Mister Spock

I'm doing a rescue mission without patched conics. I got my rescue ship within about 19 km of the stranded Kerbal, but I still couldn't target the stranded ship, even though I could see its pink "target" crosshair in the main map. How close do I have to get to target it so that I can enter target mode and complete the orbital rendez-vous? To be clear, I'm not asking for a tutorial on how to do an orbital rendez-vous; I've done countless rescues and docking operations in the past. But I've always had the benefit of patched conics, and this time I don't, so I can't click on the target or its orbit and enter target mode. (That is, the mode with the target in pink on the navball.) Thanks in advance.

Is the first, low-res altimetry scanner grayscale only? No matter how I set the color palette and related options, I get a grayscale map. I am playing with New Horizons, scanning Kerbin; the scanner says its altitude is optimal. (My orbit ranges from 130km to 300km.) Thanks for a great mod!

Thanks for that suggestion, @OhioBob. I might try that. We'll see how things go.

Yeah, I'm a bit worried I overdid it on the financial difficulty for this game. I don't care for grinding, either. So far I've managed to do mostly interesting stuff and still make money, but if it gets grindy, I'll rethink. Can one adjust the difficulty level mid-game? I suppose there are mods that do that.

Thanks, @OhioBob. For what it's worth, my upgrade costs are all at least double that, probably because I chose "Hard" difficulty (though I did enable quicksaving/reverting, and I nudged science yields up over 100%). E.g., my Launch Pad costs 150,000, and right now I have 168,000 to my name. Money is very tight for me at this level of difficulty. Nothing that some contract-grinding won't fix, though.

@cantab: My contracts are certainly breadcrumbing me to Sonnah's SOI. I have several contracts to put satellites in particular orbits around Sonnah. I'm just not sure I can risk taking one (and using up one of my two precious Active contract slots) without any KSC upgrades yet. @Snark: I didn't realize that science rewards are scaled down in the Sonnah system. Good to know! I actually kinda like the idea that science is a bit more spread around. I'm certainly looking forward to doing something different than my usual Mun/Minmus expeditions.

Thanks, Snark. So you wouldn't bother with the EVA upgrade yet? There's yummy science to be had with EVA, but yeah, my rockets won't take me beyond LKO without a launchpad upgrade.

Many thanks for those very helpful replies. Playing with New Horizons certainly throws a monkey wrench into this issue. In stock, I could probably make my way to the Mun without patched conics, but in this mod, I have no idea where I'm going! So patched conics are a huge priority. On the other hand, in either stock or this mod, I'm not going much further unless I upgrade the launchpad and VAB, and I don't have the funds for the VAB upgrade, so I lean toward launchpad, as Dfthu recommended. On the other other hand, I'm about to unlock manned space flight, which I assume might lead to rescue missions. I'll need EVA for those, won't I? And to collect soil samples from KSC/Kerbin, I certainly need EVA. So, I think I might unlock manned missions, see what contracts I get, and then decide which upgrade to do first. Anyway, it's an interesting first decision. In the past, money's been so easy for me, I haven't had to think hard about upgrade priorities. This time, it's a significant choice.

Which KSC upgrade do you recommend doing first? I'm using the Engineering Tech Tree and New Horizons mods, so my career has been all unmanned so far. I still haven't unlocked manned space flight, though I'm about to do so. As it is, I can orbit Kerbin and conduct suborbital flights to earn cash and science. (Making orbit with less than 30 parts and 20 tons has been a fun change of pace.) But I suspect the part limit and especially the weight limit will make it tough for me to go beyond Kerbin to these mysterious New Horizons celestial bodies. I'm playing on Hard mode (except I've enabled quicksaves and reverts), so money is tight; I have 168,000 hard-earned funds to my name. Anyway, right now I see two leading affordable candidates for upgrade: the 150,000-fund launchpad, to let me use bigger boosters to increase delta-V; or the 150,000-fund astronaut complex, to let my Kerbals take soil samples and whatnot around KSC for some juicy science. What do you all recommend?

Tremendous idea! I'll give it a try. I have long wished for a mod that would give us something to do with science points once we've unlocked the whole tech tree. Thank you for making this.

I second the vote for Kerbal Construction Time. Adds a new dimension to career. Also a contracts mod or two, like severed solo's Bases and Stations (formerly Kerbal Space Station) or the Progression Contracts Mod or some such.

Thanks very much. Maybe I'll wait for my next career game, then. Thanks again.

Is this contract pack compatible with New Horizons? How about Severed Solo's Bases & Stations contract pack?

I'm loving the mod so far. One mod I haven't installed yet is Karbonite. The OP says it's supported, but I see that Oronzo recently had some trouble finding Karbonite, and KillAshley is looking into it. Should I go ahead and install Karbonite now or wait?

I like your forum name!

Magico13, thanks for chiming in. I hadn't realized that KCT now has a simulation-only option; that sounds great! I'll check it out. In general I loved KCT; I just thought I'd try a game without it for a change of pace. But the sim feature is pretty awesome. Thanks for the thread suggestion, mcirish3. That looks like a useful thread. Maybe I'll contribute to it if my current modlist works out. And so far I'm quite happy with that modlist, which I developed thanks to suggestions in this thread. The core mods are the Engineering Tech Tree and New Horizons. I'm also using DMagic's Orbital Science, Nereid's Stockalike Station Parts, severedsolo's Kerbal Space Station contracts mod (which I think is being renamed Stations and Bases or some such), Planetary Base, Antenna Range, Final Frontier, and my usual utilities (KER, PreciseNode, Docking Port Indicator). I love seeing that ringed planet of New Horizons; can't wait to visit it. And the tech tree spices things up a lot. I feel that I have more choices at every branch of the tree, and thus tougher decisions to make. You start unmanned, which is cool. Mind you, I haven't gotten very far yet; I got stuck because I failed to research the unmanned octagon thingie, and without its SAS I couldn't get my Sputnik craft to fly straight. After a restart, I beelined toward the octagon thing, and now my rockets can reach space.

Career for me too. I like the sense of progression it brings. My main concern with it is variety, so I try a different modlist every time through. This time New Horizons and Engineering Tech Tree are the centerpieces, and it feels very different so far, which is great.

Cool. I guess I'd need to adjust my BIOS to boot off the flashdrive first. I have lots of USB devices attached to my PC; I don't know if that process would slow down my normal boot-up. I suppose I could unplug the flashdrive when I didn't want to boot to Linux. Or install Linux on my external HDD, which I usually leave turned off, and turn it on when I want Linux.

Actually, I love the idea of running it off a flash drive. You mean, say, an 8GB capacity thumb drive, connected to the PC via USB, yes? Will it run fast enough if it's using USB? I have an i7 930 quad-core @2.8GHz, 12G RAM, an SSD with only 4GB free, lots of USB ports (but not sure they're all USB 3.0). Also, I gather you think Lubuntu is the flavor of Linux I'd want?

OK, you talked me into it. What the heck. I'll give New Horizons a try.

Will do. Thanks!

Really? That's an interesting possibility. But if I chose to use a HDD, would I best-advised to find some space on my SSD, or would Linux work ok off a slower HDD? And yeah, I want Linux only to play KSP, though I imagine I might fall in love with it and want it for other stuff thereafter.

Sounds great, @severedsolo! I love your pack, and I'm about to start a new career game with some new mods. Will these be compatible with your mod? My partial list includes Probus's Engineering Tech Tree, DMagic's Orbital Science, Nertea's Stockalike Station Parts and Universal Storage mods, and maybe the Kerbal Planetary Base System. Thanks for all your hard work on your excellent mod!

So is there any place to see a rough estimate of which mods use how much memory? Mods with lots of parts are the worst, yes? Or environmental mods? Also, suppose I wanted to install Linux. How much hard disk space would I need? Windows takes up much of my relatively small SSD, but I have lots of space on my slower hard disks.

Pretty ingenious torus-making. I might try my hand at it. Though I dimly recall that there was a mod that supplied a torus or a ring. Am I mistaken?