Hotaru

It might be worth updating the forum's hint text for "OP" to reflect both possible meanings, seeing as the "overpowered" meaning is at least as common as the "original post(er)" one, and possibly less obvious to someone familiar with internet forums but not video game lingo.

I can't think of many things we do now to amuse ourselves that future space colonists wouldn't be able to do. Some gravity-dependent activities (like sports) would have to adapt to different levels of gravity (space quidditch, anyone?). The only thing I can think of that would be impossible would be something which required a two-way, real-time connection to Earth (phone calls, text chat, multiplayer games, etc.). Even those things would become viable again once the population of the colonized world grew enough.

I was about to say that. Don't worry, the report of my death was a slight exaggeration. I have been away from KSP the past week; among other reasons, I've been having mild but persistent headaches recently that have made playing video games a bit less tempting than usual. No promises yet on when the next update will be but there will definitely be one. @cratercracker Thanks! I really like the look of your flags and art, although to be honest I think MS Paint is holding you back. If you want my advice, try a more advanced paint program (I use GIMP myself, which is also freeware); even without a tablet, you'd have a lot more tools at your disposal. As far as this thread goes, I think I'll stick to using my own art for flags and markings for now--mainly because I like everything to have a consistent feel and your style is very different to mine--but I will not forget your offer for future projects. @NISSKEPCSIM @Gameslinx Thanks for the suggestion! I don't think I'll be making a call on this for a while yet--still got Eve and all the moons of Jool to deal with first--but that's definitely one to consider.

It's possible the rover has a wrong control point; it might be worth trying "control from here" on the cockpit. That sometimes fixes non-responsive rover controls for me.

Personally I'm not as bothered as you by the large bolts and cleaner seams (although I agree a bit more weathering around the edges would look nice), but I'm definitely with you on the colors, as much on the existing parts as the new ones. The current part selection is divided up into different sets of parts, each with its own slightly different shades of white, black, gray, orange, etc. I think just a simple once-over brightness and contrast settings on all the textures, old and new, to make the colors match would go a very long way to give all the parts a much more uniform look--so the new parts, old SLS parts, old Porkjet spaceplane parts, and others all look consistent together. Whether Roverdude's more saturated colors or Porkjet's subtler ones are better I think is a matter of taste, but I would at least like to see them match up. That said, looking more closely at that image there's some stuff I really like about these new parts compared to the old ones. One thing I especially notice is that the metal on the inside of the tanks has a nice reflectivity to it--compare to the Porkjet one at top left, where the inside of the tank is basically just dark gray. And bear in mind it's possible what we're looking at is still a work-in-progress and that the final version will be a little more polished than what we see now.

S3 Valcee on EVA from Daring 5 in Moho orbit. Duna system ops. Daring 5: Moho! PS. @Laythe Squid It was an honest mistake (and resolved to my satisfaction in private). No need to give anybody additional grief about it.

I've taken to building vernor quads around the 0.625m nosecones and mounting four of them at 45 degree offset.

There isn't really any "inherent SSTO nature of a spaceplane" at all; they're two completely unrelated categories of vehicle which happen to frequently intersect. You can have a multi-stage spaceplane or an SSTO rocket. So no, an orbital spaceplane with drop tanks isn't an SSTO. It's an orbital spaceplane with drop tanks, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a spacecraft to be. Drop tanks can be a good way of increasing the vehicle's payload fraction at relatively low cost, since you're only jettisoning cheap tankage, not expensive engines. Also, using the "stage" function in KSP doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how many actual stages the vehicle has; you could, for instance, be using it to ignite two separate sets of engines (jets and rockets) or to deploy a drag chute on the runway and the vehicle would still classify as "single-stage."

The seventh kerbonaut class with an Eve Ascent Vehicle test article. Left to right: Gwenlanna, Rodnard, Vertine, Sigemy, Mike, Harfen, Addon, Temy, Deby, Munvan, Virella, Crisdia, Berelle. Daring 4: exploration of Eeloo. Daring 5: mission to Moho. Also: Defiance 32 (flight crew P4 Janbe and P0 Mike) delivered a new crew (P2 Eiliel, E0 Crisdia, S3 Tambe, S0 Addon) to Kerbin station Immutability, returning with the previous crew.

Wearable KIS props by Enceos. In addition to looking nifty and being a bit smaller than the stock one (i. e. fits better in the buggy) I like it cause I can see the Kerbal's face from any angle. Pity it doesn't have reflections though.

Wouldn't it be easier to just make the surrounding terrain rougher than the runway?

119 GB that's exclusively used for KSP, plus at least a few more gigs of screenshots and movies from both KSP and other games and 1 kB for the text file I used to add the file sizes up.

Explored Eeloo for the first time.

The lack of decent size stock landing legs bothers me as well. Two admittedly less-than-ideal options while we wait for Squad to get around to adding better ones: use a mod that adds bigger landing legs (I personally like Kerbal Reusability Expansion but there are plenty of choices out there) or use the stock aircraft wheels, which look a bit funky but are MUCH sturdier than the biggest stock legs.

Airbrakes can make good doors, and it's not too hard to make a nice little box out of wings or structural panels. The "deploy" function of control surfaces might be helpful as well.

@rkarmark The helmets (and the helmet lights I've been using for a while now) are from Wearable KIS Props by @Enceos. @Hypercosmic @The White Guardian Thanks for the advice! At this point I'm leaning more toward OPM than Kerbol Origins but I imagine what works for one will work for the other, and it's good to know reverting Eeloo is an option in both cases.

@greenTurtle1134 It'll be a while yet before Eeloo gets its second check mark; while Daring 4 took a fast transfer out it'll be taking a slow transfer back, partly to give the lab extra time to process data and partly to allow a gentler reentry to Kerbin. As for getting the most science out of a single landing--that's why we brought a rover.

Daring 4 jettisons fuel tanks during its arrival at Eeloo. Crew rotations. Munar exploration. Duna system ops. Daring 4: arrival at Eeloo.

@DunaRocketeer Also fortunately, most of the expensive parts of the rocket (i.e. engines) weren't destroyed; in spite of that being a nearly half-million-spacebuck rocket the accident only actually ended up costing about 100,000 funds. @greenTurtle1134 While I agree that Eeloo is better as an Enceladus analog than a Pluto analog, it's just a little too jarring to have a crew of Kerbals land on it and return apparently without noticing the massive gas giant it was orbiting. I may, however, end up with two of them: OPM-Eeloo (Opeloo?) in Sarnus orbit and Squad-Eeloo (Squeeloo?) in kerbolar orbit. Might see if I can make a new heightmap for Opeloo to make it less suspiciously similar to Squeeloo in that case. And yes, I originally learned about the Cosmic Speeds from @lajoswinkler's Kron series (which was, it's worth mentioning, the main inspiration for the Daring program and, by extension, the whole concept of this career). I've always thought they sounded a bit cooler than just saying "Kerbin escape velocity" or whatever (should that also be "escape speed?" It doesn't actually matter much which way you're going, after all). So I've gotten in the habit of using them, especially in the context of the achievement of those speeds as program milestones.

Just looked it up and it turns out this isn't actually true; the KSP engine actually has quite a bit better Isp (4200s vs 3100s) than the engine on the real-life Dawn spacecraft (and of course orders of magnitude more thrust). So yeah, fair to call it OP. I still want bigger ones.

So far that's all they've been used for (although I wouldn't exactly call Dawn "really small;" it's twice the mass of a Voyager probe), but there's no technical reason I'm aware of why solar electric or nuclear electric propulsion couldn't scale up to power a manned mission. Of course KSP ion engines have much higher thrust than real ones (and I believe much lower Isp as well), and until we have a good intuitive interface for planning continuous-thrust trajectories (which would be extremely cool, by the way), I think we can expect them to stay that way. Other than the odd side effect that light ion landers are a possibility I don't see a problem with it as a concession to keeping the game playable. PS. Unless you meant the KSP ions are only meant for small probes, in which case I agree, which is why I think we could do with bigger ones that are meant for larger spacecraft.

All I want from the stock game is big enough parts to use the big parts we already have without stupid part counts. While a case could be made for stock 5m parts, I think anything beyond that can remain mod territory. I'd much rather see complete 2.5m and 0.625m part lineups (comparable to the current set of 1.25m parts) than new 5m+ parts. Although parts the size of the Death Star do sound cool.

I personally see no reason not to add bigger ones in 1.25m and possibly larger sizes, not to mention bigger solar arrays to power them. Right now solar-electric propulsion is only a viable option for very small spacecraft, unless your computer can handle the massive part counts that come with clustering zillions of Dawns and Gigantors to power them. (The same argument goes for adding larger nukes and jets as well.) They don't have to be any better performance, they should just be bigger so I don't need quite so many of them.

@RobFalcon KSS (or other interstellar mods) is definitely a possibility. While I'd prefer something that can be reached at sub-light speeds (possibly with Orion drive), I do like the idea of warp as an ultimate endgame goal. As for retired kerbonauts, well, I had planned to just dismiss them from the Astronaut Complex (I could always edit them back into the save if I wanted them for a photo op or something), but I kind of like your idea of building a "resort" for them on Kerbin. It'd have to be outside physics range of KSC, though. I will think about it. Boring stuff: TL;DR: OPM, possibly. Snacks, probably. Kerbal Komets, definitely. Daring 4 underway on nuclear power. Daring 4: mission to Eeloo. Crew rotations. Daring 3 return from Dres.