Vermil

In my very early KSP career, when I built increasingly complex and unstable stacked rocket designs from primitive parts in efforts to go to the Mun, I actually had an improvised LES of a sort. I either simply used the top rocket part as attached to the pod or a minimal solid rocket to shoot the pod free from an accidentally crumbling and combusting card house. At that time I had no way of controlling my rockets as unmanned. I hadn't understood that SAS works even if I don't have that gyro-wheel (which was unavailable), neither did I know that <T> activated it. I didn't know what navigation nodes were. So I flew manually, all the way, constantly pointing the nose in the right direction, and burned blindly, just watching the blue trajectory line as it changed. Anyway, yes I did have a number of occasions when I employed my homemade arraignment to shoot the pod away from the fiery fireball of a launch gone bad, to land safely with a parachute. I think I must have saved my Kerbal astronaut around 4 to 5 times in total, employing an emergency rocket propelled disconnect. But you asked about the LES. - No, I've never used that. It didn't exist when I needed it, and I'm kinda leaning towards that I don't like the actual implementation enough.

...So, I haven't been happy lately. Rather, I've been rather foulmouthed. Good thing you can't hear me. Well, here's the reason - mainly my own fault in the end -: Tandan, Sigrid and Bilfal were just to land on Laythe. Pretty routine, I figured, done it a few times before. But then this happened. They sailed along too far and overshot their target. A nice and well piloted landing in the water. Craft was entirely undamaged. So what to do now? I could paddle the rocket to the shore and organize a rescue operation. But here's my problem: Why did they land too far? And why wouldn't the rescue operation also land too far then? I would have to do practice landings with F5/F9 anyway, to figure things out. So I was thinking about it. I'd heard things about the atmosphere being tweaked, but hadn't much paid attention. But my latest landings had gone to plan, right? Or had they really? I started to remember how lucky I was that Danvey could stretch out his landing on Duna and thus avoid landing on the Canyon's sloped wall. And how happily surprised I was when Valentina somehow managed to clear the high dunes when she landed on Laythe. It began to make sense. The atmosphere doesn't brake as much as before. So I declared myself entitled to a F9. I measured the necessary adjustment and tried again. Spot on. ...Only... After the perfect landing, the rocket started to do an increasingly violent jitterbug, destroying first it's landing struts, then the undercarriage, then the rocket engines,.. I couldn't bear watching, and I had already pressed F9 before, and thus established a pattern. - What the h* is happening?! I tried again. Same result. Why? Why? Why? I've done this landing how many times before? Five times, with roughly similar rockets. Three times unmanned (which included practice and collecting landing estimates, so was in reality like 7, 8 landings), and two previous manned Laythe expeditions. I tried again. Same result. I tried again and thought I'd made it. The rocket stood there peacefully, velocity meter down to alternatively 0.0 and 0.1. But then it started, rocking more and more, same story. By this time I was so disgusted I don't know why I tried yet again. I guess there were two things I wanted to try. Protecting the landing struts from heat by deploying them later. Leaving the SAS and RCS active, despite that these things could logically feed in energy into the oscillations and make them more violent. But the oscillations don't need energy anyway. They are apparently some kind of perpetuum mobile... Well, it worked. Finally. <big sigh>. And then there was maybe some kind of clue as to why. I had landed in 'The Sagan Sea'. I assumed I was going to land on the 'Shores', but this was a new region. Possibly Squad intends this area to have softer ground? I dunno, and I'm certainly not convinced. Anyway, Tandan, Sigrid and Bilfal can finally have their Laythe adventure. And they will bring a ton of unexpected science points back - which I don't need. The point of this trip was otherwise to try rovers on Laythe for the first time, and visit the sea. We'll see how that goes.

1. No Mods. It's a temporary rule. I will use mods eventually. But it would feel cheap now, before I've solved my main projects within fixed limitations. 2. Take good care of my astronauts. Minimize risks. Take no chances. All equipment should be as thoroughly tested as possible under improvised conditions (no Hyperedit!). Spacious quarters on long range missions. No solo missions except for very short range, like Mun, Minmus. 3. Try use F9 very sparingly, ideally not at all. This rule manages itself, since I lose satisfaction if I do use F9. Nevertheless, I do employ F9 whenever I think the game cheats on me, like bugs and things. Consequently, I do have to confess I have some talent in persuading myself that I have the right to use F9. I also use F9 without restraint when 'training' something or testing. That's unmanned though. 4. No SAS, no Navigation Nodes,.. Just kidding, No Mechjeb, no KER. I enjoy the adventure of the uncertainty of space voyages, and trying to be clever with navigation. The day I do not, I'm going to use aids.

These tales seem suddenly familiar of late. I'll tell the story more completely elsewhere, when I'm ready, but there seem to be something very fishy going on with the physics simulation in v1.05. Well, I'm frustrated. Very frustrated. Why are things not the same the next time? Why is a system prone to oscillations? And why, - why is energy fed into a such oscillating system? Amplifying it? When there is no such energy source present? Edit: Now I'm ready, and take most of it back. I've arrived at an explanation. Things were indeed NOT as before! I had landed in a different region than assumed, with - apparently - different ground properties. Still, there's a tendency to oscillations self-amplifying when they shouldn't. This also happens on the launch pad sometimes, with heavy rockets. This time I managed the landing by keeping the SAS and RCS active all the time (ironically, they could feed energy into the system), until "speed" finally expired into 0.0. But I wouldn't be surprised if the oscillations start all over again if I quit the game and reload to continue at a later date. I hope I'm pessimistic about that, but just to be a bit safer, I'm going to continue playing without a break.

I'm having some rather puzzling and extremely frustrating and annoying experiences in KSP as of late. I'll tell you more about it when I have the energy. The one question I'm scratching my head about is: Was v1.05 always like this?

I've visited and returned from orbit of every one of them with unmanned probes. I found both Eeloo and Moho difficult. Moho more so. Moho is even quite deceptive. I should explain that I fly and navigate manually, and rockets are designed and built according to own ingame research and experiments, and not dV data available on internet nor dV tools (to me, the ingame exploration is the gameplay). I don't know, but maybe that was the reason I found Moho so difficult - to return from too. Difficult is maybe not the right word, it takes lots of fuel. I can't align my transition trajectory until I'm in the Sun SOI. And so on, I have to make a lot of corrections and they use up a lot of fuel. Now, manned expeditions and surface landings is a different story. All my manned targets have included surface landings, and all manned have returned. Minmus, Mun, Duna, Ike, Laythe. Except for Ike, all have received multiple landings and are still viable destinations for doing new things. I like Duna a lot. I've sofar failed to put a rocket designed to land and escape into orbit around Eve (no, I don't use hyperedit either). I've built an experimental descender/ascender-vehicle but was unable to make the journey to Eve. The manned Eve project is currently on hold. Vall is possibly next destination instead. That leaves unmanned probe landings on Jool and Eve. None of those were intended to return. The Eve one is still sending info on temperature etc, The Jool one sent for a while, hanging bravely in the parachute. Eventually it came out into a bowl-like version of space and Jool had disappeared. Shortly after that it went poof.

I think it will be much clearer if you first complete a number of other goals of progressing ambition, and learn underways all the hundreds of things you must learn, in order to fly to Duna.. 1: Get into the air. 2: Get higher up in the air. 3: Get into space. 4: Get into orbit. 5: Get into orbit around Mun 6: Get into orbit around Minmus 7: Land on Minmus 8: Land on Mun 9: Dock two rockets in space ...And, by all means, always return.

Last time I posted on the subject, a moderator contacted me...

I had a thought... I think it was about a way to get more thoughts. ...To be continued. ...But not now, or any time soon.

Nothing much happening today. The team is circlelizing their orbit. Easy and meticulously. They can take their time. Laythe is on its way into Jool's shadow, and there won't be any landing until they're out on the other side, in the sun again. There will be one or two lame, meaningless pictures here later. But I can't run image software at the same time as KSP, I've only got 6 GB in my laptop.

How do you refuel?

While the other teams have had their contortions on Mun and Duna, and are now safely back, Kronos_C with Tandan, Bilfal and Sigrid have finally arrived at Jool and Laythe. Tandan decides to eject 8 nuclear engines to raise the dV of the remaining propellant. And there they are ready to go into orbit around Laythe. Braking. A pleased and relaxed Tandan at the controls. Outside the windows, Laythe and the distant sun are visible.

?? Which prompts the different question: - Why wouldn't they be scared? They've seen what has happened to their predecessors, so they know it's just a matter of time. And they can see the design of that plane themselves. P.S. But the plane is actually really cool.

...I feel so inadequate... I did put in a tremendous lot of development work on my effort to do a manned landing on laythe (Alpine style, Tintin method). Here's some of it. The Banshee 8B (unmanned) ...was not able to return. The Banshee 12 (also unmanned) Was able to return, despite its damaged landing strut. Then came the Kronos X13 (also unmanned), Unfortunately, I don't have any ready screenshot there, So this is the Kronos A instead. Which was manned. It took me months of work to get this thing (manned landing on Laythe) together, so it was a great triumph when Jeb, Bill and Bob finally stood there.. Then Kronos B followed it up with a landing on the high Dunes. And currently, Kronos C MkII, which will bring rovers to Laythe, is braking into orbit around Laythe. But that's another story.

You might remember we left Val, Mad and Kim on Mun's surface with the new two-wheel rover. Well, the terrain was, quite frankly, gruesome, and maybe we went in too deep this time. After many hours of stressful driving the gals had just completed something like a sixth of their trip. The long Mun night would soon approach. Mission Control didn't like the quality of voices from the astronauts. They were stressed out, worried and absolutely exhausted. So he took the decision to abort their mission. Turn around and drive back to the ship. Let's wait until we have new wheels. The 1.1 wheels. Luckily, due to a considerable amount of more downhill than uphill on the return, it was much easier and faster. The girls were back at the rocket in about two hours and before the night set in. Also noteworthy is how well the rover works downhill. It is necessary to keep speeds within bounds, but overall it's more stable and reliable. The biggest advantage otherwise is the low energy consumption. Back in the rocket, the new Firebrand's generous cockpit, the spirits soon rise again. After the takeoff, we can look down onto the landscape they tried to conquer with the new rover. It looks about as bad as it was here. Otherwise, one usually gets fooled because it typically looks less severe from space than it is. The return trip was uneventful. Mostly. However, they almost landed in the mountains. Not quite though, they missed slightly and landed safely in the foothills.

Well, my first landing was unmanned, of course, since I wouldn't dream of sending my Kerbal heroes before we know what the h* we're doing. And here it is, landing on Duna, providing extremely good information and feedback, amongst other things how limited a parachute is on Duna, due to the thin atmosphere.

I'd say my ambitions originally carried me away. I failed at the game in sandbox mode. The game worked much better for me in science sandbox mode, because it restricted me to a level where I could get a handle and start to explore how achieve gradual goals. This in itself (the exploration of the method of rocket travel) was then fabulously fun. Currently, I've never felt I need career mode. I set my own goals. They're challenging enough. And since I've now purchased the entire tech-tree and am still wallowing in science points, I suppose I am playing the same as pure sandbox now.

I installed Windows 10 again. This time it worked much better. ...But, you're already at page 931? Don't you have anything better to do? <Sigh> I'll catch up reading later. I'm tired now.

I must have had KSP for like a year before I started to play it in earnest. Initially, I bummed out because i figured I'd do sandbox and immediately would build *awesome* spaceships with mods and all. It wasn't particularly fun, successful or satisfying. So the game lay dormant on my harddrive. - Here's it: The reason I got hooked, was I finally approached the game as an exploration. I started taking one step at a time. Focusing only on the next step. I play 100% stock except for KVV to make occasional portraits of my rockets. I navigate and fly my rockets manually, with help of SAS and navigation modes. I progress gradually towards a new planet/moon by explorative missions, develop rockets by guessing requirements and test them as well as possible on Kerbin, get additional knowledge/confirm with unmanned probes which try land and return. Then it's the big event, the manned landing. Then I repeat the manned landings (for new areas and new things to try) and progressively tweak the rocket to work better and better. This iterative, progressive adventure of exploration, which starts by just going up a bit and dangling down again in a parachute, is the entire game content for me. The reason I enjoy KSP. My main and only game objective. And I don't do try&reload gameplay. I do use F5/F9, but rather conservatively. And I'm very concerned about the safety of my Kerbals. I keep them alive. I see others play the game differently, using mod components that allow them to do all kinds of things, using Mechjeb to fly and Hyperedit to test, and I think to myself, - hey, it's a software toy, let them play any way they want. But I do suspect some are missing a huge deal. And I do suspect it's a big pity. That said, I still think it's awesome to see the ways some people have found to play this game. Like land trains, aircraft design and Star Wars. But it feels to me they are actually exploring in a similar way to what I do. This game is made like a software toy. That's its big strength. But for one of OP's points, I do lack obvious next goals. Eve is it currently, but it appears a bit too challenging so far. Currently I'm not working on it, focusing more on exploration of worlds I routinely land on. And I do think there's a - for a designed game - curious lack of progressive intermediate challenge goals between Duna and Laythe, and between Laythe and Eve. The gap between Laythe and Eve is particularly big, I feel. (Of course, if you use mods, mechjeb and hyperedit, I'm sure it's very possible, and would require much less hard work, but it would spoil it for me.)

Well, I should a lot of things. And if I was to play KSP, I should at least focus on my Laythe team, so they finish and can be retrieved before 1.1. But I made a new rocket. And a new rover. And I just had to try them for real. And, well, the rocket, Firebrand_G was a bit of a disappointment. It was neither as stable nor as agile as Firebrand_F, and it basically did nothing better. Maybe the astronauts, my second most senior team, Valentina, Madly, Kimene, appreciated the increased comfort, but it has to be modified or I'll go back to Firebrand_F. I haven't analysed it yet, but I suspect the F-version had a big gyro-wheel which is now missing. The two-wheel rover, otoh, was a great success. I just love it. Poor Squad. The fewer the wheels, the better. I hope they have less bad luck when they design the new wheel physics. It proved to be slightly counterproductive though. I relaxed, drove harder and more recklessly. Eventually the inevitable happened. After hours of driving I came upon a too sharp crest at too high speed. The rover only damaged one of the folding solar panels - no big deal, the rover is a virtual perpetuum mobile now - but the crash disengaged all three Kerbals and some bug made it impossible to reboard the rover, also the three Kerbals moved in perfect sync... Thus I didn't feel bad about pressing F9 - a bug makes it fully justified -, but since I had last saved at the rocket, before the rover trip, it set me back several hours. The problem is the rover feels too safe and reliable. I'm not careful enough when I'm driving. And why should I be? The entire point of improving the rover is to be able to drive faster? But actually, you can't, not all the time. I'll get used to it, I suppose.

I was going to do something else. Read a book. Go out with a camera... But I seem to have made another rocket. Err, actually, I was so impressed with my old Firebrand that I modernized it. Same treatment I gave Ikaros and kronos. A Mk3 Cockpit. Here Jebediah is testing the revised ladder arraignment. You also see the new rover to the left. The 'cycle' rover.

Well, we've been doing it the wrong way. Now that 1.1 is coming soon, with new wheels physics, it's sort of too late. But this exchange spurred me to experiment a bit more methodically. Basically, I figure the wheels operate like some kind of rockets, giving thrust, but where the benefits (thrust) are brutally limited absolutely by gravity, friction coefficient and angle, but all the costs of the "rockets" are not throttled. The conclusion of that is the fewer rover wheels, the better. What can I say? This is my latest design, during harsh testing. It works better than any other rover design I've done. Half the energy consumption, much more stable. It's what I'll be using until 1.1. A motorcycle with airplane gears as supporting struts. Maybe one should try a one-wheeler too? EDIT: I decided to try to answer my own question: I spent a good deal of time. It has to be the front wheel. It doesn't work well to steer with the rear wheel. But even with the front wheel, there were problems. It was difficult to get it to go straight, among other things. But the answer, at least for this attempt is: No. On reasonably level ground, it answered the questions correctly. It halved the energy consumption again. Almost a perpetuum mobile. It is basically a tricycle with two extra safety support wheels at the front. They normally hang in the air. But the problem is still that the two rear support wheels carry half the weight. That translates into that the rover wheel only has 50% ground pressure. And, no, that doesn't work when it goes uphill. Somehow, one has to get the wheel into the center, carrying all or most of the weight. But how do you turn such a vehicle then? I'm not spending more time or effort on this. But the 'cycle' shall be fun to try on Mun and Duna.

Well, obviously I want cylindrical tanks for liquid propellant, for nuclear engines, so I don't have to make do with spaceplane parts and their impact on radial symmetry. I simply think that's a kind of parts that are really missing from a stock game. They should have been there. Or - you should be able to trade Oxidizer capacity for propellant capacity in all kinds of thanks, by sliders. That would be the most elegant solution. ...And lets include Monopropellant. I also think bigger and more modern crew pods are a missing type of content. This is again forcing me to use spaceplane parts, which feels slightly unsatisfying. And are we seriously imprisoning the poor Kerbals in a tiny cramped pod for years on long missions? I always improvise habitat modules by putting together something from structural parts or, in an emergency, empty fuel tanks. These will have to represent comfort for my Kerbals. But designated habitat modules would be nice. Otherwise, I only play science sandbox so my viewpoint is limited. I feel, in that mode gameplay progression should give you access to increasingly modern technology, as well as more technology. I hope you understand the distinction. There's nothing wrong with a crappy engine, crappy pod or crappy tank. They suit early gameplay very well, simulating primitive rocketry. So don't take things like that away. But also don't make us depend on those things forever. And I want a bigger diameter class of rocket parts, but doubtless I can get those from mods, the day I start using mods.

It just hasn't happened to me. ...much. Which says a lot of the tentative way I play this game, with explorative small steps. There's just been one time. That was when Bill became temporarily marooned. But he was slingshot-ed away by Mun, because I burned blind in those days (didn't understood or use navigation node). Besides that, margins were very narrow for the return of my unmanned probes to Eeloo and Moho. But that's all. Narrow margin which worried me slightly at the time. And J,B&B had to make a rather hard approach and re-entry to Kerbin after my first manned Laythe surface mission. That's all.

If I hit a bump at 1 m/s it totally voids the extended solar array, and it came with no warranties whatsoever,.. Actually, there was a paper. It had a single line of text: "Don't call us." I must figure out where you go shopping.