Terwin

I thought landing legs were wheels since 0.90 and earlier. I like MKS for bases(and the new planetary logistics bit seems really useful for distributed bases: whenever a non-fuel resource is full and still filling, half of it goes to the planetary reserve, and any time a non-fuel resource tank is empty, it gets half-filled from the planetary reserve if there is enough available; letting you have 'mining outposts' wherever the resources are located to supply your base and not need to worry about explicit transfers; may or may not need advanced logistics component on-planet), I had a Monoprop fueled crane that managed to transfer a mining base roughly 90 degrees away from my polar Mun base to the closest mineral reserves at one point.(took lots of hops to get that far with fuel transfers between)

In my previous testing I generally found anything on a Minmus flat could get sunlight at night. Might be related to an altitude of ~0, as I seem to remember something similar on another body as well(unless I am just mis-remembering my polar Mun Base with 4x sized solar panels, as that one was legitimately never fully in shadow))

Not sure which parts specifically are less draggy, but it sounded like some(all?) Mk1 parts are less draggy, probably including the mk1 capsule.

I suddenly have an urge to search YouTube for videos of Kerbals being tortured to the tune of 'It's not easy being green'...

I prefer burning to a near horizontal stop(usually keeping ~20m/s horizontal speed for drifting past uneven patches while I descend) at at least 8km(aka an orbit that never hits the surface) then using the KER readout to slow down to ~80m/s when my suicide burn read-out gets down to 200m, ~40m/s at a read-out of 100m, then ~5m/s or once I reach a suicide burn of 50m, then eye-balling it and trying to keep it below 3m/s when I am close to touch-down. Not the most fuel efficient, but it lets me land mostly where I want. I stop my horizontal velocity when KER says I have a reasonably flat surface to land on(usually < 10 degrees, less if I have a tall/narrow ship). I try not to land on the Mun without an acceleration of at least 2m/s/s(>1.25TWR, usually higher by the time I reach the surface), preferably 3m/s/s +(> 1.8TWR, usually above 2 by the time I reach the surface)

In another thread someone from Squad posted that this is an issue with the animation not reflecting the status of the collider. The leg displays as fully extended ('Natural Position') even though the suspension is somewhat shorter due to the weight on the system. The actual wheel colliders(which landing legs *do* have) are on the surface, there is just no displayed graphic showing this to be the case.

I have not done any testing of the Klaw in 1.1 yet, but the behavior you describe could be related to the inactive craft becoming part of the active craft, and thus the previously inactive klaw becoming active with something already aligned to activate it. A proper test would need to avoid letting the inactive klaw become active through any means other than grasping the active vessel.

If you are trying to maximize dv should you not have burned off the heavier LFO fuel first?(ie use up your oxidizer in your kerbodynes as part of the ejection burn then go with the more efficient nuclear engines after burning off the relatively heavier fuel)

I can verify this, I have a Duna mission about 3 days from LKO and the only ladders are the ones that are integral to the parts. You can accelerate slightly faster than Duna gravity with a jet pack, so I just jump towards my port and use the jet pack to maintain speed/manuver, very similar to how I re-enter the cockpit on the Mun(on Minmus I don't jump as that sends me too high too fast) As far as what I forget: lights, especially landing lights. This is why I like the Engine lighting mod, it makes my engine plume give off light, letting me see my night time landing zones even when I forget lights.

Almost exclusively career. Tried the other two a little and I just like career more. Especially with USI-LS and other interesting kerbaly mods...

Did you include surface samples? Are you aware that you can get 'splashed down' in any biome that borders water? (including Kerbin Highlands and badlands) It does not look like you included asteroids.(you can sample each asteroid in each biome, so it should probably be listed as +X/asteroid as asteroids are procedural and you can have an arbitrary number of them) In any case, it is good to have a general idea of how much science is available for games where the player wants reduced science returns, no lab usage, and to still complete the science tree.

I am a big fan of the USI-MKS Logistic module. So long as it has access to a sufficient supply of LFO or Kethane(you can choose which to use for a given flight, but I never installed Kethane so I always use LFO) it will autonomously transfer resources between any two vessels in the SOI. I have done plenty of klaw-dockings for rescue 'and their vessel' missions, so I'll just let the 'yet another launch, dock, transfer, reentry' happen in the background In the Kerbin system, it takes ~ 7 hours for a transfer between a surface location and an orbital location, with 1 hour for a surface to surface transfer. I like to deploy an automated 'fuel station' with: * a pair of large drills(tweak-scaled to 400% so each one is like 64 drills in one large part) * Lots of fuel capacity(generally used to get them in place) * ISRU * Emergency life support supplies * an appropriate energy source(often a MKS nuclear reactor backing up some 400% scaled gigantors) Works great for easily refueling any ships I have on hand, even lets me refuel interplanetary transits after an initial 800m/s burn(appoaps almost out to the Mun, with a ~8 hour orbit and > 80% of the kerbin escape burn completed. NOTE: if a ship is not in orbit, you cannot refuel it and if you do any burns while waiting for the fuel, the transfer will likely be lost) I also have a Kerbin based refueler with an engineer on board and a lot more capacity(takes a lot of fuel to get all that fuel in to space, but it lets me launch interplanetary missions almost empty, using the core of the launch stage for the first couple km/s of the transit stage and refilling the main stage and ore reserves in orbit without additional manual launches) Previous versions of the fuel stations did not use tweak-scaled drills or solar panels and that meant a whole lot of parts(30+ drills if I remember correctly, I much prefer a couple 400% drills, functionally the same as 64 normal drills each, just harder to cover with fairings and much easier on my CPU) Before the Feb major revision to MKS, I had refuel stations on Ike, Minmus, Mun, and Gilly, with more on the way to Vall and Moho with a self-supporting manned base on Minmus Makes my kerbin-tour tourist/training missions much lighter when I can refuel at the Mun and Minmus without any drills or ISRU

I find that if I edit the persistence file to up the max displayed contracts to a reasonable number(at least a reasonable number for an experienced player), I can steer my space program just fine. When the list of available contracts is 30-50 long, it becomes much easier to ignore those contracts that do not fit in with your current plans, and there is much less need to discard contracts that are not currently of interest or that seem tedious. Would be nice if this became an in-game editable setting, but I can understand how that could be difficult with the interdependence on the max counts of each contract type

Generally I start a new career with each new version, although I may return to an old career once my preferred mods are updated. My last abandoned career was abandoned because a mod updated and all my interplanetary ships and bases/fuel depots vanished due to missing parts. Before that I stopped my game because I had visited Gilly, Moho, Duna, Ike, Dres, Val, bop, pol, and Eeloo(most with the same ship), and wanted to start over without using Atomic Age or Near Future engines to repeat the process(possibly visiting Lathe, Tylo, and even Eve). I also decided to start using a life support mod to make the challenge more interesting. Not sure if I will come back to my current game or start a new one after 1.1, probably depends on how far I get before my preferred mods get updated(scansat, UKS-LS, UKS-MKS, tweakscale, and KER round out my 'I'm only half playing without these' mods)

I have found that when on one of the Minmus flats that my solar panels will ignore Minmus for the purpose of solar power. This is not always the case for higher altitudes, but on the flats I have not lost the sun except during the rare eclipse. (it also worked for a base at the north pole, but that is probably because I had 400% sized solar panels sticking up and the sun only barely went below the horizon, so I deem it fairly realistic in that case)

I prefer to use the Scansat mod as it gives a nice interface to examine your map in details. note: you need the orbital scanner(M500) to see the average ore in each biome, then you can use a surface scanner to scan once in each biome to get detailed look at all of the ore on the body.(no need to use rovers unless you are on Minmus where biomes are some times so close together it is easier to just drive there) In any case, after you have done the orbital scan, just visiting the 2-3 highest concentration biomes with the surface scanner(and running the scan), should tell you the highest concentration of ore on that body. Engineers provide a boost in drilling from 5x(0 stars) to 25x(5 stars) http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Engineer I have found that with a 3 star engineer and 7-8 drills at a location with 5%+ will usually keep the ISRU busy with a trickle of extra ore. One large extendable heat-sink will happily keep quite a few drills cool (I think it is ~15 heat/drill and 30 or 60 heat/ISRU and the large radiator cools 1000 heat) I will generally use a Tweak-scaled Nuclear engine (2.5m identical to ~ 5.5 un-tweaked nuke engines) a tweak Scaled Drill(200% size is functionally identical to 8 100% pieces), and ISRU, and one large radiator to cool them(I don't use both at once so no reason not to share) This lets me wander back and forth between Mun, Minmus and Kerbol orbit, with visits to Kerbin orbit to exchange crew/tourists.

As a non-steam purchaser I believe I am only qualified for a business class ticket. (on the plus side, by the time I can disembark, hopefully several of my preferred mods will be updated) One please.

I suppose we will need to agree to disagree then, as I get plenty of grinding at my normal job and would rather stick with interesting challenges in my leisure time. (quietly sweeps current 'training' mission (that visited every unvisited biome on both the Mun and Minmus to collect science) under a rug) That is one of the reasons I have a UKS logistics hub 3 km from the KSC hooked up to a huge fuel reserve and a mining/refining apparatus: no need to send refuel missions inside the Kerbin SOI. (versions with smaller fuel reserves will shortly be launched towards the Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Ike, and Vall)

Same reason you play career mode I would imagine, they want to maximize their fun/play-time ratio. Something to consider: Once you have the MPL unlocked, you can access the entire science tree without ever leaving the KSC again. Just build a MPL into a 'hopper' that can hover on (jet) engines long enough to convert experiments into data, load it up with KSC data, lift off to process as needed and take it back to the runway/launch pad to recover it when it can no longer generate more science. Recover for 100%(minus trivial amounts of fuel), and repeat. Yes, I have performed experiments splashed down in the badlands after flying half way around Kerbin(it was part of my Caveman game), but now that I have done it once, I no longer find it an interesting challenge. I will admit that before I launch a ship with a lab on board, I always perform and collect the launch-pad experiments(to be loaded later) and then perform and convert all available experiments both flying low and flying high, but that is mostly to give my scientists something to chew on while I travel to my destination.(currently my first lab-ship is preparing for a final landing on the Mun to re-fuel before heading to Minmus, having already visited every Mun biome for which I had not yet collected surface samples, then rescuing a Kerbal and his command pod from a wonky orbit of the Mun). I like to think that the tourists who are paying for the expedition are getting their money's worth, especially as there will be a free trip to the Kerbol SOI... (I just hope I don't run low on rations before I get back to Kerbin, or else I may lose my 5 star rating as a tourist attraction. Had to spend a lot more time than planned harvesting fuel because I was at less than 100m/s d-v when I landed in a ore-poor area of the Mun )

Probably my outer planets grand tour. Admittedly I used a VASMIR engine from the Near Future mod, refueled with ISRU, but I landed on every body on rails outside of Kerbin orbit except for: Jool, Tylo, Lathe. (I am currently working on doing the set-up for something similar using stock engines(with tweak-scale for part-count management), and Life Support. I have already started launching scansats and intend to send out fuel depots with Life support supply stashes shortly)

At the very least I would expect it to let me keep my proof-of concept outposts closer to the space center. Currently I deploy everything 3km+ from the space center to limit the impact on launches. I would expect that necessity to go away with multi-core physics

Actually, the save games are all .xml files with nothing directly related to the back-end in them. Aside from functionality tweaks that could affect in-progress missions, I would not expect any problems with carrying over a stock save game from 1.0.5 to 1.1. On the other hand, I use a number of Mods and would not expect a seamless transition if only because my mods will require time to get updated. The 'knobs and buttons' for KSP mostly revolve around part-count and mods. I am confident that if you have an unmodded game and restrict yourself to 30-50 parts in the Kerbol system(including debris), I am confident that you can maintain the highest available FPS. (much like you almost never see more than 30-50 active units/objects(independent objects that can each be hit, hit back, blow up, etc) in any other game all on the screen at the same time, and if you see 200+ active and independent units on the screen at once you will generally get lag much like you do for 200+ piece craft in KSP. It is just that you have the freedom to have 200+ part craft in KSP while most other games will never permit that to happen) Personally, I like the available mods, but I recognize that this means there will occasionally be problems that need to be addressed, and even save-game breakages (ckan downloaded an update to UKS-LS before I realized it would remove all my bases and interplanetary vessels for example), but that is just the price you pay for taking a pretty awesome base-game and making it even better.

As far as I can tell, they expect career to be played in several different ways, and they want all of them to be viable approaches. All of these 'let the player choose what missions are available' requests are failing to notice that the player already decides which missions they want to take. Perhaps it would be nie to have more missions available, but you still decide what you want to do. Also, giving the player more knobs to twiddle only increases the already steep learning curve for this game, making it harder for new players(the ones still giving Squad money). Currently, the world firsts pay-outs can fund a reasonably frugal space program without taking any contracts. (or, for a more experienced player, a not so frugal space program) If you make mistakes, want to go faster, or just want bigger rockets, you can take any of the available contracts to help fund your activities. Personally, my only objection to the contract system is that there are not enough contracts available at the same time, so I upped my max available contracts to 30 and I always seem to have multiple contracts that I am interested in pursuing. (although now that I have ~20M funds, automated mining depots on route or arrived at every planet except Dres and Eeloo, with manned missions en route to Duna and Jool, I am more inclined to just let some time pass and get that interplanetary fueling network set up, might even send out additional UKS modules to get life support production going everywhere too... Remember: the contract system needs to support as many styles of play as practical, so it will not be optimal for any of them. This comes with KSP being a sandbox game.

When landing, large craters are often pretty flat in the middle of the crater. Minmus I generally land on one of the Flats(greater/great/lesser) (it is hard to find something quite as flat as those areas) Aside from Minmus, I watch the slope read-out on KER(only available under 10km). As I usually come to a near-stop over airless bodies(surface relative), then descend, I'll leave about 20m/s on the horozontal until I can see the slope read-out. Once I am over a slope that is flat enough for the current vessel, I'll burn retrograde instead of radial(or I'll burn on the far side of retrograde from Radial if I am not currently trying to slow my descent, or it is particularly problematic to find a landing spot). I try to keep my landers such that they can handle 10-12 degrees(often through clipping). any more than that, and even if you could land, you will generally slide(landed a fuel depot on a ~25 degree slope on Gilly and the sliding did not slow down on its own until the slope got under 12 degrees, finally stopping in a 9 degree area)

Having previously sent out scansats and automated fuel depots(equipped with USI Logistics hubs from UKS) to everything except Eeloo and Dres, it was time to deal with some of those. Did my adjustment burns for the Jool Fuel depot, and created an itinerary that would give me a nice Vall intercept. Then I went to the VAB to double-check and realized the my transit/landing engine(tweak-scaled nerva) had a max twr of 0.6 on Vall, so I would need to use the core of the launch stage for the landing. After transferring the transit fuel to the launch stage remnants and turning all the on-board ore to ox, I should have enough d-v to land on Vall with the launch core still attached(started with up-scaled boosters topped with drop-tanks and got the 1.5 mammoth(mammoth+ 2 vernors mounted between the 4 other engine bells) launch core into orbit, where I refueled it and topped off the ore to provide contingency d-v before sending it off to Jool). If my calculations are incorrect, the manned Jool Tour ship can always bring by some extra ore to Vall orbit and give the fuel station as much as it needs to be able to get down to the surface (Jool Tour has ISRU and big ore tanks on both the lander and the orbiter as I expect the lander to bring up ore from Bop/Pol/Vall and to be pretty much dry after launching from Tylo/Lathe and need to re-supply form the orbiter before being able to land again) I'll need to wait to see how that all works out however, as the first Jool ships are not expected to arrive until some time in year 3 and I am still in year 1 I brought my Ike Scansat into orbit of Gilly with a few hundred m/s left in the next to last stage(drop-tanks), after nearly 2 orbits of Eve(enough to scan resources, then moved on to Ike to do full scan). Shortly thereafter my Gilly fuel station arrived. Took several tries as the originally planned 35 minute breaking burn was too long to get enough oberth effect to slow into orbit before running out of refined fuel, so I finally realized the problem and slowed down substantially before getting close to eve so I could refine the remaining on-board ore reserves and have enough fuel and thrust to get into orbit. Even managed to get to Gilly before finishing first orbit of eve. As Lowlands and Highlands had good fuel, I brought my fuel station into orbit and promptly bought it to a virtual halt over the surface. Used lots of time warping and a little tweak-scaled nerv thrust, then lots of RCS thrust and managed a gentle set-down at a ~25 degree slope. Was able to mine slightly but it did not want to stop sliding, so I retracted everything again and rid the slide down to a 9 degree slope(used main engine to slow from time to time until slope was below 15 degrees, then later RCS to speed up a bit as I wanted less than a 12 degree slope). Finally got Fuel station Gilly in a stable location(9 degree slope) with drills and ISRU working away. Sent off about 2/3 of the remaining fuel after landing to refuel the scansat in orbit, topping off those drop-tanks. Time for the adjustment burn for the Jool Scansat, managed to get a Vall intercept with plenty of time and d-v to orbit. Did a bit of Kerbin-area maintenance (some tourists were ready to reach Kerbol SOI, refined accumulated resources at the Manned Minmus fuel/refinery/LS/construction facility to top off the resource tanks being slowly consumed as my lonely engineer is making a quite heavy replacement for the initial fuel station component(replacing > 40 drills with 2 tweak-scaled 400% drills, providing 3x ore with 1/20 parts, attached to a very large LFO storage tank and the replacement logistics hub, so I can get rid of he entire first fuel-station piece) Brought the Ike Scansat in to a nice polar orbit and started scanning in preparation for the arrival of the Ike fuel depot(initially the alarm did not include the 50% burn time as it was set before I had KER, so I loaded to start he burn on schedule and ended up going back before the Jool Scansat arrival, so got to re-do all of it again. Finally got the Duna Scansat in polar orbit of Ike and scanning, so now it is time to dock the the ferry that brought up those tourists and send them home along with the rescued kerbonats before sending my cruise ship off to the Mun to post yet another flag. Currently at over 16M funds, so not planning on taking additional tourist missions, especially if they want to go places where I have not yet launched manned missions yet.(manned missions on the way to Jool and Duna, but Moho and Gilly are just setting things up for later) Might be time to send out scansats and fuel depots to Eeloo and Dres however...(would be amusing to have a grand tour ship with no ISRU just getting refueled in every planetary SOI. I wonder if that would let me have the TWR for a Lathe/Tylo lander with the endurance to get to Moho...