Hotaru

[quote name='KasperVld']Yes, that's fine. If you transfer it before Friday it'll autoatically be converted to the new forum as well.[/QUOTE] Fair enough. I don't actually have such a thread, but have had them elsewhere (X-Plane.org to be precise) and may want to start one here in the future. Thanks for the reply!

Question: Will it be permitted to have a general-purpose personal thread in Spacecraft Exchange? That is, if I started a thread called "Hotaru's Spacecraft Thread" or some such and posted a variety of my designs there, would it be allowed? What if it was called "Hotaru's Spacecraft Company," but the role-play began and ended at the slightly fanciful use of the word "company?"

Personally, I don't agree with the no-role playing rule, but I understand why it's in place: RP can definitely be tricky to moderate and keep civil. That said: deleting the entire Rocket Builders forum--which includes years worth of accumulated work by a lot of people--seems to me a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" solution that will have the ultimate effect of discouraging any sort of collaboration between KSP players in the area of, well, building rockets. My suggestion (which admittedly would be more trouble to implement) would be to implement a specific rule in that sub-forum against "company role-play" (i. e. people having different jobs within companies, getting promoted, hired, fired, whatever) but continuing to allow the general practice of collaboration under the banner of a "company"--so long as the role play aspect of that association doesn't go beyond a simple name. Although I've never used that section of the forum myself, I think it would be a shame if all the accumulated years of work stored there were simply deleted.

A few weeks since landing and the rover (now named Eric Idle) is ready for departure. Erithis starts it up and, after a few small difficulties getting started, sets out. Idle has no difficulty climbing the steep hills, and steering proves to be more effective than the engineers at KSC had anticipated, even at speed. Unsurprisingly, on rough terrain Idle spends as much time off the ground as on it, but in the light gravity, this is not a serious problem; the rover's suspension is more than enough to handle the frequent jumps. Slopes also prove to be easier to manage than on the Mun. The first few kilometers Erithis drives manually; after about 10 km she engages the autopilot. After a few minutes of climbing, Idle reaches the lowland plateau between the Lesser and Great Flats of Minmus, which it crosses at 90 km/h without trouble. The descent from the plateau to the Great Flats is tricky. Idle actually runs out of battery near the end and Erithis has to use the fuel cell to keep the reaction wheels running. Although the rover takes several kilometers to coast to a stop even with full braking, Erithis and the engineers are encouraged that it was able to stop itself without much difficulty (and without resorting to rocket power) even on a shallow downhill grade. Erithis gets out and plants the flag at Base 1. The first stage, of 90 kilometers, was completed in a little over an hour.

Here is my second attempt, on Minmus this time.

This is my second entry to the Elcano challenge; the first was a circumnavigation of the Mun back in May. Same career save, same mod configuration, same type of rover, still in 1.0.2. A lot has happened in the four years since Shannon Kerman circumnavigated the Mun in the Michael Palin Mark II rover. A new class of medium cargo shuttle entered service, several interplanetary missions have been launched (Shannon herself has been to Gilly and back as commander of the Constant expedition), and permanent surface stations have been established at Ardan Base on the Mun and Coalwood Base on Minmus. With the Mark II rover well-proven by the Palin project, the engineers at KSC proposed sending one to Coalwood during that base's development; it could be used to circumnavigate Minmus, collecting science data to be processed by the lab at Coalwood and filling in many of the remaining gaps in data on Minmus, not to mention proving the rover in a very-low-gravity environment. Since the cost of the mission was relatively low, and the potential for science and funding returns high, the mission was approved. No complicated plan is needed to get the new rover to Minmus this time: it's delivered by cargo shuttle Belatrix, along with its driver, Erithis Kerman, to Bass II Station in Minmus orbit. The Mark II has about 400 m/s of delta-v; on the Mun this required a complicated dropship operation to put it on the surface, but on Minmus it is perfectly capable of landing all on its own. Erithis takes it down to the surface... ...where it will remain parked for the next few weeks at Coalwood Base as Erithis joins the base's regular crew. The actual expedition is already underway; I will report the first stage once it is complete.

Most of the SSTO's I've built either used mods, were made in older versions, or both, but it occurs to me that this one (in 1.0.5 sandbox, stock except KJR) should qualify. With no payload bay or docking systems it's not actually very useful, but in spite of the "design flaw" it took off with a crew of 4, flew to a ~90km orbit, made a safe reentry without losing any parts (just to be clear: the right chine didn't burn off, it was never there in the first place), and landed back at the KSC runway after one orbit. Unfortunately, since this was sandbox mode it never got a name besides SSTO 105 Mark I. More screenshots of that flight, including flight data: Takeoff (Bob has a concern). Vectors ignited. Circularizing. In orbit. Reentry. Final approach. Landed.

After several weeks of nothing but logistics missions within the Kerbin system (and the occasional course correction burn), in the last couple days--both Kerbal and real-life--a number of exciting things finally happened. Two new interplanetary Spacebuses went up; Phoebe is a 12-seat Spacebus 3L... ...and Carlos is a 4-seat 2L. Descended from the Aqualung family of tankers, both types are designed for efficient travel between planetary orbits, and landings on small airless bodies. Super Aqualungs Green and Red sent a mining rig on its way to Dres in a complicated double-header operation. Carlos departed a few days later with a crew of four; it will meet the mining rig on the surface, where it will refuel for the return to Kerbin. Most importantly, Valentina finally returned from Duna--my first Kerbal ever to do so (and only my second completed Kerballed interplanetary mission ever). That mission has been underway for ages; she launched back in August. Anyway, according to my (silly, but whatever) personal rule that I can only go places in sandbox mode once I've been and returned in career, Duna is now--finally!--open for sandbox exploration.

While I have to admit the new cockpit is extremely nice, I still prefer the old one, especially for early-game space planes, and I will undoubtedly mod it back in when I start seriously playing 1.0.5. What I'd [I]really[/I] like to see is a revision to the old Mk1 along the lines of what happened to the Mk1 inline between 0.90 and 1.0: same basic idea (more Bell X-2 than Lear jet), just a nicer and more optimized model. I don't understand why it was replaced by a completely different design.

Business as usual: arrivals, departures, course corrections, aerobraking, etc. Giving some thought to starting a career diary in the Mission Reports section, as much to help myself keep track of everything as anything. Shuttle Belatrix returned from a mission to deliver a rover to Coalwood Base on Minmus, bringing back the base's original crew, engineers Madra and Sheprod, who had been patiently hooking up and refueling Aqualungs for several years since their arrival with the mining rig. On the way back, Belatrix stopped at the Kerbin fuel depot where shuttle Altair was already docked, resulting in an unusual on-orbit meeting of two shuttles. Starlet Beatrix (confusion of which with Belatrix has caused nearly as many headaches around the Admin building as the Constance and the Constant) flew its first mission in a while, to make some modifications to a mining rig destined for Dres and deliver a new crew to the Pequod asteroid retriever. The Pequod departed LKO to chase down a second class-E asteroid discovered in a high Kerbin orbit.

This is my main worry about the rep penalties: those mining contracts in the late-game (not so late as before, though, with the mini ISRU). Most of the other contracts--rescues, surveys, part tests, tourism--it's not hard to imagine/role-play a reason why the company wants you to do the thing they want done; but I can't fathom why anyone would want me to pick up 50 tons of dirt from Eve just to dump it on Gilly! My suggestion would be to have all "move ore" contracts involve returning the ore to Kerbin (or perhaps carrying it to an existing space station, now we have the contextual system); then at least they would make some kind of realistic sense.

That's pretty close to the rules I follow as well, though I don't stick to them 100% rigidly. Most of my long-duration ships or stations have accommodations in Hitchhikers or Mk3 passenger cabins (which I assume to have lower-deck living quarters, as they have quite a lot of unused volume down there) for about twice their actual crew. Only short-duration missions (within the Kerbin system) every operate at capacity.

Made my first spaceplane in 1.0.5 sandbox. Actually my first one since 1.0.2, since I mostly did rocket stuff in 1.0.4. Either SSTOs have gotten a lot easier since 1.0.2 or I've gotten a lot better at building them; with 6 Whiplashes and 3 Vectors, the creatively-named Mark I is much less of a monstrosity than my attempts at non-TweakScaled Mk3 SSTOs in 1.0.2. Admittedly it can't actually do anything useful once on-orbit, but it had plenty of surplus fuel so adding docking systems, a passenger cabin, or a payload bay shouldn't be too hard. Only after it had made orbit did I notice a small design flaw. Reentry went as well as could be expected... ...but it made a safe landing in spite of the missing chine. I still wish we had some 2.5-meter supersonic jets and intakes (among other things), but at least Mk3 SSTO spaceplanes seem to be possible these days with a (mostly) civilized number of parts.

I just checked my stock 1.0.5 install: Mk3 cockpit is definitely still 3.9t and 4 kerbals, Mk1-2 is 4.12t and 3 kerbals. There is a mod (which I use in my 1.0.4 installs) which activated the two unused seats in the Mk3, making it a six-seater; don't know if that mod changed the mass or not.

Part masses have been horribly unbalanced for a while now; if I recall the Mk 1-2 pod is inferior to the Mk 3 cockpit in basically every possible way: heavier, fewer crew, and lower crash tolerance, none of which makes much sense considering their relative sizes (assuming it didn't get a rebalance in 1.0.5). I'm not surprised to hear the new cabin has similar balance issues. Me, even in career mode I basically ignore the mass and stats, build whatever crew accomodations seem appropriate from a RP perspective (i. e., short-duration orbital shuttle can just have airliner-style seating, long-duration interplanetary ship or station needs more living space), and then build the rest of my ship to carry them.

Here's my attempt, Sparky 3. This was in my OSX install, which is pure stock except for KJR. No KER or MJ to give me TWR and delta-v info, so I just threw something together that looked like it should work. Three-stage core with four asparagus boosters, which turned out to be a bit overkill. Sparky 1 and 2 didn't have enough TWR to take off, only difference between each model was more engines on the boosters each time until initial TWR got up to somewhere around 1.7. First stage. Each core has one 48-7S in the middle and six 24-77's in a ring around it (clipped into the bottom of a 1.25-0.625m adapter); the boosters have an additional 6 24-77's each around the outside. Booster separation. The core was a little short on TWR but by this time we're high and fast enough that it doesn't matter too much. The first stage core had exactly enough delta-v to put the ship in a 105x90km orbit. (Probably could do better with MechJeb at the helm, I haven't done a manual ascent in a while.) OK, now we're in orbit but we've still got two more full stages, plus the retro-rockets... ...so let's go to the Mun! Second stage is still more than half-full after insertion into about a 20km Munar orbit. It didn't occur to me to put solar panels on the thing so having to watch the battery situation very carefully. More than enough delta-v left to land and return, if only we had landing gear. Back to Kerbin, the second stage (still about a third full), service module, and retro-rockets used to make the reentry a bit gentler. Safe return. Getting late tonight but I think tomorrow I'll see if I can get it to land. Since there's no bonuses for doing anything other than reaching LKO by various methods this is only actually good for challenge level 2, unless you count the top two stages as either the payload for Level 3 or the tug for Level 4.

Thanks! I've been having fun lately building very large landing craft, of which the Super Aqualung is the one that has gotten the most use in my career save. Maybe I'll take a break from ISRU grinding later and use KVV to make a graphic comparing some of them. I could post the craft file if you're interested, although it needs a couple of mods (SpaceY for the RCS and some custom config edits) and I'm not sure how it would handle the atmosphere in 1.0.5 (the airbrakes around the nose are mainly for tail-first aerobraking). Probably wouldn't be too hard to build a stock-ified version, though. Terwin is right, I installed just the connectors from MKS Lite by RoverDude, shipped six of them up in a KAS container (which you can still see in the background, behind the mining rig), and used them to connect the modules. Functionally it's pretty much the same as connecting them with standard KAS pipes, except the MKS tubes look like they're actually big enough for Kerbals to transfer through. They really look better when used with other MKS parts, but I'm trying to keep my current save mostly stock. The modules themselves were landed by a tug (which you can see in this post) that attached to their upper docking ports, and returned to orbit after each landing.

Madra Kerman hooks up Super Aqualung Green to the Coalwood Base mining rig on Minmus for refueling. Cargo shuttle Altair coasts to apoapsis on a mission to deliver two space station modules to LKO.

1.0.5 is finally out, so I thought I'd celebrate by working on my 1.0.2 career. (I've just got too much invested in this save to update.. looking forward to playing 1.0.5 in sandbox though, once the mods are updated.) Cargo shuttle Altair delivered a power and control module to the Kerbin fuel depot, and a science module for Bass II Station in Minmus orbit. Lots of Aqualungs and Super Aqualungs still circulating between Kerbin and Minmus, with the Mun now added to the cycle as they can save about 100 m/s by returning to LKO via a Mun flyby instead of directly. An unmanned mining rig went up on an RLV-320 rocket, destined for Dres. Coalwood Base on Minmus (my first attempt at a modular surface base) now features two habs, a solar array tower, a science module, a mining rig, and a small rover. It's basically finished, although I'm giving some thought to sending up a fuel depot module as well, to shorten the surface stays of the tanker ships.

It's still a fair point: however you categorize which parts are useful for what, 1.0 definitely gave us a lot of nice new stuff to play with beyond Kerbin's atmosphere. Me, I find the fact that we're continuing to get new stuff at all encouraging. Squad could easily have said "OK, KSP is finished, victory declared, no more new features, just bug fixes and optimization from now on" after the 1.0 release; instead, they've made a point of continuing to add new parts and functionality to the game. So far most of the post-1.0 additions have been largely plane-centric (though not all: we've also got the Vector, the mini ISRU, and the Asteroid Day mod), but it's not too unreasonable to expect more space stuff in future. At the very least we know we'll be getting RoverDude's new antennas in 1.1. I'm still wary of anything like the Goliath that's basically useless for anything except subsonic aircraft, and I'm still disappointed about the Mk1 cockpit business, but (memory issues notwithstanding) on the whole I'd rather see more new stuff getting added than less. I also have to disagree with everybody who says the buoyancy work was superfluous: water landing (intentional and otherwise) is certain to crop up in any space program, so making it something vaguely resembling realistic seems like a good idea to me (and, unlike the parts, the buoyancy improvement has no memory footprint). On top of that, it opens the door to exploration of submarine biomes not just on Kerbin, but on Laythe and Eve as well--not unlike some real-life proposals for the exploration of the ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Submarines on Kerbin might be amusing, but I'm really looking forward to putting my first one in the oceans of Laythe.

I like the idea of this, in the sense of giving me a reason not to play mission control roulette until I get exactly the job I'm looking for. I that contracts give me reasons to do things I wouldn't have done otherwise, and I like the idea of finding more sources of and uses for rep, but in practice there are just too many contracts that are boring, pointless, impossible, or unprofitable for it to make sense. (At least in 1.0.2, where my current career save is; maybe 1.0.5 with the contextual system is better.) Personally, in 1.0.2 I tend to accept basically any contract that makes any kind of sense at all unless I have a pretty good reason not to ($150,000 for a flag? Sure, sounds goo--oh, you want it on Eve? Nice try, Kerlington Paper Products, Inc., but I like getting my Kerbals back, thank you very much!). Even so, I'd say I end up declining more than half of them, including pretty much all mining contracts ($200,000 and you want me to move how much ore from Moho to Eeloo exactly?), which in 1.0.5 would represent a substantial enough hit to my rep that I'll probably end up turning off this option next time I start over in career. All that said I haven't actually tried a 1.0.5 career yet, so I might be wrong about this; it's a pretty small penalty (I think a flat -1 per declined contract by default) so maybe combined with the contextual system it actually will work as a useful incentive to try a wider variety of tasks without being unbelievably frustrating. As I said, I like the theory, I'm just skeptical of the practice.

That's part of the problem, though: it's a great game, we've all got an enormous amount of time invested in it. For me, only Skyrim, X-Plane, and Fallout 3/New Vegas come anywhere close in terms of the number of hours I've put into them. That being the case, it's incredibly frustrating to see KSP not quite live up to (our various views of) its potential. Personally, as I've said before, I'm not so much worried by the buoyancy changes (actually I think they're long-overdue, seeing as they're useful on Laythe and Eve as well as Kerbin, and I'm looking forward to building some submarines myself) as by the addition of parts like the Goliath jet, which are not much use for anything involving space. I'll be less bothered about it once we get proper 64-bit support and memory becomes less of an issue, but I still think Porkjet's time might have been better spent on giving us parts that would have been more useful for building spaceplanes. Actually, so far the (in my view) pointlessness of the Goliath is one of only two major complaints I have about 1.0.5 (the other is the Learjet-ized Mk1 cockpit, but that's a different argument). On the whole it looks like a great update with a lot of bug fixes and some very cool new content, and although my career save is pretty much permanently stuck in 1.0.2, I'm looking forward to playing it on my sandbox installs once a few more mods are updated.

What I find a little worrying is not that plane parts are getting added instead of rocket parts, so much as that the parts getting added are often not much use for space planes. I've wanted a stock 2.5-meter jet for a long time but (as I understand it, haven't actually tried it yet) the new one is only good for subsonic speeds. Sure, it's nice, but what exactly am I supposed to do with it--especially in career mode--if I can't use it to get to space? (Until we get something like FMRS stock, which would allow an X-15 style TSTO spaceplane, that is.) I'd love to see a wider variety of plane parts, but only if they are useful for building spacecraft--2.5 or 3.75-meter jets, Rapiers, and intakes, for instance--but my enthusiasm is limited for subsonic aircraft parts, especially with the current memory issues. That said, I wouldn't say no to some electric props or atomic jets, as those would at least be useful for places other than Kerbin.

This can be fixed by changing the line "AverageAvailableContracts" (line 8) in GameData/Squad/Contracts/contracts.cfg. Default 10 yields about 14-15 contracts going at once, increasing it allows you to have more. Personally I think it would be cool if ore from Kerbin was basically worthless, but ore brought back from elsewhere was worth more, so you could mine other planets for a profit (I think I read where in real life, a metallic asteroid, mined slow so as not to raise prices, would be worth a few trillion dollars in rare metals). Not sure how that could actually be implemented, but doesn't sound impossible.

I do this as well, I also find Steam's mandatory updates infuriating. They're harmless for most games, but there are a few, like KSP, where updates can cause save-file-breaking issues, and I'd much rather update those at my leisure. I've long since stopped playing KSP with my main Steam install; I've got several copies of 0.90, 1.0.2, and 1.0.4 with various mod configurations elsewhere and I use those 99 percent of the time. Steam doesn't touch them, even though I actually launch them through Steam anyway (I like Steam's screenshot function better than KSP's.) The original Steam install now mostly gets used whenever I need a stock, 32-bit install for debugging purposes.