damerell

Thanks. (I see this item was moved; I wasn't sure where to put it, since I was interested in the answer for both modded and unmodded games). I'll not worry about my commsat array, then.

I've started to hit FPS problems recently, with 100% of a CPU core in use. I was wondering how much of a CPU load non-active ships flying "on rails" impose; if it's worth deorbiting some of the mess of comms satellites I have up and replacing them with a smaller number of more capable ones. Any comment, please?

As far as I can make out, once you activate RCS, the Kerbal aligns with some ecliptic. The neck-ring between helmet and suit always stays in that plane; the WASD controls are relative to the camera only inasmuch as they are always in that plane; the up and down controls are always perpendicular to that plane.

I had a bash at the KSP demo ages ago, but thought I'd pop for the full version recently. I thought I might as well write up some of my more interesting learning experiences. I was pleasantly surprised that Bob Kerman survived the one launch of the MK 0 prototype rocket (with no control systems save the cockpit's reaction wheel); he remembered to shut off the engine when up and down switched places and deployed the chute before the rocket ploughed into the ground. He was clearly quite disoriented on landing, though, judging from the way he scooped up some soil from outside the Space Centre and proclaimed it vital for scientific purposes. Jebadiah Kerman enjoyed an illustrious, but sadly, short career flying the Mk I, II, and III models, making the first flights any distance from the Space Centre. As a running joke with the science staff and with Bob, he would always scoop up some dirt and bring it back when recovered. However, the Mk IV would be his undoing; on a higher suborbital flight, the first test of the EVA RCS thrusters was not entirely successful. (The EVA controls are a bit of a mystery until you realise they're only relative to the camera about one axis, with "up" and "down" and the plane the others operate in fixed, unless I'm missing something, in which case please tell me about it. Vexingly, by the time I figured it out, although I'd got over 1km from the rocket, I had enough propellant left to get within a few metres of it with low relative velocity... but not actually to get poor Jeb back on board). A later sub-model of the Mk IV also had tragic consequences for Bob. The Kerbal responsible for the incident has been severely disciplined; all Kerbals are to remember that, when rearranging the external fittings on a craft, the parachute is to be above the top stack decoupler, no matter if some other arrangement looks tidier. (This one was particularly annoying because if I'd only realised before popping the top decoupler, I'd have made it back, the rocket being small enough for the chute to handle - and not yet using Deadly Re-entry). Bill Kerman was initially a successful pilot of the Mk V and VI, but the invention of the Stayputnik led me to start instead launching unkerballed SpanSAT probes; the Mk VI, festooned with batteries, could easily... occasionally attain a stable orbit within the sensor's desired altitudes. Then, however, I went a bit mod-crazy. RemoteTech meant I had to give up those spy sats, with no way short of a later manned rendezvous to turn their antennas on. Deadly Re-entry seemed like it might make getting the rockets down a bit more interesting, but what I didn't realise was that NEAR would make getting them up into the first hurdle. The faithful old Mk VI not only had a regrettable tendency to vibrate itself to pieces on the way up, but any attempt by MechJeb to stabilise the craft resulted in a faster and faster roll; any attempt to actually pitch it over - at all - tended to result in the ends swapping places rapidly and increasingly comedically. Enter the Mk VII, with a higher centre of gravity, more control surfaces, and more reaction wheels. Exit the Mk VII, with the observation that reaction wheels between two stacked boosters which are only really held on to the main body of the rocket in their middles tend to wiggle those boosters about with amusing consequences; but Bill survived, having the presence of mind to blow everything and let the solid fuel boosters go and have adventures somewhere else. Enter the Mk VII-a, stuck together somewhat more enthusiastically. (Not having invented struts yet, it's all decouplers...) Tragically, exit Bill; the important lesson being that sometimes when the liquid fuel stage isn't burning, it's because the throttle is closed, not because it hasn't been lit yet. Bill instead decoupled the last rocket stage, leaving his capsule heading more or less straight up, then straight down; the heatshield functioned perfectly, scant comfort for poor Bill as 48 gravities smeared him across the interior. To heap farce on tragedy, the resulting confusion in the VAB meant that on the next Mk VII sub-model, the heatshield release was further down the stack than the final decoupler; Tom Kerman discovered this, correctly diagnosing the cause of Bill's death, when he released the final stage at just the right moment, only to watch his heatshield also drift off into the void. He attempted a belly-down landing on the capsule's build-in heatshielding, allowing the components on the base of the capsule to be incinerated; had he remembered that one of those components was MechJeb and been ready to take manual control, the results might have been more satisfactory. Enter Malcolm Kerman, who seems entirely undeterred by the fate of his predecessors. (I suspect he's a Badass, given that he grins widely in all situations). Malcolm executed a near-perfect launch for a series of ScanSAT observation orbits, but then decided his re-entry was coming too soon, readjusting his orbit again... leaving the periapsis some 68,000m off Kerbin as the fuel ran dry, with apoapsis at 190km. He's now on a very long series of aerobraking orbits and hopes to return to Kerbin some time this month... ETA: I'm pleased to report that Malcolm made it back to the surface without further incidents.