Warzouz

Very cool ! My son wanted to play too. He was 7 1/2 when he tried. I tried to teach him how to build a rocket and how to fly it. 1.0 aero is much harder than beta. Then, he wanted to "know" before "learning" (as kids seems to do...) and wanted to land on the Mun on his own. This is quite a big step and was frustrated about it. Going to the Mun without knowing how to circularize is ... hard. He dropped the game then. Now he's in Pixel Art...

Not really. Before 1.0, physicless parts had no mass nor drag. In 1.0, physicless parts ADD their mass and drag to their parent part. Regular parts are handled on their own. So when you have a physicless part, you can stick it anywhere on the parent part, even without any symmetry. Usually physicless part is nice to have on light parts (lights, small science equipment, ladders, batteries...). Landing struts aren't phyicless parts, so you have to balance them with symmetry of equivalent mass part. I agree the "deploy" status of a landing strut doesn' seems to matter though.

I suggest you backup your persistent file sometimes. I already had ships disappearing (even without mods). It can be some large interplanetary ship or flags (non moving, one part) that marks the runway...

Splashing has one drawback : you can't use landing gears/struts to absorb ground shock. For example, I was very surprise to (mostly) survive a landing on Eve, hitting the ground at 50m/s (I only broke the engine). On Tylo, I remembered hitting the ground at 30m/s and broke nothing, even the ship was ready to take-off again (so quite heavy) On water, if you splash at a higher speed, the lower par may survive, but the part above may not. I did few trials in 1.0.5 with may recoverable SSTO rockets. Even the Mamoths survived, the tanks above broke. BUT, when you splash, you rocket will stay vertical much easily, and even it fall, it won't break as it would do in 1.0.4)

As for 1.0.4 (I don't know if that specific feature was changed in 1.0.5), AFTER accepting 2 satellite contracts, you could launch ONE new satellite and check both orbits. I did that several time (I even had my generic sat rocket). But you can't use a existing satellite to validate a NEW contract.

Playing KSP at the same time would be great, but additional constraints will occur. What would we do if a player is landing something and do some exploration while all your ships are in interplanetary flight ? You basically have nothing to do. On the same topic, how would we handle ship design ? For now, time is halted, so other players too ? And if it's not halted, would timewarp still allowed, that would make you miss a transfer window. Last but not least, how would "revert" works ? Multiplayer KSP may not be a technical problem, but a gameplay problem. It's not Minecraft or Skyrim, As I'd like to play multiplayer, I don't know what "rules" should be.

I remember having my heat parameter messed up with mods. I had NO mods that changed the heat mecanics, but heat convection wasn't calculated. As a result, nothing overheated into atmosphere. Some mod (but which one I can't say) had messed with game engine. I reinstalled KSP, readded the mods and save games. Everything came back to normal. I suggestion you try an alternative installation, readd you mods and your saves. Then retry.

I used overfuelled satellites to validate two contracts at one time. It's cheaper and quicker than sending 2 rockets. Same thing with Kerbal recovery combined with tourists contracts. Anyway, what you do greatly depends on the contracts and/or objectives you set. On last advice, keep your cash and only upgrade buildings when you need it.

I agree with @Streetwind, science mod is much better for new players. It introduces parts progressively and but gives from the start all the tools to achieve goals. I played Science game in beta 0.9 and a career in 1.0.x. I'm happy with that learning curve.

I use a lot of recoverable SSTO rockets. I always target KSC and land in water. Since 1.0.5, waters are more forgiving. I never destroyed any stage since. NB : I recover stage up to 500tons.

My tips for getting a lot of science in a shot time. Think big and send a refuel tank to Mun or Minmus orbit with a science lab if you want to take the time to wait. Then send a lander fully equiped with science packages and with a nice dV capacity (I like 3000m/s). With that, you can land multiple times, do some hops and retrieve science. IIRC, I got from my first Mun mission around 2200 science points and 2500 from Minmus but that was 10 month ago, so I may be wrong. I remembered doing a simple trip to Minmus before to unlock docking ports. I also remembered going back to Mun and Minmus for an additional science farming (using the same space station. With that, I unlocked the whole tech-tree without even leaving Kerbin SOI. I was able to launch my Duna mission in the first window which appear around day 30, If I'm not mistaken. As you would suspect, I sent a space station with landers...(which are still in operation)

@swjr-swis, it seems to be good. The light blue line starts from the center of the forward part. Seems logical. Here is what it looks like when it messes. you can see body lifting from many parts, but there is one in front of the fairing and not on the fairing. It seems the position of the application of the force is right, but it's set at the top of the fairing as it should be set at the bottom of it. I don't understand why Squad didn't do a quick fix about that.

This test rocket goes to LKO (75km) with only 2850m/s (VAC) without touching any key or SAS (except for circularizing). The Vector is obviously overpowered but I was testing high TWR (6 to 15) rocket in sandbox. To avoid blowing the rocket, I needed to reduce then cut engines even before set the Apo to 75km.

I don't remember having blown retractable ladders. I don't use fixed ladders since their weight is stupidly high (as high as retractable iirc). Further more, since 1.0, part count is more an issue, so fixed ladder are also bad for that matter.

Yes and the only way to avoid it is to target prograde as much as possible. The usual 5° AoA maybe equivalent to a 15° or 20° AoA, due to this bug. With the new aero this doesn't end well...

I don't see why, but with that but, you have not much choice than to set SAS to prograde and hope for the best... Maybe you can use the "Procedural Fairings" mods. It may not have this bug. (But as I don't use it, I don't know for sure)

Here do you read you dV ? For example, on the launchpad, KER always gives dV in ASL (that's why dV sometime rises as your rocket take-off. In the VAB, dV is VAC or ASL, depending if you clikcked on the "atmoshpere" button. I always use dV VAC value because ISP rises very fast with altitude. The real dV is much more near VAC value than near ASL value. In 1.0.4, I managed to go to LKO for 3150m/s VAC, but I remembered doing a very nice curve I never succeed to redo again. I usually manage to get 3200m/s. In 1.0.5, I think I'm more around 3250 or 3300 when I (reasonably) mess up. As my rocket usually have 3400m/s I'm good. But I need fuel to deorbit the launch stage and do a power landing To answer to the OP, In 1.0.4, I used to try crossing the 45° at 8km and start turning at 60m/s In 1.0.5, I'm back with 45° at 10km. I usually start turning around 100m/s. The longer you wait to turn, the harder it is to and you can burn more fuel (to force turning and to circularize) In any case, there is no precise value. I tend to get always the same result more because I always build my rocket the same way, than because it's the smartest trajectory... EDIT : and as other already said. DON'T USE SAS at take-off. it creates wobble and make turning harder. Reactivate SAS when your rocket trajectory becomes unstable (around 30km). Switch to prograde as soon as you turn your engines off.

Action groups merge themselves. To actions will be added to the other docked ship. When undocking, actions will be split. Unfortunately, this feature sometime bugs and action group are lost, without any way to reset them.

In 1.0.5 (not in 1.0.4) there is a but with fairings. The body lifting force is applied far in front of the fairing (outside of the rocket !), then the rocket would flip MUCH faster if you use a fairing than if you don't. As soon as you quit prograde, the rocket with start a unrecoverable flip. I stop playing KSP mostly because of that bug. I'm waiting for 1.1

The answer is obviously 42, even if confirmation would take few million years of calculations.

In 1.0.4, I was doing the same thing but reversed : nose down and belly in the air flow. That way I could dive faster to the ground. Then I would transfer mass at the back to get more control while nosing up at that time I would reengage one of the plane engine to get a proper landing. In 1.0.5, my unmodified SSTO space plane would loose some few parts. So I start 90° nose down, belly to the back.And when the air flow force my plane to nose up I try to oscillate (pitch up/down/up/down) so parts can heat and then cool down. That way I can bleed of speed without heating too much. To the OP : remember that prograde trajectory is the worse way to bleed speed, especially for a streamlines vehicle, which a space plane is. You'll stay longer overheating than you should be. In 1.0.4, airbrakes were a very efficient way to manage that, but in 1.0.5, airbrakes only blow up in few seconds. In theory, we should try not to stay in the thinner layer of the atmo because we get a lot of heat an not enough drag to slow us down. I've read that compression heating is higher than friction heating. In the high atmo, the air is compressed so you get a lot of heating, but the friction is not enough to slow down significantly. In the lower layer, compression heating and friction heating are more intense, but you'll slow down much faster and won't accumulate as much heat.

Symbols are always less understandable as words (or initials). You immediately recognized letters and their "value" gives you a clue on what it's about. Symbols don't. I had to look several times at your symbols to understand what the represent. Now, I imagine that would be even harder on a real navigation map. Finally, symbols can be understood backwards. It's the case of buttons to open or close door you can find in lifts.

@Snark, I agree with you. And speaking of recovering launch parts, I must say I looked into it a lot as I was searching for an economic way to lift of space stations. The answer was "recoverable SSTO rockets" (check signature). Nothing beats it, except SSTO space planes, but they aren't scalable (harder to fly and much harder to design). SSTO rockets are so simple to design, to scale up and easy to fly, that this advantage is turning into a drawback in the long run... One launch, no stage, no aerodynamic change while staging, one aim to KSC nearby, one reentry to manage, nearly max recovery rate (I'm never under 95%). in 1.0.4, I even had the chutes autodeploy... Ok, it's a bit harder on 1.0.5 but still doable. To get back on the original subject, I d'ont find that chutes needs some tweaking. They are fairely nice. I only regret the change on Duna, but mostly because I find that all plantary bodies need to be handled the same way, as there was more significant variants in the past. The only thing I wouls say about drogue is they could be available sooner, because they are more needed than in 1.0.4.

OK, I take you comments into considerations and reorganized the script I posted the result in the Mod section

Stock Part Fixes For a long time I wasn't happy with attributes of some parts that nearly prohibite us to use them. So I compiled some inconsitencies and created some Module Manager scripts to change the data. Here is the "Suggestion topic" This is not really a mod, but a script which will need Module Manager, which you can find here Download the mod (ZIP) This zip contains 3 files Consistency fixes : it'll fix many mass and few temperatures inconsitencies. It also add 50RCS to the inline docking port and extend the interaction range of Goo experiment and Lab Jr. Science changes : increase mass of many experiments, size Atmo scan and narowband to match goo canister size and mass. Only small experiments keeps their physicless atribute. ISRU are also more heavy. Delete this file if you don't like it Dubious changes : Basic fin has be buffed to a real fin and Airbrake is now more resistant. Those 2 modifications may change the game play, so delete this file if you don't like that. Feed back is very much appreciated. Further more, I would like to change some data on drag for some parts, but I don't know how to do it. Science rescale (atmo sensor and narrowband scanner) Inconsistency fixes details Science changes details Dubious changes details