DonLorenzo

So, I completed the turn, the new contract and updates tech/missions are now in the OP. @Bellaby; looks like a cool initiative, I\'m all for it as long as you guys do most of the legwork yourself. Get yourself an IRC room or a new forum topic or whatnot. I\'ll keep track of the \'fund\' in the OP if you like, everyone can say per turn how much to put in it etc. I was going to put a spacestation progress bit in that anyway (as soon as something gets launched), so it can go in there. I don\'t want to be responsible for deciding who gets to draw from it and what for etc, that\'s all up to you guys. I\'m thinking as soon as the station is up and running, it will not only unlock more missions but also provide a big boost to the \'fundraising\' option Cheers.

I\'ll havelook when I get home I was fairly rushed so could well be edit: yep you\'re totally right. sorry about that. I made a new spreadsheet for you and the references weren\'t done properly. It was taking the turn 1 starting balance for your t2 as well. Fixed now and your balance is $16550

At the moment they aren\'t, except in contracts. I\'ll add a tech for them this turn. Going to do the turn update now! Turn 8 overview! A fairly straightforward turn, nothing extraordinary happened really. Tech got researched and ships were launched, a weekend just like the kerbals like it! Technology changes -Decoupler tech has been reduced again, now costing $2400 -Salvage Tech IIa has been reduced, now costing $1350 -Parachute Tech has been reduced, now costing $2250 Financial Overview Player: Awaras Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Decoupler Tech Spent: $11800 Income: $17000 New Balance: $46700 Player: sal_vager Mission Completed: 50km Tech purchased: Decoupler Tech Spent: $9950 Income: $11000 New Balance: $18750 Player: Fireblade Mission Completed: Complete one full kerbin orbit Tech purchased: Fuel Tech Spent: $28100 Income: $30000 New Balance: $32080 Player: robsr3v3ng3Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Liquid Tech I Spent: $17550 Income: $14000 New Balance: $20900 Player: Issarlk Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Parachute Tech Spent: $17100 Income: $14000 New Balance: $21030 Player: Bellaby Mission Completed: Establish Orbit Tech purchased: Liquid Tech I Spent: $24450 Income: $22000 New Balance: $27260 Player: Db101 Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech IIa Spent: $14000 Income: $14000 New Balance: $24150 Player: Fermun Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Booster Tech Spent: $11450 Income: $14000 New Balance: $16550 Turn 9 Announcements -New Tech: Decoupler Tech II, costing $2500 which will unlock the airplane radial decouplers (structural pylons). They cost the same as the original radial decouplers but are about half the weigth. -Turn 9 contract: Launch the space bus! (See OP) -Due to me having an extremely busy schedule near the end of the week + weekend, the turn will last untill sunday night. 01-07-2012 @ 23:59 (GMT+2) If I have all submissions by friday morning I could process the turn then, but I\'ll only do that if you all have submitted Cheers

My crew reports it\'s most definately cursed

Yep from about 70-150ish km altitude above kerbin the right time to burn is when the mun rises.

@Bellaby: for most if not all powered landings I use the mechjeb landing module. What players tend to do is give instructions on how to set that up (landing m/s) and at what altitude to engage it (if engaged high up it can be wasteful). This works well. I\'m good at manual landings too, but there will always be an element of risk so I suggest just using the landing autopilot. @robsr3v3ng3: The crew have to survive! Always! So yea they have to return to kerbin, this goes for all other missions also unless explicitly stated otherwise (there are no such missions available at the time)

Turn 007 Progress update! Before getting into the turn update proper I have an important announcement! From now on out, the explosive decoupling of solid rocket boosters attached to liquid fuel engines is strictly prohibited. Awaras discovered a bug with that that causes an approximately twofold increase in fuel efficiency of the liquid engine after such a separation. This is considered cheating from now on. Note that the explosive decoupling of SRBs attached to other SRBs is still perfectly fine and allowed. Awaras has discovered this bug due to the fact that his designs the past few turns have (unknowingly) relied on it, causing him to operate impossibly effective and earn huge amounts of money. We\'ve discussed what to do about this and decided on slashing his starting funds for turn 7 to $45000 (less than half of what he had), additionally I\'m reinstating the first bonuses on the kubble, probe and orbit missions. Also Awaras will be unable to claim any of these bonuses until after turn 10. These measures still leave him with a slight advantage due to the bug, mostly technology wise. I think this is fair, he didn\'t intentionally cheat and his having of the technologies have reduced the prices for the rest as well. On to the turn 7 report! Contract The contract for this turn saw lackluster participation, perhaps because of the slightly higher entry fee. The two submissions I got for it were nigh identical, so I have decided to not award the bonus prize to anyone. Technology announcements -Decoupler Tech has been purchased enough times to have its price reduced by 10%. it now costs $2700 -Liquid Tech I has been purchased enough times to have its price reduced to the final low amount of $6000 Financial Overview Player: Awaras Mission Completed: Establish kerbin orbit Tech purchased: Liquid Tech III Spent: $27400 Income: $18000 New Balance: $38740 Player: Fireblade Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Decoupler Tech Spent: $12250 Income: $14000 New Balance: $28600 Player: Robs3v3ng3 Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Decoupler Tech Spent: $14300 Income: $14000 New Balance: $19700 Player: Issarlk Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Liquid Tech I Spent: $25350 Income: $17000 New Balance: $18580 Player: Bellaby Mission Completed: none Tech purchased: none Spent: $0 Income: $0 New Balance: $25050 Player: Db101 Mission Completed: 25km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech I Spent: $10800 Income: $14000 New Balance: $18750 Player: Fermun Mission Completed: 25km Tech purchased: none Spent: $8000 Income: $10000 New Balance: $12500 So far no space station parts have been delivered yet, as soon as they are I will put up a tally in the OP to keep track of construction progress. Turn 8 highlights -There will be no contract in turn 8 (main reason: busy weekend) -First bonuses on \'launch Kubble\' \'launch Probe\' \'Establish kerbin orbit\' \'Complete a full kerbin orbit\' have been reinstated -No new tech or other things, looks like turn 8 will be fairly straightforward The deadline for turn 8 will be Sunday 24-06-2012 23:59 (GMT +2) Good luck!

Good morning! Here\'s a ship I made that does mun slingshot -> land on kerbin -> mun slingshot -> land on kerbin. There\'s room for a bit more optimization, the last stage returned with over a full tank of fuel remaining, easily enough to powerland so the decoupler and chute can be ditched. That\'d lead to more savings making room to ditch a fuel tank or perhaps one or two of the radial boosters on the second trip stage. On my go I didn\'t actually land the after the first slingshot, I came in over the ocean so I dipped the bottom of the last stage in the water and took off again instead

We\'ll have to wait and see what exactly will happen in 0.16. As I see it we can do a couple of things: -Try and re-balance pricing so roughly similar designs and capabilities remain possible for the same amount of money -Do nothing, keeping all prices as they are. Depending on what exactly gets changed this could make things far too easy or downright impossible -Start over with new values for everything -Keep playing in .15, completely ignoring 0.16 I\'m in favor of the first option, I\'m in the experimental test group so while I won\'t be able to keep you guys updated about it I will probably have a little lead in time to think about the balancing of it all. We\'ll just keep going as is for the moment, I\'m sure we\'ll be able to come up with something that works when we need to. Cheers

And here\'s one that does kerbin orbit -> land -> kerbin orbit -> land. Fairly straightforward to fly, stage first SRBs at 22 seconds MET to make them explode.

Here\'s a craft that can do the 50km -> land -> 50km -> land challenge. It\'s quite straightforward, launch, ditch SRBs when empty. Keep burning till apo = 50, fall back down till about 1km and powerland. Ascend again, ditching side tanks when they drain, fall back down and land. half a tank of fuel to spare.

Yeah I\'ll do that Bellaby. Also if you want to can repeat elements from previous turns. Good luck with your exams!!

I had thought on a few occasions something along the lines of \'dang those small engines really are frugal with their fuel\', but never stopped to think and check whether it was at all correct. It really is a weird bug. I won\'t make Awaras start over, I will take away a chunk of his cash and will probably restore the first bonuses he claimed on a few missions. Exactly how much and what exactly I\'ll do I\'m still pondering, it will be included in the turn 8 update which will happen on friday.

The rules for delivery are a little more lenient than they were in the contract. The cargo needs to be up there, since construction is implied there can be old bits of rocket still attached to it, an unmanned capsule can be left up there as well, eliminating the need for a re-entry vehicle

This is me launching a rocket from a stationary hovering platform at +/- 12km

Some good thoughts there guys. I\'m fairly sure I\'ll disallow explosive staging in a hypothetical future campaign. It\'s been fun, and whoever thought of it first back in togfoxes campaign sure was creative, but every space program needs to stop actually depending on explosions at some point I had considered .cfg editing the engines and compiling some part.rars for each tech level, but then I went for a nonlinear tech tree and that would\'ve been a lot of work and also hassle for the players. The game will change a lot over the remaining weeks of this campaing (update .16 coming up), now with Nova on the actual dev team perhaps there will be stock balance changes (he\'s been adamant about them in the past). For now I\'m leaning to using his set of parts, I don\'t know if you guys have played with them, but they\'re a bit weaker than stock and feature very light decouplers, heavily favouring multistage designs. In fact I almost did this campaign with them, but I opted to keep it as much stock as possible to lower the barrier of entry. Another thought I had, which is basically the same as Issarlks \'make em weigh more\' is to ditch the standard \'capsule\' and instead design a small plane/spacecraft and just say that that needs to go on every mission. I don\'t really like that though since it reduces design freedom, which is one of the funnest bits of the game. All in all I think we\'re doing pretty well in this campaign, I\'m getting a lot of variation in design and approaches which is a good sign to me.

Because it \'feels\' far out. Ofcourse compared to the kerbol it\'s the same distance as kerbin, but not to the player. Best explanation I can come up with

Yeah, I suppose that\'s right. The problem with SSTO ships is just that they are very efficient. I can\'t really imagine a pricing scheme that encourages multistage rockets, with current parts that is. That incremental pricing scheme was just a brainfart to encourage large engines a bit more. Cheaper fuel would too I\'d think. That\'s all for later anyway. If I end up doing a second campaign sometime I think I\'ll use a differently balanced parts pack, something like Silisko Edition perhaps. Cheers

@DB101: I have considered that, and decided against it.. mostly. How I see the missions right now is that those that are repeating the \'simple\' altitude missions are doing so out of (perceived) necessity, the higher missions give increasingly greater reward and thus there\'s no financial incentive to repeat low missions. That\'s how I want it to be. Because I over rewarded some of the early \'high\' missions, and because of the necesarry tech progression and cost reductions it\'s not really interesting to keep increasing rewards on increasingly difficult missions. This leads only to everyone being super rich. A bit like Awaras, who has been incredibly efficient, much more so even than I projected. I added the joint projects to keep things a little more equal, we\'ll see how that works out in the coming few turns. One thing I did with the Kubble missions is a bit like the opposite of incrementally reducing rewards, instead the reward remains constant but the mission objective becomes harder each time you complete it. As of now, with the other missions I\'m not going to put in restraints yet, should they show up they will most likely be in the format of \'you can only fly this mission X times\', not keeping track of how often everyone did the mission. It wouldn\'t be that much work, but it would be cumbersome to display for everyone and it would make the whole system weird in my opinion. Better to then lose the option to do a certain mission altogether I think. As a side note, one of the things I wanted for this campaign was for the early missions to be attractive to complete using SRBs, and then moving to LFE with SRBs being cheap enough to still be used. I\'m seeing this in the crafts you guys submit, so I\'m happy with that. One of the things I\'m less happy about is how the current pricing scheme still heavily encourages single stage, small liquid fueled rockets. This morning I came up with a system that might change this, I\'m not going to implement it this time round but keep it in mind for any future rounds.. Basically all LFE\'s would have the same price (so you can actually pick and choose based on what suits the mission best), but the price for each subsequent engine increases. So say the first LFE would cost 5k, the second 7,5K, the third 10K and so on. Tech levels could modify this or even allow more engines on a rocket in the first place. I\'m liking this system in my head, but as I said I feel it\'s too much of a change to introduce this time around. @Awaras; SAS, ASAS and Mechjeb are all allowed. In fact all parts are allowed except Rocket fuel tanks and rocket engines (also the Aerospike). Except those that make up the starter rocket, ofcourse. I will be flying the thing with mechjeb aid, but will fool around with it a bit to see how it handles. This also means that this contract is an exception to the \'I\'ll only fly it once\' rule in that it\'s more the design I look at than a snapshot of performance. I want to see some engineering!

Oh and as an extra goodie, here\'s my persistence file so far. Almost all things in it are this campaign. There are a few projects of myself in there, but not a whole lot. Play in it if you like Update: Included the contract and rewards on the new missions. I did run into a problem doing the rewards, there will quite inevitably at some point exist a situation where doing less advanced missions with higher tech levels will be more profitable than doing the new missions. If not priced this way, the newer missions will just be outrageously profitable, which isn\'t very nice either. I\'m not outright banning the re-flying of old missions (yet), but please aim high! There are milestones to be conquered after all.

It\'s been a while, but here it is, the turn 6 results! Announcements -Many different missions were flown, I\'m starting to see some interesting variety in ship design and tech choices. I like this! Both Issarlk and Bellaby opted for the 200km mission, willfully subjecting their crews to hazardous G loading. The crew manning Bellaby\'s capsule were made of sterner stuff than their Issarlkian counterparts, all the bellabians survived where Issarlk\'s captain sadly returned home sans crew. Two kerbals dead and their families have been compensated to the tune of 1300 monies in total. -Cheaper technology! ZOX Tech I has been purchased twice, the price has now dropped to a low $4500. Booster Tech and Salvage Tech I have been researched a couple more times as well, however they had already reached their final and lowest price points. -The design contest this turn had two very close leaders, Awaras and Sal_vager clocking in well ahead of the pack with ships sporting just 12 and 15 parts, respectively. Thus Awaras claims the bonus contract money. -I\'ve seen a fair few of you like to use the Aerospike rocket engine in your contract designs. This is fine, I\'ve not spelled it out as such but in contracts pretty much all stock parts are fair game, except those specifically ruled out in the contract rules of course. The aerospike engine hasn\'t been available for regular missions yet, as of this turn I\'m introducing \'Aerospike Tech\'. It costs just $1000 and makes unlocks the Aerospike engine at the same price and salvage level (and subject to the same reductions through Liquid Tech) as the gimballed regular engine. -Awaras has completed the \'complete one full kerbin orbit\' mission, which unlocks the joint space station (which will unlock munar missions) as well as a few extra extended space operations missions. See the Turn 7 highlights for these. -A few of you changed your submissions half-way through the turn. This is fine, especially as it was a really long turn, but I\'m not going to commit to always honouring the changes. Basically if I\'m in the progress of flying the ships it\'ll be too late. There will be no way for you to know when that is. I encourage you to \'sleep a night\' on your submission, especially if it\'s early in the turn. Financial Overview Player: Awaras Mission Completed: Complete one full kerbin orbit Tech purchased: Zoxy Tech I Spent: $17850 Income: $42500 New Balance: $95990 Player: Sal_vager Mission Completed: none Tech purchased: none Spent: $1500 Income: $6000 New Balance: $15950 Player: Fireblade Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Zoxy Tech I Spent: $16750 Income: $20000 New Balance: $24100 Player: Robsr3v3ng3 Mission Completed: 25km Tech purchased: Parachute Tech Spent: $10000 Income: $11500 New Balance: $15250 Player: Issarlk Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech IIa Spent: $18050 Income: $23000 New Balance: $25450 Player: Bellaby Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech I Spent: $14100 Income: $42500 New Balance: $23550 Player: DB101 Mission Completed:none Tech purchased: Booster Tech Spent: $4700 Income: $6000 New Balance: $11800 Turn 007 Highlights -New Tech: Aerospike Tech. $1000, unlocks Aerospike engine at regular gimballed engine price/salvage levels -New Mission: Establish 100x100km equatorial kerbin orbit, complete two such orbits, then land at either pole. -New Mission: Reach 2000km altitude -Joint space station construction: Put the parts for the joint space station into orbit (200x200km 0 inclination). The parts required are: 25x full LFT, 15x full large ZOX tank, 4x ZOX panel, 5x tri-coupler, 2x LFE (unused in flight), 20x RCS block, 10x RCS tank, 2x sLFE (unused in flight), 4x command pod (these last, as they will build + occupy the station). Orbital Rendez-vous and assembly is implied. The parts that you send up as cargo are free (you do need to have the apropriate tech), the ship that carries it isn\'t, you use your personal launch slot for these. You get a $3000 compensation for each such mission flown. -New contract: Design an atmospheric hovering platform that can maintain <10m/s horizontal and vertical velocity at the highest possible altitude for at least one and a half minutes and can launch a rocket. See updated OP for details. The deadline for this turn will be Thursday night, 21-06-2012 @ 23:59 (GMT+2)

Haha, especially the electricity wrestling is such a bother! I do agree a week is too long, thanks for your feedback. Ill start the next turn tomorrow and we\'ll give the week/weekend schedule a go

just checking in, I am alive and will process the turn today or tomorrow (basically as soon as the hangover permits). In the mean time, what did you think of the week long turn? Too long?

Just a quick update, I\'ve got the internets sorted at my new place, all you guys submissions have come in fine and I\'ll get to processing them in due time. I\'m also gainfully employed again so a bit busier than before. Sal your turn counts for #5, so you can get to work on #6! Also I didn\'t consider a hammock, it\'s a pretty neat idea, however I\'ve slept in them in the Colombian jungle and I didn\'t really like them there, they were a bit short for me though so maybe that was the problem. Do 2 person hammocks exist because that\'d be epic. Quite the feat of engineering though, I\'m afraid

I know right!? Definately shopping for a bed come monday though