Slam_Jones

I like the ideas they're putting forth quite a bit. Terrain deformation has LONG been on my "want" list for KSP. Sure, I can go to a planet, and have fun making bases and stuff, but eventually... there's nothing to do. Nothing to explore, in that any planet is essentially X km^2 of the same thing. Maybe KSP wouldn't purse something like this, but I think they absolutely need something to do on planets. Also, this. So much this.

Nice, I figured it was 1,000. Much easier! Also, thanks! :D

Welp, I just hit 502, which I think brings me to a new level. No idea what the next one is tho

STORY TIME! Today (yesterday, rather), I began a new Sandbox, with some different rules than usual. In this case: no revert, no quickload. The purpose was to begin a new Duna Colony, this time without any room for mistakes. If something breaks, it's broken. If we crash, we crash. Started by putting the ship in orbit (unmanned to begin with). This is the Proliferater Mk-1, with its airbrake module (that makes it look a little like a pineapple), nuclear tug, and heatshield (and another pic of it in SPH). Once it was safely in low orbit, we sent up a small shuttle to ferry the crew. There would be 8 kerbals total: the Big Four, plus four additional Engineers to help with construction. As the shuttle approached, Bill hopped out to link it up to the Proliferater. Once the crew was tranferred, he unhooked it and pushed it into a sub-orbital trajectory, away from the station. With the help of KER and KAC, I was able to get a Duna rendezvous pretty easily. One long burn on the LV-Ns took us out of Kerbin's SOI, and another carefully planned burn put us on a collision course. The Kerbals went into hibernation as the ship made it's year-long journey. Once in Duna's SOI, they awoke and made preperations to enter a stable orbit. Since they still had a tremendous amount of fuel remaining, they opted to skip the aerobrake and perform a brute force manuever. Nearing the periapsis, Jeb fired up the LV-Ns and blasted retrograde, eventually bringing the apoapsis to about 80km. Another burn brought the periapsis to a similar figure. Soon, it was time to de-orbit. Jeb fired up the LV-Ns for one last hurrah, burning off as much speed as possible while trying to maintain a good landing zone. The fuel spent, we dropped the booster and let it fall. With no (known) life on Duna yet, we weren't too worried about it breaking apart. We deployed the airbrakes, letting them slow us down. Jeb realized we were falling quicker than he had hoped. The plan was to make the final pass as horizontal as possible, to allow plenty of time to burn off speed. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen. The ship was headed at a 45 degree slope into the ground. Bill scrambled to make sure all the chutes were set to deploy as early as possible. After what seemed like far too long, the Drogue chutes popped out. Soon after, the regular chutes popped as well. We were now only 1km above the surface, but still moving much, much too quick. Jeb wanted to brop the airbrake module to lighten the ship, but Bill argued that the drag induced by it cancels out the extra weight. Jeb didn't know enough about it to argue, so he let it stay in place. The next part to drop would be the heat shield, which was at the very bottom of the craft. They figured that dropping the heat shield might mean that the smelter would hit the surface and get damaged, while keeping the heat shield on would potentially cushion the landing, possibly breaking the shield, but preserving the smelter. Between the two, the smelter was vastly more vital to the mission, so they decided to keep the shield on. The decision paid off. The Proliferater slammed into the ground at about 20m/s, shattering the heat shield into thousands of pieces. The force of the impact, combined with the slope of the terrain, tilted the Proliferater to the point where it fell. Thankfully, the airbrakes were depolyed, and absorbed the brunt of the impact. One of them shattered; the rest stood solid. It was messy, but they had arrived. When he got out to inspect the vessel, Bill suddenly realized (with a laugh) that the ship looked like a skinny, albino pineapple. (Not gonna lie, my heart was pounding pretty hard during the landing... very intense ) Despite being on its side, the Proliferater was still ready to rock. First, though, they would need to get it upright. Bill looked through the on-board supplies (included for scenarios quite similar to this) and decided to rig up a winch several few meters uphill, in order to lever the base to it's feet. He drilled a piling into the ground, then welded a few I-beams on top of it. After adding a few anomolies to allow him to climb it, he attached the winch at the top, along with a contol chair to operate it with. He grabbed the head of the winch, dragged it to the Proliferater, and attached it about midpoint on the nearest face. He returned to the chair and attempted to pull it upright. No success! Instead of pulling the base upright, the winch only succeeded in pulling down the makeshift tower. Bill managed to leap off while it was falling, and sustained only a few minor bruises. Discouraged but not quite done yet, he pulled apart the remains of the tower and set about making a more stable version. He decided to use two seperate concrete blocks (drilled securely to the ground) with a pipe connecting them. He also made the main tower a little shorter, and attached a girder to the Proliferater itself. Lastly, he also unattached the airbrake module, allowing the vessel to be a bit lighter and easier to manuever. He hooked up the winch, began retracting, and successfully got it upright. We were back in business! Since the base was now upright, Bill dis-assembled the winch tower and stowed it away in the storage compartment. Then, he climbed back into the base to deploy the solar panels. With this done, they were finally able to deploy the drills and start producing rocket parts. Soon, they had enough to build their first add-on: an extra parts tank. With the addition of the tank, the Kerbals are able to build bigger. Pleased with the progress, Bill decided to clean up the site a little bit, including removing the spent parachutes from the hull of the vessel. While trying to unstick a particularly sticky chute on the very top, Bill slipped and dropped his wrech, which, despite weighing nearly nothing, managed to rip one of the solar panels to shreds. Dismayed, Bill picked up his wrench, and quietly went back inside. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the Kerbals had a meeting and decided to launch Bill off the planet. When Bill protested, they decided instead to build a small "solar farm," which would be hooked up to the Proliferater. With the situation once again stable, they were able to produce yet another, larger, parts tank. Once it was built, they realized they didn't really like where it was sitting, so they asked Bill to rig up another winch tower and drag it into a better position. Eager to re-prove his worth, Bill worked quickly and had the task finished in no time. Next up, they built another storage container for tools, and then filled it up with important tools and such. After that, Bill went to the top of the tower and set up a girder with a few lights attached to it, allowing for better night-time operations. With all the (mostly) essential bits in place, the crew moved on to their favorite project yet: personal housing. After spening well over a year cramped into little compartments and modules, they were very excited to have some personal space. Each Kerbal was able to customize their room to a certain extent. Far too late in the building process, they realized the housing complex was (somhow) sitting partially on top of one of the parts containers. After plenty of finger-pointing (and no one figuring out who was really to blame), Bill decided to rig up another winch tower, and dragged the whole complex a few meters off, allowing it some breathing room. After this, he re-arranged the larger parts container so that it would act as something of a windshield for the homes. And that's as far as I've gotten so far! Thanks for reading

Typically when it gets launched into the air, it is due to part of it being spawned in underground. There are a few ways I've dealt with this in my bases: - Make sure the spot you're building on is smooth. Doesn't have to be 0 degree slope flat, just as long as it's not bumpy. You want the base to be sitting perpendicular to the ground at all points. Not sure if it was mentioned in this thread or elsewhere, but when you load in your base, KSP loads it as if it were in the VAB, then sets it on the planet. Again, if any part of it is then underground, KSP gets confused, and physics happens, usually involving your base cartwheeling through the air. - Sometimes you can ditch the landing legs. If it's balanced and designed to do so, bases can sometimes be more stable and less error-prone if they sit directly on the ground.

If you're not against mods, propeller-driven aircraft are pretty fun to fly

Planet Packs either add new planets, change up the ones already in place, or a combination thereof. Basically changes up the solar system.

If you're staying out of the atmosphere, LV-N's are the best way to go. TWR doesn't matter nearly as much in space (unless it's ridiculously low... like so low you couldn't possibly make a burn in time before leaving the SOI)

Keith, mending Jeb's new spaceship, vigorously oiled several areas. jwtpaewh

Wow, I totally forgot about that part... I think it converts it to Scrap Metal, which has to be re-processed, but I might be able to cfg edit it to go straight back to Rocket Parts. I am a little scared of losing kerbals to the recycler... then again I can always ship in more

From my experience, Duna seems very conducive to colonization, assuming you have the right tech. Due to the tenuous atmosphere and reduced gravity, propeller-driven vehicles are very effective. I've found that while a vessel of this sort has, for example, a TWR of 1.0 on Kerbin, it will have a TWR of 2.0+ on Duna. This means heavier vehicles can be built with smaller props, easing the burden of huge electric charge draw (though it can still be quite substantial for large vessels). It also means I can build tiny vessels that still serve a purpose, or can carry payload. Altitude is still very achievable, even with small vessels. I've been able to get prop-driven planes up to 24km, which is nearly halfway to space. The only downside to the weak atmosphere is in regards to incoming vessels not having to hit a very fine altitude to aerobrake properly. Once you're there, though, it's never an issue. Duna City KSC3 Outpost/Relay Station Polar Research Station New Kerbin City Duna City 3 (My personal favorite... also it needs a name!) Duna City 4 (Also needs a name!) As far as terraforming, I really have no idea which would theoretically have better chemicals to work with. It does seem that Duna would be generally more pleasant, due to having less windstorms and violent weather in general. Then again, sand storms can potentially be very deadly too...

The engineers realized, after building the latest city, that they had somehow damaged the VTOL rotors on the D-9 Constructor beyond repair. Unfortunately, as they are a very integral system, a whole new D-9 was needed. A D-4 Skimmer was dispatched to the derelict D-9, and the crew transferred. The last one out of the D-9 shut down the propellers, closed the bay, shut off the lights, and wrote "CONDEMNED" in large friendly letters on the side of the cockpit. The engineers were taken back to KSC3, where they will help build the new D-9, and then continue the quest of colonization.

Mainly from the Civilian Population and Stockalike Station Parts Expansion mods. Also Procedural Parts for some of the domes. And I think Near Future Electrical for the larger solar panels (or they might be part of Stockalike Station Parts Expansion as well).

Anything can kill if you have enough of it

Either build a single vessel with all the on-board equipment, or deploy little "gas stations" that would dig up and produce fuel on their own. Here's an example station I built: Typically, I'll bring in a nuke-powered lander, fill up, then take the fuel to an orbiting station. As far as efficiency goes, I'm not completely sure the "best" way to go.

Has to be Hydrogen Dioxide. 100% of people who come in contact with it eventually die. ... I'll show myself out now

Tried clicking the "Switch to English" button, and got this: "There is no translation for this content, you have been redirected to the English home page" Edit: Copying and pasting in Google Translate yields the following: "Modelling of space systems in Kerbal Space Program - 2016PA2-15" "Modeling space systems studied by CNES in the software / game Kerbal Space Program . The intern will model systems such as Kerbal a reusable launch vehicle , towing a solar -electric or nuclear -electric ship. It will simulate the tasks achievable with such systems and draw films used by communication CNES" "Specialties and desired skills : general engineering or computer school , 2nd year" So basically, you get to play on KSP at this job? Awesome!

Allows for (as you said) refueling operations and such. It can help extend the range of a vessel significantly, (or indefinitely) if done correctly. It also provides a framework for conversion of other materials. For example, if you have the extraplanetary launchpads mod, you can modify your ISRU so it can convert Ore directly into Rocket Parts. This allows you to build new vessels on-site.

While the rest of the crew was off building cities, Bill was working on something much more fun: Propeller jetpack!!

Derp. Lemme replace that with one that has the KAX prop...

Another one. I think it's an addiction at this point.

It's in Sandbox mode, so everyone is level 5. Maybe it's a bug, not sure. Either way, got plenty of Engineers on Duna already, and it's relatively easy to round them all up.

Good question. Just got home, so gonna load up KSP and find out Edit: Looks like it doesn't have any productivity factor. The mod uses Module Manager to apply the module regarding productivity to certain parts, so maybe I can modify it to include to Mk3 Passenger part. Either way, the Workshop has a Productivity factor of 5, and room for up to 10 kerbals. That's a lot of work done very quickly Also, I noticed Pilots don't contribute any productivity for some reason, while Engineers do. Not sure about Scientists. Also not sure if it's a bug, or intentional.

The empty domes are pretty nice. I'm struggling to find a use for the particularly blank ones, as opposed to the easy-to-think-of-uses park ones. Maybe swappable textures or something to simulate a floor? Just random ideas In general, though, any type of biodome looks awesome, so the more diversity, the better IMO

I'm gonna waste so many hours here Thanks for sharing! Gotta ask though, what the heck the thing in the sky is on this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21516002108/ Damaged film? Doesn't look like Earth.