack of probes and wheels from the start, so you can't do lightweight probes (which you don't care whether they can get back to Kerbin or not), which are, of course, easier to launch, and rovers, and lack of an easier way to track what you have and haven't done - and importantly - what you have missed thus far. It'd be so nice if, having finally managed to land in one piece on the Mun, that I could then explore some of the rest of it in a rover. Instead one has to do launch after launch after launch trying to land (and praying one won't wreck the ship and kill a Kerbal) of different spots to gain more science just in order to unlock WHEELS, for heavens sake! Personally, I think the most unsatisfactory thing in the game currently is the tech tree, for that very reason. I don't mind the Mun being as difficult as it is to land on safely, because I know that it CAN be done, with the right experience and ships. But given that it IS that much harder than Minmus, we really ought to be able to use rovers when we get there IMHO, assuming we manage to land one in one piece in the first place. That way one at least has the option to trade patience (driving a rover around) for bravery/ability (multiple Munar landings, or one large ship hopping around the Mun landing multiple times) to a certain extent! As for realism - there's always mods!

Gilly? What is this 'Gilly' of which you speak? I'm trying to get a base set up on the Mun! :-} And I'm finding the jump in difficulty between Minmus and the Mun quite, well, hard. Having been rather spoiled by how easy it is to get to and do useful/interesting stuff on Minmus, trying to repeat that with the Mun has proven much harder than I expected. I've had to rejig my thinking on ship design somewhat in order to come up with a lander that's also capable of returning to Kerbin. But it's pretty much a one attempt or bail out affair even now (that is, if a piloted ship can't safely land, it has to abort by returning to Kerbin), because the fuel margins are that thin. My drill rig was a special case, in that it landed near empty but was then able to refuel itself a bit, hop to somewhere a bit safer, refuel itself a lot, hop to somewhere within a few degrees of flat. I've now got a manned one-man lander can on the way to set up by the drill rig, to get the base started. Should be easier, as it doesn't need to have enough fuel to return, just needs to land near the drill rig, which is on a fairly flat bit of terrain. Bit by bit I'm learning - one day I WILL set up a base on Duna, I'm determined! Anyway, thanks for the advice/tips folks! Esme

Skorpychan, if I could read the terrain well enough to not see that what looks flat is actually a 30 degree slope, I wouldn't have had the problem. I was, in essence, asking if there are any visual clues as to which are the flatter bits. as I was having a much tougher time of it with the Mun than I had had with Minmus. And I'm trying to build at least vaguely realistically, which means that occasionally I need to land what amounts to a tall cylinder on its end (because I'm not inclined to have large amounts of stuff sticking out sideways from my rocket at launch). But even something more Apollo-LEM-like would have problems on 30 degree slopes!

I'm using Linux Mint, 32-bit version. I found that ISA-sat worked, but was extremely CPU-intensive, and then I found SCANSat, which I prefered, so I've stopped using ISA-sat. I did have Chatterer working OK earlier, but IIRC it stopped working and would cause a hang on startup when we switched to 0.23. KW Rocketry works fine. I have had Cactey working in a previous game on 0.23. Didn;t obviously cause any issues, but I didn;t get as far as launching a space telescope before The Kraken destroyed my game well my attempts to edit the save file, after The Kraken banished Bill to the centre of the sun destroyed it, to be honest!) Mechjeb2 - no issues, aside from the general one that having the dV window open on launch slows things down. Porkworks' inflatable habitats - seems to work fine. Kerbal Alarm Clock - works fine. KSP Interstellar - no issues so far, but I've never gotten as far as unlocking the more high-tech stuff, the small cylindrical radiators are the first (and so far only) thing from KSPI that I have used Connected Living spaces - have it installed, haven't had chance to try it out yet. Kerbal Attachment System - works fine, no issues (other than fuel transfer prob which isnl;t unique to using KAS) My main problem is that fuel transfer seems to be very 'iffy'. I think this may have to do with having to use a modifier key in order to do fuel transfers, as I have seen a message stating that 'sticky keys is ON' appear after holding the shift button down, but when I check teh settings in XFce, they claim that sticky keys are OFF. Either way, no matter what I try at times (and I have this problem in my current game at the moment), no matter what I try, whether I use teh keyboard as if sticky keys were on or off, nothing is working. I would suggest that it may be better to enable players to pin the fuel tank displays open, and if two or more are pinned open, to allow the user to transfer fuel between them. This would avoid the problems that can arise with the use of modifier keys. It's durned frustrating, having gotten a couple of Kerbals stranded on the Mun to land a refuel drone nearby, link up using a KAS pipe, then find that I can't get fuel transfer to work, either between ships or between the two fuel tanks on the refuel drone!

Ah. Durn, I was hoping there might be a better way than that. I guess Minmus rather spoiled me! :-} OK, many thanks, mini-recce-probes it is, thank you!

Hello! I'd welcome any tips for spotting more or less horizontal potential landing sites on the Mun. I've just had the experience of trying to land an automated kethane drill rig, only to find that the seemingly flat bit between a couple of large craters (as seen from orbit) was actually on something like a 30 degree slope; having then hopped away and tried another site almost as untenable, I then managed to come down on a mere 9 degree slope, enabling my reaction wheel and dwindling supply of monopropellant to keep the rig from falling over (it's tall with a centre of mass just above the top of where the landing legs attach) whilst it drilled for kethane to produce enough fuel for a further hop - and then luckily found a patch no more than 3 degrees out of horizontal. Phew! Thing is, though, anything other than my kethane drill rig wouldn't have made it, so - any tips for locating more or less flat bits of the Mun? Whilst I'm now going to be fine to start a Munar base near my landed drill rig, obviously I'm going to want to visit other sites on the Mun - for Science! - and that's going to be awkward if I can't tell flattish bits from hillsides until I'm close to landing!

My two penn'orth is this - 1. I think KSP exactly as supplied, unmodded, is a pretty durned good game, and both better value for money and less buggy than a few games I've bought in years gone by that were supposedly ready for prime time. 2. By inclination, I'm a science geek. I've been just a teeny-weeny bit apprehensive of what adding contracts to the game might bring to it until I read in one of the earlier posts about money and science and reputation (? first I've heard of reputation in the game, but I can imagine ways that could be incorporated) being likely to be inetrchangeable. Excellent! That should let me stay mostly in my mental sciency heaven where the claim that 'the beancounters will come get you!' is a threat used to scare naughty little Kerbals into being good. 3. The fact that KSP has by design been made so that it's so easy to apply mods means that right now, you can take the base game and mod it to your liking. For this, all I can say is 'thank you SQUAD, a thousand times thank you!'. That means that I can gradually add mods to increase the realism until one day I'll be ready to start a game in which I attempt Duna Direct , the Kerbal-fied version of Zubrin's Mars Direct plan (and which last I knew, NASA was kind of going for in a surprisingly only slightly less efficient form called Mars semi-Direct). 4. If - please note I say IF - Squad took away the ability to tailor the game to a large extent, that could possibly mean that they'd also make it less fun for me. Totally depends on what they adjusted of course - could be they'd adjust it so I'd find it even more fun! But the point I'm trying to get across here really is that for me, the fact that KSP can be played so many different ways ('hey. let's throw stuff together and see what happens' through to 'I'm going to design the equipment on paper, plot all the trajectories and manouvres beforehand and essentially make NASA look like a bunch of sloppy yahoos in my nerdy OCD-ness') is an absolutely huge part of what makes the game not merely good, but great. 5. I'd like real resources in suitable real-world-analogue sites, please, ideally. Barring that, a simplification of realistic, but using real-world names for preference. Failing that, I'll give whatever is created a go and then voice my opinion on it after - hey, it might turn out better than I'd anticipate with made up resources. But please be warned - if you dare stick something called 'unobtainium' in the game, SQUAD, I may have to have a few stern words with you. Foot-tapping and eye-squinting might be involved. ;-} 6. I like Northstar's posts in this thread. 7. I've used the Kethane mod - I think it's pretty good, but it;d be better if it covered a few different resources, so maybe kethane itself on a Titan analogue, but two separate ingredients for synthesising kethane on Duna - and no kethane on the Mun, but maybe plenty of stuff good for making parts or structures from. 8. At the moment, in the unmodded game, we can choose to start career or sandbox games. Might it not be possible to have a variety of options (just as one does with graphics and audio settings) so that you could toggle contracts on or off, science on or off, maybe even have a realism low-medium-high (in terms of physics) selector, life support on/off realistic comms on/off and so on? That way, we can all set up the base game the way we like it - and then there's STILL mods too! Right - off to do some fun stuff (setting up my first Mun base with a kethane mining unit) :-)

People, I'm happy to say that The Broken Sparrow has just returned to Kerbin after successfully landing on the Mun! It wasn't the prettiest of landings (there were a couple of near-disastrous bounces), but at least I know the design I came up with does have enough dV for the job, and the ships you showed me did give me some ideas that helped me improve my design. Now I just need to improve my reflexes and ability to pick flat bits on the Mun! 8-}

SRV Ron - I perhaps didn't make it sufficiently clear that I can't land and return with a design that tries to meet the limitations stated in my original post. I can - and have - created designs that are horribly unaerodynamic which KSP will happily let one perch atop a rocket and launch successfully, currently. But my wish is to use designs that , if not fully realistic, at least look close to credible. And the target I'm having problems with is the Mun, not Minmus. Minmus I can do, easily. Thanks for responding, anyway :-} Scarecrow 88 thank you! I'm not keen on unrealistically squeezing tanks into a smaller space, but you have given me an idea re using plates to improve the look of things. :-)

Thank you Scarecrow88; how did you construct it, though?

Thank you for your responses. Technicalfool, I've tried something like that, my problem is in getting it down with sufficient fuel to get it back to Kerbin. Hmmmn.. Your talking about a small stage under the lander.. in my attempts thus far, the stage previous to teh lander itself has always been larger than the lander, and discarded at latest on the way down. Hadn't thought of adding a smaller stage (slaps self - doh! Obvious once 'seen'!), thank you! (Btw, whilst I prefer career mode, have resorted to sandbox temporarily to try to get over this problem I'm currently having. Once I get a 'feel' for the right sort of design, I'll be back to my career mode game) SSSPutnik: thanks, but for the moment, I'm just wanting something as simple as possible to give me a feel for building ships that will work, so I'd rather avoid for now the added complexity of all the docking involved with a good Apollo-alike, especially given I'm liable to crash my next few attempts! I will give it a look once I'm ready to start a new career game for my Duna Direct campaign :-)

Hello! Having got to grips with getting to, exploring, and returning from Minmus, I'm now turning my attentions to the Mun. The trouble is, I seem to be apallingly bad at designing a decent Munar Lander, and would be very grateful of some tips or even a simple parts list for a lander/return ship that's up to the job and meeting my requirements below. The best I have managed so far is to land a Mk1 capsule on the Mun - but it didn't have enough dV left to return to Kerbin NB: I also want my ships to be if not utterly plausible, then reasonably so. As in, I don't want to have engines and tanks clustered around a central core in a way that would be horribly unaerodynamic in real life. At this point, I don't mind if lander legs, RCS thruster blocks, solar panel packs and batteries are exposed. (I can work on getting things faired away once I have a design that can actually do the job!). At this point, I'd also prefer to keep the lander/return ship mass as low as possible (I seem to be OK with designing launchers to handle up to about 12 tons, 15 at a pinch) whilst allowing a reasonable fuel margin, I don't mind whether the ship is 1 or 2 crew, and I want to avoid use of 3.75m components if possible, for now (am still getting the hang of 2.5m components). This is because ultimately, I want to do a game where I mimic the Mars Direct plan, and to do so as realistically as I can handle. But if I can't reliably get crew to the Mun and back, I certainly won't be able to handle a Duna landing and return! Thanks in anticipation, Esme PS: I have KSP Interstellar, KAS and KW Rocketry installed at the moment (as well as Mechjeb and some purely visual bits and bobs), so designs using parts from them as well as stock are fine by me. I did look at the Alcor mod - looks beautiful, but I think it'd kill my system, unfortunately.

When all's said and done it's all down to personal taste. I'd love to own a Curta calculator, something I'm sure Mr Babbage would have appreciated, but I'd also love to have a mobile phone in the form of an old candlestick phone (alas, well beyond my ability to create) for the sheer whimsy of it. I've seen some extremely well and artfully done examples of modern tech being artfully concealed in retro casings, including what looked like an old bellows camera housing a modern smartphone. Just adding lots of cogs on things? Doesn't float my boat, but hey, if it makes the owner happy...