PringleMan

Home did not exist in .17 iirc At any rate it was definitely removed about a week after it was released. The animation module was not saving the deployed animation for the solar panels, so if you left them deployed, went back to the tracking center, then re-loaded the ship the panels would still be deployed as far as the module was concerned, but the panels themselves would be un-deployed. This made for really really weird and buggy behaviors when doing action groups and such.

To answer the original question better, burn at a 90 degree angle to your current orbit. For example if the apoapsis is inclined towards the north pole, then at periapsis (which would itself then be inclined towards the south pole) you should burn north. Think of it this way, if looking at your orbit from the side, edge on, it is like a teeter-totter and you should apply a force in the direction you want to move that side of the orbit. Really you can fix this at pretty much any point in the orbit, though I believe either the AP or peri are going to be the most cost effective. Just plan a maneuver node

The 2D map is better for mission planning (easier to take the image and lay them next to each other) However the 3D map is vital for those of us that are A) a few points away from legally blind without vision correction and Have a small monitor because we are poor. And as he says, the way he did the 3D map is actually much better because it renders on the fly rather than being a static image that is updated to have the deposits revealed. Previously those 2D maps were basically a picture in your folder that was slowly updated. Now it is just a small file that says where the deposits are and the plugin renders it on the go. The difference in resource usage is actually pretty minimal. From an in-game perspective, it is also easier to use in my opinion. Ignoring the aforementioned eyesight problems, in my opinion it is much easier to see exactly where the gaps are and see where exactly a deposit is in relation to the world. The 2D map was always frustrating to me because it puts things in terms of coordinates that have a totally arbitrary origin. There is nothing on the surface of Kerbin that denotes a prime meridian. The Equator is easy enough, sure, but the meridians are totally arbitrary. And as a note, KSC is not at the prime meridian! So I would read these deposits at XX N and XX W, but that does not really tell me much when trying to land or see if the deposit is in the ocean.

Indeed. Some mods like LackLuster's pack or the Wayland Corp stuff or Bobcat Industries or KSPX are pretty much just part packs. Some of the parts may do really cool things, but it is still just a part that looks nice. Other mods like FAR or Deadly ReEntry change the way the game works. For example FAR changes the entire aerodynamics system of the game. There are also mods that add functionality to the editors and stuff. And then the third big group of mods are content addons that add whole areas of the game in terms of things to do. The primary one for this right now I think is Kethane which adds resources you can harvest and convert into other stuff. As Killer said you do not need any of these to do cool things. Go watch Scott Manley's videos on youtube, that is a perfect example.

This would be perfectly acceptable for a game with the current realism of KSP. Without doing proper N-body (which would make the current physics engine cry because of multi-part ships rather than a single parented entity) this would be the best approach for an improvement. I would however point out that your pictures showing the spacecraft orbiting the barycenter nicely runs into a critical flaw. I point you to Roche Lobes Roche Lobes are a means of expressing the gravitational lines of equipotential. In a two body system with the barycenter outside of one of the bodies, that would be the result. What you propose is to basically have the Roche Lobes be the spheres of influence, which as I said WOULD be a nice alternative to trying to do full N-body, but those spheres would get real complex real fast. The alternative to simplify that would be to have a simple circle SOI around both bodies which is basically what we have now.

just try to dump them in the ocean. There is very very very little harm they can do there (high-energy radioactive decay is almost completely contained with as little as 30 feet of water) edit: I should say with the masses you are talking about, you would have to be pretty much intentionally launching nuclear engines INTO the water for a while before there would be a noticeable environmental concern

similar, but it looks a lot more refined (more like an subway map)

A while back I had seen a neat chart that had a tree-type chart for delta-V needed to get from body to body. Kerbin would be at the bottom, then a branch over to the mun and minmas, then further up the "trunk" would be duna, with branches to its moons. Does anyone remember this chart, and more importantly does anyone have that saved somewhere

Nice! Glad to see this release! This is a big help to people like me with clinically poor vision (borderline legally blind without correction)

The problem with both the ramp AND the lowering lift is that you would have to build something that is fabulously high off the ground in order to get enough clearance to release anything worth it in size. Those landing legs may have to become a higher priority then! Anyways given all of them, I like Landing A, and I would have to see the animation itself to really decide between Orbitals A and B. However I point out that you might have things radially mounted to the outside of the bay, and having the doors open into that would cause problems. Thus Orbital A is my first choice

Following this I spent some more time trying to find unit costs for various rocket engines. I had tried before my previous post, but was unable to find any verifiable data. However after my second search I was able to find some transcripts of Senators $%^@ing about the price for rocket engines that NASA commonly uses for the Delta rockets and the Centaur upper stage. Rocket engines are indeed fabulously expensive. My apologies for the failure on my part. My experience with the matter comes from my local space-science center that managed to procure one of the main engine nozzles from the Space Shuttle program while I was still working there. All of my information is from discussions among the various professors that work there and the director of the center. At any rate, I still maintain that it is too high. From a game play perspective if the first mission in the stock pack has you reach an altitude of 70km, you really need to have a rocket engine unless you can design a good jet that will peak at 70K.. Not everyone is capable of making a well designed space plane. In addition, I would point out that the 2003 manufacture cost for a brand new military-grade jet engine was $14.3 million according to a report published for the USAF by one of the DoD subsidiaries. Further, according to my research the high cost for rocket engines seems to be due to whether or not they restart. The price per unit for the J-2X (redesign of the J-2) was only 25 million per unit, which at the 2003 price for a jet engine would make it 1.7 times more expensive. In contrast, if the engine is restartable, such as the engines on the space shuttle, the price is more like 50 million a unit. If we went with the proper scaling that way, then the 2,500 for the jet engine that we currently have in game would at the most scale to 8700 ish for the most basic rocket engine (calling the LV-T30 the most basic).

Perhaps, but keep in mind that this was a rocket that had a single mission goal of reaching 75k, and parachuting to safety. If the starting budget of 50k is fine, then a simple simple rocket costing almost 33k is too much. Beyond that, a liquid fuel engine should be among the more expensive parts, certainly, but the most expensive should be the fuel. You would think that a rocket engine is a complicated piece of machinery, but in reality it is actually a fairly simple creation. The internal combustion engine in a car is vastly more complex than most rocket engines, which are basically some fuel pumps and a mixing chamber. Indeed hypergolic engines are pretty much just that. Here is the craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zq4a094x0swzrsh/Mission%201%20rocket.craft The mission I was accomplishing was the very first mission of the NT mission pack posted on the front page. Sure, some of the issue may be his own internal balance on pricing, but even so that amount of money for what is arguably only a step above the most basic lift engine available is pretty steep. edit: and just double checked, that single engine is worth more than the entire payout of the first mission in the stock pack too.

I think some tweaks need to be made on engine costs lol. I downloaded the NT mission package, and for the first mission made the following rocket (from top to bottom) Basic Parachute Okto 2 (the flat one) TR-2V decoupler NCS Adapter Z100 Bat pack x4 FL-T800 fuel tank AV R-8 winglet x4 LV-T30 Liquid fuel engine *bat packs and winglets mounted radially on the FL-T800 fuel tank The total cost of everything minus the engine: 4829 The total cost of everything with the engine: 32808 Cost of the engine: 27979 Seriously, 28k for a single, 1.25 meter engine? Friend that needs to be fixed!

If you have extraplanetary launchpads installed, that is why you have 999999 showing up. Without changing it out of what is basically debug mode for the ore harvesting, all bodies have one giant ore deposit with 999999 ore. Currently the detector does not read a difference between ore and kethane for the last deposit reading, so everything just says 999999

At the moment you are right, size does not really matter. However on the schedule for update is a proper aerodynamics system like FAR has, at which point size and shape will mean everything.

You could also utilize the EL mod to build a bigger ship after you got things rolling a little.

edit: You know I wrote this wall of text explaining about how modding should not be a black box process, about how blah blah blah. The usual stuff someone posts in a forum fight. If you already made the fixes, package them up in a rar and post em. To be honest, Bobcat probably won't care as long as you post it in here. If he does, take it down. That is pretty much the full range of what can happen. Sorry if I was harsh the first time around, the last thing I wanna do is drive someone off. But you cannot directly map your real-world commercial environment experiences for "core game updates" to an unpaid, non-native english speaker. Certainly there are good ideas that come from that, but that cannot be the basis for pestering someone on content they do not officially support at the moment.

They are in reference to the standardized size of his 1x1 hull pieces. Basically if you look at the connector-side of a cockpit like the buster, or grab the structural walkway node part, that profile is 1x1. The 2x1 hull is then two 1x1 wide and one 1x1 tall. The 2x4 is two 1x1 tall and 4 1x1 wide.

If you decide you want to range into gameplay content, try taking a look at Kethane and Extraplanetary Launch Centers as a pair. Also Kerbal Attachment System (KAS). Those are going to start getting away from what it sounds like you are looking for, but I think you will find them quite remarkable.

Actually that is exactly why I was saying having multi-in multi-out converters may not be the best idea. It may be clunky, but having unique converters for each reaction you want to do is safer gameplay wise. Something like electrolysis is one thing, but having a single converter that can take in anything and convert to anything is no good. That is what I was saying is the current problem with kethane. Kethane magically can turn into fuel OR oxidizer OR mono, and realistically it should probably only turn into fuel with trace amounts of oxidizer (though that is speculation since we do not know what the empirical formula for Kethane is exactly.

He could probably allow for multiple inputs, but doing more than one output would probably ruin gameplay a little. Kethane is not supposed to be an end all be all resource, it was just convenient to keep it that way till the code was in place to allow for more resources. NOW between the EL mod and Kethane we have kethane to convert to fuel and ore that can be made into metal for rockets. The structure is in there to flesh out an entire resource system it just needs some modders to pick it up. edit: Unless by more than one output you are planning on waste resource, which would be pretty cool in idea but in all practicality it is space you can just dump the waste overboard and be done with it.

Does that mean you finally got it working? Or is that just another teaser?

Or alternatively could he not just use the debugger to add a deposit under his location straight up?

The kethane seeds are saved in a set of files in the plugin data. You can reset a specific body or even the entire solar system by deleting these files and reloading the game. To update the save files from .5 to .6 first you have to run .5.1 in between to update the files, then you can move them to the .6 version

I landed my first tower of .6! It is a beast too, and conveniently (and legit) located south down the coast from KSC. In fact close enough it would not even be a terrible drive in a rover to collect that delicious keth unfortunately imgur is being a butt so I will upload a pic later