AG5BPilot

I've seen the same problem when using hyperedit to move ships into orbit. Not sure (yet) if it's hyperedit or KJR that's causing the problem.

The same MechJeb spaceplane dialog box with the autoland controls also has controls for heading and altitude hold. Actually, a bit more than that -- you can dial in the desired altitude and heading and it turns and climbs or descends to the desired settings. While it won't fly itself to a waypoint, I use the heading reading from Waypoint Manager's on screen display as the input into MechJeb and use that to fly aircraft long distances (with physics warp). It will happily fly right into the side of a mountain, however, so you still need to be careful about CFIT.

Let's not forget the licensing thing. While you might not care about it, it's a good bet Squad will -- or at least they should if they've got any brains. If you put untold man-years into building this mod and then show it to nobody, you're okay. But if you distribute it publicly -- and you're already advertising what you want to do right here -- someone may very well get sued for copyright infringement. That someone is always going to include the one with the deep pockets, namely Squad. This is why every commercial game you'll likely ever play that permits user created content expressly forbids players from creating content containing names or other Intellectual Property from copyrighted sources. You're legally not permitted to just go and use the Firefly universe without permission. Squad would be incredibly foolish to permit that. And, in fact, they don't They require a valid license for all mods. You can't just stick a Creative Commons license on IP that belongs to someone else. When you knowingly do that, I believe the term for this is "fraud". The best outcome is that all the effort that goes into this is wasted. The worst (but really unlikely) outcome is you find yourself hiring a lawyer to defend yourself. Since the source material for this idea explicitly forbids any unauthorized use of the material, you can't even claim "I didn't know." If you want to do this, you need to first get permission. Why put in the effort unless you know you can actually do it? Get the copyrights holders' permissions, and then go for it. But skipping the first step will probably just waste everyone's time. (I'm sorry to be the killjoy here, because I too really, really like this idea, but it's almost certain to end badly if you don't the due diligence and take care of the copyright issues first and foremost.)

There's probably a reason why this doesn't already exist, buried somewhere in the last 29 pages, so I apologize if this has been asked before. Is it possible to add integrated landing lights?

It has happened to me too in 1.05. I haven't seen it yet in 1.1. I wasn't sure what was causing it, but no that you mention it. it may have started when I added this mod.

And MechJeb has a similar, but more limited, functionality. The transfer planner is a huge help, but there's alternatives.

Yeah, that's what I would guess too, but I'm actually much more interested in the "what" than the "when". It will get changed when it gets changed. After everything Squad said about the changes to wheels in this release, I'm curious about the details of what needs to actually change.

First of all, I'd like to offer a huge "Thank you!" and tell you how much I really appreciate this mod. The landing gear are really, really nice, and a vast improvement over stock. They don't just look good -- the flexibility they provide truly helps. I do have a question for you -- and I'm loathe to say it because of all the flack people have been getting on the forums. Superficially, the question is "Are you working on an update for 1.1?", but I'm not asking because I want to know when the mod will be updated. The reason I'm asking is that it's very clear from Squad's progress updates over the last six months that wheels in KSP 1.1 changed dramatically and required a lot of reworking on their part. Certainly, wheels (especially friction) in the stock 1.1 landing gear parts behave differently than before. More realistically, in my opinion. The new stock landing gear seem to behave more like real airplane tires, instead of the NASCAR racing slick behavior they used to exhibit. The question is, if you're working on an update, what challenges does the new system create for updating a wheel-centric mod? This is purely out of curiosity on my part; as both a programmer and a pilot it's got me wondering how complicated it will be making these wheels work under the new system.

Oops, sorry about that.

The 1.1 compatible dev build definitely was working for me (Windows x64 pre-release) earlier, as I was seeing the KJR messages on screen as well as ships being obviously more resilient than the stock limp pasta. However, recently, it appears to have stopped working -- no more KRJ messaging, and the the joints are definitely not reinforced. Something changed. It could be that the newer pre-release code (1174) broke KJR somehow, or some other mod I have loaded is interfering, but it had been working at the beginning of the pre-release but it's not currently functioning.

It's not necessarily a terrible question. "Why isn't the mod updated yet?!? The pre-release came out over 5 minutes ago!!!" is obnoxious. But there's actually a good reason to ask whether the mod developer plans on releasing a 1.1 version of the mod: If he or she answers yes, then everyone can wait patiently. If, on the other hand, the answer is no (either the developer no longer wishes to support the mod or has gone MIA), then, license permitting, someone else can start thinking about forking the code and taking over. It's easy to read every question as the KSP equivalent of "Are we there yet?", but asking once, politely, is reasonable. It helps, however, to ask the question in such a way that question reflects not impatience, but rather curiosity. For many mods, it appears that only a recompilation of the dll is needed for compatibility. Knowing that a developer may not be able to get to it for an extended period time is useful information, I know of at least one mod where the developer said it would be a while before they could update their mods and a third party recompiled the dll.

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I must say that "The Verse in Numbers 2.1" made for an interesting read. Thank you for that. I'm not a modder, but I foresee two huge problems in making a mod such as you're asking for. The first is sheer size. The KSP stock solar system consists of one central body (the sun), 7 planets, and 9 moons. The Firefly Verse consists of one central star, which is orbited by 4 other stars, 7 artificial or proto-stars, and about 260 planets and moons. I doubt KSP could handle that. It would also take an immense amount of work to make it happen. I could see this sort of endeavor taking months or years to do, and that's assuming a whole group of people were working on creating all the worlds and moons. The second problem is licensing. Firefly itself is certainly copyrighted and trademarked, and the fan work that went into making up the "Verse" is also protected by copyrights. In particular, the document you referenced starts off with this: " Any replication of this content, in part or in whole, without express written permission of the copyright holders is forbidden." I'm no lawyer, but it's a good bet that this includes using the names and orbital arrangements. To even think about doing this, one would first have to get permission to use this information. If you were going to make the mod for your own personal use you could decide you're not going to worry about the licensing, but if you're going to distribute it the mod must be properly licensed (to protect Squad, if for no other reason). You would probably need permission from both the publisher of 'The Verse by numbers", the studio that holds the rights to Firefly, and possibly some other entities whose intellectual property went into making that document. That might not be impossible to do, since I suspect many if not all of the rights holders would be thrilled to see their work used in this way, but it's some legal hoops that one needs to go through before even starting such a project.

There's a way to do the orbits such that the insertion burns are (almost) always in communications range: Note that I'm currently playing with RemoteTech and ScanSat... I tend to target my capture burns for polar orbits rather than equatorial orbits. This has several advantages: 1) For ScanSat, I'm in a good mapping orbit to begin with. 2) For landing, either probes or manned missions, the orbit is guaranteed to eventually pass over any spot on the body being orbited, whether it's a specific biome, anomaly, pre-existing base, etc. 3) For RemoteTech, equatorial orbits will always give you a blackout period where the body being orbited is between you and Kerbin. For polar orbits, for most of the year, there's no such blackout period unless the orbit is very low. 4) Similarly, for solar powered spacecraft, an equatorial orbit always has an eclipse period, while a polar orbit will have no eclipses during most of the year, again, depending on the orbital height. (Note that if you're orbiting a moon rather than a planet you may still get planetary blackouts or eclipses even in a high polar orbit.) Using polar orbits makes it easier to keep the communications links intact. Usually when you reach your target, you're moving in the same direction as the target, so a polar orbit is close to parallel to the body's own orbit, and your insertion burn is in view of both Kerbin (for communications) and Kerbol (for solar power).

You'll also want to move the Ships folder if you're using kOS since the "volume 0" scripts are stored under Ships/Scripts.

I had a booster where the 1st stage main (center) section was just a little low on TWR after the SRBs fell off. I used a pair "Thud" engines that activated at SRB sep to augment the main engine. I think that's the only time I've used it.

That's true but possibly not relevant. This 'beyond-Jool' rescue will take quite a few years. In far less time than it takes to fly the mission he could obtain the RTG technology. One RTG plus about 5K worth of battery as a buffer works quite well as a trans-Jool high ISP propulsion system. The most effective way to do this mission, rather than attempting to do it with limited technology, is probably to first go and get the RTG node and then fly the rescue mission. Trying to do is without an RTG is possible, but in my opinion falls into the "appendectomy through the nostril" category. If you're efficient in your science gathering operations, it's not all that hard to open up the entire tech tree. A huge amount of science is available within the Kerbin system, and if that's not enough, a single trip to either Eve or Duna should provide the rest. The Dawn Ion engine is also pretty deep in the tech tree, so he's probably not that far from getting the RTG. Ion + big Xenon tank + 1 RTG + 5K battery can go a long long ways, and IIRC can do about 5 or 10 minute burns before running out of juice and having to recharge.

This. Remove that mod (as nice as it is) and the problem with the flares should go away. Even though the release notes for the latest release or two claim to fix that problem, I was still experiencing that problem until DOE was removed.

In real life liquid fuel rockets are fueled at the launchpad, and most of the weight of the rocket is the fuel. It makes sense that the weight restriction would be at the pad.

That problem, at least, might have a solution. It seems that when ships load the physics gets turned on all at once, so if they're landed, they go from 0 gravity to full gravity instantly (in a single physics tick). This seems to cause problems; I'm guessing it's parts colliding at high velocity with other parts as the ship compresses under the instant gravitational load, especially given the weak strength of stock joints. Kerbal Joint Reinforcement does a great job of fixing that problem by changing the loading so the gravity gets turned on slowly. I don't think I've had a "load-BOOM!" incident since installing that mod. Certainly they're very rare now.

A shot in the dark here: Most people use Windows, so assuming you're on Windows, you're probably running the 32 bit version of KSP. Running with mods can greatly increase the memory footprint of KSP. I suspect that the big parts packs are the biggest memory consumers because the textures probably eat up tons of space. If all of that is true, chances are what you're seeing is a side-effect of KSP running out of memory. I'd expect your game just crashes a lot too. I've found that there's three ways of running KSP: with DX9, DX11, or with OpenGL. You can select which one by using command line options when you start KSP. (Both Steam and CKAN have options to set the command line arguments if you start the game that way.) DX9 is the default and is what you're using if you haven't explicitly set it up to run with one of the other graphics interfaces. DX9 uses, by far, the most memory. If you're running Windows and using any big mod packages and haven't changed the graphics interface, you're at best running on the ragged edge of having memory problems. More likely, your game is crashing a lot and you're seeing all sorts of weird problems. OpenGL uses a lot less memory, but it's slower and the graphics aren't as good. (It may also be a bit buggier than DX9 or DX11. Fix one class of bugs, add another set of bugs. Not 100% sure about this.) DX11 also uses a lot less memory (although more than OpenGL, I think), but its speed and quality seem to be equivalent to DX9. DX11 is what I'm using as it seems to clearly be the best of the three options. The command line arguments for these three options are: -force-opengl -force-d3d9 <-- Default option -force-d3d11 <-- Best option I also use -single-instance to prevent accidentally launching the game twice. This might have nothing at all to do with your problem, but if you're running Windows, you might want to try this.

It's possible there's more than one cause, but a bug in the USI MKS mod causes every part to look like it is manned and allows you to get rescue contracts like that. There's an easy fix. Check out this thread for details: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/126658-Rescue-missions-Sending-me-to-Probe-cores

Question 1: (RemoteTech) (I'm not playing with the Outer Planets mod, but I believe the comments about Joolean moons also apply to some of OPM. I could be wrong. Being further away, they might actually work better. I'd have to do the math to check.) RemoteTech is a lot of fun, but its interactions with some other mods is a bit wonky. MechJeb, for example, will stop controlling the craft if it loses the comms signal, which makes no sense. The signal delay, while realistic, is, again, a bit wonky with other mods, and unless you're up to writing kOS scripts to control your probes there aren't enough mechanisms in place to deal with the signal delay in an in-game manner. There's also a huge gap between the smallest dish antennas designed for use within the Kerbin system (Kerbin/Mun/Minmus) and the next larger dishes which are designed for communicating with the inner planets. Neither is suitable for communicating between the Joolian moons. The Kerbin dishes don't have the range, and the inner planet antennae have beam widths that are too narrow to use "cone" mode. You can still make it work, but it's harder than it should be. Question 2: (Toolbars) For each mod that has a button in the stock toolbar, you have to go to that mod's configuration window and tell it to use the Toolbar mod instead of the stock toolbar. Then got to the toolbar mod and tell it to display the other mod's button. Not all mods have the option to use the Toolbar mod instead of the stock toolbar, so you may still have a few on the stock toolbar. Most mods have the option, fortunately. Question 3: (Procedural Fairings) Procedural Fairings are a little more versatile that stock, although supposedly stock got much better in 1.0.3/1.0.4 when they fixed the fairing weight. They didn't just make the lighter, but the weight's now in the fairing as it should be instead of in the base. So, you know, when you jettison the fairing the mass of the vessel actually decreases. Stock fairings allow more control over the exact shape. Procedural fairings go about it a bit differently and are easier to use. Question 5: A few mods I like that I don't see on your list (I may have missed them, or you may already be using them but not included them in your list): Kerbal alarm clock: This *completely* changes the game for the better in that it gives you a reasonable way to manage multiple missions simultaneously. In my opinion this should be part of the stock game. Hyperedit: I don't use it to "cheat", but I do use it to run "simulations". Testing Tylo landers without actually having to fly each iteration of the lander to Tylo from Kerbin makes things much more fun. Same thing for Eve ascent vehicles. Note that although it has an option to change Kerbin so it mimics other planets (so you can test rockets for, say Eve, right on the launchpad), although it seems to correctly change the atmosphere and gravity, it does not change the engine performance to match the increased atmospheric pressure. So if you test for Eve on a hyperedited Kerbin, it probably won't work when you're actually on Eve because your rocket engines will be producing much less thrust than they did in your "simulation" back on Kerbin. MechJeb for when you get tired of manually flying rockets with a keyboard. Docking Port Alignment Indicator is excellent, and unless you use MechJeb to dock for you, this really helps. In my opinion this should be part of the stock game. Action Groups Extended is excellent. In my opinion this should be part of the stock game. RCS Build Aid is pretty nice. It shows you both your wet and dry CoM so you know where to best put your RCS thrusters. Waypoint Manager lets you manage your own waypoints, as well as showing distance and bearing to the active waypoint.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

I had this happen a couple of times. Once the Kerbal was trapped in a small probe core, and with KIS I put the whole probe core in the rescuing Kerbal's pocket (inventory), and brought her back to Kerbin like that. Another one was trapped in an inflatable, but not habitable, OKS storage module. I used KAS to attach a docking port, docked to it (which re-powered the module), inflated it, and then re-entered using it as an inflatable de-accelerator (similar to what NASA just tested). Amazingly, it worked. I wonder if this problem occurs without mods, or if it's caused by a problem with one of the mods?