swjr-swis

Thank you (and the contributors of the other styles) for this. I need to find some time to re-tinker one of these to fit my particular predilections, but at least I can have the forum open long enough again to actually read a thread or two.

Tip1 : include a Surface Scanning Module in your craft. At the start of your flight, right-click and pin the PAW of that part. For minimal extra weight and cost, you get a live display of the current biome. Bonus: it also shows the exact LAT/LON, updated live as well.

I would really appreciate knowing who exactly thought it was a good idea to make everything on a page blend together to the point of making it near impossible to discern where a field or UI element ends and the next one starts. Basically, the exact same atrocious error made the last couple of updates, but then another degree worse. I'll do the same I did last few times: I'll give it a week or two before I revisit, and hopefully by then someone has come up with a half-decent complete style replacement so it becomes somewhat functional again. Otherwise, I guess I'm done with this forum. You know you're doing a good job reworking your website when the first thing half the visitors do is go look for ways to revert/undo/work around the new appearance. Whoopdee doo.

That kind of noodly flexing would definitely affect performance. I've only seen that kind of thing in 1.3.1 when trying to take high G turns with big non-autostrutted wings. But I did fly Krazy1's original once it was shared, and it showed no such flexing.

Ok clear. That equalizes things a bit more between spaceplanes and rockets, at least for that part. If I remember correctly, the last time this specific objective was called for in a challenge, they added categories for trying to pick up the same payload and bring it back again, also without refueling (as a separate leaderboard). Might be interesting to compare how the game progression influences the results - back then it was done in 1.0.5, with significant differences in aero and engine performance.

No, most definitely not negligible. There is a significantly higher fuel expenditure at low altitude and speed. A good bit of fuel will be expended in an actual effort to fully break and accelerate again and/or to touch down gear safely, which can easily make or break a craft's ability to get back into orbit a second time. My opinion: I think in this type of challenges touch and go shouldn't be allowed - it favors spaceplane entries over rockets, as rockets still need to lose/reverse all their speed while spaceplanes get to keep a good chunk of momentum. If you still want to allow it *and* accept still screenshots as proof, a bit of allowance is inevitable - gears/wheels being in the state they are it's very easy for a craft to bounce before you can hit the screenshot key, whether in horizontal or vertical landing. But to be fair to all, the screenshot should be close enough to show an actual touch down was at least attempted.

A few things I notice now that I've had the opportunity to test this and compare it with my rebuild: You need to balance your plane to get much closer to 0 degree AoA (fuselage, not wings) in cruise. Right now, it is at around 0.8-0.9 degree. This sounds small, but it makes a big difference - Mk3 body drag gets very high very fast when off prograde. For comparison: mine flies at about 0.03-0.04 in cruise. Main thing to change to achieve this: move CoL closer to CoM than it is now. AoA on your wings is more than it needs to be. It does achieve what you have in mind, make it cruise higher, but at the cost of a good bit of speed. You need speed more than altitude though (and towards the end, you really don't want to be flying too high and risk flame outs). They are mostly identical beyond that. I used smaller elevons as canards, but then I used bigger landing gear. I really think the above, and particularly point 1, is what makes the big difference.

If you hover your cursor over the top right corner of the image, you'll see a widget appear, with the option to 'Copy' the image link. To the right of that you'll see a small arrow down. Hover over it to get a small menu, you'll want the option 'get share links'. One of the link types is the BBCode.

It was mod-moved after OP.

I don't see why one should exclude the other. Just add another slider/toggle to the graphics settings page, and everyone can tailor their game experience to the capabilities of their hardware. Doing anything else is simply choosing to limit your customer base. Ultimately it's the devs' prerogative to cater for less customers, but then accept it is your choice - don't go putting the blame on customers for not having your particular choice of equipment.

Well, I had to make up for my previous oversight, and I guess a slight matter of honor was at stake. But no, I did not do this 7 hours straight... I paused the game after every lap to get a break and do other things, including sleep, food, and other trivialities. That session ran for the better part of two days. The roll correction was... highly annoying. It meant I couldn't leave the game window running in the background while doing other things, like I did the previous run. And time warp is not recommendable in this challenge - it affects fuel consumption rate negatively. The previous sounds weren't ideal either, I'll agree. But for some reason these ones just seem to drill into the skull after anything more than 10 minutes. Ugh.

I think clipping in the build of replicas specifically is completely accepted. The limited library of parts we have, and the complete lack of sculpting tools (possibly with the exception of creative uses of fairings) means there's really little other way to closely reproduce the forms and lines of the RL counterparts. And due to the way stock aero and physics works, once you go that route, you're almost forced to also use clipping in other ways to get a reasonable performance out of the replica. Building replicas is a form of art all by itself. Getting the right visual is paramount. Getting it to perform is a second consideration, but a definite bonus. Clipping, in any form, to achieve either is pretty much a tool of the trade.

Ok, ensuring this time everything was within the rules, I redid the run in 1.10.1, which was a lot more trouble than expected. Not because of the plane's performance, which was better than in 1.3.1, but because bugs. Sigh. Seriously... why does anyone use 1.10.1? I had to rebuild the plane part by part from scratch in 1.10.1, because the imported RAPIERs from the otherwise entirely identical 1.3.1 version started flaming out continuously for no reason at all, while still well within the engine's power envelope. There is a constant phantom torque forcing what should be a completely stable plane to roll right all the time, which necessitated babysitting it during the entire flight, tapping roll left to counter. How does anyone endure those jet sounds for any amount of time??? This was a frankly horrible experience and it'll be my last endurance entry for this challenge. I just can't do this again, not in 1.10.1. Especially not when it's clear that performance-wise, a 1.3.1 entry is only at a disadvantage, making this torture for torture's sake. So, until a better entry comes in, I give you the swis-circ 2b-10, clocking 11 laps around Kerbin in 7h14m7s. Craft file - essentially identical to the already-shared 1.3.1 version, but rebuilt part for part in 1.10.1 to circumvent bugs (and with the previously-empty fore Mk1 tanks filled and prioritized): swis-circ 2b-10 Full imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/COvDSnW Quick highlights:

Have you actually looked at the settings inside the game? If you go to the 'Input' section, under the 'Flight' and 'Vessel' tabs, you'll see on te right that you can adjust the sensitivity and dead zones of all the input axes individually.

@zolotiyeruki Can you please remove my entry from the leaderboard entirely? I don't know how this escaped me, or anyone else for that matter as it's right there for everyone to see, but that entry is not legitimate - it breaks the rule regarding nothing stuck to the end of the rapiers. I have no explanation nor excuse to offer, but the screenshots clearly show a RAPIER drag value in the PAW that I can only explain if the engine's aft node has been 'plugged'. I must've somehow flown the attempt with a slightly different version than the craft I thought I used. So please remove my entry entirely. If I get around to repeating the attempt with a legal entry, I will repost and it can be evaluated on its own merit. My apologies.

I can't do anything with it right now due to time constraints, but I've downloaded it and will let you know what I find. This is the one I used or the screenshots: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrd0cdsy4p9yk4z/0circ1.craft?dl=0 Upfront I can say that I agree with @Lt_Duckweed regarding the AoA. 5 degree is generally the maximum to get good performance, although usually close enough to optimum that I hardly ever bother to tune further (*). In the above tweaked version, you'll see I used the exact 5 degree snap as well. You also run the risk of flying too high, where the RAPIER power curve quickly drops and you'll start getting flame outs well before the speeds you would need to get the savings for long ranges. (*: there are exceptions - when the goal is top speed at the cost of everything else, and if you can handle the heat, it usually pays to employ a much lower AoA, one that allows the craft to stabilize very low in the atmosphere where engine power curves allow thrust to continue even at higher Mach numbers. Don't expect to get any practical ranges out of such craft though.).

I was not aware of this, thanks for clarifying. I hope you find a workable solution.

A modless method:

Also, did you verify files again?

The part that is actually not realistic is the generic drag cube calculation of the game applying full drag on a 'face' that is in reality producing THRUST (it's an engine after all). Not arguing about your rules, it's your challenge, just commenting on the 'realism' thing. Differences, as shown in the post that I got in just after you, are really negligible, and in fact look in favour of 1.10.1 as far as I can tell without doing the entire run. But again, your rules. I'm fine with it not qualifying if you intended from the start to only allow 1.10.1.

Ok I had a moment to spare to run a test lap on the 1.10.1 install. Fresh reinstall off Steam (without DLC to save load time), and a direct copy of the tweaked craft copy&pasted right out of the 1.3.1 save, and directly loaded onto the runway. Screenshots at the first lap and a split second later with the game version information shown, just to prove it's really 1.10.1. The results are, as I expected, pretty much negligible. In fact if anything, the craft is performing marginally better in 1.10.1 than in 1.3.1. It would seem I am at a disadvantage doing my runs in 1.3.1. Note that I rebuilt your craft from scratch based only on your screenshots, since I can't load a 1.10.1 craft in 1.3.1 and you haven't shared it anyway. Without having the original, I can't 100% guarantee I got it all exactly the same to start with, before I made the changes I listed. Offer is still open to send you the craft file, so you can compare them for yourself and verify it performs as shown. I'm specifically not posting it here to respect your choice of not sharing your craft, but I have no issue letting you have it - it's your design anyway, with a few tweaks.

Up to OP to rule on this, but something to consider: when opening and closing a cargo bay, there's a bug in which KSP will sometimes 'remember' the drag values/forces that parts in the bay were experimenting, and you end up stuck with them even when the bay is closed again. I did comparisons right after 1.10 dropped, I didn't really notice any significant differences in aero performance, but I'll reinstall 1.10 and do the run there. I looked through the rules before I entered my attempt and didn't notice version being specified, but now it is indeed there in rule #1. Edited in afterwards? I guess that invalidates my attempt. I won't have opportunity to do another long-range run again in a bit, there's work and life and stuff to deal with and even at an average of 40 min/lap with a plane that practically flies itselfonce on cruise, it's a long time to keep an eye on the game screen while needing attention on other things.

Especially important if you're flying with RAPIERs like most entries in this challenge, since they don't have a generator. Good catch.

Tip: include a probe core. The probe core will take over flying while your crew are unconscious.

The F3 readout numbers are notoriously inaccurate, to the point of useless. On my 8 laps entry, it displayed a total of 69M km.