willow

Thanks for your really detailed information. I'm going to try this out tonight... I do have some additional questions regarding the eve mining process. * Just to clarify, you produce ships and parts on your shipyard? * Your SSTO solutions are rockets with propellors for the first league? not space planes? * You solve the intense power requirements of karborundum rockets with capacitators and nuclear reactors? * How much karbonite do you typically need? I was pretty impressed with only 70 units. You're speaking about 200.000 unit haulers. Is that an infinite supply? Or do you regularly need to get more? From your explanations I think I'd best try for a chute landing rocket, which takes of via propellors and then switches to karborundum at 15km. In combination with a kind of mother ship which gathers karbonite either from gilly or from eve's upper atmosphere? That initial haul can then help me drag other equipment from kerbin to eve to make the operation simpler. I would love to see some screenshots of your ships, especially the early ones. If it's not an inconvenience. Thanks again!

Congrats!!! Curiously awaiting your next trick

That last update was epic. You've cut my initial startup time down from an hour into something like 10 minutes... AND it no longer crashes on a few of those pesky textures. Thank you!

Is a karborundum based jet engine a possible future prospect? Also, I'd like some strategy tips on getting to the karborundum. I did an eeloo mission that retrieved a morsel and got like twice it's original dV in return. But it ended with a 10 year mission time. Basically shutting down the rest of the space program for an eeloo trip doesn't sit well, and the alternative is never getting it since most games don't last ten years unless you put it on fast timewarp. I read about the jump gates, which sounds like a nice avenue to explore, it's a bit OP for my taste, and I believe you can't bring the karborundum with you on those trips anyways. There's also eve. But getting the from eve to orbit has proven to be quite a challenge using conventional methods. And the karborundum efficiency is about 1/6th inside kerbins atmosphere. Maybe I am missing something obvious. But how have others set up their karborundum based fuel economy? Edit: So I figured maybe I'll lose a lot of karborundum just lifting off on karborundum engines alone, but as long as I have some left in orbit I can make that work. And so I did some testing. But the amount of electric charge required to pull that off means you can't bring it in batteries for the weight and there are no generators which can generate that kind of power. Really hoping you guys have some tips for me.

You rock and I'm apparently blind

Could you add this mod to ckan?

I like it. Usually i start with contracts but get bored with them later on. You should add this mod to ckan.

Hey, I've been trying to accomplish this for a few weeks now. And I just can't figure it out. I'm trying to build a spaceplane which can achieve orbit from eves surface. With experiments I found that landing is very simple, you can pretty much just do it unpowered. Taking off is also trivial.. That is as long as you have the infinite fuel cheat on. It just takes a very long time to get through the lower atmosphere. I'm not a purist, I don't mind using any mod as long as it's not a blatant cheat. I'd prefer something in the karbonite direction though. I've seen scot manley do it, but the engines he uses are a bit OP and high up in the tech tree. Does anyone know of any examples I can look at that are able to do it? In youtube vids, screenshots or just some good advice (and encouraging words )

Yep, seen that too, I also went back to 1.44 to fix the problem. I had two tiny rescaled engines weighing in at 51 tonnes each.

Ooh! That's a cool idea. Especially if you can start countdowns with an action group.

That's an awesome tool. Would it be possible with this to have an action group set the throttle? So I can use this when launching from the moon for example..

I disagree, it's not OP at all... In fact it's almost perfectly balanced. I built a stock vehicle that approximates this vehicle. Rockomax x200-16 + Mk1-2 command + Poodle + 4x LT1 landing struts It's 15ton, 2.8k dV and seats 3 kerbals for 10 thousand credits. With a TWR of 1.4 Your Raptor is the exact same stats, but has space for 6 kerbals as opposed to 3. So you could up the price by 2 or 3k if you want to reflect that but I don't think you even need to do that... If the raptor's TWR is close to 1.4, I'd say it's perfectly balanced. Just in case you're thinking about additional things to build.. You could consider a flat! crew section that houses 3 more kerbals. A flat! fuel tank that would upgrade the dV to something worthy of an IP takeof and return vehicle. (Say +1000). A flat science tank. Or a flat cargo bay which opens up and allows us to stash instruments inside. I don't think a cargo bay that allows another craft inside is realistic for such a small craft I suggest flat components because a space agency would avoid tall landers, rather going for something with a relative wide base. Would you consider including one of those fancy toggles so that I can switch from monopropellant to different fuel types? Like karbonite and regular LFO? (Your monopropellant choice is the only thing I dislike about this capsule. And I say this with sufficient humility, because I think you did an awesome job that I would not be able to follow) Thank for an awesome new toy, I can't wait to take it out on a flight

This is one mod I really got used to having around. At first I did not see the point, untill I tried it and now I don't want to launch without especially the list of available actions as clickable buttons on screen is really useful. Would it be possible to enter a set of names for this mod and then import them unto any ship? I tend to have solar on 4, it'd be nice if I could define this once and then import the naming scheme to a new ship. I don't mind adding the solar panels to the group myself. But not having to type the group name over and over again would be nice. Also, you have toggle groups. Which is awesome, but right now they only work with toggleable actions. Is it possible to have a toggle group have an on activate and on de-activate actionset? So that instead of "toggle engine" I can use "activate engine" and "deactivate engine"? Some mods don't offer toggle groups.

I Love it,... I know a couple of spaceplanes that would work better with this mod than with my personal ministrations. Here is a problem I bumped into a few times... Maybe it's something you'd like to work with? If you're in the VAB with a circular flat tank or cupula, and slap 6 wheels on it, the vab places them with their angles all messed up. Right now you have to fiddle a lot with individual wheels to get to a viable rover. It would be awesome if your mod could accomplish this.. I know it is rover wheels not landing gear, but I think it would be perfect to get those base mods all lined up, certainly with variable heights.

Well, Kind of I'm pretty sure you did not intend the things I'm bumping into I had it dock to a spacestation and then suddenly, having access to a full tank of monoprop, it went full tard untill the station was drained too Which means that for me monoprop is unusable as long as a taurus is connected. Which is basically all the time because it's an epic command pod! This is the best thing since the old dragon pod. Anyway, as a stopgap, for anyone interested I changed my cfg to this. Which makes it behave like a regular orbital maneuvering engine that uses monoprop in a vacuum at about the rate you'd expect.. MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform throttleLocked = False exhaustDamage = True allowShutdown = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 30 heatProduction = 500 fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.02 PROPELLANT { name = MonoPropellant ratio = 1.0 DrawGauge = True } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 100 key = 1 260 } }

I like the Taurus capsule, but the monopropellant escape system confuses me.. It keeps triggering on me and instadrains all the monoprop in the ship.. Is there a way I can disable it?

@Kommitz, ooh I like the hexagonal, octagonal (can't really see) look you're going for on the most right engine.

I've tried this and it really works. It also manages to put the chutes in the proper stage. It's really good, I don't understand why this hasn't received a whole lot more attention Good work xytovl

I do agree with your general sentiment, but it seems you've only tweaked some config files. And if you decide to do that I believe module manager is your friend, you don't need to copy everyone's models. (You did ask permission didn't you?) This mod could potentially become interesting to me if you'd add your own models. Or at the very least retexture.

I agree, 3d lines would be ugly... But, an optional "x marks the spot" where your plot intersects the ground might not be so bad? It would do wonders for peoples ability to do precision burns over small distances. Hint hint poke poke Hehe, it's your mod, your vision, I think it's already tremendously usefull so I'll be using it either way.

Great Idea.. Does it show your landing spot only in the flight scene? Or only on the map. Because if you could show the touch down site with some kind of decal in the flight scenethat would be totally awesome. The problem with map view only is that it only works on relative large scales. So when you're 'hopping' your colony buildings a few meters map view really is no help at all.

I'll have to check fine-print. Indeed I can smell the potential in the contract system, they have only touched the surface of it. Though most of the contracts are too awkward in my opinion. Testing a landing gear/separator on Duna doesn't tickle my fancy. How about "There's a strange rock formation at 2 or 3 locations around that precise spot... go take some samples." Great idea.. Let the measurement be a function of time or a mapped value (similar to biomes) then waiting/travelling and taking multiple measurements would be great.

I will try out that Karbonite mod Tommy, as soon as my tech tree is filled out a few refuelling bases are the next step on the agenda! I like that we agree on the problem... Maybe we can devise some very simple ideas on solving the issue? ( I love the spelunking idea, though I fear it's going to cost a prohibitory effort to implement) My example would be expanding the ground scatter a bit. So on the mun there is groundscatter rocks. If squad adds different rock types and allows a science experiment to be performed on these rocks. Then travelling around would yield a few different rock types with a science bonus for every rock type found.

The last few weeks I've been heavily into KSP again. Starting from scratch and by now I've almost got the tech tree filled out. However, I did notice one thing, that I have been bothered by before. For all the effort I put in into getting to Duna, all I tend to really do there is get out, scoop up some sand, scribble a few notes plant a flag and go home again. This usually occurs within a minute. I could drive around in a rover. But to where and why? I could make a few hops with the lander, again to where and why? I'm really missing things to do. Whats your opinions? You also do your landing and liftoff within the minute? Or have you found an actual reason to be on those planets for an extended period of time?

I love what you've done with the dockingports list. That's just plain pretty. The buttons around the main dialog are a bit big and clunky though. Maybe you could do some of that guisnazzery you did to the dockingport list to those buttons, making them a little flatter and prettier? Same goes for the searchfield, it's a bit clunky.