Violent Jeb

If you'd rather not use the launch planners, you can get set your own manoeuvre node fairly successful. For duna, zoom out on the map screen until you can see duna and kerbin. Fast forward until duna is ~45' ahead of kerbin. If kerbin and duna were in a race, duna would be 1/4 of a lap ahead. Now, for getting interplanetary encounters closer to the sun, you want to launch on the side of kerbin that is facing the sun. For interplanetary encounters farther from the sun, you want to launch from the dark side of kerbin. So, zoom in. set a node on the dark side of kerbin (in the middle of the dark side), and add prograde until you have a kerbin escape. Zoom back out, and you will see that your projected orbit (from the man node) will move in towards eve, then as you make a pass around kerbin, you will almost align with duna. If you fine tune the start of your burn from here, adding small amounts of prograde/retrograde, you can usually get a manual encounter. This will take ~1200dv fuel (haven't done it in 1.0.2 yet). In .90, the entire journey took me around 12500 Dv Remember that duna has half the gravity of kerbin, and just slightly more than the mun. You will need around 3000dv to get back off duna and get back to kerbin. For interplanetary I usually recommend extra fuel in the transfer stages, so that if you make a mistake or run low on fuel you can re-dock with an orbiting fuel tank before you leave.

How much dv do you have to work with? If you can add a little burn to your aerobrake you can always fine tune the Ap by burning retrograde while your in the atmosphere. I usually circularize in one pass this way, usually with less than 200 dv all in. Typically i enter between 50-55 km. I wouldn't go any lower than 45, since even if you get the Ap to LKO you're going to have to burn prograde to bring the initial side back into orbit. In this higher atmosphere (above 40km) your crafts direction isn't going to affect your drag or orbit significantly - there's very low air presure. Once you get lower, pointing your craft "up" (blue on the navball) is going to slow you down, and "down" (red on the navball) is going to speed you up. I find this particularly important just before you start to experience the serious re-entry heat around 20km, you can try to slow yourself as much as possible, then once your ship is on fire, you usually just focus on keeping it straight to reduce the damage (if it's a problem for your craft design). Usually I find 15t and under need no shielding if you bring them in under 3000 m/s @ 100% heat settings in a reasonable descent.

You could edit the persistence file or use a contract mod - maybe if you bounce into the ground hard enough it'll detect

I think i see why you are unable to match my profile. Your craft is massively powerful. The thrust limiter in the VAB is essentially the same as the reducing the throttle, the engine still has the same efficiency, so when you are lowering your max thrust, you are carrying the extra weight of your engine up with you. That is where the 300-500 difference is. The total time I am throttled down is less than 30s, only during the thickest part of the atmosphere where i'm losing too much to the wind (your design is throttled 60% the entire time). Drag is seriously reduced approaching 20km (inside the second layer of atmo), so I throttle it back up to 100% As it is, your craft is able to blast way beyond the Ap by the time you're ready to start the turn, which means you need even less throttle from the engine. I would try either an additional fuel can on your initial stage, or a smaller engine, so that you don't rocket past (a good pun) that 1minute Ap. The additional fuel can will add to your dV while making your launch more efficient - so i'd go that way. Double the bottom stage fuel throttle 100% and you should see those savings

It's probably producing so much heat because it is inside of a cargo bay. In my tests, I was able to convert 150units of ore into lf+ox in approximately 1/4 kerbin day. Using this metric it will take me apx 1 full day to produce 600 units, which means approximately a week to convert enough ore to fill an orange jumbo. On kerbin, My solar components produced ~5-8 units of electricity per second optimally, using 10 1x6 solar panels the ISRU drew something like 30. Because of this, I could only sustain the converter for a few minutes before having to turn it off and wait for battery charge to accumulate. The drill is much less intensive on resources. Testing has also shown that the ISRU does not need to be directly connected to the processed fuel tank, so it works somewhat like monoprop My design uses 2 cubes (-) to keep the engines and ox/lf [] tanks physically separated from the ISRU []-[o]-[] \/ \/ Either i've gotten lucky or my tests haven't revealed the same overheating issue as you guys have been experiencing - only electrical. I am wondering if your shut-offs are due to losing electric power. I have also experienced the issue where I can warp so long as i'm not out of electrical power, and the ship will fill/convert infinitely, while my available charge does not change during this time (day or night). I will be launching this mining rig from kerbin to the mun this evening so I will come back and share my findings.

Without KAS, i'm building my Mining vessel so that it can drill and launch itself into orbit. Surface docking is infinitely more challenging, so i'd rather keep the functionality. Rig will go down to minmus, drill and fill tanks, then re-enter the orbit to serve as the refuel station until it needs to re-land and re-fuel

Thank you for this mod. It is quite useful for interplanetary ops. Nigh Essential - It is quite tedious to go without.

Mechjeb will give both different readings atmo and vac so i'm probably referring to atmospheric. Either figure is somewhat rough because atmospheric data assumes a constant atmo isp though it is almost gone after 15k and vac dv is consumed faster in atmo, so it ends up between those two readings either way it's significantly less than what was needed in .90, but the aero makes it more of a challenge. I'm actually satisfied because it implies that the round trip mission to eve might be a little more possible - haven't got out there yet to find out.

It is WAY to grindy. Funds should fall from the sky on easy. If you want a degree of grinding to be relative to difficulty, then make funds more scarce on hard. The problem as it is now, if you adjust the slider % for funds returns on contracts, it linearly increases the costs of the buildings!! So there is no way to reduce the cost of the buildings, regardless of difficulty, without using mods. The grindiness is cooked right in at present. the cost of the buildings needs to be the same regardless of difficulty, and let the amount of funds available scale. I frequently just sit on the contract screen and decline mission after mission hoping to see one that i'm remotely interested in. If i'm going to have to do that all the time, it'd be nice to have keyboard integration or make the decline button closer to the list of missions. Honestly I reject 20 missions for each one I take. And contracts suck. Badly. Testing parts and things like that should be one time only. Since it's my space program though - I should get paid to do whatever I think is important to kerbin, so long as I achieve it. I think that there should be a weekly/yearly budget or something like that that grows so that as you progress you end up with more disposable income. ^^ Consider the following. On each career run, the amount of funds you have at any given time is usually just enough to launch 1 or 2 new interplanetary round-trip crafts. If you have an upgrade that you need, it adds to the problem. You NEVER have enough money to launch "pleasure crafts" where you can choose to just fly an interplanetary mission for the science or experience. All the way through the career you might earn enough funds to launch 2 major crafts of your own free will. It sucks when the majority of the experience is acquiring science while you're grinding out pointless contracts for the man. Full disclosure: Right now I play with the science funding mod - which I have found to be quite satisfactory in terms of supplementing my income. The amount of funds is still small enough that it needs to be managed carefully. I certainly cannot unlock buildings recklessly, yet I still have enough to launch crafts for fun to go to new places, or try new concepts without waiting for a suitable contract to try a new design out.

It is certainly the most efficient to burn at Ap or Pe. During a launch, I try to keep under 200 m/s during the first layer of atmosphere. I always fly almost directly up or 5 degrees at the most during this time. For the first 7000m (give or take), the average ship @1.5-2.0 will encounter 200-500 µm/s - almost half a m/s being wasted. If you go above this, the resistance makes the craft very hard to control (turn) with so much force acting against it. So anything above 200m/s during the first 7km is not efficient - so much so that I usually dial engines back to keep my speed under 200m/s. After the first atmospheric "zone", the craft can still be quite prone to tipping if you don't have fins or SAS/monoprop. After you've cleared this you should have your Ap approaching 1 minute away - and climbing fast. This is the key. Burning with your apoapsis more than 1 minute away means that you are constantly burning in a less efficient spot (especially for turning). 1m is arbitrary, obviously the closer you can get to burning on the Ap is better but I find 1m gives you nice room for correction. As you turn, the time to Apoapsis will slow - keep turning until it remains under 1 minute. Usually by around 20km I am only 20-30 degrees from completely horizontal. At 25km your wind resistance has fallen to less than 1/10th what it was during the first zone, So it doesn't hurt you because you're saving big-time by keeping your turn within 60s of the AP at all times. I find that by 40-50km, I have begun to fly "into the red" on the navball, just to keep my time to Ap less than 60s. Now we're gaining some serious speed - and the Ap begins to slide. At this time I cut the engines, and do 2 or 3 small burns within 10s of the Ap, directly horizontal. I've got a few different crafts up with VERY close to 3000m/s to 0.0 circular orbit, 70-73km. I'm going to say an optimal ascent could be 2800. I can't tell you the actual profile but I follow the Ap exclusively. I'm flying manual on career mode - mechjeb is giving me the drag/Ap values i've been using. These observations are based on 1.0.2 flights

I've been slowly getting used to 1.0.2. It does remind me of far, and it is definitely an improvement from 1.0 and .90. I think that jet speeds at different heights need to be fine tuned, but the atmosphere is a happy medium- it feels familiar to both stock and FAR Per rockets, I have found that it is requires less dV to get into orbit, but the aerodynamics is very unforgiving. You need to fly very straight with rockets for the first layer of atmosphere. The main issue is that it was called the release version. As others have pointed out, there needs to be more improvement in different places. Career mode needs to be worked over - the re-entry heat is still not much of an issue - but that's okay because the heat shields are still kind of awkward. I've been fairly consistant at keeping ships alive with no shielding, as long as I have sas to keep retrograde.

Most games that i've played since 1990 have brightness settings for this very reason. Not everybody is calibrated the same. That being said, you can increase the brightness on your monitor.. or you can download the ambient light adjustment mod, which adds a historically necessary feature to the menu of this game! with ambient light adjustment, sometimes you will go with full brightness - other times you can dim it down to get that cool nighttime look, but i almost NEVER have it turned down to min - which is the stock setting. I even still put lights on my crafts for night time. anytime you see half decent night screenshots it's bc they're using ambient light adjustment mod. Don't feel bad, you NEED some mods.

+1 - this is still beta. It's upsetting bc they refuse to listen.

immediately gets flooded You sir, are the master of exaggeration. I count 2, TWO, links to working SSTO spaceplanes in this thread. Where is this flooding? The one that was "cobbled together in 20m" was at least 80 if not 100 parts, over 100t and I am quite sure the OP was asking about low part count, low weight vessels. So go ahead and build a small spaceplane on principal, because i have yet to see some successful small SSTOs. Stick to the topic and actually help demonstrate the viability of the SSTO - rather than blast the OP. Real friendly. Not flooded. Nothing has fit the bill. There is a reason behind all of this clamor. You can pretend that everybody here is just complaining, but there is something to be said for the amount of people that have serious concerns with this update. the end.

3 - OP is pointing out how absurd it is that we have to open the debug menu to access thermal data in flight. This is a problem for several obvious reasons. a - requiring a debug mode to read thermal data is hardly evidence of a complete, or even well-thought out feature. b - most new users have no idea how to access the debug menu. We are never told how in the mindless and brief tutorial. c - even if you can access the debug menu, like myself, i still can't find temperature data to save my life. Honestly, if i've paid for the game, I have a right to complain when certain features are a complete letdown. I also have a right to not candy-coat it, in the hopes that one day a dev might stumble upon constructive criticism and actually do something, instead of releasing junk like this. For #12, you're completely missing the point. Oh sure, we don't NEED a bigger claw, just like we don't NEED bigger landing gear. But you are alienating anybody who wants to build a large ship with visually pleasing, appropriately sized components. Why not just make one set of parts if only half the components are going to be available in a given size. 1.0 was completely broken compared to .90 - which is fairly unprecedented. At least .90 was playable, didn't require hot fixes just to access the game. While we're at it - The introduction to a new player is not good. They don't even tell you which building is which beyond simply saying, "here you are, you build stuff in the VAB" (without indicating it). So a new user has like 8 institutions with no idea how any of them are relevant to the gameplay let alone what buildings you should be upgrading, or which research you should unlock based on your desired contracts or playstyle. Consider this, I start a new game, on "easy/normal/whatever the default is". I right click on the ship building facility, and upgrade it! Voila, i'm now completely broke, not enough funds to do any contracts and either have to find my way to an emergency loan, or restart the game. So I start a new game. I right click on the research building, upgrade that.. Voila, i'm now completely broke again, not enough funds to do any contracts and either have to find my way to an emergency loan, or restart the game. So I start a new game. I build three or four giant rockets, run out of money.. Voila, i'm now completely broke, not enough funds to do any contracts and either have to find my way to an emergency loan, or restart the game. So I start a new game. I don't upgrade, I don't build large junk. I finally make it part way to space, and parts start exploding, with no discernible reason why. I guess it must be aero - So i'll build my craft a little slower - it'd be nice to have a Dv readout, but you need mods even if you want to know where you can go in this game. Real cool. So I lauch this craft, and it still blows up.. Too fast again. I try to build a third craft and.. Voila, i'm now completely broke, not enough funds to do any contracts and either have to find my way to an emergency loan, or restart the game. Wow, this is some tedious trial and error stuff. You'd better jump online and find someone who's been around before .23 who can give you some actual advice on progressing in this game. That's some real genuine gameplay right there. A new player needs 10x the funds that the custom slider will even allow. 10-50m funds would be a "start" It has literally nothing to do with them making a "hard" game. They had a very logical and fluent system before they integrated career mode. It seems like they continued to tack bad ideas on top of bad ideas, to try to make something fun come from career mode. There have been threads on how to make the system more "game like" - whereby the game gets harder as you go, unlike now, where it starts exceptionally difficult and then becomes easier. That is completely asinine video game design. The difficulty hasn't particularly changed since .16 - but they've put in SO MANY barriers to having a fun experience that you feel in control of, that it's next to impossible to play a vanilla career mode, unless ofc you enjoy grinding out pointless contracts, littering space with garbage. Honestly the community has been very pleasant and forgiving.

This mod <3 Thank you.

.. or they could just not release the game halfway into monday.. if it were up sooner, it could have balanced server load. Expect me to spam refresh in the next little bit.

disagree. It should be perfect out of the box. The precendent of "not perfect out of the box" has lead to "games that are never finished", and "20gb day one patches". I've always played TES on the console - this is because i can't afford the newest gpu +i7 to play it on the pc, but my 10yr old 360 can play it just fine. I can only play last gen games on a pc half that age. I'm not getting into this argument, bc ksp isn't even on console. KSP is also an exception to the rule among the other examples of early access games - many of which are completely unplayable. I think it's fair to see quirks, but not regular issues (post 1.0). I agree 100% with the OP. I've been logging some crazy hours in ksp the last few days/weeks getting hyped for 1.0, and .90 crashes more frequently than .25. I'm being real positive that that'll improve, however - the climate here is that we still shouldn't expect a game that does not crash daily post 1.0, and that's just wrong. I'm anxious about the mix between a huge rebalance, aero model, tech tree changes, new building tiers, AND if any of those 300 bugfixes address existing problems, or just new problems conjured up by the new additions. r4pt0r is even right about the future of these games. I will be able to reliably play old cartridge games long into the future, because these games (the good ones) were shipped as masterpieces. we've clearly moved on from expecting masterpieces, now we're just supposed to be grateful if we get a decade of support because it "isn't a consumer right?". I already know i'm going to have to archive my mods like crazy if I want to keep them for ksp. I'll probably stick to vanilla to get acquainted with the aero system & heat shielding and see where that takes me. As I mentioned, I'm still very excited !!!

Is this very similar to the model that is expected in 1.0?

This is an excellent mod. Thank you for the housekeeping.

I just wanted to post and say thank you for this incredible tool. The scope of this is incredible.. thank you soo much. This will quickly become something I use from now on.

A 1.0 shouldn't have bugs. It should be balanced and playable. Matter of fact, it should also include all the features that were promised, AND be balanced and playable. So you'd better do all of that by 1.0, that is the release version you know - I know I didn't decide to make it 1.0, but that is the expectation.^

Thank you so much for the update. I appreciate your time and work, this mod is essential for me. It is quite awesome.

I just finished reading, i'm excited about it but it still stands that these features will need to be tested.I wanted to post now, to help stand with others on this topic & make our opinions well-known.

I voted no. This game is beta, even if it doesn't "feel" beta to those who have had time with it. I've been playing since ~.17, i agree with others that this is one of the best games i've ever played. If this is not an issue of money, this is an issue of semantics. Squad wants to refer to the game as 1.0, which according to convention, is a completed product. Unfortunately, the world does not revolve around Squad (rather the sun, thank you KSP) - Squad should conform to a version structure that indicates an "almost feature complete" game; beta. If your own community is this confused by your naming conventions not matching market expectations, think of how the general public will receive it. I understand that it might generate some sales to push 1.0 now since this release is going to be jam-packed, but along with what everyone has said, why not allow at least one more beta release. That will give you the opportunity to fit even more features into an actual 1.0 release. btw, you're still missing basic gameplay mechanics. •Craft interiors - you can't just do 50% of them. that is incomplete.If you're going to do that, you might as well remove all of them. •Heat Shielding - (even if it's one or two parts, it is a design consideration for rockets and a realistic one. You're trying to sell this as an educational tool) •Life support - ^^ (How does keeping kerbals / resupplied alive not = more gameplay?) •Resource gathering - That'd be nice to try out before a 1.0 release. •A meaningful career that doesn't feel like grinding out procedurally generated contacts just for funds. You might as well remove this and just keep "science mode" because i've launched the game ~10 different ways and can't get an enjoyable start to career without mods. •Ability to enable / disable atmospheres, active texture management, and similar performance mods (or features if you are wise), and do this from a launcher. •Bigger / multipurpose landing gear? (edit: They mus've heard me.) •A 2nd (or 3rd) landing gear wheel part(edit: They mus've heard me.) •A functioning tutorial •RPM / Alcor "like" features - In a space program game, people DO want to sit in the cockpit and have buttons and switches to play with, crazy but true. •More planets? •Future / emerging space technology? •Recoverable debris (again, if you'd rather not simulate funding considerations for the space program you could just remove career mode since it is an empty grinding mess) ^This is actually a "no-brainer" - ME: "What happens to the rocket debris?" Kerbal: "uh, idk we've never even bothered to go find the junk after." RLY? •Customisation options, beyond the space program name, why do all my kerbals and parts look the same as yours? Immerse me. Many people have said it, i don't need to repeat it, there is much more to be added before it'll be a complete game. Semantics and Version numbering aside, I've already invested in the game, so all i can do it hope we do see the updates (that will obviously be needed) after "Not-complete" Version 1.0 - And that we're not waiting months and years for them.