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Lunniy Korabl

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Posts posted by Lunniy Korabl

  1. Haha, it does say my favourite planets and moons, I can't imagine making one for Tylo anytime soon! Also, doing the mun would pretty much consist of taking an Apollo photo and swapping the earth for Kerbin, but I'll probably be adding some more interesting places as I visit them.

    Laythe seems to get all the attention these days, but I've never even been to the outer Joolian moons, so maybe Pol could be next. Didn't realise how small it was until I saw the infographic in another thread. Definitely one for an RCS lander!

  2. Thanks! Atmosphere is useful for integration. I hope more moons have thin atmospheres in future updates, both for aesthetics and realism. Just added a Gilly one as well. Maybe next up I'll do a Jool atmospheric probe, though I'll have to design the mission first! I think it's important for realism that all of the ships are from actual missions I've flown.

  3. Yeah, my interpretation was that the side-mounted super draco thrusters are what will make this thing look very different from the cargo version. We've already seen this in recent mockups. That, and a proper docking mechanism. The rest is just marketing hype.

    745px-DragonRider_Mock-up_-_Musk_and_Bolden.jpg

  4. I want for people to stop building massively inefficient rockets where most of the fuel is wasted on launching most of the fuel that is wasted on launching most of the fuel...

    Seriously though, I'm sure more optimization is in the works. There's no point fully optimizing the game until all the features are in, but I think squad do a pretty good job of making each update run a bit better. I think I read somewhere that the planetary bodies will load dynamically in 0.20, which might break telescope mods but should increase performance. Hopefully there's a decent placeholder system that we can still see through telescopes. That would be rad.

  5. I've never managed to attach this engine perfectly.

    Neither have I, but it was close enough to be able to counteract the torque manually even at full thrust. Interestingly enough, using this design with a 3rd ant stage on top raised the centre of mass such that it was impossible to control at full thrust. Back to the drawing board for Joolian missions!

  6. Well, it's clear now that I've been doing it wrong. Here's a stock Minmus lander for just 1905! It still has the automatic panel, so anyone who wants to fly a more carefully sun-oriented mission could pull off spending 1705, which I believe is a new record. It does require part clipping to get that radial motor nice and central and the decoupler clear of it with the help of a few struts. Since almost all stock spaceplanes use part clipping I figure this is ok.

    screenshot960_zpsf07edf8d.png

    Probe

    Core 230

    Battery 80

    Antenna 150

    Folding Panel 300

    Total: 760

    Landing Stage

    Tanks 225

    Engine 240

    3 tiny struts 30

    Total: 495

    Launch Stage

    Small solid 450

    Small decoupler 200

    Total: 650

    Grand total: 1905

    As you can see from the landing shots, the fuel margin is tight, but good enough to tolerate my no-mecjeb no-maths style of flying. Suicide burn required!

    screenshot944_zps27aab21d.png

    screenshot959_zps69a5bd78.png

  7. I'm very impressed with cheap micro rockets/probes. Instead, I went with the strategy of decouplers are expensive, fuel is cheap and built a bigger rocket with the probe just bolted a onto the liquid 3rd stage. It could be another 200 cheaper, but I kept forgetting to sun orient the tiny solar panel during cruise so eventually gave up and put the cheapest automatic array on there. Anyway, here's the breakdown. This could probably make it to Duna or Eve with a parachute, but for testing I went for the easiest target, Minmus. Sorry for the huge images. Looks like I was ninja'd by a cheaper one too...

    Probe

    Core 230

    Battery 80

    Antenna 150

    Folding Panel 300

    Total: 760

    Landing Stage

    Tanks 450

    Engine 750

    Total: 1200

    Launch Stages

    Small solid 450

    Large solid 800

    2 small decouplers 400

    Total: 1650

    Grand total: 3610

    Lifting off the stick is pretty much dead because fins cost money. The off-centre battery slowly pulls the rocket in the right direction for gravity turn.

    screenshot880_zps0fac06de.png

    Second stage really roars through the dense atmosphere as the tiny battery tries its best to tug us into a turn.

    screenshot883_zpsda3cdb59.png

    After very little steering from the solid motors, third stage needs to work pretty hard to make the most of the orbeth effect, but at least we're in the tenuous upper atmosphere.

    screenshot886_zps95a7d2c4.png

    screenshot888_zps82369f43.png

    Launch windows are boring, maneuvering at the low orbital speeds of high altitude orbits is more fun and doesn't take much fuel to get a Minmus intercept.

    screenshot890_zps5b3382ac.png

    screenshot893_zpsba097e77.png

    screenshot894_zps671912d1.png

    Orbits are expensive and boring, let's just aim at that ball of green ice and see what sticks.

    screenshot902_zps21c81a5a.png

    screenshot903_zps3f021c34.png

    Ok, maybe too much timewarp is a bad thing, but on the plus side there's plenty of fuel for a suicide burn.

    screenshot904_zps2952f70f.png

    screenshot905_zps8410655f.png

    Maybe I could have come in somewhere flatter. I have enough fuel to aim for the bottom of that basin, but again that's boring, let's just land already.

    screenshot907_zpsed43741c.png

    Nailed it.

    screenshot922_zpsa5513b85.png

    screenshot930_zps86a1847a.png

    Just in case anyone was concerned that awesome landing compromised the mission, we can see from looking behind the hill that our antenna is nicely aligned with Kerbin overhead.

    screenshot931_zps12545cde.png

  8. I think I've been to the Mun only a handful of times after Minmus came out. The way I see it, if Minmus were real, NASA wouldn't spend much time messing around in the barren deserts of the Moon when there's a cheaper target with frozen lakes on it either!

    I also see a Minmus base as a very likely staging point for interplanetary missions. I haven't had a play with the kethane mod yet, but I think that lets you mine fuel on the surface. Should be good fun. I've already landed a large drill-like structure on one of the frozen lakes. Landing bases is a breeze compared to the Mun because the gravity is so low you can use low thrust engines all the way down. Not a big deal with a small lander, but a massive deal with a more massive base.

  9. Looks like another great sandbox space game. Not sure about all the killing, but it's still in dev, I'm sure they fix that.

    JK, I used to play TA as a kid, but I would always get beaten because I was more interested in the building of an awesome base with heaps of tech than I was in the killing.

    Anyone interested in games from that era should also check out Jetpack 2. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adept/jetpack-2

    I spent so much time playing the original loderunner inspired jetpack based platformer with the best level editor ever!

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