ticalc2014

[FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]For quite some time now, I've been thinking about a challenge similar to [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118310-The-Great-Kerbal-Space-Race/page7"]TinyPirate's "The Great Kerbal Space Race"[/URL]. It was a lot of fun, seeing how quickly into a new career, one could land a Kerbal on the Mun and return, safely. Where it started to disappoint was in the lack of continuity between the tasks being assigned. Simply put, I felt it would have been better had the tasks been linked to one another in the same career, and in doing said tasks, I made a point to try to achieve them in my own career. With that being said, it will be my attempt, here, to build upon what TinyPirate started, and create a series of tasks that should be accomplished in a single career. If anyone has a good idea for the challenge name, feel free to propose it, as I have the creative capacity of a slug. For the purposes of this challenge (or rather, series of challenges), you should begin a new career. I opted to do a custom "Normal" career, so all rewards/penalties will be 100%, and simply disabled reverting, quicksaves, etc, and also set starting funds to 0. These settings should allow for significant progress in a short time-frame, while retaining the risk from higher difficulty careers. More expensive, less efficient crafts will still be affordable, allowing for early attempts at progressive missions in a timely manner, hopefully avoiding the senseless grind of reduced payouts. Now for some rules.[/SIZE][/FONT] [IMG]http://i64.tinypic.com/df9c08.png[/IMG] [B][U][SIZE=6]RULES: [/SIZE][/U][/B] [B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]#1. [/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]No Debug Menu [/SIZE][/FONT][B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]#2a.[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3] No mixing of careers across challenges; if you start again, please update with all previous milestones[/SIZE][/FONT][B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3] #2b. [/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]While you may not mix results from multiple careers, I WOULD suggest creating a back-up save at each milestone (land on the Mun, 1st day progress, etc) whatever they may be. If things go south in the current challenge, reverting back to that backup will keep your previous results intact, while allowing you to try to improve your latest task.[/SIZE][/FONT][B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3] #3. [/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]No use of glitches/bugs/exploits/hyperedit. As with everything, this will rely on the honor system.[/SIZE][/FONT][B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3] #4. [/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]No Mechjeb or the like; I will allow RemoteTech, KER, Kerbal Alarm Clock, and any appearance mods. Custom part mods may have their own category.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]Aside from that, it is my hope that, should you decide to join in, it will be fun, competing with others, trying to push your early game skills to the limit. Everyone will, of course, have their own strategy and that's what can make something like this fun. I will update the challenges as often as possible, and will try to devise a fair scoring system, throughout.[/SIZE][/FONT] [U][B][SIZE=6]Challenges: [/SIZE][/B][/U][SIZE=5][FONT=verdana][B]Challenge #1:[/B] Achieve Orbit around Kerbin, and return safely to surface, as early as possible.[/FONT] [SIZE=3][FONT=verdana] Description: Whether you decide to go manned, or unmanned, you are tasked with bringing a vessel into orbit around Kerbin, and returning to the surface, as early on in the career as possible. Please provide screenshots: in the VAB, at the launchpad, in atmosphere, in orbit, during reentry, and safely landed, all with "UT" timestamps, where applicable. Also, immediately after your safe return (and recovery), please provide a screenshot of your current tech tree. [/FONT][/SIZE][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]Scoring: Rather straightforward for a task like this. Points will be lost for each second (T) elapsed, each tech tree node (N) unlocked, and awarded for each Kerbal (K) on board. The scoring model will be scaled to a 0-100 range, and be calculated as follows: Points = [/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][FONT=verdana][SIZE=3]80 / (1 + 0.0008T)+12K / (1 + K) + 8 / (1 + 0.2N) I know this is a lot for such a simple challenge, but it shouldn't take too much time, will get you started in the right direction for other tasks down the road that may be time sensitive, and is simply being used as a "qualifier" of sorts. I will be posting another, more progressive challenge, shortly.[/SIZE][/FONT] [COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR] [U][B][SIZE=5][FONT=arial]Challenge #1 Leaderboard [/FONT][/SIZE][/B][/U][SIZE=5][FONT=arial][SIZE=3][FONT=verdana] 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE]

Sorry, I've been busy lately, and haven't had much time to work on this challenge. I've also never done any form of SSTO, and apparently, am very bad at it. I wish the challenges had drawn more interest, and we could have kept this going longer. Thanks for the first few, though, I liked having a reason to really push and see how quickly something could be done in a new career, as I usually get lazy, and do one mission at a time, with a lot of time-warping, but the multitasking added an extra layer of difficulty, trying to plan multiple launches, figure out which tourists to pair off such that contracts could be fulfilled efficiently, etc. I never had any reason to leave enough fuel to get into Munar orbit, back to orbit around Kerbin, and then off to establish an orbit around Minmus before finally returning to solid ground, until I decided to try a time-efficient approach, brought on by the "early in career mode" aspect from the high-speed challenge.

You know what they say, "Go big or go home!". Since I already had the backup, I figured it would be fun to see just how fast I could get to that stage of the career. I still have plenty of tech to unlock before I'm truly that far along, but I only focused on getting to "Supersonic Flight" to gain the ability to unlock the "Whiplash" when I built enough science. If I didn't get the part test contract for it, I could have unlocked it in a day or so, if I keep declining contracts until I got "Visual survey of Kerbin" or "Temperature scan on Kerbin" type contracts, and had Valentina fly around completing them with a basic jet. Now I don't know what to do, as I have 11 flights in progress, 4 to Minmus, another 6 to Mun, and a satellite waiting on it's final burn, but every node is 3+ hours out, and my last available contract cycled around to "Explore Duna". It'll be easy enough to get there, at this point, I'd just rather not spend money hiring new astronauts when I've got 3 around the Mun to rescue, so Valentina, Bill, and Bob are all I have available. It may be time to try to recover science from the surface of Kerbin, while I wait, as I don't want to get too many more missions running. That or keep up the pace I'm going, and add Kerbal Alarm Clock. Decisions, decisions.

Established a new speed record in the very early stages of my career. I went to my backup from the first challenge, and really focused on building funds, recovering science, and carrying on several missions at once. After unlocking the "Supersonic Flight" node, I performed several parts tests, and low and behold, up pops (Test the "Whiplash" engine) contract! Several Munar landings for my tourists had afforded me some expendable funds, so I went for it. Just before the end of the 8th day, Valentina splashed down from her new, high-speed record run, having attained 1392.6 m/s during the jet engine burn, and topping out at 1550.6 m/s during the SRB "Afterburner" stage, bringing her 1-minute run (1:07 to 2:07 in the video) to a blistering 1471.6 m/s!

Which winglets were you using? The deluxe winglets were working fine for me, as they only have the little flaps that cut into the air, so they should take on less heat than the AV-R8 albeit with less control as only part of the winglet is providing control. It could be that the constant fight to stay level is causing additional heating in the control surfaces. If you can get your center of lift and center of mass to balance out better (COL just a tiny bit behind COM in my case) and get control surfaces to survive on the front, and back, it will make for a much easier time remaining level and building speed.

'Those front winglets make a HUGE difference! I played around with my wings trying to get the center of lift closer to center of mass and all that, but couldn't get anything to fly level. I finally thought to throw those on there and play around with that center of lift, and all of a sudden, I'd barely have to do anything once I reach cruising altitude. They really do make the difference, keeping it flying almost perfectly level, and preventing the cockpit from spinning out of control when firing the SRB.

I've developed a hybrid approach to this whole speed challenge. Establish a craft that is capable of reaching a stable top speed, then strap a booster to the front of it. Max out your top speed, then decouple and fire the SRB. With that, I establish a new record, and the potential to explore further speeds. 1384.1 m/s + 1482.0 m/s = 1433.0 m/s avg. My speed would have been better if I didn't lose control during the SRB burn, but that will be something to work on in future attempts. Without further ado, meet the "Afterburner".

Funny you should mention that, because I'm about to start a new career (or pick up where I left off on the first challenge from my backup). It bothers me that I've only landed on Minmus and Mun, and I'm nearly on day 49. I just got lazy and decided not to multi-task, so I time-warped through several days, had my EVA transfer lose science due to a game crash, went back to Minmus again, and here we are. I can probably cut the time in half, anyway, if I get several missions going at once and also focus on science around Kerbin. But first, I will attempt to beat your top speed in this career, as I have the tech, and have been burning through my cash reserves on failed attempts. I hope to see some updated results tonight, even if I come up short.

Nice job, you've definitely given me some work to do. I'm just curious, what difficulty and re-entry heating settings are you playing on? I know somebody could just turn re-entry heating off and put together some ridiculous contraption, giving themselves a huge advantage. That's the hard part with something like this, as difficulty isn't dictated in the challenge (although people wouldn't necessarily follow it anyway), people could just use the easiest settings to try to gain an advantage. None of this applies to you, of course, just more of a general statement. Great job once again, now I need to figure out how to beat you! I think I've got a couple of ideas that may work.

Decided to give it another go with a new design. Maxed it out on my way to my second speed, so things started to burn up on me. 1268.8 m/s + 1300.8 m/s = 1284.8 m/s average. This speed can definitely be beaten, but my OKTO core keeps burning up on me if I'm not careful. EDIT: New speeds: 1301.0 + 1312.2 = 1306.6 m/s average. I hope the 2nd speed is acceptable on the changeover to 20,000m, I deleted my screenshot from a few seconds earlier on both, before realizing that it was going over 20km.

As we were never told it had to be a manned flight, here's my current best effort in the continuation of my Mun Landing career. Only got 1122.1 and 1215.6 for an average of ~1169 m/s, but it's a start. Parts tend to heat up, quickly. I had it going along around 1200 m/s and tried to speed up for my 2nd reading. Instead, I had to lay off the throttle for a bit, because I was about to explode after hitting 1300 m/s.

I somewhat agree, but I initially took it to be a continuation of the first Mun Landing challenge, and have worked on completing contracts and science gathering, trying to unlock the necessary tech for supersonic air travel. I wasted a bit more time, time-warping, than I would have liked sending missions to Minmus, and out of the Kerbin SOI for science, but have the "Whiplash" engine available, finally, after like 42 days. Had a few issues when sending a Kerbal out on EVA away from a dead ship, and taking the science with me, didn't store the experiments in the rendezvous craft, so I had to run the experiments, EVA reports, etc, again. All in all, trying to do this in career has at least kept my interest whereas going to sandbox, would not. Even though it doesn't NEED to be in career, and you're at a huge disadvantage having to unlock the tech for your aircraft, it may at least make it more interesting for you.

Great job guys, I was happy with my attempt, just getting under 6k for the first time, but under 4k, I can't even compete with that! Of course, I never thought to EVA to the surface, so that certainly saves a few hundred delta-V. It just goes to show just how much more there is to learn, if I'm trying to get somewhere on a tight budget. It was a fun challenge though.

I didn't do any of the tourism contracts in my attempts, either. I was all about getting ready to go to the Mun as quickly as possible, so spending those precious few minutes to get to space was not in my gameplan. By the time all of the initial launch, speed, distance, altitude, orbit missions are done, and the return from orbit contract, you wind up with something like 450k, before any part unlocks/building upgrades. Make sure the FIRST thing you do is accept the "Recover science from Kerbin" contract, as that pays about 85k, just for going to the launch pad and doing a crew report. Personally, I've been doing science at the launchpad with the mystery goo, crew report, and EVA. Then I unlock the science jr, and put two on a pod along with mystery goo. Include a "Flea" SRB and lower the fuel and thrust so that it will just get off the ground, and a parachute just to be safe. Take your launchpad reading on the bottom materials bay in case it explodes on landing. As soon as you lift off, take your crew report, mystery goo, and second science jr readings. If done correctly, you can unlock everything before the 45-science tier at that point, and stability for an escape/orbit rocket won't be an issue. From there, it's up to you. Complete parts tests (or accept contracts to unlock parts for your Munar Lander to avoid the need for more science ), quickly achieve and return from orbit (make sure to grab the "Return from orbit of Kerbin" contract), or try to land on the Mun without a tracking station upgrade to save a few precious moments completing contracts. I've been going with the parts tests myself to get any additional funds I need for an upgrade, or easy to achieve missions while in transit to the Mun, so I can upgrade the tracking station on my way. Everybody will have a different approach, and even if we started with all of the same nodes unlocked, the same craft design, etc, our times will vary greatly depending on how aggressive we are with our approach and return trajectories. Best of luck to you, I know somebody out there can beat my time!

I added KER back for another game of mine, and forgot to remove it once I came back for a second try. Anyway, made it to Minmus, and back, safely, under 6k! 5,975 minus 20% = 4,780!! Of course, I ran out of fuel and had to use EVA to propel myself the last 20m/s or so to get a reentry trajectory, but that was probably just pilot error on my part, not following the most optimum path. Swapping out the decouplers for cheaper, lighter models could get that down to 5,775 / 4,620.

It certainly isn't the cheapest you can get, but I made it to Minmus with a cost of 9,683, just trying to get it under 10,000. Can probably squeeze more out of it, perhaps for a return, but I don't know if I'll try it. EDIT: Of course, I didn't refresh, and somebody had me beat by the time I posted it. Nice job!

Jebediah Kerman once again embarked on a mission the land on the Mun! This time, he spared no expense. The KSC provided a craft capable of pushing the known limits of rocket design, cranking out 8,500 m/s delta-V (give or take 500, or so they say). With this new high-tech craft, he was able to land on the Mun in under 1 day. An unfortunate bug was uncovered, however, rendering the command module reaction wheels useless, as turning off SAS sent the craft into an uncontrolled spin, draining power down to dangerously low levels. With his vast experience piloting unwieldy vessels, he was able to maintain control. Once landed, he set course for Kerbal firing straight towards his distant homeland. Thanks to the precise calculations by those at the Command Center, he ran out of fuel before establishing a viable return trajectory. Fear not, a few EVA flights later, and a comfortable periapsis of 28km was established, and he was on his way home! Touchdown occurred on Day 2 at 2:12:44! EDIT: After a little research, I've discovered that I accidentally applied some trim. Now I know not to touch the Alt key at all while flying!

Landed on the Mun on Day 1 at 5:54:20, ran out of fuel on my return, Day 2, 2:48:15 or so, the Kraken struck, and shot my EVA Jeb away from my craft! I think I'm calling it good with my Day 4 time, I think. I had gotten my periapsis inside of 1,000,000m, and think it was only 4 or 5 hours out, so I could have been looking at Day 3 1:30 or so. Oh well, such is life. I just don't know why pushing my craft in EVA mode should subsequently cause a Kerbal to "bounce" off at several hundred m/s.

Nice job! I was going to try once more, as my approach to the Mun came from the back side, so I had already slowed down a lot on my orbit before entering the Mun SOI. If I were to try again, I would try going West instead of East, and really pick up some speed on my approach to cut down on some time. I also need to get rid of my orbit around Kerbin to collect some critical science, and explore regions near the KSC instead. You won this round though, I'll be looking forward to a chance to catch up on the next challenge!

My recovery ended up looking something like this. Not the most elegant solution, but after tipping over, and being on a tight schedule, it had to be done. I even ran out of fuel in this run because I had a bad trajectory out of the Mun SOI, but I just did it quickly to see if it was easy enough to repeat.

I know that it won't count as I am past the deadline, but I wanted to share anyway. Got to the Mun nearly 5 hours into Day 2, after a few launchpad science missions, a couple of part tests, a launch to space, and finally an orbital mission. Unlocked just what I felt was needed in the tech tree. As you can see, my landing on the Mun was somewhat of a .... failure. Despite my best efforts, slowing to about 1m/s before landing, I managed to tip over my top heavy design. Unsure of what would ensue, I even attempted to record my efforts to take off, but sadly, the video decided it wanted to end up corrupted. I extended my landing legs, and tried rolling down the hill. After burning through about 1/3 of my remaining charge, I managed to get the nose far enough up in the air that I was able to throttle up the engine, and take off. Never again Jebidiah, never again! After all that, I nearly ran out of fuel on my return trip, getting the appropriate periapsis as to allow reentry. While it won't count towards the first mission, I was hoping that by posting, I will at least establish a completion time for the first stage, to get a more accurate measure from here on out. EDIT: I do have RemoteTech installed at the moment for my other saves, but if unmanned probes come up, will be sure to uninstall it.

Sadly, Jeb just met his demise on the surface of Mun after a little over 2 days, in my attempts to rush this after getting home from work.

It felt kind of like cheating to change the persistent save file on my career, so I've decided to start over, yet again. This time, at a MUCH more reasonable 250% funds penalty, thus only slightly beyond that of "Hard". Beyond that, starting funds at zero, starting reputation at -1000, reputation penalty remains at 1000%, and all of the rewards at 10%. Again, none of the "General Options" are enabled, so I still have to be careful not to "land" Jeb back on Kerbin while traveling too quickly, and all of those other fun scenarios.

OK, so apparently Remote Tech + FAR = broken antenna and useless satellite. Without fairings, the two can't be used together, so I guess that was a short-lived trial. Back to Remote Tech only.

I'm still plugging away at it, while admittedly, not playing that much the past several days. I'm running low on funds, around 55k at the moment, but I have upgraded the launchpad to support vessels up to 140 tons. I'm still limited to the 30 parts requirement, but earlier missions had shown that simple vessels were being held back by the lack of fuel mass available, rather than a lack of parts. I may try a Duna encounter with a manned mission over the weekend, but I'm not sure I want to risk the life of one of my Kerbals given the surprising 100% survival rate thus far. Given the ridiculous fund requirements for building upgrades, I may have to scrap this career and go with a lower "funds penalty" setting, or as Amahula suggested, go into the save files and change the settings there instead so as to not lose my progress thus far. I'm also looking into installing FAR to try it out, but I fear that a less "soupy" atmosphere, thus lower delta-V requirements will overrun any increased difficulty in piloting vessels.