Kyrt Malthorn

I was planning a mission to Duna, consisting of an interplanetary transfer vehicle, a hab with greenhouses (USI-LS w/ permadeath) for a crew of six, and a lightweight lander intended to put lucky kerbal on Duna and get him back to orbit after. Then I had an epiphany. The transfer to Duna or back home is only about 65 days. I have to plan for over 300 due to waiting for launch windows. So, what I'm going to try to do tomorrow is plan the greenhouses (and if I can get away with it, much of the heavy habitation stuff) into a module I can detach and leave in Duna orbit. Future missions would only need to take supplies for the transfer itself, and fertilizer to run the greenhouses that are already there. This would free up weight, I could use the same interplanetary vessel to bring other payloads, like reusable landers and ISRU equipment. Oh the possibilities...

I Download from Steam and then copy the install directory and install mods only on the copied one. This also gives me a place to go bug testing in a pure stock environment, only drawback being Steam cant track the hours i play. Wait... I'm not sure i I Download from Steam and then copy the install directory and install mods only on the copied one. This also gives me a place to go bug testing in a pure stock environment, only drawback being Steam cant track the hours i play. Wait... I'm not sure i Even want to know.

Is this round of tourists just exceptionally overweight? You should charge them more.

Dres? Eeeloo? Wherever you like? transfer windows are usually the determining factor for me. Be advised it takes a long time to get to Jool so if you don't mind having a couple missions going at once, launch one for Jool and do some to Duna, Eve, etc in the meantime.

A tidbit of my own story coming to KSP: a friend tried to get me into it a good while back. They were describing to me their challenges building and learning to fly spaceplanes, and I was curious about it from a technical standpoint (I love science) but thought it sounded like way too much work to be fun. Moreover as soon as I saw a screenshot, the little green men thing was very offputting to me. I forgot such a game existed for at least a year. I found it again when I ran across a website with an author who won my respect with science, and then used KSP as demonstration tool of orbit mechanics. I was curious enough then to try the demo. I feel like KSP has this weird mix you don't really find in many games: it has a huge learning curve, it's very technical, it lends itself to enormously dedicated realists. On the other hand, when your rocket flies apart over the launch pad, you sit back and laugh it off, because it has a silly sort of over-tone that helps out gloss over the places it fudges realism. Some people go super serious and get all the realism mods... some people just do silly things or pay less attention to realism and just do whatever feels fun. KSP walks a fine line of having aspects that could easily irritate both extremes of the spectrum. And it does it very well. It's engaging enough for those of us who learn the essential skills (or choose mechjeb) and get the enormous sense of accomplishment that we can all learn to love the parts we thought we'd hate. That or mod it away. Or at least, that's how it seems to me In my nnarrow little view. P.s. got my brother into it because I kept talking about it in an excited fashion.

I routinely play with science at 40 percent returns. This I find is the lowest I get away with without forcing lots of science on Kerbin. I do build really simple rovers to collect the KSC science eventually. Alternatively I sometimes do 30 percent and give myself some starting science (20 skips using flea hoppers the first couple missions and 40 makes suborbital science reachable on first mission). I've considered using as low as 20 percent - at which point using the MPL gives you as much science as stock 100 percent - but take note that experiments from Kerbin rarely count for enough science points to even register in the MPL and get converted to 0 data. These kind of losses make 30 percent the lowest I'll go. I have this love-hate for the MPL. I love it in that it gives new reasons to send bulky stuff far away places - I hate it making things too easy. I'm in the boat with the slow progressors, to the point I'm tired of science mining the moons of Kerbin and I'm setting my sights on Duna, and I've barely unlocked gigantors and twinboars. I think unlocked the MPL node mainly for the ladders. For this playthrough I'm using USI-Life Support / permadeath mode and a trip to Duna is daunting enough. I love it.

I'm still using fuel lines... a tad retro but I like that the fuel transfer only goes one way, Ie. .you know it's time to stage away the LFO boosters when they stop burning (can hear the difference) and they don't start eating the main engine's fuel. I need to design my launch vehicles kinda idiot proof. I'm newer to the game than most of the part rebalancing, but I find I don't use lights anymore. I used to use tons of them because I kept finding myself docking on the night side of Kerbin. Nowadays I've completely stopped using lights for anything but landers which need to hit a specific biome (when i don't have the luxury of choosing any landing site on the day side) and occasional aesthetic. Reason being, I got better at rendezvous and now plan my close approach just before reaching the day side of the planet. also I

Haven't seen this mentioned yet: the ability to see where kerbals have been from the list while placing them in seats from the VAB. Other than that... the ability to remove decouplers from the staging list, and the "action groups always available" difficulty option. IMO, action groups don't really make the game easier to play, they're just plain convenient. Further, you don't get those nuisances like "Darn it, I launched this ship before the last VAB upgrade do out doesn't have the standard action groups every other one just like it does! Couldn't they just wire ten buttons!?" And let's not forget the overall sstability.

Hello folks! I've been away for a while. Been back a little while, but haven't posted much here as I've mostly been dealing with the typical early missions in my new 1.2.2 career, my first serious attempt to conquer space since 1.1.2 dropped! It's a mostly stock game garnished with informational mods (KER, TWP, etc) and... USI life support. Permadeath enabled, all consequences for running out of supplies, EC are KIA. I have hab consequences set to 'grouchy' for non vets. I've had a few deaths... all so far due to life support, though the first two were because I took rescue contracts which spawned kerbals in mod parts that had no doors. (Until a kind soul pointed me to the mod that fixes that.) Another died because she was depending on supplies in the lander she was going to take to the mun... but Bob ate them all before she got there. (No it wasn't Val. So far all my orange suits are alive.) Anyway, I finally have something I tight was worth showing. Meet OrbiLab. My modular LKO testbed for learning the ins and outs of life support over duration, and perform studies on the effects of kerbals on space. Directly beneath the solar arrays, the part with a monoprop tank on one side and a supplies tank on the other, is the supply module. It's core is comprised of recyclers for up to six kerbals. A remote refuling probe is presently docked opposite the solar gigantors. On the nearer side, are two identical hab modules. Oh, and docked to that monoprop tank i mentioned earlier is my station tug - that block of RCS, and SAS with a probe core. That handles stationkeeping, module attachment/rearrangement, and has been an awesome little help.

The moment I learned modders had gone and added weapons and star wars paraphernalia was painful. Does that count or does it have to be in-game?

Innumerable thanks!!! @Merkov too. Now i just need to not starve Jeb.

My first rescue contact with my new career using life support. All consequences are KIA expect habitability, which is grouchy (veterans exempted from habitability consequence). My first low Kerbin orbit rescue contact spawns a kerbal in a Nom-o-Matic. Which has no hatch. Well, he's dead. And I'm in the hole for rep. Edit: aaaand the second contact (which I picked up to see if I could salvage my losses) spawned a kerbal in the viewing cupola. Which has no hatch. She's dead. Please, is there a way to disallow the game from using certain parts for spawning rescue contracts in? Sigh.

I originally was told about the game by an online friend who was getting into it. I think they sent me a screenshot and were describing their struggle to design and then learn to fly space planes. I was very dismissive. Got hung up on the little green men part and assumed the game was quite silly, which, pile that on the fact it sounded like an awful lot of work.... I didn't think it would be my thing. Like, a year later, I was pondering writing science fiction stories and happened across this website: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/respectscience.php This guy appealed to my interest in realism and managed to convey how and why Hollywood sci fi is so often unrealistic per real world physics. Plus he's witty and a hilarious read. I gobbled up everything on that website... And then I got to orbital mechanics. He used KSP as a demonstration tool. Also, he made an really early version (pre .90) orion drive mod. Which led me to watch Scott Manley playing around with said mod. I still haven't written any sci fi's. I haven't even landed on Eeloo yet!

So, I had dabbled in SCANsat prior to 1.2, but now that Kerbnet is here I'm quite content with the stock solution. I'm presently living happily with Kerbin and Mun each having a triplet of relay satellites. Having over a dozen probes other spacecraft with probe cores, sometimes anomalies show up... And sometimes they don't. It seems as though one given probe sees a handful of them, another probe might see the same ones or different ones. I found one on the Mun and landed near it - the lander probe core never saw it no matter how close it was, but the surveyor that marked it with a waypoint spotted it from the SOI change on. I'm wondering if this is limited to a vessel or a core. I.e. if I have 30 probe cores on one craft, am I more likely to find more anomalies, or would 30 separate probes do the trick? Does anything reset them so it's prudent to check again later? Do different cores have better odds? Do the old ore survey scanners come into play? Why isn't there a KSPedia page that gets me pointed in the right direction with definitive answers? Despite the rant, I'm mostly just curious. I'm excited to start finding some of the easter eggs I've never seen for myself, but I just wonder what it'll take to be sure I've got them all. Prior to 1.2 I've only ever spotted the closest few to KSC and one Mun arch. Today I've found the Armstrong Memorial with the help of my probes - yay!

Okay. Deleting the settings.cfg file did the trick and all listed symptoms went away. After taking the settings to my preference and display settings, I'm back in business. Thanks again, @sal_vager

Yeah uhh... being installed under "half life 2" thing? That's because I didn't know what Steam was when I installed it alongside that game from a CD back in the day. I thought it was installing in a company-named subdirectory so I have it a different name. It's an awkward quirk of the file naming, I know, but it doesn't currently affect any of other steam games. Two of your suggestions are already out. First time I realized these odd UI things I was running a modded install under F:/KSP/1.2/ - I keep my steam installation stock and make copies to this KSP directory where I have several versions. And thus I habitually launch directly from the KSP_x64.exe in that folder. I came back to my steam install to replicate the issue. I'll play with deleting the settings for when I get home from work Friday morning. If that doesn't work, I'll just hold out until I can verify cache or reinstall with a connection. Thanks for your time!

@sal_vager, you're right.... I honestly just expected a canned response, thanks for being understanding and helpful. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xl6818b0ptkx8lq/BugReport.zip?dl=0 I think that should work? lemme know if not. I crammed some cropped screens in there too so you can see my symptoms. I started a sandbox game (included in zip) in 64bit stock, and launched a stock Kerbal X to a Mun intercept. Saved it there, closed the game, cleared out the log files, booted back up, and loaded that game again. Triggered the sticky settings window bug (screenshot of 'no function' stuff), it cleared out when I went to the tracking station. Loaded up the kerbal X from before and got a shot of the intercept ui weirdness. R-clicked all the nodes to make their text sticky. Notice mun, mun periapsis, and mun escape text is down by my ship far away from the actual encounter. And then before I forgot, went to trigger the debug console spam...Learned something! The debug console spam is only present while the settings menu is stuck open. They must be related. Seems like there's a disconnect between the settings menu UI and back end? But I don't know if that's related to the encounter node placement stuff.

Sure, in a few weeks when I can get the affected desktop an internet connection again... Never mind, sorry for wasting your time.

I'm having some odd UI bugs. I wood have thought if other people were seeing these, they would be all over this forum. I'm running 1.2, updated from 1.1.3 via steam, on 64bit windows 10. These issues were first encountered in a modded install, but easily replicated in my stock directory (i have a couple custom flags in gamedata, that's it). These may be totally and completely unrelated for all I know. Issue 1. Enter any save game, I hit Esc, go to settings. Scroll down. Every setting button and slider after 'conic patch limit' simply says "no function". Issue 2. After the steps in issue 1, I click Close. The Esc menu returns but the settings window remains open, regardless of wether I click apply/accept/close, the window is stuck open until a scene change and doesn't appear to apply any settings - whether they claim "no function" or not. Issue 3. Any time I have a Mun encounter (other bodies untested, haven't got a vessel that can reach them), and the Mun is not in focus, I.e. screen is centered on my craft or Kerbin or anything outside Mun SOI, in map view, Mun periapsis and Mun escape makers appear in the exact same spot as my ship. Hovering over them displays all the usual mouseover info for all these nodes and my craft. It appears to move normally and encounter the Mun as expected, but these nodes are misplaced from the Mun fly-by prediction and located on my craft. Issue 4, or at least a clue maybe: alt+f12 debug console is constantly spamming "Exception: IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range." All the other debug console pages appear to be functional. Setback: the desktop this is occurring on has no internet connection (I had to pack it up and take it to family's house to use their internet to update to 1.2) so I'm currently unable to provide logs, save file, or so much as a screenshot. Nor do what I would normally do right off the bat: make a backup, delete the KSP directory under steam, and have it re-download a fresh install. Anyone have a clue what might be the issue and how to maybe possibly fix it without internet?

I.e. The high G Forces we're looking for. The contract only states they have to black out, right? Not that they have to wake up?

@Streetwind, if I understand you correctly, the reason my final formula was right even though I got there with a faulty understanding, was because T was already the sum of all engine's thrusts? Thanks so much! Isp combination was not intuitive enough for me to be certain of what I was doing. Edit: Never mind, I see i put *isp instead of /isp.

I sometimes fire the original three... And Val, just starting with enough funds to hire any four more kerbals from the astronaut complex. Otherwise the same kerbals get the same first accomplishments, every single time... Also I may have to look into this KSPTOT... Orbit stability was really killing me in 1.1.3, so I'm really looking forward to updating this weekend.

So I'm putting together a spreadsheet - in part because KER is not up to date yet, in part for learning experience. Something I've meant to do for a while. Need someone who knows what they're doing to check my math logic here. What I've got going on: I've got a table of engine data and rather than make a user type in their vessel's Isp, I have them place a quantity next to each engine type. These quantities are 0 if none. Might put down they have 1 skipper and 2 thumpers, though. So from what I can tell, the way to measure combined Isp with combinations of engine types is a thrust-weighted average. I guess because thrust and isp are both in relationship to exhaust velocity? Check me here. The formula I've found is: thrust / (thrust 1* isp1 + thrust2*isp2 ...). Since I'm factoring in the quantity of these engines as well, I fist multiply thrust1 by quantity1, so if quantity is 0 the thrust and isp of that engine is removed from the picture. And if they have 2 or 3 of an engine, thrust is doubled, tripled, etc, affecting the weighting of the isp. So where T= total vessel thrust, Tx, Qx, and Ix are thrust, quantity used, and isp of engine number x, this is my formula... T/(T1*Q1/I1 + T2*Q2/I2 ...) (formula runs through every engine in the list this way so it changes as soon as engine count changes) If I tell it I have 1 terrier or 100 terriers, it correctly tells me my Isp is 345, can someone give me test cases and answers to run through my formula?

Come to think of it, quoting was a factor... Sadly mobile is my only access to the internet for the months ahead. Thanks for the info.

What it says on the tin. Basically, I'm limited to browsing KSP forums with my phone right now. Across several (android) browsers I've had some weird issues when positing, apparently they stem from JavaScript heavy WYSIWYG editors and can crop up on many browser/keyboard combinations. If there's a basic mode I can't find it, but if there is, maybe there's a way to default to it?