herbal space program

I'm jealous of all those fancy joysticks, but there's no way I'm going to re-learn how to fly after 1500 hours with my clunky old generic Nintendo-type game controller! [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][COLOR=windowtext][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][SIZE=3]FWIW, I’m left-handed, so I have yaw pitch on the left thumb stick, RCS translate up/down/left right on the right thumb stick, roll and RCS forward/back on the HAT. Throttle up/down is on the left trigger buttons, toggle RCS and SAS is the right trigger buttons. Reversing sides for right-handers would actually work better, because the HAT controller is easier to reach with your non-dominant hand that way.[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=windowtext][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][SIZE=3]Besides the fact that I’m more dexterous on the stick with my thumb than with my wrist, it also allows me to use both hands in a way that typical throttle/stick combos don’t allow. For new players, I would suggest trying that before spending a lot on a fancy stick.[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[quote name='KerikBalm']I was struggling to break mach 1 in a shallow climb with just 1 (everything was in one center stack, without the side stacks. Also, my design has no landing gear, and basically I throttle it up and drop it from a launch stabilizer (maybe I should try launching from the launchpad, as I can have my craft start higher there). With only 1 juno, I had to light rockets just to get it flying before it colides with the ground. I was also thinking of 2 junos and 1 spark. With 3, I could at least break 400m/s and a 15 km apoapsis I think ultimately, given the low airbreathing top speed, I may end up just with a pure rocket drone..[/QUOTE] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT="Arial"][COLOR=#000000]What I ended up doing, since they were not kind enough to give us any appropriate landing gear, was to put on the smallest wheels with reverse-mounted small hardpoints, then jettison the gear right after takeoff. I guess that breaks the official SSTO rules, but I think it’s a fair kludge given that the appropriate parts don’t exist and trying to drag the larger ones into orbit is a non-starter. For my part, I tried endlessly yesterday with various combinations of a one-stack design with 1 Juno and one Twitch or 6-8 Spider engines mounted radially. With the best Twitch configuration, I *almost* made it to LKO, managing one time to get to a 72km apoapsis and 3km periapsis (pictures later maybe). In that process, I think I also identified the Delta Deluxe winglet as the optimal main wing. That’s a little better than KerikBalm posted upthread, but still a good 100-150m/s short of making orbit. I’m getting a little tired of flailing away at this problem after spending half the day on it yesterday, but it’s so tantalizingly close I think I might just try with a 3-stack, 1 Spark + 2 Juno configuration before giving up. The Spark has just a little better thrust and ISP than the Twitch, but I don’t know if that will be enough to offset the added weight and drag of having a 2+1 tri-stack. Lastly, I think I can say that those small circular intakes are significantly draggier than the structural intake, although of course swapping those for nosecones makes everything weigh more.[/COLOR][/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

Wow! Not sure what your application for this thing is, but with that kind of TWR at takeoff, you could either boost a whole lot more fuel or drop half of those engines. At the TWR you have, I think a somewhat steeper ascent profile might prove more economical as well. You are speeding up so fast that your drag losses that low are going to become significant. But I must say it sure looks cool! There’s a thread in Challenges titled “lowest dV SSTM†where optimizing really high TWR ascents is discussed (disclaimer: the air was the Vulcan atmosphere of 1.0.4 ). The big impression I came away with from participating in that discussion is that the Mammoth engine cluster is OP! With its very high TWR and good ISP (for a rocket anyway), it can boost the most gigantic payloads. This ship, with a Mammoth and 6 Nervs, can make orbit with 4.4 km/s dV and a TWR of 0.3-0.6, depending on fuel remaining. That means I should easily be able to fly it to the Mun surface and back, although landing it would be challenging!

Thank you for that Pecan. I was feeling just a bit ill-used there, and I really appreciate the gesture. What you said was actually much more measured than some of the other “quit whining†comments. And as you said, the fun is in doing the hard stuff. I think I will just wait until they settle on their aero model before committing to any more 100-hour missions that are completely dependent on the design functioning exacttly as expected.

For my part, I think they should do a handful of things to enhance playability of the existing game, like some sort of basic multiplayer mode, some sort of additional content for the existing planets, especially in the context of career mode, and then pretty much call it done. After that, they can always add little free expansions to keep everybody excited, consisting of maybe a handful of new parts or some easter eggs. I know that they have to implement the new physics engine, but after that I think they should also stop messing around with the fundamental parameters of how things work. Then they should really take a step back and decide how they want to move the game forward. Once they’ve got a clear vision, I think they should set it forth and then offer everybody the chance to re-up to stay on board. I know I’d gladly cough up significantly more than the 20 bucks I had to the first time around to keep them at work making the game bigger and better. I guess like Streetwind suggested I can buy a copy for the Xbox too, although I don’t think I’d actually play in there.

First of all, I never, EVER said “the game is stupidâ€Â. Where on Earth are you getting that from? I expressed some disappointment that Space planes have now taken a significant haircut and some irritation that changes to the air have now broken all my designs six times in the last year. I think I am well within the bounds of civil discourse to express those opinions. There was no “rantingâ€Â, as Pecan dismissively pronounced, or any other invective against the game or the Devs. Secondly, I also never said it was now impossible to build any SSTO with >6km/s deltaV. If you’re willing to put up with monstrous, totally impractical, ugly, and/or exploitative designs it’s of course still possible. So what? Nobody has yet shown me a ship that can do what I was trying to do that has the same range. And truthfully, I’m far, far less irritated by the changes to the game than I am by the army of gremlins that comes out of the woodwork to attack if I dare to say anything that can at all be interpreted as negative. Don’t you guys have anything better to do? - - - Updated - - - Zomg. What is the TWR of that thing when it takes off?

I thought you might say that. But you have to admit it doesn’t look bad! I think in addition to the lower ISP with the tiny engines, if you want to go all 0.625m you have to take a hit on wing efficiency as well. I don’t think the Spark alone is quite strong enough to push even the smallest proper wings, so you’re stuck with using less efficient control surfaces for your lift. Perhaps that can all be overcome though, but it’s definitely a tougher problem. Do you mind if the Juno engine doesn’t actually make it get to orbit better than the same rocket would without one?

OK, so I got it to work with a Terrier and 4 Junos. Like I was saying, the Terrier has great vacuum ISP, but it’s just awful at the surface. While the Junos can’t really do much in the way of building up speed, they can lift the Terrier engine to ~7km, where its ISP is already about 285. With that much of a boost, the Terrier can just get it the rest of the way there. I’m sure I can still improve on this performance enough to de-orbit successfully, but I’m too lazy to do that now.

I would say show me, but it has to have at least 0.2 TWR on orbit or it's useless for what I wanted to do. And the challenge I was working on specifically forbade ISRU, so THAT is moot as well. The point is how far can you go, where can you land and return from, with no refueling. And personally, I'd say also with no abuse of massive cargo bays to cheat the drag model either, but I guess that's debatable.

I think the Terrier engine is the key to success. The Juno can lift it pretty easily to where I has near vacuum ISP . I've gotten very close now with 1 Terrier + 4 Junos.

That plane is not exactly useable for anything beyond what you did with it there, but I’ll admit that before saying the sorts of dV we got 1.0.4 aren’t possible, I should have investigated the Mk3 parts more. Of course that plane probably would have had 9km/s in the old aero system. Nonetheless, if I mentally put 4 more nukes on that plane to make it have a somewhat flyable TWR of 0.2 instead of a preposterous 0.067, hold my nose at the flagrant abuse of the cargo bay, put an actual Kerbal-containing cockpit on it, andgive it some solar panels, some reaction wheels, and some rcs, I expect you’ll end up with somewhere close to 6km/s on orbit with that monster. Still no landing legs though, so forget about any airless bodies with more gravity than Minmus. Anyway, I will now experiment with Mk3 some more before I pronounce the things I wanted to do before impossible. And thank you for at least offering something constructive to go with your "quit whining!".

Why is it that you don't feel others are entitled to express their opinions? Does this thread need your policing? All you are doing is antagonizing people with this type of comment.

My own fantasy would be to have executing all those orbital scan/surface contracts actually involve finding stuff. Let’s say you first get a contract to do temperature scans of the Mun at 3g-7608z. When you execute that contract successfully, you’ll sometimes, not always be told that you noted sme kind of an anomaly at a specific surface location. This will automatically trigger a surface exploration contract at that location that requires you to do some rover exploration to scout the area. When you successfully complete that, you’ll identify the one exact spot where the anomaly lies. That in turn will trigger a surface sampling (or better yet ore drilling) contract that will ultimately unearth *something*. “Something†could be some sort of unobtainium ore that perhaps lets you create an income stream or unlock some specific advanced technology. Alternately, it could be some kind of alien artifact that does the same thing, or that leads you to explore in a different location. Heck, it could even be some kind of humorous easter egg, like the Bob’s Big Boy statue with Dr. Evil in it! OK, that would be too cheap, but you get the idea! Having *some* kind of reward that goes beyond just the rep, science, and cash would make grinding through all that stuff immensely more fun IMO. I also think it could be implemented fairly well without all that much added effort from the devs.

I don’t really know how FAR interacts with the physics model in stock, but I’m pretty sure using it would make the transition different for you than for those working in pure stock. Looking at the changelog, my impression is that the higher drag in the upper reaches of the atmo is not because they actually increased its density up there, but because they’re modeling turbulence, etc. differently now, and that produces more drag in thin air and less in thick air. I haven’t actually checked this by taking up a barometer though. Also, if you are orbiting your ship with a relatively high TWR, like >= 0.5, then the new air really isn’t going to hurt you that much because you can blow through it without losing much steam. It’s really just the fine art of nudging a heavy, fuel-laden ship into orbit with a low TWR nuke engine that has suffered a grievous blow. These long-range designs were optimized to ship as little oxidizer as possible and make as much of the transition from air breathing to orbit as possible on the nukes. The way the air was in 1.0.4, their biggest hurdle was breaking the sound barrier. Now their biggest problem is their inability to push apoapsis up and out in the 30-40 km altitude zone against the increased drag. This can be straightforwardly fixed by shipping more oxidizer and/or less LF, but of course that way you end up losing quite a bit of range. That takes a number of really cool things one might have accomplished in 1.0.4 with fancy flying and good planning off the table. IMO these things were way too easy in 0.90, but in 1.0.4 I think they struck just the right balance of what was technically possible and what it took to achieve those things, making for some really rewarding challenges. Now the bar for those has been raised out of reach, which I guess some people regard as a good thing but it makes me sad.

Dood, people are entitled to ask for what they want. That’s what this forum is for!

I really liked the way the air was in 1.0.4, and I think it’s quite OK, in fact I think it’s important, for me to say so here. How else are the devs going to decide upon their final physics model except through feedback from this community of dedicated players? Every voice in this community should be heard, for their own good as much as anybody else’s. After all, they’re making a game that they want to be fun for as many people as possible. If you think this new air is awesome, then by all means you should express that opinion. But just telling people they should adapt is basically dismissing and invalidating their opinions. It’s a game, it’s not reality. Nobody’s opinion of what it’s like to play it is therefore any more valid than anybody else’s. I think everybody here should remember that. - - - Updated - - - TThe loss of body lift was only part of the issue. The main thing is they thickened the 20-40km band of the atmosphere such that a lot of SSTOs trying to make orbit with low TWR RAPIER-nuke configurations can’t do it anymore without shipping quite a bit more oxidizer. That considerably lowers the maximum range of SSTOs in general. Probably not an issue so many people have concerns about, but it affected my play significantly.

I'll weigh in alongside everybody who says what we really need is more stuff to do on all the planets. I got bored with building rockets ages ago, because there's just not much of anything for you to find when you get there. After doing Jool 5 in 0.90, I really felt like there wasn’t much left to do with rockets. Building and flying long-range space planes was quite a bit more fun, but now those have been nerfed half to death with 1.0.5, so there are fewer possibilities there. Having more cool stuff to find and do on all the bodies really would breathe new life into the game for me, as would having some kind of goal-directed narrative in Career besides just unlocking the tech tree. What’s the point of having the game be over the second you become capable of doing the most stuff?

I don’t want to belabor this too much, because what’s done is done, but honestly I don’t think having the very outside of the envelope for SSTOs being 6km/s of low TWR dV on LKO actually breaks the game. That SSTO may be able to reach any SOI in the game from Kerbin, but I don’t think it can even land on Moho, much less return from there, and it certainly can’t land on Tylo at all. Vall may or may not be possible, and Dres and Mun are doable but painfully. Not sure about Duna, but I guess that’s moot now. It also takes forever to make orbit, has an annoyingly low TWR, and has no docking port, no lights, no science capability, no ISRU, no comms, no cargo capacity, and room for only one Kerbal. It also flies pretty poorly. In fact, except for the one application of trying to land on and return from as many bodies as possible on one tank of gas, I’d say it’s actually a pretty lousy design choice! Anyway, the new air is the new air. I don’t know if the devs actually meant to nerf SSTOs with this complex update to the drag model, but that’s apparently the way it worked out. So much for my big plans. I imagine that when 1.1 comes out with the new physics engine, everything will change yet again, so I think I’m done trying to optimize SSTO’s until at least then. When they do finally settle on a model for their air, I for one hope it’s closer to 1.0.4 than this is.

Well I’m sorry to have gotten snippy about it. As a more or less dedicated SSTO builder, I’m just frustrated with the air changing every 5 minutes. I spent months working on a very specific problem – how to design the longest-range, useful (i.e. not purely ion-powered) crewed SSTO possible. Now, just as I was about to do this huge triumphant mission to visit Laythe, Duna, Minmus, and back to Kerbin on one tank of gas, Oops! fugeddaboudit! That ship won’t even make orbit anymore. Since the silent patch it’s not nearly as appallingly bad as it was initially, but still I’m looking at a good 0.8-1km/s haircut on how far I can go with an SSTO. Some may say such ranges are “not realisticâ€Â, but c’mon. The whole game is not realistic. If it were, it wouldn’t be any fun. For a very experienced player like me to be just able to wring that sort of performance out of an SSTO design, after months of tinkering and learning from others, was really quite gratifying. Now the possibilities are quite a bit more limited again, and “realism†notwithstanding, that is a drag for players like me, for whom these sorts of challenges are the only thing that still really holds any appeal. I dunno, maybe one of the threadmeisters who was proclaiming earlier how much better this air is for SSTO’s will come back and show us how to do it so that you can get the same or even better performance, but this time I rather doubt it. I don’t see how you overcome all that new air resistance at the top end. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to set the whole SSTO thing aside until they finally make up their bleepin’ minds about the air. Maybe I’ll try the caveman challenge or something… - - - Updated - - - Say what you will about realism, but there was nothing *easy* about making an SSTO that had 6km/s dV on orbit in 1.0.4. Throwing that word out there trivializes a lot of effort. That was the limit of what was achievable after several very experienced players put a fair bit of work into coming up with the best designs they could. And when you decide to spend that much effort on something like that, it’s kind of irritating when the goalposts get moved right before you can finish what you were trying to do with it. I think that’s understandable, regardless about what anybody else’s philosophy is about whether or not it should be possible to do certain things.

We're not talking about payload fraction, we're talking about dV. It’s not like we don’t know how to build a ship that can get to orbit. The question is how far can you go after that? The answer for all-RAPIER designs is not very far. When you are talking about a ship with 30 tons of fuel, here is no way you are going to overcome that 315 ISP by not lugging a 3 ton nuke into orbit.

Trying to figure out how to optimally navigate the new aerodynamic model. This will probably be true every day until the next update comes out...

As to the post, Sorry about that. I'm having all kinds of weird problems with the editor interface here and nowhere else. I’ve taken to pasting text in from a word processor, and no matter what everything posts in that tiny font. I don’t see any color tags when I look at it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was messed up in other ways. I guess I need to switch browsers for this forum. Anyway as to the plane, I’ll see how it works now. By the time that patch was applied, I had already given up on Mk1 fuselage-based stuff and was working with Mk2. There were a fair number of us in 1.0.4 working on high dV spaceplanes for long-range missions, and based on this thread none of them seem to be very happy. The thick atmosphere high up makes trying to circularize on the nuke engines quite a bit harder. Doing that is always a narrow-margin exercise, and that little bit of extra drag up there made it seem to me like I would have to increase TWR a fair bit, i.e. boost less fuel and/or ship more oxidizer. On top of that, while I could just get to 1500 m/s on air plus the nuke, I couldn’t sustain that speed to nearly the same altitudes as I could in 1.0.4, so I had to switch to bipropellant quite a bit earlier. It will be interesting to see later how getting the body lift back may mitigate all these problems. It also seems like they fixed the intake air situation with that patch, as I noticed I needed significantly more intakes to keep flying up high afterwards, but OTOH my range seemed higher once I had enough. If they’ve fixed it so that this thicker air now sustains combustion in proportion to its drag, then we might be in a different movie... ...So I went back to my old plane and tried it, and it’s definitely better than it was before the patch. Nonetheless, it still can’t make orbit the way it is and will need to ship more oxidizer. I suppose with the cheaper transition to supersonic flight, that might actually work out to more or less a wash. We’ll see...

I can’t seem to orbit my best long-range SSTO from 1.0.4 now either L. This used to get to LKO with almost 6km/s dV, sporting both RCS and landing struts. Now I can’t seem to get it into orbit at all. In addition to the lower velocity ceiling of the RAPIER, the thicker upper atmo makes my one nuke insufficient to make orbit from around 39km with a 45km Ap 45 seconds out, which is where I generally was with maybe 75 Oxidizer left before. Now I will have to greatly increase my TWR between 20km and 40km. I will definitely need ether more oxidizer or less weight to do that, inexorably reducing my maximum range. I don’t think the reduced intake drag is going to offset that. Bummer!

FWIW, I've been testing different front ends for my plane, and AFAICT the shock cone still has the least drag. At least it gave me the best takeoff speed and low atmosphere acceleration by a fair bit vs. the tail cone A or the 1.25m advanced nose cone. Not sure if they behave differently at the top end

I'd say it's a wash between the fact that if you launch the game without your controller plugged in, it STILL erases all of your control settings and the fact that ships on interplanetary flights STILL sometimes disappear (along with everything else) when you load them, so that they're deleted from the persistent save file when you relaunch.