Terwin

As I primarily get my kerbonauts from rescues(where I have specialists disabled), I only use the Kolonist specialist, and that is because they improve all 3 bonuses while only taking one kerbonaut worth of supplies and habitation. Also, by the time I am hitting Duna, I generally no longer need to worry about funds, so hiring non-kolonist specialists is no longer a concern.

To create material kits you need: * Sources for Metallic ore, Substrate, and Minerals (drills work, but if not all are available in the same place, mining outpost(s) may be needed, dirt+ sifter is also an option, but is generally much slower) * Refining capacity for the above(Ranger portable smelters would be the minimum, MPUs work well for unmanned/mining bases, I generally use one or more 3.75m industrial refineries for manned bases. The refined resources are called metals, polymers, and chemicals) * Manufacturing capacity(Ranger workshop or Tundra assembly plant, the assembly plant can also make machinery once those resources are available) * Power supply. This is usually solar panels or a power plant depending on tech level and intended usage. * Storage: a place to store created material kits, plus at least a little storage for both the raw and refined resources(12+ hours worth is preferred to avoid loss of efficiency during catch-up). Having an engineer(or other kerbal with the appropriate skill) on board will greatly speed up the production process, but is not required. An engineer will boost mining, refining, and manufacturing; boosting your entire production line. Having a kerbal on board will also require life support(Supplies and habitation) if you have USI-LS installed.

MKS will not appear on ckan until Allista updates planetary construction to 1.4.1 and updates the metadata to reflect that. MKS has a dependency on PC, and while MKS includes an updated version of PC core, CKAN does not account for that and will wait for Allista to mark PC as updated. Also RoverDude(and many other mod makers) have had problems both with ckan and with users complaining to the mod makers about problems caused by ckan not installing things properly, so do not ask about ckan support as RoverDude does not support ckan.(fortunately, he is willing to take pull requests, so those that enjoy the ease of using ckan can still enjoy his mods)

This is the sort of mission/mission set I was thinking of when I told people that MH was SQUAD's answer to players complaining that Career mode has no story behind it. I would be interested in giving it a spin once it is ready.

If everything is working as expected, you should have a series of containers under the logistics tab(the ones I prefer for transport look like shipping crates and range from 1.25m to 5m, but inflatable ones are very useful for landed bases). All of the MKS containers(except fuel/nuclear fuel) should have a repaint option that will cycle through the possible payloads(shipping crates) or payload combinations(inflatable). You should also be able to fill the containers in the VAB. If you cannot do this, please try updating to a newer version of USITools and possibly reinstalling the mod.

In my 1.3 game, I started with just some 'squatters' to build up some planetary stores and get the colonization percentage up. These consisted of: Pioneer module, 3-4 hitchhiker cans, RT 5000 recycling(the 2.5m one), lots of rt 500 recyclers(the surface-attach one), 2(?) nom-o-matic 25000, a couple of stock ore drills, 1-2 small drills for gypsum*, 1.25m MPU* (gypsum->fertilizer and LFO), containers for resources being harvested, Lots of solar panels, and whatever additional habitation bits I needed to get 1-2 years of habitation. (I only visited these 'squatters' during the day as I did not have reactors at that point) I would fill these with 12 colonists and an engineer(a pilot too if they had a logistics module). Visiting every now and again to check on them and collect colonization bonuses. These are not for long-term habitation, but help you get started and stock up on fertilizer and supplies on-world. *) for earlier versions I used the small ISRU to convert ore to fertilizer instead, adding a logistics module if available Later on, when I had most of the MKS gear researched I would deploy 'seed' bases from a DIY kit which would then use OSE Workshop to build additional components. Seed base: Largest OSE Workshop storage container (3.75m? 5m?) as that is the only one that can (barely) hold a 3.75m MKS component; 3.75m refinery set to metal/polymers/chemicals; drills for metal ore, substrate, minerals, and whatever else is locally available**; 3.75m workshop set to material kits, specialized parts, and machinery, 1.25m Nuclear power with 10% fuel, logistics/pioneer, recyclers, Nom-o-matics, solar panels, heat sinks, and lots of inflatable storage. These would be set up by 3 launches: DIY Kit launcher; Container of Material Kits large enough to build the base + deploy the inflatable workshop(filled to the brim so I could use the extra to start building more components); and the assembly vessel with an inflatable workshop, 2 engineers, any short-term habitation, and a small stock of specialized parts. Once the inflatable workshop was deployed, I could usually disassemble most of the DIY kit vessel for more material kits before I started building the kit.(the rest of the DIY kit vessel would eventually follow, and once the seed-base was built, the MK storage and any useful parts from the assembly vessel(habitation, inflatable workshop, recyclers, etc) would all be transferred to the seed base with the extra bits(engines, empty fuel tanks, landing struts, etc) all turned into material kits. The first things I would build with OSE Workshop generally included: nuclear refinery, additional power plant, Refinery for specialized parts resources After those, I could just build whatever I felt I needed(such as habitation so I could transfer all the colonists I had cooped up in 'Squatters' for the last few years, and lots of recycling/supplies production to support them), usually adding a number of 3.75m nuclear plants as I started running low on power. (my Mun base now has 7-8 3.75m power plants and half a dozen habitation rings to support the 3 dozen squatter colonists I transferred to it for example) **) As all of the required resources are generally not available in one spot, I would put the base in the best option, but only after deploying an automated miner to a location that would start collecting the missing resources months or years before I started building my base. Miner consists of: drills, MPU, Nuclear power, containers, cooling, and would generally land, deploy drills, and just start harvesting(plus refilling it's fuel tanks in case there should ever be a need to move) in the zip file you downloaded, there is a GameData folder, copy the contents of the GameData folder from the .zip file into the GameData folder in your KSP install.

If you are on the main KSC page and click the USI-LS button, you can configure the rates and functionality of USI-LS, including making all of the bad-stuff results 'no effect' which effectively disables USI-LS. Also, this is the USI-MKS thread, and while USI-LS is supported and well integrated with USI-MKS, they are different mods and neither one requires the other, so you could always just install USI-MKS without USI-LS and have no life support to worry about at all.

If your batteries are below 90%, the nuclear reactor will run at 100% to get it back up to 90%. If your batteries are 90%+ your nuclear reactor will stop production and no longer consume EU. That is the *ONLY* code to prioritize using solar over nuclear during the day.(Solar will happily charge you to 100%, shutting down your nuclear until the batteries go below 90%; before, the nuclear reactor was at ~100% production even if your only power consumption was a probe core and you had an overabundance of solar panels) I believe fuel-cells use the same logic. Note: without this logic, the reactor would have produced 1,620,000 EC instead of 1,084,000 EC, consuming almost 1.5x the EU

MKS reactors will only charge your batteries to 90% and then stop consuming EU. This is to reduce wasting resources and is a design feature. (lets you do things like only run your reactor at night if you have enough solar to power your base, and lets you conserve fuel by adding solar to your base)

As far as I can tell you need to use stock drills to get the ore missions(at least for the MKS version released in October 2017 running on KSP 1.3.1)

As far as I can tell, no one is saying the wiki is perfect, but specific examples of what is missing or out of date will make it much more practical to make the fixes you are requesting. As you said, if you know what to look for, then it is fairly easy to find what you want, and as RoverDude wrote much of the Wiki, he will need the perspective of an outsider to identify things that are hard to find for other people. Also, if you point out specific things, then anyone who knows about that thing can go do a quick write-up on the wiki. Example: Even though I have made several updates to the wiki, I would not consider myself nearly expert enough to give it a 'it's broken, fix it!' overhaul, but if you found that the conversion rates have changed, I would not have a problem with going back and updating it(again).

If you are worried about breaking your save, copy it to a safe location before you start experimenting. If you like, you can copy the entire KSP directory, just to be safe. Then, no matter what, you can restore your game-state by just deleting your messed-up version and copying the saved version back in its place(or just play from the safe location) The lack of DRM on KSP makes this sort of thing very easy to handle.

It is more 'that part you are worried about is not a hard part of the challenge'. Orbiting the mun is harder than getting to orbit but not as hard as landing on the mun(assuming you do not just smash your vessel into the surface). Just remember that deployable solar panels are much more delicate when deployed, and should generally be kept stowed when in atmosphere.

If you look in the tracking center, any vessel with a maneuver node will alternate between flight clock and a count down to the maneuver node. I forget which version this was added in(perhaps 1.2? ), but I would consider that to be a (very) slimmed down KAC in stock KSP. Would be nice if there were settings to always display the node count-down if present, and to sort by time to next node, but as is, it is enough to let me run concurrent missions if I am careful with spacing out my burns for different missions.

Unfortunately, the only type of DIY kits you can make with OSE Worshop are 'empty' kits, so not useful(assuming this has not been blocked, I have not checked recently). I use OSE Workshop to build MKS components directly after establishing the initial base(with the largest available storage box) with a DIY Kit. The biggest problem with OSE is that it only builds things while in focus, and the current version of the core game(1.3.1) has issues with wonky heat at high time-warp(which is over 100x for me), meaning it can take several minutes of real-time waiting for larger parts to print.

I think there may have been a miscommunication: DIY kits are here now and you can shoot them off to wherever you would like to build them into bases(or starter basis if you also use OSR Workshop). In the future OSR Workshop will not be required for anything beyond spare screwdrivers as you will be able to create new DIY kits at your established bases and them send them off to make new bases(or expansions for existing bases).

As the desired functionality is basically Ground Construction + the ability to manufacture DIY kits off Kerbin(which GC is currently working on), I am not aware of any plan for RoverDude to roll his own beyond probably picking up the reins of GC should Allista put them down.

I believe most of the costs for a majority of satellites and probes are related to designing the satellite/probe. If it is cheaper to improve reliability by making 3 of the same satellite/probe, there is no reason not to pursue that path. It is just less likely for that to be the case if you are mass constrained and the cost per launch is high. As an added benefit, if your redundant probes/satellites are spread across multiple launches, you also reduce the per launch risk to your project...

If you can afford to double the weight of your satellite for extra fuel capacity, it seems likely that the satellite could have a lot more lee-way in where it is dropped off and still get to it's preferred orbit. Indeed the costs are astronomical, but not nearly as astronomical as everyone is currently paying to get anything into space. When everyone is accustomed to paying $60M+ to get something into space, if you can do it for <$10M, you can undercut everyone else at $50M and still have >400% profit/investment recoup per launch. Even if you are only launching something that would fit on a F9B3 with RTLS.(making those extra 100 double-weight star-link satellites basically free to get into LEO as a secondary, unless you already have a secondary which means even more profit per launch) Note: if/when someone else gets a smaller fully-reusable rocket working, SpaceX may well have a more limited clientele, but unless/until that happens, SpaceX will be basically printing money with every launch, and even after it happens, people will have had enough time to have designed bigger sattelites to make full use of the BFR capacity, so the market will probably not completely disappear(satellites are expensive to design and build($$B), so why not throw on an extra-large fuel tank if it makes it last that much longer in space, it will save money in the long run, especially if the marginal cost is trivial($$M))

Why fewer launches when star-link will happily send up an extra 100-200(40t-80t) satellites as a secondary payload? How else will they get to 12K satellites in orbit? Even assuming a 10yr life-span on these VLEO satellites, that still means ~1200/year or ~100(~40t)/month of already booked secondary payloads(probably closer to 80t) And if they get the manned BFR working, that could be less than 150K per couple to honey-moon for a week in space($10M launch /75 couples=$133K)

Thanks @Krakatoa, I'll try spamming fixed radiators and see if that works. Edit: about 50 radiators later(6 3m reactors needing 8 each and having a total of 10 to start with, plus a couple for each of the 4 modules with drills hanging off of them, plus a pair for the module between the drills and the reactors so the drills don't cause the reactors to shut down when coming out of time warp), and I can now safely go to 1000x without dangerous heating or losing reactor efficiency.(things start heating up at 10kx however) I must admit I did not realize I needed > 20% radiator panels(base now has 271 parts), hopefully this issue will be fixed in 1.4.

I think I only had the one MPU on my large base(the one I switched to LFO and sent off with my resource drone), but if it is a general heating problem, would it not be reasonable to expect it to be present at all time-warp speeds, not just 1000+? I can go for days at 100x with nothing but radiators being warm, but 1000x seems to start changing the heat levels of my entire base within a couple of hours. I do not have any NFT reactors, and I removed the patch to make MKS reactors act like them, so ideally, NFT should not impact my system, I mostly listed it in case there is some additional conflict I am not aware of.

I am running into an odd issue and I was wondering if any one else had experience with it. My MKS nuclear reactors will overheat and cause parts of my vessel to explode if I have them in the physics bubble when time-warping over 100x. (they are fine to run for days up to 100x with no appreciable heating other than the radiators, or when running months of catch-up, but as soon as I accelerate to 1000x the entire vessel starts turning yellow). I suspect it is a mod conflict, but I already deleted the MKS reactors patch from the near future electrical patches folder, is there more than one? GameData & versions: It is mostly an annoyance when building large parts with OSE, so not that big of a deal, but I thought I would check to see if anyone else has encountered this. Some things that may be related: My MKS reactors seem to be at least partially ignoring my Thermal Control Systems, even when directly attached to the reactor(landed and activated). With less than 1% usage they will quickly go over the ideal operating temperature without one or more attached radiator panels. (I have 3-4 TCS on the main base that has been slowly upgraded to now have 6 3.5m reactors, but this was a problem with a single 1.25m reactor attached directly to a TCS but still needing a panel or two. I also sent out a resource drone with one 3.5m reactor which has 4 large panels and a TCS but is slowly over-heating. Colony bonus: ~350%)

That should be easy to check, just look at the DIY kit before you deploy it, as it should list the total number of kits required, then check to see what it says in the 'Requires' field when you start building.

If this is a problem for you, set the home altitude to 250km(or higher if you do a lot of slow braking burns) or include a probe core. Even the integrated antenna of a probe core should keep you flying at any altitude where you might consider a kerbal 'close to home.' It is not like the small ones weigh much or take much EC. (just the other day I landed a couple of delivery drones on Minmus where they would be disassembled for additional material kits for my new Minmus base. They were down to one bar, but still had full probe control out at Minmus orbit with no supplemental antennas)