Kyrt Malthorn

Fuel in the game is said to be liquid - it's density and usage in most engines seems to correspond to RP1, which is basically kerosene. It's very hard to compress liquid - especially in space, where the difference in pressure would be huge. However, liquid fuel and oxidizer also seem similar to liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. (Especially since hydrogen makes the ideal propellant for a real life nuclear engine, and the NERV in KSP uses the same liquid fuel.) These are both gases at room temperature. The way you compress them is by refrigeration - the gas condenses into a liquid. These are called cryogenic fuel. ...since in KSP they are called liquid fuel, if they are meant to correspond to hydrogen and oxygen, they're already cryogenic and as dense as they're going to get. Realistically these fuel tanks should actually be drawing power for active refrigeration. They don't. I generally think of the LF/O in KSP as a microcosm rather than any one kind in RL. I would also say fuel stacking just isn't realistic. If you want more fuel realism, check out the RealFuels mod and the Stockalike Realfuels Configs, which make stock engines use real world fuels without changing their performance.

I put a Minmus base down. Still hard mode. :) [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/1MPSnBq.png[/IMG]

I'm doing well in my 1.0.5 Hard Mode I think. :D [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qc4l4on.png[/IMG] And aside from the late Sigwig Kerman due to an untested reentry vehicle, no kerbals were harmed to get me this far! A good chunk of science I brought home today from Minmus - not an extensive biome hopping, but I started with a flag contract and another to "measure the temperature on Minmus near <this probe>". This probe had a thermometer but no means of moving, but I took the contract and sent a dedicated mission. I didn't realize those contracts gave you one location at a time and led you through several biomes - but it was convenient and I had a perfect amount of fuel as it turned out. Fergee Kerman is my first kerbal to set foot on Minmus - or any other celestial body! - in this savegame. I was a bit nervous sometimes. No reloading, no going back... tons of science riding on a reentry I was only reasonably sure would work... But it did! :D Details of aforementioned mission to Minmus: [imgur]Yl6ES[/imgur]

[quote name='wasml']@Kyrt Malthorn - The cloak should persist through saves, vessel switches and coming into and going out of range.[/QUOTE] Yay! Thank you. I'll definitely be grabbing this when I have time, then. :)

Is the cloak condition persistent? Say I cloaked craft A. Craft B then came within 2.5 km of craft A. Would A still be opaque?

Several months back when I was brand new to KSP, I saw this mod and though, "Oh, that's awesome! But do I really want to do that to myself?" I decided no; I was still very green and didn't know what I was doing half the time, decided this wouldn't help me learn the game. But now, it's time to reconsider it for my upcoming realism / story career mode. :D Quick question. How does this mod track and increment hours of use? Does it only count that time that the vessel is active (vessels not active are timeless) or say for an engine, time that it's actually running? Does it keep track of this time logged for parts adding stuff to the save file? I'm asking so I know what my capabilities are in setting up a sort of scenario. Thanks. :)

[quote name='V8jester']My bad I just sent you here..... :blush:[/QUOTE] Technically, twice. It was an older post of yours in the KAX thread that got me here in the first place. ;)

Anyone know if this mod works with 1.0.5 and/or is being maintained still?

I'm playing with 1.0.5 career mode now and here are my takes. [COLOR=#333333]-reentry heat is worse Reentry IS a lot trickier, I'll admit, it has caused me to loose one kerbal in my hard mode game. It's not that its hotter, its that the upper atmosphere is thicker - you get that heat higher up - but far more misguiding is that the atmosphere is actually thinner nearer ground level. It doesn't slow heavy craft down enough to deploy parachutes on its own, so you end up needing an alternative; make lighter reentry craft, engine brake, or use drogue chutes or airbrakes. I like it, because it's more realisitic and makes me work a little harder to design things, and to certify them kerbal-safe. :) [/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333]-jet engines were pitifully nerfed AGAIN! [/COLOR]:mad: Jets really don't need to be super powerful to make a plane fly. Now the engines and intakes are optimized for different speeds - subsonic and supersonic. But they need far less intake air to work. So you can make really good supersonic jets without spamming shock cones. Space planes, if you're into them, will be trickier, but mostly because of the thicker midrange atmosphere. Drag is more of a concern than ever, but it's actually possible to build spaceplanes sooner because the panther is actually quite good, before you even unlock the ramjet. The ramjet and the aerospike now unlock together, and the aerospike is even better than it used to be. [COLOR=#333333]-no more fighter jet cockpit (or is there?) They did replace that one cockpit with one that looks less like a fighter cockpit, true. People have made mods to re-include the old parts. If you miss it, you can find them still. [/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333]-game is apparently slower now Haven't noticed. If you use a ton of mods, maybe, but I think that complaint is from the 10% of people who squeeze every iota of performance out of the game. It's now got better heat physics and time-warp physics are more accurate. For casual gaming purposes I haven't noticed anything slower at all. [/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333]-dont care for any of the "new and slower!" jet engines Moar boosters. :) I like the progression of jet engines better, though. Give it a try. If you have the disk space, you can even copy your current game directory before you update, so you can have your old game still if you don't like 1.0.5. Just r-click on the folder "Kerbal Space Program", copy, and paste it somewhere else on your computer, rename it to KSP 1.0.4. And then you can update without fear of losing anything.[/COLOR]

I experimented with making some barges with my career game, thinking I could haul a few tons of liquid fuel over to the other continent and use that as a staging area for airplanes doing surveys further from KSC; extend the range of my survey capabilities a good bit. Had fun with the concept, but the tricky part turned out to be getting the fuel to the plane from the barge. That either means docking the plane to the barge (iffy to an extreme) or using an intermediate docking rover. I'm powering everything with jet engines since I don't have rover wheels yet, so... I DID manage to dock a rover onto the barge. But I decided it wasn't really feasible just yet (hence no pics). If I were using KIS/KAS and other mods, I could build a real base camp on site and run fuel lines to planes. Noted for future mod games; this one's hard mode, stock parts only with only informational / visual / audio enhancements.

Has anyone seen the old exploration contracts since the 1.0.5 update? Such as "Explore the Mun" with several objectives, like "Orbit body", "Science from Space Near body", "Land on body", and "Science from the Surface of body". I used to like to double them up with other contracts to visit those same places. I haven't seen any in my current career, and I'm pretty far along, so I'm kinda surprised. Are the expanded record firsts filling the same role now? EDIT: I'm seeing one now. I was expecting one for the Mun, but since my first fly-by accidently crashed into the Mun and it registered a landing... I didn't get it. Now they want me to explore Ike.

Thank you rbray, this looks great and works without a hitch, at least on my system! The forest fires are out, no more soot clouds! ^^ I'll use this until more official releases come along. Although I think I'll hang onto the soot-clouds version for another time. It was creepy, but intriguing. I may have a story career premise that incorporates it.

So hey, are clouds supposed to be this dark sometimes? I am using a couple other mods concurrently, and I can't claim I know what might be affecting it. If I see it much more I'll try to replicate it on an EVE-only installation. Or maybe it's a feature because forest fires? Hehe. I had this occurrence in the evening, and for a little while in the morning, but it cleared up later: I hear you're already working on making the shadows adjustable so I'm not to complainy. I just think it's awesome that clouds cast shadows, I'm just wondering if cloud layers might somehow be shadowing themselves / silhouetted in certain lighting conditions, causing them to appear black?

I got together some visual and audio effects mods to apply to an otherwise stock 1.0.5(.1028) game, planning to start a hard mode game and go for personal achievements. I'll be able to start seriously playing the new version this weekend! Debating whether to keep a Mission Reports log.

This is my first time trying EVE - so I don't know if this is 1.0.5 or me being dumb, but I couldn't find any obvious answers. Installed this on a fresh KSP install, no other mods whatsoever, and it seems to be doing absolutely nothing. Do I need the "configs" download too? It really wasn't clear. EDIT: And FYI I tripple checked the installation paths and everything. EDIT AGAIN: I am a moron. It IS clear, I'm just blind and didn't see the instructions in the github page.

They don't have to be connected. It's be like a geosynchronous comsat array - several satellites with the same orbital period that can bounce signals all over the globe. Only the original dyson sphere concept was many, many satellites in solar orbit with massive solar arrays, which could beam their power (microwave or laser) to receivers that needed it. So for kerbal you'd start with an equatorial orbit, and start launching satellites into a predetermined orbit around the Sun. Until they have a dyson ring. More could be added to inclined orbits, all the way to polar orbits. For the scientifically nitpicky, the dyson sphere satellites were actually not in a typical orbit, but would be held in place suspended by the pressure of electromagnetic radiation (light) on their freaking massive solar collectors. KSP does not model this solar wind. Anyone who does this would either have to be ridiculously patient or use hyperedit. But they'd have the first kerbals to achieve the status of Type II Civilization. They would also have a lot of useless stuff on solar orbit, unless they used KSP-Interstellar microwave power transmitters. Then they could own everything.

A dyson RING is doable though! The original dyson sphere was not a megastructure, it was a satellite cloud. Also, as of new buoyancy, here's something I want to try: Build an underwater colony.

I'll play devil's advocate here. It's an option that can be turned off, and I believe that is as it should be. But, personally, I like to leave to leave that slider at 1. The slot machine usage of the contracts window bugged me. That wasn't realistic at all. How often does a space agency get the chance to decide what contracts or government grants are given to it? They can appeal, but very frequently a space agency's goals are driven by politics. Politics are illogical enough in the real world; imagine kerbal politics for a second. I kindof see the decline penalty as "decline of public interest" if you refuse to do things that've been pushed by kerbal science fiction or politics. And you're not without options; the new contextual contracts are much more interesting than the old ones. You can always wait, or keep funds in reserve to fly missions you won't find contracts for, but need to do. And when I want a game I don't have to worry about contracts much, I can turn off the penalty, increase funds returns, and start the game with some kickstart rep. I may be a minority in this thread, but there are other players out there who don't mind that the option exists and needn't make a fuss.

I made (most of) a working all-stock dump truck. Courtesy 1.0.5 for the tube, very useful. Single-use. Hoping this will make it easier to dump random junk into the ocean to test its floatiness.

Attempted to weigh down a rover to see if it was feasible to drive on the ocean floor. My rover wasn't nearly heavy enough, even with ore tanks in cargo bays. So I strapped a big ore tank to the back. And the moral of this story is: CoM goes down. Also, need moar mass. Gosh, you'd think if you drove a CAR into the water, it would sink, right? Right?! What does it take to sink a tank in KSP! I get it that crew cabins and rocket fuel are less dense than water. But even with heavy ore tanks this wouldn't go down. I wonder which is less realistic: the density of kerbal structural parts, or the buoyancy settings.

I saw that! That's what inspired me to start experimenting with this stuff. So I cobbled together a rover with a seperator crane arm in front and a counterweight in the back, that can drive over to the ocean and drop things to perform experiments. My first such was my first undersea probe. "Seesea 1" had one of the new Juno engines, a fuel tank and air intake sized to it, a tiny probe core, a couple RTGs to keep it alive, and a couple of airbrakes. As has already been suggested here, "reverse flight" does work perfectly. Also, although Seesea was buoyant enough to ascend at a very respectable 5-7 m/s, deploying the airbrakes brought that ascent to about 0.5. Looks like aerodynamic hydrodynamic drag will be a very useful tool. This also agrees with what's already been suggested in this thread about "flying underwater". My tendency to want to fly up as one would in a plane, however... that was hard to conquer. Oh, darn it. I was hoping cupolas would sink, being a very heavy single kerbal command pod... and rather looking the part of a submersible window, eh? No matter! Hey! Can anyone figure out how to make a propeller? I know I've seen things with awkward stock bearings, and maybe other exploitable spinny things. They seem way beyond me, but it would be a darn shame if the buoyancy models drag, but "stock helicopter" type designs were impossible to use as submerged propulsion.

Poking around in the new cockpit IVA. Noticed the "sun roof" as seen from the outside, that's cool. But... Switches? Joysticks? A navball!?!? Considering this is pointed up at the cockpit's "ceiling", is this supposed to be a spaceplane docking view/control area?

Have you made anything that floats yet? Sinks yet? Something that has some kind of ballast control? Something that didn't operate as expected in water? Any rules of thumb for estimating volume, so that given the mass we can guess at buoyancy? Let's pool our experiences and start launching stock ships, seaplanes, and submarines!

After completing a contract to test a decoupler in a splashed-down situation (I LOVE the new contacts!), Val discovered it worked as a rocket jetskii. ...It didn't work for very LONG, but it did manage 88.2 m/s (171 knots)!

Whew, finally some time to play. I put a rather...large*... station in orbit of Kerbin. I only have the tiny docking ports so far and I'm still limited to 240 ton launches, but they already want 12 kerbal capacity and 4,000 units of fuel. OKAY! So "Unity Station" is now in orbit, and I used every kilogram of the launchpad capacity. It would have broken if Jeb had snuck any extra snacks in his pocket. Fortunately it was unmanned, so Jeb did not. What WAS manned was a two-part launch of a command module and munar descent module - kindof apollo style, except I had to use two seperate vehicles and top off the transfer stage from Unity Station. Poodle is the transfer stage, it has the lander perched on top of that, and the service module with the 2x Ant engine return stage is docked nose-to-nose with that. Receeding in the background is Unity Station. Bob and Val are headed to the Mun, soon to be the second kerbal(s) to see it up close, and one of them will be the first to set foot on it! Mission control assured them they were flipping a coin to see who, but everyone knows they need Bob's opinion of its surface, and Val's piloting skills in the command module. So excited for new goodies 1.0.5 will bring. Until then we're raking in all the science we can, so we can play with the new parts ASAP! *EDIT: Okay, its not large, but it was my first sortof heavy/bulky/awkward launch situation in this career.