eddiew

Hi there, Really simple; it would be nice if tier 2 (or even 1) SPH allowed at least 1 custom action group. Reason; spaceplanes are all but unflyable without them. A quick read of the forum shows various solutions being used, ranging from mods, to mapping the abort action to perform the necessary engine switch. It is simply not practical to wait for the air-breathing jets to flame out on their own, or rapiers to automatically change mode, since your spaceplane can end up in a death spiral due to this happening asymmetrically. You cannot manually click the engine and toggle it because you will get exactly the same issue. Single-jet designs are vaguely possible, but not useful, since they lack the thrust to lift significant cargo. On the other hand, the VAB does not require tier 3 to get to LKO because rockets, frankly, are simpler. Action groups are not a luxury that can be deferred in the SPH, they are a requirement from the start - although it would be practical to restrict it to one or two at early tiers. Personally I've started using AGX, and I'll be sticking with it because it's nice that it has so many options and buttons, not to mention that it overrides career mode and gives me engine control back - but for those who prefer not to mod their game, stock really should make the spaceplanes workable Alternatively; if an engine is placed with mirror symmetry, make it act as such! Flameout at the same time whatever else may be going on in the structure of the craft, then players can just wait for it to happen and not worry. Asymmetric flameout is the killer. Thanks!

Perfect, cheers Diazo. I'm sure I can just kill everything off that's more than 3 days old now; generally any backup saves I've made are just while I'm figuring out aerobraking or some such transient risk. 48 hours later they're mostly useless I'll see how it goes on auto-delete again, but worst case turn it off and manage the folder manually. Thanks for your help! *edit* Yeah, much better now, thank you!

Thanks for the quick reply 210 files total, actually! 115 are AGExt00--.cfg, and 50 of them are Kerbal Alarm Clock making backups when it switches active vessel - I think I can configure that to a smaller number which will probably help. I've also gotten into the habit of making a daily save every time I start the game, which is another chunk - I'll start archiving those elsewhere, plus all the intermediate saves before I commit to something crazy How do I know what an AGX file is attached to? Is the latest one likely to be my persistent.sfs? Eight of them are dated as per my last kerbal session, the others are much older. Don't want to blanket delete them and wipe out my spaceplane keybinds ^^; Cheers

Hi there Diazo, I was noticing a lot of lag when switching between the VAB/SPH and the KSC. Hunted through my logs and found these lines: AGX Deleteing old save games start: 1/15/2015 6:25:10 PM (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) AGX Deleteing old save games end: 1/15/2015 6:26:00 PM That's 50 seconds between those timestamps, running the game off a pretty quick SSD... And indeed if I remove AGX from my mods, the exit from VAB is down to 5-7 seconds, which is much more bearable. Doing without AGX permanently is too painful to imagine with a tier 2 SPH, so can I ask: - what save games is it deleting? xD - how much penalty is there if I just turn off deleting them? Will I end up with thousands of files? Thanks!

Sorry to our american friends, but I'd call China. More likely to take a chance on something with an 80% chance of success in order to have the prestige of being first. The US and Europe will be too mired in creating an absolute 100% perfectly safe everything to actually launch. Which seems silly, cos I reckon you could take any group of peeps from the astronaut programme, tell them they can go to Mars next year, but will probably die of cancer within a decade, and I bet they'd all volunteer anyway

Reaction wheels, SAS on, and linear (LIN) docking mode. Docking mode will try not to let you flip, you can basically bang it to 4x timewarp and as long as you stay under your wheels' maximum speed, it'll all work out I have some tiny rovers (fit in a 1.25 fairing) that never fall over, just because I drive them in this mode. Rotational (ROT) docking mode will let you flip it back over if you do still manage to get its legs in the air.

It does seem a little random... Currently I have contracts for Ike, Gilly, Jool, and Bop. Ike came as a pair with Duna, Gilly came with Eve, while the last two appeared while already en-route to Jool because, like you, the window was open so I sent some probes. On average they do seem to come in planet/moon pairs, but not necessarily in the order I'd like (Eve was first up).

Gilly Dropped a probe onto Eve, but knew I'd never get my kerbals back if they followed Then 0.90 came along right as I was about to launch my first Duna mission, so naturally I restarted the whole game... and I haven't caught up with myself since. So many things to do in Kerbin SOI...

I have only once built a spaceplane without enough chutes for an emergency landing... once was enough to remember their little faces for the rest of my life

Prefix Equivalent real world mission, e.g. Apollo, Mariner, Viking, Pioneer. Suffix Probe orbiter: bird, e.g. a Chaffinch class small probe, Osprey class heavy science package, or Dove class mapping satellite. Probe lander: insect, e.g. Cricket class light lander, Beetle class rover. Crewed lander: mammal, e.g. Fox class 1-man lander, Bear class 3-man, Cougar class dropship with Badger rover in the cargo bay. Results in fun names like Viking Bear, Apollo Fox and Mariner Cricket while still being recognisable (to me) from the name

No preference; I send them places as a pair for their respective benefits

There's... there's nothing wrong with sending kerbal to Minmus with enough TAC-LS supplies for over 60 days, right? I mean, that's just sensible planning in case of mechanical failure. More seriously, I take kerbal life very seriously. I use Kerbal Construction Time and run multiple launch and mission sims before anyone gets to go anywhere, and always have enough reserve supplies to wait for a rescue mission. All first-landings are done by probes. I will not accept deaths due to game bugs, like pilots flailing around at 1m above the surface, or kraken attacks, or those moments where a ship is mis-reporting having more delta-v than it really does. I would accept the death of a kerbal due to design failures; lack of supplies or fuel, but thus far (having explored Kerbin SOI only) I haven't had any casualties

The only hard thing about FAR is aerodynamic disintegration - which you can turn off in its options The detail window is not required to get to orbit, and in fact I have several working FAR spaceplanes for which I have never checked the stability statistics. They got to orbit during prototyping, and they didn't lose control on re-entry; I therefore don't care about any red numbers that might be lurking. If you understand CoM and CoL, and you have a feel for how a high speed plane should look, then you can manage just fine Other than that, FAR makes common sense apply to the launchpad and runway. If your plane looks like a plane, it often flies like one. If your rocket looks like a rocket, it often flies like one. If your plane looks like an imbalanced tangle of wings that shouldn't fly, then it probably won't fly. FAR can however gimp your style... Because it forces you to take the common sense answer of smooth rockets and balanced wings, it's harder to do weird and crazy contraptions. It doesn't mean that you can't make pretty rockets and planes, but you may have to tone down the oddball ideas. If you like mad and crazy shapes (which I admit can look awesome) which have never appeared in terrestrial engineering, then FAR isn't going to be for you.

Kerbal Construction Time is great, especially paired with Stage Recovery - although if you actually play with all-spaceplanes it probably won't affect you much RemoteTech, only if you want a proper hardcore game... I respect it's realism aspects, but it adds a lot of problems (controlling probe landings being top of the list) without adding solutions to those problems. I've been using Antenna Range as an alternative, which still makes you think about communications for transmissible science, but isn't as brutal about the control of probes. Transfer Window Planner is nice if you're playing with life support, since you can pre-plan the entire trip and return, and know exactly what you need to provide for. DMagic Orbital Science is a great addition, as long as you turn science income down to match the fact you have new ways of getting that technology. Some of it's deep in the tree, which can give reasons to re-visit places. Modular Kolonisation Systems is fun if you want to do permanent bases elsewhere in the solar system. Back it up with Karbonite for some in-situ refuelling options - which I can imagine working very well for an SSTO fan, actually, since you can send a fuel refinery ahead of your manned mission, then top up once you get where you're going; no need to have enough fuel for the round-trip anymore Lack Luster Labs' SXT adds a lot of plane parts and engines that you might find use for. Station Science gives you a good reason to put heavy things in orbit, although I'm not sure they'll fit into an MK3 bird. And of course Kerbal Engineer Redux! I'd normally suggest KW Rocketry, but I don't think it's your style - although you might find use for the Vesta class engines early on (good efficiency, better thrust than a 909). ...yeah, I'm one of those guys who runs with 70+ mods, but they're all cherry picked like the above, and most of them aren't too brutal about memory requirements. Everything you listed is in my GameData already

I look forward to that day! IIRC welding wings doesn't currently work very well. Orientation of the panels tends to go amiss. That and I don't think FAR understands them properly, so you may not get the right lift/drag from it.

It certainly looks big enough xD If your lander is specced to have at least 2500 delta-v when it's sitting on red soil, it'll be fine as long as you can wait for an optimal return time

I am pretty darn sure that debris and 'flights in progress' slow down your transition times between buildings and getting stuff onto the launch pad... Considering getting an SSD raid array to make it bearable with 50 things going on! Debris is probably less of a problem though; active missions will be complicated vessels with many many parts, and bulks up the save file massively. Debris is usually a tank, engine, and decoupler and doesn't add so much bloat.

Bear in mind you can aerobrake all but the last hundred metres, and you don't technically need to orbit first. Speccing a Duna lander so that it parachutes around 3 m/s on Kerbin will give you a manageable 12-15 m/s on Duna's midlands, needing only a little tap of your engines just before landing I've been running Kerbal Construction Time sims of a Duna lander which has 2500 delta-v at descent. The remnants of the transfer stage's fuel will push it into a ~5k periapsis, then detach, so the debris crashes hard while the lander floats down. If the planetary alignment was right for a cheap return, this would land using chutes and about 100dv, take off with about 1500, and have enough to come back home. That said I use TAC life support, meaning I have to carry extra weight, and take a sub-optimal return window to get home before my kerbals starve, so I'm leaving a fuel and food cache in orbit, rather than having to carry it down to the surface and back. The cache carries a medium grey 2.5m tank's worth of fuel, and and gives the lander a healthy 2200 delta-v when reattached, even dragging all that heavy food and water around. Plenty for an early return - and of course the chutes get used again when landing back on Kerbin, because I'll have room for an engineer on board

Bit late now, but in general it's good to stay with an eccentric orbit, where the AP matches thingy-o-stationary orbit, and the PE is low, and let it circle a few times until the site you need is visible when the vessel is in the right place. Then you can just circularise right where you are and you're done

You might want to post this issue under the support section, tis entirely possible the devs haven't realised it's doing this

Nice... I play with KCT, and I've lost a few changes in the past by editing but not saving an under-construction vessel; end up with a ship on the launch pad that doesn't resemble it's original .craft file anymore. This looks like the perfect save tool Really nice shuttle, btw, Inigma - does it fly as well as it looks?

Good stuff

Following up my own post, this turned out to be probably an issue with Kerbal Construction Time. I've raised the matter with Magico13 and any further follow up on the matter can be found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69310-Kerbal-Construction-Time-Dev-Thread?p=1665185&viewfull=1#post1665185

Cheers for the rundown 5th It'll still be like trying to use a napkin as a hang-glider :/ Tbh, mk3 feels rushed out. I do like it, I do want it, but it's missing all the supporting stuff to make it viable. On the up side, plane parts earlier - finally! This needed to happen with 0.90 and it's survey contracts. Crazy that people have been left facing walls of flight contracts, while not owning wheels to launch planes with. Will wait and see on the aerodynamics... I like FAR, but I could be persuaded to a different model as long as stuff flies in a way that feels right.

Perhaps the USI Exploration pack has something in it for you? That said, to my mind the definition of a rover body is a bit that the other bits hang off. A modular girder and a couple of I-beams can make a perfectly viable 'body' with plenty of surface area to attach wheels, batteries, solar panels, and science instruments to. Tweakscale can help with the aesthetics of this approach, and helps keep things down to an appropriate size for the wheels you're using. I never use the stock rover body, because it's just a bulky lump without any particular benefits