fourfa

Regarding airplanes with Breaking Ground propellers... it’s been my experience that at any given speed, there is one blade pitch that gives maximum thrust. Seems to change more or less linearly with speed up to a max around 53*, and seems not to matter much (or at all) which size of blade. Corrections welcome if you’ve found differently, of course... I’ve searched a lot on the topic, many guides to manual pitch control but haven’t found anything on auto pitch control outside of real-life mechanisms. This seems like an excellent opportunity for a mod to provide an Automatic Blade Pitch Controller, which when engaged would automatically set blade pitch proportionally to forward speed. This would greatly simplify takeoff and stall recovery, where speed changes rapidly and the pilot is often stumbling to find the correct pitch manually before crashing... Then disengage auto-pitch for landing (perhaps bound to landing gear deploy?), where manual control gives you excellent control over approach speed. Questions: 1. Can this already be done with some existing smart parts mod that can sense speed and control sliders in closed loop? 2. Would this need a gain control? Is there enough variation between parts to need it? 3. I talked about maximum thrust, as I’ve been looking for max speeds in my planes. But are there other modes of interest, like best efficiency? 4. Altitude? So far it seems that the same pitch angle for sea level also works well at altitude... but I wouldn’t be shocked if the controller needed altitude compensation as well 5. Advanced controls for feathering (min drag), braking (max drag), compound propulsion (ie props to reach altitude then light rockets etc), etc. @Stratzenblitz75 has found an interesting exploit using heat shields as props, and there are other supersonic builds out there that might have special needs... Open to discussion I put this topic here since it seemed right for general mod musing, but if it’s so specific to Breaking Ground that it needs to go in the graveyard of the BG sub forum, so be it... Additional thoughts?

Still running NCD-level + reverts. I had good success with ladder rides on Mun flyby. Scaled up to ladder rides to Minmus, with juuuuust enough dV to drop into elliptical orbit. But Bill, after years of next to no missions or accomplishments, decides... to be the first Kerbal* to set foot on another world * [in this save] (now I hope I can get him back)

Maybe trve cave kerbals are only allowed to send things to launchpad/runway in containers... Build on the lawn, refuel planes by swapping out drop tanks, etc

TL;DR: KIS/KAS Lite in stock. Inventory system moved into the base game from BG, ability to construct on EVA on the ground or in space, possibly rebuild ships in orbit with fresh fuel tanks, get around part/weight limits in all sorts of ways. Going to mean significant changes to the Cave clan. Might even need to figure an even harder challenge, or just disallow things to keep the challenge static.

I think what was meant is that there's a natural limit of single-launch inert payload mass, given the restricted parts, part count, and pad capacity in Caveman. It's not anything specific to the rules, just the implied limitations. Though by the time you max out the Cave tech tree, that limit is somewhat higher than 2.5 tonnes.

A station/fuel depot at 80km orbit would be a great way to practice launching to direct orbital rendezvous. Makes it easier to have fixed landmarks for when to launch... Maybe this is what I need to get my crewed Mun landing program underway. Doing fine with single-launch return probes, but I want those sweet sweet crew reports

OK, that's actually helpful info @Popestar - it tells us it's a trajectory issue. I just built that exact craft (Mk1 pod, 16x FL-T100, Swivel, chute, no decoupler, no fins). I'll try to be detailed here but not obsessive... Following a simple gravity turn (straight up until 75m/s, halfway to 45 ° at 4km altitude, 45° at 10km altitude, go horizontal around 45km when the flames stop, never let the navball direction indicator get outside the safe zone of the yellow prograde indicator circle, and watch the throttle to keep thrust-to-weight ratio [TWR] below 2) Watch the apoapsis readout carefully! Click the purple square in the lower left for a real-time readout of apoapsis - without doing this it's all to easy to end up wasting fuel on setting a very high apo too quickly. Throttle is critical here - keep the TWR under 2 remember, which you can see on the G indicator on the right side of the navball, or click the orange bars in the staging list on the left side of the screen during flight. The simplest single thing to ensure an efficient gravity turn is slowly reducing that throttle by keeping TWR under 2. And actually closer to 1.0 above 30km, as you're nearly flying horizontally. If done right, you'll float up slowly to your apo and only need a few puffs of thrust to circularize (maybe 50m/s or less). I made a 80km x 80km orbit with 450m/s to spare. I didn't use advanced SAS modes, just steering by hand. It's all too easy to inefficiently blast full power at the beginning of the flight until the apo is in space, coast all the way up, then blast sideways. Throttle down to decrease the rate of climb and give yourself time to nurse the trajectory. Regular KSP modes have the luxury of upgrading the pad very early, letting you use all kinds of high-delta-V designs. In Caveman you *really* gotta make the most of what you got. That's what makes it such a great level-up learning challenge. OK I was able to deorbit the whole rocket holding retrograde through reentry, with the engine exploding on landing. But often enough the engine explodes from heat and the remainder will lawn-dart into the ground/water without slowing down enough. So do suborbital test flights first until you can get the decoupler. Hope that helps and happy to continue working the issues! Other things you can try if the margins are still just too small - go up to 18 FL-T100 tanks with the Swivel, or use the Reliant (the mainstay of most Caveman careers) but you'll need to use a lot more steering input with the Reliant since it doesn't gimbal - you'll be relying on the weaker reaction wheels of the pod.

IIRC the Mk1 pod, 16 FL-T100 fuel tanks, and a Swivel engine will SSTO with safety margin, deorbit and parachute to a safe landing (well, safe for the pod and pilot at least!)

Coming soon in stock KSP update 1.11: Would be a fun mission to go line the runway with guide lights

Fastest in game time will vary a lot depending on difficulty level! At the easiest settings, I could probably get there in an evening or two of low-stress play. Nano-crystalline diamond level takes months of consistent gameplay.

Yes each one at X^0.75. KSP doesn’t make it easy to figure out distances between celestial bodies, or frame it in terms of available parts, so that doesn’t help. But lol I guess that’s the point here in this thread

Man, how many HG-5 antennas is it going to take to get a constant comm signal to Minmus? I'm up to 28 at keosync opposite KSC and 28 at Minmus, and still no link when KSC is behind Kerbin (no spoilers, I can make a spreadsheet if I must. Will just keep docking up 8 at a time)

Well, Matt Lowne featured Parallax so get ready for the flood

I fine-tuned a super reliable crewed Minmus lander. Super safe with a healthy safety margin. No MH/BG parts. With a fairly aggressive gravity turn at launch (radial out to 75m/s, turn hard to ~15 degrees off vertical, then follow prograde) the topmost drop tank should run out right before a tiny circularization burn. Transfer/descent fuel should run out right before final landing burn. I usually have 300+m/s left over back at Kerbin to slow down before re-entry. It's weird; I'm way more proud of this than the most complex and fashionable SSTOs I ever made * ask me how I know about collecting the Science Jr data before decoupling

Small upper stage rocket with small wings, maintaining 69 x 69 km orbit @2300m/s... falls within the rules as I read them

I’m muddling through half-remembered Italian in the screenshot... could the “total resistance’ figure be including thrust? Does the number remain negative if you shut off the engines?

Totally random glitch I've noticed lately. If I have a probe with an extending antenna (ie HG-5), launch on a decent gravity turn, the circularization point is way around Kerbin out of line-of-sight of KSC. I have a relay network at keosync but the simple stick antenna can't reach them Anyway if I get to the apoapsis having lost probe control as usual, I don't have the ability to extend the high gain antenna and get control back. HOWEVER, if I pin out the right click menu for the antenna before launch or during controlled flight, the 'extend' option remains there and still works after losing comms! Outside of Caveman I'm not sure anyone would notice or care but it sure helps here! I guess the second piece of advice is put your relays as low as you can (while still seeing each other) so this won't matter in the first place

This gave me a good chuckle this morning, thanks. Kerbals are born mysteriously in orbit and have to be rescued from their incubation chambers when they grow to full term - this is immediately going in my KSP head-canon

TIL: Baikerbanur is still there in 1.10, and it's got two microbiomes (launchpad and touching the old VAB) that give unique science.

The seven-segment display is genius!

For what it's worth - I'm playing NCD but with reverts and saves turned on. #1 - my Mac install has a bug where contracts sometimes insta-fail when accepting, wiping out all rep and funds. I flatly refuse to put time into this game without the ability to revert this bug. #2 - I find this game fun and a good use of my time when I can revert, and I do not if I can't. I have proven this to myself enough times that I don't need to keep testing it. Your mileage will vary. So I come here to this thread to get inspired by others and share things I learn, but not to document for badges and leaderboards as my setup isn't compliant with the agreed rules. No big deal to me! I'm finding NCD + reverts to be great fun, super challenging, lots to learn, but not grindy and unpleasant. Anyway on to the sharing - there were some questions about fragile KSC science rollers being too risky. How about these armored rollers, protected by 8x clipped girders: I had tons of luck with these, no explosions. If you don't have batteries yet then you might need multiple runs to cover the whole KSC and all the microbiomes. The second one was particularly good at spending a lot of time just barely off the ground, to collect those elusive "flying low at [KSC microbiome]" crew and temp reports. Re: crewed Minmus landings - I succeeded with this simple design. Burned straight from Minmus intercept to a mountain landing (Lowlands biome however), then burned from surface straight to Minmus escape heading directly east (about 400m/s burn) with enough dV to adjust for 45km Kerbin periapsis plus.... 15m/s left over. Okay, that margin might be too narrow for safety - but as I've recently learned, this twin-Thud booster is considerably less efficient than a single-Reliant, so there is probably +100m/s margin there. Heck, you don't really need the science box either (capsule was taken from a version with a Science Jr below the decoupler, and I had a Goo explode on a previous mission) Another tip I've learned recently for early Mun flyby missions: setting your Mun intercept Ap inside the Mun's orbit will put you in a prograde pass, Ap outside the Mun's orbit will give you a retrograde pass. Now with normal KSP, maneuver nodes + patched conics, that retrograde pass can be tweaked ever so gently to give you a safe free-return trajectory. Never going to happen in Caveman, and I usually end up with Pe buried deep in Kerbin or up high halfway to Mun - both requiring expensive correction burns. The prograde pass however will slingshot, throwing you out higher. At that high Ap (and correspondingly slower orbital velocity), corrections are VERY cheap. The downsides: 25+ day mission instead of ~2 days; and if you set your Pe at the Mun too low (like 6km) you can accidentally get a slingshot out of Kerbin SOI... Just inside the Mun-low 60km boundary is always safe though. EDIT - another tip I forgot: the '#' on right click menus in VAB/SPH switches from quantized sliders to numerical input. I often find when building boosters, that a particular tick is over the 18T limit, but the next tick down is considerably under the limit. Switch to # mode, and you can type in any arbitrary number and slowly converge on exactly 18T. Just grab your calculator and remember that the right amount of oxidizer is 11/9ths of the LF quantity. It's a small tweak but sometimes it matters...

I'm sure this isn't an original approach, but I've been having tons of fun with it in my early-NCD run: the Biome Bomber. A ballistically-deployed steerable glider, for targeted early rare-biome science collection. Pilot in front, scientist in back, fly over the desired biome and pop chutes. I was able to hit the island runway, landed/splashed Deserts, and splashed Grasslands on the west coast of Kerbal Africa (WSW of KSC). That was enough to finally earn the Science Jr, and refit the Bomber for materials bay collections (nice gentle 4m/s descent with 3 mains). A few different configurations: * PS: not for suborbital flights; the fins will burn off. I don't even have Stability yet! I'll try suborbitals once I get the AV-T1 wings, for Badlands and polar targets.

In career mode, at level zero, engineers and scientists cannot activate SAS. It’s possible this is the situation our new-to-KSP OP is in

Go ahead and try it, if you think it’ll work. You might find that admin strategies effectiveness scale with reputation, and in harder versions of caveman, rep is extremely hard to come by.

Topping this up as I’ve been playing caveman style on a laptop while the beast PC with all the mods is in storage. Great way to make the most of minimal computing! I see DLCs are discouraged but not prohibited - interesting as the Bobcat makes an outstanding lifter engine with excellent ISP both at sea level and mid altitude. Tons of thrust and could easily carry more than 18t, if you’re assembling drop tanks on it. Speaking of assembling, I’ve been wanting to try holding a large upper stage in the air with launch clamps, then driving an 18t first stage under it, then drop-bombing the upper stage to dock on top of the booster. Anyone tried this? Every time I’ve tried assembling things with wheels onto things held by launch clamps, kraken forces and explosions have been the result; this might be a simple way around it. And easier to incorporate regular decouplers above the docking ports than the wobbly side-mounted tanks that don’t decouple right