Edax
-
Posts
269 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Developer Articles
KSP2 Release Notes
Bug Reports
Posts posted by Edax
-
-
I am very late to this party, but as a person who's both dumped 600 hours into this game and has yet to install a single mod (I like to play the game the devs intended), I did have some confusion on how mining, scanning, and resources worked.
I understand roverdude's reasoning and explanation, and they make a certain amount of sense. Usually in this game I try and experiment with things as intuitively as possible, and the whole scanning process is a bit less intuitive than I'd have liked.
I had assumed, starting out, that I'd have to figure out some kind of scanning orbit, and eventually I'd get a whole map of the planet. Once I realized polar scanning was instant I was a bit disappointed because there was less reward for the effort expended than I expected, but it made a certain kind of sense, because really, all you're doing is finding out what the general concentration is in a biome. What you are not doing with the high level orbital scanner is getting any sort of spatially accurate information. The overlay you get from this is essentially a starter kit at this point. If I'd had my druthers, I'd wish the requirement would be for the probe to complete one polar orbit, or at least an animation, but whatevs. Not a terribly big deal.
After I figured all that out, my next intuitive assumption was that since there was no sort of accurate map with the orbital scanner, that job would then fall to the narrow band scanner. Now that you got some extremely generalized information, you'd narrow things down a bit, and your orbital overlay would turn more into a map, which would require you to get into a proper scanning orbit and do some very simplistic, but at least some sort of analogue to reality legwork. Here is where my biggest confusion and immersion break came from.
Why is there no usable, discoverable, viewable detailed map? Without it, finding the perfect mining spot is very frustrating.
After some searching at this point, I found out that in order to get some detail to the little gui window, you had to land and take samples. This makes proper intuitive sense once you realize what the surface scanner's job is. Getting more and more accurate information should take more and more work.
What still bugs the crap out of me though, is after you do all this work to drill down to the most accurate information you can get, you have no way to save your work. Which rewards all your effort with a slap in the face. This is worse than nothing. Your effort/reward ratio at this point is negative. Your GUI window is all you really have, and you just constantly throw that data away. No space program worth their salt would ever just trash useful data. It's not like storing data is hard. Just ask nasa.
The progression I would personally like to see with resource scanning goes something like this
Step 1. Get into a polar orbit, run the scanner for exactly 1 orbit. (this gives you an extremely basic idea of what's out there because you're zoomed all the way out) (small reward for decent effort, but that's fine because it's the first step on the journey.)
Step 2. Get a surface scanner on the ground to get biome information (this gives you a much better idea of where stuff is, but you still got work to do, because your zoom level is way too close,)
Step 3. Get a narrow band scanner in a close realistic scanning orbit, and get a slowly revealing map. (Once you have the general and the specific, then you have the happy medium complete picture. This also gives you the bonus of your polar satellite not being a single use craft with very small reward for all the effort it takes to get it there, and it teaches us plebs about actual satellite scanning mechanics in the real world. Most effort/Highest reward)
I realize roverdude wrote his own resource mod and wants people to use it, and as much poorly articulated crap as he's received in this thread he may have already made up his mind and dug his heels in on this, but this is a non-modder's take on stock game gameplay. I don't have all the preconceived notions of how a certain thing should be because it was like x in y mod. My preconceived notions are all based on what happens in real science, and I think my proposed progression would both make more intuitive sense, and be more rewarding gameplay wise. Half the fun of KSP is learning all the things you didn't know about rocket science. Yes, I realize this game oversimplifies everything about space exploration, but it should at least not be the opposite of reality.
My take on the scanning system is that it's a great start, but it needs some tweaking to make it more fun/rewarding.
It's rather crude, but you can just have a Kerbal plant a flag on all the richest deposits of ore you find. Still, it's kinda disappointing that the flag you use as a monument of your greatest achievements, are also used as mundane ore markers. Maybe just a simple flashing beacon that engineers can place would be more appropriate? Should be simple enough to implement.
-
It already contains 491 data. Still yielding a petty trickle of science. Does it matter if it's landed or in orbit? I can't fathom how someone could get 7 science per day.
This post has been deleted by the user for displaying incorrect information.
-
Hi people,
I have made a poor 1.0 decision. I shouldn't put two nuke rockets on the Duna visit craft. Now I have only 478 m/s delta v after landing on Duna and returning back to the orbiting rocket. I need about 650 m/s delta v to get the orange dudes home safely.
Now I have three options of accomplishing it.
1) Use gravity assist of Ike of 300 m/s orbital velocity to accelerate for free, with current craft setup (both vehicles)
2) Undock and park the heavy lander in orbit to gain the total 818 m/s delta v to send the nuke+hitchhiker rocket home directly. But I am using Remote Tech mod (no remote-control in middle of home path), and would have no correction-control between Duna and Kerbin.
3) Send a refuel vehicle to Duna on next window. The wait will be like 1.0-1.5 years.
The question is I am trying to figure out how to use the Ike gravity assist correctly. See the second photo in the second spoiler. Is A path the correct way?
On a happy note, I applied my lesson on designing a EvE craft (just visiting not landing) with a single nuke and mod liquid-only tank.
The safest and most simplest method would just to send a refueling probe. Docking ports, plenty of airbrakes, large heatshield (doesn't need that much ablator) and make it sturdy, and just hurl it at Duna at high speed without waiting for the transfer window, and aerobrake hard. And double check to see if the resupply module will enter in a retrograde orbit so it can link up.
-
From a high-speed non-window planetary transfer, the atmosphere of Duna can rip you apart at 15000m.
-
Admittedly I'm new to mining, but on Minmus, I have a Mk3 ship medium sized fuel tanks (about 4000 units) and a medium amount of ore tanks (2400 units) and the converter. I just land, mine, fill up the fuel tanks, fill up the ore tanks, and dock with my orbital refilling station transferring fuel, and refining the ore into more fuel. This method seems the simplest. 2 lv-ns have no problems moving a now 100ton ship into orbit.
-
So the orbital map implies your still moving after you've stopped? If the markers are twitchy, it could indicate a physics clipping issue. (You ARE in orbit right? Not on a sub-orbital trajectory out of the Mun?)
-
I have been trying to build a ship capable of going from the surface of the Mun up to my orbital station in orbit around the Mun and back down to the surface where my mining operation is. It has to carry as much fuel as possible (~6K in LFO & 1500 in Mono).
I've made a dozen variations of ships that are capable of going up into orbit and back to the surface with full tanks. The problem arises when trying to rendezvous with the station.
I set up a rendezvous maneuver with the station so there's less than 1.0 distance of separation between the 2 ships at closest approach. Every time after finishing the maneuver, the separation distance starts at 1.0 or less but increases over time. No matter how many maneuvers I do, the distance at closest approach keeps slipping further away. I've even tried a fueling ship that I've successfully used in the past to dock with the station. I just put some wheels on it and put it down on the surface, but it won't rendezvous with the station after lift off.
Does any one have any suggestions as to what might be going on? I've never had the separation distance change after a maneuver like this. All my other types of ships (rockets, refuelers, station components, or small science landers) have no problem making rendezvous', just these darn SSTO's.
Unless your orbit is perfectly matched, your going to drift away from your target at the "closest seperation". What you want to do right before closest approach is burn retrograde in "target" mode till you and the station are no longer moving in relation to each other. Then find the target the nav ball, and burn towards it slowly. You'll want to monitor orbital drift and burn towards where the station will be. On the orbital map, you should maintain the slow burn until the orbital map slowly shows your closest separation to be 0.0km.
-
Landing vertically is a lot safer if you have the fuel for it. Just point the main engine prograde until you've killed velocity and are pointed upright. (though technically the spaceplane in this video isn't a SSTO, but that isn't that important)
-
I laughed at the thought that Mortimer could take out a life insurance policy on the astronauts. The monthly premiums for Jeb alone probably be what the real-world Apollo program cost in it's entirety. The most you could say for Jeb is that he's a non-smoker.
-
My quirk is that every "manned" mission to another planet/moon must be done via spaceplanes. It's fun to have more control in take off and landings, plus spaceplanes just have the coolness factor, that I'm more then willing to put up with the extra challenges of fuel and logistics that spaceplanes require. Plus it makes the return more triumphant when you land at KSC in the very spaceship that traveled to another world, with a cargo bay filled with new scientific data, just to have it refilled with fuel and sent off on another adventure.
-
It can be handy to stick docking ports on struts pointing outward of the main body, that way other ships can dock with the station without colliding with the station's equipment.
-
Sometimes the structure of the spaceplane generates too much lift at a certain angle. The best solution is to fly as prograde as possible, same with reentering.
-
I think both gauges either side of the nav ball could have some work done to them. The red area at the top of the throttle gauge needs to either be usable, or be removed. Every time I build a rocket that's underpowered I look at that little red area and wish I could actually use it.
I'd rather replace the g-gauge with an engine overdrive gauge. Who wouldn't want to be able to get 120% thrust on their engines while screaming "I'M GIVING HER ALL SHE'S GOT!"
-
When I built my first craft using LV-Ns in 1.0.4, I didn't know their heating had been fixed. I also saw the radiators and thought "Neat, new parts to solve the heat dissipation issue!"
I put a ring of radiators (the extending kind) around the main tank (Mk3 liquid fuel tank) of my interplanetary stage. They seem to work (in this application) as intended. The radiator gets hot and radiates a lot of heat. The rest of the craft gets less hot than it would have without the radiators.
Given that it's a large area, lightweight, flexible structure, I had never considered deploying it during aerobraking, assuming it would simply shear away. If you did deploy such a thing during atmospheric heating, I'm not sure what I'd even expect the behavior to be. It's a huge surface designed for efficient heat transmission. Would it absorb a lot of heat from the surrounding atmosphere and concentrate it into the part it's attached to? Possibly.
IMO, the radiators are intended to radiate waste heat more efficiently into deep space, and they work well enough for that purpose, though they may not be strictly necessary now that the LV-N's heat generation has been corrected. Using them during atmospheric braking is off-label and may possibly have unanticipated results.
I use the deployable radiators to cool down my reuseable rocket tanker. They can be deployed safely at 30,000 m, as they are necessary given my tanker has the "boars" for engines, which produce a LOT of heat just getting into orbit. Without the radiators deployed, the thrusters at the bottom of the rocket on the "boars" will explode from the heat, which would make aligning docking ports extremely difficult.
-
What is it with these tourist that want a sub-orbital flight on the Sun? Is there a sensible way of delivering this?
Some kerbals have watched Sunshine one too many times.
-
Contracts need better progression. Their pretty fun in the beginning. Like trying to flyby the mun with no maneuver nodes, no solar panels and no sas. It was a fun interesting challenge that felt like something would have reflected reality early on during the real life spacerace. But other times it's frustrating, like getting the "Get a space station orbit in Duna contract" after I've already built my Duna spacecraft in orbit around Kerbin (thus making it ineligible). It's weird seeing 2 star contracts to land tourists on the mun when you yourself haven't even landed an astronaut there.
I like the tech tree as it is. It eased me into the game mechanics and taught me how to do more with less. I just wish there were more
I think the MPL needs work. It makes sense that you can gain additional science by gathering soil/rock samples from Kerbin or the Mun and testing them in a lab in space. But temperature data? Eva reports? "Bill triped over on his space walk? QUICK GET MY ELYMER FLASK!" How is a spacelab turning this into science? I feel like MPL should run science equipment continuously in order to gain science, like a lab on the surface of the mun constantly scanning seismic data can perpetually produce science data. I feel as though labs should act like science harvesters, with their output dictated by their location (orbit, landed on other planets/moons), rather then function as Science recycle bins. That way your encouraged to put labs in difficult places, and be rewarded for the challenge.
-
LF only space planes are hard.
For 4 km/s dV on nukes with a starting TWR of .7 (the highest TWR where nukes are typically mass optimal) you need 3.5 t (700 units) fuel per engine (and â…› tank mass) for a budget of 1.8 t payload per engine for a total mass of 8.7 t. The orbit mass of a Whiplash (engine, intake, tank, and round up for landing fuel) is 3 t. If you overload 2 nukes to a jet, that leaves .3 t a nuke for payload and wings! You want 3-4 t for crew cabin and support. (docking, panels, reaction wheel, monoprop, etc) You need to compromise on TWR (complicating accent profile) or dV (limiting range) for better payload fractions.
In 1.02 you could fly with good lift and low drag at 32 km until you gained orbital speeds. That allowed a more predictable if not more efficient accent for nuclear planes. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work anymore for 1.04 (the AoA needed for level flight killed horizontal velocity). Instead, insertion burn must be done on ballistic trajectory. 1300 m/s (1600 vacuum) is a lot of acceleration to get out of those nukes on a suborbital trajectory.
Since there are almost no LF only structural parts and RAPIERs have a higher flight envelope, I recommend using RAPIERs for nuclear space planes and using the LOX your structural parts can hold regardless as a booster after airbreathing mode starves completely.
IMHO, if you don't have RAPIERs, the only association nukes should have with your planes is as a payload. The numbers just don't work out well.
LF spaceplanes are easy, just bolt them onto a non-LF only SSTO. Then the LV-N only has to operate once in orbit.
-
It seems like using landing wheels for mun/minmus landings would allow you to save fuel by not having to kill all of your horizontal velocity, and let the brakes do that, plus they can handle some pretty hard landings. I've never seen discussion of mun/minmus landings mention their use though. I imagine you'd have some bouncing, but turning brakes on before touch down will help kill velocity as you touch n go.
Thoughts?
I've landed on the mun and minmus with spaceplanes. The most effective way is to kill ALL velocity, so you touch down vertically on the wheels very gently. In low gravity environments, if you try to land horizontally, the wheels will just bump off the ground; you'll get no braking action, and you'll be tossed from the ground at an odd angle that can be difficult to correct. You can compensate by having the thrusters try and keep you on the ground, but it's just safer to burn the extra 70 Delta V for a gentle vertical landing. The advantage of wheels (even just landing gear) is that the spacecraft if moblie on the ground with just a few thruster inputs, and you can easily visit several biomes with all of your science gear with you.
-
How are you defining "effective" here? Much of the plane will be dead weight in space whether one refuels or not.
Spaceships can get away with very light designs and can ditch mass with staging, while spaceplanes have to drag around it's wings, plus, SSTO spaceplanes have trouble removing dry mass from itself, so it's less fuel efficient traveling in space, that's one of the drawbacks to spaceplanes. To compensate for the extra dry mass, you add fuel sometime during the journey.
-
Cannot? *Cough*
Yes, they cannot "effectively" travel. I didn't say they couldn't do it. You want to leave Kerbin orbit with a full tank so you can go anywhere and come back. A lot of the spaceplane is dead weight in space, so you need to top off the tanks to compensate.
-
I have spent some time designing a pure liquid fuel space plane and this is what I have come up with:
The problem that I am having is that once it is in orbit at around 100k there is only 1000m/s delta v left and I am trying to use this for interplanetary travel. Not sure what the solution is.
[i can't see your image]
You need to build a LF refueling station in orbit of Kerbin using either MK1 or MK3 LF parts. Dock with it, and gas up. SSTO's cannot effectively travel after they burn their fuel escaping Kerbin unless they get some gas whilst in orbit.
-
So, now that the ship is fueled up, loaded with probes and 2 disposable fuel tanks for the spaceplanes, I think I'm ready to head to Duna. I think i'll just skip the launch window for now, it's only 250 extra Delta V at the moment.
-
Well, gliding is possible depending on the mass to lift ratio. So you would have to test or calculate. Same goes for aerobreaking (I hope you have aerobrakes?), try or calculate/guesstimate, but the Duna atmo is very thin.
Failure is part of the fun. Though personally I try to minimize my costs of failure by limiting the scope when trying something new. That is why I recommended a minimal mission first. I just checked and I can build a complete Duna/Eve probe mission (4 experiments, landing legs and so on) with 20 parts and 6 tons.
For such small craft, launch windows especially to Duna are much less of a concern, since it is fairly easy to add another 1-2km/s dV.
But you already built that giant thing, might as well test with that directly.
If that is the challenge/mission you want, go for it.
Worst case, just load an earlier save and try something different.
Hmm, maybe I should have stuck the engine on the front of the plane like it did with the Valkyria III, that way the wings would have been pointed in the right direction for gliding, and I'd have thrust slowing me down...
Guess I'll just have to see for myself.
-
I meant it more like, send probes first and then a giant ship with kerbals on board, not small probes on your giant ship.
My first interplanetary missions (probes) are usually below 18t and 30 parts (depending on installed mods of course), for the whole mission...
Eh, giving that the launch window for Duna effectively makes the delta V requirements as low getting to Minmus, getting to Duna orbit isn't my concern, it's the landing part that's got me nervous. I mean, can a plane glide effectively in Duna and slow down using wing imputs alone? Or do I need to fire the engine to slow down to a safe landing speed? Reason I don't want to send a probe first is that by the time it get's there, I'll have missed the launch window.
- - - Updated - - -
Don't you need two science kerbs to run the lab or did that get changed up? You must have hours and hours into the assembly. That's an awesome ship you've got there! It would be a pity to get there and not be able to run the science lab.According to the wiki, it says I only need one.
Spaceplane Carrier to Duna (Looking for constructive criticism and tips)
in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Posted
Essentially what happened on my trip to Duna.