beabop

I'm running this mod in 1.02. It still messes up the VAB if you choose that view, but the star tracker view works just great!

Ah, thanks everyone! I think it's worth it. I'm impatient and running on a potato computer. And because we're hacking stuff together from spotty documentation, I find myself restarting KSP really often just to test out a tiny, subtle quirk.

Mods or people who know things, where should you ask about quirks specific to mods? E.g. If their API functions aren't documented. Or if the call they use in the KSP API isn't documented. The mod's dev thread? Nobody can say RTFM if there is no manual or if the question is to clarify the manual. (Because even good documenters are only human.) But then you're spamming their thread with your noobishness. Your own mod's dev thread? Do you like to pretend that you know everything in your dev thread? But how do you get people who know the answer to actually read it? Private message? But then nobody else can see the answer. And if there are 2+ devs, they can't see each others' replies. A new thread in the Plugin Dev Help and Support forum?

Squad, you guys are amazing! Thanks so much for taking a risk on KSP. I bet you've inspired more future rocket scientists than anything done since the Space Race. If we ever send people to Mars, I think a bunch of the engineers who pull it off will have gotten their start with KSP.

Is there a consensus that ScreenMessage should not be used? Instead you use the ScreenMessages static functions?

As long as you're not changing the sun, I thought making an alternate star system is just a matter of an alternate Kopernicus config? AFAIK, the hard part (and the part that makes me want an "official" version) is balancing their orbits to be fun and challenging.

diaspora (n): The movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland star The mod's endgoal is to put you in another star system, with a fresh start. A big ship and some workers, something like this: Or really, a bit more like this: I think there's a fundamental problem with realistic starships in KSP, with mods that have multiple stars. They take too long to get anywhere! You time warp through a flight lasting decades or centuries, and what does the Type 1.5 civilization you left behind do? They're not mining the sun, building megastructures, or kerbin-forming planets. You can go back to the Kerbol system at any time and your satellites are still in their orbits, your Kerbals are still in their hitchiker containers, and your bases haven't expanded one bit. It breaks my suspension of disbelief. The ModThat's where this mod will come in. The journey to another star is a special voyage. You entire civilization (and your game) has been organized behind a single purpose: build the greatest spacecraft ever built, fill it with tons and tons of the most expensive substances known - Helium-3 or antimatter or Karbondrum - and launch it on the most epic journey in history. Your kerbals wave the starship off, and then... Diaspora focuses the scope of the game on your colonists. Decades or centuries later, their ship arrives in a new star system. Kerbin is so very far away - your only interaction is tiny, very expensive email packets that take years to arrive. The home system is irrelevant, so it's not even in the game. Uninhabited worlds await. Launch your construction craft, get mining, and build a new Kerbal Space Program around your new home star. And if you want, build another starship and launch it to another star! Each interstellar trip is a new chapter in the kerbal Diaspora. Planned Contents Interstellar Navigation Komputer part. "'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.' - Doug-Adams Kerman. But that's okay, with the latest, greatest flight komputer from Bebop Rocket (and Dance) Collective. Guaranteed to keep your starship on course for decades and your crew alive (sanity not covered by this guarantee). BFR engines and planet-sized fuel tanks not included." Interstellar Navigation GUI. Select a star from a list of stars you've discovered (installed), make sure you're ready, and the mod will simulate the voyage to your new home! An interstellar voyage. While you're in interstellar space, I would like your ship to live in another system that only contains stars: Kerbol and the Local Kluster. On the second pass (after the teleporting from a GUI), the trajectory will be set automatically and the screen will be locked to the Planetarium, as the game timewarps through years. Eventually, I would like to add the option for the player to fly the mission themselves, so you can do your crazy powered slingshot past Kerbol. KSP without the KSC. KSC is lightyears away. Your new base is your mothership. KSC functions will be tied to specific parts - VAB/launchpad to an Extraplanetary Launchpads part, science to a lab, navigation to a dish (or an epic dish cluster part). Eventually, the main KSC Scene would be replaced with a screenshot, then a Scene of your mothership! Multiplayer support. Considering how huge a starship is and how much exotic fuel you need to mine to cross light years, I think coop is a natural fit. The diaspora could keep repeating, with a new star system every month or so when the players successfully launch. Other Mods Dependencies Kopernicus Kerbal Engineer. Used to calculate vessel deltaV through all the stages and trip time. Background processing? Used to deplete consumables over the trip. Time warp enhancement? Used to warp years at a time sensibly. Very Strongly Recommend You don't have to launch a colony. Building a Project Daedalus-style probe could be interesting. But if you do... Extraplanetary Launchpads. Without the KSC, you'll need some way to build things. A resource mod compatible with EL. Where do you get the resources to survive and grow? Strongly Recommended Propulsion mods (Karbonite+, KSP Intersteller). Propulsion is half of why interstellar travel is so hard! Good luck travelling light years on the Isp of the stock nuke. You'll probably also need a mod for stupendously giant fuel tanks and stupendously giant mining equipment to fill them up in a reasonable time. Life support mods (TAC life support, USI Life Support, Snacks!). Long-term life support is the other half of why interstellar travel is so hard! Whether they're dead on arrival or refuse to work (dooming your expedition to eternal sulking), you won't want to run out of these supplies. DeepFreeze offers you the solution of kerbal popsicles. Mods like USI MKS/OKS and Biomass let you recycle life support supplies so you don't have to pack a century's worth. Power systems mod. There's not enough light for solar panels between stars; you need nuclear energy. Maybe you can power your life support on stock RTGs, but The Kraken frowns on that many parts. Development Plan First the voyage GUI. Figure out how to load different Kopernicus/Kopernicus Tech configs without having to restart the game and plop your craft in orbit around the new star. Next version would simulate the voyage - calculate delta V and trip time. Next would be resources - check that your craft has enough power, and it arrives low on life support supplies, reactor fuel, machinery, spare parts, etc (or if you didn't pack enough, the kerbals all die). Either it would be calculated by the mod or some time warp enhancement/background processing would be used. Next, the KSC and VAB replacement, bundled as a required but stand-alone mod, Mothership. For the first version, I'd like to find a hack that disables the returning to KSC from flight and replaces the VAB background Scene with a starry skybox. You would now reach the relevant KSC scenes - VAB, science, and astronaut lounge - from part modules. Working around the time limit. I've never gotten that far, but apparently after ~60 years the game breaks? It seems simple enough to restart time on arrival. At this point, I would call the mod feature-complete, and everything else is bonus. Extensions of other mods: Civilian Population. Hire contractors to mine fuel for you, because you're going to need a lot of it. Telescope mods. Launch Kepler-style missions to scout out destinations. You don't want to end up at a crappy star! Build a solar system-spanning telescope to finally get a good look at the exoplanets. Contracts pack. Kerbal equivalents of the 100 Year Starship project, Tau Zero Foundation, and the British Interplanetary Society guide you through starship construction (and give you money). Extended tech tree. Another star should have an insane science modifier, so I think it needs to be balanced to feel right. Extending the tech tree with very expensive, overpowered Star Trek style technologies would give you something to spend it on... Enhancements: Relativity. Makes the propulsion problem way harder and the life support problem a little easier. Procedural generation of systems (incorporate and expand Warp Drive). A way to handle the life cycle of Kerbals over generations. Without the endless supply from Kerbin, how do you get more of the eager green creatures? An extension of Civilian Population/Kerbal Konstructs that lets colonies grow into full-blown cities. Funds and contracts will reappear. City generation and terraforming for systems left behind means it *would* make sense to return to the home system. Better bring something rare and exotic to make it worth the trip... [*]Laser light sail. Possibly the only peaceful use of a death star. [*]Rendezvous with fuel from Kerbin. It's been a proposed cheat to the rocket equation... build a mass driver on a moon and launch fuel tanks that rendezvous with the starship. Hey, it worked for exploring the north and south pole. With manual mode checked, you'd have to send a tug after them (unless you have a logistics mod and part). [*]A Bussard ramjet. Other intakes are only 1.25m? How cute! [*]Honorverse-style hyperspace. Hyper limit = star's SOI. Parts for impeller nodes, inertial dampeners, and Kerhawski sails. Gravity waves are dangerous for craft without Kerhawski sails. With RemoteTech, you have their FTL gravity transmitters. Difficulty modes: RoboKerbals. (Lack-of-difficulty mode.) Aka stock. Without a life support mod, Kerbals are assumed to be in cyborg bodies - that need electricity. A little mod for uploading kerbals and downloading them into new bodies could be fun. Crappy star. These planets are resource poor and the star's light is wimpy. Good luck! Star changed since launch. "One of our grad students forgot a decimal point. He had one job!" The star isn't what we expected it to be! It's now a neutron star (radiation, comms interference), dwarf (dim light), or a red supergiant (swallowed the good planets). Planets changed since launch. A moon escaped, or a moon was captured. Two planets collided, or some planet's atmosphere boiled off, or the pre-radio-when-you-launched inhabitants of the Kerbin-like world nuked themselves to death. Lapped by the future. "We were secretly hoping that Kerbin would sit and do nothing like they always do on interplanetary missions. But no." A more advanced ship beat us here! They are happy to let us use their facilities, if we earn it. You arrive in the system to discover cities and space stations, who give you contracts. Funds becomes a mechanic again. They wish we weren't here. As long as we stay away from [planets with kolonies], they won't shoot at us. Let's get enough fuel to keep going. [bD Armory installed.] A more advanced ship beat us here! Their technology is superior, but they have forgotten about war... [*] Generation degeneration. "Kids these days! They just don't make kerbonauts like they used to." Centuries of confinement and inbreeding later, the generation of Kerbals that arrive have high Stupidity, crappy KerbalStats and have lost parts of the tech tree. [*] Life support failure. % of Kerbals die. [*] Space debris strike. At relativistic speeds, even single particles can be deadly. Your ship has taken damage. Could be mitigated by debris shield parts (using electromagnetics or oil droplets or whatever). [*] Computer glitch. We lost much of our old knowledge. Have to go through (most of) the tech tree again. [*] Fuel leak. We don't have enough fuel to slow down the entire ship! Use KAS to trim weight and make clever use of orbital dynamics. [*] AI rebellion! [bD Armory installed.] "Our mechanical servants ran away with most of our equipment! And invented shooty things!" Alien things to discover. For fun, science, and terror! (Seperate mods): Alien ruins. High-science biomes. Part: Xenoarcheology kit. A derelict starship/Big Dumb Object you can restore. Fetch quests for alien ruins and exotic resources. Discworld. Spin it up and stabilize it! Endless Space-style wonders Stargates! It still counts as hard science if the space magic was made by aliens. Can be moved with the claw/KAS. Need KAS to connect power. First one has a smashed DHD, so . Interstellar wormhole. Leads to the Gargantua system from Interstellar. [*]The planet where Krakens come from. [*] Reapers. Someone built a Kerbal reaper! [*] Zerg/tyranids/xenomorphs. KSP tower defense. Destroy their hives to colonize the planet. Make sure your settlements are fortified! [*] Zombie/pod kerbal apocalypse. Something alien is infecting your kerbals - and they've already been found on the Mothership! You need to send science expedition to the plant of origin to find a cure. The expeditions will be very dangerous, but not sending them would be even more so.

Hey, thanks for asking this! I'm also interested in learning how to do this.

Coming late to the party, but I just want to share that I'm a sucker for alternate star systems, instead of adding planets to Kerbol. So I would love all these crazy planets around another star. Maybe the aliens who came from that star became Type II and started making ridiculous, planet-scale art projects, before ascending to another form of existence. I think it would explain your awesome weird stuff like cube moons and be a cool theme for sciency easter eggs.

We have a total clustereffup of three different GUI systems in stock, with yet another on its way with the Unity 5 port. Do mods use yet another system at all? Which one do you recommend? Also, could we share some best practices for GUIs? Which toolbar do you put your mod's menu button on and why? What are some anti-patterns and pitfalls that experience modders all know about?

I don't see any guides linked for making GUIs in KSP. I think this is an important omission especially now when we have a total clustereffup of three different GUI systems in stock, with yet another on its way for Unity 5.

I'm following , where one of his tips to make your life easier as a modder is to make a development copy of KSP and delete most of the Squad parts so that the game loads faster.But for me, the VAB is mega messed up. I can mouseover parts like normal but can't click on any of the parts that do exist to place them. I can open existing craft and get the highlight from mouseover, but also can't click on those parts and grab them. The place, offset, rotate, and root tools don't work, but you can set action groups and pick crew. There are buttons for parts I deleted, and things that aren't normally parts - a flag, a potato-like rock easter egg, even kerbals! (And instead of spinning in place, flag and kerbals zoom in, getting bigger than the buttons.) I'm guessing it has something to do with all the amazingly awesome new ways to sort parts introduced with 1.0. What do you have to do in this brave new world to add (or remove) parts correctly?

As I understand it, we don't know what a black hole is like because we have no idea how relativity (and thus gravity) works at a quantum scale. So if we unify quantum physics and relativity (the Theory of Everything), then we could figure it out.

KerbalStats?

In the Kerbol system, I think it makes more sense on bigger bodies that are further away in delta V from Kerbin. For Eve, I think it's pretty much a requirement to have a separate lander.

This is amazing! I installed Collision FX just for the squeakies.

I think you could get a rough estimate if you break the trajectory into linear segments with constant everything - air pressure, Isp. Drag is still a pain, but you can look up the drag cubes of your parts and guesstimate drag coefficient and area, maybe linearize the drag force. Gravity loss varies with flight angle (gravity turning v.s. slowing you), but since your segments are straight lines, cosine and sine of flight path angle are constant over time. Linear segments of trajectories got us to the moon, maybe you can use them. You'd get the best answer using numerical integration and an optimization algorithm. Which I think Mechjeb does.

With the Kerbal Attachment System mod, engineers are awesome - they can do your wildest dreams of EVA repairs, up to building whole craft offworld.

Well you can grab latitude and longitude from Scansat and use Waypoint Manager to create a marker visible in flight and in the map. Or Kerbal Engineer tells you what biome you're over. [X] Science lets you sort and search your list of which experiment you've done in which biomes.

Very carefully. With the 30 part limit, I had to power budget tightly using the 1x1 solar panels, mounted on a single face on a structural girder. And I got in the habit of making sure they're pointed at the sun when I enter and leave focus. RemoteTech seems to love turning your solar panels away from the sun. (Because of this limitation, with no mode to keep a fixed attitude relative to the sun, I didn't feel bad editing in a little emergency electric charge.) Also you can abuse the fact that power is not consumed out of focus. Time warp in focus on the sunny side to build up charge in your batteries. Time warp from KSC when on the dark side.

If you're stock, he'll happily hang out in that tin can for years until you advance down the tech tree to the claw. That lucky tourist gets tons of bonus time in orbit! Or, you could build a craft with tons of chutes and a low tech cage - four girders sticking out that fit snugly around the tourist craft (kind of like the tugs in this video: ). Dock very carefully until it's inside said cage. Then close the cage by deploying specially placed landing legs. I have no idea if it'll survive the reentry Kraken with all the bouncing around, but it sounds fun!

By self-sufficiency, I meant the base can mine/recycle it's own resources, even export them. I can see missions that guide you through a complex colonization game with mods like USI and TAC life support. More ideas: "Concerned citizens are worried about our life support supply missions sending Kerbin's air irreversibly into space. I'm sure the protesters will go home if we build a self-sufficient base." Build a base [on ____] that recycles 100% of its oxygen. Assemble it with no more than X units of oxygen. At least N kerbals must live there (stay within e.g. 5 km) for Y days without resupply or mining more oxygen. (Where Y days is set long enough that you have to recycle 100% of your oxygen to make it that long.) A similar mission for each life support consumable, the final one for all of them. Protesters could say, "Eat the space program!" and "What will we eat at the movies if you send all of our Snacks into space?" "The protestors are back! They say our Mun base has mined so much water, they can see the damage from Kerbin. We told them that those craters have always been there, but they're not satisfied." Make your existing Mun base self-sufficient. The quests continue until all your bases are abandoned or self-sufficient. Another one: Hide your non-life support resource mining operations on the far side of Mun. "A big breakthrough for Kerbin's land pioneers was realizing they didn't have to carry their own logs across the continent to build houses. We think we just made a similar breakthrough." Build a base with in-situ minerals with [list of Parts]. These parts must be made on [planet]. No more than X tons can be landed from Kerbin. (Needs Extraplanetary Launchpads.) "Our scientists say we can mine oxygen on [planet]. I have no idea how you'd breathe rocks, but that's a problem for our engineers." Generate X units of oxygen on [planet]'s surface from ore [or rock-like community resources that can be turned into oxygen]. "Komercial aviation only really took off when we realized we could refuel planes instead of blowing them up each flight. Let's do the same thing with a rocket. Refuel it, that is." Land a craft on [planet] with less than 20% of the delta V to take off. Mine enough fuel to return it to low Kerbin orbit! "Bottled water conglomerate Keslee realized they could charge absurd prices for Space Water. Build them a base on [planet] that produces X units of water per month." Further contracts could be to return said water. "Kerka Kola wants to enter the Space Water market. They think water from Laythe would have twice the psychotropic placebo of their competitors' Mun water." You can get similar contracts from Kudweizer, Kepsi, etc. You could string out this hilarious contract chain telling the story of the Space Water boom and bust... and the next venture, Space Air. "Ice cream giant Koldstone Kreamery thinks the next great flavor can be found in space! Their flavor lab needs samples." Return them surface samples from each of Minmus ' biomes. Next mission, "Koldstone wants to send two of their flavor scientists to Minmus to investigate: How did nature make an entire moon so minty and sparkly?" Build them a research outpost with [instruments], host them for N months supervised by 1+ experienced Kerbalnaut then return them to Kerbin. On success, "Koldstone's food scientists have released a new flavor - Minmus Mint ." Next mission: After an expose and lawsuit revealed that Minmus Mint doesn't actually contain bits of Minmus, they need us to build a base that will mine them some." Build a base that produces N units of ore or minerals per month in the [biome] if Minmus. On success, "Our new Genuine Minmus Mint flavor tastes like sand, but marketing says it'll be a hit anyway. Thanks!" The korporate clients could give lots of funds but less reputation whereas the self-sufficiency/space environmentalist ones give science, lots of reputation and less funds (because sustainability is its own reward).

Thanks everyone! Thanks for using GPL, I'm going to definitely use QuickGoto on the backend.

Is there a version with nothing but zombies?

Is there a mod that gives you a Kerbal-Engineer-style view in the VAB of the parts that consume and generate a resource and calculates the net change rate? Use cases: - Electric charge budget - Intake air vs engine consumption - KSP Interstellar heat management - Mining v.s. smelting v.s. conversion into e.g. RocketParts - Regenerative life support