wossname

Are there any mods that give you a realistic ground-track shadow for a solar eclipse? I would love watching the Mun's shadow sweep across the planet Kerbin.

My only mod is Kerbal Engineering Redux (version 1.0.16.6) on KSP version 1.0.2. It seems quite easy to reproduce this bug, but I think it is a nasty one, although I can recover from it by "wiggling" the ship around a bit with RCS. Wiggling is a technical term. 1. Build a rocket with a tall fairing at the top and add 6 radially attached long fuel tanks in such a way that the fairing shells will collide with the fuel tanks when the fairing gets jettisoned. 2. Get in a vaguely circular orbit, 100km will do, the altitude seems unimportant. 3. Turn on SAS, throttle down to 0% and kill all rotation. You just want to be drifting and holding attitude. 4. Add a new manoeuvre node say 10 minutes ahead of you. 5. quick save here for convenience. 6. Jettison the fairing - ideally you want at least 1 of the fairing shell parts to get tangled up in your ship between the fuel tanks. 7. switch to Map view and enjoy the weirdness that has infected your manoeuvre node GUI. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out and you'll see that something is very wrong. On my machine (even with KER disabled) this happens reliably with a fairly typical "asparagussed" rocket. If you have RCS you can try moving in reverse to attempt to free the tangled fairing shell part. Once the shell is clear of your ship the problem seems to go away and all is back to normal in the map screen. I noticed that while the shell is tangled in the ship, I cannot use time warp to get rid of the shell fragments (as you can with a clean jettisoning) because it complains of "cannot warp while in flight over terrain" error message. Also the blue orbit path does not appear when this particular bug is in effect. Sometimes the shell parts don't look like they are touching the rocket, but SAS seems to be trying to do some heavy corrections very fast, the ship appears to be vibrating slightly, although it remains responsive to user flight controls (yaw, pitch, roll etc). Pitching hard up seems to throw the shells out of the way sometimes, unless the shells are actually clipping through the ship and then you're in trouble. This has happened twice with two different ship designs (although the placement of the parts is similar). edit: This bug can also happen when in sub-orbital flight above the atmosphere, which might explain the terrain remark above.

Any parts test that takes longer to load the launchpad environment than to perform the contract is a pain in the bum.

I hope nobody from the Fan Art forum sees this.

The "Aftermath" video is rather an excellent way to revive his channel. Looks like he's on vacation for another month now (sounds like he needs some leisurely downtime) so we can get busy firing up the hype train for his inevitable KSP 1.0 adventures. IMHO, this guy does some of the most cinematically beautiful KSP videos out there. Long may it be so.

I'd say don't be afraid of using SRBs as an assistive force while launching. It's a good idea to have a vectoring liquid fuel engine in the middle to provide some level of thrust and directional control but it's great to have the brute force of the SRBs to get you off the ground ASAP. Use some struts to ensure the SRBs don't flap around and tear your ship to pieces. If you have roll issues, then look carefully at the symmetry of your design - are your SRBs twisting? Add more struts if so.

I wonder if you're colliding with something else before you get to the docking distance. Try adding a couple more octagonal struts to push the docking port out a bit more (sometimes size does matter!).

Nice landing! Looks like fun, I'll give it a try.

Sounds like fun but perhaps not suitable for newbies (I used to be one not long ago, I remember the pain and the electro-shock therapy after landing)... IMHO, there are too many constraints on the lifter stage to make this an "easy-to-moderate" challenge. Currently it's more like a solid moderate with many fiddly details.

I'm still waiting for the contract that goes something like... "Jettison annoying d-bag hipster tourist into the cold, dark void while in high Jool orbit for +1,000,000 funds and 4000 science."

Real fairings use pyrotechnic charges to break open don't they? So yeah they are a bit like grenades.

I think whoever is responsible for the fairings in 1.0.2 is to be profoundly congratulated. This feature is really slick, and the GUI implementation is pure eye-candy. I've been sitting here just waving the mouse around in front of the fairings to reveal the contents. Back and forth back and forth over and over for probably 15 minutes, it's quite hypnotic and, in the true sense of the word, awesome. Beautifully done. And they make getting funny shaped stuff into orbit a heck of a whole bunch easier I can tell you.

Yes, and the victim rescuee seem to be still inside a wrecked command module - this allows new types of rescues - unmanned rescue craft with Klaws to drag the craft back to LKO and have the rescued kerbonaut attach his own parachutes (perhaps with KAS).

I only payed £22 for my copy, this is very cheap for such an excellent game (in my no doubt dubious opinion as a complete shill). You, however are complaining like someone who, either paid a lot more for it, or has no other difficulties in their life. It's just a game, lighten up, go play something else.

You know you play too much KSP when: you begin a new sentence with a SPACE.

Try a gradual gravity turn starting from a few seconds after launch. You may find that turning SAS off might help with controlling the craft (SAS tends to fight against the atmosphere and makes your job harder). By the time you hit 10,000m altitude, you should be just passing through 45 degrees of turn. The turn should be smooth as possible from start to finish. This is hard to do with a keyboard - I use a joystick to get nice smooth analog control and I find it much easier than keyboard alone. You can't just "take a right turn at the cloud" to get into orbit any more And do use the small fins, they will aid your stability without having the SAS turned on.

I think that most people able to play KSP to at least a basic level are able to understand this. 96% is less typing also. Holy crap that's a high score.

Are we to assume KSP version 1.0.2 for this?

KER is the only mod I cannot live without. I have not installed anything else since 1.0.2 came out. KER is a major aid to my being able to get anywhere in KSP. Long may it remain.

I have fought tooth and nail with KSP 1.0.2's new features. I persevered with what I felt initially to be a losing battle and now I think that the technological curve is finally leveling out and delivering HUGE science rewards. My first simple lander to the Mun and back (recovering as much science as possible) yielded more than 450 science from a single landing site! With these points I was able to buy the procedural fairings part. This is revolutionary! With a fairing it is hugely easier to get into orbit. Make it a priority if you are struggling!

I've just consulted the book of knowledge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_circulating_currencies) and a few amusing "K" prefixed possibilities present themselves. Perhaps Squad have something in mind for future versions?

Is there a name for the currency used in KSP? It looks like "\F" in some of the screens and like a square root symbol in other places. What's it called?

I am trying very hard to ONLY play career mode in KSP 1.0.x. I'm finding it to be a grind. Not pleasantly so. Before 1.0.0 the career mode was way too easy. A skilled player could literally earn enough science points to buy the entire tech tree in two or three launches (Scott Manley did a good youtube series on this). However in KSP 1.0.x the difficulty pendulum has swung back in the other direction, and been nailed, glued and welded there. I don't really know what to think about this though, ambivalence is my main reaction to the current career mode. I like to have goals to reach for and I like to follow a story or at least a progressive path toward something worth working towards. I enjoy sandbox too but it somehow seems aimless and lonely and ultimately goal-less. But I do like making massive space stations and de-orbiting them for no reason. Sandbox is splendid for experimentation and making utterly insane things. Feels like the latest release of KSP has set the difficulty curve higher for career mode than many players (new or old) are likely to be interested in. I hope that in the long run this isn't the case, since the career mode is a very promising gameplay dynamic, but it *still* needs a lot of fine tuning.

Sorry I asked.

I've changed my strategy to the following... Do nothing but get all the local science data that can be had with the Flea engine and take the most direct route through the tech tree to get the "Aviation" category parts - this has wheels and wings! I reckon this is a better jumping off point for spamming science points since I can just taxi around the KSC and visit each building in turn. Hmm, wonder if the swimming pool is it's own biome... I managed to get 33 science points by using this rather odd looking contraption... Crank the thrust limit all the way down to the lowest setting (seems to be 5.5%) and tilt it up very steeply (but not quite vertical). This will then gently accelerate and you can steer easily and govern the speed by using the brakes. There is enough go juice to visit the astronaut complex, the R&D centre, the tracking station and the VAB in one trip. That was enough to go back and buy some of the earlier tech tree items I had done without in order to grab the Aviation parts. Bootstrapping FTW