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Think I'm far too lazy for this... although it does provide something else to build, if I ever run out of other stuff that needs doing xD Until then I shall continue to fly my jets half way around the globe for a Fine Print mission, then parachute them to ground and recover them quickly

Grows on you fast, doesn't it? Good news is that the obsessive phase begins to fizzle after a couple of weeks and you get to the comfortable 'it's great, but not 16 hours per day' stage

Oh tsk tsk, you dirty lurker you

These are all really good, actually. In addition, I'd like to suggest Infernal Robotics and KW Rocketry. They don't add realism per se, but they do add tools which will help you overcome the extra problems that FAR will introduce (e.g. with hinges you can make your un-aerodynamic probes and rovers fold up a bit so's they can be tucked behind fairings, which are then more launch-able). And it'll be controversial, but Mech Jeb will help with planning trips to other bodies. You don't have to let it fly if you prefer to take the helm (I mix and match; I tend to let it get me to orbit, but I'll land stuff manually) but it's got some nice built in tools that will help get your orbital transfers sorted out. If nothing else, it can calculate where your target will be at the time you get there, which I for one find a real pain in stock!

- Build rovers in the spaceplane hangar, not the VAB, otherwise your navball will be 90 degrees out of whack, and possibly backwards. Not to mention the symmetry is more appropriate in the SPH. - If you make rovers with a docking port for skycraning, make sure the docking port is the root element - this way you can save them as a subassembly and attach them to a rocket in the VAB later. (Look for the SelectRoot mod if you found this out too late!) - If your rover is attached as a subassembly onto your rocket, double check you're controlling the rocket from the right place at launch... if the rover is upside down in the rocket, you don't want it controlling everything! - If your rover is unmanned, consider making it as a hollow shell of panels (not necessarily a solid 6-sided box, 2 panels with a separator at each end is fine). This gives you room inside for batteries and mono propellant tanks, and protects them against impact, while leaving the external space for wheels, science widgets, and solar panels. - If you use mods, Infernal Robotics adds awesome hinges that you can use to turn your rover's wheels underneath it, giving you a more compact object to launch (great if you use FAR!) which then spreads into a wide wheelbase when it gets where it's going. (Can't tell that I spent 5 hours working with rovers last night, can you? )

Ohhhh... right, I see. In my head, the speed of sound was ~700 m/s, but it turns out I was thinking of miles per hour Ok, now I see why it fell apart - and why it glows so beautifully during night flights! And yeah, one of the reasons I wanted FAR/NEAR from the outset was that I'd seen planes in it have a habit of looking realistic, which makes me feel better about the physics modelling overall My current jet resembles a Eurofighter Typhoon and (apart from the turning at mach 5 issue) handles really well for roll and pitch. For the moment I'm getting away with KW Rocketry's fairings. Though it did look silly when I launched a fat but light satellite in a 2.5m extended case, on top of a 1.25 rocket! Made it to orbit though, amusingly. Biggest challenge is rovers, though using Infernal Robotics hinges, I've now got a pretty solid 6 wheeler that folds its legs underneath it so it can be turned on end and just fits in an 2.5 ext fairing, along with a skycrane on top of it holding 1200 delta-v. Comes with the handy bonus of being able to tweak the ride height if it's grounded out The interstage idea is a nice one though, I'll look into that - might make my designs a bit less bulbous up top! If nothing else it sounds like a good place for mono propellant tanks. Annoyingly I didn't get round to it; turns out I have 85 game-days until the best Jool window for the next ten years, so I'm scrambling to dredge up local science from Kerbin and Mun and Minmas so's to be able to get the best possible ship ready. New rover will definitely be in the fleet that goes out, the question is whether I can manage an orbiter with a return stage to get the best possible science back... Plenty of money, but I don't think I've unlocked the nuclear engine yet cos I went towards probes and spaceplanes instead of rocketry I'll definitely use your MJ tip when I launch that lot though, thank you

My probe got to Moho before I realised the RemoteTech antenna on it was targeted at Mission Control instead of a satellite with long enough range to talk to it Also I build rovers with faces, then feel guilty when I don't bring them home x(

Tbh, it's exactly that which was scaring me off FAR. Being quite new to KSP, I'm not really sure what will get me to what speed - it was a total surprise that my ram/turbojet fighter goes as fast as it does Might give it a shot, though, since I think I now understand how to design planes that don't fall apart. Although I did try a 15G turn at 1500 m/s yesterday. Even with just NEAR, it didn't go well, but hey, that's why I always put a radial parachute on the pod I haven't actually had anything rip off, because I've been wrapping every single probe in a fairing Although a couple of times I've screwed my staging up, the fairing has popped at the same time as my boosters detached, and then taken off a solar panel or dish because it's gotten caught in the airflow and dragged down the side of the rocket. Aside from that, my worry is things like the big reflector dishes, KR-14 and up, which I think don't survive a launch? And then yeah, there's issues about how big a rover I can put on the end of a rocket, because they're not the most aerodynamic objects to put on the front of a rocket. That said, maybe I should actually try to launch something ridiculous - maybe it's not as much of a problem as I'm expecting it to be Been investigating the robotics mod too, the hinges in that look quite promising for giving some fold up options, if I design stuff cleverly. Ah, that sounds like the 2nd step that I've been missing, cheers The initial Hohmann transfer is pretty good at getting in roughly the right location at the right time (or at least it's better than guessing!), but fine tuning as early as possible is decidedly what it needs. I'll give it a go later tonight, thanks!

Hey guys and girls, Ten days with KSP now, all of them deeply engaging, and seven of them running NEAR, Fine Print, RemoteTech, KW Rocketry, TweakScale, and a few others because they're clearly too good to ignore. Mostly going well; probes to the inner solar system, 'fast enough' jet planes for Kerbin flyover missions, and an unmanned Munar rover that can run just as well either side up, as inspired by those little radio controlled cars. Gone career mode because I'm that kind of guy who doesn't like everything handed to him up front and loves the long discovery process with lots of use of intermediate tech levels. Indeed, I restarted after two days because I'd taken the Outsourced R&D policy, and discovered it is hideously overpowered and ruining the whole point of having a tech tree. Technically 'legit' but obviously a sploit... Much happier now that I'm grubbing around for science while battling a budget. I wanted to make it an iron man play, but truth is I feel like the game engine is a bit too likely to 'splode my stuff for absolutely no reason. One accidental tap of time warp and my planes fall apart in flight, so I guess it'll be an honor-system iron man, where I'll take losses if they feel fair, rather than like the result of dodgy coding or lack of information at the point of commitment. I know it is rocket science, but I don't have the head for the mathematics and I have to go on what the orbital predictions say will happen - even when that's really vague and stops at 'Kerbin escape' If y'all could spare a little wisdom, I do have a couple of questions however 1) Is using NEAR (and later FAR when I know the game better) going to make me struggle with later missions? I like the aerodynamics a lot better than stock, but it does make getting big things into orbit really hard. So far I've been focussing on unmanned flights, and have been shrinking my components to 50-70% normal size in order to wedge them into a 2.5m fairing, but I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get kerbonauts past Minmus. They'll need better comms, which will need to be shielded in a fairing, which will not fit around a big capsule; rovers for a crew will need to be bigger than my scaled down mini-rover, and yet I had to think really hard about how to fit a skycrane and lander into a fairing, just to land on Mun; etc. In short, does FAR or any other mod, provide any solutions to the (realistic) problems that FAR brings to the table, or is it something nice to play with for a while, but an obstruction later on? 2) I've been looking at Transfer Window Planner and MechJeb to help me find the right times to get to places. The first just gives me angles and delta-v's that I have no real idea how to implement, and while MechJeb will create a manoeuvre node, it has a habit of not arriving in a very good place for getting into orbit around my destination. Example, my recent Moho probe just barely achieved a wonky orbit with 12 m/s left in it's fuel tank. According to TWP I should have arrived with a thousand times that to spare, transferring orbit-to-orbit, which was to my mind 'plenty'. The question then is whether TWP is providing a fair calculation of delta-v, and if it is, how can I go from what it's showing me on screen to a set of manoeuvre nodes that I can execute? Otherwise, how can I get MechJeb to tell me what the other half of the transfer will be, before I launch, so that I don't try this with a crewed vessel and have to abandon it and return home? Thanks for your advice!

Been struggling with the same challenge as the OP. I use NEAR (because I've only been playing KSP for 10 days and FAR looks really hard ) and have never flown in stock conditions, but landing can still be a pain. So far only achieved on the polar ice cap, where I just cut the engines and let it glide down super slow. So I added radial mount parachutes to key points of the fuselage, and a few struts. Now I just have to get her below about 200 m/s and she'll hang together when the chutes deploy. Doesn't seem to hurt much either; twin turbojets and ram air scoops, ~1500 m/s top speed, maybe 20km ceiling, and gets 2/3 around the world on a full tank. Not gonna win any awards, but nicely for those flyover missions that Fine Print keeps giving me. And glows nicely in the dark Would FAR be more brutal on the drag effect those chutes would have? (Alternatively, am I underestimating how much drag I'm getting from them?)