Jakalth

The Evolution mothership. Might not be the biggest, but could very well be the most unstable... Has to be assembled, in Kerbin Orbit, from 6 different parts. Has enough Delta-V, once assembled, to do a Dres direct transfer(inefficient transfer ignoring the efficient transfer window). Possibly even capable of flying strait to the Jool system if an efficient transfer window is used. Other then that... 705 parts. 705.892(706) tons 35m tall 15.7m wide 25.2m long each part, other then the central core, is capable of landing on lower then kerbin gravity worlds/moons. The 5 landable sections can refuel and fly back up to the central core and reattach since they are all equipped with refineries, science packages, and mining equipment. The craft, as a whole, can attempt a low gravity landing, but it will most likely end up becoming an impressive debree field if landing as a whole is attempted on any terrain that is not 100% perfectly smooth. The individual parts on the other hand, can make safe landing on quite uneven ground with little problems. My largest functional ssto. Designed in ksp 0.90, I was never able to get it into orbit without some extra fuel. In 1.1.3 though, it can now reach orbit, barely, while hauling a full orange fuel tank with monopropellant and a probe core attached. Not exactly the best flying beast though. In fact, it's actually quite ugly to fly... :\ The Lamp Post is also quite the beast. It is my primary cargo tractor for doing long range missions. It's capable to towing over 150 tons of equipment to anywhere in the kerbal system. It can perform a direct flight to the jool system without refueling and can do a grand tour, of all the planets and moons, if the tanks are topped off at each stop. Nothing fancy, just a functional tug. And finally, my single largest craft, the Driad. This craft is huge, for me anyways. Being nearly 100m in length and requiring a complex docking procedure that aligns 5 different docking ports to connect each piece, it is not an easy craft to put together... Also, it is a complete failure. The moment the engines are ignited to break orbit, the craft implodes... Very kerbal in that way.

A semi-simple ion powered satellite that also acts as my first out exploration and survey craft when planning a mission to any planet in the Kerbin system. It's got a wonderful 13,000 delta-V, so can do a complete survey of any system, even a full Jool system survey, prior to the launch of my mission specific craft. It was built in sandbox for a spacific reason but ended up being so effective at that job that I use it for any planet/system specific missions. Simply called: Trailbreaker Has both of the orbit capable scanning tools and antennas to send the data back to kerbin. It's powered by 4 dawn ion thrusters and has a pair of large solar panels and 8 RTG's along with a probe core, and 1,600 units of charge capacity for longer burns.

Well, when thinking about bugs in KSP and how Major/Minor they may be/are. First, just think about this; Have you ever played any games created by a company called Bethesda? Now compare bugs between their games and this one, AND, more importantly, the budgets and number of people involved. Makes you think a bit differently about the bugs in this game doesn't it? The work on KSP isn't so bad at all huh? Anyways. My three cents. And I also look forward to the progress of patch 1.1.3 Here's hoping it doesn't break any of my craft. But considering nearly all my craft from 0.90 still work just fine in 1.1.2, I'm pretty confident it'll all work out. Just to note: I have nothing against Bethesda. I enjoy their games, and I like them as a company. Using them in this post is for comparison only.

I think my Lamp Post, when I sent it to Jool, was over 70m long. But I'll bet I could pack most of it cleanly into the Intrepids' hanger bays. Only thing that would not fit is the Lamp Post it's self. You've got one BIG ship Kuzzter. *thumbs up* Actually, it might be interesting to see if the Lamp Post would fit inside the Intrepid, or at least if it could be dragged around by your mighty ship. I have no doubts that the Intrepid would win in a tug of war. LOL

The readout of KER going out happened to me on my Descapade mission. More then once... Something about large craft makes it hard for KER to update the readout so it defaults to blank? I got it back by bringing up the main menu, going back to the ship, bringing up the main menu again, going back to the ship. Did that between 2 and 3 times and it would come back online. Not sure why it helped, but it did. Try that if it does it again.

Yeah, it was somewhere around 2.8m/s and still slowing when it touched down. It's mass at contact was around 635,000kg or 635 metric tons. The craft was held together by docking ports, girders, struts, and many hours of praying to the Kracken. Works fine in space, where it was designed to live. Was NOT designed to land on the surface at all in its assembled form. 5 of the parts can safely make the descent on their own though. Did I mention it had 701 parts making up the craft? And the 11.8 degree slope probably didn't help things any. I had no illusions of it surviving the landing, I just wanted to try anyways. See if I actually could do it. And the results were spectacular enough I just had to share. Only took me 2 hours of flying the craft under nearly full throttle just to make the descent from a 65km orbit. Bad TWR for making the landing... Only 1.41 at altitude and it dropped down to 1.32 at the surface. But the results were worth it.

This is just another episode of Good Idea/Bad Idea. This time the topic is Motherships. Good Idea: Flying your mothership to the Mun. Bad Idea: Landing your mothership on the Mun. The End.

And now for something the Kerbals have been waiting for. The surface runabouts. Basicly 3 Kermen vans, but with a wide stance and off road tires. This will let them move about easier in this low gravity enviroment. Explore the surrounding crater for resources, and perform general crater shenanigans. Undocking was easy and the module pulls away slowly but smoothly. After jettisoning the rear docking adaptor, the burn for Dres descent was easy. Just enough thrust in the center aerospike engine to bring this craft down nice and smooth. Landing was a little shaky do to the narrow landing gear in the center, but it stayed upright. With the craft landed, I could finally detach the runabouts from the lander. After the mandatory explosion of decouplers, and the dust had started to settle, we were left with 3 of the craft on their wheels, as designed, and only one of them still standing on it's back. Switching to the 4 runabouts, one at a time, only required a little wiggling to get them all 4 ready to head over to the nearby surface base. I lost one of the runabouts after being a little to enthusiastic when the craft got some vacuum after a sudden dip in the terrain dropped away under it. But the kermen survived the accident so I rescued him with one of the remaining 3 runabouts and parked them around the surface base for convenience. Though the light gravity of Dres makes it ideal for landing and refueling, driving around on Dres is another matter. The light gravity applies its own challenges to maneuvering and grip that can only be experience, else where, on places like Minmus. The craft without SAS on, are a little skittery and don't hold a strait line well, but with sas on, accelerating turns into a wheelie a little to easily. Maybe should of made the runabouts a bit heavier... But they are still fun to mess around with. After dispersing the runabout around the surface base, I brought down the Lamp Post 3 and landed it near the base as well. Only 600m away is close enough for now. I could always move it closer later on. Time to refuel the Lamp Post 3 as well. In the crater, and the space around Dres is getting pretty cluttered now. Looks like a busy airport with all the craft wizzing around. Only a few things remain to do at Dres. Land the Lamp Post 2, Bring down the Indignation for refueling, dock the fuel modules with the evolution station, Land the 2 fuel transfer vehicles, land the Lamp Post 4, and finally send the dresteroid tug on it's mission.

Now lets get the science rover down to the surface. This vehicle can rove around Dres gathering science and processing it on the spot. It's a rather long and ungainly vehicle though, and the light gravity makes it a bit less stable then I was hoping for... First off, lets undock it from the Lamp Post 3. Using it's RCS pack I'll maneuver it into a slight altered orbit so I don't have any issues of collisions during descent burns. That would be bad... But now that it's far clear of the Lamp Post 3, we'll shed that RCS pack, since it's only job is now completed. And we'll begin it's deorbit burn. Full power to the engines and deploy the radiators. This looks like a good enough time to start the breaking burn, so that our touch down doesn't become a smack down. And the last few second under low thrust to bring us down nice and gentle. Landing light were a bit much, but why not. And now that we are down it's a slow and careful drive to the Dres surface base. The base and the Snack-O-Mart are quite inviting after the long trip. Quite inviting and busy! The science rover turned out to not be the most drivable craft I have every made. It's actually to light to really get much traction and it's size makes maneuvering a bit sluggish. But it gets the job done. Lots of science equipment and an on board science lab to process it all makes it a still usable science grinding rig. If a bit lacking in the style department... I tried docking the science rover with the surface base, but the design of the two craft means their docking ports don't line up. Even with the muscle power of a few kerbals to try heaving the base up higher, it was no luck. Oh well, it wasn't actually designed to dock with it but I had to give it a try anyways.

@NathanKell hmmm, can't reproduce the condition in a new game without the mods installed. Seems to be an issue with my save game(again). And/or one of the two mods I'm using may be causing it as well. Ad since I've only got Kerbal Engineer and Hyper Edit installed, there is only 3 options. Bugged save game(happened to me before), Kerbal Engineer, or HyperEdit.

Just zoom in and angle the camera until it is inside the fairing, you can then click on the part you want to transfer the crew into. Although, this only works if there is enough of a gap between the fairing and the parts contained inside for the camera to be angled into...

What I find works best in this case, is to tuck the sepratrons under the nosecone in such a way that they go most of the way through the decoupler, but not enough to touch the part the decoupler attaches to. This way the sepratrons are out of the aero model equation, but still can kick the cone the extra distance. Also, turning down their thrust to 50% helps prevent them from burning the front of the rocket on activation.

Ah, thank you for the correction Snark.

If it's going to do lots of transfers between bodies in space I'd think about going with a Nerv engine. It's a bit slow but it has the range to go farther then any other engine, except for ion. Otherwise, as Sir_Robert said, the Terrier is a great engine for that type of job. :edit: Also, if you go the Nerv route, your going to need radiators to cool the engine down. 4 large surface mount radiator panels will do the job nicely. Or a single deployable medium radiator array will work nearly as well, and can be turned off once the craft has cooled down.

1 issue I see. Your trying to move ORE Tanks!!! Bad... bad mojo... O_o Me and Ore tanks have a hate-hate relationship. They blow up too easily. 2: try connecting from a different location, either directly above or on the very bottom. connecting to the sides of Ore tanks seems to make them quite unstable. 3: try the same design but with a load of fuel tanks instead of ore tanks to rule out any Ore Tank related shenanigans going on.

I do have something you can try. Go to each of the craft and tell them both to "control from here" on the docking ports that you are connecting. It might be something simple like this that will do as a work around. Worth a shot.

Best way to go with a surface base like that is to simply build a lander. And by best, I mean simplest. Keep the lander as low to the ground as possible, so try not to build it tall. This is entirely for ease of landing. Short landers are more stable when landed at an angle then tall ones. Also, when it says research lab, it usually means you can just use the science Jr. Simple way to check this is to do the following: 1: make a quick craft with a science jr, and a command pod. 2: send it to the launch pad 3: check the mission list to see if the research lab part of the requirements is checked 4: recover the craft for 100% returns. 5: build your surface base/lander

Answer: That depends entirely on what your doing with the craft. Is it going to operate in atmosphere? Is it going to strictly fly in space? Is it an orbital transfer vehicle? Is it an all in one? There are several different engines that qualify as the "best" for a craft of that size. But each is the "best" at a different task. If you give some more info on what your using it for, one of us can narrow the engine choices down for you.

I've had this issue with docking completely stock craft in a stock install before. For me it ended up being an issue with the stock ore containers. For some reason, even though the ore container was not connected to the port, or to the part the port is connected to, docking with that port caused a chain reaction of rapid disassembly. For me the Ore container was clipped into a fuel tank for aesthetic reasons. Removing that ore tank and using one of the smaller radial attached tanks fixed the issue. So it can sometimes be something small like that, that can set this off. Ore Tanks are my nemesis when it comes to random explosions. By chance do you have any tanks clipped into the craft anywhere? Fuel, mono, ore, or otherwise? It's the only thing I can come up with that is not mod related.

I've found that a fuel pod of that size, having 16 of the small rcs blocks is enough to not only change alignment, but also shift orbits and perform docking maneuvers. But, using the small rcs blocks does mean having to have seperate fuel for them(monopropellant) which is a downfall. Also, having a single 2.5m sas module on each end can perform most of the turns the fuel pod will need, other then for sliding sideways, or performing big orbit changes. That design is probably more then you need for fuel transfer, especially if the other craft does the docking. In fact, if the other craft does the docking, all the tank needs to do is turn to face the docking craft. So in this case, you could even drop the RCS and just use SAS for turning, saving on part counts. As for the lights, I'd stick with only 2 at most. Otherwise they can produce to much light and cause the other craft to get whited out and make visibility worse instead of better. And if your using them to light up the docking port, turn down their intensity to 0.3 or lower for the same reason. It takes very little light to make the ports show up in the dark of space.

Never tested it on time warp. Was performing the tests at normal time and it was generating power like that. As for the solar panels, they were saying direct line of sight with the sun, but 0.00 charge being generated. All 8 panels read the same though. The power generation was spiking at 0.30/sec not counting the 0.03 drain from the probe core which makes no sense really. And these were the readings from the vanilla KSP readout, not the ones in Kerbal Engineer.

I've got a drop probe in testing that I'm going to use to seed the Kerbin system some time in the future. It works just fine in space, and it's descent to a planet goes as planned, but something odd happens when it lands. You see, this probe has only surface attached solar panels for power(which is all it needs). The oddity happens when it lands. Having just solar panels, 2 batteries, an sas module, and a probe core, for power items, should mean it is constantly draining power when in the dark. In space and during reentry, this happens as you would expect. But once the probe lands, it starts generating power at night, fairly rapidly at times, even though the solar panels have no sunlight and stability assist is turned on. I would like to figure out why this is happening since this is not a design feature of the probes. And I'm sure this is not supposed to happen. Oolean Drop Pod 2. It shows no signs of oddities when placed on the surface via launch or an editor. It's only when it goes through an actual descent that the strange happens. Descent on Kerbin: from a 75 x 75 km orbit.. activate first stage and use sepratrons to break orbit use the ablator to absorb the heat of reentry until around 18,000m detatch the ablator and use main engine to slow the craft down to safe parachute speed stage the parachute at around 4-6km lower landing legs before touchdown, anytime after dropping the ablator is fine. once landed, cycle off then on again stability assist. If your landed at night you should still be generating more power then using, which is not normal... fyi: only mods I have are: Kerbal Engineer and Hyper Edit for testing.

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Now to continue the mission. Lets get the new and improved(now with SAS) science module down to the surface. First off, disconnect it from the Lamp Post 4. Next, we plot it's trajectory and burn for deorbit. With the de-orbit burn completed, we ride this puppy down until we are close enough to perform a suicide burn. I missed taking a picture of the suicide burn somehow, probably due to the landing site being far from ideal and trying to correct it's location while descending... Anyways, landing goes off well enough with the landing gear down. I ended up landing once again, in the dark... Why do I keep letting myself do this? The landing lights are not very good for dark landings it ends up... In fact, they are nearly useless... But the craft is down, and on the crater wall, not a good spot to be. Yes, the picture is how steep the crater wall is... 22.3 degrees. The drive down the crater wall was a bit scary. I would rather not do that again... *looks over at the evolution shuttles* Crap... I nearly lost the craft on at least 4 separate locations. I ended up having to take several small hops using the landing engines to make mini descents back to the surface. It all worked out somehow as I drove the science module in to line with the habitat module. This is where I get to test my extremely careful alignment of the landing gear on the habitat module and the running gear(wheels) on the science module. The alignment was even better then I had hoped for. I was thinking I'd need to get the help of a few kerbals to lift one of the two modules slightly to get a good hard dock between the ports, but no need. The locked together just fine once I had everything lined up nice and strait. This is due to my testing of the parts on Kerbal and my careful calculations(guessing) to compensate for the difference in gravity. Beautiful.

small update: I've been doing stuff in the background. Sadly I'm getting a bit burned out with this mission so I've not really been taking pictures, just launching parts and alt-tabbing out to watch scrapheap challenge episodes. Shipping parts to Dres is becoming so very tedious... But I do have these. I've been able to assemble all the parts for Lamp Post 3 and got them all sent to Dres. The Lamp Post 3 I hauling a large science rover and 2 small buildings from one of my sponsors. They are a place all kerbals love and enjoy going to, even if they don't admit it openly. You will find out who they are soon enough. I also got the Lamp Post 4 sent off with a pair of fuel transfer rovers and a quartet of runabout rovers for the surface crew to use. Along with this, I have the upgraded science module attached to this one. This upgraded module has something very important to its mission, SAS. Still can't believe I forgot to add sas to the origional design... Both of these two Lamp Posts still have their cargo attached and are waiting to drop them onto the surface. It should go a lot better this time. *crosses fingers* I have one more craft going to Dres to complete the drescapades. It has a very crucial mission to complete once it gets there. Can you guess what this craft is for? It shouldn't be to hard to figure out. Once I have everything in place, the drescapades will have the following stats: Number of Kerbals at Dres: 80 Number of craft at dres: 36 Number of separate parts shipped to Dres for assembly: 46 Number of craft it took to fly it all there: 8(4 lamp posts, 1 octopus, 1 evolution, 1 indignation, 1 ????) Number of hours in game: over 70. Number of failed craft: 5 Total disasters: 1(original mission) Overall FPS anywhere in the Dres system: 19(normal is 30) Regrets: none