Snark

Reaction wheels are absolutely useless for dealing with aerodynamic forces at high speed-- the aero forces are so gigantic that they swamp whatever the reaction wheel tries to do. The only way to solve your problem is aerodynamically. You've built a highly streamlined, front-heavy javelin, which therefore has a really high ballistic coefficient. It's the poster child for a craft that's going to faceplant at Mach 2. You need to find an aerodynamic way to get it out of its nose-first, pointed-straight- attitude during reentry. One super easy way to do that would be to just add a couple of steerable fins onto the very back of the craft, such as the AV-R8 winglet. With those, you'll be able to steer the craft to point the nose upward (i.e. above ) as it falls, which will generate drag and also a lot of body lift. This will allow the craft to slow down to speeds that the drogue chutes can function.

Well, sorta. There's an autopilot mod called MechJeb that's very popular-- it won't do everything for you, but it can automate quite a bit (e.g. "fly this ship to orbit" or "dock with that ship"). I've never used it myself, but I gather that it can do quite a bit. Add-on Discussions might be a good place to look for talk about it.

Perhaps, and you're not the first person to observe this. But the difference is so tiny as to be trivially unimportant, so I've never bothered correcting it. It's a difference of one part in nearly 3000, and makes absolutely no significant difference to gameplay whatsoever. Correct, there isn't. There used to be, but I removed it for maneuver nodes in BBT version 1.7, since it was superseded by the improved stock implementation in KSP 1.5.

Saying "there exists a thing somewhere" is not an add-on release, and therefore doesn't belong in Add-on Releases. Moving to Add-on Discussions. Posting an add-on release here in the forums (e.g. with a link) requires complying with the add-on posting rules, including providing source code and license. Thank you for your understanding.

"Permission" isn't a thing unless it's in the license, as far as we're concerned. Otherwise it becomes an unmanageable mess, trying to keep track of who has permission to do what, the potential for arguments over what permission was or wasn't granted, the potential for other people to take impermissible action because they saw someone else doing a thing and thinking that meant it was okay for them too, etc. Managing who is permitted to do what is precisely what licenses are for, and they're the only way that everything can be managed sanely.

Just out of curiosity, have you actually tried the mods and verified that they don't work anymore in 1.11? Just because KSP updated doesn't automatically mean that all mods need to release an update, too. 1.11 added some new features to the game, but it wasn't especially "disruptive"-- didn't really dink around with the existing features, so I would expect most mods that work in 1.10 to just continue working fine in 1.11. I'm the author of a couple dozen mods myself, and all of them continued working without a hiccup when KSP 1.11 arrived. I went to SpaceDock and marked them all as 1.11 compatible, but I didn't need to release any actual updates to make them keep working.

Which is also not "official" and is not, as far as I know, maintained by Squad. Which means that if you're over there in Reddit, you're swimming in the shark-infested waters of the general Internet, which can be... kinda harsh. The KSP forums are not like Reddit. We're nicer, here. It's different.

Hi everyone, I'm pleased to announce the release of SteeringTweaker v1.1, with shiny new features! New with this release: Adaptive mode: This lets you configure the wheels to dynamically adjust the amount they steer based on current vehicle speed. See details and examples in the OP above. Constant mode: This is what I call the mode that you already had before this release (and is still the default). You can toggle between constant and adaptive modes via UI button or action group. Axis group binding for adjusting the steering limiter slider when you're in constant mode. Here's what the new adaptive mode's UI looks like: You pick a low speed, a high speed, and a limiter value to use at each. It uses the low-speed limiter if it's below the low-speed threshold; the high-speed limiter if it's above the high-speed threshold; and interpolates between the two if your speed is between the two values. "Blah blah blah," I hear you cry, "can you just show me some pictures of how it works, Snark?" Why, yes. Yes I can. Please see the OP above-- I've added a fair bit of detail, and in the section on adaptive steering there's a spoiler with some detailed examples of what the behavior of a vehicle looks like at various speeds. Enjoy!

Hi @somerandomperson, Moving your post to KSP Network, since it's not about the KSP game itself. I'm sorry to hear you had an unpleasant experience with someone. But it wasn't "us." Of course it's up to you where you choose to go and whom you choose to associate with... but please don't confuse what you saw on some Discord server with the "KSP community". There is no official KSP Discord. People can set their own servers up, of course-- but those people aren't any sort of official representative of the community. The forums here are very different from the experience you describe. We have rules here against abusive behavior, and a moderator team who take those rules seriously and who act promptly to correct violations. The KSP forums are a nice, friendly, helpful place, I think you'd find, if you choose to stick around-- you've only made a couple of posts thus far, so you haven't really had a chance to experience it. So I do hope you'll give the forums a try... but if you choose to go, we're sorry to lose you and wish you the best of luck. Cheers, Snark KSP Forum Moderation Team

Hi gang, I've released MissingHistory v1.9.2. No new features, just some bug fixes. Fix a bug in the "Stowaway" crew cabin's model that caused odd behavior with ambient light boost. Thanks to @Hex3 for reporting, and to @JadeOfMaar for quickly supplying an updated model! KSP 1.11 compatibility update: Various MissingHistory parts have been updated for appropriate cargo stowability. This was an oversight on my part in earlier releases. Enjoy!

Sure, no argument there. Again, though-- key argument is large burns. Which is admittedly a relative term, but I'm describing burns that are large in relation to orbital-velocity-at-low-altitude. For example, the maneuvers you've shown there are very small ones-- only 161.4 m/s and 120.2 m/s. They also have the property that they're being done where they're being done because they have to be there, due to geometry. (For example, if a ship is in a highly eccentric orbit and wants to raise its Pe, then the burn to do so has to be done at high altitude-- you can't raise your Pe higher than the altitude you're at when doing a burn.) I'm not saying "never do burns at high altitude". Some situations (like raising Pe) you have to, due to geometry. Other situations (like plane changes), it's better to do at high altitude because you have the option of "large burn low, or small burn high" and the small burn is better. What I'm talking about is neither of those cases-- I'm talking about "large burn low" versus "large burn high", such as arriving at Minmus from an interplanetary trajectory. In such cases, doing the big burn is better done low than high; it's more efficient to do it at low altitude due to Oberth effect. Oberth is your friend. In the case of someone arriving at Kerbin on an interplanetary trajectory and wanting to go to Minmus, in general it'll be better if they arrive at low Kerbin orbit and do a big braking burn at low altitude, followed by some very small burns up at Minmus altitude, instead of trying to go to Minmus directly.

Statement still stands. Large burns at high altitude are inefficient. Not sure what exactly you mean by "the angle of your trajectory"... do you mean your inclination? If so, then yes, it's better to make an inclination at high altitude... because then it's not a large burn. Note that I didn't say that all low-altitude large burns are efficient-- just that high-altitude large burns are. There are certainly cases (such as a large plane change) where it's more efficient to a high-altitude small burn instead of a low-altitude large burn, precisely because it's small.

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek: as moderators, we often have to deal with people who are upset-- usually with us, sometimes with other users. Our favorite kind of moderating, of course, is when we get to help people-- for example, finding a post that a newbie has put in the wrong place, and moving it to where it will get the right sort of attention and responses. Or keeping an eye on the "approval queue" so we can promptly approve the posts of new members who haven't racked up enough posts yet to be allowed to post "unsupervised" (a measure that is, alas, necessary because of all the spambots and scammers out there, who like to prey on forums). Or getting to do fun things like recognize folks' contributions with Thread of the Month. I would say that actually, most of our moderating is of this "good" kind, largely because the overwhelming majority of forum members are kind, helpful, friendly, people. This is a nice place, and most folks get along pretty well, and goodness gracious are we moderators thankful for that. It's why we stick around. But unfortunately... sometimes things go sour. Even people who are normally "good citizens" may be having a really bad day or something and can take comments personally, and end up in fights with other members, where tempers raise to the point of folks forgetting about the rules. Occasionally, not-so-nice people show up who deliberately troll or otherwise engage in hurtful behavior, and those are always un-fun. So we sometimes have to step in and correct such folks... and they are never happy about it. Naturally so. Everyone always thinks of themselves as reasonable; this is human nature and is hardly surprising. In cases of conflict, it's always the other guy's fault. Which means, in turn, that on those rare occasions when we have to take action to correct a person... they're generally not going to be happy about it. We try to be respectful and matter-of-fact, but nobody likes being told they're in the wrong on anything, and some folks take it better than others. So reactions run the gamut from apologetic to mildly annoyed to very angry to incandescent rage-- it really has more to do with the individual personality than with the actual topic of discussion. Some people have hotter tempers than others. We get yelled at, a lot. Which of course we don't enjoy, any more than you would-- but we knew that was part of the job when we volunteered. It can't really be helped, it goes with the territory, and it's worth it if it means we can help keep the forum nice for everyone else. It's why we do what we do. As for what the topic of contention may be-- e.g. politics or whatever-- there are all sorts of things that folks can run up against; and in any case, out of respect for people's privacy, we can't give you any examples. Sorry. However, if you just take a gander at the forum rules... well, we'd prefer to have no rules if we didn't have to, so every forum rule that's there, is there because past experience has shown that it's necessary to prevent people from doing that thing. If there's a rule about it, generally that means that it's been done in the past, and was enough of a problem to need a rule about it.

Though I once saw a guy who actually went beyond that, all the way to extremely.

Not a good idea. This would lose all benefit of Oberth effect. Basically, you would either want to stay in low Ike orbit and eject directly from low Ike orbit to Kerbin intercept with a single burn, or (possibly) eject from Ike orbit in Duna-retrograde direction to drop your Duna Pe down very low, and then do a prograde burn at low Pe over Duna. Which one of those two would be better in terms of dV depends on the relative masses of the bodies in question and the height of the moon's orbit. I'd have to crunch math to come up with the answer, but off-hand my instinct would be to keep it simple and go for a direct ejection burn from low Ike orbit. (Naturally, when I say "direct ejection from Ike orbit", I mean that you'd eject in the same direction that Ike is traveling, so that your overall ejection speed from the Duna system would include Ike's orbital velocity around Duna, plus your orbital velocity around Ike, plus your ejection burn-- all three components pointing in the same direction.) In general, you want to avoid doing large burns while in high orbit around anything. It's very dV-inefficient. For your arrival in Kerbin system: the exact sequence of things will depend somewhat on your approach geometry, due to the inclination of Minmus' orbit. There are several possibilities. However, whichever specific approach you use, the first thing should be that your approach to Kerbin should have you on a trajectory that takes you to a very low Pe over Kerbin, and you do a burn when you're at Kerbin periapsis in order to capture to Kerbin and reduce your Ap down to about the altitude of Minmus. (In other words, don't have your approach try to go directly to Minmus and try to slow down there from interplanetary speeds. Do the capture burn in low Kerbin orbit.)

Sorry to be that guy, but... given that kerbals have neither noses nor visible ears, how the heck do the glasses stay on? Seems like an elastic strap or something would be in order.

Not a bad idea! They're not, currently. But should be pretty easy to bind the steering limiter to an axis group. I shall think on this.

Well, gang, a bit late to the party, but I finally figured it out. I just now released SteeringTweaker v1.0.1, which now allows you to set the steering limiter in flight as well, not just in the vehicle editor. Hopefully this will make it easier to "tune" your vehicles by playing with the settings while driving them around. Enjoy!

Actually, I believe the wheels already have a bit of a curve built in to turn less when they're going faster. That said, though: yes, I'd love to have some UI-accessible ways for the user to address speed-related behavior. This is among the ideas that I've been noodling around. I do have ideas for stuff to add to this mod, but figured I'd go ahead and release this one bit now. There's a reason I decided to name it SteeringTweaker and not just SteeringLimiter.

Well, kinda. I'd actually say it's more like the "gimbal limiter" on engines, except for steering. It makes a particular set of wheels steer less. (Whereas "fine control mode" affects control input, which this mod doesn't touch. It just changes how much a given steerable wheel or landing gear is able to turn.)

What it does Adds a "Steering Limiter" setting to steerable wheels and landing gear. This allows reducing the amount they steer. You can toggle between "constant" and "adaptive" steering modes. "Constant" mode just has a fixed steering limiter that you set with a UI slider. "Adaptive" mode is a bit fancier and lets you adjust steering dynamically based on vehicle speed. See below for details. Download from SpaceDock License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 Source code How to install Unzip the contents of "GameData" to your GameData folder, same as with most mods. (Note, includes ModuleManager.) Why would anyone want this? Steering ground vehicles can be challenging. In particular, if you go very fast, even a slight amount of steering may have the potential to flip the vehicle. This mod gives players more control over how their vehicles steer, by allowing them to adjust steering on individual wheels to reduce the amount they can turn left or right. How do I use it? There are two steering modes, "constant" (the default, and simplest to use) and "adaptive" (a bit fancier). Constant mode This mode's really simple. There's a single slider in the part UI, "Steering Limiter". It defaults to 100%, at which the wheel will behave normally (i.e. same as stock). If you slide this control to something less than 100%, then it limits the amount the wheel can turn to that amount. You can also adjust the slider via axis group binding: (Note that this binding only affects the slider for constant mode-- it has no effect on adaptive mode, described below.) Adaptive mode This mode allows you to set the steering limiter dynamically based on the vehicle's speed-- i.e. have the wheel automatically steer more when it's going slower. You set it up with three controls, as shown above: Adaptive speed: This sets two speeds in m/s, a "low" speed and a "high" speed. For example, in the above picture, the low speed has been set to 10 m/s and the high speed to 25 m/s. Steering Limiter (slow): This sets the steering limiter value to use when the vehicle's current speed is at or below the "low" adaptive speed. For example, in the above picture, the steering limiter will be set to 100% if the vehicle speed is at or below 10 m/s. Steering Limiter (fast): This sets the steering limiter value to use when the vehicle's current speed is at or above the "fast" adaptive speed. For example, in the above picture, the steering limiter will be set to 20% if the vehicle speed is at or above 25 m/s. If the vehicle speed is between the high and low speeds, then the steering limiter value will be linearly interpolated between the two steering limiter settings, accordingly. For example, if the speed were 17.5 m/s (exactly halfway between the "slow" and "fast" speeds in the above example), then the steering limiter would be at 60% (since that's halfway between 100% and 20%). To see an example of what the adaptive mode looks like in action, see the spoiler: Switching between constant and adaptive modes The default mode is "constant". You can switch modes by clicking the "Steering Mode" button (seen at the bottom of the UI in the above pictures). You can also switch modes via action group:

Hello @cmet24, and welcome to the forums! This mod looks amazing-- how much time did you put into it? (On a side note-- I see from SpaceDock that it looks as though this mod is licensed MIT. Could you please add a note to that effect somewhere in the OP above? Sufficient just to say "License: MIT" somewhere.)

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

Thank you, that's a good suggestion. Unfortunately, it's also a non-starter for me, because reasons. Lengthy rant in spoiler, but it boils down to "same problem as with CKAN." Thank you. Though I'd contend that that's not irony, that's just people coming up with a new and wrong usage of the word "snark" (starting circa 2000... yes, I'm calling that "new", fight me) that has nothing to do with my prior adoption of the moniker. (And yes, I'm aware that this attitude of "you people are all wrong because I was there first, how dare the world change" is a perfect example of what makes me a curmudgeon.)

Caveat about my following comments: There are people who are so deeply autistic that they have trouble communicating with anyone at all, but I'll assume we're not talking about such folks, and that we're discussing people who are so-called "high functioning" (at the risk of using a vaguely defined and therefore loaded term), such as Asperger's. Bear in mind that Aspergians aren't any less than neurotypicals (i.e. so-called "normal" people). They're just different. They absolutely can have friends (both Aspergian and neurotypical), romantic partners (both Aspergian and neurotypical), happy marriages, well-adjusted children. There is absolutely no reason why Aspergian can't get along with Aspergian, or Aspergian with neurotypical. I would say that Aspergians probably find it somewhat easier to talk to other Aspergians-- just as neurotypicals find it easier to talk to neurotypicals-- because they tend to "speak the same language" more naturally. Just as Aspergians understand better if you give them very literal speech that doesn't depend on nonverbal cues... they also tend to express themselves very directly and literally. All people naturally talk the way they'd like to be spoken to. So yes, that "greases the wheels", to a certain extent. But Aspergians and neurotypicals can totally get along with each other, too.... if both sides are aware of the other's quirks and are making an effort at it. This is why you can have friendships, romatic relationships, happy marriages, etc. that "cross the border". If a neurotypical knows that the Aspergian is, in fact, Aspergian, then they can make an effort to express themselves in a way that's likely to be better understood. It just takes work, is all. The problem that Aspergians tend to face, on a daily basis, is simply one of brute statistics. They are a tiny, poorly understood, and largely invisible minority. In most of their interactions with neurotypicals, the neurotypicals aren't going to make any effort to meet them halfway, or accommodate them in any fashion, or make any allowances. That's not because neurotypicals are jerks; it's just that most neurotypicals have never heard of Asperger's, aren't close to anyone who has it, and have no idea what to make of this oddball character who seems to keep putting a foot wrong, socially. It's the fate of any very small minority, really. This can result in the Aspergian becoming very lonely and isolated. In the happier cases, a common pattern I've seen is that they'll tend to form a small circle of close friends who "get" them and have known them a long time. For anyone who may be interested in learning about what life is like from an Aspergian perspective, here are a couple of very well-written books by Aspergians, which are not only enlightening but touching and entertaining (and very funny!) as well: Look Me In The Eye, by John Elder Robison The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch