Kyrt Malthorn

What mod gives those Mk2 service bays?

So for the last few weeks I've been tooting around restarting career mode play-throughs with various combinations of difficulty settings. (I have a bad habit of restarting saves a lot, in most games. Trying to break that one...) As a result of all this, I haven't had much in the way of personal achievements, or even much more than really basic rockets. Finally getting somewhere, this particular career I'm playing with about ~40% science returns and permanent death, but otherwise all the settings are at normal level. That said, I'm not using quicksave to undo my oopses, it's there for kraken insurance. And, well, when I broke the Mun and literally couldn't do anything because everything froze up except camera panning. Which is probably a very large kraken's doing. Remarkably, nobody's died yet this game! No, I didn't even quickload any embarrassing ones, I've just been getting better at building rockets... or very lucky, possibly both. My actually-noteworthy accomplishments... I managed to scrape together a three-seater orbiter with very low tech command pods; eeked into orbit with less than 200 m/s of dV to spare, but it was enough to do some rescues. Built a "science car" for trucking around KSC and collecting science - we all do that.. This was the first one that, for being low tech, actually bore vague resemblance to a car. I was also using my Kamilton Model B airplane to get science from Kerbin's various biomes, but it needed a bit of a boost to make the ice caps - so I gave its wings a serious lift to make room for some undercarriage radial decouplers and drop-tanks with plenty of fuel. Takeoff was worrisome but once I was in the air, it was golden. And after a number of fly-by's, I managed to create a viable lander that made a beautiful touchdown in the Mun's Highlands, where Jebediah got a serious boost to his ego. I wasn't sure his lander would get him all the way home again, but it did! I'm quite happy with the design, but of course will be moving on to bigger, better things.

I just rescued Haytrid Kerman from LKO, and she's a scientist... Not a scrap of stupid in her. If I ever get Enemy Kerman those two will probably mutiny...

The following questions pertain to a stock installation. I'm aware there may be mods that could be used to achieve similar things, like hyperedit and tree toppler. I want to know if they're possible with stock alone. (Answered) Question 1: Is it possible to move a craft in flight between save games? Note, this isn't about the craft file. I'm asking about a craft that has already been launched. Say you launch a rocket to Duna. Then you want to make a copy of that craft in mid-flight, or after landing, and paste it into your sandbox game for simulations without having to recreate the entire situation. Or to build a scenario. Use it for story purposes or something. Is it possible? I'm not afraid of mucking around in the file if it's complicated, I just want to know how complicated and what the pitfalls might be, if anyone knows already. Question 2: Can you create a craft file out of a launched craft? You launch your prize rocket. Then you go into the VAB and start fussing with the saved version, decide to leave the VAB and accidentally click to save the craft. You just saved over the ship you spent three days building. But there's one in orbit! Is it at all possible to copy a chunk from the save file and rebuild the craft file from whence it came? (Answered) Question 3: Can you undo tech tree progress? Say you reached the end of the tech tree and decide to trash all your tech nodes and start over, as if it were a whole new career. Imagine you didn't strip-mine Kerbin's biomes the first time around. Is there some way to reset the tech tree to your starting point? I realize these are odd questions but I have some ideas. I could probably go rooting around in the save file and learn by trial and error, but if anyone already knows, I hope I can avail myself of your knowledge and save myself a lot of experimentation.

Got a better idea... and I'm guessing thread deletion is for mods, because I can't seem to do so.

Well it wasn't technically IN KSP, but... on a whim I made a flag for my latest space organization savegame. I hope it shows up and works in-game. Edit: It DOES work! Mega-yay!

After getting very frustrated at a rocket design that was only making it suborbital 20% of the time, I got very frustrated and built a new suborbital hopper. On its inaugural flight, I killed Jeb, and his tourist passenger. So I went back to the old rocket. At least nobody had died in it. And shortly thereafter, Val died in it, with the tourist she was taking suborbital... I'm broke, have no pilots, and can't unlock a single probe core yet. Sigh.

I started a new career mode game with the following settings: Slightly more lenient than default Hard Mode, with the exception of science returns. I anticipate trucking to Duna and Eve with terriers. Engineer, Alarm Clock, RCS Build Aide, and Astronomer's Visual Pack are the only mods on this one. Wish me luck!

I thought I knew what I was getting into, when I comprehended that KSP is under active development. I was very, very wrong. See, I haven't been playing that long. I started with 1.0.4. Now I'm excited for 1.1... heck, I'm excited for the new features in 1.0.5! It seems that one's right around the corner. Which leaves me wondering what to do with myself. I've played mostly stock. Then I played with a few choice mods. I'm just starting to experiment more and more, there's so many potential directions I could go with a new career! But I'm not sure which mods will ever be updated for the new versions. And it's turning into a horrible struggle to decide what I want to do next, and whether to invest (on a separate installation that won't be updated) or refrain until updates, or play all stock so there won't be comparability issues. Maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's common. Or maybe KSP veterans used to be like this but have settled down with some personal policy for handling it. And don't say "play something else until 1.1", because I'm new, very much obsessed, and I'm not putting this game down. Even without mods I love it. (Though if I have to play without KER I may have to break down and relearn some math.)

Aha. So I did miss something. Shows me just how much I understand feebly grasp about life support stuff. I do hope TAC-LS remains compatible and/or updated with the upcoming updates, 1.0.5 and later 1.1. This mod is changing the way I play KSP in my present career game, and I love it.

Nope. The center section and 1:3 adapters are a large weld, all the docking ports were tacked onto the weld after; since its general purpose is to dock tons of stuff to it, that's kindof unavoidable, but I do read the warnings about what NOT to use UbioWelding for.

THANK YOU. So much. This is exactly the bug I was coming to see if there was a solution to - I realize this is one of those outside-the-box mods that's bug prone, but I'm very happy for what it does to my part counts so far! But I was having this very issue with a stock Mk1 Structural Fuselage. I had been trying different root parts and re-making the thing to no avail. I'm not afraid of tweaking configs, but without your post here I wouldn't have known what to look for. So following this example I was able to find the scale line in Squad's part file, and apply it manually to the instances of that part in my weld.

Today I launched my first serious attempt at an orbital shipyard with Extraplanetary Launchpads. This is the first ORCA line of space stations, and if it's successful, I may deploy more where they can be more easily supplied with parts mined from convenient places, such as the Mun perhaps. I haven't got the survey satellites up yet - there are plans to launch those... from ORCA-01!

Can anyone explain why TAC LS's so-called Sabatier CO2 and only outputs oxygen, and why water and energy are required as an input instead of being the product? Because according to online sources, the Sabatier process is: CO2 + 4 H2 → CH4 + 2 H2O + energy ∆H = −165.0 kJ/mol Or, Input carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen, out comes methane and water and the reaction releases energy. Out of all the life support mods, I like TAC LS most for it's attention to realism. So it strikes me as a bit incongruent, that or I'm missing something.

After clearly visualizing what I wanted to build today while at work, I got home and started a mission in my my scarce free time during the week. I learned (I hope...) I am not one of those geniuses or long-time KSP elites who can design things in 45 minutes flat. Sigh. KSP just isn't a game you can cram in between long shifts. I can't revert now, either; it's all saved over. And I'm using TAC-LS, which means I'm going to have to launch a rescue.

Ahh, my Duna mission - it went so smoothly, but in the end, orbital burns are quite forgiving and by-the-book compared to willingly succumbing to the gravity of alien worlds and atmospheres. What a chain of disasters. Things started to take a turn for the worse when the lander had a bit too much deceleration to do right at the end, and it toppled. Nothing broke so I thought, "okay, I can work with this." Samler and Bardrin Kerman are alive, the lab is okay, science may begin. So the signal is sent and Bob brings down the rover! It sets down just fine, just a little way the frick off target; he has to drive 314 km to the lander... Waypoint tells me at 20m/s that's 6 hours and 20 is a pretty breakneck speed. I should have played it safe... Bob became the first kerbal in an automobile accident on a planet other than Kerbin. He also became the first kerbal to die on a planet other than Kerbin, and the first kerbonaught I lost in the course of this career. Okay not the first I've victimized with my own ineptitude, but the first one I decided not to couldn't reload and undo. I made a quicksave. I quickloaded. Rover spawned inside a hill and spontaneously exploded. I couldn't prevent this, couldn't fix it, and I'd been only using the quicksave for far too long to go back... So, we mourn the loss of Bob. It doesn't stop there. After 100+ days carrying on a kerbal shorthanded, Bardrin and Samler attempt to take off skidding and point the nose up before any serious damage is done. .... and yeah. Scraped the engines and pretty much everything else off the lander, totally wrecked it. But they were alive, so...there is that. Time to cut our losses. We've done what we came for, our priority now is to get those kerbals home! The boys at the VAB thanked me for mercifully not installing a life support mod (yet) and rushed to design a replacement lander. They got it on the launchpad before you can say Kerman. Lessons learned, I think, this one is a success. Bardrin and Samler had a relatively uneventful trip home. ... Well. That's it. Curtains down. I have done what I set out to do with my first ever KSP career playthrough. I learned a lot, did a little of everything - lots left to explore, so much potential, so many ideas! But this ends my first space program. Tomorrow I turn over a new stone and start playing a slightly more serious / realism oriented playthrough. Likely with lots of mods, but I'm not entirely settled on what exactly I want to do yet.

It seems like a popular enough thing, popular figures streaming KSP and having an audience witness their victories and oopses - and they're all different. Everyone likes different stuff, too. I'm just curious to hear from this community what YOU think makes a good KSP streamer? (This applies no matter where they stream - livestream, youtube, twitch, or any elsewhere I haven't heard of.) EDIT: Apparently there's a difference between Youtubers versus streamers. I was kindof lumping them in together. Point taken: you kindof know what you're getting into with a youtube video before you start watching, whereas a livestream you really don't know whats coming, it's more spontaneous. Still, the floor is open to comments on both, I'm not booting out youtube-only. To those who say Scott Manley is a tuber, he DOES do livestreams from time to time. And then posts them on youtube too. If you'd watch a youtube video knowing only that it was KSP and Scott Manley, that's not much different than joining a livestream eh?

Finally all the pieces fall into place and I begin my mission to Duna! This represents a lot of firsts for me, as a player. - First Kerbals to leave Kerbin's SOI - While I have a probe in orbit of Duna, obviously this is the first manned visit. - First time entering an alien atmosphere with parachutes and intent to land. - First time attempting to put a rover on any body beyond Kerbin's SOI. - First time attempting a round-trip from any body beyond Kerbin's SOI. - First time (re) launching from any body beyond Kerbin's SOI. (If I can land.) I borrowed a Scott Manley trick and made my orbital period a multiple of Duna's rotational period - every so many orbits, I believe it's 8 orbits, my periapsis will pass over roughly the same spot on Duna as it did the previous day, and I'll use that to put down my lander and rover at different times but relatively close proximity. Or I may screw it up horribly. Who knows! FOR SCIENCE!

Civilian Population, Extraplanetary Launchpads, and tons of part packs. Really my biggest excitement for 1.1 originates not so much from the memory cap (though that will be a big plus), but the physics capabilities' increase. Higher part counts will mean bigger bases and space stations are possible, so I'll be picking up mods with functions that didn't work well with small bases, and required bases that I couldn't stand the lag on.

Civilian Population mod has - along with some large 1-part buildings if you can figure out a delivery system - some really big structural panels you might find useful.

Maybe somone could pull it off, but I expect it to be highly unstable. Couple reasons: - Things with insufficient lift have very little lift force to keep them from accelerating downward, at which point you need to aim more vertical and your plane looks more like a turbojet rocket. - The Mk2 parts will usually have their center of lift roughly in the middle of their own center mass. Then you stick and engine on it, generally in the back, and it has no inherent lift. The CoM travels back and the CoL is in front; this is an unstable situation. - Elevons have pathetic lift rating given their mass. Spamming them probably won't help much, as by the time you have any meaningful lift from them you'll have too much control and the gentlest nudge of the controls will send it a-flipping. - If you're allowed tail plane you might find yourself more stable flying sideways.

Today I am reminded why I hate mysterious torque. I have some odd requirements and bugs with this design that have teamed up to force me to abandon symmetry for some parts. It's the bulk of an interplanetary stage for an upcoming mission, I just need to put it in orbit (for the sake of convenience, I'm trying to get it up there fully - or at least MOSTLY - fueled.) The symmetry issues made building a semi-asparagus rig here a minor nightmare in and of itself so I'm REALLY hoping I can get away with not rebuilding the whole thing. Especially since it doesn't spontaneously explode on the launchpad as many of my oversized asparagus loads tend to. This Anomalous Torque of Evil has me tearing my hair out. That much torque that didnt even exist as hint in any stage before or after makes it seem like I've got a Mainsail pointing in some weird direction, but I don't, and all my engines are staged to fire together and none of them have thrust limiters or locked gimbaling or anything weird. Weirding me out further is that, if I remove the stage BEFORE this torque is allegedly to kick in, it disappears from KER. And yet, if I fly this thing, no matter WHAT stage I'm flying it wants to veer off northward wildly - which makes NO sense given that what I had to build without symmetry was oriented east/west. And the unfortunate reality of working 12 hr shifts is, I don't have time to mess with this piece of tripe and it's seriously hampering my attempts to put kerbals on Duna.

And here I was v looking for mods or considering save game file editing to rename things uncontrolled or from a distance..... THANK YOU. Is there a repository of such unintentional secret functions somewhere?

With my scant time between 12hr shifts, I've been preparing to take my first manned mission to Duna and I'm going kinda all-out. Shot of my development mock-up of what is to be assembled in LKO: This consists of four parts: - Topmost: CM / Laboratory, this will be three kerbals' home for a couple years. It's also both the lander and the vehicle that will return them to orbit. Its four LV-N's also fill the role of main propulsion bus. - Center stack: Fuel for the interplanetary transfer there and back again. At the bottom is a Rhino - to give me a little boost when reaching escape velocity each leg, it's main purpose is to make burn durations humanly bearable. I just don't have time these days to sit through 10 minute LV-N burns, however efficient they may be. - Right side rigging: Rover carrying every conceivable science experiment, seats 2, lands independently. (Featured in a previous post here.) - Left side rigging: Probe bound for Ike. This thing will be dropping bits and pieces left and right. Two science Jr's, one for In Space High and one for In Space Near, will be jettisoned after their data is transmitted. Once in a polar orbit, it'll detach a light probe with the survey scanner, and the rest will proceed to land. Also on that side of the rigging is an extra half-empty fuel tank as ballast because the probe is lighter than the rover. Mandatory overtime sucks when you really really really really want to launch your first manned interplanetary expedition...

Thanks. I shouldn't take ALL the credit - saw someone else make a similar computer somewhere; don't recall where, but I always wanted to include something similar. I had the idea whilst positioning a light to make clicking on science experiments at night easy.