ArchGaden

+1 for no fairing launch Make sure the center of mass for the rover roughly sits above the center of thrust for the launch vehicle. This may require a new attachment point on the rover. Add a ton of struts. You can strut between the rover and the launch vehicle as struts will break away when the stage separates without issue. Due to the rover likely having uneven drag, you may need more control in the launch vehicle. This can be acquired by adding wings to the lowest stage. The extra drag will eat a bit more fuel, but its a drop in the bucket at this point. For the launch, the safest option is to go up slower and start turning at 30km. Bring 5-6000 d/v worth of fuel for total of the launch stages and you should be fine. You can get away with earlier turns depending on how much control the launch vehicle has. An earlier turn and greater speed (to an extent) will let you get away with less fuel. I've launched a few big mining rigs with the huge wheels before... even the largest fairing wouldn't fit some of them. Generally a combination of going up slow, turning late, adding control surfaces, and bringing extra fuel will let you put anything into orbit. Of course, if you're on a tight budget, using fairings and properly designing a launch vehicle will likely be the better way to go (if fairings even fit)... but you're really going to have to put some effort into that. Although, a late turn after using some hefty solid-state boosters can cut cost a bit as well.

With science lab, you can just pile in some data and go do other missions. You come back weeks later and collect data... no baby sitting required! That does lead in to a good question. Would this hypothetical stock real-time scanning require baby sitting in time warp? Or could you just setup the orbit and then go do other missions? Kethane could not scan while unfocused due to a limitation in how unfocused vessels were treated. I'd be okay with real time scanning IF I didn't have to sit around in timewarp to get the data. If I can setup the satellite, active scanning, then go do a dozen other missions while the data piles up, that would be fine. If I have to sit there and timewarp for weeks/years to scan a body, that would not be fine, I'd mod it out in a heartbeat. One point I realize now, if we do go to real-time scanning, it would actually somewhat reduce the challenge involved. A polar orbit is required to get a full scan of a body, but in practice, you don't need all that data. You really only need the location of a handful of good sites, which can easily be accomplished with an orbit or two of any inclination, no polar orbit required. In fact, you're better served with an equatorial orbit revealing data from landing sites that will be most easily acquired by incoming vessels. This is how I dealt with Kethane's limitation. I'd never bother with polar orbits and baby sitting... I'd just warp for an orbit or two in whatever inclination I happened to arrive, and pick a few good sites from that data. I didn't need to adjust and spend fuel hitting a polar orbit at all. I don't think challenge fanatics have a leg to stand on here.

You have to be a good distance away from planets and moons to activate. For Kerbin, this is 900km I think. When the drive is actually active, you'll see a big warp bubble. It is a bit of a beast to launch and you'll want to bring other propulsion with you to move around once you get roughly where you're going. Make sure you disable other engines when using the warp drive. Make sure you disable the warp drive when using other engines. If you don't, you'll mostly just waste fuel, but it could get violent as well.

Grabbers. They're like universal docking ports!

I-beams and most structural elements are heavy. If you're going heavy, you might as well just throw on some RoveMax XL3s instead. I say 'instead' because you can mount the RoveMax on structural fuselages or fuel tanks and still reach the ground with plenty of clearance to keep your vessel safe. Structural fuselage is only 0.1t... compared to 0.38 for an I-beam, it practically sells itself! The RoveMax mega-wheels are practically indestructible for any rational use. Structural fuselage weight is low, so you can spread out a bit and make a wide-stable design. Then you can cover some distance without having to drive timidly. Bring some silver cake spray so you can chrome up before the drive. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/RoveMax_Model_XL3 http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Structural_Fuselage For big mining rigs, I generally mount the ISRU in the center and stick a big SAS below that, which acts as a mounting ring since parts don't want to attach to the ISRU. I'll fix four structural fuselages to the SAS and then add fuel tanks, ore tanks, and fuselages to square off the design. I stick some rovemax XL3s wheels at the corner and fix some terriers for engines wherever they fit, as long as it stays balanced. I generally create an extension with a fuselage that will have a grabber on it, so I can refuel surface vessels as needed. My drill will be on the opposite side from that to keep a better balance. A utility bay a the top will have a probe core, RTGs, batteries and other small bits. A few big solar arrays will finish it off. The whole thing weighs under 20t and will have 2-3k d/v for the engines, allowing landings on most bodies, and for most moons the ability to get back into orbit and land again, sparing some fuel for an orbital refueling operation if needed. I've tried various combinations of the smaller rover wheels, hoping to cut my weight down, but a mining rig with an ISRU will have to be heavy, and only the XL3 can take that weight. I could go with 10+ ruggedized wheels, but those won't reach the ground from a fuselage, so I'll have to use I-beams and heavier stuff... resulting in a vessel about the same weight in the end, but with a higher part count and lower durability. The ruggedized wheels can hit a much higher speed though...so if you're going a long distance on the ground, that might be your best bet. I generally use the terriers and just fly out if I need to go a long distance though. I haven't tried some of the heavier landing gear though... that might be even better for my use cases.

I like the instant scanning. Having to wait around in timewarp wouldn't make the scanning more challenging. If it had some really nifty eye candy, like Kethane's crazy hex grids, it might be more interesting for the first time or two, but needless timewarp gets old fast. As an aside note, there really isn't much need to actually send up scanners at all. I always do it as a self imposed rule, because I like satellites, but it honestly doesn't matter much to me when I land a miner on the surface. I try and aim for rich deposits, but if I miss and land in a poor area, I still get some low ore %, which just means I'm mining in timewarp for a little longer to fill my tanks. *shrug* What would be more interesting would be special rare ores that could be recovered and traded for funds or science. These ores could appear in small pockets requiring effective orbital scanning to locate an approximate location, effective ground scanning to pinpoint a precise location, and off course, a mobile mining rig or precise landing to grab that rare ore. Rare ores could be things like platinum, iridium, fossils, unique minerals, ect. This way, it would still be easy to get basic fuel/oxidizer anywhere you go, but by really focusing on exploration and data collection, you could locate valuable resources to give your career a boost. Mining iridium from asteroids or hunting evidence of life on Laythe would be fun.

I expect some of the reasoning involves not presenting new players with a huge flood of numbers creating a confusing mathsplosion of an interface. When you start learning how to do more advance things, you realize how necessary all those numbers really are, and plugins like KER start to seem more mandatory. We're seeing some of that information work into the game in clever ways though (ie, Engineers Report and such). I'm sure the trend will continue.

Perhaps not, but your kerbals will be much happier with a world-class billiards hall, Olympic size pool, state-of-the-art fitness center, and IMAX theater. Consider showing them some appreciation later on when you've raked in untold millions.

You can go over the kerbal limit with rescues, but you will not be able to 'hire' them directly while at or above the limit. The limit is just for hiring purposes.

There are underlying bugs in KSP that can be revealed under perfect conditions.... and then there are times when the bug is in what seems to be a perfect design, but a high level concept that you don't account for comes into play. Of course, the biggest cause of rockets flipping now is aerodynamics when you reach a certain speed at a certain pressure that your design can't handle. Example 1) Attaching a probe core to the upper interior node of a utility bay. This looks fine on paper. 90% of the time I've done it, it worked just fine. 10% of the time, it results in a craft that wobbles out of control for no apparent reason. KSP bug! The workaround is to tweak the design to put the probe core in a different place, even if it results in a design that is less perfect on paper. Clipping parts in utility bays will cause issues much more often and more violently. Example 2) Any seemingly normal craft...starts to wobble slightly and the wobbles increase in magnitude until the craft shakes apart. No clipping, no bays, gimbal on engines reduced to avoid notorious SAS gimbal feedback loop... it all looks perfect. However, due to some particular aspect of the design that could not be accounted for by the simplified math we use for VAB design, the craft experiences harmonically constructive vibrations. This is the result of an effective KSP physics simulation. You could do the math for it IF you had access to all the joint physics values and the unity physics code, but the math would be on the same order of complexity as the math for real world materials engineering. Similar real examples of such failures are common in history... buildings and bridges falling over in low wind, because the speed is just right to cause a harmonically constructive vibration in the structure. Real designs have to suppress these vibrations. I get this from time to time when I have a reaction wheel too high above the center of mass... which is sadly where I want my reaction when to go at launch, as I prefer not to add big reaction wheels to the lower stages. Similarly, two reactions at opposite ends of a large vessel can cause a sort of jump-rope effect... not fun... or lots of fun depending on perspective. Example 3) You aren't flying a lawn dart design. You want to have a lot more drag at the back than the front. I've resorted to putting some pretty big wings on the first stage of some rocket designs just because they refuse to stay upright without them. Alternatively, you can throttle down a bit (ill advise) or fly straight up until you're mostly out of the soup (inefficient). The drag hurts efficiency, but markedly less so than having the engines pointed the wrong way. 1.0.2 aero seems to force me to put huge wings on the back of vessels. The designate rocket fins seem to be about useless... even slender profiles seem to need the bigger winglets at least.

I'm on win8 as well and I have no issue alt-tabbing in and out of KSP. It definitely isn't normal. If all cores go to 100% that is likely the game crashing, so there would be no way to alt-tab back to it. In ye olde days of winXP, I had some games crash when alt-tabbing, but that was fixed with video card driver updates at some point and I haven't seen an issue like that for years. Do make sure you're up to date on video drivers. If that doesn't help, you might want to try an unmodded KSP install in case one of the plugins is making it unstable. Or skip all that go right for the workarounds...but seriously, update video drivers at least if you aren't up to date. If you run in windowed mode, alt-tabbing won't be stressful to the system. It will hamper performance somewhat though... unless you go for fullscreen borderless windowed mode. Both NVidia and AMD have long since optimized their drivers to avoid rendering background windows when a game occupies the entire screen. Fullscreen borderless windowed mode gives you the all the advantages of both fullscreen mode and windowed mode, without any of the disadvantages. You'll be able to alt-tab instantly, get full performance, and not have a silly window border. Sadly, game devs mostly aren't up on the best view mode and rarely include that option. KSP is no exception. Fortunately, unity supports it though and you can force it on easily... or resort to a third part app to do it (which works with other games). To get that for KSP, follow instructions here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20894-KSP-in-full-screen-windowed-mode!-quick-n-simple-(windows-only) or use the app here (works with other games to) http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2675769

On my latest Duna mission, I had 4 vessels sent in. A science station, a lander, 2 ISRU miners. One of the miners was designed to land on Ike to mine and lift off to refuel vessels orbiting Ike or Duna. The other was built lighter with airbrakes and parachutes to aid with landing on Duna. Its purpose was to refuel the lander on the surface. The thing was... I made the Duna miner a little too light. I forget to add a drill entirely. Fortunately, I drastically overbuilt the Ike miner. I gave it those giant heavy rover wheels, even though it didn't need wheels at all. It was actually a design I use on my Mun and Minmus bases. It came with about 2.8k d/v (when ore is empty), which is plenty to land on Duna without parachutes. I was able to support the Duna lander with that to get on with the science and get my kerbals back up to the station. The station itself needed refueling before it could return to Kerbin though. To do that, I had to launch the Duna miner back to low orbit (dumping ore first), give it fuel from my other vessels, and fly it over to Ike for mining operations. It didn't quite ruin the mission entirely, thanks to a silly overbuilt mining rig, but part of the overall mission goal was to establish infrastructure for future missions, and only half of that is functional. I'll have to send a replacement miner for Duna surface.

I stand corrected. I think the existing ion engine is too large actually. We should have it scaled down to 1mm and only use it for orbital corrections on a single blinking LED. Seriously though, I'd like to have a larger ion engine to do exactly the kind of stuff I do with the existing ion engine, but scaled up. Mainly, I'd like it to be useful for sending larger probes to distant places.... or smaller probes to the same places quicker... or more simply, reduce the part count for missions where I normally use 4 ion engines. You can only get so far scaling down payloads. The scientific instruments have a fixed mass. - - - Updated - - - I have a breakthrough design to solve this. It is a larger ion engine composed of multiple smaller ion engines. Take 2 normal ion engines and mount them in parallel. You get double the thrust and double the power consumption! Alert the presses! What you're talking about is holding the reaction mass (Xenon) use constant and ramping up power. I'm talking about using more reaction mass along with the additional power. In that case, thrust, power consumption, and reaction mass use all scale linearly.

- Life support systems and modules, including long-term oriented things like greenhouses - 5M engines and parts - 2.5M LV-N, Ion, and Xenon tanks - Fuel hose for surface refueling - Articulated grabber (like the old Romfarer take on Canada arm and such) - Propellers and other moving parts

The times I've intentionally played stock where when I wanted the pure challenge of doing a mission without the help or hindrance of mods. A stock solution can be recreated by anyone, and knowing that seems to make it feel more legitimate somehow. Of course, beyond a few sandbox missions, the only reason I play stock is because plugins sometimes need a few days to work out compatibility with major patches. I can say without plugins, my playtime in KSP would probably be about 1/5th of what it is... a great bargain to be sure and still an amazing game, but just not nearly as amazing as it is now. When used properly, plugins can add convenience to certain redundant aspects of the game without making it easier, and add amazing new features well ahead of the stock game. Mining and refining fuel, better aero, and deadly re-entry heat are all features we got from plugins before stock had it. Life-support is still a plugin-only feature. My personal point of no-return with plugins was with Kethane. Too often, my big missions were devolving into countless routine refueling runs. You can only make a vessel so big before it breaks the game and deep space missions meant either insanely big vessels at launch (worse before 3.5m parts) or many ships docking in orbit to refuel at key points during a mission. So many routine refueling missions turned the game into drudgery. It was then I reasoned, "This isn't hard. The mission would be just as hard if I cheated to refuel at these points, but a lot more fun without the drudgery". I just couldn't bring myself to outright cheat though...and then I discovered the Kethane mod. It added a whole new dimension to my missions, allowing me to refuel without routine launch drudgery or feeling like I cheated. It even added difficulty to the game. I now had a reason to put satellites into polar orbit and land large mining rigs on distant moons. Building fuel infrastructure in advance of major missions was often more challenging than the missions themselves. Of course, I can fully understand how someone getting into KSP right now could shun plugins. All that cool stuff that was once part of my 'must-have' plugin package is now built into stock and stock feels much more like a complete game. On other hand, you're still missing on life support, robotic parts, and a lot of other cool stuff.