purpleivan

As another very long standing games dev (back to the 8 bit days) I second everything that Snark had to say. KSP is pretty much the worst possible case for ensuring a perfectly behaving game, what with it's reliance on a physics as the absolute core of the game, as well as user made content being thrown into the mix with that. Add to that the need to use a third party engine that's outside your control and that it's a PC game with all of the issues that can arise from the game running on a massive range of hardware as opposed to just consoles X,Y and Z. These factors alone would make it extremely difficult to ensure that all player experiences of the game are perfect (or even close to it), but when you add the fact that Squad is a pretty small developer; one which is smaller in total than a lot of bigger budget games' QA teams, then the fact that the game for the vast majority of the time, for most players, is a reliable and reasonably performing experience, is a small miracle. Again not a fan-boy (but definitely a fan) just a realist and someone who also does this for a living.

I have a small mining operation on Minmus, composed of a single mining base, with a small tanker that transfers fuel to and from the mining base and the larger vehicles that transfer the fuel up to an orbiting fuel station. With this I was deployed a similar fuel extraction and storage setup on Ike, without having to carry up anywhere near as much fuel from Kerbin as would normally be required. So far I've not made any further use of these facilities, but that's mainly due to me being busy with other things, both in KSP as was as outside of it. I've had one weird issue with my Minmus mining base when part of it exploded when I detached the claw of the little tanker vehicle from it. A bunch of fuel tanks as well as a couple of ore tanks decided they we bored of being part of a mining base and made a fairly short lived attempt to go into orbit. Fortunately the tanker had an ore tank on it, so I all was not lost. BTW... the transfer vehicle in the background is a small early version before the obvious occurred to me, that I should be moving fuel into orbit in much larger quantities. Here's the mining station I sent to Ike in orbit before I put it down on the surface. My operation is pretty small scale test one, but is still capable of producing useful amounts of fuel to supply large interplanetary vehicles.

There was a discussion here about the difference eyebrows make to kerbals. Here's a few I threw together to see what they might look like.

I might have missed something but the recent update to the Imgur website seems to have broken a number of features and made albums in particular, hard to work with. It used to be possible to remove images from an album as a group, but now it's one deletion at a time. The new rearranging images mechanism is horrible, only a few of the attempt I make at moving an image, results in the desired layout first time, due to the awkward way they move the image tiles around. Even the uploading of images has become worse, due to their being no feedback that the upload has been initiated for 10-20 seconds for a group of images, leaving a user in the dark as to whether the upload has been started or not. Then once you get an album together it doesn't render correctly here, with some horrible cropping to the current image and incomplete set of thumbnails... don't know if fixing that is something that requires a change to this website though. Overall the changes smack of someone having to justify their existence by making this unnecessary "upgrade" to the site.

I used this to launch an ever so slightly Apollo style mission to the Mun and back (only 1 in the crew though). But I did launch it on another rocket from the KSC first, parachuted it here, then drove to the pad before launching it. Video of the liftoff from the Inland Space Center.

I sent a (vaguely) mini Apollo 11 style mission to the Mun and back, but with a twist. I launched it on a rocket from the KSC, airdropped it to the inland space center, drove it to the pad... then launched it from there.

If you've not seen the Inland Space Center yet, be warned that this thread contain images and video of this location. To celebrate the 47th anniversary of those strange pink skinned creatures landing on their moon for the first time, the KSC decided to go for a bit of friendly one-upmanship, by launching a Mun return vehicle from the Inland Space Center. Nothing too strange about that. Well they wanted to do it the hard way, so decided to first launch it on a rocket from the KSC, then airdrop it at the the inland site, drive it to the pad there, before sending it up into space a 2nd time, this time on its way to Mun. Video of the liftoff from the Inland Space Center. BTW... am I the only one who feels that the Imgur site GUI update has simply broken the site (the album above took about 10 times longer to setup due to the changes on the site).

At least the explosions didn't happen when it was going backwards.

New addition in seat 3.

A last minute change allowed a couple members of the backup crew on board.

When I landed on Mun for the first time, I only had about 5% of fuel remaining in the descent stage, so at least in that way I was true to the Apollo 11 experience. But the guys on board where happy to make it down in one piece.

Although it's quite addictive and more of a challenge than my flights usually are, space planes aren't likely to be my go to solution for many things.. But I have to say that flying them is a lot of fun. BTW.. agreed on the desirability of hoses. Beer hoses especially would be most appreciated, although they might lower my launch success rate a bit

From experience, developing a game for PC and for console are two very different things. From the sounds of it the team at Squad may have been doing their best when making the conversion to PS4/Xbone but lacked that all important experience of console dev. One of the last things that you do is to break any accepted standards related to controls, especially when you're have the additional problem of trying to match the controls of a PC game (compounding complexity with confusion) and it seems that has happened here.

I see what you did wrong... you put the wheels on the wrong side

Dennis Kerman came out a little more "evil emperor of the universe" than I intended and Grace eyebrows should probably have been put on Valentina.

My missions use formula more like this. Entertainment = ((KSP + TV - cooking_dinner)/work) / Time * (luck + rule_of_thumb) + send_more_fuel_later Improvements on this much appreciated.

Unfortunately my Kerbin home would be a bit wet as it's in the middle of an ocean, but the Mun holds no such problems. So this is what the view from my room would be.

Would you go into space with this motley crew.

For making interplanetary burns then LV-N's make a lot of sense. After all, with the time involved in getting into the transfer window, the transfer itself, braking into an orbit and most likely adjusting your plane, then an extra few minutes to make the transfer burn is small change really. In my current main game save I have a small fleet of little nuke tugs to do the interplanetary leg work to get a bunch of other vehicles into position for mining operations at Minmus and Ike. Initial fuel section headed for Ike station Mining base delivered to Ike orbit Habitation and docking core of station headed for Minmus I even used a couple of modified tugs to haul my Eve return vehicle the Eve Redux out there Then act as a return vehicle to bring Maxisa back I have much love for the nukes

This as well as gamepads that recognise my leaning to the side to mean "go more that way" and PC's that unfreeze when shouted at

Maxisa Kerman minutes from touching down on Kerbin after her return trip to the surface of Eve in the Eve Redux

I landed a space plane for the 2nd time. With my first space plane trip to orbit and back a couple of days ago, I overshot the KSC by a few miles so ended up landing at the alternate landing site on the airfield island. This time I overshot by half an ocean, then spent 15 minutes turning around and flying back to eventually make it down on the runway at the KSC.

Part 5 - Return So with Maxisa in the Eve Redux in a safe although not quite circular orbit, it was time to get the return tug into something more useful orbit-wise as well. It had been left in a highly elliptical orbit, which just missed the atmosphere, so the first thing to do was to bring it into the atmosphere for a little aerobraking. With the PE set at about 88km, the tug passed into the atmosphere with little affect on its AP, so the pair of nukes on-board were started to pull the AP in. That’s a bit better. But how deep can the tug go on the next pass without getting too hot, so I adjusted the orbit to a PE of 86km. This is turned out was about as low as I could go without risking detonating the tug. Even at this altitude the more fragile components were at risk of exploding due to overheating. My solution was to tumble the vehicle occasionally, to allow the cooler components to take the heat, while giving the hotter ones a welcome break. After a couple passes through engaging in this little tumbling act, I realised that I didn’t really need two of everything, so I decided to sacrifice a solar panel and battery on one side of the vehicle, to give me an easier life protecting the remaining ones. Sacrifice of the components to the Eve goddess of massive atmospheric heating was by fire. Typical explodery results as the little solar panel detonates its hidden stores of dynamite. After many, many (I think about a 10) passes through the atmosphere at 86km, the AP was reduced to 1429km, so with some fuel remaining in the Eve Redux and my patience with the whole aerobraking thing wearing thin, I decided I’d circularise the tug at the AP and have the Redux meet it there. So Maxisa gunned the engines and adjusted the orbit of the Eve Redux to a circular 1121km one. Then it was time for the Tug to circularise its orbit. That’s better. The Maxisa made the necessary burns to arrange a rendezvous with the tug. And there it is! Good thing too as there is precious little left in the Eve Redux’ tanks. Time to EVA over Eve, to get to the more spacious accommodation on the tug. With Maxisa safely on board and after a little warping to get into the transfer window, it was time to set the burn for home. See ya Eve. After a course correction the Eve Redux was set for smacking into the Kerbin atmosphere at an altitude of 60km, although the approach was a little less equatorial than normal. Hi Kerbin. Looking beautiful as always. Just before grazing the atmosphere Maxisa had this nice view of home. As well as aerobraking, with plenty of fuel left in the tanks, it was time to light up the nukes again. Nice! However almost the whole of the daylight part of the orbit was over water and I wanted to bring Maxisa in on land. Only one thing for it then… BURN TIME Adjusting the angle by some 20-30 degrees took some doing, so there wasn’t a lot of fuel left after the adjustment to the orbit. With the adjustment done, time to make the re-entry burn. Followed a little later by the friction burn. Then much more burning. Good thing these components are so well built. Well… except for the nukes which exploded, but hey… their job was done anyway. Nice view for Maxisa to enjoy as she heads down on the chutes. Almost there., just time for a last look out of the window before touching down. Home again.

Some more of my space plane shenanigans. Heading to orbit. "You were supposed to land right there"... "oh you meant that KSC" Banking round Not far to go now. Made it

Had another crack at making the KSC runway (managed it this time) with a larger space plane using the Mk2 cockpit. My overshoot of the KSC brought new meaning to the term "going around", but at least I put it down on the right runway this time. Although after all the tribulations of landing, I deployed the chute and forgot to keep the thing straight, so rolled off onto the grass.