Piper

I've always played with keyboard, and with spacecraft it is my preferred option. However I do wish I had a working joystick for whenever I'm doing atmospheric flight.

I generally, I multiply my total needed deltaV (as calculated with a deltaV road map) by 1.25x. However if I'm doing any type of precision landing like landing at an anomaly or a base, I'll multiply the amount I need for that portion of the mission by 1.5x. I usally also add on the max plane change amount without any multiplication. Actually liftoff from Kerbin I usually just make an even 3500m/s, no 1.25x added on. So as an example, let's say I was sending a craft to the surface of Dres to investigate an anomaly, I would calculate it as this: Liftoff from Kerbin: 3500m/s Kerbin Escape: 950m/s x 1.25 = 1187.5m/s Transfer to Dres: 610m/s x 1.25 = 762.5m/s Max Plane change: 1010m/s Dres Insertion burn: 1300m/s x 1.25 = 1625m/s Dres precision landing: 430m/s x 1.5 = 645m/s Total mission deltaV: 8730m/s

Back in the 0.18 days, I used to be a big fan/player of Orbiter, and had heard a bunch of talk about KSP through the Orbiter forums. I decided to check it out and downloaded the game, but didn't really give it much of an actual try and it sat unused on my laptop. Around the time 0.23 came out, I decided to jump into it again and started actually playing it, and quickly became hooked on it. One of my earliest memories of KSP is getting my craft into "orbit", only to discover that both my apoapsis and my periapsis was just below 70km, and so I hadn't actually technically made it into space. I think I was trying to get an experiment to work and was completely confused why it kept saying I was in Kerbin's upper atmosphere.

Today in KSP I fried my laptop. Well technically it was two days ago, but it's still fried. So, I had three ships returning from interplanetary missions, each carrying seven Kerbals, and instead of launching multiple ships to dock with them, I decided to build a "Rendezvous Station" and a single large SSTO shuttle that would be capable of carrying all of the Kerbals back to the surface in one shot. After working on different designs for nearly a week I finally got one working that would do the job reliably (and safely), so I decided to launch one more test one in Krash to doubly make sure it works as intended. During the launch to orbit, my screen goes insane and everything just stops. Feeling the heat coming off the laptop my first thoughts are that it overheated, so I immediately turn it off, unplug it, and disconnect the battery. It's been a couple of days now, and it still won't turn back on, and I fear it is completely done for. I'm going to take off the cover and see if it's something repairable. My biggest fear is it's the motherboard itself, but with the way it is behaving (repeatably turns on and then immediately turns off, with a long pause in between without anything appearing on the screen), I suspect it either is indeed the motherboard, or the CPU. I just really hope I haven't lost all my stuff for good (thankfully, I don't think that is likely). This KSP play-through has probably been my favorite so far, and I've been gearing up for my first manned missions to Jool and Eeloo, with some pretty new and ambitious designs (for me), and as I had mentioned been working on m first SSTO shuttle.

Instinctually, I wanted to say Dres, as it certainly gets the most hate/contempt on the boards. Heck, even of the science reports say things like "No planet found here.", but everybody KNOWS about Dres, and I think most people go there at one point or another, so I'm actually going to vote for Vall. Nobody really says it's a bad place or anything like that, but other then those who have been there nobody really talks about it at all. The first time I landed on Vall, I remember thinking "Oh wow this place is pretty cool with some really neat surface scatter! I wish I explored this place sooner!" Now, it's hardly the coolest, or greatest rock in the Kerbol system, it's not even the coolest place in the Jool system, but I would call it the most under-rated simply for the reason it feels like the most forgotten one and therefore never gets rated anything at all.

Mein Gott! What did you do to that guy?!

My first career game was back in the 0.23 days, when career was the current Science Mode and we didn't have funds. Now I had come into the game having played Orbiter for years, so I already had a pretty solid understanding of orbital dynamics, but at the same time it was nice having to work a new space program up from its foundations. The funny thing about that particular career mode, was that for my first manned interplanetary trip I basically went with the hardest I could do, which was a landing on Moho, at night. Since then I've done a couple of different career modes, each slightly different. In my current one, I have it set where contracts give three times as much funds, because I never was big on doing tons of contracts, most of them doing things that don't really interest me, but science results from experiments are cut down by a third as well to try and balance them out as well. This makes the early portion of career mode particularly difficult, since you really need those science rewards to progress technologically, and without all the science experiments unlocked, you can't always gather all the science you really need.

Have you tried MechJeb or KER? Both have options for windows that include orbital information. I personally like the versatility of MechJeb, but it's a bit more complex then KER which definitely seem to be the more popular options these days.

Since Milford isn't one of the "original 4" (Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Val), his generation is completely random. But there is another way to get him. If he press Alt-12, it brings up the Debug Menu, in it, somewhere under the heading "Kerbals", there is an option for generating a new Kerbal, and in it you can type in a custom name, and select their characteristics.

I know Scott Manley has already been mentioned twice now, but my most memorable video has to be him using a single large 2.5m tank (the largest in the game at the time) as his only fuel source to travel from Kerbin, to Duna, to Ike, and return to Kerbin. I don't think you'd be able to do it now, since the way physics works (namely aerodynamics) has changed a ton since then, so have many of the parts, but it is still a pretty cool thing to see.

I can't remember specifically which update it was, I think it was around the 1.4 era of updates, but either way it was definitely in between 0.23 and now, lol. 0.23 and the newest versions are almost entirely different games. But I have the latest version of KSP, and my laptop isn't much newer then the one you have. I think I was even playing KSP on an older laptop with almost identical specs to have, and that was up until 1.3 or something about that. If you have the space on your computer, I recommend installing a second install of KSP of the latest version and giving it a try, and see if it works.

Specifically which version do you have? I know there was one big update they did where they specifically tackled performance and made it a ton faster. I have an older computer laptop myself, and I know I did see a difference, especially with larger stations and bases. It still take forever to load, but I think that's mostly because of the obscene number of mods I have.

Personally, I would love some type of "Vehicle Assembly Building" app that simply had all the ship building capability of the game so you could design ships/aircraft/probes/anything while you are about. I don't know how many times I've gotten an idea in my head while at work or on the bus and had to wait all day till I got back home and was able to try to make it work. This way you could design different iterations while you are out, and fly them once you get home. A secondary app like this would also be a great home for KSPedia as well.

Lol, that has been EXACTLY the case with me. After beginning to circumnavigate Eve, I'm seriously thinking of building a proper aircraft for exploring all of Kerbin, because as of right now I've explored more of places like Dres and Eve then I have of my own homeworld. There are biomes on Kerbin I've never even been to, let alone collected all the science I can. Now that I stop to think about it, I actually feel kinda bad that I've given Dres more love then I have Kerbin.

Funny you mention that. In all the time I've played KSP, I've only gone and visited that one once. In my current playthrough, I've visited anomalies on the Mun, Minmus, and Eve, but yet to investigate a single one on Kerbin.

It's not that I don't understand how to make airplanes, or the principles of flight. I have a private pilot's license IRL, it's mostly just that until recently, I've never really explored much of building aircraft in KSP, so whereas I could build a rocket and launch it to the Mun and back with no testing and be confident it will work just fine, I can't say I can do that with aircraft. For example, that Eve aircraft I mentioned, I spent a good full afternoon going in and out of KRASH designing something I'm happy with. Ironically I ended up going with something a lot simpler then all of my initial designs, because I originally was trying to build a tail-sitter, but I was having too many stability issues when I tried to transition to the tail-sitting position. With Eve's thick atmosphere, even the smallest difference in position between CoL and CoM caused the aircraft to flip. I may have been able to work something out if I used a ballast system, but I ended up deciding to use Eve's thick atmosphere to my advantage, and built a simple STOL instead, that ended up working as a pretty good boat as well. The only real mistake I made is I didn't put the Bathymetry experiment underneath the thing, so every time I want to use it I have to drive forward and push down in the water to dive underneath and use it.

I've always used ScanSAT, so I've never learned how to use Kerbnet either. For me though, the biggest thing has always been aircraft. I've always played KSP for its rocketry, and while I've build a few aircraft (just yesterday I landed and flew my first Eve aircraft), compared to rockets/spacecraft I've done very little. I don't believe I've ever built an SSTO either.

Unmanned I've been everywhere and have landed on everything you can land on. Manned, I've landed and returned from Moho, Gilly, the Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, and Dres. In this particular career mode I haven't landed Kerbals on Moho yet, but that is coming up shortly, along with plans to visit the moons of Jool and a mission to Eeloo as well.

For me, it's always been a manned landing on Eve. Every career play-through I do, around the time I'm ready to commit to a manned landing, something happens that leads me away from the game, and by the time I get back to it so many things have changed, so many new things have come out, that I end up starting a new career mode again. Even right now, I'm getting close to being ready to send a Kerbal to Eve (I'm just waiting on crews to return from Duna, Ike, and Dres), and I plan on launching crews to Eve, and of course, I discover KSP 2 is going to be coming out. Knowing my luck, something IRL will take me away from the game, and by the time I get back to it KSP 2 will be out and I'll want to play that instead.

Not only on Eve, but the immense pressures of Jool as well. If you're up to sending a Kerbal on a one way trip, you can EVA a Kerbal all the way down to the pressure limits of Jool, which IIRC goes up to 15atm at that altitude. Edit: An idea just came to mind, what if the helmet is constructed with an interlocking frame on the inside? That way it could be deflated/collapsed when not in use, and be able to hold up against both vacuum, and the positive pressures of places like Jool and Eve. It doesn't explain the visor portion though. It doesn't appear to have any structure to it, yet retains an outwards curve to it, regardless of outside pressure.

I'll likely switch over entirely, however that is really going to be hardware dependent. If my poor old laptop can handle KSP 2, then I likely will switch, but frankly there's a really good chance that I'll need to keep to 1.0 for some time until I can afford a better laptop. With that said, with the mountain of mods I play with I feel like there's a possibility that a fresh install of a new game will actually be faster, lol.

So I just had a good one the other day. I had launched a duel mission consisting of an unmanned orbiter and rover to Moho, and the mission went from bad, to good, to "well this is a total loss". The design was basically a clone of another mission already on its way to Eeloo, where the rover is attached upside down above the satellite with a sky-crane type landing module, and a whole ton of deltaV behind it to launch it to its destination. I cloned that design since the total deltaV requirements for going to Eeloo are usually close enough to Moho so if it works for going to Eeloo it should work fine for going to Moho. The only real change I made was to the power sources, since I don't need as many, or as large solar panels for Moho, and a little extra fuel to the transfer stage. The launch started ok, but when I separated the fairings, I realized I must have clipped some of the wheels during design because two of the wheels of the rover blew apart. I can't see any way of roving around in this configuration, but it should still be able to stand, so I figured my rover just turned into a stationary lander. Not terrible, not great. The transfer and capture to Moho go just fine, and I decide to map the planet first before landing on it, so with the rover/lander still attached, I turn on the ScanSAT devices and go do other things. I come back to it some time later, and the planet is fully mapped. "Excellent!" I think, and decide to commence with landing. I separated the landing portion, and pick an appropriate landing site. Everything is going all hunky-dory (missing rover wheels not withstanding), so I initiate my landing. I slow the spacecraft down, and begin my approach to my landing site. This is about where I realize I have completely messed up as I'm looking at how much fuel I have. As I mentioned before, this mission is basically a carbon-copy of a mission on its way to Eeloo (which still hasn't arrived). The deltaV landing requirements for Eeloo is 620 m/s, the deltaV landing requirements for Moho is 870 m/s. Now, I always add in an extra margin (usually about 15% to 25% extra deltaV), but 25% extra of the landing requirement for Eeloo is still only 775 m/s. Sure, the total deltaV requirements for the two missions were the same (or close enough), but I had completely failed to pay attention to the deltaV requirements of the individual decent stages. To make things worse, the slow acceleration of the ants I choose to use for this means I'm also loosing a bunch to gravity-drag as I descend downwards. I give it all I can, and perform the most efficient suicide-burn I can muster, but without the needed deltaV, it ends up being more suicide then burn and I missile into the ground at about 200 m/s.

The vast majority of my rendezvous and dockings occur with stations/spacecraft in polar orbit. In which case I wait for my launch site to line up with the orbiting spacecraft, and then launch either north or south (depending on which side of the orbit I launch on), and try and get as close to the inclination of my target as possible. In most cases, I launch to an altitude below that of my target, so I can play "catch-up" with it. Once in orbit, I adjust my alignment with the target and get to 0 relative inclination. After that I do one of two things. If the position of the rendezvous in orbit is important (ie, I want to make sure it happens on the day side of the planet) I perform a burn so that my orbit intersects the target's orbit where I want it to. After a few orbits of catching up, I then perform another burn at that intersection, raising my periapsis, so that on my next time around I arrive at that point at the same time my target does. If it doesn't matter where in the orbit I meet my target, then I simply time my apoapsis raising so that I meet my target at that first intersection.

Oh wow, that looks exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks!

I'm planning on doing some high resolution SCANsat mapping of the five moons of Jool, and instead of doing five different probes to each of the moons, I'm planning on doing just a single probe that will first orbit Laythe, and then work its way out to the other four moons one by one. Now, I could load up sandbox, make something with a ton of dV (or just have infinite fuel on) and fly out to Jool to find out for myself exactly what I need, but before I do; has anybody else already done this and crunched the numbers?