KBluey

I had some success attaching two small gear bays to the bottom of a modular girder segment, which was mounted to the underside of a wing-mounted fuel tank. Doesn't look good, but it takes off without wobbling and without extra struts. My vessel is only about 70 tons though. I attached two gear bays to the bottom of a single girder using mirror symmetry (to make sure the load was totally even across the two wheels), then grabbed the girder and mounted it to the fuel tanks using mirror symmetry. I'm sure Capi's manual tweakscale approach gives a more pleasing result though.

Roverdude, I'm having trouble with AMT. When I escape the atmosphere on Kerbin, my vessels lock up and go into progressively stranger orbits, then explode. The vessel's orbital speed stays exactly the same while the altitude increases, which seems to lead to disintegration as the ship accelerates out of control. I reinstalled KSP fresh, reinstalled the mods, and this problem occurs when AMT is installed, but not when I remove the AMT folder from the Umbra folder. Any ideas....?

Aha! This was caused by an outdated version of Asteroid Mining Technologies posted on Roverdude's Github. I'll let him know.

After I installed the mod I launched a craft to LKO and then--I think what happened--is that my vessel stopped moving around Kerbol, but Kerbin didn't, if that makes any sense. So my orbit became more and more eccentric around Kerbin (apoapsis increased, periapsis decreased to the point where it was below zero), and then the vessel exploded. After I left the atmosphere, the tail fins turned and the engine fired up, but the vessel wouldn't rotate or accelerate. The same thing happened again after restart. Vessel was stock. The vessel was behaving like a planet (like it was on rails) so that made me think it might be a planets issue... I have a few mods installed, not many, mostly Roverdude's stuff, KAS, Porkjet, TAC LS, Mechjeb. Any clues....?

Well, I'm currently trying to get a successful SSTO ascent on Eve, using Firespitter and the ducted fans from Roverdude's Freight Transport Technologies (http://bobpalmer.github.io/UmbraSpaceIndustries/). This seems to be maybe possibly doable, and definitely hard enough to keep me occupied.

Really great job with these parts! My only complaint is that the engine seems very overpowered, but that's easily solved by me simply not using it. As others have said, I would love to have adapters from your cockpit to 2.5m and from your cockpits and body parts to 3.75m.

I really like these parts--nice work. I'm currently trying to get an SSTO to LKO in 6.4x Kerbin RSS, which is moderately tricky! One question, is there a way to attach a docking port to the inside of the cargo bay? There's not an attachment node, at least not in the version I'm looking at. I'm getting around it by surface-attaching a cubic octagonal strut and then attaching the docking port to that.

Yeah, I can't think of a use for the cargo bays, except in conjunction with aerodynamic mods NEAR and FAR, in which case you can put your probes and other small items inside a cargo bay to reduce aerodynamic drag during a Kerbin ascent. Oh, and why can't you deliver an orange tank into orbit with a spaceplane...? It took me a while to refine the design, but I use a cargo plane to deliver orange tanks, landers etc to LKO to resupply expedition vessels. If you attach a fuselage section to the back of the cockpit, put a docking port on the back of it, and then use two girders or truss sections to split the plane in two (i.e. fuel tanks and wings on each side, with a big gap in the middle for the payload) it works pretty well as long as it's suitably strutted.

Some parts have crossfeed and others don't; I'm not sure whether there's a list anywhere, but you can sometimes see it in the craft files. I think the truss sections allow crossfeed, and the radial attachment points, but not the stage separators (obviously).

Ideally, mount your fuel tanks so every fuel tank's center of mass is level with the plane's COM. That way your plane will always be perfectly balanced through its entire flight. This may mean mounting some fuel tanks alongside each other rather than inline.

What happens when you slow down? Does the nose tip down? If so, your COM is probably too far ahead of your COL. Move your wings forward, install more SAS. If the plane is just falling out of the sky when you slow down, then it's too heavy for its wing area. Drop some weight or add some wings. And bear in mind that a plane that "looks right" for real life may not work well in the game because Kerbal physics is an intriguing approximation, it's not real physics....

Here's a trick to make the "puller" design work for asteroids--attach your fuel tanks to the asteroid, but have your puller engines attached to the tanks by a really flexible connector, like half a dozen FL-5(?) adapters (the little ones) stacked on top of each other, concertina-style. And attach at least a couple of the big SAS units to the engines. This will allow you to direct the engines independently of the fuel tanks and the asteroid, and keep the asteroid on track pretty easily.

Here's an alternative way to think about a station. I use what I call a "backpack ship" for most missions; it's just a generic vessel core that has comfortable accomodation and workspace for the Kerbals, fuel tanks, nuclear engines and a bunch of docking ports of different sizes, positioned so it can haul many different loads without getting unbalanced. Designing this vessel was a really interesting challenge so I won't spoil it for you by posting a picture :-). I re-use this vessel for multiple missions, and just attach whatever landers or probes or bases I want for that particular contract or science expedition. When the backpack ship returns from its mission, it sits in orbit at 121km while I use spaceplanes to bring up a fresh crew and more fuel, to bring the used landers and science experiments back down to Kerbin for science and recovery value, and to bring up new landers and probes for the next mission. So while the backpack ship is between missions, it's effectively a space station, but it's being built up piece by piece so it's ready for the next mission. This is a way to create a space station that's useful for more than just dumping fuel.

Here's an alternative way to think about a station. I use what I call a "backpack ship" for most missions; it's just a generic vessel core that has comfortable accomodation and workspace for the Kerbals, fuel tanks, nuclear engines and a bunch of docking ports of different sizes, positioned so it can haul many different loads without getting unbalanced. Designing this vessel was a really interesting challenge so I won't spoil it for you by posting a picture :-). I re-use this vessel for multiple missions, and just attach whatever landers or probes or bases I want for that particular contract or science expedition. When the backpack ship returns from its mission, it sits in orbit at 121km while I use spaceplanes to bring up a fresh crew and more fuel, to bring the used landers and science experiments back down to Kerbin for science and recovery value, and to bring up new landers and probes for the next mission. So while the backpack ship is between missions, it's effectively a space station, but it's being built up piece by piece so it's ready for the next mission. This is a way to create a space station that's useful for more than just dumping fuel.

I constantly struggle in the VAB is trying to make complex craft that have sections joined at odd angles. Like, if I want to join two mk1 fuselage sections together at 30 degrees, to make a curved connector between different sections of a vessel, it gets messy. And the mk1 is one of the better parts for odd angles--some parts won't snap at odd angles at all. If more pieces would snap together neatly at odd angles (or even, if you guys could develop procedural curved connectors!), it would allow a lot more options for creating complex vessels. Also, I would really enjoy some more complicated missions, e.g. salvage this disabled/damaged craft and bring it back to Kerbin, or land this super awkward object on the surface of whatever moon.

I'm having a lot of trouble with the mod. I'm running TAC life support, as well as a couple of science mods (LTech and Tarsier) that may interfere with Biomass. The problem I'm seeing is that the vessel's mass is increasing over time, with both the food greenhouse and aquatic greenhouse. Also, I'm not seeing seeds as a resource--should those be appearing? The food greenhouse is also using a heck of a lot of electricity (7 or 8 per second) even with the lights off.

Incidentally, TAC has some problems with warping too. I have an air filter on a mobile base, extracting oxygen from the atmosphere at Laythe and it works during warp but only if the focus is on that vessel.

I really like this mod and will test it, but right off the bat have you fixed the warping problems? Resource production froze when the vessel was warping, whether the focus was on the vessel or not. Made the mod unusable. There were also problems with electrics under warp. Can you just confirm that?

I love these parts and I use them a lot. The only problem I'm having is with Crew Manifest/Ship Manifest. It doesn't seem to recognize the 1.875m docking port, i.e., I can't move Kerbals around the vessel. This means I *literally* have to do EVAs!!! Like it's still 1990 or something. Also, while I have you on the phone, are you planning to create a 1.875m NERVA engine? The stock nuclear engine is a bit puny, and the 2.5m one from KW or Novapunch or whoever is a bit of a beast. 1.875 would be the Goldilocks version, I believe.

@BigD, btw I found a fix for the Interstellar problem. If I just left a thermal electric generator switched on the whole time, the electric charge stayed topped up, even if the reactor that the generator was attached to wasn't switched on. Anyway, that's off topic so I don't want to spin that discussion out too much.

Aha! I just noticed that it depends on warp. At warp x100 or below the greenhouse works as I'd expect. At warp x1000 or above it seems to run in reverse. Come to think of it, I had the same problem with the Interstellar mod (which I'm not using at present); electric charge rate seemed to go haywire at higher warps. I'm using TAC v0.8.0.4. Oh, and scratch my comment about the respiration/photosynthesis equations, I read the numbers wrong in the .cfg file...

I can't seem to get this mod to work. The biomass in the large food greenhouse reduces by about 0.7 every 6-hour day, even though the greenhouse has seeds, water, wastewater, light and CO2. Panels are retracted, and the greenhouse is facing the sun with full exposure. I just launched a very simple ship to high Kerbin orbit to get a feel for the mod and can't figure out why the biomass won't grow. I have the latest versions of Kethane and TAC life support installed. I checked the equations in the greenhouse .cfg file and it seems like the respiration equation uses up biomass at a higher rate than the photosynthesis equation generates it. I'm probably missing some key point here, but nevertheless any tips would be appreciated! I tried unzipping the "easy" difficulty level but wasn't sure whether I needed to move those unzipped files anywhere. Module manager didn't like it on startup, and generated a couple of errors due to the "easy" folder.

I'm having some trouble with electrical power and I think it's to do with KSPI. Running a space station in orbit around Jool, with lots of panels to make sure it can keep itself charged. Intermittently, the station decides that it will start to lose electric charge (around 4-6 per second). When it does this, extending and retracting solar panels has the inverse effect from what you'd expect (extending the panels increases the rate at which charge is lost). The only thing that solves it is to activate a KSPI electrical generator, which boosts the electric charge immediately back up to full, despite the fact that the 1.25m fusion reactor the generator is attached to isn't activated! As soon as I shut off the generator, the electric charge of the station starts to decline at 4-6 per second again. Any insights into this...?

This is a brilliant mod....solves so many problems I've been having! Thank you.

Ferram, I'm having trouble with a lander that I've inverted on top of a rocket. At launch, the lander is attached to the top of the rocket using a clamp-o-tron. When I begin the ascent, the craft goes into a spin (roll). When I zoom in and look at what's happening, it's positive feedback from the control surfaces, i.e. when a small random roll is introduced, the control surfaces act to make it worse, not to correct it. It gets worse and worse, sometimes destroys the craft, and it continues once I'm out of the atmosphere (presumably due to the engine gimbals on the SABRE M engines), though it turns from a roll into a kind of shimmy above about 60km. This seems to be a Ferram artefact, since it doesn't occur when I disable Ferram and launch the same rocket.