Stratzenblitz75

Kasuha made a thread describing how this works (I highly recommend you give it a read, it contains a lot of good info on KSP's fuel flow logic in general). Apparently, it has to do with how the game reads the craft file. By placing the intakes and engines 1 after each other, you can trick the resource system (which Kasuha describes) into equally distributing the intake air among the jet engines.

This launch window planner does just what you're asking. It calculates optimal transfer windows and tells you how much DeltaV you need, when to depart, and how long it will take to arrive. You can use this info to figure out how long an interplanetary return trip will take. For example, lets say I'm going to Duna and back. First, I'll put in Kerbin as the "origin" and Duna as the "Destination" with the earliest departure date being year 1, day 1. (With no insertion burn, since I'm going to aerobreak) It tells me I have to depart on Year 1, day 58 (Earth Time) and I'll arrive on Year 1, day 121. For the return trip, I'll put Duna as the "origin" and Kerbin as the "destination" with the earliest departure date being Year 1, day 121, (the Duna arrival date from the first calculation). For these parameters, I tells me I have to leave on Year 1, day 273 and that I'll arrive on Year 1, day 340. So, I depart for Duna on Year 1, day 58, and arrive back on Year 1, day 340, which means that I have to carry at least 282 days of life support for the entire trip. Now, you don't have to use the most optimal transfer. You can click on the Delta-V plot it generates to learn about other potential transfers.

My first launch was with SRBs only because I couldn't figure out how to increase the throttle on the LFO engines. I can't remember anything else other than it probably exploded.

*Insert bragging here*

Actually, nothing seems wrong here. Your ship burns through about 3000 units of liquid fuel to make orbit, which is less than 3500 units of liquid fuel that the FLS Titan needs. According to the KSP Wiki (And from looking at values in-game), liquid fuel costs 0.8 funds per unit. So really, your ship should have burned about 3000 (factoring the cost of the oxidizer) funds worth of fuel. Now, these values are for 0.24.2, did they change the price of fuel in 0.25? If not, how are you calculating the cost of the fuel you burned? Also, you should only need 1 NERVA to make orbit. The turbojets should be powerful enough to get you up to orbital velocities if you just level off and gain speed at about 35 Km. At that point you only need a tiny boost of 50-100 m/s to get into orbit. In addition, I noticed in one of the pictures that half of your turbojets were offline. When this happens, be sure to throttle done a bit. In this case, more turbojets running at a lower throttle > less turbojets running at max throttle.

Are you using this trick? Placing the Engines and Intakes one by one not only prevents flame outs, it also makes the jet engines more powerful (you can see that in a test I preformed in that link). Also, how many intakes are you running? The FLS Titan runs 2 intakes per engine for a total of 32 engines and 64 intakes. I found that two intakes per engine on a VTLV craft should be enough to air-hog your way to orbit. Or maybe 0.25 changed things, as I've said, I haven't tested it 0.25 yet.

Huh, A thread about "MOAR POWAH" and "MOAR BOOSTERS"?... Whackjob! I choose you!

99% builder, 1% pilot. I consider my self a decent mission planner, but I'm an absolutely atrocious pilot. I need at least 5 quickloads for pretty much everything (usually much more). Also 100% mods over here! I can't play without FAR, KW rocketry, B9-Aerospace, Deadly Reentry, Astronomer's Visual Enhancements, ect.

RCS build aid will calculate the CoT only for the engines in the first stage. So, simply put your VTOL engines in the first stage (or in KSP terms, the bottom-most stage), and put the other engines somewhere else.

If you're not against mods, Get RCS build aid (As the name suggests, it helps you balance RCS thrusters, but it also helps balance "regular" thrusters). It is one of the most helpful tools for building VTOLs, since it lets you precisely align the CoT of whatever engines you choose, with your CoM.

I used to use asparagus staging for everything, but haven't touched it since I switched over to FAR. Building vertical rockets that "aren't pancakes" has been loads of fun (and explosions) and I have no intention on going back.

Indeed: I haven't tested it in 0.25 yet (I'd imagine it would still function the same, but who knows), but in 0.24.2, This thing can lift 165 tons to orbit with fuel to spare. And it only masses 250 tons (with the payload) and burns less than 4000 funds-worth of fuel. So yeah, if you have no concern for realism whatsoever turbojets are the way to go.

Stop playing for 3 months, then come back. It's what worked for me.

I see radial rockomax 24-77s. You should replace them all with the stack-mounted rockomax 48-7Ss as they get much better efficiency and they have a better TWR ratio. That is, unless you feel that rockomax 48-7S are too cheaty. Other than that, I don't see any major design flaws. You could increase the width of your landing base, but that isn't necessary. (BTW very nice looking crafts, I really like your Eve probe glider) Edit: Just noticed the seperatrons, you should probably get rid of those. They add a lot of mass and I don't even think you need them.

For the heat shield, I highly recommend you use ProdecuralParts' heat-shields. They are designed to work with DRE and you can make them as large as you want. For the rocket, yeah, 5 - 7.5 Km/s of Vacuum Delta V should be enough. As others have suggested, use KER to figure out how much Delta V your rocket has. Yep, long and thin landers are the way to go if you feel like torturing yourself. (Notice how the terrain is flat, yet I still managed to crash it) Successful landings: 2 Failed landings: 2 many Just make a wider landing base, you'll thank me later.

I recommend OBS, its completely free, no watermark, no recording limit and the quality is good (from what I've seen so far).

I start to have noticeable, but minor slowdown at around 400-500 parts. It gets worse, but still very playable in the 500-1000 part range. I don't know where the part count becomes unplayable since I rarely build anything in the 1000 part range range. I think the only thing I ever built that was more than 1000 parts was this thing...

Justice has finally been served.

I second this notion, there should be a FAR/mods or perhaps a "mixed solutions" section for those of us who can't stand the "soupmosphere". Heck, if you think FAR makes the ascent too easy, just require KIDS with the "FAR to stock KSP, atmosphere only setting". That applies a nasty 0.38 ISP multiplier to engines in >1 Atmo and makes the ascent pretty difficult since your engines only get about 100 ISP for the first 10 Km. Also... I can confirm this... I can't count the amount of times I've crashed this thing.

That right there, might be what I call "the floating probe core" bug. It appears to be induced by the Klaw and it happens. All. The. Dang. Time. Solution: Don't use the Klaw

Space Engine has to be one of my favorite "games" ever. There's just so much to see and explore... And it looks incredible too! Here is just a few of the many, many, many sights I've seen in Space Engine:

Ahh Rendog. The first video I ever watched from him was this nearly 3 years ago. I really enjoyed his Terraria series (I used to be a BIG Terraria player... I had over 1000 hours in that game) so understandably, I was a bit sad that he discontinued it in favor of a Minecraft series. But I'm getting way off topic now, at least its good to see that he's still "in business" so to speak.

Congrats on the Tylo landing! It certainly is tough celestial body to conquer. Although, this should probably go in the mission reports rather than the general discussions.

NO WAY. I don't care if this is supposed to be a game-play feature, Kerbals should NOT be able to boost a craft's efficiency, or thrust or whatever simply by piloting it, that's just ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as turbojets or ions or stock aero in general.

Hmm, simple plant flag and return mission... Haven't done one of those in a long time, however, I am pretty sure I could do a mun/minmus mission in 1-3 stages. Maybe more for an interplanetary mission, depends on the payload (and/or if I use ion engines or turbojets). My last big mission used 6 stages (if you don't count all the other stuff attached to it), 3 were used for liftoff and 3 were drop tanks that were jettisoned over the course of the mission.