Norcalplanner

Chapter 1 - Getting Started Because starting a career involves retreading a lot of well-worn ground, even for something in a new system, I'm going to keep this brief. Here are the settings: All other settings are fairly standard and/or default. The KABOOM Kronicle begins with the launch of Argus I, a classic fleahopper design. Although Jeb tried to make it to the ocean, the limited delta V meant that he fell short of his goal. Seems like a good start. With a fresh infusion of funds and technology, Val is chosen to leave Gael's atmosphere with a two stage solid-only rocket, the Argus II. Alas, this also fell short of its goal, topping out at 54 km before falling back down. Hopefully this won't turn into a pattern. The Argus II is modified by adding another Hammer to the bottom, making it a three-stage rocket. Clearly, KABOOM has lofty aspirations - however, I don't think we're going to stay on this curve of adding another stage for each new rocket. Argus III sallies forth, and finally makes it out of the atmosphere with Jeb at the controls. After hitting a peak altitude of 180 km, Jeb falls back to Gael. He's fortunate that KABOOM administrators were also using this flight to test a single radial drogue chute, as he might not have slowed down in time without it. The Argus III came down through some lovely clouds, courtesy of SVE and Scatterer, with their custom tunings for GPP. Funds are spent upgrading the pad to allow larger and heavier rockets. With that improvement and a fresh contract for reaching orbit, the Glorious I is sent skyward. Jeb may have been first to space, but Val will be first to orbit, if all goes well. This new design uses a two-stage central LFO core with the recently-unlocked Terrier engine for the upper stage, and four small SRBs courtesy of SpaceY. Getting to orbit in 3.2x generally takes around 5.3 km/s of delta V, so this is a bit bigger than typical first orbital craft. Looking good so far. Staging the SRBs, which promptly came back together and exploded shortly after this image was taken. Staging the bottom LFO stage. A good ol' LVT-45 powered the bottom half of the central core. Success! Val has made orbit! Although the planet is re-scaled in this save, the atmosphere remains untouched at 70 km in height. Val tried raising her Apoapsis to gain additional science, but forgot that high space begins at 1,000 km in this save. With battery power rapidly depleting and only 200 m/s left in the tank, she heads back down after only a single orbit and safely splashes down. With orbit in the rear view mirror, the preliminaries are over. Time to start doing more interesting things... in the next chapter.

The KABOOM Kronicle: (Mis)Adventures in a 3.2x Scale GPP Modded Career The Plan: I'd had this idea rolling around in my head for some time for an epic career playthrough for my fictitious space agency, the Kerbal Administration for Big Overpowered Orbital Machines (KABOOM). Inspired by the likes of Shania_L's 64k space program, Eddiew's c'logs, and the Ussari space program, I'd decided to keep a diary of this career and share it in a mission report thread. I got things started up, and had played through what would have been the first eight chapters or so. Things were going well, and I was about to start posting mission reports. Then Galileo's Planet Pack came out. Holy moly, this thing is beautiful, and big, and new, and interesting. This... this... this is the piece I had been missing. As someone who has played KSP for years, the idea of having new places to go and explore is simply too powerful to resist. With both a heavy heart and joyful anticipation, the modded career in the Kerbol system was abandoned. After a bit of fiddling, a new career save was born using Galileo's system. Exploration will now commence from the new homeworld of Gael. The revised plan is found below. Major features of this career are as follows: 3.2x scale (for a proper sense of grandeur and to make things a bit harder – delta V requirements are multiplied by 1.8) without use of SMURFF, RealFuels, or any procedural parts TAC-LS (to make things a bit harder) Stage Recovery (to make mission planning and craft design more of a challenge, and save some funds) Kerbal Research and Development (to make things a bit easier in 3.2x in the long run, and soak up science points so there's a reason to keep exploring) Karbonite and KPBS for more self-sufficient infrastructure A variety of parts mods, mainly by NecroBones and Nertea Strategia and Contract Configurator for mission variety Other quality of life mods and prettifying mods Goals for this career: Build lots of infrastructure – if in doubt, send satellites, a station, and a lander Mid game goal is to colonize both of Gael's moons; end game is to colonize at least two other planetary bodies (one of which should be Tellumo) with fully self-sustaining infrastructure; and visit all the anomalies we can find along the way Do something major and cool I've never done before, such as a big circular station with many docked ships, or a huge surface base with dozens of Kerbals Build a surface base in a somewhat inaccessible place, such as a moutaintop or in a canyon Use some new mods or ones I haven't used in a long time, including KPBS and TAC-LS Bonus objective – put boots on every body for the first time since 0.90. KABOOM's (brief) list of roleplaying rules: Only seasoned test pilots (Jeb and Val) may be hurled upwards by a purely SRB lifter. Stages should be designed for recovery to the extent possible. Any stage not intended for recovery should be minimal, ideally consisting of one engine, one tank, and one decoupler. Kerbal R&D shall be limited to improving parts consistent with known or reasonably foreseeable physics, chemistry, and materials science. Improvements to LFO engines and SRBs shall be limited to stats (such as Isp and TWR) found in real-world rockets. LV-N use shall be limited to vacuum environments. Whenever there are more than five million funds in the bank, new impressive things must be built to bring the total back down to four million or less. The Kerbals want to feel like they're getting their money's worth. Use an interesting naming system. No more of this uninspired “Mun Lander 1” or “Kerbin Station 125 km” stuff. No more than three LFO cores using crossfeed may be used for any launch, similar to a Falcon Heavy. One final thing – I reserve the right to introduce universe-altering cataclysmic events. While the Kerbals are still shaking off the effects of being teleported to Gael, things may still change even further. Everything might suddenly inflate to 6.4x scale, or Rald may replace an existing body, or even more planets might suddenly appear. While I'll try to save all the Kerbals I can and salvage infrastructure to the extent feasible, there will likely be some level of loss and reconstruction effort after any cataclysms which may occur. With that, let's get to it! Chapter 1 - Getting Started Chapter 2 - Leaving LGO Chapter 3 - Paying the Bills Chapter 4 - Iota or Bust Chapter 5 - Setting out for Ceti Chapter 6 - Speeding Towards Destiny Chapter 7 - Interplanetary Preparations Chapter 8 - Turbo Time Warp Chapter 9 - Interplanetary Arrivals and New Stations Chapter 10 - Evacuate and Begin Anew Chapter 11 - Back in the Saddle, and an Icarus Encounter Chapter 12 - Hermes Space Program Chapter 13 - The Probes Have Landed Chapter 14 - Thalia's Curse, and Something Completely Different Chapter 15 - Interplanetary Preparations (aka Thalia, We're Heading Your Way) Chapter 16 - Lili Investigation, Boots on Thalia, and a Side Quest Chapter 17 - Our Heroes Return Chapter 18 - Niven Bound Chapter 19 - Boots on Niven, and the Chariot Returns Chapter 20 - Karborundum Space Program Chapter 21 - Gael Exploration Chapter 22 - Kerbals on Icarus, and The Beginning of The End Chapter 23 - Ending on a High Note - SSTO to Tellumo

Please open up the game in sandbox mode and load one of the included pre-made rockets to see how the included decouplers and interstages work with this mod. They attach to hidden nodes inside the appropriate tanks for each rocket.

I'm using Sigma Dimensions at 3.2x scale and most everything seems to be working fine. I did have to remove the extra KSC++ / KK stuff as it was spawning in the wrong place and interfering with things. Although in all honesty, I haven't used the runway yet.

Question @nightingale Would it be possible to make the massive scale launch strategy levels additive, similar to some of the other strategies? I believe that right now (away from computer atm, so please forgive any errors) that you don't get any reward for 20 tons in orbit if you have level 3 of the strategy active. As it is right now, I rarely use level 3 since it's more lucrative in total to use level 1 or 2, for which far more of my launches will meet the criteria.

It was really a poorly worded suggestion. I'm sure I'll forge my own Tellumo adventure in the next week or so.

Could you land once at high altitude, then explore with a rover or a plane you brought along?

Be sure to grab SpaceY Expanded if you want to go bigger. The Penguin series of orbital engines are great, and the tanks and big lifter engines now go up to 10m.

NecroBones has made some really good stuff if you're not familiar with it - check out SpaceY, SpaceY Expanded, and Real Scale Boosters. The last one in particular uses real world stats that makes building big a lot easier. True five-segment SLS SRBs? Yes, please. Edit - I used SMURFF at full lever with all these mods in RSS (no RO), and was able to set up a large lunar base, orbiting Moon station, and land multiple unmanned probes on Mercury.

Sounds challenging - you're brave and/or a bit insane for trying it when the base GPP mod is already a lot larger than stock before the rescale. I'm running Kerbal Research and Development, so my part stats will increase over time as I spend science on them. Still nowhere close to SMURFF, though. Delta V requirements are only 1.8x stock in a 3.2x rescale, so I think I should be able to handle it with a few modifications.

Loving this mod! Just started a Sigma Dimensions GPP career on Sunday, just finished a flyby of Iota, and am now planning to scan that moon, to be followed by unmanned landings. Once everything is verified safe and feasible for Kerbalkind, we'll be sending some grizzled veterans to check it out. Here's a shot of my SCANSat / lander combo heading up. Running 3.2x scale, 0.4 on the terrain ( results in 1.28x standard), no changes to atmo or clouds, and increased Ciro's brightness slightly to 0.6. Also running 71 other mods, including some I haven't used before or haven't used in a long time, like TAC-LS. I'm really enjoying that feeling of discovery again, which I haven't had in quite a while. Well done, Galileo and Co.!

Yes, that's how Sigma Dimensions works. If you're doing a 10x scale (RSS-ish) then I'd try 0.2 or 0.25 for landscape. It will be somewhat flatter than stock, but definitely better than no increase in height at all. I've also found that deleting the "rescale clouds" config to be worthwhile, so the clouds stay around 6 km where they're supposed to be. BTW, just started a 3.2x GPP career with Kerbal Research and Development in addition to most of the recommended mods. Kerbal Konstructs was a casualty, however, as everything spawned in the wrong spot after Gael was plumped up.

Really enjoying this YouTube series. Well thought out, with calm and insightful narration.

Away from the computer at the moment, but the methodology used for the turn is described in the OP of the original (RSS) version of the thread. There are some steering losses during the initial tilt, and hardly any during most of the burn, and I noticed when completing those burns that steering inputs from MJ were practically nonexistent. The majority of the steering losses actually occurred during the circularization burn, which goes to show the value of a proper ascent with a very small final burn. In my testing, if the final burn to achieve orbit is less than 100 m/s of delta V, then it was a good ascent. The important thing is that it was the most replicate-able method I could come up with to test my thesis regarding the impact of a single additional degree of initial tilt.

I tried RO, but ultimately decided it was just a bit too much work for my taste. I did have a a blast for a few months in RSS with SMURFF at full lever, including landing three probes in three different biomes on Mercury (thank you, Strategia) and a fully functional Moon base with refueling capability and a 70-ton Moon orbital station. My current project is a 3.2x scale career modded with Kerbal Research and Development. I strongly suspect that there's going to be a dimensional rift which transports the KSC to Gael sometime in the near future, although the scale of the Kerbals' new home is still TBD. Might go up to 4x or even 6.4x, depending on how improved various parts get with KR&D. Your rocket sounds awesome. I myself am a fan of the big boys - here's the Nova Heavy I made with RSB in RSS: Each of those cores is 12.2 meters, with a total of 24 F-1Bs, plus 14 Ariane V SRBs to help get it off the pad. Payload was an 890 ton fuel depot. In RSS. Back on topic, I'm really liking the look of GPP and can't wait to try it out... just as soon as I get back from the holiday trip I'm about to embark on.

cough (Sigma Dimensions) cough

My quick back-of-the envelope calculation says that a craft would need need 7,500 m/s or so of delta V to land on Tylo, and then another 7,500 m/s to get back into orbit. Probably next to impossible with stock parts, but could be doable with a staged lander using RO or SMURFF.

I shudder to think of what a 6.4x Tylo would be like. Establishing a base on that would be EPIC.

Looks like a good time to trot this out again... While these are not true gravity turns, the general concept is the same. The most efficient ascent in stock at 1.57 initial TWR was under 3,100 m/s of delta v.

So it sounds like the solution is simple - Squad, could you please make auto-switching of nav ball modes a toggleable option? Thanks. And in the meantime, anuone habing trouble may want to check out the SmartASS function in MechJeb. The more I play, the more I love that function. I'm pretty sure that if MJ was reduced just to SmartASS and a button for "execute next node" that I'd be quite happy.

Yeah - RoverDude has removed that ability for balancing purposes. My old post is outdated now.

If you tweak your rule to say that you will never plan any mission where a Kerbal is going to spend extended periods of time in anything other than Hitchhiker or MPL, then you're still good. The rescue contract was an unplanned event, so it sounds reasonable that he would be grateful enough to put up with suboptimal living conditions on his way home, especially if he's only one guy in a 2-man can.

I've always loved space and space stories for as long as I can remember. At the risk of dating myself, seeing Star Wars in the movie theater when it opened altered the trajectory of my childhood. Soon I added other things to the repertoire - Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Lego space sets, Star Trek, Cosmos, various PBS documentaries, Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon, The Martian, you name it. KSP scratches a particular itch like nothing else I've ever played, providing an outlet for creativity, engineering, clever design, and accomplishment for which I have yet to find an equal. As someone with an analytical mind, I've always enjoyed figuring out where the lines cross in a given subject - cost vs. simplicity vs. capability vs. flexibility vs. aesthetics vs. pure unadulterated awesomeness. KSP provides an opportunity for this sort of mental exercise in spades.

I'm enjoying this, but it's very different without the parts inventory. My build times just don't seem to be coming down very quickly compared toy previous KCT experiences, because I've always been really good about recovering my dropped stages. It's taking awhile to adjust to the new normal. :-)

EddieW's recently completed "c'logs" had RoverDude's Alcubierre Warp Drive Mod as the ultimate goal, which cost 100,000 science points to unlock the node. And regarding R&D being overpowered, all it takes is a bit of creative thinking. I just started a new 1.2 career with R&D using stock parts in 3.2 scale. With all delta V requirements around 80 percent higher, the incremental improvements in R&D will be very helpful. I'm also limiting myself to real world figures in terms of Isp - for example, LFO engines will be limited to an atmo Isp of 350 and a vacuum Isp of 460, and LV-Ns will be limited to a vacuum Isp around 1,000 (which is about all NASA thought they could get from a solid core nuclear thermal rocket).