Wanderfound

Dude: stop digging. You're hassling an extremely helpful volunteer because they asked that you provide the minimal information needed to help you. You are not Nathan's employer. You're not even his customer. He has no obligation to help you at all. Getting snippy with the mod makers is not going to end well for you if you continue.

How retro can we get? Ever experience the joy of bread & drippings sandwiches?

Incidentally, "force roll" seems to think that 0° is inverted while suborbital in vacuum, but normal while in atmosphere or orbit. Is this intended? Not really a problem, but it does waste a bit of RCS.

Stock aero is a distant memory, so I can't promise anything, but: try it without the down one. It may be pushing your booster back into the core.

Sugar water. That usually doesn't have enough rum in it.

Relax; no harm, no foul. Folks have been a bit snippy in general lately, and when you've been here for a while you do tend to see some things over and over again. It is worth having a read of things before posting, though, particularly the stickied threads. With challenges, aim for something that is: 1) Possible within the game. 2) Something that everybody can at least attempt. 3) Something that is fun to try even if you fail horribly. (I'd add a #4, "something that produces entertainingly explosive screenshots", but that's more of a personal preference thing)

Okay: Sepratron demo as promised. Note alignment of Sepratrons. One pair per booster. Launch: Decouple: Spinny: Same rocket decoupling while pitched over: You’ll want a few more Sepratrons if you're shifting huge things like LFBs, or if you’re planning on decoupling while pitched horizontally, but in either case: they work just fine if you set them up right. The decoupler thing is a bug that can be neutralised as simply as moving your Sepratrons a smidgeon higher. Yes, it's a bug, but it's as close to a zero-priority issue as you can get.

Okay: Sepratron demo as promised. Note alignment of Sepratrons. One pair per booster. Launch: Decouple: Spinny: Same rocket decoupling while pitched over: You’ll want a few more Sepratrons if you're shifting huge things like LFBs, or if you’re planning on decoupling while pitched horizontally, but in either case: they work just fine if you set them up right.

Endorsed. Using the tech tree to guide players into learning manually before automation is an obviously good idea. Keep the full range available in Sandbox for them that wants it. I wonder if there's an audience for an extreme version of BTSM? Start with Congreve rockets and unpowered Da Vinci gliders type thing.

As usual, screenshots would be a great help in diagnosing the issue. The self-undocking thing certainly does suggest a bug, though. Either that or an accidental quickload back to a pre-docking state.

Which is why I qualified it with "once you know what you're doing". And this is why I always pop in to object when people criticise some of the contracts (ground tests, etc) for being "too easy". They were set up that way on purpose; the low-difficulty contracts are there to give struggling newbies a boost. For those just learning: don't be too ambitious too early. Learn to enjoy repeated failure. Test things out on a small scale before investing in something epic. Consider using Sandbox mode for "simulations". Set up the Abort action group to kill engines, pop parachutes and decouple your capsule. Use the abort option before the rocket hits the ground. Try to build cost-efficiently. SRBs are your friend, especially when combined with thrust-limiting tweakables. Think laterally: defuel your test rockets, drive rovers into the ocean for splashdown tests, plant flags near the runway for navigation beacons, etc. I usually don't bother returning with data, BTW. Transmission is less efficient, but it's good enough most of the time. I know that KSP is a lot more difficult when you're starting; I left more than my share of impact craters and stranded Kerbonauts on the Mun while I was learning. My early attempts at rendezvous and docking could have been used as slapstick comedy. My first "successful" Mun landing saw the legs flex just enough to destroy the engine. The second "success" toppled over sideways just as I was about to go EVA. The "rescue" mission sent to get those guys somehow ended up out of fuel in a Kerbol orbit. My first space station had all of its docking ports mounted backwards. I once set up for a rendezvous around Duna with perfectly matched orbits...going in opposite directions. When I first started playing with perma-death on, it took me several campaigns before I managed to keep Jeb alive for more than a couple of missions (FAR + DR + early-tier tech + attempting to reenter in large, unaerodynamic Mun landers for the recovery value = good unplanned disassembly screenshots). The "Nintendo hard" factor is a major part of the appeal of the game; it's challenging enough to provide a real sense of accomplishment once you do get things done. My Facebook contained nothing but "I finally made it to orbit!" type posts for months. But, magically, Squad has managed to do this without turning it into an exercise in grindy frustration. Yay Squad.

I wouldn't give it too much weight; most of the time when I end up on someone's profile page, it's due to iPad fat-finger syndrome.

Give me a few hours and I'll post a demo. They do work when used right.

As above: there's no good reason not to jump straight to 24.2. Accidentally detonating a few dozen rockets on the launchpad doesn't mean that you're bad at KSP, it just means that you're experiencing the traditional entertainments of an early-stage Kerbonaut. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The bug has the SRBs rotating top-in a bit more than they should, but it's easy to compensate for. Just mount your Sepratrons a little bit higher than you would otherwise.

Not really; they work fine when set up properly. As others have mentioned, you need to angle them so that the exhaust doesn't hit the core. They are SRBs themselves, after all; they're fast burning, but they aren't weak. Don't try to kick outwards only; set them so that they push down as well as out, and bias the balance so that the top of the booster gets slightly more kick than the bottom. Using the alt key in the VAB to fiddle the angles in 5° increments is important. Once you get the hang of it, you can make your spent boosters do coordinated aerial ballet on the way down. If I get the time, I'll make a demonstration rocket today and post screenshots of how to set it up.

PS: don't be afraid to use F5/F9 heavily while you're getting the hang of it. Quicksave once you've set up a decent final approach, then repeat the landing a dozen times. Remember to take screenshots while crashing. Think of it as simulator training.

As above: land manually. Get yourself low and slow (i.e.: subsonic speed, < 5,000m altitude) before you reach the mountains west of KSC. Pop over those mountains and then drop back down to ~1,000m. Get lined up as soon as you can: the KSC runway is on a perfectly east-west orientation, so a target set to the flags or rovers you've left as nav beacons just off each end of the runway should show a bearing to target of 90°. If you've forgotten the nav beacons, KSC is midway up the east coast of the one that looks a bit like Africa. Throttle way down as soon as you get over the mountains. By the time you get within 10km of the runway, you want to be below 150m/s and only a few hundred metres off the deck. Try to touch down as slow as possible, but avoid overly vigorous manoeuvres once you're above the runway. Be prepared to do a bit of very gentle steering just after touchdown. Make sure you've unlocked the steering and disabled the brakes on your front landing gear. If you're flying with FAR, explore the use of flaps and spoilers.

If you've got the time, please give the new upload a shot. The thing that was wrong on the old upload was that several of the forward surfaces were set to affect yaw when they should not have been; this had a dramatically negative impact on stability in all axes. If you've got a version that is tuned as it should be, the only control surfaces affecting yaw will be the rudders. The outermost rear horizontal surfaces are ailerons set for roll only, pretty much everything else is set to work as an elevon. When working and flown as intended, it should be able to maintain a stable hands-off 20° climb within about twenty seconds of leaving the runway. I think the flight demonstration I provided with my entry show that it has adequate stability when set up as designed. My mention of roll instability just meant that you typically needed to level the wings before setting your trim just after takeoff; once you've done that, it should fly straight and level from then on. It is intended to be flown with SAS on at all times, and it's not designed to take extreme angles of attack during reentry. Use the spoilers and intakes to enhance drag in the upper atmosphere, get down to ~21,000m as fast as you can without burning up, and hold that altitude until you're down to about Mach 2. The nose should stay within 20° of prograde the whole way, and by the time you're getting heating effects you should be below a 10° angle of attack. There definitely appears to be something screwy going on with the action groups; the Aerospikes are certainly set to action group one on all of my versions. I never use staging at all on my spaceplanes. I've had missing action group weirdness on every plane I've tested so far, I think. I suspect industrial espionage. BTW, the major motivation for the Aerospikes was for use as propulsion in vacuum with higher fuel efficiency than the RAPIERs. Although I love the look and sound of turbojets, I'm starting to move away from them except for medium-altitude craziness. By the time the RAPIERs flick to closed cycle, I'm usually close enough to hypersonic that turbojets have negligible thrust.

RCS Build Aid. It does thrust alignment as well as RCS. Also allows simultaneous viewing of fuelled vs unfuelled CoM and measures the distance between the two.

Incidentally, it hits orbit with tanks half full, so you could easily swap some fuel capacity for another four passenger cabins out on the engine nacelles. That'd bring it up to two crew and forty passengers, all in a practical and flyable package that won't melt your computer through Whackjob-style part counts but can fly in atmosphere at better than Mach 10. Munar VTOL capable, too. Also available in bulk cargo configurations.

I do. :-) The Minmus ice races draw large crowds, and that's not even counting the construction crews needed to build the grandstands... I figure it should also have some usefulness for the folks messing around with Duna colonies and such.

Better organisation in the VAB/SPH menus makes most of that issue go away, however. Sort by theme, sort by most used, customisable ordering and show/hide options, making the damned names visible while you're looking through the parts (the pictures are too small to see properly anyway, just give me a list with columns for name/cost/weight/thrust/ISP/etc), fixing the misbehaving pop-up part info screens that obscure what's behind them and refuse to go away, etc. My preferences aren't too far off yours; I uninstalled KW rocketry about ten minutes after getting it because I just didn't need that much clutter. But it was the clutter that was the problem, not the parts. Whether it's parts or contracts or difficulty modes or whatever, I'll reliably vote for expanding options as much as possible; let everyone play the game that they want to play. But smooth interface design is a key part of making that work.

Can't be bothered spending twenty minutes guiding your Kerbals to their seats in economy class? Do your passengers object to riding in an unsealed cabin for some reason? Then you want a Kerbodyne Migration Aerotrain. Flight details essentially identical to the original Migration (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1370535&viewfull=1#post1370535). Download craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/bx2otm4w0gj8gij/Kerbodyne%20Migration%20Aerotrain.craft?dl=0

I know that this doesn't always always apply in KSP, but: look to the real world for inspiration. Yes, you'll see plenty of planes with big engines way out on the wings, but they're usually things intended for long-haul high-altitude level flight while carrying bulk cargo (whether that be boxes or people or bombs). They're trading off manoeuvrability for the sake of interior space. It can work for a fast intruder (e.g. de Havilland Mosquito), but it's very easy to get it wrong (e.g. Messerschmitt Bf 110). What you've built looks like a cool plane, but the shape of it is more high-speed interceptor/penetrator rather than low-altitude ground attack. You've got a MiG-25, but it sounds like you're after an A-10.