Norcalplanner

Awesome. Thanks. Not a huge issue for me at the moment, but I understand the desire to get something working properly.

Working well so far. I'm using SETI, OPM, KCT, SCANsat, and a number of other mods. The only glitch so far is that I can't use the Anomaly Surveyor contract pack - the way points were a few hundred meters off, and since you have to a) be EVA and b) be 10m or less from the waypoint, I couldn't complete the first contract to go to the top of the control tower on the island airfield because the way point was hovering in the air away from the tower. Everything else appears to be working fine so far. I'll let you know if anything odd happens.

I'm running a 3x career (and loving the challenge of 4,000 m/s reentry using stock parts) and set landscape at 0.75. It looks nice, but I already lost one pod on reentry when it crashed into a mountainside at 12 km ASL. I may lower it to 0.67 or 0.5 - and pay more attention to where I'm coming down.

There was also a challenge for how fast you could go before leaving Kerbin's SOI. Here's my entry for that, at over 31 km/s - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/102973-stock-kerbin-space-speed-record/&do=findComment&comment=1835484

Sigma88, Thanks for all your work! I just started using this mod, and having a blast. Just one question - how are solar panels affected? I'm running a 3x save, and would like to know (hopefully without running a bunch of in-game experiments) just what the power dropoff looks like.

For me, it's: Civ 5 EU IV Skyrim Fallout New Vegas Fallout 3 Medieval 2 : Total War Mass Effect series Dragon Age L. A. Noire Hoping to upgrade my computer and give Fallout 4 a try sometime soon

This had been discussed a little bit in the tutorial thread linked in my signature. I have the rules almost done, but can't spend as much time on KSP these days as I'd like. If someone is willing to co-judge with me (since there will be frequently be a few days at a time when I don't do anything KSP), or if people are OK with a delay in the scoring, then I can get it up and running by the tail end of this weekend. And yes, it will be called "The Cheap and Cheerful Rocket Payload Challenge".

It's my understanding that a Z170 mobo generally has 20 lanes available. With a single graphics card using up 16, that should leave 4 for the SSD.

The more I think about the weighting mechanic, the less I'm worried about it. Why? Because it means that there's a "hook" into the contract system for modders to use, and everything will turn out OK in the end.

LV-Ns are really expensive in career. Putting a terrier under a Rockomax 16 works great as a Mun lander with around 3.5 to 4 km/s of delta v. Randazzo's VX series engines are also great - there's a 40 kN 1.25m engine, and a 120 kN 2.5m engine, both optimized for vacuum, which I use all the time.

Does anyone have any experience with how well anomalies are handled in the various resizing mods? I'm looking to do a new career game in the 2x to 3.2x range, but also want to go anomaly hunting with the appropriate Contract Configurator contract pack (either Anomaly Surveyor or K-files). It would be really disappointing to finally make it to a particular anomaly, only to find it hiding deep underground. Currently using Hard Solar System 2X, bUT the first contract is to go to the island airfield, which is now hundreds of kilometers away. Kscale 2 appeared to work, but wasn't compatible with OPM. Any advice would be welcome.

Looks very interesting! I'm going to start a new career with this and let you know it goes.

Good to know. Sounds like I should be able to do a mild over clock while still keeping noise and heat down. On video cards, is there any benefit at 1080 x 1920 to going with a GeForce 970 over a 960? Looks to me like there's not much difference until you jump to 1440p, but the memory bus jumps from 128 to 256 bits between the two models.

Don't have a computer in front of me at the moment, but I recall seeing a comparison where boot times were 38 seconds with the PCIe SSD vs 52 seconds for the SATA SSD. There's also a chance that I'll end up using this computer for audio recording and mixing (I'm a musician), in which case I'll probably need all the help I can get.

It's only possible to cheat in the context of a challenge with clearly defined rules. Otherwise, have fun. Personally, I take pride in never having used infinite fuel or Hyperedit. I get great satisfaction looking at photos of my own missions and craft knowing that "I launched that sucker and flew it to where I wanted it and did what I wanted to do" while respecting the limitations if the game.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I've decided to hold off for the moment until 1.1 drops, but I'm now leaning towards an i5-6600K. I don't think I can justify the extra $150 to step up to the i7-6700K at the moment, but things may change in a month or two. One thing that I've definitely decided to get is a PCIe 3.0 SSD - holy crap, those things are fast with a Z170 chipset.

If you doubled frame rates from an OC'd i7-920, then that bodes very well for my moving up from an OC'd C2Q9550.

So I'm starting the process of speccing out a new computer. Largely for KSP, but also for newer games like Fallout 4 at 1080 x 1920. I've looked at plenty of reviews and charts on Tom's Hardware and other sites, and feel like I have a good handle on the overall direction I'll be heading. The big question in my mind is the difference in-game between current Skylake CPUs and older Haswell versions, in both i5 and i7 flavors. Which ones are better in KSP? Currently leaning towards i5-6500, but am open to suggestions. Definitely want this new system to be quieter than my current one, so I'm leaning away from overclocking. Or should I just wait until 1.1 drops before committing? Also, would there be any benefit to KSP, now or in the future, by going with a Nvidia card with Physx instead of AMD? Money not really an issue, but obtaining good value is. Something a step or two behind the bleeding edge with a lower price point and more of the kinks worked out is my preference.

I like it, but it's really too powerful to use as an upper stage engine above a single Mammoth. Keep the Isp where it is, reduce or lose the tank butt, and reduce vacuum thrust to 900 - 1200 kN or so (with a commensurate decrease in mass) and you'd have a heck of an engine. A bonus would be if you then have landing legs big enough to have the option of using the engine as a larger, more powerful Poodle.

KSP has provided a series of joyous, can't-wipe-the-grin-off-my-face moments. First launch. First leaving the atmosphere. First orbit. First successful recovery of a Kerbal who had been in orbit. First Mun landing. If I had to choose, though, it's a tie between two very similar events - getting back into orbit around Tylo after a manned landing as part of my first Jool 5 mission in 0.24; and getting a Kerbal back into orbit around Eve as part of my Eve Rocks mission in 0.25. Good times.

After thinking about this, I think the solution is fairly simple - have two selections (maybe with new personalities associated with them) in the administration building for "celestial body of interest" and "program focus". It could cost some currency of some sort to choose each one or change it to something else. Then it would feed into mission control somehow, and guarantee that at least two or three of the currently offered contracts comply with both criteria, and half of the remaining contracts are associated with at least one of the two criteria. An example is probably worth a lot here. Let's say my program has gotten some kerbals to space, and now I want to go to the Mun. I go into administration, pay some sort of currency, and set my celestial body of interest to "mun" and my focus to "exploration". The contract internals will now require at least two in the next batch of contracts to have something to do with Mun exploration (flyby, explore, plant a flag, etc) and half of the other contracts to do with either one or the other (such as explore minmus, or science from the Mun). If i want to keep exploring, i simply choose a different celestial body (such as duna) and I'll start seeing exploration contracts for duna. Or if I want to stick with the mun, I could change my program focus to science, or infrastructure, or tourism. You could even set it up so that different levels of administration building unlock different celestial body options (tier 1 is just Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, tier 2 adds Eve and Duna, and tier three adds everything else) or program areas (tier 1 is exploration and science, tier 2 is tourism, tier 3 is infrastructure). You could also set it with prerequisites, so that you have to focus on mun or minmus before eve or duna. It's late so I'm not sure how much sense this makes, but I wanted to write it down while it was still fresh in my mind.

So just to be clear, does it have to be detachable? Or can I send up a solid 100+ ton station using KJR, assuming I can overcome the aerodynamic issues with the lifter?

Might want to put your display area further from the pad so the vehicles are out of physics range when you launch. Unless my information is bad and they fixed this, in which case the placement looks great!

I second this. Editor Extensions is your solution for any odd number of radial parts. I remember launching a 3.75m center stack with 9 or 10 Kickbacks around it back in 0.90. Good times.