Falkenherz

This really is something to look forwards to. And so soon, spring 2020! Joy! I hope there will be ways to do re-usable rockets like SpaceX. Some sort of automated landing would be necessary, too, or those things could never return and land so precise on a landing pad (or a drone boat....?).

Concerning the new configs for the drills, are existing drills also affected? Because the lag at my Mun colony with an A-Drill did not get really better. Instead, it got reset and I have no special parts to re-select the stuff to mine.

Thanks for confirming. I am glad I did not accept a Duna ore mission! Just curious if this issue will be adressed by Roverdude, probably in relation to the new mission creator in 1.4.1.

Ah, well met. I just checked for an issue and found your latest and last patch for 1.3.1. Drills. I despaired on a "get ore from Mun" mission. It will just not check "aquire fresh ore from Mun". Is this a known issue? If there is no quick answer, I will send another mission with drill-o-matics just to see if the bug is somewhere else in the mission creator.

Fantastic mod, very authentic, good looking and not unbalanced at all. Finally I have proper parts for those space stations! Here is a little problem, though; I cannot deploy the pilgrim centrifuge even though I have enough material kits. (USI MKS, KIS, some other non-parts mods). There are two engineers aboard, seven crew all in all. What is going on? I updated to the latest version via CKAN, but no help. EDIT: Found the error! You have to have >6750 parts, one part more and it works.

Hi guys, can anyone help/explain that little problem with the graphics of the mini-truss? I attached them via EVA (KIS mod). Basically I want to connect in situ separate tundra-hubs via mini-trusses and KIS, but this totally does not look they way as it does in VAB and pretty much kills immersion. I tried to attach and reattach with every node which is offered by KIS during EVA. Here is a similar problem: I attached a docking port via KIS, and it would not recognize the Tundra adapter, resulting in a docking port embedded into the adapter. Docking to this port really looks weird (highlighted green).

Thx, sound advice! I am not very experienced with interplanetary and low-thrust burning. It was always annoying to do already within the Kerbal system, and since the arrival of ISRU harvesting, there hardly seems any need anymore for building so much deltaV.

As many have already mentioned, it is all about what payload you want to move. Here is some of my experience: I personally avoid LV-N like plague, due to low thrust to weight ratio (TWR); KSP is not made for calculating efficient continuous burns, and any ejection burn from Kerbin, which takes longer than ~40 seconds, becomes very inefficient, eating up a lot of the ISP advantage which those low-thrust engines do provide. While you usually can get by a TWR of 0.5, by now I prefer to have more, especially for landers. The less time the engine burns for a given maneuver versus a gravity well, the more efficient it is, often outweighting the advantage of higher ISP engines with a weak TWR. Also, I often do have a symmetry or shape problem. E.g., where do I put the rover or other payload which is intended to be decoupled later? It is usually the central axis. Therefore, the engines get outsourced to dual- or quad-nascelles. This in turn requires me to "split-up" and downsize to smaller engines. This causes only a a slight loss in fuel efficiency, because bigger engines tend to be more fuel efficient for a given TWR. However, I rarely use Rhinos or even Poodles these days (they have best efficiency apart from the LV-N). Instead, I often refer to Terrier or Aerospikes in quad-nascelle arrangements and safe that central axis for a flexible payload arrangement. Concerning launch-stages, most engines have a lesser thrust and ISP in atmosphere and thus require high thrust, which is mostly overpowerdly wasted after the initial 20km of altitude. That is why Skipper plus any number of boosters or even triple Skippers plus boosters are my favourite engine. I rarely launch payloads which require more thrust than that. A very successful design was an SSTO with four aerospikes plus four boosters which helped to get through the initial 20km altitudes. I found staging beyond that to be necligible, as an empty fuel tank adds only very little weight and the Aerospikes serve very well in and out of the atmosphere (i.e. less initial dead weight from engines which will be fired only in later stages).

Yeah the hitchhiker is always a central part. I have built big interplanetary ships, but they were always a bit painful. E.g. centrifugal induced artifical gravity is possible to build with stock parts, but launching such a ship, or just being able to assemble it in orbit, is a major pain and requires for me a lot of suspension of disbelief. BTW, using Mk1 command pod, adaptor and hitchiker makes for more efficient space than a Mk2 command pod, by almost 1 t less mass. Imagining this as "one big command pod" is already a stretch. It is little things like this, when they sum up, that they throw me a bit out of the game. I would like to have real dedicated parts instead of redundant historic parts like they seem to want to offer in the "making history" expansion.

Some very nice replies to my posting, thank you for your insights! I have done about five career games, and each one was different in scope and goals, using completely different approaches at design and logistics. So I can understand players who like to replay under different historic technologies and designs. However, my point about the lack of new gameplay option sticks, and that´s why such an expansion is rather "nice to have" but nothing really which propells the game forward as a true new content DLC should. As an additional point, I had to observe that did not go beyond the Kerbin system in every one of those saves. Because the parts are not made for it, not realistic enough to pull it off. Well, except for unmanned flights, and the last expansion for remote controls did a lot to make it realistic enough. But there is no way that I cram e.g. Jebediah in a Mk1 pod and leave him in there for 3+ Kerbin years, just in order to reach Duna! I need a true interplanetary spaceship which also accomodates the "human aspect" of Kerbals, they are no robots! So, here is a second aspect beyond the pure gameplay and management aspect, some more "simplified realism" would be cool. This of course also directly feeds into the colonisation-idea, as management of Kerbals should be a much more central aspect there.

Coming back from a hiatus, I might chime in here a bit late. Unfortunately, this expansion does not excite me at all. - New parts of "historic" design, which probably just do the same job as all other parts, will just clutter up the UI. - Historic missions are of no interest to me. - Mission builder is a meta-game-y aspect which I am not interested to play. I would advocate an entirely different direction for Kerbal Space Program: Don´t look back, look into the future! Like, - Some advancement in tech, like the new SpaceX Merlin engines with better ISP ratings. (Near or far future mods tend to overdo this, I want something modest and realistic) - What about economic and social exploitation of space? Tourist missions and ISRU harvesting are just a start, what about colonies? The stock parts are woefully lacking here. Mods like USI and MKS look good but seem to overdo things, especially when simplification is one of the strengths of KSP. So, bottomline, I will wait until KSP starts to look forwards and implements new systems to add new gameplay, like colony or social and economic management.

Yes, it is a nice shortcut if you do not want to tweak a rocket up to perfection. Even if my vessel is basically stable, I found that manually controlling heading in conjunction with SAS on stability is just not a fine enough control, oftenly overshooting or leading to pendulum movements. Alternating between stability and prograde SAS just does the job for me.

My problem with turning off SAS is that the craft often likes to start to rotate or deviate sideways. Controlling a craft in this situation manually is very difficult. That´s where I learned to appreciate the advanced pilot/autopilot "prograde" setting. That´s why I always have the SAS module on board; it also works in conjunction with a simple remote control unit. I basically do it exactly like the OP, just that I click on "prograde" once my vessel has achieved 100m/s (which is roughly at about 6-8km altitude). If for some reason, the prograde marker drops too fast downwards, I can manually correct this by switching from "prograde" to "hold heading" for some moments. My aim is that the rocket ist almost horizontal at about 42km, but not earlier.

http://falkenherz.blogspot.de/2016/04/patch-11-greets-me-in-kerbal-way.html

As a "totally professional Kerbal Space Program pilot", I wonder why the guys over at SpaceX to not attempt a different concept to land and re-use their rockets: Parachutes? Granted, they might not pull off a point-exact landing with parachutes, but select a big landing region, roughly direct your rocket there, deploy the parachutes and all that matters should be that you have your precious rocket back unharmed and recoverable in one piece, no?

All-in-one spaceships, cross-mounted living quarters, for realistic habitat conditions for longer travels and a bit of centrifugal gravity. For launches from Kerbin: SSTO whenever it makes sense, with added boosters to quickly reach 100 m/s after liftoff. Always using orbit for transit from atmospheric- to space-worthy crafts.

Thanks! I just love the way how the game makes you learn by leading you to your own conclusions by just doing it. Without the limitations of career mode, I would have never been challenged to do stuff like SSTOs (ok, minus some boosters...) with a "Swivel" engine and wings. And it works perfectly well, at that.

Hi there. After a little break, I started a new career game, even though, like this, I will never see the end of the tech tree... Here are some impressions logged: http://falkenherz.blogspot.de/

MarkusF, this is a fantastic report, tutorial and inspiration! Well written at that, too! And congrats to the nearly flawless piloting, I wouldn´t be able to pull this off. It is also interesting to see how artistic design choices start to creep into each player´s gameplay, the more the career does advance. I especially like your outpost and orbital facility designs! I am still doing my second "moderate" career and write about it since March (see signature) and logged about 450 hours in Kerbal Space Programme, but I haven´t advanced as much as you yet. I can snatch up some nice ideas from here, e.g. the idea to attach large docking ports to the multi-point connector is an obvious one but had escaped me so far. Same with the idea to turn some parts around in space before landing them combined. Maybe some ideas from my experience: - You can have smaller payloads if you work with a refueling routine in LKO via spaceplane tankers. - I am trying to build jack-of-all trade vessels, which can be sent around into galaxies unknown like the USS Enterprise... uh, well... anyways, in combination with said LKO refueling and/or on-board mining equipment, you can re-use them quite a lot. From your reports, it is not very clear for me how you do the interplanetary burns; is it one long burn or do you also do the more "Mangalyaan"-way (i.e. multiple small burns)? Keep it coming! Addendum: In your early entries, you had a question about Mobile Labs, but I am sure you don´t really need them now anymore, after all the science from your expeditions. Two or three of them fed with a full load of 500 science data could have already maxed out your tech tree during a simple voyage to Duna.

Ok, I did not do any interplanetary transfer yet, I do not like the "precise-node" mod and want to use just stock maneuver node options, so let me see if I can translate and understood the tutorial from both links correctly (very helpful links, thanks a lot!); - start 11,5 days before the transfer burn must happen (this is the time it takes to complete all "precomputed burns" ie. "perigree kicking burns" from the link to RedIronCrown´s tutorial) - set a standard "one burn" maneuver node to destination planet - eyeball a second maneuver node at ~10 radial degrees *after* the first one and use it for the "precomputed burns" from the link to RedIronCrown´s tutorial (this takes into account the different position Kerbin will have in relation to the target planet after 11 days) - make sure orbital angle of the second node is aligned to your target planet the same way as with your first "one burn" node - delete the first maneuver node and start the precomputed burns - you have to manually again set up each of the precomputed burns after having executed the preceding one, at the same location (second node) - check if at any point of the precomputed burns causes an unwanted intersect with Mün or Minmus (if yes, you need to miss a round and will have a not so optimal transfer anymore) - final burn must never start more than 90 degrees radial orbital angle before the maneuver node; rather adapt course then later when in solar SOI - may have to adapt orbital angle later in sun SOI because could not perfectly eyeball the shift in orbital angle resulting from the 10 degree orbital radial difference of the second node compared to the first one. (I can do the same procedure if doing the Mangalyaan maneuver, the difference basically just is that it does not reach out so far as 31,930km, but only 900 km, and thus does not risk interference from either Mün or Minmus) Would that work out?

I just came home from an extended rover trip on Mün (uh, wait...). It was a science-rover for a 4-man-crew. While the uphill speed was undewhelming due to only four wheels and a heavy mass rover (sometimes only 3m/s at 45 degree slopes), I was able to go downhill at top speeds of ~40m/s, and take high jumps with an impact vertical velocity of ~12m/s. But not with the baloon rover wheels. I rather use landing gear to that purpose. The baloon wheels broke everytime I was over ~14m/s and just bumping over ridges. I am not sure how the ruggedized version is going to fare, but if you want to cheese the game, always combine with landing gear.

Just pls keep in mind that the result, how it plays, should be both entertaining and remotely realistic. If life support was just about adding another tank, I would rather consider it just as a nuisance. Now, if it required me to actually plan some logistics like - food supply - waste disposal - health&psychology (injury, gravity, sleep, recreation) then I would consider this as quite some added value gameplay. Who knows, one day this game might have transformed into a Colonisation&Sims type of game on top of its impressive physics simulation. I can dream, can I?

Yeah, I am in my first 1.0 career game and half way through the tech tree. I feel I have everything there is for spacecrafts (just missing ion engines). Mk3 parts seem to be more tailored for spaceplanes / spaceshuttles. What I am really missing is some Mk3 sized spacecraft parts which are tailored for long term mission. I mean, Kerbals being able to hibernate and all that interpretation is fine, but when I finally launch a 2+ year expedition, I want to make sure to have proper accomodation ready, possibly with centriopedal gravity. Try as I might, my current Mk2-part ship is the best I can come up with; there is no more need for the rest of the tech nodes, which I find a bit disappointing. - - - Updated - - - Currently I have the feeling to fare much better with landing gears instead of rover wheels on my, well, "rovers".

Indeed, I am similar surprised. I guess I should have included a "keep both if possible" option; however, I wanted a clear "statement of taste", regardless whether a third option like this actually existed.

Patch 1.1 will bring us newly designed parts. The new Mk1 cockpit can be seen in this album. Im genously curious how the majority feels. Personally, I do not like parts which are too close to real life, being more of a sci-fi inspired Kerbal. E.g. the space-shuttle cockpit looks horrible to me and I feel I cannot produce any sleek design with it, even though by its tech data it seems to be one of the best available.