Der Anfang

I noticed that in sandbox mode the tab is very easy to see in the VAB/SPH. However in career mode I do not see it at all!! Does that feature come with a building upgrade?

Well? How do you do it? I see the new launch sites but have no idea how to switch from just the default KSC one.

The 5 metre parts are exactly what I wanted. Not only do they help maintain a low part count, but they feel more correct in the game as well. They're perhaps the best Saturn V analog components yet and we are bound to see even more Apollo Clones. Hah...

I don't get why it is that NASA and other space agencies decide to use plutonium? Especially for the Voyager program, since plutonium-238 has a very short half life compared to Uranium (or even thorium). Also plutonium is rare. So what's the deal? Why use plutonium when you could use something far more common and much more longer lasting for a space craft? And yes I know the difference between an RTG and a nuclear reactor. RTGs use the heat created from the decay of the radioactive elements.

I would like to build lightweight mining ships. The problem is that I can't ever seem to get the miniature refinery to work. The normal one seems to operate just fine. I only need to use 4 small rotating radiators and the refinery will always operate at optimal temperature. If I use the same radiators for the small one, it always overheats and eventually shuts down. Even 4 medium rot-radiatiors don't seem to help it maintain optimal temperature and it overheats and shuts down. How the hell do people use the mini refineries without any trouble?? I like building heavy but I sometimes want to build light too... and I can't do this for a miner ship. **Edit** I wasn't talking about the baby drills. I was talking about the small ore processor. I know how the baby drills work. They only work with a certain threshold of ore underneath. I already knew this. I mean the processor overheats...

Only one full deployment out of the VAB/SPH. You are using whatever you deploy after that, and you may use it as you see fit. If you somehow launch two or more vehicles in a single deployment, that will still count toward the total weight of the entire craft.

Here is a fictional moon that I painted a few years ago! Seems a few people mistook it as a photo. Also on a funny note, a failtroll tried to tell me that I copied The Moon and that it is copyrighted, lol. In the end he got banned. Here is the link to my original upload on my DeviantART account!

I just have to say that you all are wonderful people. Boy, I haven't been on this forum for some time now, but I have been busy with a lot of things and not enough KSP. But honestly, guys. This forum rocks. You're all fun to talk to and you are great people. Too bad a majority of the gaming community fails badly. I play (or I played) a lot of World of Tanks here and there, and while I understand that it is a competitive video game, so many people act like sore losers and bad sports. It's not even funny. It's a video game. You have people who say some really mean and questionable things that I do not believe I need mention (but I suppose just as a small sample, you have people who call you obscenely rude names a lot). Communities like this put me off and it just makes the game a whole lot less enjoyable. Although I was not banned from that game, I did get a forum strike in that community, simply for calling somebody out for being stupid and overly aggressive toward me. While I was sloppy and shouldn't have done that, I made sure to fix my mistake in my thread and removed names and everything (the rule is called "Naming and Shaming" which is something you cannot do). Even so, a lot of people were just jerks about it and immediately mistook my casual conversation starter as me whining, being butthurt, etc. Even though I was genuinely looking for critique in one of the battles which I had an issue with the person in question. I didn't even make that big of a deal out of it, but since so many people just for some reason don't like it when I point out the social aspects of the community, it seemed the administration there favoured them and gave me a strike. Again, I was not banned, but that really put me off from so much as playing the game and I just outright left the forum. I can't even start a casual conversation without flamewars and huge excrementsstorms popping out of nowhere in my threads. It's sickening. World of Tanks is a fun time waster, but it's not an amazing game. But I think the biggest issues are not the game itself, but rather the administration behind it and also the hostile community in general. I get that it is a competitive game, but it seems like many people use this as an excuse to act like complete asses about it because they think it makes them look like a hardcore cool person or something. I do not know. Meanwhile, here, I feel I can talk about anything because people seem more openminded and peaceful. Then again, KSP is not an action game... although I suppose you could turn it into one. It is not competitive, at least not unless you get challenges involved but even then people are very chill and fantastic in that section. What I don't get is why it is that people's mental nature seems to change drastically the moment they touch a game where you can shoot stuff. I just don't understand this behaviour at all. But that could just be me. I appreciate this community, and it's great how chill you all are. Sorry for the vent, but I needed to get this off of my chest. A lot of gaming communities just tick me off, and it's primarily due to the bahaviour towards others of the people playing the game in question

No they do not. Wow, I am so so sorry for the late reply. I forgot about this forum and I have just been extremely busy with other things. But if you have not already attempted this, yeah you don't NEED command pods.

So, I haven't been very active in KSP since last year, and only dabbed a little bit once the comms were introduced. Well, just yesterday, I attempted a Duna mission with a probe only in career. I had a pretty big commsat setup in the Kebrin system. And yet while I still had some control on the approach of Duna (even during the Aerobraking phase) I had completely lost comms with my probe after I left Duna's atmosphere. Let me begin by saying that since this last time I restarted career mode, this was the first probe ever in the Dunian system. I tried to wait for one more aerobrake after I lost control and I still didn't get my comms back online and I had totally lost the probe. Gosh, it felt like a scary mars mission blowing millions of USD for nothing. Anyway, what is the best approach of an unmanned mission to a new world for the first time? Is there anyway to maintain that control without a commsat setup already in place? It's very different trying this with the comm networks now, and exploration seems even harder now. Not that I mind the challenge, but I have a laythe probe already on the way even before my Duna mission and I am afraid I will not be prepared for it by the time it reaches the Joolian system. How do I prepare unmanned missions with the commnet, and what steps should I take before sending a probe to unexplored worlds so that I do not lose it like I did with my Duna mission? **EDIT** Yes, I have upgraded my tracking station to the max. It is fully upgraded.

No, the thread is not dead. It is indeed still around for anyone to complete. I wanted to get an official badge done but nobody seemed interested in helping me with this. But I wanted to make this an official challenge if I could.

149,600,000 kilometres, anyone?

Ah yes. That's exactly what I meant. The effort of actually shipping ore FROM the surface would be virtually pointless. I have designed an SSTO for Tylo which is meant only to mine and refuel on the surface, rather than taking anything back up.

It's incredible you can SSTO on Eve at all. Even so, it's also quite fascinating at how much of a difference you get in ISP for every 1000 metres on Eve. Right on Sea level, it's a damn pain in the ass to deal with and only very few engines actually work at that level. I have also considered in the long future trying to land on a mountain top, but it would require expert piloting skills and a lot of practice. Also you gotta be sure not to tip your craft if you land on an incline... which makes mountain landings especially difficult.

That moment when I realized during my Ascension Programmed that I was supposed to have an engineer along with the rest of my crew to go to Eve. However, when I discovered why mining Gilly was so slow, I realized that an extra scientist snuck on board in place of the original engineer's spot... must have tied up that pesky engineer and posed as them during the boarding procedure. Sigh.

I always land on the Mun first. Considering what humanity has done in '69... there's just that epic sense of nostalgia and accomplishment when you actually do that as your first extra LKO mission. If Minmus were my first ELKO mission, it would be a bit of a pushover and in fact it's kind of - actually it quite is - anticlimactic. Given, for future missions, I always establish stations and mining operations on Minmus versus the Mun, for obvious reasons. Although you need ~100 Delta-V more to get there, the overall mission needs much less than Mun. I love both worlds equally, although to me the Mun is just so very strange and I love it for it's strangeness. Then again, irl The Moon has always been such a strange world to try to imagine - for me at least. And airless world with no blue sky and much lower gravity, and very dusty. Oh my! When doing a Mun Mission, I love listening to this:

I find stations extremely useful around moons and planets outside of Kerbin. For one, if I have any automated mining operations, it could help me for interplanetary missions to further planets. I like Dres especially because of the dresteroids, which is perfect for an asteroid mining station. Once you drain that asteroid, just move the station to a new one, preferably look for E class ones. Eve is an interested planet to have a station around. It's also pretty convenient, since you want to mine Gilly as well. The best reason for that is to save fuel for future landings on Eve, just deploy a dry mass Eve lander and dock it in Eve/Gilly orbit to refuel. As for Jool, although I haven't sent any manned craft yet (and I only sent a probe to one of the moons thus far), I would definitely want a mining operation there, since there are a lot of moons to visit. Tylo is a tricky one to visit constantly for science, so you probably want a very specially designed SSTO lander for that which can mine and process fuel on it's surface. Otherwise, just use the other moons for stationing.

It's been a while since I have really touched KSP, or even been in the forums for that matter. I kinda want to get back into it again, but was deterred by the 1.2 release since some of my favourite mods weren't updated for a while. For instance, EVE, Mechanical Jeb, and Distant Object Enhancement. Yet I have noticed people were able to use those in the 1.2 version and I have no idea how they managed to do that. I found a way around that only for KER via some sort of master folder thingy of some sort. KSP is a beautiful game even in stock... but after I have played so long without those mods it feels kind of lack lustre.

Yes. I had Fraps for a little bit. Although, I was really confused, as I couldn't seem to get any of my recordings beyond 30 seconds each. Is that a non-premium feature where you're supposed to buy it if you want longer recordings?

What kind of software do most KSPers use when recording a video? Is there any freeware? And any recommended video editing software?

I've updated the scoreboard, everyone. Apologies for the long delay. Please, keep the entries coming! I love what we have so far.

@ JacobJHC Don't forget about my submission, mate. ;)

http://imgur.com/a/z7gbm 27 tonne nuke ship. Hope you like it. Had to play in 1.1.3 because I wanted to use the KER mod, and was too lazy to muck around with the file stuff for 1.2. Are resubmissions accepted?