Kyrt Malthorn

August 10, 2016

@Brandon Kerbin, if what @FreeThinker said is correct and you do have Near Future electrical installed, I do as well. What FreeThinker meant was that KSPI-E modifies itself if Near Future is present so they DO work together.

Working warp drive example incoming!

Disclaimer: In all seriousness this ship probably actually sucks - there's probably something easier, more efficient, etc, etc. Remember I'm still learning this too. This is the first thing I've found that works, hey. Also, warp travel and potentially stranding 1 kerbal is all this thing is capable of. This is the first thing I've seen Jeb reluctant to get in the cockpit of.

I pinned the rclick menus for the critical parts here. I'm using the ISX fusion reactor/hull (the four attachment nodes that come with that, I slotted with interstellar tanks for LqdHydrogen for use with the Vista). The Vista is on the bottom, and the warp drive* (heavy version) is on top of it. Above that I stuck a dusty plasma fission reactor, then a thermal generator*, and finally a command pod. The only other parts in play here are a pair of radiators. They seem kinda OP, they're tiny yet they satisfy more cooling requirements than many of the huge ones. I'm guessing the small ones get upgraded with high tier tech nodes... Ooor maybe FreeThinker has a bug to squash. Either way, the VAB Thermal Helper text turns green when you have enough cooling for your stuff.

Other than that, I removed all the resources from the reactor except for He3 and Deuterium, and I think the Vista had room for more Tritium and Deuterium too. That's why I pinned this stuff and took a screenshot - you can see what I did.

*marked parts I tweakscaled. Tweakscale is recommended for KSPI-E, otherwise you're stuck with parts in only one size.

I put this in orbit. I was lazy, so I used a SpaceY engine and infinite propellant cheat to get it there, but this thing isn't all THAT heavy as "huge launches" go. Another option is Extraplanetary Launchpads for orbital construction.

Okay, now... We have a lot going on and not a lot of screen real estate. Once in orbit, you can rclick on your warp drive and 'Start Charging'. But don't even bother in low orbit. It will charge, and your fusion reactor will give you a warning about running out of juice (shown above) but don't worry - it'll keep running fine. It takes a while to charge, but you can timewarp until it's full. The problem now is, even when fully charged, your warp drive will short out if it doesn't have enough MW's of power.

2 very important things I finally learned that had been holding me back:

- The speed of light (1.000c on the warp drive menu) is the most energy efficient speed. The further off target from 1.0c, the more power needed.

- When you are deep in a gravity well (i.e. in low orbit) your maximum warp speed is capped. And since lower speeds take more power... In short, around heavy planets it's very likely there is a threshhold below which you simply can't generate enough power with a given craft to go to warp at all.

Notice on my last screenshot, on the warp drive menu, I was getting a MaxAllowedThrottle of 0.010c in LKO. I didn't have enough power to run that extreme low. (P.s. the Reduce Warp Power button steps your current warp throttle speed toward 1.0c.)

The solution? Higher orbit. Periapsis doesn't matter, only your current altitude (and the Vista on high-ISP mode does nicely). Notice now at almost 7000km**, I have a throttle limit of 0.063c, matched my throttle to that speed, and the current power for warp is 20MW - which is just within my reach. I can now go to warp!

(( ** You might not actually need this altitude. I'm using KScale64, soooo that threshold MIGHT be about 6.4x higher than you'd need in the stock system. Wild guess. ))

Now, finally, activating the Warp Drive does something other than complain about not having enough MW (and wasting all the time we spend charging the warp drive...).

"Is that Kerbin?" "Yup." "It's so small..." "C'mon Jeb, you've been interplanetary before. Just admit you're impressed this thing is fast."

Select a target (actually a good thing to do before you activate the warp drive) and just point at it. You can in fact turn at warp speed too, in a kinda jerky way. When your rotation comes to a stop, the warp drive will register your new heading and bang, you're going that way. I happen to be experimenting with Outer Planets Mod so we're headed to Tekto here.

You can timewarp at warp speed (warpception?) but watch out, don't overshoot. This thing is fast and the only throttle controls that work are on the warp drive rclick menu, which you can't access from map mode. Not that's the end of the world if you do overshoot by a few light-seconds, it's just a bore to charge the drive again.

So this little ball is Tekto apparently.

Here's the catch with warp drives: maintaining your direction and velocity from your point of origin, which can lead to ridiculous things like this - to even get close to an orbit, I'd need about 30,000 dV. Even Interstellar tech won't get you that kind of dV. The reason for this is, like a moron, I warped across the solar system. In other words, my velocity is that of kerbin's orbit, and my direction is the same as kerbin's on the other side of the sun. So my solar orbit overall is now retrograde. It would have been smarter to stay at Kerbin until the Kerbin and Sarnus systems are aligned and roughly heading in the right direction (or pick a different target...) I'm finding with warp drives, it really behooves one to consider the starting variables, and given a goal (i.e. "orbit Tekto"), and devise the best place to warp to such that you end up with a sensible orbit. It's helpful to know things like, what is a low, circular orbital speed for this planet? Then I know if I'm in a really odd eliptical orbit, I wait until a point in my orbit that my velocity is about that speed, then warp close to the planet and boom - I'm much closer to that circular orbit, without spending ANY dV (fusion reactor fuels aside). I don't always know how to make it work efficiently, but it's making me think, and I love it.

At least switching prograde and retrograde orbits only requires warping over to the other side of the planet (or star...). That's efficient, when it's what you WANT to do.

Hope some of this helps. I'm wordy, I know. I tried to do KSP Interstellar for ~~Dummies~~ Non-Nerds, but I think it became a nerd rant. It's also way past my bedtime.

August 10, 2016

I know how it feels, trust me! Only last weekend (and in sandbox, never mind career, so everything was upgraded as I'd max tech tree) did I get a fully functional Vista/ warp ship running.

I'm posting from a phone now, I can give you specifics and screenshots later.

I first went looking for the reactor with the single biggest power output - it turned out to be one of the fusion ones, I think. Now, fusion takes some power to maintain that fusion reaction, so if it ever dies, it needs another power source to 'reboot' it. So, I added the best fission reactor I could find, as well. My total power output was something like 25gw. That's what it takes to run this crazy stuff.

Vista was pretty straightforward but it does use up a little of the same types of fuels as the fusion reactors (at least when they're both left on default settings, D-T fusion). If I'd done a lot of galavanting around the galaxy, I wood have needed extra fusion fuel - but it worked fine with just the Deuterium and Tritium stores in the fusion reactor itself.

Note that this all needed quite a lot of cooling. Pay heed to the Interstellar Thermal Helper widget in the VAB and it will tell you when you have enough effective radiators.

The final piece was of course the warp drive. You have to start it charging and wait while it greedily sucks up all your power for a little while. This triggered a warning message from the fusion reactor (remember, it draws some of that power to keep fusion going) but it never died on me because I still had the backup fission reactor.

Now learning to use the warp drive effectively and not end up in a spot that demands tons of dV to achieve a sane orbit.... that's what I'm trying to do now.

August 9, 2016

Quick question: has anyone got this running alongside any of the Kopernicus mods adding extra star systems / interstellar travel?

August 8, 2016

12 minutes ago, Francois424 said:

Must have mods :

My personal mod that I try and keep updated (I'm not a genius at it, but I usually manage, even if I need help from forum members every now and then). It features the old mods "Kommit Nucleonics", "IonHybElec_Pack", a self-modded Nuclear Reactor, "Interstellar Radiators" (man did I spend days on making these work, they where SOOOOO outdated), And a few of the "KOSMOS" mod parts... Most of them aren't even updated anymore so I probably have a few hours of work for my next campaign. It also has a two 2-man "pod" (one of which is a He-111 glass cockpit, the other looks like a truck cockpit), it's not really a capsule, but it does the job.

I will be adding Outer Planets Mod (OPM), and a few parts from "HomeGrown Rocketry" (since the 64-Bits version is here, I'll fit them), Scatterer, some volumetric clouds or EVE (Will have to browse later)

Kerbal Engineer

Kerbal Alarm Clock

TweakScale & Procedural parts

GPOSpeedFuelPump -- which I learned from 5th_Horseman's (now HMV) videos

ScienceAlert (that is, if it is still supported, haven't checked in nearly 6 months, but I was quite fond of that mod).

Kerbal auto-level-up mod, and the one that display their stars and professions.

SurfaceLights -- Gotta have MOAR LIGHTS (and I love them)

FuelTanksPlus & ModRocketSys

HyperEdit (Not for cheating, but really for testing... Makes testing landers so much easier... A must have for me now).

RemoteTech & Origami Antenna (as end-game, "can reach near everywhere antenna")

Parts from KAX, B9, SXT, Kerbonov_Pack, and NearFuture Solar -- Some of them no longer supported or where changed/remove in more recent version. Hence me having to update them.

I do not think I am forgetting anything, and once I get all of this working, I will begin my first campaign since March 2016 (most likely in September).
Started watching KSP videos to put me in the mood (Thanks 5th_Horseman) and it works like a charm.

FYI - ScienceAlert is not currently working in 1.1+, which is quite sad. The closest thing that's up to date now is ForScience... and it automates the science-getting and moving around of science. Personally I'd rather do it myself the stock way than 100% automate it.

Also, it's now a stock behavior to show kerbal's name/profession/stars when mousing over their portraits.

August 8, 2016

11 hours ago, DaMachinator said:

I play KSP 1.0.5 which means 32-bit which means I cannot install much more than 100 mods. Nonetheless, I get several OOM crashes a day. They are sighed over, closed, and then I restart the game.

I installed KSP Interstellar but for the life of me I have no idea how to use it.

Personally 64bit 1.1.3 has been serving me quite well. With "only" a hundred or so it's been quite stable for me. The wheels thing hasn't really reared it's ugly head for me, I'm not sure if it's just my system or my crafts. (Prefer much lighter rovers and planes.)

KSP-I is enormously fun but definitely a challenge to learn. I just got my first warp capable ship that actually WORKED yesterday - in sandbox, after trying off and on for months. Warp drive was ALL it did, but I learned, so hopefully I can do it again when I get that far for reals.

August 7, 2016

So I'm confused.

I can't find a single part that holds MaterialKits, sooo...how does the workshop make anything?

(Also my game crashed a while after launching with this installed. I'm not even sure it was OSE that's causing this, or a mod conflict elsewhere, but I was tinkering with a the OSE workshop at the time. I do know I have a more recent KIS version and that might be why.)

August 7, 2016

@nightingale, this mod is SO useful. Just wanted to say thanks!

August 7, 2016

On 5/6/2016 at 11:19 AM, Warezcrawler said:

I've been working on getting it to work in 1.1.2 since the author is doing other stuff

I think it is somewhat running now. I've hardcoded some elements to get it working again, so speed is fixed, but at least it is roving.

Try it out: AutoRove 1.1.2

Thank you @Warezcrawler! And @Wotano for the original. I never actually used this mod until very recently / 1.1.3. Working great for me. I installed and tested it thoroughly, no issues found whatsoever! It even works with rescaled planets (I'm using KScale64).

I did discover some tips if anyone else is thinking about trying this though...

1) Don't visit your rover while it's traveling through water. First off it'll start on the sea floor and take a veeeeerry long time to float to the surface. Aaand then it won't autorove because it's situation is now splashed-down instead of landed. (Not that rovers generally cross oceans...)

2) This mod pairs VERY well with Waypoint Manager which will let you nab the longitude and latitude just by placing a custom waypoint on the map. The waypoint list shows the coordiates in degrees/feet/inches but the waypoint edit dialogue gives it in the same decimals that Autorove uses.

August 5, 2016

48 minutes ago, Glaran K'erman said:

And to the OP, I would highly recommend starting to add mods in bunches of 2-3, even better if you add them one at a time. Generally mods are well maintained and sometimes depending on their function may even work well past their version number. That being said problems with mods happen all the time so adding them into the mix slowly better allows you to find those one or two that just seem not to want to work for you. I currently have exactly 40 mods all working quite well together! I am sure with a bit of time you'll be able to get all the one you want working sooner or later.

Yeah, I've now rolled back to the basics for mods and adding things slowly, with testing. I just got excited to start playing the super-awesome-career-with-every-imaginable-mod. I was able to quickly check off simple parts mods that are working fine, now I'm slowly going through the more advanced "gameplay features" mods one by one, in order of coolness priority.

I just wish I had as much time on my hands as I did years back, when I had the patience to accrue over 200 mods on another game (TES:III Morrowind) which worked seamlessly together.

August 5, 2016

I may have gone a liiiiiiittle overboard....

I love mods.

I actually... haven't played with many. To date most of my games have had a few essentials (KER, KAC, sometimes KIS/KAS) but for the most part I've been attempting to experience the game in a very stockalike way. I kept promising myself that when 64bit KSP was supported, I'd get into plenty of mods! I had quite a list.

I finally started a copy of my KSP folder and began adding mods, finally booted it up today and boy it took a while. So I started a sandbox game to test things and make sure they work and... umm. Well. After fussing with a few parts, the game crashed. This got me to glance in my GameData folder and, umm...

MY GOODNESS I had a lot of mods...

KScale6.4, Extraplanetary Launchpads, KIS, KAS, KAX, Kerbal Krash System, KW Rocketry, Lithobrake Exporation Technologies, Modular Rocket Systems, MkIV Spaceplane, the entire suites of USI (+full MKS and life support) and Near Future, KSP-Interstellar Extended, Planetary Base Systems, SpaceY, SMURFF, Engineering Tech Tree...... and a dozen other little things.

This isn't a bug report/support request or anything. I really should have known saddling an untested game with THIS MUCH all at once, something wasn't gonna play nice.

Anyone had a similar experience?

Bottom line: __________________________________________________________________

For those of the community who mod a lot, I wanna hear how you guys go about deciding what mods to throw together for a given playthrough! Share fun stories and whatnot. If you had a really fun career with a particular combination of mods, let's hear it!

August 4, 2016

I love it when a plan comes together.

Those moments when, after putting in hours of planning and scratching notes onto stickies and covering my wall with the mission parameters, each phase of a carefully constructed mission unfolds. I do enjoy quick flights and streamlined designs, but it's the big ones - often multi-craft or involving bases and orbital stations - which get me hyped to continue and satisfied to complete.

July 29, 2016

Ahhh... Back in 1.0.5, when the new contract type came around - the ones that generate points near already landed craft? Well, I thought, why not put a rover on Minmus and test out these contracts. (Questionable, I know, but I was just getting into rovers in 1.0.5 as in previous versions heat transfer bugs usually caused all my rovers to explode.) Built it, flew it to Minmus, landed no problem. Undock. Uh-oh, it's stuck between the engines. That's fine, my skycrane has TONS of fuel, I'll just hop it over. By the way, I was lazy with my landing site and had landed on Highlands, not any of the Flats.

Oh, I shan't forget to mention that riding this multipurpose lander I'm using as a skycrane are seven tourists. And this was a hardmode game - I did NOT have quickload ability!

Got unstuck from the rover, but my re-landing attempt toppled over on its side. SAS torque was just not sufficient to point it in the right direction. Well, I thought, I'd just decouple the radial engines - I had one more the rover was blocking, and the SAS should be able to point the center stack high enough in Minmus gravity. Here goes!

Decoupled the radial engines.

Pointed upward.

Lost power.

Yeah. All my solar panels? They were attached to the radial engines.

Oh I tried to save those seven tourists. I tried everything. I tried flying a solar panel probe to link up with its docking port - blew up bumping into the ground one too many times attempting to dock. I tried skycrane with claw - was too tall. If the darn tourists could just EVA I woulda had a rescue, no problem-o, but nooo they're limited to crew transfer and seat warming.

I was so frustrated over this I deleted all the work I'd put into that hardmode (losing the tourists woulda bombed my agency's reputation eventually, and meanwhile it was taking up a number of contract slots).

July 27, 2016

In my current career, I rescued Edbles Kerman. Thought it sounded like edibles. But it gets better, I rescued his twin too.

Erbles and Edbles Kerman.

July 26, 2016

1. Check your high power engines are getting enough air intake. Notice different air intakes are efficient at different air speeds/altitudes.

2. Consider other variables at work. Do the high TWR planes have more drag, and are they flying at similar altitudes, flying completely horizontal or diving (getting some help from gravity)? Try to eliminate as many uncontrolled variables between test flights where possible.

3. Pay attention to the right click menus of your engines. They may not actually be producing as much thrust because - like air intakes - they work most efficiently at different speeds and altitudes. The difference between a wheesley and a whiplash is huge - they fly VERY differently.

July 26, 2016

"Deploy solar arrays and ensure they are receiving sunlight."

July 25, 2016

I've been on Kerbal hiatus for a while, since about the launch of 1.1, as I just felt like playing something with less... um... engineering constraints. But I knew I'd be back, and here I am! So starting a new stock-experience game in 1.13 (visual and informational mods only) I've started a normal difficulty game with the intent of putting kerbals on each planet(oid)!

My weekend consisted of relearning things from the ground up. I haven't done much science on Kerbin, since I found it easy to start gathering it from space. I'm used to playing hardmode with like, 30% science returns? This is cake. But I realized, hardmode really only limits this basic early stage, by the time you've unlocked half the tech tree there's more than enough science in reach anyway...

So, I've shot things at the Mun and done Minmus fly-bys, and I have one probe with a few cheap lightweight instruments headed for a flyby of Moho for some quick science (and to brush up on my interplanetary transfers).

I am, however, most proud of my little Mun program for now. I've had two successful missions, 2 kerbals each. My third I just landed has been a bit more daring!

Two rovers were launched ahead of time, and met up with a crew of four! Johning, Edbles, Gusdun, and Jesie Kerman (2 engineers, 2 scientists for redundancy) will be tasked with exploring nearby biomes over the coming days. While both rovers are fully equipped with science, one will be used primarily - the other held in reserve in case an engineer needs to rush over and fix some tires.

Ahh, good to be back.

Edit: is it just me or is my imgur link busted?

July 22, 2016

Well... technically yes? I was decommissioning my first ever space station, and was just undocking the last ship to take elsewhere, and was in map mode so didn't realize my deorbit burn was pointed through the middle of said decommissioned station / oversize space debris. It was a learning experience. And messy, explody, etc.

July 3, 2016

Darn it. I don't use mods that muss with contracts, I'm still playing a mostly stock experience.

Ah well. Totally understand having too many mods on your plate can be stressful. Take it easy.

June 17, 2016

The problem with percents of a day... is that days are minutely different spans of time, due to axial tilt, current place in its orbit, tiny changes of that orbit, so on and so forth... in our current system, leap days keep us on track for days lost on our calender for much the same reason, but there's also the leap minute to keep our strict 24hr day on track with the solar day.

Just saying, whatever length of time we arbitrarily pin on a day, is going to have shortcomings.

That's not to say I'd be against it. I'd rather divide a day into thirds or sixths, though - because the 'norm' is to spend a third of the day asleep, a third at work, and the last third flexible.

24 divides nicely by sixes or by fours or threes or twos. If you're wanting to find 50 percent of a day, odds are in everyday life you're more interested in half you're waking time. Which if you're working in percents of a day you end up with fractions/decimals.

So, personally, I like our hours. I could stand to count in hundredths of hours though (centihours?).

June 17, 2016

The problem is not many clocks count in thousands of seconds. And a thousand seconds is too long to accurately keep track in one's head. It'd be a fine unit of time (a little over 15 min) but...

Like metrics if you live in the U.S.....

Makes perfect sense but nobody uses it because it's not what people already use. Vicious cycle is vicious. Pardon my redundancy.

June 15, 2016

I missed the 1.1 train, only just now got here...

Ticket please!

June 9, 2016

1-5 - craft function specific. Drill and ISRU controls for mining rigs, engine modes for space planes, sets of engines for modular/reconnecting craft, etc

6 - science

7 - solar panels

8 - "radi(eight)" radiators

9 - antenna

In the early game with only a T2 VAB I bind either science experiments or solar panels to "breaks" - the other to "lights" unless the craft actually does have lights. By the time anything I build has breaks besides simple aircraft, I've probably unlocked the rest of the action groups. Planes, fortunately, don't have deployable solar panels.

April 16, 2016

Planning to play wit USI-LS come 1.1, so this should be very useful! Thank you for sharing your hard work. (I tried something along these lines for TAC, gave up, too many resources...)

April 15, 2016

I have a programmable mouse. Time warp +/-, throttle 100, and throttle 0 are all bound to convenient keys at my fingertips. I too moved translation controls to the numpad. I also have a programmable key pad as an option, but I haven't found KSP requires me to have THAT many keys. I've only used it to program little macros (like to hold down W for me for long distance rover or EVA treks).

April 15, 2016

1. No kerbal endures interplanetary travel times solo. Their habitable modules (If seperate) must be adjacent.

2. No unreasonable part clipping (clipping into a structural part for aesthetics is okay).

Those are the big ones. Others vary from career to career. In one I may be focused on realistic designs. In my current career I am allowing reverts, but disabled quick load: I can roll back quick missions, but long ones become committed.

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