Wild Cobra

Thank-You for updating it! In the event someone tops me, I was considering a new design yet. With the action groups, I was considering not using the large numbers of Vernor engines, but using strategically positioned rocket engines. These big designs really slow down when turning on the RCS when it controls 432 Vernor engines... I'm sending a ore extractor/tanker to Minmus that is 1,544 parts and 11,313.4 tons at launch. After the three stages detach, it's wet weight is still 4,174.5 tons with 1,092 parts. I stopped the game coasting to Minmus after setting course. Fuel usage was extensive on the last stage so far, and it's sitting at 1,531.39 tones as it's drifting to Minmus. Oh well... I know how to make big tankers. I have two parked in orbit over the Mun. I landed on day 12 for the lander for the Mun Rocked challenge. It is now almost refueled. After moving it to the "sweet spot," which is 8.5+% ore, at almost day 20, it is almost full. I have to wait a few days for the sun again, as I depleted my batteries, still processing some ore in the dark. It appears I need about two mun days to fill it, already using about 1-1/2 light cycles. It's currently at 2817.62 tons with the ore I extracted and fuel I made. I should be able to lift off back the the Mun's orbit and refill one of those tankers, set down again, refuel, and refuel the other. Sending them on their way from the Mun to Minmus. Maybe I should have sent it to the Mun. Oh... I can make another! The center core has loads of batteries and wheels, and if you look closely, you can see one of four ore drills:

I captured a class C. Never playing with an asteroid before, I started harvesting and converting. I was converting to fuel faster than I could burn it with five Rhino engines. I decided to bring it to Eve's orbit. Not realizing how fast the resource drops to zero, it was a failed idea.

How fast is your system? How much memory? I don't really notice the lag until I get over maybe 500 parts. My most recent creation has 1,544 parts, and I get about an 11:1 time reduction. It takes 11 seconds for 1 second to pass. I have a pretty fast system though. My i7 4790 3.6 ghz is rated as the 5th fasted processor for single core processing, the last time I looked at PassMark. The fasted was the i7 4790K 4.0 ghz. The bulk of KSP apparently runs in a single core. I also have 32 GB, though I don't see an improvement over the 8 GB I upgraded from. I suspect since KSP uses almost 4 GB of RAM, you need at least 6 GB, and better yet 8 GB. It's only 1600 mhz memory. I wonder if I can put faster memory in? If my motherboard supports it? I should have checked that before buying the 32 GB... None of my slowing down is from graphics processing. My GPU barely breaks a sweat, it's the GeForce GT 720. I use 15+% (12.5% +2.55%) of my CPU capacity for the game with 8 logical cores, and if I turn hyperthreading off, I use 28% (25% + 3%) of my CPU capacity. I hear various things, I'm told by some I shouldn't have any improvements with hyperthreading off, I hear by others maybe a 3% max improvement. It at least feels faster, maybe it's my imagination.

Well, I built a huge Mun/Minmus lander to extract ore that is designed to go back to orbit with it's payload. Those damn size 3 decouplers... They explode of separation, or don't work right otherwise. I reloaded the game on my Tower for all stock applications and the only non-stock thing was three custom flags I added. I had the bug fix on my decouplers before. Anyway, lost an engine first attempt to separate the stage. Thought I fixed the file, recompiled, then I lost two engines. And two again on my third attempt, then gave up.

Well, I'll have to figure out which save file it is and try that. Meanwhile, I spent a few days doing other things on this save file. After touchdown and presenting my entry, I took off and moved it to the richer ore area, and started harvesting. I am also harvesting from an asteroid, moving it, and making more fuel/oxidizer than I am using with five Rhino engines. Is that normal? Anyway, I've also been filling the beast up. I don't have any good means of transferring fuel. I one some small docking ports near on one of the bottom habitation unit. I'll have fun designing a large combination rover/tanker that can land same move and take off again. Anyway, the Monster is almost full now: Looks like I need to suspend operations until sunrise. - - - Updated - - - Yep, I was off on the mass I calculated 1778.5... It is 1778.52 hehe...: This gives me first place so far, right?

Mine was pretty slow too. Especially when I used the RCS. As long as I had the RCS off, the slide show was pretty fast... for a slide show. Once I activated those 432 Vernor engines, wow... It was crawling... - - - Updated - - - Did you see the size of my tankers?

I refilled my entry with five tankers before attempting the landing.

I landed my monster for the Mun rocked challenge.

Will this do:

I think the RAM is your limitation. Windows programs fragments the memory as it's used and released. That's one reason why I maxed out my memory to 32 GB. I don't see any speed improvements on anything, but I don't crash any more using dual monitor and a couple dozen windows opened.

OK... I did it. Didn't land as close as I wanted to, but it's down in one piece. I drained the tanks of 196,241 units of fuel/oxidizer. I don't have the fancy mods to tell me my landed mass, but at 200 units to the ton, I lost 981.2 tons in fuel weight from my starting 2,795.7 weight of the lander portion, full. I calculate my landed weight to be 1,778.5 tons. Someone check my math please. Here is the evidence:

I wonder how much weight you could have had if you refueled in in Munar orbit? - - - Updated - - - I decided to take another stab with my test lander. I'm much happier with my remaining fuel. Time to land the real thing!

Well, my landing spot is currently on "The dark side of the Mun." I have to wait a few Kerbin days before attempting my land. Meanwhile, instead of advancing those days, I built effectively a 1/24 scale lander. I have one instead of 24 mainsails, six extensions, and one instead of 24 Vernor engines in about the same 18 positions. One solar panel instead of 24, etc... Instead of 2579.7 tons, it's 115.9 tons. I gave it infinite fuel until I achieved the same orbit as my lander. Then I turned infinite fuel off. My first attempt, my engines stopped working... A glitch? I still had fuel. It happened when I went to docking mode for sideways maneuvering. Anyway, I didn't save while in the proper orbit. I did the second time. My purpose was to check when to start my decent, and how well the craft decelerated. Not really sure what was best, I started about 90 degrees before my target and adjusted my orbit with anti-normal to get over may target. This used up about 675 of my fuel... Ouch... I then went retrograde to fly low over my target. Now I've used 900 units, which would be about 21,600 units for my lander. By the time I got close to my target, I may so many mistakes. About to land, I accidentally hit full throttle and really messed things up. Going up and out of control for a bit... I'm down to about 20% fuel. I have plenty of thrust for everything. This is completely do-able at full scale as long as I don't screw up. Anyway, I landed 2 km from my intended target which is still pretty rich in ore. Just not the sweet spot I found. When i planted my four flags, I took my biggest reading, and went four directions from it, and put a flag where my number dropped by 0.01%. I'm good with the one test landing. When I'm ready, I'll land the beast. Maybe tomorrow.

I want that to be a stock part! Not a mod. Do they or do they not, add and/or remove parts in gave revisions?

Thank-You - - - Updated - - - Mine was 8766.8 tons at launch. I had to launch it from the runway because it was too big for the launch pad. I'm lucky my i7 4790 3.6 ghz is rated the 5th fastest processor for single thread processing. I just wanted a nice tower and if I bought if for this game, would have stepped up the processor to the 4 ghz version, the i7 4790K, which is in first place. Without it, these monsters I create would probably be impossible. I doubt it helps, but I have 32 GB of memory too, so there are more areas it can use without fragmenting it. With the usage of the game and other things going on, I'll bet at least 6 or 8 GB is needed to to run these large beasts without breaking. - - - Updated - - - LOL... I just noticed all my spelling/typos as I went though those images. I should fix them...

Well, I'm not getting enough time with this game lately. However, I finished refueling the lander in Munar orbit about 21:40 local time. Here are some slideshows of progress since post 31: More refueling in Kerbin orbit: Traveling to the mun: Refueling in Munar orbit: Wow... I need a break! The apprehension of it all... The next step is to adjust orbit and land! How do you guys get IMGUR to show the slideshow?

Yes, I have run into that too as an oversight. The scale = 1.25, 1.25, 1.25 line is for the mesh overlay. Changing thse numbers affect the graphics, but not the nodes. The other scale and rescalefactor affect the node positions. They all have to be set to conform with each other.

Interesting. But I see all those vents, the outer black is designed as a radiator instead. Why did I forget their color? Must be the passing years since I watched the space program in action.

With all that black paint, are you trying to bake your pilots in the sun?

Just do what Monty Brewster did. Pay someone to drop in engines on a large iceberg, and move it to California. I wonder if a current mod will do that? http://inhabitat.com/tag/moving-icebergs/

I'm not so concerned about the command modules, but I would like to see a fuel tank adapter from a size 3 to 2, and even a size 3 to 1. What I really think would be cool, would be having the ability to deploy a rover like we did the recent ones on Mars: What I like the best of the mod add on parts are the GingerCorp Stock-alike Station Hubs. I would love for these to become stock parts. And... all three of these hubs need to be sized up to size 2 and 3 also.

Yes, power cycles do pose another challenge... Big batteries... Looks like the biggest problem may be supplying power when the surface is on it's dark cycle. Batteries would be too massive to bring from earth. Probably need to use fuel cells, and using 2/3rds of the electricity from the solar cells to break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen and stored to use in a fuel cells while there is no solar power. We could just suspend operation when there is no solar energy, leave the minimal amount of aluminum and molten ore to solidify, and let focused solar energy heat it back to temperature and resume smelting. One good thing about smelting aluminum is it produces oxygen too. This would be practical for a moon base. Aluminum does not readily burn with oxygen. Spaceships use about a 3mm thickness of aluminum. If we are going to have larger spaces, that thickness would have to be much greater to contain the pressurized interior. Radiation inside should be greatly diminished.

I've had the same problem at times with modified parts. What I found, was I always had some simple mistake in the modified or added rescale line. It seems capitalization, spaces after commas, and other simple things are important.

Interesting idea. I'm not going to test this, and I'm concerned that you should already know how to modify such files if you wish to do so. Just the same, I checked the stowed, and deployed differences of the Mk16-XL parachute in the save file. here is what probably needs to be changed: Now I didn't test it. I suggest you copy the file, find the chute for your craft, and change those two lines.

RAM is getting cheap. I suggest upgrading to at least 8 GB. My laptop started with 8GB, and I added another 8 GB for $80. I took out two 4 GB modules from my tower and added four 8 GB modules for $224, and I paid retail price for these at a local vender. Online would have been as much as half these prices. But then I was picky also and bought higher end memory. Amazon had the same brand of 32 GB I paid $224 for, at $179. Other brands were even less. The same brand of 4 GB modules I took out of my tower are now going for $22 each online.