wossname

Here's my attempt: Launch Price: 253,846 Mass when final stage fuel runs out (no further mass changes possible): 15,840kg My vertical speed a fraction of a second before lithobraking on Minmus was reported as 6,787.4m/s over Minmus' "Slopes" biome. I don't know if my screenshots provide enough information to calculate a score, so I'll let you decide... http://imgur.com/a/zBZdv#0

Hi guys, Here's my entry... 20.5m high - assembled on Kerbin (x5 multiplier), landed in Minmus's lesser flats... Has enough fuel to return to Kerbin again (I think, I haven't tried going home yet). Name of craft: "Kalexandria II" Total score: 102.5pts. Mission Log: http://imgur.com/a/c0ePy#0 ------ Edit: yep, landed back on Kerbin with only minor damage...

Yeah that's totally fine. The rules are deliberately pretty relaxed, I just want people to have fun really.

Yeah, actually I think that's what I meant when I wrote the above post. Do'h, I'll edit it now, thanks.

Stumbled on this earlier today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_AD-1 This aircraft is a variation on the swing-wing concept - the difference being that one wing sweeps forward and the other wing sweeps back by the same amount. In other words the wings are on a turn-table on the roof!!! RULES OF CHALLENGE: 1 - no cheats. 2 - FAR is ok as long as you declare you are using it, we'll have 2 leaderboards, one with one without FAR as is customary by now . 3 - Kerbal Attachment System and/or Infernal Robotics mods are allowed (probably necessary?!). Basic challenge: 1 - Your MANNED (Kerballed) aircraft will take off from KSC runway with wings in normal configuration (both wings at 90 degrees to fuselage). 2 - Attain a stable altitude of 5000m and then swing your wing (clockwise or anticlockwise, whichever you like) by at least 45 degrees. 60 is preferable. This will be "eyeballed" from a well-positioned screenshot! 3 - Hold steady level flight for 2 in-game minutes without altitude changing by +/- 500metres. 4 - Return to normal flight wing-sweep and return to KSC runway for a safe landing. No damage is permitted to the aircraft. 5 - The plane needs to have at least a passing resemblance to the NASA AD-1 experimental aircraft. Scale is not important. Bonus points for: BEHEMOTH - heaviest plane to complete the challenge gets 100 pts bonus. (marked in leaderboards with "MASS"). SONIC BOOMERANG - reach 1000m/s at any altitude while wings are pivoted at least 45 degrees from normal. 100 pts. (marked in leaderboards with "BOOM"). PARTS BIN SPECIAL - plane with fewest parts to complete the challenge gets 100 pts. (marked in leaderboards with "RUSTBUCKET"). LOW AND SLOW - plane with lowest horizontal (surface) speed at touchdown at KSC runway after mission. 100 pts. (marked in leaderboards with "CHILLIN"). Leaderboards: Non-FAR Mode 1 - 2 - 3 - FAR Mode 1 - hoioh - 300 points - At the moment Behemoth, Parts Bin Special, Low and Slow 2 - 3 - Notes: This is my first challenge, I hope it is amusing to someone. I had fun with this one. My first attempt was actually surprisingly stable, perhaps BECAUSE of KSP's aero limitations rather than in spite of them. This should be regarded as an "easy" challenge, at least for the basic requirements. I hope it has some scope for larger constructions. Those aiming for the "BEHEMOTH" challenge can waive the "passing resemblance" constraint if they declare "BEHEMOTH" in their posting. e.g., if you want to have 8 sets of pivoting tri-plane wings - then you win the internet for a day.

@Aanker: I just got the "Where Eagles Dare" goal with my VTOL I have updated my entry posting here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/112550-Military-Procurement-Strategic-Bomber-Concept?p=1801620&viewfull=1#post1801620 Can you remove my previous entry from the scoreboard and replace it with this new one please? The Jet's name is "Fools Rush In" This is an AWESOME challenge Aanker, I've had a great time playing it. Might do one more design. - - - Updated - - - Yes, very yesness. All yesses at once. - - - Updated - - - And just got the Battleduck award too!

Woooohooo! I have a 00:40:15 for a VTOL Peninsula Run! http://imgur.com/a/gHarS (the images seem to be all out of order I'm afraid, no idea why). Details to follow in a minute..... Title of jet: "Fools Rush In" Swift payback: 220m/s at 3000m = 22 points Engine maintenance: 18 basic jets!!! = -36 points Part maintenance: 156 = -3.12 points Gentle giant: if you use the VTOL engines to provide lift, then yes, I'm being optimistic +20 points Flashy technology: Yep, that's the whole point of this jet: +30 Service ceiling: +15pts will do this easily without VTOL jets enabled Where Eagles Dare: +30pts (Photo here) This took about 11 attempts, destroyed the VAB about 5 times! RIP Jeb and Bill Battleduck: +20 pts (http://imgur.com/a/CDb7n) Total score: 97 points 57,255 kilos at takeoff. Here's the craft file. I think you guys will get a kick out of this plane. It's very stable even at VTOL takeoff. Procedure for taking off VTOL... - turn SAS ON (vital!!!) - set 66% throttle - STAGE - wait until the VTOL jets spin up and you'll gently lift off with a slight nose dip, pull back gently to trim attitude and add a little more thrust if needed. - let the nose dip until you're going forward 30m/s or so - set 100% throttle - wait a few seconds and maintain stable flight - STAGE (enables main jets and VTOL simultaneously) - allow airspieed to pickup and set the nose dead on the horizon and then wait until your altitude hits 2000. - press "2" to kill the VTOL jets and pull up a bit and then CRUISE to the battle zone!!! - after a few minutes you can STAGE to drop the four small under-wing jets once they flame out, you won't need them after that. On the way to the peninsula you can cruise at 10km altitude for a while at around 400m/s. Have a gin and tonic while you're enjoying the view. After bombing ("9" to toggle cargo doors, and the STAGE to release the payload, then 9 again to close) you will need to pump some fuel forward to trim the loss of mass, else it'll stall after a couple of minutes. I have not yet tried to land this jet using VTOL method after the payload is dropped - but that is not in the mission requirements.

http://imgur.com/a/nnurJ <--how do you embed this?? Peninsular mission: 00:42:00 Parts: 106 (-2.12pts) 4 basic jets only (-8pts) Swift payback: 192.8m/s *0.1 = 19.2 Service ceiling: YES +15pts Such stealth, very sneak: YES (based loosely on the B2 bomber) +2pts Total score: 26points Photos provided show crew entering and leaving the jet from ground level, achieving level flight at 3000 and 12000metres, releasing all 6 payload sucessfully and landing with and without payload. It's surprisingly stable for a flying wing design and is very solid in flight, but SAS has a hard time holding the nose up at high altitude, so some manual intervention is needed to get the level flight achievement at 12000. Works beautifully at low altitude, hits 250metres altitude before it reaches the end of the KSC runway at takeoff, doing 140m/s without breaking a sweat. Was tricky to build and get all the staging right (many kabooms before i figured out I had the engines staging after the payload decouplers!). By the way, this plane is slightly less than 32000kg mass in the SPH. Any chance of a "lightest plane to complete the peninsula run" award?

I'm having considerable difficulty with making my new plane look beautiful. Aanker seems to have no difficulty (see the very first post in this thread). And the Narwhal is another great example. Is there a tutorial anywhere that discusses the methods used for attaching parts at seemingly arbitrary locations and angles? I'm having a hard time getting my aesthetic parts to stay put. My latest bomber needs to look beautiful, and at the moment it looks like a tornado in a scrap yard.

Does there have to be a Kerbal on board?

I didn't try diving actually, I played with the throttle a bit but I couldn't find the sweet spot. I'lll try it now, thanks for the advice I might try designing a challenge of my own next. These challenges have completely re-newed my interest in KSP again. I was getting stuck for ideas and was losing interest (Kod forbid!).

Alright, my second attempt at a bomber design (entitled "Kilo-Bravo") was much better than my first. Took lots of pictures this time. Will try to upload them shortly. Here's a rundown of my design's performance... - Meets all Basic Requirements (Remark: "The Bomber must be able to drop this payload safely, without any damage being inflicted on the airframe. Collisions between bombs, such that parts of the payload are destroyed during drop, should be avoided." -- I can drop 5 of my 6 internally stored bombs safely, but number 5 tends to explode against the rear edge of the cargo bay due to "physics". No harm is done to the airframe of the bomber as per requirements. I beg the judges look upon me favourably in this regard. If this counts as a failure then I voluntarily disqualify my design. 6 bombs internally stored, no other ordnance. This is a minimalist approach! Bonus points: Swift payback: 155m/s at 3000m altitude = 15.5 points Part maintenance: 120 parts = -2.4 points Gentle giant: I'm not sure about how to measure this but I' used the navball to get damn close to 5 degrees as far as I can tell. I'll try to show this in the screenshots. Potentially +20 points Engine maintenance: 4 turbojets = -16 points Service ceiling: Hell yeah! this thing burns red at 12000 metres! +12 points Shortly after beginning to get seriously hot while hauling ^$$ at 18000, the ship gets highly unstable and performs an unscheduled dissassembly. Spectacular. Assuming my screenshots are acceptable, I calculate my score to be 29.1. Feeble! But I had fun getting there. My time for the bombing mission on the eastern peninsula was 35 minutes, but I can't prove that since I went EVA to prove the ladders worked - thus losing my flight time. Meh, wasn't competitive anyway. Will upload images when I work out how... This challenge is hugely enjoyable. Highly challenging and very satisfying to complete, even if the end result isn't very competitive. I wonder if one could argue that a low starting weight could add a few points. My starting weight was 41,852KG all up with bombs and fuel.

No, I don't have a points tally yet because I didn't bother to take any screenshots to provide evidence. It's a nightmare to get off the ground so I'll try this mission again with a new design. I used rapiers because they look really awesome, and at the end of the day there's no sense having a military budget and not getting cool looking engines

I tried this challenge tonight and I found it hugely enjoyable. I have never built such a massive aircraft. The original prototype was 290 tons, I had to drain some fuel and add MOAR ENGINES!!! to get it off the runway. My plane is called "Dave the plane". Simple but effective. Dave accommodates 4 crew, in almost no comfort at all. The snacks are severely limited. But off the runway it goes, with a bit of persuasion. The "Eastern Peninsular" attack was successful, followed by a tough flight home and a really tricky landing at KSC. I can carry 12 bombs in the cargo bay and drop them carefully and safely over the target area. I hope that's worth a few points. KSP tells me I did the mission in about 49 minutes and my plane has 350 parts when new (and 299 parts after mission end). I have no idea if that's any good or not but oh boy it was a great flight. I'd like to share my plane with other players if they want to fly it. Not really sure how to do that though. I have set up a couple of stages that help the big plane up into the air but it's a pig to get airbourne. Thanks for this awesome thread, I had much fun playing along with it. Here's a pic of my plane

At least I know the trick to this now, so I can get on with it knowing that it really is just a weird interface. I'm hoping that my final plugin can be simple enough that it uses as few of these "invisible" functions as possible but still accomplish quite a lot. The main reason I'm trying to get this working is to make some electronic hardware I'm building talk with KSP to control the rocket. If I can get as much of the complexity abstracted out and away from KSP as possible then the plugin itself should be easily maintainable. Oh boy, hardware design is so much easier than software. I don't know how you pro's do it!

Yeah, I think I should have used the wording "implementing those functions" rather than overriding. My original question is answered, thank you. I now know that I can inherit from the MonoBehaviour class for my purposes. But I'd like to understand the reason why the IDE doesn't show at least some kind of placeholder for these functions. The "...\KSP_Data\Managed\UnityEngine.dll" is recognised by the VS IDE since I can see at least some of the class definition for the MonoBehaviour class, just not the bits that are vital for the code to work. Anyway, I'll continue to ponder this conundrum. Many thanks. w. - - - Updated - - - I did wonder if some sort of duck-typing was going on somehow. Reflection makes sense. I have been in the wrong frame of mind while trying to write this first plugin. The right frame of mind is something like "O, great Unity, please accept this puny DLL offering and this dead chicken and grant me a few hours of prosperous rocketry!"

OK so this class library I'm writing needs to conform to the Unity "interface" (to use a C++ term) but that interface isn't visible from within the C# IDE? At least I can't see these definitions in my current setup. I'll double check my library references in case I missed something. Edit: Well I can see my code being called in KSP but I don't understand how. It's very weird but it is working... where is the "contract" between my library and the Unity Engine? Confused - but happy it works. I'd be grateful for a description of how Unity knows that my library is the right shape or not. Will it all explode in a heap if I get the slightest thing wrong?

Thank you NathanKell and FreeThinker for replying. I've been looking at the "KSPSerialIO" plugin to try to understand how this all hangs together but I'm struggling to see where the entry point is for it. Where are things like "Start()" and "FixedUpdate()" actually defined? They don't seem to be defined inside the MonoBehaviour class as far as I can see from looking at the VisualStudio object browser ("show definition" when highlighting the MonoBehaviour class name). If I'm going to override those then don't I need to be able to see the base class's definition of it in the IDE? Sorry, my C# is pretty rusty, it's been a few years.

Howdy, I have just started to create my first KSP plugin. I'm up to the point where my IDE is set up correctly according to the tutorial here: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Plugins. My goal for now is to make a very simplistic proof-of-concept plugin that simply lets me activate the first stage of a rocket, say 10 seconds or so after spawning on the launchpad. I do not need any kind of graphical interface whatsoever (writing text to the log file will be sufficient), and the plugin only needs to be enabled when the vessel is actively engaged in a flight (from the launchpad and up until the end of the flight, but not in the VAB). I want to be able to switch between vehicles (when the user hits the [ and ] keys) and have my plugin affect the next vessel selected, so it "follows" the focus of the main GUI controls such as mouse and keyboard. I don't want to have a "physical" rocket part that I have to attach to the vessel in order to make my plugin available. The tutorials I have seen generally assume that we are trying to make a physical part for a ship, but I just want something more to do with non-graphical flight interface augmentation. The tutorials use "PartModule" as the parent class (which seems to have some baggage with it involving config files). Given that I don't want to make a part as such, is there a more suitable class to inherit from? There's a lot of classes to choose from by the looks of it, could use some guidance. Cheers. w.

Sorry, I deleted my post already. Thanks for the information. I'm sure others will find it useful if they want to use zitronen's system. I decided to do it another way just now, hence deleting my post (didn't want to clutter the place up). Sorry once again.

Hard to estimate total time served on KSP... perhaps 800 hours or so in 6 months. I enjoy playing KSP now that I have a new (modest) computer powerful enough to make it look smooth and beautiful in it's latest build. The frame rates are phenomenal, which is a testament to the fine skills of the dev team and the guys who make such awesome mods. I think KSP is a wonderful and truly relaxing way to spend one's downtime. It's not violent or aggressive like many modern games, but truly serene and positive and promotes deep use of the "little grey cells". I've learned a great deal about the physics of space exploration in the last 6 months or so too. I usually listen to some Joe Satriani or maybe a few episodes of my favourite podcasts (No Agenda, SE2KB...) while I'm playing. The hours just fly by at relativistic speeds. I do like the regularity of new releases - that keeps the new features coming in without being too fast that it gets confusing.

When Acronyms COLLIDE!!!!!!!

In a very recent episode, in fact here's a link to the exact time he mentions it... OK so it is a VERY fleeting mention, but it was enough to remind me about it. He has talked about it in glowing terms in one of his old "Interstellar Quest" videos too but I cannot remember the episode number, it was a long time back, perhaps near Ep30 or so? He went on about it for a few minutes if memory serves. The science messages were pretty hilarious, which is why I wanted this so much.

His Kerbal Highness Sir Scott Manley has repeatedly recommended the CSS mod and several other MM-dependant mods on his seminal youtube channel. It would be a sad thing to lose such a resource.

...If MM and CSS are already installed on your PC, I suppose. Thankfully I suspect that is the majority. ...Seems that might be a fairly significant problem!