ghpstage

Successfully rescuing a Kerbal from a near polar orbit around the Sun. Probably should have asked just how they got there in the first place though....

Not sure you meant it, but I wouldn't want the game to automatically jump forward after building a craft in the VAB as ongoing missions will be ongoing, though a button to jump to when craft are completed will be pretty important. Aside from that nit pick, I like build times and your other suggestions. Something else that could work well with all three would be the ability to build multiple craft for use in 'quick' succession (limit of one launch per day perhaps?), but with stored craft having a 'monthly' storage cost based on craft cost/size. That way we can plan for maximising the use of transfer windows, plan for possible rescue needs, relatively short term orbital constructions and other things at a cost.

Love it But don't forget about rescuing Jeb from orbit 12 years after abandoning him! As it is now, career does manage to provide constraints and weird requests that can spur ambitious and ridiculous missions, plenty of creativity and much hilarity, which certainly isn't a bad thing, but until time is made meaningful it will never feel anything like a 'career'

I haven't tried it, but you may be able to transfer tourists to another part on the same vessel with the right click menu, like you can your own Kerbals. If so, then as the Klaw binds two vessels in one in exactly the same way as docking you will be able to transfr them to a safe re-entry vehicle and release the old craft..

What do you mean its behaving as though its top heavy? That would generally be a good thing! Having your drag centre above your CoM will cause it to want to fly back to front and it will try to turn itself upside down as a result The only thing that would stop it from doing so in such a situation is a whole heap of control authority. You don't necessarily have to move your CoM upwards, theres a limit to how much you can do that due to parts and staging. What you can do instead is push the centre of drag downwards (we don't have a UI feature to seee this but CoL is a similar concept), add fins to the bottom, take unnecessary ones off the upper sections.

On career mode the low weight, low cost and SAS modes not being tied to experience are pretty handy. So they allow lower tech to go further (interplanetary probes with no building upgrades!), they are great for cheaper 'manning' of long term manning for refuelling tugs, interplanetary tugs, stations and make are particularly excellent for early rescue missions. They are also something of a necessity for satellite contracts. **Doh, this had been necroed from last year...

You can get them to work. I've found that designing them for low take off speeds (30-45m/s) seems to avoid most of the issues that your finding on take off. Meaning to make sure the craft has a decent angle of attack when on the runway by having a good angle between front and rear gears, and rotating the wings slightly. Keeping it light will help landing a lot too. Honestly, they weren't really worth using in the old career, but the new patch has pushed them way out into obscurity.

A variant I like to play is to see how far I can go in stock, while only taking milestone type contracts, with launches purely to grab additional science being allowed but frowned upon.

Orbit isn't a biome, it never has been, Space near is the biome, and you've obviously done the experiments there, so there's nothing new available for being in an actual orbit. You will get more science when recovering a craft thats been in orbit however, but its not a big thing. 250km+ is the high space biome. Similarly high orbit gives nothing extra so all you need to is raise your apoapsis to above 250km and do the experiments when you get there to grab that science.

True lol. Its not just the pilot perspective that makes it annoying, not being able to put anyone in there pre-launch means we have to jump through the same kinds of hoops if we want to use them as passenger seats too. And there's certainly nothing wrong with having Jeb do that.

Those pictures show experiments in low space around Kerbin. I don't see the problem?

No idea. I think you can click on the tab with a kerbal icon in the upper, far right area of the screen to see what the game thinks it is.

Science experiments are the main source. There's enormous amounts available closer than you think, you just need to get used to how the biomes work with science. Most experiments done in a new biome will count as a new experiment and give a bunch of extra science. One particularly good source is the KSC, which uniquely features a huge number of biomes in a small, easily accessible area that many people like to gather for an early head start using some kind of science hopper/roller/buggy There is a an admin building activated 'strategy' that uses funding obtained from contracts to get science, and it used to be absurdly, brokenly powerful, but its been nerfed into oblivion now. Your much better off using funds to upgrade structures to allow you to get newer, and larger quantities of science from new locations.

I really don't like this change as getting the next world's first contract frequently requires declining several trivial but pointless contracts.. Its very annoying. Glad to see there's an option I hadn't noticed. Thanks

Seems to have them a little more survivable, but I just experienced some ice skating for the first time and the trick doesn't work on the nose gear so i'm guessing the swapping the values dose that coincidentally?

Sounds good. I'll give this a go on my collection of heavier fixed landing gear aircraft and get back to you.

When I was putting the fixed landing gear through their paces the biggest thing I got off the ground using the upgraded runway was this, So while they are made of glass, and great care must be taken when using them, even the fixed gears are usable. Landing is by far the bigger problem, without draining pretty much every drop of fuel this thing would have no hope of managing it whatsoever, but it wasn't designed to do so as i'd given up trying to land anything heavy and just wanted to push the takeoff as far as it could go. Without a way to jettison fuel waiting for it to empty takes forever.... Provided you get it pointed straight, it'll take off at around 40-45m/s without any control input needed.

Designing for a lower take off speed and being aware that the spawn mechanics drop the aircraft in the orientation they are in the VAB will go a long way to solving take off problems. Its the landing I can't manage, but thats because i'm messing around with fairly heavy things using the earliest aircraft tech,

Its not actually too difficult to get aircraft off the T1 runway provided you build for a low take off velocity, having the craft lean backwards, angling the wings for a larger AoA, more wings etc. The bigger problem is having landing gear made of glass. I've managed to get aircraft of 10 tons in the air off the T1 runway using only the first aircraft parts you get, but landing is another kettle of fish entirely. Even on perfectly flat ground the heaviest thing i've successfully landed without damage is 7-7.5 tons. This doesn't excuse the T1 runway however, to have as huge area of grassland lying nearby that is far flatter than the runway is completely absurd.

The Ant and Spark, I use them wherever I can get away with as part of my penny pinching, ridiculously low budget, and frequently low tech space program. I do like use the hammer a lot too.

Probably, but my uneducated gut instinct would focus on Eve due to the very low initial dV cost, short transfer time and low position in solar orbit.

Objects significantly different from current planets are what I would be most interested in, things like, binary planets, permanent objects with highly inclined, near polar or especially a retrograde solar orbit, co-orbitals and a handful of named planet-like asteroids in a true asteroid belt.

[quote name='Play_LORD']Even if I line up the CoM and the CoL, it flips head over heels. Why? Too much lift? Is that a thing? Tilting the wings doesn't seem to work, help?[/QUOTE] Have you accounted for the drag on your wings? If its a classic biplane with wings connected straight to fuselage and a second set of wings above that then the drag on the upper set will cause a torque that will try to turn the nose upward.

Where is the CoM?If it is located between the wings and the elevators then the game is doing it right.

Both mechjeb and KER have the ability to give your total dV at a specific altitude, which isn't very useful in most circumstances. Assuming you are calculating vacuum dV check your mechjeb isn't in atmospheric mode.Aside from that you may be making mistakes in your calculations, common ones include, Using local gravity values instead of 9.81, Forgetting the 'ln' function, Adding together the ISP of multiple engines on the stage, the proper way to deal with it is in the link already given