Quiana

I haven't tried launching severely massive payloads into space, but after an accident with a save file I had to relaunch a challenge vessel into orbit. Being oddly shaped as well as having the lazy-bone kick in, I figured I'd launch the entire vessel pre-assembled into space. Only 109 tons, but there was an interesting catch due to the design of the craft, as seen below. This is also using stupid_chris' stock rebalance files, where the ARM NASA parts are rebalanced closer to the other traditional stock engines. It makes it more challenging as well as having a unique limit due to my design. Apparently, that lander at the bottom of the central part of my core ship looses its radial tanks due to FAR stress if I achieve 1.7 TWR before reaching 10k in height. I didn't want to over-engineer a design with liquid rockets, so I used the larger NASA-styled SRBs that Chris upscales and tweaked them down where they achieve a rather wonderful curve from 1.05 to 1.67 right at 10k. The SRBs actually carried that thing up to 33k~ by themselves before the ascent engines were fired. It could have easily achieved a 100k+ orbit, though I jettisoned the ascent stage when it was just shallow enough to still return for burn-up (as per 'no debris' policies I inflict on myself as much as I can). PS: Yes the only thing holding those two separate stacks together is three struts and the upper core vessel itself. I was surprised at how stable it was without any joint reinforcement mods/etc.

That's actually an issue with resizing parts period. I recall some discussion on the issue at hand in the TweakScale plugin. Basically, the part's model was sized for X so when you scale it down, from a distance it loads in the original scale before it resizes it down in physical range. This may be something to take up with KAX's author and see if they can resize the model so it is scaled to 1 rather than 0.0125 which hopefully should correct the behavior.

I'm in agreement with the PMK. I've been looking for a good replacement for that stock two man lander capsule that looks stock-alike. This one fits the bill quite nicely. While it is still round, which can cause occasional Fun times in placement of items, it certainly beats out that damn flat can. Look forward to seeing it fully-finished and ready for service.

Okay, got the replaced core vessel into space. It matches the original part for part and is prepared to complete Mission One tomorrow. Please ignore that the kerbal inside the lander is named differently in screenshots for mission one's beginning compared to the departure phases (the original was lost when the mod kraken ate him).

It isn't required anymore (rarely will chutes rip off anymore unless you're trying to slow down way too fast) but there are other things it solves. Such as being in time-warp when your chutes are rather narrowly timed to deploy near the ground. The pre-deployment (with realchutes at least) doesn't have enough 'physical' time when running 4x and you won't slow down enough. Splat.

I especially like #3, I can see it becoming a very handy thing to set several variations of balancing. Good for landers on descent for example (bottom heavy, good for ensuring no roll-over) and then balance out evenly in the lander to center it better when ascending/orbital maneuvering.

The second one isn't too bad. @Part[bravo]:NEEDS[!ExampleModName] { Do things } In this case, perform something to BRAVO if there is not ALCOR installed. You'll just need to use the name of the DLL for that prop pack (Name.dll) and drop the .dll off the end. Then it will ONLY fire if the DLL is not there.

Just a heads-up for you PorkJet, may want to ensure that you use a custom model on the cargobay. Having unattached nodes can cause some fun FAR issues too without one. Though I'm not sure if that applies if the nodes in question are 'shielded' or not. I haven't studied FAR's mechanics beyond finding out how it treats normal parts in drag. EDIT: I do know that multiple nodes from HGR has caused some fun times with that and FAR until they used a custom model for the Radish capsule (they make cute drop-pods).

I had a minor accident with some mods and ended up having my core craft wiped out. I'm currently lifting it back up (I recreated it identical to the original, though I have new textures on the TAC life support cans) and hopefully can complete mission one today. It's just taking eons to get it all up there.

There needs to be a : in there, specifically: @Part [*]:HAS[#stepIncrement [*]]:Final The rest looks okay to me, which leads to my own question. Can we search @PART [*] while excluding specific parts? EX: @PART[*,!RCSBlock]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleRCS]]:Final It, to me, logically should work but does not appear to. The example I want to do for this is boost all other RCS module thrust *2 while leaving out the two stock ones (because they're already modified by another CFG change to be hard-set to 2x).

Hi, I've got a small config question. I'd like to take a pod and apply a space-shuttle like shielding to it using DRE so I can turn it into an emergency drop pod. I've taken a look at the config, and while I understand the basics of how it applies ablative shields I can't quite wrap my noodle around how it's applying heat shield protection to shuttle/plane parts. Can anyone point me to the specific area where that is applied so I can mimic it for the pod? Or is it merely just how it handles heat tolerance to parts that is doing this effect? EDIT: It looks like it might be reflective, if I'm guessing right?

It can also punish rockets with poor weight balance. To me it really should be a stock thing and I do hope that Squad corrects aerodynamics at some point. It also teaches you the slight benefits of a little weight on one side of the rocket to create a natural inclination to a gravity turn. It's almost majestic when you create a rocket that's balances just right so it slowly starts a turn as it gets up towards speed and keeps a gentle turning motion without any stick input (I fly joystick so I tend to actually feel like I'm flying it).

That has been something stock has lacked in, though for reasons other than you think. There just isn't enough in a stock game library right now to either use power or generate it, since one or two panels has always been enough to power 90% of the things you'll need it for. Hell, it takes mods to start adding in many features that, to me, give reason to have power generation and regular amounts of it. If you're really hurting for power generation, there's a few mods to add in some things, such as the Universal Storage modules (with a fuel cell based off realistic Apollo-style measurements) along with mods like Near Future (which add in a large amount of energy-using 'futurish' engines and somewhat balanced nuclear reactors). Honestly I didn't want to use many of the engines in Near Future so I pretty much yanked out everything but the reactors and the stock-like larger batteries.

Just a quick side-note, your GitHub link is http://http//www.github.com/BobPalmer/MKS, may want to fix that extra HTTP on the OP.

Sometimes designing efficient things can be an art form in and of itself. When given requirements, making them fit precisely into it while minimizing waste is key. In this, it was a satellite built for a challenge. Had to have RCS, its own thrust, three science devices, one long and short range communications system, and be at least 1.25 tons while self-powered. I managed that with 1.26 tons, in fact the hardest part was making it look pretty and actually weigh up to the requirement. I could have made it significantly smaller than that (one design I was so proud only weighed in at 0.6) but it wouldn't have met the requirement. EDIT: In fact I probably spent nearly as much time balancing out those two RCS thrusters on it than I did on anything else. It is perfectly balancing in both rotation and translation even down to empty tanks.

Indeed, I find myself almost tempted to remove the stock parachute and shift some tech-tree use of your chutes around. The ability to tweak the parachutes as desired makes them infinitely more valuable to me for rocket use. The solution in design shouldn't always be 'strap more on' when you can design 'better' chutes for the situation.

I know this is slightly a derail but for those asking about 8.1 and KSP? Yes, it works fine, brilliantly even. Though I think my joystick is the issue at times with throttle control (it likes to get stuck at 5-10% throttle as the 'base' and require me to unplug/replug it while running). Even then it will reconnect and the game recognizes it just fine with the throttle back to normal. It is also really, really stable in terms that even a GPU crash can sometimes recover and continue playing a game on the rare chance one does occur (I've had Far Cry 3 nuke my video card and Windows managed to restore it, while the game was running, and pick up where it left off). As for the mod, I'm curious if this would completely negate the use for ATM or not. I haven't visually noticed any differences in texture quality with it (I run basic and have settings cranked up to silly) but then again, not all texture issues would be noticed when working at medium distances from objects. Even close-up I have not really noticed any significant difference in it, then again I'm sure if the load on demand can be worked to a fine-tune it might just not require worrying about compression. Not to excuse some textures which are far too large though (who makes 1024x1024 textures for a tiny button after all? X.x).

Occasionally, non-debug clipping is something I do when it logically makes sense. See this example: Notice how I clipped the probe core into the hollow strut along with a xeon tank. It gives some use of the 'empty space' in the middle of the device without breaking logically an action that should be possible. Edit: This is actually a satellite for a challenge I'm participating in, with a requirement that it must have thrust, RCS, power itself, and have two forms of communications with three science modules. As well as being at least 1.25 tons (tops out at precisely 1.26 fully fueled).

If you happen to be using the aggressive package of Texture Management, that too can cause such issues with buttons. It's been happening to a few mods that get updated and don't have a config setup in ATM for them with certain screens/icons. I use the basic one, so thankfully that hasn't been a problem for toolbar icons.

I'll take a look. There's a chance Procedural Fairings is at fault here as I've seen a bit of back-and-forth about it perhaps having 23.5 issues but nothing I can verify. Probably do a top-down check of all my mods. Appreciate the help with the condensation effect setting.

That's good to hear. I've been a fan of the mod itself for a while since I've loaded it in, but sadly had to take it out when orbiting some large payloads for a challenge. The effects were happening inside the fairing (I use FAR) so it crawled my game to a halt. Of course this only happens once, but it was still somewhat jarring going from rather buttery launches of small craft to a stuttering few frames per second. Hopefully with the new patch the improvement in speed will come in handy, as I really do miss the silence of space. Edit #2: Perhaps some kind of toggle for the atmospheric condensation effect? Something we could use to turn it off while say, orbiting larger loads that would slow it down, while keeping the sound changes?

I rather like how the subtle tweaks have, to me, improved thought on design and implementation of lifting stages as well as long-term voyages. I tended to design around some mods anyways, but tweaking the stock parts gives a really, really nice curve with the few part mods I've put into my game that feels right. Everything has a purpose, from the littlest engine that could to the lifting stages where it's a choice between size and weight. Sometimes large, light payloads just need less thrust to keep them from disintegrating which gives good purpose to smaller engines, whereas the heavy lifter stages even throttled down and tweaked still could put too much stress on it without careful monitoring of the throttle.

I had frustrating progress today on getting the core vessel ready for mission one. After four failed launches of the engine pods, I determined that FAR and the procedural fairings were not playing nicely, and it took me most of the night to get the two behaving well. I did manage to get the lander unit lifted and docked to the core vessel. Tomorrow, I get the refueling mission and engine pods sent up. Though I may need to redesign the engine pod delivery rocket due to the tendency to swing back and forth within its payload fairing. Additional braces might shore that up, but will make for much, much more interesting docking due to it being tight already. Current progress:

I'll take a look, I saw those monster landers, I know EVE requires around 10,900 or so delta-v to lift from that island based on my calculations and some charts. As it is, I think my computer wouldn't be the issue with the EVE mission. Moreso the pilot's design skills. I appreciate the compliment, considering I spent probably more time designing them specifically than I did on their lifter vessel. PS: They are very precisely 1.26 tons, I fiddled with them to get everything to fit on that exact size (I could have had them MUCH lighter and still met all requirements, but it has to be 1.25 weight for the mission). EDIT: I wonder if the changes from FAR would reduce that delta-V any... hmm. I need to send an unmanned test lander out there to check after mission one.

It's a true point, but I find that balancing the RCS out correctly can significantly lower how much fuel you use. A handy tool for that is RCS Aid, which will present a diagram of any rotational force implied by your thrusters if they're off balance and how strong of one it is. Using it, I've managed to learn how to better balance my RCS units out and as a result usually only need to send half the fuel up I used to for those things. Sometimes a little bit of knowledge can go a long way.