richfiles

Well, I succeeded in getting my Explore Minmus contract by using BOTH the debug menu AND persistent.sfs file editing. I found that my particular save would not generate a contract for Explore Minmus, but it would generate multiple Explore Duna, Ike, Eve, etc... So what I did was accept a DUPLICATE Explore contract. Exit your game and back up your persistent.sfs file (Kerbal Space Program/saves/**yoursavenamehere**/persistent.sfs), and then open it in a text editor. Search for the text "ExploreBody" and you'll find the area of the file where your contracts are located. Each explore contract has 5 instances of "body = x", where x is the id of the celestial body. If you use the debug console to generate a DUPLICATE Explore X contract (like say, a second Explore Duna contract), then you will see TWO contract entries with the SAME "body = x" number. The code below is an EXAMPLE from my save file (the other data might be specific to your save, so only change the bold portions, and use your data from your own save file to modify). So change the number of "body = x" of ONE of your duplicate "Explore X" contracts from whatever number it is to "3", and that will change it to a Minmus contract. Quite frankly, I don't even care about the other parameters. Maybe someone who got the Explore Minmus contract can fill us in on the correct payout values (prestige, funds, science, rep, etc). All I know, is generating a duplicate Explore contract with the debug console, and then finding the duplicate in the persistence file and changing the 5 instances of the the body id number to 3 did the trick. Also, I did not let not getting the contract hold me back... In my game I have actually landed on Minmus and collected science. Editing the contract in this manner DOES NOT mark those events as complete. You'll need to perform those tasks again for the contract to register the events.

Gah! No answer!!! I'm borkin', I'm borkin'! I'm gonna save my save file... Just in case, and load this mod into 1.0 to see what happens. My concern is, does this have thermal or drag characteristics compatible with 1.0, or will the game just sorta... figure it out. I guess I'll try. Last time I launched one of these, it used an ungodly asparagus staged monstrosity. I had 13 stacks of Kerbodyne tanks, the BIG ones, I think stacked either 2 or 3 tanks tall, and there were 13 of those quad engine clusters to fit each of those stacks. I had to use the little tiny oscar tanks, held out on the end of the long structural girder, just to act as "waypoints" for the fuel lines, cause it took 3 fuel lines to connect up the asparagus staging on the outer layer of tanks! It was Ca-RAY-zee!

Pff... Who needs an in game calculator when you have a working Commodore N-60 Navigation calculator! I kid, I kid... But it is cool to have one! But seriously, I may download this, cause it's convenient to always have a calculator around!

Yeah, I'd love instructions on how to manually add the Minmus contract either via console or by editing my persistent file. I bumped Minmus's SOI doing a "Test this dumb wheel on a Kerbin Escape Trajectory... cause reasons..." I guess the reasons were some good rewards for a simple parts test, only that straight up appears to have locked me out of the Minmus contract. So far, I have 2 Eve, 3 Duna, and 3 Ike... No Minmus popped up using the console... So... At this point, I'm not sure if I need to edit the save file now. Dunno?

I used to do around 1800 - 2000 part ships (heavy asparagus staging to get complete stations with multiple Kerbodyne tanks worth of fuel with science lab, crew habitation, and multiple docking ports and escape pods up to orbit). I even sucessfully launched a Stanford Torus (from Michaelhester07) from the pad, and got it to the ground on Minmus (back when I used to do Kethane) It had 4 biodomes and the near VAB diameter torus part (the one with the forest and stream inside, and I think, a 44 Kerbal crew capacity). I discovered that fuel lines have a length limit when I built that... Had to hang oscar tanks from girders, and run fuel lines from one asparagus stage, to and oscar, then another fuel line from the oscar to the next asparagus stage. I think I had 12 peripheral stacks of Kerbodynes, and one central stack, plus a set of ejectable tanks and engines that didn't stick below the landing gear... SO. MANY. LANDING. LEGS!!! Each of the 12 peripheral stacks was either a fuel tank or a kethane tank, and I either had 3 or 4 sets of octo-symetrical landing legs on each stack... The center had the drill. I think that's at least 288 landing legs alone? Right now... My VAB is still stuck at the 255 part limit. I haven't upgraded. I spammed R&D on science modules, but I'm still stuck on the first liquid rocket engines, and the first three SRB sizes... I need to spam KSC science to get some bigger engines, as i've only been to orbit once so far. I had to get creative with the heat shield flipping bug (before the fix was figured out). I launched a ship with 5 heat shields attached to cubic struts and used 8 nosecones (to shape the aerodynamic disaster that 5 heat shields made), and 8 small torque wheels to keep it oriented. 2 service bays worth of batteries and science gadgets, and three command modules (for increased crew experience)... I got that to orbit on the entry liquid engines. Once... I can't wait to unlock Mainsails and the quad clusters again... I'm going crazy without them! If i ever get passed my grind... and the Stanford Torus mod gets confirmed to be 1.0 compatible, or updated... I'll have a go at seeing how much I can punish my computer in 1.0!

I spent $17. This and Skies of Arcadia are the only two games I ever felt like I cheated the developers out of their value! They deserved moar of my money!

Are these bio domes and toruses compatible with KSP 1.0? I really want to put up new stations using these, but I don't want to bork my fresh, brand spankin' new Kerbal 1.0.

I've got faith that you can figure this one out. Automatic pumping and balancing of fuel between tanks... Such a simple concept, but the usefulness is simply incredible! I once used this mod to virtually asparagus stage a giant, near VAB sized, rocket! The fuel lines simply couldn't reach that far! I use it to auto refill landers that dock to stations. I use it in planes. I'll be downloading this as soon as you've got it figured out for 1.0!

That is so cool... **sadface** I wish it still worked... Anyway, I hope it gets fixed!

My solution was to use the first available structural thingamajigs to create a semi-hemispherical 5 piece heat shield on the bottom. I attached 8 of the small torque wheels under 8 nose cones, and used the rotate and offset tools to aerodynamically "shape" the top of the heat shield dome. Int he center, I had 3 capsules (2 of the starter capsule, and one inline... since that's all I have unlocked so far, and I wanted a three Kerbal crew), a service module with goo, and other science, and a pair of radial parachutes, and a bunch of batteries, and a materials bay. Topped it with the standard parachute. That was enough torque to keep it DEAD stable... I had to actually manually adjust it as retrograde sagged more downward as I slowed. It's a horrible solution. I got it into space using only the BACC boosters and the first tier liquid fuel engines and tanks... Ugh... THAT was a monstrosity! I just want to get enough science to get the 90 level unlock to snag solar panels. Then i can do a jet powered rover (got the entry wheels) to spam the KSC for science. At least enough, i hope, to unlock most of the science parts... Though i might aim for larger rockets. This is getting ridiculous, being stuck with only the first tier of liquid parts. Soooo... Painfull...

You mean like this? And this (I didn't have a proper green filter then, but I do now... Pic might just get randomly replaced at some point, so if it looks "moar gooder", I probably reuploaded it!) And then there's the throttle lever I plan to use... ... I have more of those buttons than I will ever know what to do with! Part of me wants to use that actual video effects unit AS my control module. It'd obviously have to get major panels changed out, but what's really cool, Is if you give a quarter twist to two large screws (which could be changed with knobs), the panel springs up and open like a car hood... If I flipped the panel, and then mounted a pair of restrictor chains or bars to keep it from opening ALL the way, and I mount it on heavy duty slides under my computer desk, I could literally slide it out, and then pop the panel up so it's angled to meet the bottom edge of my monitors! It's even already a similar width, and the same depth as my keyboard/mouse drawer. I could mount the drawer to the bottom of it, and it'd only drop my desk space about an inch to an inch and a half, or I could work on a swing around drawer for my keyboard and mouse...

My Jeb is using Kerbol as a slingshot to get to Eve in a less than stellar orbital transfer. He, along with Bill and Bob, and my rescue puppy Wilsy, are all flying to Eve for Science and offroading on Gilly. They are flying "Gilly Vanilli" a 44 ton, 32 wheeled, rocker bogey (built with docking ports) suspensioned, complete science lab, with a top speed of 134 MPH (60 m/s). The rover doubles as a return vehicle, capable of safely landing on Kerbin, and then rolling to wherever I decide to take them! Prior to this mission, He was stuck with Bob in a capsule in heliocentric orbit for 45 years with no fuel. Bill... was stuck OUTSIDE the capsule with no EVA fuel. I succeeded in launching a rescue mission that consumed vast quantities of xenon. That ship was the Challenger Titanic Fitzgerald IV. CTF I was the ship that sent Jeb and company there, CTF II is not spoken of, and will eventually swing passed Duna... Someday. CTF III made it to 1400 km of the capsule with Jeb and Bob (and the very lonely Bill), but failed to meet rendezvous before reaching the point of no return fuel capacity. I got back to Kerbin on aerocapture and less than 400 units of xenon left of a 78000 unit store of the stuff. I DO like to name my ships after disasters... Gilly Vanilli I think counts!

It... It's so beautiful! I really need to build something like this... I'd use nixies for mine, but I can't afford that many.

Mine says the same thing. I was playing a save started in .25 and continued into .90 I also occasionally have vessels that work fine with mechJeb (all modules enabled) but when I decouple/undock the vessel into separate components... sometimes they "lose" modules, and it tells me I need to unlock modules by upgrading my tracking center or something. I CAN'T upgrade ANY building, because I don't have the option! As far as I can tell, they are all upgraded! Could this be a transitional bug (save file starting in .25 and being used in .90), and if so, is there a way to fix issues like this. I am NOT cool with abandoning everything. I have bases on both Mun and Minmus, missions in transit to Eve and Duna, and a few probes and stuff around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.

That's a pretty cute rover! Dead opposite of mine too! LOL! Mine is 44 tons! Anyway, I landed one on Mun and one on Minmus. MAN did I cut it close on Mun. Ended up with a night landing, with engines that BARELY could slow it... and no Radar altimeter, as I had forced myself to control from one of the suspension docking ports, to keep me vertical. If I switched to IVA, it would rotate my controls 90° when it reset my control point. I did some testing on Minmus. Top speed of Gilly Vanilli is 134 MPH (60 m/s). The wheels themselves simply can't take anything higher. They just shred, even on Minmus's flats. I've gotten incredible air as well, and on a low gravity body like Minmus, I've been able to land, or cushion my landings using the down facing ion engines, well enough to have NO vessel damage at all, not even a single blown tire... This on a trip that covered over 1/3 the distance around the moon, over 110 km! I have no idea what this thing will do or how it'll handle when I actually get it to Gilly. I know I won't be driving 134 MPH... I'd probably launch!

Did two more runs. Caught air... MAJOR air... as in I went over a ridge and was 50% of the vehicle's height off the ground. When I hit, I more or less nose dived and it sheared the front suspension bogie. Interestingly, I was able to very clearly see the mechanism that the suspension seems to "save" the vessel by. The long rectangular strut pieces come free of the cone shaped strut, but the docking port remains firmly attached. the rover skids on the pegs that remain, the docking ports bouncing and springing around to allow the vehicle to skid to a safe speed. Landing legs and long rectangular struts are on both sides of the vessel as well, and the nose is long. All these factor into acting as crumple zones/skids that kill all the speed very quickly. The science lab is a weak point, but I may simply add a second inline cockpit and transfer crew out of the lab when in flight or when rolling. Despite the suspension failure happening while landing a ridge peak jump at 48.2 m/s (107.8 MPH), I'd say the vehicle came out pretty unscathed! the Science Jr nose was destroyed, but not the leading fuel tank. The belly RTGs were destroyed, along with the bottom ion engines, but that was the only damage to the core vessel. All 4 bogie pivots remained intact, along with the entire upper suspension structure. The last failure actually happened at a much lower speed, and was not major... buuuut... A rainbow of FAIL!!! My engineer can't change a stupid tire! If any other two tires had failed, I might have carried on through that mountain pass, but not BOTH the outside leaders, NOPE! That's begging to dirt plant if I pick up any speed. I was only doing 33 m/s (73.8 MPH), but hit a particularly rough bump while cutting between a pair of mountains. Darn it Alley Kerman (who is totally a girl in my game, cause that name! Dang it, we need girlbals in the space program!!! LOL) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375218178 The 17.5 km and 28.9 km flags mark the failure points of the last two runs... Each run has started from the runway, so this last run has gone about 30 km! I'm trying to cross the "Africa" shaped portion of the continent that the KSC is located on. I recalled Billy-Bobdan and Alley Kerman and plan to level them up on an asteroid capture mission that's coming up... maybe drop them on Mun and Minmus real quick... You know, so she can FIX A FRIGGIN TIRE!!! XD I'll return them to the Gilly Vanilli rover with a sub orbital drop capsule. Alley can fix the wheels, and they can get on their way. They are also officially members of my Ace team backups if they make it to the distant shores. Wilsy is a Scientist, so that works out, as that makes them Pilot, Engineer and Scientist! WOOT!!! I'll have a "B" team!

Hmm... I made a new rover. I've got Jeb and the gang flying it over to Eve, with the goal of landing it on Gilly. Since Gilly is so tiny, I decided to take advantage of the low gravity and go BIG! Also, in the long standing tradition of naming my large vessels after disasters (Titanic, Challenger, Columbia, Fitzgerald, etc)... BEHOLD!!! CORN... I mean, "Gilly Vanilli" <-- Clearly inspired by an unmitigated disaster***! XD In all seriousness, after blowing the launch stability decouplers (small decouplers with strut points attached to add rigidity to the suspension during launch), this 32 wheeled monstrosity of a vessel weighsin at 44.8 tons (on Kerbin). I think on Gilly, it would only weigh 480 pounds... Not bad. Due to Gilly's low gravity, I decided to include ALL relevant science instruments, the science lab, and give it VTOL capacity (under Gilly's gravity anyway). It has landing legs that both protect the wheels during landing, and jack it up for wheel repair. It carries a massive xenon tank, RTGs, and some gigantor solar arrays for the trip back to Kerbin. It also has parachutes so it can perform it's own landing once back home... And I've gotten it going 46 m/s (102 MPH) in the hills behind the KSC. It can get all 32 wheels off the ground jumping the runway embankment or the aforementioned hills! This thing is like a locomotive barreling at you, off the rails, all wheels off the ground, at twice the posted speed limit! XD I built a double rocker bogie suspension using the standard size docking port. Due to the docking port's exceptional flexibility, compressibility, and docking strength, the bogies prove surprisingly resilient, even at speed, and even when landing hard, such as when the rover catches air off a jump. I have no idea HOW much further I can push it, but my next test will be to fire up the nuclear engine on the rear at 100% and tick the infinite fuel cheat, so I can see just how far I can get from KSC before the speed or terrain destroys the rover. I'm hoping to perform a continental drive, if it proves resilient enough. I have only destroyed the vehicle from rollover at speed, or by collision. I destroyed the runway once by hitting it too hard from the side, the rubble shredded the suspension, but not the vehicle. I was doing about 25 m/s (56 MPH). Only the front suspension broke on impact. I have found the vehicle is prone to roling if you turn too sharply while at speed. I rolled it when I tried to turn at 102 MPH... real smart... Even crazier... No deaths! I've tested 5 of these vehicles to destruction... Not one fatality! You know... I might just start a cross continental drive today! Mods used: Tweakscale: To make the enormus xenon tank (same diameter as the science lab!) Goodspeed: for pumping/balancing fuel beteen tanks, without needing lines. Kethane: The Kethane detector on the vessel's nose. Mechjeb: Because real rockets have flight navigation computers, and people who deny MechJeb are very clearly masochists! XD ***Milli Vanilli was a performer (early 1990s, if I recal) that got caught lip syncing his entire playlist... He didn't voice ANY of his music. it was all a "man behind the curtain". Destroyed his career. Also, "his" music sucked anyway! XD

Because some of us (noobs like me, who only grabbed this since .25) haven't been around that long, and didn't realize this was even a thing to be aware of, and Steam nuked my copy of 0.25 before I had a chance to make a backup (or even realize I NEEDED to). The bugs I've encountered loading my .25 save in .90 have been... unusual... I still see the illumination from all of my vessel's lights, and can still turn lights on and off using the "Lights" button, but the light fixtures don't render, and are not clickable. RCS is even worse. RCS blocks usually don't render either, but they do animate, but generate no actual thrust. In the VAB, if you load a saved ship, the RCS blocks are missing (lights are missing from saved ships in the VAB also but the illumination is still there as well). It seems I've had issues with certain structural struts, the RCS, and lights. Furthermore, I've had vessels literally fall apart as soon as I docked to them... dozens of pieces just floating off. I have had random "smoke poofs" in space when trying to move old vessels, and parts break apart from the mere force of a torque wheel. I even passed right through an entire space station while trying to dock with it! 44 kerbals on board, and I PASSED THROUGH the station! That was both incredibly nerve wracking, and an uber case of wat. All it's RCS blocks and lights were gone (but lit), but it still had it's launch stage and a TINY bit of fuel left. I turned on infinite fuel, turned the massive 380 ton monstrosity with only 4 Advanced S.A.S. wheels, and flew it from Minmus back to kerbin, launched a new rocket with 3 of the "shuttle" style 16 passenger crew cabins, and managed to successfully dock it to the station (no ghost ships this time! yay!). I then (again, using infinite fuel...) crashed the station. That's what I did to ALL my old vessels. I either crashed them, or used the terminate button on all the pieces. There were a lot of pieces... In general, I've been building ships with escape pods and crew cabins to transfer all my kerbals away from their doomed .25 vessels. I only have one .25 vessel left, and that's a stationary Mun base. I disabled all engines and torque wheels, in the hopes that I don't accidentally set those off... and RCS has no thrust, so hopefully,it won't tear itself apart, seeing as how it IS a stable land base. I will still launch a replacement for it eventually, but for now, it seems stable enough, despite the RCS and lighting bugged out on it. Man... I already miss my station... Thanks to mods, I had a massive bio-torus and a biodome. I named her "Silent Running". Like I said, I crashed her into Minmus. Ironic, when you consider the reference. No Kerbals lost... I have the foresight to equip all my ships with a probe core on each separable piece, so I never strand anyone or any piece. I can either remote fly it, or crash it, with no risk to kerbal lives. Oh the memories though... Kerbals sipping on mugs of coffee and cocoa in the torus... Dear God, the asparagus staging on that vessel's launch was BEAUTIFUL... I shall truly miss her... I had to use the long struts and intermediate little fuel tanks just to chain multiple fuel lines, so they would reach! Did you know fuel lines have a maximum length? I know now! The vessel touched both SIDES of the VAB and launched a 380 ton payload to Minmus!!! ) Now I get to do it again... but this time... I know what the hay a vernier thruster is for! 4 S.A.S. wheels on a 380 ton vessel my SAS! ... And then I learn about the "beta" option in Steam... /)_- Well, i now have a copy of 0.25 again, but I'm pretty much done with the great evacuation... Oh well... Goodbye Silent running and Luna Park... We'll build a new space station and Mun base, with blackjack and hookers.

So, if I have contracts in Fine Print on .25... How do I move forward? I would presume I need to uninstall Fine Print, correct? That seems straight forward. The question is, what will happen when the new stock integration encounters old contracts? that I accepted from Fine Print. Do I have no choice but to cancel them, or will they carry over. If I have to cancel, I won't feel too bad, as i'm sure I'll get more contracts in due time. It'd just be nice to not have to do that... I've never failed or canceled a contract before. Or were you referring to leaving Fine Print installed on 0.90 until those old contracts are completed? I guess the wording didn't feel clear whether you were saying keeping and fulfilling the old contracts was the bad thing, leaving Fine Print installed was the bad thing, or both. Also, that's one nice STOCKing stuffer you got for Christmas!

Use the Coms for saving and loading. VHF Transmit Telemetry, VHF Receive Telemetry, UHF Transmit Telemetry, UHF Receive Telemetry, for quicksave, load last persistent quicksave, save new quicksave save file, and load quicksave file. Time warp could be disguised as command module "computer" program clock and step controls... program clock advance, program step advance (physics warp), program step back (physical and non physical warp speed down one factor), program realtime (jump to 1x speed), CPU Interrupt (pause). I think those "disguises" would be fitting. Consider mocking up the famed navigation computer!

I had a pair of biodomes attached back to back using three tweak scaled 1-2 splitters... My mass got to 3518439096385.480 tons before i figured it out... Actually I nuked that ship with the Space Center terminate button, redid the ship, launched it, and then got up to 50000 or so tons before THEN finding the issue. Mass is back to a reasonable 600 tons (it IS two biodomes, after all, docked to a fuel tanker with one big tank and 4 smaller orange tanks, 6 large RCS tanks, a hitchhiker pod, and a science lab) Although... Now I have NO idea what's happening. Had two escape pods explode off the Docking port Sr. they were docked too... smoke puff, no flame, once I started maneuvering to dock with a tanker... some struts and some gigantors went with them... Uhg... Think i'm gonna just fling those tankers at some other orbiting body and hope they have enough fuel left to do some good if I ever get out to where I send them... **reads message directly below... I was using long girders (don't recall which ones) to extend the gigantors away from a pair of docking port Sr... Maybe that's what glitches, the escape pods broke off at the SAS units... where the girders were attached. Dang... I'm gonna have to rebuild this station segment a THIRD time, aren't I! XD /)_-

Having the same issue on my Mac version... I suspected tweak scale, since i could repeat the bug inside VAB by bumping the size of a part larger than smaller then larger again... The Mass increased every time

And I found a paper on spherical motors. http://www.jhu.edu/news/home01/jan01/pdf/mechatronics00.pdf The image is just one concept of a spherical motor. It's a very large variant, but the general concept is definitely there... Eliminate ALL the complex mechanicals by simply turning the ball itself into a static, free moving permanent magnet multi axis rotor, and having a ring or grid of electromagnets to manipulate it. I mean... LOOK at that ball! It's ALMOST the 8-Ball / navball already! **EDIT** Hmm... The link/images are gone. Oh well...

Have you ever considered another option for the ball... Make the ball with a pattern of north and south oriented magnets inside, and place a set of electromagnets around the perimeter of the ball. The ball would not be attached to anything at all, just spinning on some ball casters or possibly fluid suspended. Your control device would operate the electromagnets to create the opposing poles of the magnet pattern across the electromagnets, much int he way a sinusoidal brushless motor pushes and pulls on a permanent magnet rotor by creating a magnetic field that rotates around the stator. creating a hemispherical magnetic field that pushes and pulls the ball around was beyond the tech back then, but I can't imagine it wouldn't be possible to create a patterned magnetic field with, say a hexagonal array of coils covering the rear of the ball (like the retina of an eye), and three caster balls to hold the ball stable against the rear of the housing. I'm thinking that if you get creative, it might be possible to create a pattern of magnets that could create a self calibrating start up sequence. Possibly an expanding spiral of north south regions in the ball, so if you start the field confined and then expand the field int eh opposing spiral, presumably, it'd drive the ball until it spins itself tot he aligned unique magnetic pairing with the controller generated field. Rotate the field, and you roll the ball, translate in one axis, and you get yaw, translate the field pattern in the other axis, and you get pitch. i realize it'd be a start from scratch effort, but it'd probably be the cheapest possible ball design possible. just a bunch of electromagnet coils in a grid, and a bunch of permanent magnets glued to the inside of a two piece ball. Presumably, if the magnetic pattern would not be a completely uniform, repeating pattern, and the field that is generated itself becomes the aligning factor through a sequence of generated fields designed to take advantage of that non uniformity to drive the ball into known predictable paths from an unknown start point. Another option available is to have a very uniform magnet pattern, which would allow for (I think) an easier software control if the fields, but have a CCD on the back of the ball image the ball to determine where it's at. That'd require image processing though, so that more or less negates the easier control pattern... I still theorize that a magnetic pole pattern could be created that forms a self aligning startup sequence, and maintains ball position based on the rotation or translation of a polarity field pattern over the electromagnets that matches the unique, non-uniform magnetic pattern of the ball. Yet another possibility is to place some hall effect sensors to detect the pattern of the magnets passing below them. Finally, the use of a laser barcode scanner MIGHT be able to be adapted to recognize the spacing of the graduations of the ball along different scanning axes, so that it can determine the start point of the ball. I myself am considering getting an old arcade style joystick (two I suppose), and a few pushbuttons and toggles that have safety flip top covers and making a simple keyboard replacement controller. It would literally be a gutted USB keyboard, with switches hard wired to the key matrix to recreate the keyboard keys in the appropriate switches... Not exactly rocket surgery... LOL But man, I so want a nav ball in it now! XD