Vigelius

So I'm having some difficulties getting RO working! I had a setup with a fair few mods including RSS and PP, wanted more realistic rocket performance, do away with the game-crashing mountains. Downloaded RF, it made all the tanks have the same capacity regardless of size and did nothing to the engines' fuel requirements. Thought I might be missing something so I installed all the required mods for RO, plus RO itself. Then every single part in all the tabs vanished from the VAB! Trying to rectify the situation, I stripped out everything and reinstalled only the required mods for RO, plus RO itself. There are still no parts whatsoever in the VAB. Can anyone help!?

I've found TT NeverUnload to work great for this sort of issue. Add the NeverUnload part to both vessels and activate them both, then the 'physics bubble' can extend up to about 200km IIRC

Sound familiar?: - the standard advice says rockets fly best if they are weighted like a dart - shift the CoM as high as possible - the rocket lifts off ok, but then makes a concerted effort to arc over towards the ground, in a random direction - masses of SAS can bully a small rocket into obedience, but big ones start bending. I had one flex so far, the top was at a ninety degree angle to the engines! - failure. I suspect the problem is that, whilst the CoL is happy to follow the CoM, the rocket is so top-heavy that it essentially falls over as soon as it goes anything other than straight up. Fins at the back won't help because it's like holding a big bendy stick with a lump on top, from the bottom end - hold on as tight as you like, it still won't go where you point it. Usually I find it actually helps to drop the CoM back down again - it only needs to be a little above the CoL to be stable. Failing that, a few control surfaces above the CoM might help but starts to smell of over-engineering.

So after a bit of experimentation there is progress: - I can confirm that tabbing directly to a craft on the ground works from below 250m - I removed FAR and that made everything waaay easier for two main reasons: i. The atmosphere is much thinner with FAR, so without it craft stay in the air at about half the speed ii. Everything with wings is much less responsive without FAR, so close manoeuvres are a lot more forgiving. - Interesting learning about tiny planes which only have one pair of canards as control surfaces. Seems weird to me! - I'm still struggling to seal the deal, but that's clearly just my bad piloting now! Thanks for all your help folks!

I was pointed towards TT NeverUnload, which seems to do the trick for this sort of thing

@Aphobius - Good skills! Couple of things: - How did you get around the active craft problem? You just seem to tab across when you fly over, but mine won't let me do that - Have you got mods on that? I don't recognise the shielded docking ports - How do you keep the wings so stable on the big plane with so few struts? - I'm quite new to FAR, but from what I've seen it is a massive improvement to the aerodynamics. Certainly infini-glide isn't a problem. It slows down a lot through manoeuvres, which makes more sense to me. I tried that with these builds, but with the extra power in the chase-plane it kept catching up and jackknifing the whole setup. Might work better with a smaller chaser... Does this mean the same thing as Nemecle? Launch them as though they are one craft and then split it? Good knowledge! @Rokker - Burn Together looks pretty sweet! Unfortunately it doesn't seem to do so well in atmospheres (yet!)

Thanks folks! That's great, Imgur album sorted. Very smart!

Hi folks! I've been playing KSP since 0.21, and have been hooked from day one! I've been a lurker on here for a little while now, you guys always seem to have already found the answers to my questions, it's great to have a place like this available! I reckon its about time I joined in... For starters, I've been having a little piloting trouble: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77140-In-flight-Refueling-difficulties%21 Question: how do I embed an imgur album into a post like I've seen around a lot? I tried copying in the HTML, but it didn't work...

Hi All! I've got a fun little project going on here, and its got so close to success that I don't want to give up now - I'm in desperate need of someone who knows about aeroplane design! So as the title suggests, I'm trying to dock two planes in atmospheric flight. As you might expect, that presents a few challenges: Issue #1 - To dock two planes, I need to have two planes! But when I try to put something on the runway from the SPH or main KSC screen, it clears off anything already there. Simple solution, taxi the chase plane onto the grass first. Issue #2 - As soon as I'm in flight, the game won't allow me to switch focus. It will let me switch to any pieces of falling debris though. I've got a docking port on the back of my lead plane anyway, so I attach an unmanned probe body and basically try to bomb the second plane with it. Tab to the debris as it falls, and then switch planes that way. Issue #3 - Whilst the lead plane is still flying, any attempt to switch between craft results in going straight back to it and then Issue #2 kicks back in. I replace the probe body with a lander can, stick a parachute on it and drop the altitude of my flypast as low as possible. The idea is that any craft a Kerbal enters from EVA immediately becomes the active vessel. A free crew slot and an access ladder are necessary on the chase plane. Issue #4 - Getting a parachute involved means that by the time the can hits the deck and the pilot jumps out, the plane that dropped it has flown 2.5km away and vanished. Lazor Systems' docking mod on full draw distance only actually seems to increase that to 4.5km, which is still not enough. TTNeverUnload comfortably fixes the problem (reusable rockets here I come! No, stick to the task in hand...) Issue #5 - Kerbals walk really slowly! By the time the pilot is ready to go he's got 45km to close up, even with the lead plane at minimum throttle. That means the chase plane has to be rapid! The trouble with that is we end up with a twitchy plane, which needs to go at high speed to have half decent control authority. But at high speeds, the tiniest manouevres cause all sorts of wobbling and careering about that just isn't compatible with docking. I could make an edited version of the lead plane to serve as the chase plane so we can slow things down a lot, but the massive wings mean we just run into the same un-subtle manouevre problem at lower speeds. Beyond "be a better pilot", does anyone have any ideas? EDIT: After running through some tweaks, now going to learn how to be a better pilot! Mods Used: B9 pack Ferram Aerospace Research Lazor Systems' docking cam TTNeverUnload