RizzoTheRat

If you're regularly within 40km then you're not doing badly.

Realised that my first Remote Tech KomSat didn't have enough power to run both the omni and the dish. D'Oh. Luckily I'd had minor redesign before I launched the other 3 in the network, and even better I had a mission come up to do an orbital rendezvous, so I got paid to replace it. I launched another one to orbit the Mun (mun flyby and the first step of explore mun contracts) and will probably put up another couple of them around the Mun before I go for a landing there. Waiting for Minimus flyby and explore contracts before I head there. I'm rather linking this restart, Remote Tech is making me have to plan a bit more than usual.

Both. I have an SSD for my OS but KSP is installed on my secondary HDD. Iv'e not tried it on the SSD to see if it's any quicker but as my PC is only SATA 2 I think the SSD is only about twice the speed of my HDD.

A mix of the above IMO. To my mind the payload is the mission equipment that needs to be put in to an LKO. If I'm launching a new lander to send to Minimus then both the lander and it's booster are payload, and that sits nicely in 3b. If I'm using a spaceplane to bring a crew to orbit then the crew and their module is payload, as it could be flown by a single pilot, and I usually carry excess fuel on those missions to top up the station.

That Bear and the ring station are stunning, fantastic work. Makes my achievements look a little pathetic in comparison, however having started a new game with Remote Tech I'm quite happy to have my initial omni-directional network up, along with a ScanSat equipped probe in a polar orbit.

If there's something else there in the correct angled orbit (eg a moon), target it and you'll get the ascending and descending nodes highlighted. Not sure if it will work the other way though (ie targeting a planet when you're orbiting a moon). As others have said KER will tell you the current inclination but you'd need to eyeball the burn to change it. The simplest mod would be MechJeb which can set up a node to achieve a defined inclination, and then do the burn for you as well if you're so inclined.

I like ScanSat, and have restarted with RemoteTech which I think should give me a bit of added realism. Only recently started using MechJeb to take the drudgery out of repeated tasks, but only use it for stuff I know hoe to do but can't be bothered to, rather than for stuff I can't, or find tricky to do manually. Kerbal Engineer Redux however is something I consider essential to all my games.

I hadn't realised they'd actually shot them down, I thought the idea was just to disrupt them enough that they wouldn't detonate on impact. tThe YAL airbourne laser was supposed to hit missiles in the boost phase when you'd only need a pretty small amount of damage to knacker the whole thing, but THEL appears to have "shot down" several mortars, and even artillery shells, which must mean detonating the explosive inside. Considering they're built to withstand about 15000g on launch I'd guess the explosive is pretty stable so that must be putting a hell of a lot of energy in to it. Every day's a school day

I assume when they release the new version the updater will want to update to it. that's about as close as I get to news.

Current attempts at laser weapons are intended to either fry/blind sensors, or cause a small damage to sophisticated systems to stop them working properly. Firing a laser against an incoming missile or drone is cheap and doesn't need to do a lot of damage as aerodynamics or gravity will do the rest of the work. However against a ballistic weapon they're useless, instead of a 40kg lump of metal hitting you at 500m/s (155mm shell), you get a 40km lump of warm metal hitting you at 500m/s. The LaWS on USS Ponce is supposedly fully working and they've demonstrated it taking out an outboard motor on a small boat, so the technology's there.

I think the fact it's on an inclined plane supports the captured asteroid theory. If it had formed from accretion/condensation with the planet it would be on the same plane. Not sure what constraints there on formation by collision, which the most likely theory for the creation of our Moon.

Ooo, some good stuff there, might need to spend an evening with a pencil and probably Excel to work through it. Interesting thought on using Jool. I've not played with gravitational slingshots yet but presumably if I went for an elliptical orbit with a nice slow Apoapsis in Jool's SoI I'd get the most benefit. I've spent most of the KSP careers messing about between Mun and Minimus, I'm just starting to realise how much more complicated interplanetary space is

Badly I've been following a pretty basic evolutionary approach. Started with a small atmospheric craft and discovered that I could hit about 20-22km and 1000-1100m/s with the Whiplash ramjets. Then I added rockets and found it took a lot more dv than I expected to hit orbit (in previous versions you could could hit orbit with very little rocket power), so I added more rocket fuel and found I needed another Whiplash to get the speed/altitude, then I found I needed more wing as I had to have such a high AoA it was to draggy... I shall be watching this with interest as I could do with some simple rules. I think in 0.9 I used to reckon 1 lift rating for every 2 tonnes, but I haven't quite figured out an optimum wing loading in 1.0, looking at other people's designs many seem to be using more engine and less wing than me at the moment.

Clearly I should read the small print on contracts, I've been caught out before on launch satellite missions wanting to orbit Kerbin the wrong way, but I now have one wanting to orbit the sun the wrong way. I'm guessing I need to set up very elliptical orbit to get a nice slow Apoapsis where I can change direction for a minimal thrust but that leads me to a few questions. - Is that the most efficient way of doing it? - How close to the sun can I get doing an Oberth maneuver without melting my probe? - How complicated is the maths to work out the tradeoff between the amount of dV I expend pushing the Apoapsis out, and the amount I'd need to change direction, other than just playing the nodes and seeing what happens? (I have an engineering degree but I haven't really got the hang or orbital mechanics yet ) - Anyone got a rough idea how much dV this is likely to need? I don't have Ion drives yet so this may have to be a slightly larger mission than I originally expected.

Interesting range of styles here, good point on it varying a lot depending on your lift. I don't seem to be having any major heating problems coming in at about 20 degrees nose up from a 75-80km orbit so I'll persevere with that but aim long and dive with the airbrakes to dump height in the lower atmosphere. The shallower approach angle I can get away with the better as the less fuel I use in the deorbit burn the more I have to cruise to the runway if I get it wrong. I think looking at some other people's designs I'm relatively low power and high lift, but I found with less wing I was having to have a really high AoA, which caused a lot of drag on the ascent. I assume 20-22km and 1000-1100m/s is a sensible target for lighting the rockets when using the Whiplash ramjets (not researched Rapiers yet). Had a go at building a bigger one last night with 4 ramjets and 2 rockets to use as a crew shuttle, but got the weight balance wrong and one wing and engine pod broke off when it pitched up sharply during re-entry. I was surprised that the rest of the craft remained intact and the crew survived on the parachutes. This is the first time I've had a go with planes in 1.0, they seem to behave a lot more like I'd expect than they did in the previous versions Ooops, sorry.

I've finally manged to come up with a space plane design that can make it in to orbit. However getting it back down again is proving a little trickier. Is there a knack for working out where to de-orbit in order to hit the landing strip? First attempt overshot by miles, and the second attempt ran out of fuel and came down in the sea a couple of hundred km short of the runway, and annoyingly about 500m short of land, luckily I'd fitted parachutes as I was expecting landing to be a problem. Also what's the best approach for re-entry? Nose high to let the body and wings cause lots of drag, or keep the angle of attack fairly low and rely on airbrakes? Up to now I've always splashed capsules down in the ocean, so no need to worry too much about where I'm aiming.

I find stations are very useful in the early game in career mode. I like to get a lot of kerbals to plant flags on the Mun and Minumus totrain them, so put a station in orbit of each moon and do single landing science missions from there. My stations look pretty inelegant compared to many on this thread though, this is my current Minumus station (although some might class it more as a mother ship I guess) with my science lander docked on the bottom, and a mining probe and rover on the top. Later in the game I usually use the Hubmax and docking ports to make modular stations, but I think I might work on some fancier designs seeing some of the ones posted here.

I use Skippers a fair bit. In the early game an orange tank with a single skipper makes a good first stage for decent sized payloads. I've only used the Thud so far as extra thrust to test mun/minimus landers on Kerbin, they come off for the actual mission. Tempted to start putting fuel cells on everything as I've lost count of the number of probes that have got several days out in to space before I've realised I forgot to open the solar panels. I've taken to adding a couple of the single flat panel solar panels but you can occasionally end up with them both shaded. I always use the 6x1 panels, I think they look way better than the 2x3 There's a few other parts I rarely use that I might be having a go with based on comments on this thread though.

Descriptive titles, current fleet includes things like: - Munlander 2 - Minstation - MinReplen 1 - ReturnCapsule 1 - Scansat 2 - LongSciProbe - Miner 1 - Atmo 1 - Spaceplane 2

1600x900 as that means running int windowed on a 1920x1080 display I can see other stuff on the screen at the same time...yes Im sad enouhg to have an excel spreadsheet with a list of which biomes I've visited and what experience all my crew members have got

I'd rather have a Trent My main problem is that every time there's a new update I start a new career, and on my current one I've got got as far as the Mun and Minimus. If they keep releasing new versions I'll never get anywhere

My stupidity knows no bounds. Launched a Munar resupply mission (2 return capsules and new lander), booster pushed it neatly in to a 100km orbit, and then I hit a wrong key and accidentaly jettisoned the transfer stage. D'Oh

Turning it off and going to bed

Don't think I've ever had one of those days in KSP

Glad I'm not the only one who operates in cycles like that I went thought a phase where I'd get as far as getting stations around Mun and Minimus and then a new update would come out and I'd restart career mode. Then after playing for a while i'd reach the point where I'd make stupid mistakes and have to repeat stuff, or things would start to get a bit repetitive. I spend far more time in the VAB making stuff than I do flying them, and often find the nause of launching it and flying it to wherever before I can find out if it does the task I want it to can be be annoying, and I get bored and stop playing for a while This time around I just rebuilt my PC with Win 10 and was reinstalling stuff so put KSP back on and started having a fiddle. I helps that the wife's away for a few days as I've been glued to it the last few evenings Now have a station orbiting the Mun and building one to go to Minimus and hopefully can complete most of the tech tree operating from those two stations. I've also made one major change this time around and have installed MechJeb, I'm finding it pretty good for taking out the drudgery than make the game boring. By the 20'th time I've set up a node and fiddled with the handles to get a circularisation burn set up properly or align my plane with the target it starts to get boring, MechJeb's doing a great job of freeing me up from the stuff that I know how to do but just takes time, and lets me concentrate more on the fun stuff like designing new craft or figuring out how to land more efficiently.