soulsource

I don't have issues with Kerbals gathering the experimental data right at the sensor. For instance, my headcanon is that for the Goo and Material Lab experiments they are taking the samples out of the respective container and put them in a compartment of their EVA suit, just to store them in a proper cabinet in the capsule later. Thing is: It has been suggested by selfish_meme to put a second lander can at the bottom of tall landers, in order to save ladders. While the idea is great, and with proper design the Kerbal on EVA can gather all experiments, it's somehow necessary to transfer the data to the other command pod internally... I've just found the Ship Manifest mod, which will allow this as well, but if there'd be a simpler mod that just allows science transfers, or if there would be a solution without using mods, I'd greatly appreciate any hints toward these.

I'm wondering: Is there a way to transfer science between modules internally, meaning without EVA? I mean, if a Kerbal can bring along the data on EVA, why shouldn't the same Kerbal be able to bring it along when moving between parts inside the ship? Edit: Would a moderator please be so nice as to move this to the support forum? I just realized it would fit there better.

And today, Matrix Kerman joined my space program. I bet she's good at algebra. I only hope that I'll never mix up the two of them.

After a buzzing sound the radio comes to live. "Sir, you must realize that they are dead. Their re-vert-animated corpses in orbit mock everyone involved in the development of their ship, and every kerbonaut capable of going to orbit without blowing up their own ship." It takes some time until the head of KSC finds the strength to answer. "Yes, Val, you're right. We all have to face the truth. Let's ban the necromantic technique of re-vert-animation, blow up their ship as they did at their first attempt to launch it, give them a proper grave along their comrades, and pretend this never happened." Some minutes pass. "Ok, I've just done the sorry deed of sending up an automated, non-controllable warhead to blow up the ship." "Are you aware that Chadson was our last pilot at KCS?" "Oh god... We'll have to pay a price for this... Funds actually. We were able to cover up that our rescued colleagues had to sleep on the floor for some weeks, but if we now need to hire new crew, we'll have to offer them a proper room to sleep at the KSC, or they'll never sign our contract! This whole Eve mission turns out to be a big sink for money." "Yes, Sir, but remember, we aren't in this for the funds. We are doing this for the advancement of all Kerbalkind. Although I of course would feel more comfortable if we had at least some return of investment for this trip to Eve, apart from the data we can gather. Also, just think of all the funds we already invested in the lander. No way of chickening out, just because we only have half the funds left the Eve mission started out with." In other words: I reconsidered. Reverting is disabled again, as is quickloading. The "cheated" ship including crew has been terminated in the tracking station. The astronaut complex has been upgraded, a new pilot has been hired, and the new ship has been brought to orbit. Edit: A post like this deserves a screenshot. Of the new ship just at launch.

I just turned down difficulty from hard to custom (with quicksaves and reverts). No way I'm giving up my manned Eve ship because I was too stupid to throttle down.

I changed my mind about unlocking the extra large NASA parts before attempting an Eve return mission. I know that moar boostars and bigga engines is the Kerbal way, but sometimes, just sometimes it might be a good idea to keep the payload light instead... After having thought that my Eve lander was finished, I launched it, of course unmanned, as it's enough to risk a Kerbal life once it is in Eve orbit. The launch didn't go well. Aero forces ripped off the payload at about 7000 m altitude... There go 250000 funds... Sadly I didn't take a screenshot of the broken rocket, but here's one where I was still optimistic. But, the worst part I didn't even mention yet: I have no contracts for Eve. This whole mission has no return of investment, just (hopefully) a few science points... And yes, it's basically the same lander that ruined my launchpad, just with a few modifications, so that the fairing now separates the way it should. Well, the other Kerbal way is to add more struts. That's exactly what I did before the second launch attempt, between the small tanks and the large tank just above, and now I got a hopefully functional Eve lander in LKO, waiting for the transfer window in 2 weeks...

I'll shamelessly quote my own Google+ post...

I had the Kraken eat my launchpad. Or more precisely, it ate the ship that was standing on the launchpad, parts of which then crashed onto the pad, and boom. I was trying whether some pFairings of my Eve lander design separate clearly. They did not. As the fairings got stuck between some parts (fairing base, landing leg, short rockomax adapter), they conjured up the Kraken, which caused a phantom phorce to tip the lander over... Apart from that I did the usual stuff I do whenever the first transfer window to another planet opens: unmanned probes. One lander for Eve and a SCANsat and Ore mapping probe for a polar Eve orbit. I'm planning to send a SCANsat probe to Gilly as well, but didn't find the motivation for building it after the launchpad blew up. Also, the Eve lander is not ready, it still needs a proper transfer stage and launcher. I'll probably use NASA parts for that, so it'll still take a while, until I can afford to upgrade the R&D (not that I wouldn't have had the funds - before I blew up the launchpad).

Just to clarify a few things: On Linux and OS X the most commonly used 3D graphics API is OpenGL. (Nearly?) all 3D games use it on those platforms, and KSP is no exception. If your system has low OpenGL performance it is nearly always a graphics driver issue. If you haven't already, you might increase performance by installing the proprietary graphics drivers. On nVidia that's more or less mandatory, as the . With AMD the situation is different. Both, the open source and the proprietary drivers are developed by AMD employees, yet the open source drivers lack some features, as there are intellectual property issues with open sourcing some parts of Catalyst [citation needed] (the situation will change soon). So, while the open source drivers offer (much) better desktop integration, the proprietary drivers might, depending on the game you're running, offer quite some performance increase (an educated guess is that most often it increases performance by 50%, sometimes even 100%, in rare cases it also worsens performance slightly). For Intel there is only one driver available for Linux (not counting the recent work on a Gallium3D based Intel driver), so you're more or less stuck with it. Nevertheless, OpenGL is not the only 3D graphics API available on Linux. On some graphics drivers, namely those that use the Gallium3D driver model (in other words: the open source AMD driver, the recently developed Intel Gallium3D driver and a few drivers which are not really relevant on the desktop), even Direct3D 9 is an option. Nevertheless, as far as I know only Fedora supports gallium nine out of the box, with other distributions some manual work is required, that might very well end in a system that can no longer boot to a graphical user interface. As I've never set up a gallium nine installation, all I can do is forward you to the iXit website. But keep in mind, that for being able to use the direct3d state tracker you'll likely have to run the 32bit windows version of KSP through wine, severely limiting the memory that can be addressed by KSP...

Are you certain it's atmospheric absorption? Elsewhere [citation needed] it has been suggested that the temperature of solar panels affects their efficiency. Would you mind checking part temperature, for *science*?

What about an option: I like it, but use FAR anyhow? For me, the biggest benefit of the aero overhaul is that now the rocket engines are balanced in a way that doesn't make using FAR look like cheating. Previously one needed a lot less dV to get to orbit when using FAR, and now both, stock and FAR, are comparable.

I've been doing a lot of stuff lately. Today I upgraded the landers on my munar base with gravity sensors by using the KIS mod. I had to send two ships, as I completely forgot that the engineer at the mun station doesn't have any tools yet, as she was sent there before I installed KIS... So, she had a lot of new science equipment, but no means of mounting it on the landers... The other thing was a redesign of my minmus lander. I managed to reduce costs to about 2/3 of the previous value, but sadly my first attempt to launch it tipped on the pad due to a lack of struts, and the pilot got killed. At least the expensive scientific equipment survived... Well, the second attempt, which was using launch clamps, was a success, although I force-closed KSP when the to be placed flag touched the ship and made it fly away on its own... Luckily the game had saved right before that. On the weekend I managed to do my first landing on Duna with FAR installed. During atmospheric entry Jeb managed to keep the heading at retrograde, and during ascent the lander was surprisingly stable. Ah, and of course I launched lander and ship separately and docked them in LKO.

Oh, someone did that already? *immediately stops coding and goes back to playing KSP*

The question is: Do we ignore that various bodies in the Kerbol system obviously are of a much higher density than normal matter would be under the same gravity? If not, than most bodies in KSP would probably explode, as their very fabric would try to release all strain it experiences the moment real-life physics would set in... If we ignore this, and just assume that Kerbols planets are made out of black magic, then: Well, fellow KSP players, to the numerics mobile!

What you're describing sounds like you're running out of memory. If this is the case, it can have numerous reasons, the most likely (if your computer has more than 4 GB of RAM) is that you're hitting the limits of the 32bit address range. The easiest thing to do is to use the 64bit version of KSP, which is at the moment only available for Linux, but running KSP on Linux has its own issues, see the Linux thread. Sadly, for now on Windows the only option is to use less memory... As sarbian said, you might experience less memory usage in OpenGL mode, and if that doesn't work, you might be successful by forcing DirectX 11. If that's not enough, consider using lower resolution textures, and converting the textures from mods to .dds (I wouldn't do this by hand, as it's tedious, might break mods, and is error prone, as you'll also have to exchange colour channels in normal maps from RGBA to GGGR). The automatic solution for both is to use Active Texture Management.

I don't know about PS3 controllers, but with a PS4 controller it's as easy as to pair the controller and the PC via bluetooth. (At least on Linux) there are no special drivers needed, it works just out of the box (on a recent enough kernel). Only thing one needs to know is the bluetooth PIN of the PS4 controller, which is simply 0000. I personally prefer the Wiimote Classic Controller though, as it has four digital shoulder buttons, not two buttons and two analogue inputs.

I haven't checked the immediate surroundings, but imho this could be the interpolation bug regarding biome maps. Close to the border between two biomes KSP behaves strange, as the biomes are "colour coded" (sorry, I don't have game development experience, no idea how it's called properly), and KSP smooths out the sharp edges when upscaling the biome maps. If now the interpolated "colour" is closer to the "colour" of a non-adjacent biome than to both adjacent biomes, it leads to the observed inconsistency.

It's intentional, see the changelog. I didn't fail any missions yet because of it, as I always realized before launch, but the significantly reduced atmospheric performance of some rocket engines made me scrap several lander designs for Duna. I'm curious how my current one, the first I launched, will behave once it's there.

I'm playing hard career, so no reverts or quickloads, and a lot of careful planning instead. This also means, that I'll do unmanned missions whenever possible, in order not to risk Kerbal lives. Up to now: 1 dead Kerbal and a few (probably 3 or 4) failed unmanned missions. But: I've used force-close several times to prevent KSP from saving after a bug caused a mission to fail. For instance when the Service Bay Kraken ate a part of my space station, or after I found out the (rock) hard way that (at that time) FAR had a bug that prevented changing parachute predeployment pressure during flight... Also, I'm playing with FAR, as it offers some tools to check the aerodynamic feasibility of a craft before launch, making the game a lot easier.

I sent off my ship and probes for Duna and Ike. I'm still not sure that the Duna lander will work with FAR, but Jeb is going to find out . Furthermore, I finally finished my mun station. I also learned that it's rather easy to clip a Kerbal into a lander with 1.0, what will send the Kerbal breakdancing across the surface with body parts glitching out of the EVA suit...

I had several spontaneous disassemblies of my munar station, which I undid by force closing KSP before it could save, until I realized that the torque created by reaction wheels in the service bay caused the bay to clip into the fuel tank. Disabling the reaction wheels seems to have solved the issue. The parts in the bay aren't clipping into each other, as far as I can tell.

Same issue as reported by DuxDucisHodiernus: The latest development build destroys all running missions. The ships disappear, the crew gets marked as missing in action. If it helps, here's a complete error report: My Spec: OS: Gentoo Linux AMD64 multilib CPU: AMD FX-6350 GPU: R9 270X with Mesa Gallium3D RAM: 8 GB KSP version used: 1.0.2, started using the 64bit Linux binary. Where did I get FAR? Latest dev build from Github, master branch (commit: 9a69b589de24f4e37ba6d3f416ea83edc012965d ) Other mods: Module Manager Modular Flight Integrator What steps I took to produce the issue: Fresh KSP install (1.0.2 Linux version), with just FAR dev build and the dependencies Start new sandbox game Launch a craft (can stay on Kerbin - I just rolled a command pod off the launch pad) Go to VAB, load a craft (can be the Autosaved craft just launched), open the FAR dialogue, press the "Sweep AoA" button, and boom... What happens? All tracked objects disappear, all Kerbals in crafts are marked as missing in action. What's supposed to happen? Nothing special, crafts just shouldn't disappear... What is running the background? KDE desktop, Dolphin file manager, Firefox, cwiid (a wiimote userspace driver), Konsole. Full list: http://pastebin.com/C4twqL3C Player.log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx3gTbeJuJRWVnlFX2VzQ29tZHc/view?usp=sharing

If you don't like the new aero, I'd recommend to try FAR. This might sound crazy, but imho FAR indeed makes launching rockets easier than stock. The atmosphere is even less soupy with FAR (=even slightly lower dV requirements), and the gimballing range of all rocket engines is buffed by a factor of 1.5. This makes it much easier to keep even unstable rockets under control. Apart from that I can only repeat what others are writing: Put fins at the bottom of the rocket, don't do rapid turns (keep your heading within the surface prograde marker), make your payload aerodynamic as well, at least until you get a feeling for how bulky payload may be to still keep the rocket controllable,...

I finally managed to do a perfect landing on the runway. I don't know for how long I've been playing KSP, sometimes with, sometimes without FAR, but I've always sucked terribly at landing planes. I've been using planes in my last hard mode career save for survey contracts, but I must confess that I never even tried to land at the runway, and went for my own personal runway instead - the flat part of the polar ice caps. Now finally, in sandbox mode, after I don't know how many reverts, I finally did it. I managed to fly around the KSC in a FAR Blitzableiter, and I landed it on point and in one piece, without quicksaving just before landing. Now I need to train my landing skills, so I might eventually one day be able to use spaceplanes in hard mode career. But until I'm able to land with a close to 100% success rate, I won't risk the life of any of my Kerbals. In my career save, I extended my station in munar orbit. It now has plenty of fuel, living quarters, and a 2-person lander (the extra seat is for tourists who want to land on the Mun). Next I'll bring up a lab module, and a 1-person lander. Also, I did my first tourist landing on the Mun, that also brought back enough science to unlock the lab module.

Although I don't really know why, yes it happened to me once that a mod doesn't work correctly after simply converting the textures to DDS format. This nevertheless happened only in one case, the other mods were working fine even after simply converting their texture files. I'd say, just try converting and if something breaks, reinstall the mod. As implied above, yes you can do this for almost all mods. I personally can confirm that TextureReplacer is working fine using .dds textures in 1.0.2. Nevertheless there is one thing you need to keep in mind: The color channels for normal maps are different for DDS normal maps. PNG normal maps are (afair) in RGBA format, while for .dds normal maps you'll need to convert them to GGGR before converting them to DDS. I'm a friend of simple tools, so I'd recommend to use ImageMagick. If you're using Linux, chances are extremely high that it is already installed, and all you need to do would be to run convert INPUTFILE.WHATEVER -define OPTIONS -flip OUTPUTFILE.dds The options you can use are: dds:cluster-fit=true|false Enables the dds cluster-fit. dds:compression=dxt1|dxt5|none Sets the dds compression. dds:mipmaps=value Sets the dds number of mipmaps. dds:weight-by-alpha=true|false Enables the dds alpha weighting. There are of course other tools available, for more details see the DDSLoader thread. Anyhow, I personally got bored with converting textures manually, and simply installed ActiveTextureManagement, which will convert all textures to .dds automatically the first time KSP is being run after installing ATM.