Hagen von Tronje

If you mean is RO good enough that if Squad had developed it internally and marketed it as $5-10 DLC, would I have bought it? Probably, I bought several Mount & Blade expansions that were more or less the same as a total conversion/overhaul mod by the developer and think they were pretty good. RO already exists and is free, but on the other hand if Squad released an "official" RSS with highly detailed planet maps, named features (i.e. if you visit Olympus Mons, your biome is Olympus Mons, etc), and integrated visual and environmental physics upgrades (detailed and animated Jovian atmosphere, real wind storms, etc), I'd pay money for that one feature provided it would be compatable with existing mods (or mods were equally easy to develop for it so that a strong modding community were inevitable). The main thing I find myself craving, whether it's stock or RSS, is surface detail.

With KAS, you just put a pipe connector port on each vessel then have an EVA kerbal connect/disconnect the pipe (integral to the connector, no need to bring a pipe item). For that matter the EVA kerbal can bolt on the connectors as needed so you don't have to orient vessels any particular way. Ground pylons can be used to extend pipe as far as reasonably needed or provide a buffer if physics are being unkind to direct connections between ships. The winches also function as docking mechanisms, so you could use one of those as a flexible hose. By far the simplest method of doing fuel transfers IMO. And frankly better looking as Rocketeer says, I much prefer a simple hose/pipe hookup. I strongly advise against leaving ships hooked up via pipe without KJR, though. The physics loading on stock tends to rip things up if you do this, KJR's physics buffer softens it enough to be pretty safe with stable structures though. Never leave them connected via winch cable though, that ends badly no matter what.

Depends on what it has. But even if it has nothing but some remaining dV, you could still: - Dip down to 95km to do a visual inspection of the surface, possibly leave it here as an "Eve cam" for future use - Dip it down below 90km to find out how much fun it is to enter Eve's atmosphere - Shoot it out to Gilly if you'd like to see the tiniest celestial body (not cheap on dV though) - Maybe drop it into Moho encounter, capture is difficult but a flyby isn't unreasonable if you can exit Eve orbit

This is my "Tower of Power" unit, used for supplying fuel and power for permanent installations on atmospheric bodies. The tank and thuds are just landing gear, removed via stack separator, then picked up and disposed of (KIS).

Shot in the dark but FAR flight assistance can do this to you as well.

Sure. It's just that the cave always leads to an explosion.

Thanks Sal, after old man has a nap I'm going to install Kubuntu and see how things go. Hopefully smoothly and I don't have to bug you with anything.

I spent most of my Sunday not playing KSP, but troubleshooting KSP. To my continuing bafflement, it would appear that installs that were under the memory limit before and stable for weeks can decide at whatever time that they need even more memory than that on startup, and become impossible to start. Maybe it's the save file growing, maybe I'm just flying too close to the sun and this is breaking things in creative ways, but it's going from innocent crashes to major gamebreaking glitches, like the atmosphere permanently disappearing, and I don't think it's fair to ask people to troubleshoot an install that I've not only modded to hell and back, but modded the mods in (nor do I think I want to put in even more hours to troubleshoot much further along these lines when the memory cap is always a threat). Either way, much as I like to tinker, I don't like to play guessing games about whether I will get to play KSP today. The solution to me seems pretty obvious: switch to Linux x64 client and enjoy the luxury of practically unlimited memory. Obviously I have google, I can see instructions on how to install Ubuntu written for people with even less knowledge than myself; but I've seen several players mention they switched to Linux for KSP, and I'd like to know how that worked out and what was the best/simplest approach when your goal, in the short term at least, is just to play KSP in peace and use the hardware you paid for. Questions: - Seems common knowledge that Ubuntu is the most popular distro. Any reason to choose something else, or anything I should know about distros relevant to KSP? - I have an SSD and HDD. The SSD runs Windows and games that benefit from an SSD; I'd prefer to install Linux to the HDD for now so I don't have to worry about competition for disk space and KSP doesn't seem to benefit from an SSD anyway. Is it difficult to run both Windows and Linux on the same PC for this purpose? - Once I get Linux installed and KSP installed for Linux, is modding it and playing it going to be pretty much the same as on Windows? It's not that I'm a Windows fan so much as I'm getting kind of old and don't like surprises. Given that I never see Linux or Mac versions of mods, I guess it must be the case that KSP's internal file structure is the same regardless of OS? Sorry if this comes across as gripy, I don't mean it. I don't actually blame Squad or anyone else for a heavily modded install getting clunky, just exhausted from reinstalling dozens of mods from scratch only to keep bumping into the same problem, so I figure why not solve the problem the most direct way.

I'm using Raster Prop Manager, ASET, and B9 cockpit props, and some custom edits to put more functional instrumentation into all cockpits/pods. When I fly planes in this career, I typically stick a JSI basic camera into the nose so I have a takeoff/landing cam. Some advanced cockpits like B9 and QuizTech have integrated landing cams, but I haven't unlocked those goodies yet. Trying to land on a runway in a stock Mk2 cockpit is awful, clearly not made with IVA flight in mind. I've got a few cockpits installed with no MFD panels, but if they don't have great visibility or some other redeeming quality I cut them from this install. But I completely agree, it's not only satisfying, I have learned a lot by doing it this way! If there's one thing KSP "realism" mods and IVA flying teach you, it's that astronauts/cosmonauts are stone cold badS to do what they do.

Yes, primarily because part count is such a gamekiller. If having a ton of struts didn't hurt your performance at all, I'd say "who cares, space tape", but the feasability of craft that certainly should be capable of working is limited by part count, and KJR is a prime way to reduce part count. But the big one to me is the physics buffer on load. This is a straight up bugfix (well, bug band-aid). Nobody wants their craft that were motionless on save to impact the ground with catastrophic force on load, that alone makes KJR a "not playing without it" mod for me.

Did my first Mun flyby in an "extra hard" career game, using TAC LS, FAR, etc, and done entirely from IVA/EVA. No getting out for a view, I fly from the inside only unless something in the interface utterly requires that I go to outside view. All piloting is done with RPM props (and huge "props" to RPM, B9, ASET, etc, for making this not only possible but fun). Val almost died in the attempt, I was stuck on science, having harvested everything on Kerbin I had reasonable access to (greatly reduced science rewards), and just barely unlocked solar panels (needed to stay alive without bringing a rocket full of batteries), so this was pretty much a do or die situation for my career. She got back to Kerbin with less than 1% on all life support and reentered going nearly 3km/s with no heat shield (good ol' service bays!). The materials bay unfortunately broke up on splashdown, wasting maybe half the science I gained, but I considered that an acceptable sacrifice to get her home alive. Fortunately I finished two lucrative contracts and still got most of the other data home safe, so it was a mostly-success, and apparently at the limit of what constitutes a plausible munshot. Never been so tense as watching the speed bleed off on reentry, hoping it's just enough to not lose my favorite pilot and probably tank my career (most of my remaining funds had been spent on upgrades and the ship necessary to make this trip). What a relief!

I like that they introduce a valid and practical motive to create long term bases and stations. However, they are poorly balanced, they produce a really crazy amount of science. I find they feel closer to being balanced with things like TAC life support and greatly reduced science gains introduced, as well as career mode where you can sell science, but in either case they have the potential to be a lot more fun than they are. It would be nice if they had integrated scientific instruments (which would require moving instruments around in the tech tree, which is also fine, endgame science instruments just don't make a lot of sense unless you just want to sell science), and even an integrated antenna via shielded port. It's a big part, what kind of engineer can't put a thermometer in this? For that matter, it would look pretty awesome having integrated vents for atmospheric sampling and other visible instrumentation on the exterior surface. Would also be more fun if the lab counted up a percent of results for a celestial body, across biomes, and generated a fixed science based on how many you've collected. This would give a strong impetus to not only place the lab but to do further exploration around the planet/moon to make the lab more effective. Exploration is good. This would also solve the problem of the lab eventually needing to be pointlessly replaced by another lab in the exact same place when it burns through its allotment of experiments. Labs should also only count one per surface and one per orbit. A very silly and very effective technique it to simply bomb the flats of Minmus with small landers containing just a lab and instruments and antenna. You can have as many of you like meters away from each other and generate hundreds of science. That's the real balance problem. The lab should last indefinitely but only allow one per body and one in orbit above it. Again, this further encourages exploration rather than cheaply harvesting the low hanging fruit. I'm not sure how I feel about stock life support since I worry it will make the game even harder for new players to get into, but it really adds so much to labs. The imbalance is nearly entirely addressed by the difficulty of maintaining the installation long term, so you really can't time warp to unlimited science and have to "earn" it. Well, that and restricting yourself to one per body. Nothing for anyone to feel guilty about, though. Is it "cheap" to science bomb the Mun? Of course. It's also your prerogative, if you're tired of grinding science, you should do whatever makes you enjoy the game more. You didn't cheat anyone out of anything, you adjusted the situation to your preference.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Navball This has some great information on the navball's functions and the terminology we use with it. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Maneuver_node And here's a similar one on maneuver nodes - maneuver nodes are simply planned directional burns to adjust a trajectory in a desired way, and they're actually a great learning tool! In a sandbox game*, if you place a ship in orbit, you can click the orbit and create a maneuver node, from which you can adjust the trajectory along the paths described in these articles (pro/retrograde, anti/radial, anti/normal), and the game will provide immediate feedback on how this changes your trajectory and orbit by showing your predicted orbit after changes made. Toying around with it can really help you visualize how orbital physics work, or at least it helped me quite a bit! *The function is of course available in all modes, but in career you have to unlock it first.

The small gear bay at least is great. Best light in the game for stock, sit flush with wings, low profile, my only complaint is that it makes other landing gear look bad by comparison. Even most mod gear don't have inbuilt landing lights (and none as powerful, surprisingly), so the design on that one is A+++. If more gears are made/brought up to that level then I'll be very happy.

...you are aware that SAS can operate on engines with gimbal, on RCS, on wheels themselves, and anything else that generates force, right? SAS only has omnidirectional torque if you specifically gave it omnidirectional torque. If you give it directional controls, it will use those, and only those, because nothing else is available to it. I don't know what you mean by "manner in which it operates", but I can tell you SAS will not invent brand new magical forces to compensate for what you don't give it, so yes, you certainly can change the resultant behavior of SAS systems by designing a rover that only permits certain forces. It's really bizarre that you keep saying "everyone" agrees with how SAS works when it's not even clear that you understand the difference between SAS and a reaction wheel. I imagine you probably do, but you conflate terms regularly and aggressively and the entirety of what you've had to say has been built upon this extremely narrow understanding, so who can really tell? But I beg you, don't elaborate. I don't think I could hear "in case you haven't grasped it" one more time without gagging. That thing I said about being patronizing? Yeah. It's all I can stomach, I'm out.

SAS torque doesn't exist. SAS is a system that can act on forces you make available to it. You build the craft, you decide what SAS can and can't do. I also don't know what you mean with this nonsense about rover design is irrelevant, tests are irrelevant, etc. You made a thread titled "how does SAS work on terrain" in a rover. You were told by people who have tested a whole bunch of rovers that it depends on rover design, and you should test it. You directly contradicted those assertions, because physics, which you proved with an irrelevant test (your words). So what's wrong with this picture, guy? Maybe you don't mean to, but you come across as extremely patronizing. You can choose to be offended by that, but in the end it only hurts yourself! Either way, good luck with your rovers.

All you've demonstrated to me is that you know how to design rovers that handle badly. I'm not seeing any test results, I'm seeing a tale from a guy who has no details, much less images, craft files, or anything of substance. If you're going to claim that someone who's driven completely around multiple planets doesn't know what he's talking about in a surface vehicle, you really should bring something to the table to back that up. It's not that you're being directly impolite, it's that you're telling people with literally hundreds of hours of testing and photo albums to prove it, along with detailed reports on their own tests, that your small scale test that nobody's seen is the only valid one. Really guy, if you know more than Claw about how rovers work, write a tutorial. With all the griping that goes on about how hard rovers are to drive I'm sure a lot of folks would really appreciate it.

Thanks, I got to tell you I really respect your circumnavigations. You've driven even more than I have and you've done it stock, that's impressive stuff! Everyone: Eve circumnavigation has begun, and I've got a surprise this time: all IVA driving! In an amphibious rover that goes 60m/s on Eve and enters and leave the sea at 35m/s! It's a tropical holiday for Hagen as I cruise around the equator of hot and sunny Eve, my favorite planet, so I hope you'll join me as I see the sights on the queen of all planets! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/130281-Elcano-Challenge-As-Long-as-it-Takes

Eve circumnavigation is underway, first album posted! This one's going to be special: besides being an equatorial route and a whole new rover design, I'm going it all IVA, Manley Mode, from start to finish! No F2 unfortunately, I need the HUD to show the map and prove location, but future attempts with RPM cockpits may look at a no-HUD run. I've also given the OP a much needed update, migrating much of the vehicle discussion and expanding upon it with the new vehicle catalog, detailing the rovers I drive. Also if anyone has any great ideas for circumnavigational stunts, I'm open to suggestions. I can't guarantee I'll do every insane idea but I've got a lot of driving to do still so who knows how low I'll go to keep it entertaining?

My current Eve circumnavigation is real-time, because it employs aerodynamic control surfaces and becomes highly unstable at physics warp. Which is why I still have no updates worthy of posting, Eve is a really huge planet. My time elapsed there is going to be my real time investment...which is a little uncomfortable to have staring me in the face!

I still do not think you get what I'm saying. I am not saying the reaction was what well-informed, intelligent people should do. I am saying that, surprisingly enough, the world isn't populated by well-informed, intelligent individuals, it's largely populated by completely average joes. Failure to take into account that average joes are numerous and irrational is itself irrational; it doesn't make you smarter than them, it makes you naive*. Fourteen certainly is young, and he should have all lenience because of it, but it's old enough that if he can't piece together what he might have done to prevent this, he needs coaching ASAP. He's a few years from bearing sole legal responsibility for all his actions, whether the world is fair or not he should probably get a handle on that for his own safety. Keep in mind that in 2015, taking aspirin or a butter knife to public school is a good way to get expelled. It doesn't take great imagination to determine that a homemade electronic device in a beat up metal case will send people who make rules like that into a tailspin. *Just to be clear, this isn't intended as an ad hominem against you - I use "you" in the nonspecific sense.

Really? So he's smart enough to make a clock but not to figure out that making it look like a Hollywood bomb and taking it to school with the alarm set is a dumb idea? I don't buy it. I was a kid once and I remember very well how things I thought would be hilarious were not so well received at times - but I was not unaware that a reaction would take place. I also don't buy that you don't understand it, since the very words before that indicate precisely that you do understand that. People get their knickers all in a twist for nothing, your very words. You know it. I bet he knew it, he's clearly not an idiot and no mention was made of his suffering from a total disconnect with reality. Doing things to provoke said knickertwisting is a bad life strategy, as I and many others have learned the hard way. I'm not saying that what took place is just. I am saying that he should have known better (and now he does, unfortunately), and more importantly, one of the adults involved should have really known better. You also seem to think that I don't sympathize with him - I do, more than probably most here, because I know exactly how it feels. But with said sympathy comes the knowledge that he was probably his own worst enemy that day.

What he did was...not the action of someone who has thought his actions out all the way through. Yes, if you walk around school with a metal briefcase full of wires leading to a big red clock and an unidentified white packet, you can expect that somone is going to be ignorant of what you are doing, and understandably so, and will alert authorities, who will have no choice but to treat it as serious until proven otherwise. That is an entirely foreseeable outcome; I wonder why at least one adult who saw it prior to the incident did not say "Hey, I better hang on to this for you until later. And then we're going to discuss more nonthreatening design aesthetics for your future show and tell projects." So sure, I support young aspiring engineers of any race or religion, and think they should have all freedom in exploring their interests. I also think that by their teenage years they should apply some critical thinking skills to the most probable outcome of their actions.

Alexustas also made an IVA for the Mk1-2 command pod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/129315-IVA-1-0-4-MK1-2-Pod-IVA-Replacement-by-ASET-%28WIP%29

You specify that you used a vehicle which exerted "vastly excessive torque". I submit that this test does not distinguish whether the bad advice is to use SAS, or to employ (probably centerline chassis) torque on rovers if your chief concern is not rolling over. SAS most certainly works on control methods other than reaction wheels; I believe it can act on wheels themselves, and I'm very sure it can work on RCS, engines, and control surfaces. Also worth mentioning that I prefer to place stability controls such as downthrusters or control surfaces at the extremities near the wheels. I'd venture a guess that this behaves differently under SAS than centerline torque does.