Korizan

I was launching a rather large Rocket today and was having some wobble issues, then I realized something all about the SAS and a rocket engine Gimbal. The SAS is a reaction control wheel assembly that allows you to orient your ship while in space without using an RCS system. Any SAS should have a slow reaction as it gets turned up and down. While a rocket engine gimbal is used to steer your ship in a limited direction based on, well changing the engine orientation of the engine and using thrust. A gimbaling engine has a very fast or immediate reaction time compared to the SAS. So in translation these 2 systems are NOT compatible for atmospheric flight do to the constant/many adjustments that need to be performed. In space you point in a single direction and hold that orientation for the entire burn. Why is it more noticeable on large rockets. Well I am guessing (don't have numbers to compare) but on a small rocket the SAS has so little effect compared to the the rockets thrust that it just doesn't come into play. However on the larger rockets with a larger SAS the effects become a lot more noticeable or it is the distance from the engine which will be greater on a large rocket or any number of factors So the conclusion. Do you need engine gimbal and the SAS engaged at the same time while in the atmosphere. NO Is there any advantage or reason to have them both engaged at the same time while in the atmosphere. NOPE They don't play well together by there very design. So basically shut down your your SAS and launch using just engine gimbal When you reach your cruising altitude (before you do your final orbital burn) simply engage your SAS at that point in time. It comes down to is there really a problem with the SAS and the gimbaling engine mechanics, the answer is NO it really is working the way it is supposed too.

I used to play Orbiter 2010 a lot then when this game came out I switched. Now the discussion is about the game not being realistic is I am understanding the OP correctly. Now in Orbiter, despite it being a simulator it is VERY far from realistic depending on the mods you use and more to the point Is Orbiter any more valid as a simulator then KSP, NO. Why. Although they Orbiter does use a different physics engine it doesn't deal with parts only ships as a whole. You can modify any ship in the game to your needs and well there is just about every science fiction ship is in the game if that tells you something. Now what Orbiter and KSP do teach you is the very concepts of space flight. The mechanics and the reason why you build a ship and how you build it is very much represented in KSP (in Orbiter I could make a cube and hand it the same characteristics of the space shuttle but it is just a text file) I could go on and on about what KSP has and a lot of things it doesn't have, but the smallest requirement is to have a solar system that is identical to ours. You need to look at what it does teach you, not the I want an earth solar system simulator. I am not sure what you where expecting, did the whole KERBAL thing not give you a clue that the system wasn't going to be just a mirror of our solar system. Take another look for what KSP is and if you really want a true simulator then you will need to look into building a server to actually run the simulation and then get another computer hand you your GUI. To be honest your expectations are not very realistic.

This might appear to be a unrelated but maybe not. A couple weeks ago I was having some weird things happen. Ships wobbling for no reason and and yes the SAS just made it worse. At one point it got so bad that a station that was sitting stable completely disintegrated as soon as I warped away from it. I had service bays that would cause a wobble if the doors where closed. The list goes on When I started looking for a bug I found someone reported that the claw can break the physics engine when it gets engaged. I thought it was a bit far fetched but as I had one that was currently in use and it would not be much work to remove it so I went ahead and decoupled it and destroyed it as debris. Funny enough everything stopped I haven't had an issue sense. Note - NONE of the ships or stations that had the problem had a claw mounted on them. Almost like a a bug gets injected into the physics engine and gets replicated to every ship as you use them. Like I said it may not be the issue and it doesn't happen all the time but there is definitely something weird with the claw and how it interacts in the game. For now I just don't use the claw

Sadly laws have zero requirements to explain why they are written (my biggest problems with "bureaucratic legal systems") Been awhile but in England there was a law that states all taxi's will have a bail of hay on them (for the horses we have to presume) but it was still on the books. A prime example of you can get a ticket for not having a bail of hay by the letter of the law but anyone with even a tiny bit of common sense ... well you get the idea. And probably the best bit of the entire system is you are required to follow the law and (IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NO EXCUSE) but show me just one person that knows every last law. So yes you could get bitten with an EULA if someone wants to prosecute by the letter (and you find a closed minded judge), but at the same time I do have to ask what the person was doing to get that kind of attention to begin with.

You can't pick out one line on a EULA and consider it the whole of the document. Think of it this way. EULA's first lines always deny everything (call it a catch all), then later on in the document they selectively authorize. For computer geeks think firewall rules and/or router ACL's. The INTENT of the complete document is what counts, NOT selective lines.

Does a Mod creator actually own the idea for the mod. If a person who creates a mod takes suggestions from players using the mod do those players also have rights to the mod. And sense a game designer decides if they want there game to be modded in the first place do they have a share in any mod created for there platform. I say having your mod idea put into the game is the ultimate compliment.

I really just don't see the point. Besides if I want to kill off a Kerbal, there no shortage of ways to do it in KSP without the need of weapons.

As others have stated the center of gravity is the reason behind the flip. However most of the time the cause is a rocket that is WAY over powered for the payload. If your rocket is flipping take a serious look to see if you need all that rocket for that tiny payload. It has been stated by others that adding more fuel does NOT always correlate to more Delta-V. If you have a > 20 m/s acceleration off the pad you are overpowered scale back the rocket. This is not the only reason for flips but it is a good indication.

Don't revert, instead ... Replace the center LV-T-30 and put in a LV-T45 (which has gimbal) and you will be good. IF you put on all LV-T45's you can remove the fins

$40 is a reasonable price. To many games are trying to charge $60 or more which is too much. Sadly in a world where free to play is now the standard (not really free though) too many people just don't want to pay, and well the result is a lot of the games coming out these days are well junk. KSP is one one of the good games out there and yes I would pay $40 for it.

So it comes down to processing power and weld points and the physics you choose to run on each part. I read somewhere that each part has weld points that you can set up different parameters. The question is can you create certain weld points that will treat 2 parts as one. And can you be selective about it. For example 2 fuel tanks form a single part when merged but adding an engine will leave that part as separate. IF you can do that then you should be able to lower the part count but if you can't do it within the game engine then .....

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't the game engine run physics on every part ?

A valid point So I took 3.8t worth of Mono and 4 Puffs came up to 3,920 Delta-V And 3.8 t worth of normal fuel with a Terrier and that came up with 4,946 Delta-V Now just with that the Terrier wins based on Delta-V However when you start looking at the size of the craft well not even remotely close. Might have to look into this a bit more.

So I was playing around with a tug to get a station to Mun from a Kerban orbit. Tried multiple different engines with the "Terrier" coming out in the lead Well until I started looking at the Mono-propellent engines then things got REALLY interesting. So the baseline tug was putting out a Delta-V of 180 m/s Terrier before I added some tanks. For fun I added in (4) O-10 "Puff" Engines and the Delta-V jumped to 836 m/s. So I added on (4) Stratus-V Tanks and now I have 1,077 m/s and now on paper I can push the station to Mun and put it into orbit. And now I have to ask, really, what am I missing here ?

Please explain how you can debunk someones opinion of a game and call it nonsense ? That sounds like trying win an argument by saying I don't like liver therefore you couldn't possibly like liver and if you do it is nonsense. I am sorry but now that is funny

A MOD (modify) changes the game. Mods allow people who want more from a game or who are not happy with the game mechanics and wish to alter them in some form. People who play a STOCK game are just happy with the game that the developers have released. To each there own.

You can't really can't compare earth orbit speeds of ~7,800 m/s to Kerban's ~2.500 m/s It is just apple and oranges. One of the biggest problems is just using real world formula's for something that just won't exist. It doesn't work the math will always be off. If you did use real numbers you could have a valid argument that there is too much heat in the current system. But what would be the fun in that. No matter either way it should be interesting to see what the squad does in 1.0.3 and we will just have to adapt from there

KSP uses a visual representation for what is essentially math and a ton of it. The game basically does it all for you with the exception of some key elements. Mechjeb runs a simulation and hands you back a result (sometimes not the best). Just about anything with any size (including planes) have autopilots. There are some planes out there that are not stable on purpose and can not be flown without computer control. Cheating, depends on how you look at it. Sometimes I let mechjeb take full control (assents generally but I still watch and decide if something needs to be tweaked). A lot of the time I bounce what mechjeb considers to best and what I have done (never hurts to have more then one opinion) Doing it by hand really comes down to how good is your hand eye coordination, the better you are the easier the flights will be. So someone who spends a lot of time with FPS's will tend to do better then someone who spends their days on a 3rd person strategy game. Or you could say that a pilot would have an easier time flying the rocket then the engineer who designed it. Does that mean the engineer should be forced to fly the rocket manually, I think not.

Two things. 1 - Heat, right now all kinds of things make it back to kerban that shouldn't, most things should be burning up in the atmosphere. 2 - The new aerodynamics are not necessarily wrong, resistance translates to heat. Making the atmo thinner doesn't make it correct. What will happen when you drop something into an atmos at high speeds. Well it will rip it apart, and then burn it up. Something not very easy to simulate when you give people the freedom to build just about anything. How do you decide what gets ripped apart and what doesn't. Things can get rather ugly real fast, think 1.0 on steroids.

Nice job OP It comes down to 2 questions. 1st if you are purely interested in how drag interacts with aerodynamics in the game then then equalizing the total mass would be applicable. 2nd if you are more interested in getting the most performance out of your rocket by changing out (modifying) the nose cones, then I would look to the OP's charts.

Clouds - I know they are not shown but solar panels do have to deal with them and atmosphere scattering (dust / dirt on the panels and in the atmosphere and the sky is blue after all). Temperature is should not be an issue on the planet.

So I am playing around with some rockets and I am down to maybe 32 - 120 /ms left to make a 80 km orbit. Now I could add a little fuel to the stage so I could complete orbit or I could just expend a little fuel from the interplanetary stage. One option leaves me with less fuel granted a tiny bit but the other option will leave debris in space and add some cost. It really is a flip of a coin but I am just wondering if others have asked this same question (or I don't care is a valid response) and if so what was your final conclusion.

I use the the 1x6 all the time, launch a satellite yesterday and had no problem deploying or retracting them. Was there an update today ? Will have to check it out when I get in game. ------- Just checked Okay never noticed that before, always put the protected version on the landers and they can retract. Well now that is something to keep in mind, makes sense but... YUP add me to the list of people that overlooked that little detail... Still I thought I had retracted them before, hmmm wonder when it was changed. That or I am just going nuts.

I am not being sarcastic I am serious. - EVA - Well I have heard that they eat a lot of beans. - Re-entry - Well I think if they get cooked then they should be running around with there pants on fire (I so want to see this) - Surface Impact - Well Kerbal's BOUNCE or least they should in proportion to there impact speed. In other words the Kerbals are the comedy factor in the game in my opinion and should be just that.

I wouldn't say your setup is over powered or too powerful. It is more of a case you have a comfort zone. These engines are also supposed to be heavy lifters so I wouldn't say unbalanced either. It is a game and well the power lets us have some fun Right now I am playing some heavy lifting fun 1st stage is (5) Mainsails and the second stage is a Rhino, no boosters. It will put a 109.3 ton payload into a 80km orbit.