Reiver

So, uh, is it still too late to ask for an increase to the impact tolerance of the cupolas? I had a parachuted section touch the ground at a ~30 degree angle, have the parachutes all cut accordingly... and slam down, with the cupola exploding. The cupola was holding the pilot. It would also help make the rover configurations a little more sturdy when they run into things. I'm not talking a massive resistance (Though I note the command pod is 30ms/s, for comparison), but less prone to explodeyness would sure be nice on such a pretty part. Aside: I love love love those new base cross-pieces! The way it manages roof attachments is sheer brilliance; well done! Them and the new flexible tubes make me a very happy man indeed.

Oh, this is lovely Any objections to it going on CKAN?

Actually, that rover reminded me. Could the cupola be made to have a slightly better impact tolerance? Being at the front, it often gets scrapes and bumps when you're rovering, which doesn't help - but more troublingly, I've found that when the first corner of a base touches the ground, all the parachutes evaporate - which can lead to the thing smacking the ground just while 'settling'. And given you might have been steering the base with the only Kerbal in the base being in the cupola at the time... I get that as a 'cupola' it shouldn't be super-tough, but the actual use-cases for this mod as the only properly shaped 'cockpit' to put Kerbals into (if they don't have a command centre on that particular base segment), it seems like it would be helpful?

You know, I really like that drill mount. Also: A 2.5m rooftop connection is awesome for the cross-join. So many possibilities - I'll try to get a picture up tomorrow.

You know, I really like the idea of the + simply being a little square - that way you can integrate it into a nice long facility: --+-- And then add the | ones on afterwards with the slow-rollin' rover legs. Mostly, it'd help them fit better into your launch configurations; even if the sides are straight up and down it'd be sufficiently flush to fit into a Mk3 cargo bay or a 2m bicoupler rocket stack. Going substantially bigger is pretty, to be sure, but starts to stretch what's a reasonable rocket launch; I've always admired how this mod managed a grounded approach to launch complexities. ... that said, if it included a 2m circular roof 'attachment point', that'd be a great place to have a greenhouse dome... or a fuel tower... or a cupola... Edit: ...Or if you're playing RemoteTech, the 2m drone that acts as a remote command base! It's always been a struggle finding where to put it; at the hub of a C&C Martian base would be fantastic.

The Mk1 basic cockpit could do with a little love. The question is, could a revamp go as far as adding a Tiny nose connector to the front, so you can slap all and sundry nose-cones on it? That's been a long-running bugbear of mine. Breaking the nose off should be traditional, after all.

Man, this is awesome. My full credit to you Quiznos, these parts are fantastic! Is there a wishlist I'm allowed to add to? My most recurring desire I can think of is a nosecone in the same shape as the new NCS nosecone adapter (Or slightly shorter if you like; that nice curve is the key!), but with a teeny tiny cargo bay instead of a fuel tank. That way you can stuff in batteries and drone cores and OSCAR-Bs with Fuel Cells on board... you know, those auxillary bits that end up cluttering up your nice smooth lines otherwise To keep with the theme, it'd also be neat to see an air-sample nosecone (I was so very annoyed when they took that out, even though I'll grant the new flight computer nose is kinda cool itself); especially on dual-boom aircraft it'd be nice to have something useful to mount on the wing that isn't carrying the autopilot. And finally in the more-similar-to-your-current-projects... a 1m-mounted electric propeller engine would be lovely. For those Eve propeller planes, see?

Heeeey... As the silliest little enhancement ever, could the Science modules telescope slide to point outwards properly when the module is activated to do some science? Totally pointless... but it'd look cute

So, I've been thinking of making a new Kerbal profession, namely, 'Colonists'. They'd be cheap to obtain (Presumably via a mission structure if I can't rig the KSC recruitment page to do it), but all but useless until they'd earned experience enough to be minimally competent. You know, something like 0-star: Tourist 1-star: Functional (able to count as 'doing work' for various parts) 2-star: EVA capable (No flags or surface samples, of course) 3-star: Vehicle command (No SAS or anything, but scientist/engineer level steering) 4-star: Repair wheels (Because a rugged frontiersman is going to eventually learn how to do the odd repair, y'xnow? ) ...and potentially a science/engineering style multiplier available to be plugged into life support Greenhouses and the like, to represent improved productivity in such administrative tasks. The idea being that these are the dudes you send to 'fill the ranks' of any hypothetical space station or colony base, leaving your specialised (and exponentially expensive!) Engineers, Pilots, and Scientists do do the tricky stuff. You know, like engineering, piloting, and running science labs. My problem: I've no idea where to start. I'd thought it'd involve creating a new line in Experience.cfg and then adding lines to the relevant parts via ModuleManager or the like, but it seems such lines simply don't exist. Where does the game track the capabilities of what specialised Kerbals can do? Is it strictly inside the engine? I'm a little lost where to even look.

I'm finding they judder and 'drag' on the ground a lot like a broken wheel does, though they're still intact as far as I can tell. Is this a matter of overloading, or because the wheels aren't directly perpendicular to the earth?

For what it's worth, I figure that needing to mine for ore disqualifies a station as being 'closed loop' at all; you've simply exchanged the need for external resupply of Supplies for resupply of Ore. It just happens that Ore is accessible from the place you're parked on. For a planetary habitats mod, this seems entirely reasonable - what you've prevented is the ability to run indefinitely (ha) in a vacuum. I'd be totally fine with greenhouses reaching 90%, and then algae+mining operations letting you reach 100%, with the 'losses' being supplimented by Ore. It still means your space stations need supply runs, but lets your planetary bases do a little farmin' of the soil. Which is the point, right?

Those wheel-legs are fantastic. Full kudos on that design, man And yeah, good luck on the 3.75m tricoupler. I suspect my design would need to be padded out wider to make it fit entirely neatly with landing legs on, but that just leaves more room for the central rover, right? I'm happy either way, but the idea of a truly massive colonisation vessel does please me greatly.

Regarding the 'inverted' design: It's not nearly as pretty. I didn't manage to get a screenshot before KSP crashed last night, but both designs require a certain amount of 'bulging' out past the diameter of a true 3.75m part - but while roof-side-out is a bulge, bottom-side-out ends up with awkward spiky bits (the corners of the bases) poking out, ending up with a star-shaped profile. I guess you can make a coupler for anything if you try, but the look just isn't as nice.

Regarding the airlock issue - on pondering it, I feel that's more what Cupolas and Command Modules are for, too. The roof hatches are a reserve/emergency access (And needed from a game mechanic perspective), but the real doors are in the command modules. They've even got proper modelled doorways and everything! They are also small enough that they may well qualify as suitable airlocks in and of themselves, come to think of it.

I'd envisoned it working like the current 2m version - you break the ships apart in orbit, and land them individually. It also looks tidier, because you see the habitats while it's in-flight rather than their bottoms. The idea of the 1m internal bit also amused me to no end That said, I might have a go flipping them over tonight and see where we go, eh?

ahahahahahaha 3m TRICOUPLERS WOULD WORK There's even room in the middle for a 1.25m stack! For, uh, carefully sized companion rovers, or support satellites, or something. Or, y'know, More boosters... Whatcha think, oh modelling maestro?

Those wheels are cute! Do they end up extending to the same height your 'normal' landing legs for standardisation purposes? I also assume they're balanced to be rubbish /rover/ wheels; all slow and expensive to run? They're for housemoving, not exploring, after all Actually looking at the model, I'd half expect their suspension to retract all the way up as the legs extend, too. Is that a challenge to animate? Idly: Do you still plan for a KAS extendible transfer tube? Not the end of the world, I'm just curious and loving this thing far too much. Final thought: Nooo, please don't change the MkII capacity. 2x greenhouse kerbals can feed 4 people, right? A single MkII part provides accomidation for all. If airlocks and bathrooms are an issue, that'd surely be an extra part, because you might have only one airlock to multiple accomidation rooms, and I see the habitation modules as the 'housing' rather than the entrance/exits.

That thing is gorgeous! That said, I've come to appreciate the colour scheme of the very first one - pointing towards the black to fly to space makes so much sense I wonder how hard a re-colour would be with my terrible artistry skills, hm. Do you know how we'd use the bump map in KSP? I'd not seen such a thing for a navball before.

VTOL: Hm. I would argue that the Harrier was subsonic, and the Yak had something closer to a thrust-vectored main engine and then a pair of boosters at the front, which is probably best represented by shoving an actual turbojet on the back if folks so desired supersonic flight. Then you could rig up a thrust curve that's optimised for low speed & low-mid altitudes, and caps out just around the sound barrier - plenty fast enough to poodle around with as a VTOL, but if you're trying to VTOL your spaceplane you'll be wanting a supporting Rapier or something, and leaves VTOLs being balanced while doing what they want to do most - lots of thrust! If you did this, I'd suggest running the same curve on all the VTOL engines, so you don't get weird thrust imbalances as altitude climbs. It's a little gameish, but probably simplifies an awful lot of a hard bit of design work to start with. Cockpit: I guess I can see it. That said, it looks like it had a 'normal' nose curve going on, then suddenly tapers out to make it longer still, which isn't generally how the Kerbal stuff goes. Were it to continue to blunt, I think it'd be more American-ish. The Ion engine: I understand that NFP does things a bit differently to stock. I'd suggest considering how much surface area you're throwing around vs the stock Ion's rear panels, and going with that - preferably at similar ratios of thrust & ISPs (which, let's be fair, are already pretty fantastic), because Ion engines scale linearly with surface area - there's no 'economy of scale', because the limitation is ion pressures within the engines themselves. I've been continually tempted by another engine, too, though I guess it wouldn't technically need to be a MkII: the turborocket! It's a turbojet that burns fuel and oxidizer to heat inflowing air without relying on the air for an oxygen source. Picture a turbojet, but burning Oxgyen alongside its LiquidFuel and thus running on Duna and Eve before one unlocks the nuclear jets... It'd make a nice stepping stone to the nuclear rockets and rontgen, but like I say, there's nothing stopping it from being a Mk1 part (Unlike your more exotic MkII designs here, which are wholly logical in needing the 'extra space' for their use). I'd assume this is outside the scope of your parts pack? But then, you've got little surface-mounted jets these days, and they're not technically MkII either... Just a passing thought.

Gah! Brain-typo. Braino? Whatever I meant the fighter-type cockpit is somewhat excessively pointy. Is there a reason? The engines look lovely. Though I would note in passing I find it a little odd that the VTOL thrusters are built to operate at optimal thrust at Mach 1.7 alongside the Wheezely; I guess making their own thrust curves to be optimised for low speeds and altitudes is a bit too tricky? Likewise, I feel the MkII Ion engine is either not showing its stats right, or a little insane - is it really meant to be an order of magnitude more thrust and twice the ISP? That... doesn't seem right, even with the dramatic electricity demands.

nooo not inflatables, I much prefer the campervan designs! (We should totally have the habitat parts produced by a campervan company. I don't know why the thought amuses me so much.)

Hey, speaking of. Why is the fighter-type engine so... pointy? The nose looks a little extreme. Was there a reason?

Because the angles (and tendency to be pointing towards the ground) makes it very prone to accidentally being blocked despite what looked like decent ground clearance. I should try that things IVA out again, come to think of it... now the capsule is bigger I wonder if it's got a better view downwards

oh, this is exciting And I love that plane! What propeller is that?

My general assumption is that you'd follow the TAC reactions for TAC, right? Or does Universal Storage change up the TAC formulas?