Wanderfound

Hunt up some old Moffat vs Brock footage. Worth the time. The GTHO vs Cooper stuff was the best: the Falcons would annihiliate the Minis on the straights, but the Minis would make it all back during the corners. In the last thing I saw at Amaroo Park, the lead was neck and neck Falcon vs Mini for the whole race; the Falcon won in the end by the trick of keeping his car sideways across the track for the entirety of the last lap. Bathurst also used to be a multi-class race, with everything from factory V8 professionals to club racers in commuter hatchbacks all running at the same time. It was like one of those "weave through the slow traffic" levels on Forza.

As per the title. Kerbpaint (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50008-0-23-KerbPaint-Paint-layering-for-parts-%28September-23rd%29-%28Same-Old-Still-Works%21%29?p=650669&viewfull=1#post650669) is unmaintained zombieware, and has been for some time. It's held together with patches and string, has a user interface that wasn't very friendly to begin with and is subject to an assortment of irritating bugs. Downloading it requires hunting down several patch packs, installing it requires the removal of archaic files from subfolders, and running it appears to substantially increase the crash-happiness of my laptop. But the functionality provided is fantastic. Whether you're building simple rockets or flashy spaceplanes, Kerbpaint massively improves the look of the game. It's yet another of the "why isn't this stock already?" mods. So: anyone feel like throwing together a new and improved Kerbpaint replacement?

Gave up on Bathurst when the V8 boys had their bad-loser tantrum after Godzilla won and banned everything modern. Production racing I like, antipodean NASCAR not so much. The best bits of Bathurst were always the contrasts between cars with differing strengths: a Mini Cooper vs a GTHO Falcon, an RX-7 vs an HSV Commodore, etc. With that gone, the race lost much of its appeal.

FAR is having some issues. Wait for the next release.

This does match with my experience since the update. I don't know if it's due to heavy wings or not, but I am struggling to control pretty much anything above 25,000m, regardless of what the analysis screens say. Lack of lift and dangerous stalls at small AoA's. I can get to orbit, but it's a chore. It almost feels like flying in stock aero again. I'm pretty much focussed on rockets and career mode until this shakes out. Kerbodyne SSTO Division is taking a temporary holiday. The dev build looks promising, though.

Got something good in the works. High-tech and expensive, but very ​effective.

I just came close to invoking destructible buildings in career mode. Because funds were tight, I'd been using a lot of SRBs. Because Ferram's wings are now super-heavy, I'd been skimping on the tailfins. Result: Mun launcher flips at about 1,000m above KSC. Never mind, I've got an abort system for Jeb...but wait! The rocket is flying straight towards the VAB! Jeb must continue battling with the controls, struggling to hold the nose up long enough to clear the buildings. With the SRBs finally running out of juice, KSC now safe and the rocket a few hundred metres off the deck, Jeb ejects his lander and pops the chutes, settling to the ground while countless tons of rocket rain down on the paddock south of KSC. Fun.

I was about to complain about an "impossible" contract: flight survey in the mountains west of KSC with a ceiling of 2,000m. Then I found the hidden valley with the 1,950m floor. Fun.

I know, I've got similar. Working well enough to do the job, but require constant nursing on a slow climb to orbit. And I have to stick to small-winged designs; no more long winged jumbo lifters for now. I miss my fire-and-forget speedsters. The tweakable mass patch in the dev build is very promising, though. Potential for a whole new level to consider in design; as fast or tough as you like.

Thrust and fuel limited RT-10, probe core, materials bay, goo pods, parachutes. Fire off a dozen in different directions from KSC.

Currently nigh-unusuable in Ferram, though. Anything big enough to carry one is too heavy to fly well at altitude. Fighter wings ain't good for spaceplanes.

Design appropriately: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1447848&viewfull=1#post1447848 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1447848&viewfull=1#post1447848 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1447838&viewfull=1#post1447838

Agree that it needs improving in stock, but, as always, there's a mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50143-0-23-5-Editor-Part-Highlighter

Wing strength and weight were both massively increased. Your planes are now all hugely overloaded. It appears that a fix is being sorted in the dev build.

I highly recommend that you all grab the dev version; the tweakable wing mass thing is brilliant. Easy way to calibrate: test fly and do something suicidal. If your wings don't break, they're too strong. I'm finding .25 to still be very solid. (note, however: dev build. Niggles still being sorted out)

Having a play with the dev version. The tweakable wing mass thing is brilliant: it adds a whole new level of depth to design. Strong trainers and aerobatics planes, ultralight fragile speedsters, middleweight cargo workhorses, etc. Either this was your secret plan all along, or you've just stumbled onto a very positive feature. The only niggle is that the scale is set way too far to the right. I'm using wing strengths of 0.25 or so, so I'm trying to pick values from a tiny portion of the left of the bar. 0.25 is still too heavy, but 0.05 is a bit too weak. No options between those two. A numeric input and saveable default would be nice.

FAR dev build with tweakable wing weight available at https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research

However, also: the current release of FAR has massively increased both wing strength and weight. This means that small aerobatic things are much easier to build and fly, but large cargo stuff is much harder to construct and tricky at high altitude. There may be a patch in the works to make the strength/weight tradeoff a tweakable.

Another keyboard flyer here. Controls: tap, never hold unless you need absolute maximum pull. You've got three control settings: normal, precise and trim. Most of the time you should be using normal (after trimming for level flight), controlling the turn by altering the rate of your taps. If the situation is so extreme that this will break your wings, hit Ctrl to engage precise controls and keep tapping. Holding down a button with precise controls on gets you just as much turn as without precise control, just a bit slower, so don't do it. If even precise controls are breaking your wings, use trim. Alt-up or whatever and again, tap tap tap. In all cases, watch the G-meter more than the nav ball. When it approaches dangerous levels, stop tapping and wait for it to settle. Aim to keep it steady rather than surge and plunge.

Because people have been whining to Ferram about aero failures for years, usually with some variation of "but fighter planes can do it!". Methinks Ferram is making a point: he gave us fighter-strong wings, but also fighter-heavy wings. There's a bit in the current dev build to turn the weight/strength thing into a tweakable. Hopefully shouldn't take too long to hit the main release.

The current version of FAR has massively beefed up wing strength but also massively beefed up wing weight. The end result of this is that small aerobatic things are much easier to build, but large heavy lift things are much harder to build. Fighter-strength wings are no use on a hypersonic cargo plane. There's a patch in the works to make the wing weight/strength tradeoff tweakable, but until it drops there'll be a lot of FAR flyers struggling to make those lovely new cargo bays usable. For now, expect a lot of small planes and air-breathing vertical SSTOs, but less in the way of big wing stuff. However, Kerbodyne does have something for you if you're itching to get a cargo bay flying. If flown right, it'll get to orbit with half full tanks as usual. However, it's not quite as fast as our usual fare, and it requires active piloting throughout the flight. Keep the nose close to prograde, expect to have to do a climb & bounce while you build speed, and turn the Vernors on whenever the handling gets tricky. Anyway: the Kerbodyne Velociraptor XXV. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmk9qnt9kyhtn7y/Kerbodyne%20Velociraptor%20XXV.craft?dl=0

Ask, and ye shall receive. Praise be unto Ferram.

Should it be possible to get aerodynamic failures on parts inside a cargo bay? I've had a few batteries go bang.

Do control surfaces include weight for hydraulics?

You're going to hate this, but I'm already wishing I could trade off a little durability for weight. When I took 'em for a snap test, it took absolutely suicidal flying to do it; they handled 15g aerobatics without a twitch. Something halfway between original and current would be perfect. I wonder if it's possible to turn strength vs weight into a tweakable?