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Sr. Spacecraft Engineer
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I do feel that it is an issue, but probably for other reasons than the poll suggests. First of all, it's my firm belief that everyone should play the game as they see fit, that's what's the most important. For most games I play all stock. at least for the vast majority of the game. Exceptions are usually if there's something I find horribly wrong with an otherwise fine game, such as Fallout 3 weapon damage (way too low, and the player can take too much damage, resulting in a way too easy game. There's a mod that changes that). I remember saying at one point regarding mods "I prefer to play the game as the creators intended, at least until first completion". However, my feelings for this in KSP is slightly different, because I don't see mods as something that changes the game, but they add to it and elevate the experience. A friend of mine, who hasn't logged that many hours in KSP, mentioned that he was struggling with docking, and I informed him about Navyfish's Docking Alignment Indicator, to which he opined that he too preferred stock, but for the same reasons I listed above - He doesn't want to play a different game than the one he purchased. But to that I say that KSPs strength lies in the fact that it can be modded to whatever degree you see fit, be it just adding RCS sounds to a complete realism overhaul. Today I play a heavily modded game, but I somehow feel that up to a point it might as well be considered stock, as most of my mods are info-mods, tweaks, and additions, while not changing the core. The biggest gamechanger (in its literal sense) extraplanetary launchpads, basebuilding, and KIS/KAS. At one point I will use a different solar system, or at least additional planets, but I'm not through with the stock system yet. Could this be some remnant of any stock elitism? I think it may be. But the important aspect is that a game can be "vanilla enough" for people like me, while still playing with mods. But to reiterate the most important thing already mentioned plenty of times in this thread: Everyone should play whichever way gives them the most enjoyment of the game, being pure stock, with or without info-mods, or spending all day hyperediting Orion-powered submarine-bases into Sarnus.
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I have: 3 kids 1 wife Full time job A side business Over 2000 hours of KSP I'll sleep when i retire.
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what was the lowest Dv margin you haved for a flight?
jarmund replied to omelaw's topic in KSP1 Discussion
One of my first Duna missions: Despite not moving far away from Kerbin, I was sick of the trial and error portion of building, so I had started using KER to get proper readouts during construction. This had left me with a craft that on paper looked like it'd work. I also had KAS installed, as I liked doing assembly in orbit. Because using KAC from early on, I had pretty much solely relied on launch-to-encounter, as it's more efficient, and a lot more fun. The orange three were about to take of Duna, but with lower dV remaining than I was comfortable with. I sent an engineer out to remove some parts that were deemed not critical: A few extra battery packs, the antenna (afterall, they were bringing the entire thing back home, no need to transmit), and all but one solar panel that I made sure to keep in the shade during the transit back to Kerbin. I also removed some empty TAC-LS containers. I then launched, making sure not to let a single fart in the spacesuit go to waste for the little extra thrust I could get out of it. As soon as I was high enough to somewhat safely EVA around the ship (still it Dunas atmosphere), I sent out the engineer again to remove the landing legs. It was a pain in the aft to fight the atmespheric drag, but he eventually did it and got inside. The pilot started burning again, and I ended up getting a pretty much perfect escape angle, eventually resulting in a Kerbin encounter. Kerbin periapsis at 35km, which was as low as I dared go with Deadly Reentry. I then concluded that I had no choice but to hope for the best, as I only had 3m/s of dV remaining. From there on it was just a matter of coasting back and let the atmosphere do the rest. The 35km periapsis turned out to be perfect: It slowed me down for a capture, and after looping around Kerbin once I finally reentered for a "safe" landing. (somewhat harder than desirable due to stripping of some parachutes before departing Duna). -
First of all, instead of going for a powered decent from high up, burn orbital retro until your periapsis is maybe 5000 meters above the ground, coast halfway around the mun to the new periapsis, and go from there. Secondly, it sounds like your navball is in orbit mode. When at your new periapsis, click the speed readout until you're in surface mode. Then start a powered decent from there. A suicide burn is a lot more efficient, but also a lot harder to time right and survive. Try to keep a groundspeed of around 50-100 until the 1000 meter mark and then slow down to 10-20 and lastly 1-5 when under 100. Stay locked onto retrograde the whole time. And most important: Savor the moment when you finally land.
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1 never happened to me 2 is what's ended most of my saves 3 has happened twice to me
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As a followup to this question, I've started using MKS Lite instead of MKS. I had my MKS base up and running smoothly, but I found that MKS Lite is more to my taste/gameplay. However, I cannot see the MKS launchpad anywhere? Is it not part of MKS Lite at all? Is it possible to "mod it over" somehow? Alternatively, what's the "best" way of building/launching rockets from my Munbase via MKS Lite/EPL? I've never used the EPL parts, as I liked the look and feel of the MKS-L replacement parts.
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I listen to Vektor now and then. Not for coding anymore, tho: Like I mentioned, raising 3 kids has taken its toll on my ability to concentrate In my old job, as seismic survey technician, I used to code when onboard a ship, in rough weather, sitting next to the most annoying VHF radio, with the loudest navigational department in the world sharing my desk. All this with the highly eclectic music taste of the geophysical department ensuring that silence was not a possibility. It's perhaps worth mentioning that the main difference between then and now is that I'm now mostly coding in java, while it was perl back then. Perhaps it's just java screwing with me in the long run, lol.
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*Extends gecko-like tongue and consumes it* "No there's not." Waiter! There's gecko drool in my soup!
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I have that for my car-playlist, along with Meshuggah and Dimmu Borgir. Doesn't work too well when coding, tho. I sometimes put it on at the workshop on my dayjob to bring some counterbalance to the dance-hits our interns usually insist on playing.
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I'm a technician by trade (maritime, to be precise. VHF radios, echosounders, sonars, autopilots, etc), but a programmer by hobby. It just so happens that the latter is often paid, so I happen to call this work. Now, I used to have a playlist dedicated to good background music when I needed to concentrate, but I've found that instrumental music works so much better. For quite some time I've tried to build a decent playlist of music that allows me to "get in the zone". Now, I normally have a very wide taste in music (70's progrock, 00's death metal, 90's rock, classical and some stuff that is generally hard to categorize. I can listen to almost everything, but country music and accordion makes me cringe.), but when it comes to background music for work I tend to be picky, as I'm often thrown off my game - Fathering three kids has taken its toll on my ability to hear myself think. So, I just thought I'd mention an artist named Adam Young. He's released a few albums that sounds like it'd be soundtrack to movies, but instead they're soundtracks to historical events. I mainly thought about sharing this with the KSP forum, as this is where I first learned about him as something else than Owl City. And in case anyone is interested, here's the spotify playlist that I currently use for when I'm working on something in a solitary fasion. Please note that at the time of this writing, I still haven't sorted through all of Adam Youngs stuff yet to see which tracks are to be added to that list, so if you're interested in that, you need to check that out separately. Also, what music do you listen to when you need to get "in the zone"? [insert relevant joke here]
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Alright, so I'm now at the point where my MKS-oriented munar base is almost self-sufficient (The crew shuttles bring a small amount of materials now and then, which is enough to keep life support running for years). The goal was to have this be a staging ground for crewed interplanetary explorations, and with time I'm hoping to do the same on Duna and Laythe with time. These bases will also be where I build the required hardware (ships, additional base structures, etc). So now that I've gotten the base up and running, i'm having some problems wrapping my head around Extraplanetary Launchpads and how it integrates with MKS, so my questions are: * What materials do I need (produced or flown in) to build ships? I've accumulated a lot of MaterialKits from recycling leftover dropships while building. How do I turn these into rocketparts? (From what I've understood, RP is what I need to build and launch the ships) * Which structures do I need? I see that both MKS and EPL comes with launchpads, so I must admit I'm at a loss what to bring to my base. * Any other pointers/tips?
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I'd say it's mostly stable. I only have a few crashes now and then in the VAB, and i use a ton of mods, some of which haven't been updated since 1.0.5
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Lazy answer for a lazy returning player, here is a list of the mods I have installed. The ones prefixed with an asterisk are the ones i consider essential. Please note that some are merely remnants from the 1.0.5 days and I've never bothered uninstalling them. *Action Groups Extended (AGExt 2.0b) Alternate Resource Panel (AlternateResourcePanel v2.8.1.0) Ambient Light Adjustment (AmbientLightAdjustment 2.5.8.5) *BetterBurnTime (BetterBurnTime 1.4.4) Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack 0.5.4.0) *Docking Port Alignment Indicator (DockingPortAlignmentIndicator 6.4) Firespitter Core (FirespitterCore v7.2.4) ForScience! (ForScience v1.4) HyperEdit (HyperEdit 1.5.2.1) *Kerbal Alarm Clock (KerbalAlarmClock v3.7.1.0) Kerbal Attachment System (KAS 0.5.9.0) *Kerbal Engineer Redux (KerbalEngineerRedux 1.1.1.0) *Kerbal Flight Indicators (KerbalFlightIndicators R13) Kerbal Inventory System (KIS 1.2.12.0) Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (KerbalJointReinforcement v3.2) MakeItSmall (MakeItSmall 1.1) Module Manager (ModuleManager 2.6.25) Navball Up Default (NavballUpDefault v0.2.2) NavBallsToYou (NavBallsToYou 0.1) Olympic1's ARP Icons (Olympic1ARPIcons v0.9.0) *Precise Node (PreciseNode 1.2.3) RCS Build Aid (RCSBuildAid v0.8) RCS Sounds (RCSSounds 5.0.1) RealChute Parachute Systems (RealChute v1.4.1.1) Rover Wheel Sounds (RoverWheelSounds 2.2) SafeChute (SafeChute v1.9.1) SCANsat (SCANsat v16.3) *TAC Fuel Balancer (TacFuelBalancer 2.8) Thermal Monitor (ThermalMonitor 1.3.2) *Toolbar (Toolbar 1.7.12) Trajectories (Trajectories v1.6.2) TriggerAu Flags (TriggerAu-Flags v2.8.1.0) USI Core (USI-Core 0.2.4.0) USI Kolonization Core (USI-UKS-Shared 0.2.4.0) USI Kolonization Systems (MKS/OKS) (UKS 1:0.40.4.0) USI Life Support (USI-LS 0.4.4.0) USI Tools (USITools 0.7.2.1)
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Greetings fellow kerbonauts. I'd love some input on my logic regarding eccentric orbital efficiency. Let's presume Val is orbiting Gilly and wants to go to... Kerbin: Burn at Gillys PE around Eve, because higher orbital speed thus Mr Oberth helping out more. Eve: Burn at Gillys AP around Eve, because it's better to lower the PE further than lowering you AP all the way. Is my logic sound? Any flaws? Any other useful commentaries?