Jaeleth

Yeah... I guess installing by hand would've been better. Still, I managed to install it by removing lots of recommended mods although maintaining all critically important, like FAR, DRE, Real Eng, real fuels, real S.System... And a few I considered interesting.

I can´t install realism overhaul using CKAN. Always fails at some point with several errors of libraries that could not be installed. I am installing it on a fresh 1.2.2 release. Any clues? Thanks for any help UPDATE: I removed most of the recommended mods and it installed. Must be one (or several) of them...

I find this thread very interesting. I've been designing KSP aircraft for a long time and, in fact, the CoL behind the CoM does not solves the problems always but if you have a fairly pointy nose and the wings backwards it should do, like Snark says at a point, it is somewhat intuitive. Use this aviation motto: "if it looks good, it'll fly good". Most important also and, a real design issue, is inflight displacement of CoM. This is usually due to fuel being spent or cargo being dropped. The trick here is to put as much fuel mass as close as possible to empty CoM, either by a central fuel tank or wings. But on cargo aircraft, SSTO's or shuttles, which have to be balanced for flight with and without payload, it is useful to place a fuel tank as far ahead as you can so that you can transfer fuel to it, in flight, in order to move the CoM further ahead in case of need. Of course, always design your craft to be flyable with zero fuel... The Placement of CoM too further ahead makes it also "nose heavy" and hard to land and take off. For those cases consider the use of canards. Also, sometimes, you may find it difficult to take off even when there is plenty of lift. Check placement of landing gear, ideally, the main gear (rear, on a tricycle gear), should be as close as possible to the CoM as long as the craft doesn't tends to flip back when landed... Hope to have contributed, somehow.

There are plenty of movies around explaining this. But, to put it simple, build a rocket where the sum of delta v's from all stages is equal or greater than 3400m/s, ok, make it 3600, for starters. Then launch, at a about 1.5km or 130m/s start your gravity turn (turn very slightly towards east, that is, heading 090 on your navball) (do not overturn and do not gain too much velocity too early), press M, fly from there, make sure the parabola of your trajectory is not too steep neither too shallow, check your Ap, wait till it reaches 75km (safer) set rocket to prograde, shut down engines and hands off keyboard until altitude above 70km. From now on, put your rocket level with the horizon and ignite engines once more. Keep controlling thrust /pitch in a way that Ap is inching ahead of you and not increasing much... Watch for Pe coming at the other side of the planet, when Pe > 70km... you're in orbit.

At 1000 I stopped counting them... I think I am over 2000 now.... Estimating by the time that passed since I downloaded the game for the first time and the average number of hours a week I spend with it. By the way, is there a counter we can read that gives us the precise figure? I am not using Steam, I downloaded directly from Squad's site. At 1000 I stopped counting them... I think I am over 2000 now.... Estimating by the time that passed since I downloaded the game for the first time and the average number of hours a week I spend with it. By the way, is there a counter we can read that gives us the precise figure? At 1000 I stopped counting them... I think I am over 2000 now.... Estimating by the time that passed since I downloaded the game for the first time and the average number of hours a week I spend with it. By the way, is there a counter we can read that gives us the precise figure?

Depends on what you call massive... The largest ships I use are my OMS's, they have roughly the equivalent to 10 Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tanks, a single Rhino gives it a TWR of 0.64 which is not that bad to eject from LKO orbit to anywhere. To help maneuvering I use vernor engines only, these ships are a bit sluggish to turn but nothing unmanagable. And they are this big only because game efficiency in hauling fuel from the surface of the mine-able planets. Exploration ships are smaller, I prefer to use a fleet of smaller ships than a single behemoth, besides, I use large docking ports lavishly so that my ships are always reconfigurable in space, with the exception of the OMS's I have no big ships, really, only modules that I can assemble into very big ships if I want to (rarely do). Part count sucks... big time Note: If you have a very low TWR you can always do a multi-pass ejection, and an higher ejection Kerbin periapsis also helps.

Why carry fuel from minmus to LKO at all? It's more practical to build your ships with around 1000dV when in LKO and launch them to minmus orbit where they can refuel. They can then use Kerbin to slingshot to where they want to go without wasting too much dV since they are departing from an higher energy orbit with full tanks.

Land bases are cool to build and cool to watch... Otherwise they are... Totally useless... I ditched them altogether by the 1000 or so game hours... And why? Terrain clipping bugs kept them exploding, particularly if they were BIG. Only solution, put them on legs, but coolness factor disappears in a way... and having large fuel depots on legs, even locking the suspension, is awkward.... putting them on wheels? Even less cool . And then there's the dreaded part count... Landing ships on docking ports, on the surface is easy after the 200th or so game hours... But it is still time consuming and the awesomeness factor soon fades away after your 100th landing... You can always get mechjeb to do the routine while you eat a snack but you still have to monitor it. Plus... In some worlds, like Gilly, you cannot time warp too close to the surface and descent is very slow (sometimes I accelerate TOWARDS the surface in order to speed up), on other worlds, like Pol, there's this bug where when switching to bases, the base is hanging above the surface, for a few seconds, and then it gets on the surface (many times destroying things with terrain clipping bugs). So... My "bases" now are huge ships. I call them Orbital Mining Stations (or OMS) and they are completely automonous. On approach to target planet they deploy a wide area survey probe to get mineral pattern, they have a narrow area scanner to scan the surface and a small lander/rover whose job is to land, pin-point a good mining spot and stay there marking the spot. The big ship will now land, deploy 4 drills and fill the fuel tanks. Get into orbit again and refuel all ships in orbit (much faster process). I totally ditched solar panels since they are too big and clumsy and take up a lot of space, and do not work at night, and... a lot of other nuisances, and do not work efficientely in planets beyond kerbin, so, to guarantee the functioning of the 4 drills and an converter I use nuclear power, lots of them. Each ship costs me 3 000 000 credits but, who cares? It's the most practical, and fast, way to explore the system.

Is ghere ANY difference between "start surface harvesting" and "start asteroid harvesting"? Or is just there to bug us... And if there IS a difference... WHY?

Ah, the Mk1 does takes less heat. And the 2 or 3 fuselages won't help either, you see, the more weight coming down, relative to drag, the longer it takes to break, the longer it takes, the higher speed it will reach the lower and denser layers of the atmosphere. i mimicked (sort of) your setup and used an mk1 with 1 astronaut and 1 FL-T800 full of fuel. first time, head first, exploded at around 30km, critical part: the mk1, ap100km, pe49km i tried lower pe, it helps breaking faster at the expense of more instantaneous heat but reduces heat buildup (time), That's the way they do it in the real world with capsules (not shuttle). Still blew up. I think the heat buildup issue has yet to be improved in the game then I tried going tail first, terrier took the heat. And survived... probably due to more drag, more speed bleeding before lower layers since terrier as same tolerance to heat than mk1 cockpit (skin)... It's one of those game things... still, airbrakes survived the punishment, all the times, all the way. Probably you had few airbrakes coupled with low drag of ship and high weight. well, bear in mind that this is kerbin, not earth, reentry speeds are 3.5 times lower and so it is acceptable that lots of gear survives reentry even without shielding, some should take damage, yes, but probably not complete stuctural integrity loss. if you install real solar system... Things will really heat up

Yes, As I mentioned before no aircraft do this in the real world, this is a speculation. Can't do... Hypersonic air (do not forget reentry is at around mach 29) will destroy them even if you find a way to "feather" them, that's the term, at least for propellers, nothing like this was ever done with turbine blades. And the blades aren't the only thing you have to be concerned about in a turbine engine, get a jet engine schematic on the web and see what's in there behind them... yep, but first it must survive reentry, these questions are mainly for restarting turbine after reentry if that is what they plan anyway, probably the turbine on reentry is just dead weight and the ssto will make a powerless glide to runway, like the shuttle. Well... Mechjeb can do almost all the flying for you but... Is that fun? There was one particular, and brief, period of time when that happened... But then squad did change something and it happened no more, unless you tweak the reentry "deadliness" in game settings. Just done a test in the 20 minutes between these posts. KSP 1.1.3, full stock, only KER installed to get temperature readings (I have some difficulty in saving videos on this machine). You can go and replicate it now, of you like, it's a simple ship and fast to perform the test: Here are the results: the vessel is a mk2 cockpit, mk2 drone core, mk2 to 1.25m adapter long, inverted for extra sleekness and a terrier at the end, 2 astronauts. 4 A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S mounted around the adapter. A really simple "bullet" with airbrakes... kerbin orbit ap 200km, pe 49km, airbrakes deployed Table of results: SPEED ALTITUDE CRITICAL TEMP. MOST HEATED PART (explodes at 100%) 2400m/s 70km 2442m/s 60km 38% 2407m/s 50km 59% 2074m/s 40km 75% 1500m/s 30km 81% 1000m/s 20km 53% and cooling down until it hit the ocean... it fell like a rock, head first, at a point I lost energy (i forgot to add batteries) so it started spinning slowly and wobbling a bit around prograde axis, because i was moving at warp 4 to save time, just reducing warp at checkpoints to read the values, It still had plenty of fuel so it made airbrake worse, if it had less fuel, probably, wouldn't even get to 81% critical heat. no explosions, no damage... The temp markers didn't even reach the red color, only a deep orange.

by "like that" I meant KSP did not implement a visual depiction on how it is closing the intakes, so you have to imagine they just, somehow, close... Internal cone? External cone? Imaginary Force field? Doesn't matters... They are closed, theoretically reducing drag, now it's left to the player's imagination how they did that... What I mentioned are broad categories, your solution falls within my second category (protect them from airflow). Only two: cover them, with a physical cover, or make air not get close to them, the infinite solutions you may find fall either in one or the other category. Maybe... But I know of a very few pilots who wouldn't demand to have a manual override ;)... Virgin galactic's Spaceship changes wing configuration manually... To all it's troubles... And virtues... I play since early 0.9 Neither the turbines nor the entire ship is of any concearn... Do you want me to post a video of me doing that? Yes... It takes a lot more distance to break, but I can always use spoilers, but nothing explodes, nothing burns, in Kerbin of course, in Eve I have to be extremely carefull... I usually plunge in at the famous 41 degree AoA, sideways, and then switch to the other side, but only for roleplay, if I want to go have a snack and leave the damn thing plunge head on the only thing I have to be carefull with is with some hard "lithobreaking" if I don't finish my snack before it hits the ground... I play with stock game, default flight model, and a few "workflow" mods (MJ, KER, ship's manifest, and the like) that do not interfere in flight performance or materials resistance) I have my career game in 1.0.4 and I play sandbox in the latest version for ship design in stock and another game with maximum realism mods for extra challenge, and fun (until I can migrate my career rovers to 1.1.3) The russians say they will test one (nuclear engine) in 2018. If they test, the others will test too. Honestly... It's a bit "ackward" to complain about a few ounces of radioactive material orbiting Earth for incredible scientific benefit when nuclear bombers carry, quite often, a far greater amount in warheads around the globe and nuclear vessels carry a lot of it, active, in their reactors in every sea of the world.

No airplane closes intakes like that... Might be true... If I knew what "like that" meant... Since there was no visual display in the game of the intake closing, it is, therefore, assumed that it is a "theoretical, unforseen" closure, which will have to be done, one way or the other, on future re-entering space planes, as I mentioned before. So, we have either 2 approaches: 1. Close the intakes in whatever way, in which case you have to have a function "close intakes" and then imagine how they are closed as you wish to imagine. (Changing the AoA would not protect them from damage, those blades are really fragile). One practical way, yet crude, would be to manually attach an ablative cone, while in orbit, over them. That would solve bpth damage and drag issues on final powerless glide. OR 2. Place the intakes protected from the airflow (and we know that neither many ksp builders do this neither the software deals the correct amount of damage to them even when the SSTO in plunging headfirst into Kerbin at 2000m/s or so... As you know, with stock Kerbol System, no thermal shields and no "belly first" are even required for survivable reentry from LKO so the craft can indeed go head first with the turbines getting it all the way. If something can't be implemented in KSP because it is not yet fully implemented and tested in the real world we would have to scrap the nuclear engines... We can always make educated guesses on near future tech...

If it's not a simulator it sure is fooling much people... Lol... It's more a simulator than a simple game, since it "models" reality, that's what simulator do, it might not be as precise as, say, MS flight simulator for the flight model but it is better than, say, Berkeley Orbiter (which is a SIMULATOR) at the flight model, the reentry and at a par in orbital mechanics... And besides, I have flown real simulators and they looked and felt worse than MS flight sim so... Of course there is a lot that doesn't teaches! No simulator teaches everything. You can't learn to fly a plane by flying MS flight sim, but it does help to grasp the concepts and you can learn to fly instruments almost exclusively in MS flight sim. Besides, space flight, unlike atmosphere flight, is maths and calculations, it is IFR taken to an extreme, so to speak, therefore there is actually much more resemblance from KSP's orbital mechanics to real life orbital mechanics than MS flight sim control sensitivity to a real aircraft control sensitivity... And one thing that this is NOT is a Tycoon Style game, absolutely not! Time is not a significant variable (which would have to, in a tycoon game) money is not the objective (major fail for a tycoon game) merely the means, and you can even play it without any money involved (tech mode, sandbox) and way, way, way before you "complete" the game (colonized every planet), you already have your "empire" maxed out (full installations, full tech). This is a simulator with a fun exploration and buildup side to it, which makes it, also, a game... With realistic overhaul mods you turn it almost into a pure simulator. The tweakable option should not only exist, as it should expand! Orbiter does not simulates atmospheric flight as well as KSP, particularly reentry, the last time I checked, anyway, which was a long time ago, but then again, I don't think they have been evolving it much anyway. Atmosphere subsonic flight model is also better simulated in KSP. I don't think I can, as far as I remind it, stall spin the crafts in orbiter, I can in KSP, so, KSP is more of a simulator than Orbiter... Ms Flight sim has a better flight model but then again, that one is a pure atmospheric flight sim. Ok, I can't either stall spin the crafts in KSP as I can in real aircraft but at least I can... Somehow... And surprisingly, I can even use KSP to teach flight students what happens if they load the aircraft unproperly, displacing the Datum (CoM) beyond allowed range, lol. In a simple and crude way, yes, but it does the job. It... Simulates reality... Because, as a simulator, KSP is unique, and fun. No other space flight simulators around, and orbiter lacks many realistic features and stopped development ages ago, as far as I can tell. While KSP has a thriving community and is under constant improvement. KSP's uniqueness also derives from the fact that teaches space flight basics with a fun gaming approach to it. But it only does so because it emulates space flight in a realistic manner (as realistic as you can get on a home PC), if it looses that advantage and concentrates solely on the "fun" side, and I mentioned the wheels problems for this particular reason, it will fail in the long run. You see, there are lots of terrific space games out there, incredible atmosphere, multiplayers, empire building, incredible landscapes... These games appeal to "space fans", where do they loose to KSP? They aren't realistic. Hard core space fans will prefer KSP over them for this reason... There are excellent racing games out there, race car simulators, stunning graphics you have to look close to discern it is CGI, is KSP rover skidding competing with these? "Stealing" race fans from those games to this one? Nahhhh... But none of those games simulate the thrill of moving a rover, slowly and carefully, 1 million miles away from Earth... That's where KSP wins. There are amazing Tycoon games... Etc... Etc... And the list goes on... KSP triumphs in it's corner... Simulating space flight, reentries, atmospheric flight in alien atmospheres, mixed with exploration and building crafts (which can also have some learning simulation potential) and resources, for added fun, and standing out from the crowd by doing it in the most realistic manner possible, giving the notion to users that they could really be there, 1 million miles from Earth, reentering in an alien atmosphere with a space plane, going where others fear to tread. Not competing with them in their fields of choice... And... If this was supposed to be a Tycoon style game, Squad would've have tried to get some endorsement from the wall street exchange or something. Who did they get the endorsement from?... NASA... ESA... Well, that pretty much closes the discussion on the simulator thing uh?

Ah, VTOL, ok, of course, good exemple.

Possibly frame rate, read: slow computer. sometimes, to view the contents of a fuel tank I need 3 right clicks on the tank, and to change to another tank, 5 clicks!! so 2 key hits for action groups is somewhat, expectable, if too big part count on the 2.3 km radius.

Well... As I said. It has been a long time, so be it then. By the way, action groups should be allowed from the beginning, anyway, it makes sense that to build a large craft you need a large VAB, but it makes no sense at all not to be able to switch on or off two engines at the same time, I can do that in real life with little effort, and I certainly do not have a VAB

Ok then I remember this now... It was so long ago I started my career I didn't remember this any longer but still... If I still remember, one also has to be pretty far up the career ladder to start building space planes (the only craft where we have this problem) so, maybe, by that time you already have the action groups anyway, maybe.

I liked the assimetric flameout of the engines... It forced you to be on your toes when flying the aircraft, which was at it should be. And you could easily avert that by switching off both engines before starving the engine out of air... what do you mean by not afford action groups yet? Action groups are in place since a long time now.

Incorrect... In a simulator realism prevails, that's why it's called a... "simulator". Anyway... I can't see the point, closing intakes never bothered me, lol... Speaking of gameplay, infinite loading screen times and crashes every 4 or 5 screen loads, in a bad day, DO BOTHER me!!! But hey... I can live with that, if I wanted simply a game I'd be playing EVE online, here, I come for science and simulation! With some fun to it, of course... Well... Have you never heard the creation, often, overtakes the creator? That happened with Dungeons and Dragons, now that I remember old times... If it was a game first, the lasers, starfleets and empire building system are missing... And why did the upgrades (and many mods available) so far, increase realism (improving of reentry and drag models, for instance) and did not add blasters and star destroyers? KSP is an outstanding simulator and a good teacher of what is flying in space. Keep it that way! Making it "just a game" puts it head to toe with the likes of Eve Online, or Stellaris, just to name a few, do you really want to do that? Let it be good at what it is: science and simulation, with a fun side to it, that makes it cool learning, do not try to force it into something it wasn't born to be, or else it will loose... Well... That's an acceptable explanation. So, I will rephrase... They should add it back whenever possible, together with more damage to parts exposed to shockwave in reentry and not coated in ablative material. Incorrect approach... It should be: "As realistic as possible without compromising gameplay (particularly frame speed) or, at least, let the users decide how realistic it gets" As for gameplay there are other... Issues... Which should be addressed much more urgently. For instance, the dreaded wheels that got completely messed up with the new unity engine. Now they are neither realistic, neither playable... But we have patience, for a unique simulator, that we wouldn't... For a simple game.

No there isn't, I just mentioned that it in my previous post. No jets doing that, the only hybrid engines in testing haven't yet a fully working aircraft (read: spaceplane) to be assembled on. When they do, they'll have to find a workaround for closing them and/or diverting the flow of hypersonic air from them (blades). Unless they use a statoreactor at some point, but there must be a turbine somewhere for working at lower speeds. And yes, supersonic air cannot hit the turbine blades, that's why the design of supersonic jet engines is much more complicated, the faster they go, the harder it gets to do this. Correction: Another forum member pointed me out some VTOL examples, actual planes that close intakes, although not exactly for the same reasons we were discussing it here, it is a good example.

If it increases realism, it is, by itself, meaningfull in KSP. KSP is not an ordinary "game", it is, or at least it is supposed to be, a space flight simulator, and as any simulator it should simulate reality as best as it can. If it can't, it can't, but removing a feature that was already implemented and contributed to realism, not good policy. Why having all those types of engines then? One single "super engine" like a rhino with a NERV isp, dual cycle, and weighting 1t would do the job... But hey... It's not realistic, right? Are all of them "meaningfull" to KSP? As meaningfull as closing the intakes... They add realism... Because if it's just about orbital mechanics a single type of engine would do the job... And, in terms of KSP (game only) if I can reduce drag when climbing or in a powerless glide with no fuel, back to KSP, I definitely want to, and it is definitely meaningful...

What you are referring to is not closing the intakes (at least in a usefull aerodinamic sense). What we do in real aircraft when parked at the apron or hangar is to put intake covers, radiator covers, pitot tube cover in place. Often a bit of foam covered in leather, usually painted in red, with a "remove before flight" sticker attached to it. The purpose of this is to avoid bugs, birds to get inside and even make nests in those orifices, in case of the jets also to protect the sensitive turbine blades from damage. The discussion here is how to close the intakes, aerodinamically, in flight. I know of no aircraft who does this since there are not yet operable hybrid engine aircraft, althout there are, at least, 2 hybrid engines under testing, the british SABRE and a russian engine. But, to be effective, the intake doors would have to be an extension of the fuselage and engines must be mounted in such a way that, during reentry, would be protected from the shock wave, probably at rear, above (and protected by) the wings. So, in game terms, this last approach is the one we should be talking about. It has not yet been done, but it is close future, like many features on this game. It is not necessary, in game terms, to imagine the engineering of such an intake, just to admit that it is there and it makes a difference.

It is, actually, meaningful and critical: (Note: "Atmosphere" is comprised of Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesoshpere, Thermosphere, Exosphere, which fades, gradually into vacum, which never is, actually, absolute. It does not ends all of a sudden, although it does have separation layers between these I mentioned, relatively thin (called the xxxxxpauses) which, still, are continum, not abrupt). The ISS, space shuttle and foreseeable space planes with hybrid engines, for instance, orbit in the thermosphere, "space", the Karman line, is considered, nowdays, to be 100km high, some 50km above the beginning of thermosphere). In an hybrid engine you will switch to closed cycle way before "space" is reached. 1. In the ascent phase, there will be a point when the air is thinner than the necessary to produce thrust, you switch to closed cycle (rocket), but the intakes will still produce some drag, you optimize it by closing them. And I am not even considering the problems of hypersonic air hitting the blades of the turbine... We will see to it next... 2. In the reentry phase is ABSOLUTELY critical to close the intakes... It would be the death sentence of a reentry vehicle to enter Earth's surface at mach 29 with an open intake. How would you coat the blades? How would you solve the problem of hypersonic air hitting them at mach 10+, I am already assuming air speed is reduced to subsonic before hitting the blades as normal in supersonic / hypersonic aircraft. 3. In game terms why would you want excess drag ascending, even if little, or lots of excess drag when descending, when you no longer have any fuel left to use the turbines? in short... A nice and realistic feature... Gone

If the rover "wants" to drift to one side I can think of 3 things: 1. check if you are controlling it from a port that is paralell to ground, just in case, easy to check, when you look at the navball check if you can see the artificial horizon with blue above and brown below, only blue, only brown or any weird pitch angle (in level flat, level, ground) is wrong. 2. There should be a misalignment of the wheels, remember, wheel alignment has 3 axis, not only one: camber, caster and toe (google it for explanation). It is not usual to misalign in KSP if you work with angle steps in builder, but if you work with free rotate mode it could happen, even a small misalignment would bring this kind of trouble. 3. Check if, by accident, you didn't change the setup of one or more wheels (grip, etc...)