Terwin

Anyone else excited about the 'open immediately', 'open when safe' and 'open when risky' parachute settings? Seems like it should make reentry and air-drops easier. How about the new 'science container' functionality?

Add difficulties to make it more interesting, like life support, or only stock engines. I like adding infrastructure(automated fuel station and a scansat for for every planet) Once the infrastructure is in place, try sending a small ship to every planet using the fuel stations to replenish fuel and life support at each stop. Could you repeat the journey if the 'ship' only consisted of habitation space, life support supplies, and docking ports?(probably a little bit of RCS for docking) (presumably using the fuel stations or other 'local' craft to send you off to the next planet) Could you do this while still landing on all the planets?( or at least all of them except Eve, Tylo, and Lathe?)

Anyone excited about the expected performance improvements? It seems like they spent a lot of time on things like caching resource requests and eliminating garbage generation, and there was a demo done a while ago comparing the 1.1.3 code and some pre-experimentals code in a unity dev environment, I seem to remember them getting a substantial performance increase(and performance degradation with more parts should be more gradual than in previous versions as well) I might be less excited about this than I should be due to the 1.1 performance improvements making it so that even when launching my interplanetary ships with life support, I only get mildly yellow performance, and most of the time I stay in the green unless I am using time warp. How about the 'ease in gravity' setting? I'm pretty excited about not having that 1-2 second delay from KJR when I am trying to warp between unmapped biomes trying to collect science data...

Agreed, in my current save I am at 41.8M funds and 47.7K science(after CTT completely filled), so once I finish a few last things I'll be ready for a new Career game.(this one was started for 1.1) Todo list: Finish new Jool contracts with manned ship currently orbiting Bop(Pant flag on Vall[already visited this trip], Explore Pol, Extract ore from Vall and Pol[into Jool orbit], orbit Tylo, and Rescue from Vall[I have 8 LS recyclers and only 5 crew, it took ~2200 fertilizer to get to Jool, and I filled the tank up to 4K fertilizer while on Bop, so plenty of NOMS to go around]) Rescue Moho fuel station in orbit of Eve so it can top off it's fuel and land on Moho (Manned ship with ISRU due to arrive at Eve in less than 20 days) Jool Scansat arrival(~ 10 days) Gilly Fuel depot arrival(~ 50 days) Bop fuel station arrival(almost 5 years out, should have used a launch window or something) (may launch Eeloo scansat and Fuel depots for Dres, Eeloo, and Vall if experimentals take long enough, and that would mean a scansat and automated fuel depot(or two) in every planetary system, with a fertilizer-producing fuel depot for every planet outside of Duna)

Balancing a rover stage is no harder than balancing any other payload stage. Just look at the per-stage torque on KER and adjust things until it is appropriately low for all stages( but keep fuel tanks on the center-line if you don't want burning fuel to make your ship hard to control). I find that once my payload ship is balanced, the lifter(which is usually pretty simple and using radial symmetry) is usually automatically balanced.

I have had a number of refuel missions, but surprisingly few rescue missions(I blame F9) Last night I had my Ike fuel station launch and grab my Duna Scansat to top off it's tanks(taking them both back to Ike as I think it will take a second trip and I have already finished scanning Duna, so no need to keep that orbit) Last weekend, I discovered that my Moho fuel station did not have enough d-v to capture at Moho, so I diverted it to Eve where it is awaiting the Gilly fuel station's arrival(not enough fuel to get to Gilly), unless my manned mission get there first, in which case it may be fueled with ore harvested from Ike so it can land and refuel on Gilly before heading to Moho where it will act as an autonomous mining/refueling station. I have had a number of early-career missions which required a tanker deliver the fuel needed to get home. On occasion, I have had vessels end up on their sides, but I always restored an earlier game unless I could get it back into orbit from that position. (much more often I misjudge something and there is not enough left to rescue, and for those I always restore an earlier game, as I do not let my Kerbals stay dead)

Everything I know came from here: There are screen shots with options such as 'Ease in gravity', 'autohide navball in map view', 'enable kerbal experience', 'kerbals level up immediatley' and 'signal required for control'

Whenever I have a probe on the Mun or Minmus, I will occasionally get 'take readings near' missions that involve taking the probe to a series of locations and using one of the on-board science instruments. I think the only requirement is that you have a vessel with one or more science instruments landed on that body.(my 'vessels' were generally a probe core in a service bay with a thermometer, antenna, reaction wheel, and solar panels, so it was a fair bit of effort to get to those destinations which were usually around 1-2 km away from the starting/previous position) These came available at the same time as the 'expand space station' and 'change satellite orbit' missions.

Last I heard, if you can connect to a vessel that has pilot+probe-core, then you can have full control, if not, then you are limited in things such as: only 0% or 100% throttle, limited SAS/turning options

I'm excited about the stock instant leveling option and the camera re-focusing functionality(both mentioned in the squad-cast)

I was thinking the 'part upgrades' was referring to giving all probe cores full SAS ability and full kerbnet ability. It will be nice to have field experience in stock, especially if it lets me check which kerbs have/need which activities on which bodies in the astronaut complex(for example, checking to see if I forgot to plant a flag with anyone while landed on Duna *before* I take off) Camera Focus is something that will be an immense help in running science experiments, especially on the launch pad(collecting data for the science lab, even if I can't load it before launch)

I attempted to make a spaceplane at one point(probably back in 0.90), it did not want to work, so I went back to rockets and have not bothered with them since. (in general I am not great with planes, so I just strap my payload onto a rocket and let it fly...) My current career has a manned ship on route from Duna to Gilly, and another that just entered the Jool SOI with > 30M funds and > 12K unspent science with a fully populated community tech tree. So neither funds nor science are much of a concern for me at this point(Unfortunately CKAN says Kerbal R&D has a conflict with Interstellar fuel switch, so I don't get to try that out with this game)

Aesthetics? Is that the thing where you overlap 3 fuel tanks into the space 1 would normally take so your lander is short enough to be stable on an 8 degree tilt, or is that the thing where you put your ISRU inside a Mk3 cargo bay because it has weak joints and cannot surface attach? If I can get it into space and it does it's job, then that is good enough.

One Ticket for the Hype-Train for KSP 1.2 please. First Class.

I would not be too sure, whenever I do this, I just find another stranded Kerbanaut who tells me that the princess is in another pod. My astronaut complex if getting pretty full and I am going to need to start building non-automated bases soon...

Does anyone have a link to the badge with easy/normal/moderate stones?

Each time I see this thread I keep thinking it is about recovering a heat-shield from the mun or some such(I did not realize what it was when I took the contract, so I ended up finding some adequately sloped terrain and slowly pushing the thing around by walking into it until I finally got the klaw to engage. Last time I ever took a contract to recover landed equipment...)

Early game is probably close to 50-50, half my time flying and half my time building/designing. Late game is is closer to 10-20% designing and 80-90% flying. A lot of this is due to using standard designs. I have 'scan-sats' that I launch to every planet out to about Dres(early versions just go around the Kerbin SOI, but once I have nukes, I have a standard design I can send to any planet where a pair of gigantors provide > 3ec/sec My most recent change to this was add in 3ec worth of RTG and remove the solar panels for a deep-space version. (probably 10-15 min at most) and I will launch at least 2 of this version(Eeloo, Dres, possibly jool). Before that I created a 'deep space' version of my low-g Autonomous mining station(4 drills, ISRU, Nuke engine, fuel tanks and lots of clipped ore tanks (~1300 units each of liquid fuel and ore with 660 of oxidizer for the vernors and ships that need it)). It has a claw on the front for 'docking' and belly and tail landing gear(it mines on it's belly but lands/launches as a tail-sitter, thus the vernors near the nose), by adding ~65EC/sec of RTG. Already launched one of these towards jool for future missions(it can launch from Vall, Eeloo or Dres fully loaded Might even manage Moho, but have not checked ) Just getting those platforms distributed to Ike, Gilly, Eeloo, Vall, Pol or Bop, and Dres will take far more flight time than it took to design them. Same thing with the Scansats, one design, many destinations. I also launched my seond kerbaled Duna mission last night, with less than 10 min of design work updating the ship from my first mission(swapped out the nuclear reactor as unneeded and added a Mk1 crew cabin so I had enough capacity for a contract)

I always stow my ISRU in a Mk3 cargo bay so that I can attach medium radiators to the side of the bay, and a large radiator on the back side if it is a tail-sitter(often flanked by solar panels) I find the weak connections and refusal to accept radial attachments two of the 2.5m ISRU's largest annoyances(at the very least we should be able to hook up radiators and struts to it) I also attach drills in pairs(often tweak-scaled so I can get the benefits of more drills without the excess part count). Sure they may be draggy, but that is rarely an issue beyond the first 60 seconds of the mission. (I also tend to either leave my final stage mostly empty or cross-feed it's fuel tanks for the launch stages then fill up the tank and ore storage on Minmus. Only need about 1.5km/s beyond circularization to have plenty of safety margin to land and top off the fuel)

No need to wait for mission control, just plant then retrieve the flag. I normally do: eva, plant flag, retrieve flag, next then re-board everyone at the end.

Not that I have noticed, but then again I generally have enough surface mounted drills, landing legs, radiators and solar panels that any shape based drag from a reasonably aerodynamic part shrinks into insignificance.

I suppose it depends on what you consider abandoned. I have Scansats around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus that have finished their planned mapping duties and are sitting in orbit waiting for 'gather science in space over' contracts(thermometer and Gravioli detector on each of them just for this purpose). Similar satellites are currently around Moho, Gilly and heading to Duna(~ 10 days?), Jool(~200 days away), and Dres(~ 4 min from ejection burn) (Eeloo scan-sat launch to commence after the Dres ejection) In previous games I have more neglected abandonments: Jeb along with 2 tourists in an orbital tourist ship that does not have enough fuel to avoid burning up during reentry, waiting on the development of the Klaw for a rescue(In a Caveman game which I will probably not return to now that it is complete) An extensive scattering of 'Mun Bomb' probes landed on various mun biomes in a few Caveman games. An eve probe with an electrically powered propeller for propulsion and several science instruments landed on Eve in a 0.90 game(abandoned after visiting several biomes) 'Automated fuel stations' on Ike, Gilly, Minmus, Moho and occasionally other bodies in various 1.0 games (the 'automated delivery' component was Deprecated before 1.1) In previous games I have also abandoned a variety of surface probes(generally consisting of a service bay, solar panels, probe core, reaction wheel, antenna, and one or more science experiments, ejected from a manned lander for future 'science landed on' missions) I don't consider spent stages to be abandoned, more fully utilized and discarded (unless they still have fuel for some reason).

I am pretty sure I have never used the Mk 1-2 cockpit, anything that is not done with a 1.25m part is usually done with the Mk3 cockpit, or, occasionally Mk2 parts. I currently have a ship returning from Duna with 2 crew in a Mk3 cockpit(and more crew in a science lab in the back) I also have a ship heading out to Jool with 2 crew in the Mk3 cockpit. I have never gotten a space-plane to orbit, but I still use the Mk3 cockpit on every 'large' rocket I launch. The rocket equation makes dry mass the primary optimization value for almost every ship to be launched, for a part to be useful from an engineering design standpoint, it needs to have benefits over other parts that serve a similar function. I do not find the Mk1-2 cockpit to have compelling benefits over the Mk3 cockpit, so I do not use it.

I can see a lot of purpose to a SSTO that requires surface refueling on Eve/Lathe/Tylo and can deliver base components large enough to include a full mining rig(Drill, ISRU, Probe core, and presumably some sort of mobility and docking/klaw) You can use it to build surface bases one module at a time.(starting with ISRU of course so you can get back to orbit) On Minmus this is the standard approach for filling orbital fuel bases.(land, fuel up, launch)

Something else to keep in mind: Unused docking ports create lag. (on the order of unused ports * parts in physics bubble) I think in 1.1.3 docking ports are still examining each part in the physics bubble each frame to check for anything it needs to dock with. As such, even a relatively small core component with lots of docking ports can cost frame-rate, and it will only get worse if you bring things along side for docking.