Terwin

As the second stage gets into LEO, why would it not complete most of an orbit and land back at it's launch point with just a reentry burn? It seems that not needing a boost-back would greatly reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be reserved. Presumably spending an extra hour or so in space should not be much of a hard-ship compared to reentry...

Habitation has 2 components: Current module: resets any time you EVA and is based on the hab time if your current vessel Homesickness: Resets only on Kerbin and is based on the best vessel that kerbal has been aboard sine they were last on Kerbin.Pilots and explorers are immune to homesickness (and current module time I think) so long as they have at least 1 year of hab-time in the current vessel. Colonization modules can be used to reverse the clock on both timers by consuming Colony supplies(does not work after they become tourists) Medical modules can return Kerbals to work once they have become tourists(or mutinous probably) but consume colony supplies(only works on Kerbals that have stopped working I believe) Any vessel with a hab-time of > 50 years counts as having an indefinite hab time(aka will not have active hab counters). Any vessel landed on a body with a >=500% colonization bonus and at least 1 year of hab time will count as having an indefinite hab-time One possible option is to build a really nice station with huge hab-time in kerbin orbit and dock your small vessel to that to give a high home-sickness counter, then use KAC to EVA before the current vessel hab-timer runs out. Personally I find that a few extra hitchikers and a bunch of viewing couplas(the ones with a 0.7 multiplier) will generally make my kerbals pretty content for a trip to Duna. (Last night I landed my second batch of Kerbals on Duna, while the first batch just did flags and footprints, this batch is currently using GC to assemble a series of facilities that will let them become permanent residents once completed)

Any other mod which allows design-time or flight-time changes to a part will block usage of R&D on that part. Tweakscale for instance, will block nearly all parts from being researchable, while fuel switching mods will block fuel tanks from benefiting from R&D. R&D scans for most of those mods and refuses to work with those parts so that there is not a conflict when two different mods try to change the properties of a part. (if you had set a LFO tank to LF and R&Ded it's dry-weight by 10%, then, on any scene load it could either be LFO with reduced dry mass, or LF with full dry mass. Try this with Tweakscale and you get mission-ending errors potentially happening with every scene switch as half the parts of your rocket apply their tweakscale changes and the other half applying their R&D changes, and which parts do which changes every time you go back to the craft)

All of my rockets VTOL. I even have some with sky-cranes that will lift the cargo box off the long-range rocket-base for depositing it on the ground near by.(primarily for Ground Construction, as you do not want those too close to anything as you deploy them. DIY kit is attached by 2 large docking ports so that the rocket can re-assemble and return after delivering the cargo) If you are talking about planes, I do not often use those as they are not as play-time efficient as rockets.

The save file is just a text file, so changing the profession of a kerbal is as simple as opening the save file in a text editor, searching for the name of the kerbal to find the block where they are defined, then change the profession name from the old profession(Tourist in this case) to the new profession.(I think there are 2 places where it needs to be changed, but I have not done this in a while and that might no longer be the case) As always, make a back-up copy of your save file before making any changes, just in case. I would provide more detailed instructions, but it has been a while since I did this, and I do not have a save file handy to identify the relevant labels and such.

The fenders are for Mun Dust, the Lunar rovers kick up a fair bit of it, and when one of the fenders was damaged they could no longer use the rover until they fixed it(duct-tape and maps attached with clips) https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/duct-tape-auto-repair-moon

That does suggest that there are a number of mod makers that care about the appearance of certain parts. But mod makers are a small fraction of mod users and mod users are a minority of those that play KSP. It could well be that more than 90% of KSP players strongly dislike the current rocket part aesthetics for one reason or another, or it could be that it is less than 10%. I do not know, but my guess would be the latter. In any case, I do believe that you have made it clear that you personally have a strong desire for a rocket-part over-haul at this point.

Personally I am perfectly happy with the look of the rocket parts. I might appreciate a few more LF tanks and adapters due to my over-use of nuclear engines, but I do not have problems with the appearance of the existing parts. I expect this is probably just one more case of a vocal minority thinking it represents a larger fraction of the user-base than it really does. (I must admit that any time I have used KAS to re-arrange inflatable fuel containers it does look pretty make-shift due the lack of a regular pattern, but it is also pretty hard to argue that the appearance does not match the fact in those cases...) In any case, looking forward to starting a new game with the new version, but this time with more science containers now that I can collect multiple copies in bulk. (would be nice if I could transfer to/from pods and labs without an EVA, but it is usually not that big of a deal, and with the new change, it should become even less so ).

A science station that had an over-powered ascent core that was expanded to a science/fuel base LKO But probably one of my larger bases would be my Mun Waystation, almost 30 kerbals and over 50 years of hab-time(in case the colonization modules ever ran out of supplies)

Logged MKS #1245 Looks like 2.5m and 3.75m med-bays both have crew capacity 4, making it impossible for the 3.75m part to treat 12 as the description claims. (Duna and 2.5m part may also have inaccurate descriptions if Scientist must also be in the module) Also updated wiki 'Med-bay and colony supplies' entry to include Duna med-bay, and all 3 colonization modules.

RoverDude said you needed to have the colonization module active to breed kerbals, and I took that to mean turned on and supplied with colony supplies.

Do we have hard numbers for how much a unit of Colony supplies will affect the hab/home time of a kerbal? Do we even know if the ratio is constant between med-bay vs 2.5m vs 3.75m colonization modules? Does the consumption of colony supplies by Colonization modules go down when the hab timers are all maxed out? (if not, does anyone know the ratio of active/inactive time that maximized the utility of your colony supplies?) Seems like good information to put into the wiki, but unlike the manufacturing parts, I do not think all of the information is present in the config files. It would be nice to be able to to determine if/when it is more weight-efficient to rely on colony supplies for a mission as opposed to bulk hab-time/multipliers, much like we can determine when it is better to rely on basic supplies vs a fertilizer cycle.

10.6 supplies/kerbal/day *0.21 for RT 5000 recycler -> 2.226 /11 for fertilizer usage -> 0.2024 * 426 days -> 86.2 fertilzer/kerbal/year ~776 fertilizer per kerbal for 9 years 5.8 kerbals per 2.5m fertilizer tank(4.5k), 19.3 per 3.75m tank(15k). Seems like Hab is the biggest problem, not supplies. Wow, I have been massively over-supplying my inner-system ships with fertilizer... >12 years worth for Duna and Moho (4.5K fertilzer for 4 kerbals)

I had a number of missing categories, but when I uninstalled and reinstalled the RoverDude and Allista mods it was all working fine again. Vacuum tubes came before solid state transistors. It is often easier to do something with a larger form-factor. I assumed that it was deliberate that the bulkier version of Logistics become available first. There is a skycrane under engines. It is no longer Octagonal, it is a 2.5m in-line part that has deployable engines.

I have not looked closely at the code of course, but I would not be at all surprised if enabling that sort of intra-part end-cap transparency was a pretty serious performance hit on the graphics side.(Assuming Unity even supports it) I don't know if it is still the case, but considering what I have heard about the resource management system before it was re-written, I would not be surprised if the tank-butt-on-engine modeling was done because the alternative was to bring even high-end computers to their knees. Once they are assembled, my rockets(usually) look pretty realistic, so I am ok with them being a bit simplified while still being constructed.

When I went to Kennedy at the end of last year, I was surprised how those 'ugly tank butts' look exactly like the tops(and some bottoms) of the rockets they had on display(especially the Saturn V). Call them ugly if you want, but it is a very realistic texture that I think adds an extra dash of veracity to the game as a whole. Remember that rockets are performing pretty close to the edge of the envelope as far as materials science goes(at least for the time they were designed), and are very much function-over-form devices because of this. I think the realistic NASA-like 'tank-butts' are a good reminder that every extra ounce of weight costs, and is removed at every opportunity.

When I was setting up my first asteroid capture mission as a way to get my 'dock in Kerbol orbit' exploration task completed, I noticed an asteroid in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbin. I think it hit the Mun or Minmus SOI and that changed it's trajectory enough to capture it inside the Kerbin SOI(at least until it's next encounter). I do not have any asteroid related mods, so it can certainly happen in the base game. (I plan to collect it as soon as I get my currently hooked asteroid stowed on my science station in LKO, but it may be making stops at Mun or Minmus first for refueling/science collection activities...)

I would not be surprised if RoverDude does something like check for landed in the last minute and currently in range. That would alleviate problems with vessels that are slowly sliding and flicker back and forth between landed and not landed. You might try landing one vessel on a high area then have a vessel orbit within 100m and see if you can transfer that way...

Why not just send out single-planet vessels, probably with a couple landers and an orbital relay or two. That should let you have well-stocked planetary stores by the time you get there. You do not even need to launch them all before you send out your mothership, just at any available transfer-window. Just make sure that your resource retrieval vessel has both logistics and a pilot, so you can fill your tanks and holds without needing to land close your facilities. Note: actually making things and advanced refining(refined exotics and silicon) cannot be done with automated parts and may have greatly slowed production without kerbals.

If you are primarily concerned about supplies(aka the basics of life support), then nom-o-matics combined with recyclers should limit your need to re-supply. Drop an automated fertilizer lander(gypsum drills + automated refinery or three) on a low-g moon and pick it back up when you leave, you should be able to bring up enough fertilizer to refill your tanks. let's see: 200 years @ 427 days -> 85,400 days x 10 kerbals = 854,000 kerbal days 10.8 units of supplies per kerbal day x.21 for having at least a RT-5000(this would be x.135 if you have a 3.75m tundra kerbitat recycler instead) supplemented by as many light weight RT-500 modules as needed(10 for the 5000, 11 for the tundra) reduces that to 2.268 supplies per kerbal day. Nom-o-matics turn 10 mulch(used supplies)+1 fertilizer into 11 supplies, reducing that to 0.2062 fertilizer per kerbal day So you will need a total of 176,094.8 fertilizer to keep all 10 kerbals awake for 200 years. The 1.25m MPU produces 1.476 fertilizer/hour consuming 2.952 Gypsum and 6.48E-3 Machinery. So you will need 119,305.5 hours of refining(46.7 years) and 773.1 units of machinery. If you use a un-manned 1.25m MPU. (the larger ones are faster, the 3.75m one only takes 6.4 years but may take more machinery) I am thinking that for only 1-2000 machinery, it may not be worth-while to bring the entire supply chain, just take an extra 1000 machinery so you have a nice safe margin of how long you have to turn it off after you will be able to fully refill your fertilizer...

There is a non-trivial supply chain, and lots of required resources, so you may want to not only look at multiple landers, but multiple automated landers. The automated drills and refineries can push to planetary stores and then you could drop down with a cargo lander to haul it all up to your ship. Of course the MKS components are better suited to a long-term base/station than a mother-ship. You should probably expect to spend as much as 20% of your trip time planet-bound unless you plan to push around several 15m storage tanks as part of your mothership. An additional option would be to bring along a series of DIY kits of automated bases, perhaps 2-3 per planetary system, take them down to the planet with a container of material kits, build them and get them working on producing whatever you need locally. That would let you stop back by a body with a previously deployed harvester set-up to re-supply.

Homesickness is always based on the biggest/best vessel the kerbal has ever been on. As such if they are on a 50 year ship, their homesickness will be indefinite until they get back home. If you send a Kerbal from a 50 year mother-ship down to a planet in a 2 month lander, they will be fine for 2 months(more if they EVA on occasion) Kolonization modules, when supplied with Colony Supplies, will suspend or reverse hab and homesickness timers. Medical modules, when supplied with Colony Supplies will return a Tourist to active duty(eventually)

Probe core, reaction wheels, sturdy supports, and several attempts? That is what has worked for me...

Mostly 2.5m and Ranger Hab modules, as those fit the size of the pioneer/logistics module I used as a root part. Later I added some 3.5m parts(training center, agricultural and assembly modules along with 3 colonization modules to make and use colony supplies to support all my Kolonists. Manufacturing bases elsewhere handle things like kits, specialized parts, and machinery)

When it comes to Colonization bonuses, isn't a reduction in part-count self-defeating? Would it be appropriate for the bonus calculation to instead use dry-weight(+ construction weight if expandable)? (love the mods btw)