MaxwellsDemon

Successfully soft-landed a rover on Duna! Even more impressive (to me, at least) because the atmospheric entry did not go as planned, so it was a bit of a nail-biter. It's transmitting the science data from the entry and then pausing to recharge-- necessary, since I landed at sunset-- before starting to investigate the Red Planet. The orbiter did not manage to make its planned orbit before running out of delta-V, however, so data coverage from that perspective will be spotty. Fortunately, there are two more probes inbound (on slower, more economical trajectories), so that's not a total loss.

Recently, I've been transferring a group of stranded Kerbals across the Munar plain to a waiting rescue vessel. It's taking a significant amount of time, partly due to the distance from the wrecks to the rescue vessel, and partly because there are six Kerbals to move by EVA... Sort of wishing I could tell this group of three to move together, and then that group of three to move together, for instance, turning six individual EVA movements into two. (Yeah, I know I could've landed closer, but that's just how it worked out.)

How come I can fly multiple simultaneous missions in space, yet I can't get two individual Kerbals to walk side by side? (Not usually an issue... but when I'm trying to load multiple Kerbals on a ship that's a kilometer away on the Munar surface, it gets a bit tedious...)

Not much to report here... still collecting half of my space program staff from their Munar strandings...

I made the embarassing discovery that a basic design fault was the cause of two vessels crashing on the Mun... half of the fuel tanks are liquid fuel only, so once I ran out of oxidizer, that was it! I'd picked the tanks because of their shape... now I'm feeling like a moron. (I was puzzled because it looked like I still had fuel, yet nothing was firing... duh...) I dispatched an uglier-but-better-designed ship to pick up the various stranded Kerbals. Sigh.

Blargh... didn't have a good evening in KSP. Val EVA'd to a Munar Arch to mark it with a flag, but since it was a longer trek than anticipated, I thought I'd just have the lander pop over and pick her up. Mistake... I didn't have a pilot left on board the lander, and it dropped out of the sky. The velocity was low enough that it survived the hard landing (minus a couple of solar panels), but it's sitting on its side. So, I launched a rescue mission with two kerbal pilots aboard, intending to 1) drop off a pilot at the crashed lander site and 2) pick Val up, but had a hard landing which knocked out the main lander engine. D'oh! It can get to orbit and back to Kerbin with its secondary engines, but it's going to take a third rescue mission to clean everything up, I think. Jeb was on his rest cycle, but I think it's time to call him in and get him to straighten things out...

IMHO, the answer is "top-down design." Start with what mission the ship or station will have-- for a station, it might mean answering questions like, "is it for scientific research? For a refueling stopover? For a rendezvous point? For in-space construction? For tourist accommodations?" (Or perhaps some or all of those?) Perhaps you could build a "command core" and then add "wings" onto it, each dedicated to a particular mission or purpose...

Maybe it's not the first time, but Jeb confirmed his status as the king of KSP yesterday in my career campaign. Over Minmus, while attempting to land at an anomaly site, Jeb noticed that an EVA report at that location was needed, so he stepped outside. Unfortunately, the ship was maneuvering at the time, and Jeb lost his grip. He was unable to get back, as it was expending more delta-vee than he had in his EVA jetpack. So, he did what any self-respecting Kerbal Chuck Norris would do: he killed his sideways and vertical velocity and managed a stand-up landing on Minmus without benefit of a spaceship. The flag he planted was named, appropriately, "Jeb's Landing." The lander itself aborted to orbit, went once around, and landed nearby to pick him up.

I like "Scarab," principally because I tend to name my designs after Ancient Egyptian themes, but it's also a semi-obscure "Battlestar Galactica" reference.

Did a mission to Minmus to fulfill multiple contracts and give some Kerbonauts some experience, and orbited a couple of survey satellites to scan for ore-- the start of the larger plan to set up an off-Kerbin refueling point.

Here's a book I found immensely useful in my understanding of the physics of space flight: To Rise from Earth by Wayne Lee https://books.google.com/books?id=WAuXNwAACAAJ&dq=to+rise+from+earth&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIqruU8t37xwIVhlGSCh3Wqgz7 It's very thorough without getting bogged down in the too-technical details (and it's an interesting book besides).

I ended up launching three, rather than two-- one on a "fast track," one on a fuel-sipper route, and one down the middle of those two. (I learned my lesson from my Science Sandbox campaign to space out the arrival of multiple probes, lest one burn up in the atmosphere aerobraking while I attend to another one...) This also will allow me a spare for an Ike landing if I'm successful with #1 and/or #2. Kerbal Alarm Clock is set for all of them. It's all good!

I realized a good Duna launch window is close upon me, so I hustled to put together a Duna orbiter and lander/rover. A test launch revealed some weaknesses, which were corrected; then the revised version was sent around the Mun and back to Kerbin on a test run. Everything looks "go"... launch of two probes to Duna scheduled for later today!

Plugging away with 1.04 when I can. I don't get enough free time to play it in order to get tired of it! My primary problem is concentrating on "work" when my brain is thinking about a design for a Duna rover...

I've seen this a couple of times recently, though in a bit of a different context. In one case, I had just come back to a vessel from another one, and there was an odd white disk sitting sort of askew right in the docking port. I decided that it wasn't "really there" and ignored it... when I maneuvered the vessel, it went soaring off! Weird. Then, a few days later, I went to pick up a rescuee from the surface of Minmus, and there was one on the ground next to her... again, once things started moving, it went zooming off. (I wondered if the Ship of Lights from the old Battlestar Galactica was lurking about somewhere...) (I have Distant Object Enhancement, and I have recently been experimenting with -force -opengl, so if those have something to do with it, it seems logical.)

I am having very similar issues; they seemed to start a few days ago. I just looked through my files and realized I had MechJeb installed twice for some reason, once in the KSP root directory and once inside GameData; I don't remember doing that, so I wonder if it came along with another mod I added? Anyway, I'm in the process of extracting MechJeb and reinstalling it to see if that helps... UPDATE: Removing both instances of MechJeb and reinstalling it appears to have fixed the problem. I'm not clear on how there came to be two versions of it in the first place, though.

I have noticed this as well-- all of the rescuees are female. It's not as important to me as what their profession is, as I like to have a mix of pilots, scientists, and engineers, but I did notice it as an oddity and wondered if it was the "rescue the damsel" thing. I do have Asteroid Day installed.

I haven't even tried 'infinite fuel' myself. The weight of fuel vs. weight of payload considerations and all their repercussions are so much an integral part of spaceflight that I can't imagine it otherwise (my enjoyment of "Star Wars" -style dogfighting notwithstanding, but that's after a substantial and willing suspension of disbelief)... I'm free with the "revert," though. But again, it's largely a "sandbox" game. Everyone plays as they like. Consistent rules (apart from self-imposed limitations or challenges) are only useful in situations involving competition.

A Munar orbit rescue (really, rescues have turned out to be the main source of my Kerbal recruits-- why spend money to hire them when you can just pluck them out of space?) and a few more satellite launch contracts. One of the launch contracts turned out to be impossible. I matched the plotted orbit in Map Mode almost precisely, apses and nodes and all, but the inclination plotted was not what was stated in the contract; but when I altered the inclination to the contractual specification, it still did not complete the contract. I think the Kerbal lawyers goofed on that one.

This is very similar to the concept of my station, though divided into two... what's the added benefit of a second station to you, rather than doing it at a single station?

I poked around in the tutorials for a bit, but honestly what helped me most was to A) download a keyboard map, start launching stuff and see what worked, and C) poke around the forum here when I got stuck.

Didn't have a lot of time yesterday, but I fulfilled two satellite launch contracts. Not the most exciting things in the world, but easy money.

I did in my late Science Sandbox campaign; it functioned as a rendezvous and refueling station for my anticipated Duna mission (which did not actually come off before I ended the campaign...) As the size of my Duna complex exceeded my launch capabilities, I launched it in three portions, only partly fueled; they each docked with the station in turn, topped off, and then were assembled in the correct sequence. (One of the reasons I did not go ahead with the Duna mission was that I found at that point that I was unhappy with the way I'd designed the complex and wanted to start over... but the proof-of-concept worked just fine.)

The modding community of KSP is a big reason the game is so great! Squad built a fine foundation, and a lot of clever and imaginative folks are joining in.... why restrict yourself?

I'm on the fence there. On the one hand, I get very goal-directed, and getting through the tech tree seems to take forever (as it did in my Science Sandbox campaign)... but on the other hand, once I was through it, I was like, "Wait, there isn't more to the tree?" So you're probably right-- it's not so much the XP system, it's the fact that it's running at a different "velocity" than the tech tree.