JonathanPerregaux

Wut-wut? Another part pack?! If Squad wasn't embarrassed before, they ought to be now.

A couple of weeks into June, I went into the LEGO store in my area and asked about the set. The guy there said it was sold out in a day, and that they expected getting more in about a month. He told me many of the LEGO sets are never made again, and pointed out a few in the store. If they are popular for some reason (cough, Millennium Falcon, cough), then you better grab it now. That doesn't preclude a reappearance of a similar set in the future (cough, Millennium Falcon, cough), but something like this? Doubt it.

I just got this myself. I haven't gotten a LEGO set since I was a kid (I'm 51) but this proved far too tempting. Still, I was on the fence. Then I watched Scott Manley's video about it and I pushed the BUY button. In related news, my cat hopped up on the bed, caught sight of the big box sitting up against the wall, and got all creeped-out for a minute. "Something new! What this! I can has rocket?"

I edited my ship files directly with the new names. I attempted to load each red ship from the VAB/SPH and noted the part names the game could not find. Then figured out their replacement names. In retrospect, a matrix would have been great for that, as I kept going back and forth figuring out what the old/new names were. It's laborious, but holds up in the long run. It's good practice to fully delete and then re-copy NF folders in gamedata when there are new versions. Unfortunately, this would wipe out any cfg files you created.

I stuck a few of the ring-shaped solar panels to my ship to look at them. When I tried to re-position them (in this case, "up"), they suddenly snapped to some point inside my ship. I wasn't able to move them around.

A good playable example of the Roche Limit can be found in Universe Sandbox 2. You'll be surprised how quickly an orbiting body will break up.

Looks like "-force-opengl" cured the problem. I had to give up using this switch in 1.2.2 because it was giving me blank textures, even with the latest drivers. I did try updating drivers again, to no avail.

I've had a long-time crashing issue with KSP that, until now, has baffled me. What would happen is that my screen would go blank, I'd hear Windows play an event sound, and then I had no choice but to power down my PC. This happens sporadically, most often in the VAB. It also happens in-flight, but a bit less so. Maybe because I spend more time building contraptions than flying them. Since playing 1.3 (and stripping me of all mods), the game has totally stopped crashing for me. As I've slowly added back updated mods, the game has remained stable. Until I put back NF and started editing my contraptions again. I've included my game log below. The crash indicates my video card ran out of memory. I'm running an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, which has 4 GB of RAM, at a resolution of 3840 x 2160. The exact action I was performing in the VAB, with a complex ship open, was extending and retracting one of the new photo voltaic panels to check it out. Guess all those textures going at once is too much for my card. [LOG 12:23:13.650] [ApplicationLauncher] OnSceneLoadedGUIReady: scene EDITOR ShouldBeVisible() True ShouldBeOnTop() False iIsPositionedAtTop True [LOG 12:23:13.651] [ApplicationLauncher] SpawnSimpleLayout: HorizontalRightLeft [LOG 12:23:13.654] ScaleModList: listSize 41 maxListSize 2289 [LOG 12:23:13.656] ScaleModList: listSize 41 maxListSize 2289 [LOG 12:23:13.657] ScaleModList: listSize 41 maxListSize 2289 [LOG 12:23:13.658] ScaleModList: listSize 82 maxListSize 2280 [LOG 12:23:13.659] ScaleModList: listSize 41 maxListSize 2280 [LOG 12:23:13.659] [Kopernicus]: StarLightSwitcher: Set active star => Sun [LOG 12:23:14.136] [UIApp] OnDestroy: ContractsApp [LOG 12:23:14.311] ScaleModList: listSize 82 maxListSize 2280 [LOG 12:23:14.316] [MessageSystem] Reposition 0.02 34570 [WRN 12:23:14.322] UIList: RemoveItem didn't find any item to remove. [LOG 12:23:14.609] [UIApp] Adding EngineersReport to Application Launcher [LOG 12:23:14.611] ScaleModList: listSize 82 maxListSize 2239 [LOG 12:23:14.634] [UIApp] Adding KSPedia to Application Launcher [LOG 12:23:14.636] ScaleModList: listSize 82 maxListSize 2198 [LOG 12:23:14.636] [GenericAppFrame] Reposition 0.2285863 34576 [LOG 12:24:04.440] deleting part solarpanel-deploying-2x3-1 [LOG 12:24:18.375] solarpanel-blanket-3 added to ship - part count: 491 [ERR 12:24:42.424] D3D device reset failed [out of memory] [LOG 12:24:42.424] Skipped rendering frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost) [ERR 12:24:42.620] D3D device reset failed [out of memory] [LOG 12:24:42.620] Skipped rendering frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost) [ERR 12:24:42.754] D3D device reset failed [out of memory]

I wasn't expecting so much manual ".craft" file editing, but okay... worth it!

Yippee! Now this is pod-racing!

I also had that set! I never understood why everything was blue, but whatever. At least the LEM separated from the landing body. Fortunately, the LEGO human figures got slightly more realistic...

If only we could get the Mun to break away from Kerbin so we could have weekly adventures in space and visit planets outside the Kerbol system. According to the show, the delta-V requirement for such an event is surprisingly small... and also inexplicable.

For me, everything was trial-and-error until I learned the ropes. When you start, use your mistakes as a learning experience. Just built an under-powered rocket? It's too heavy. Try a different engine, or maybe multiple engines. Some perform better in atmosphere versus a vacuum. Ran out of fuel? Check what kind of engines you're using (some are gas-guzzlers). Perhaps you should add more fuel tanks, but then consider what the added weight will do for those engines you picked out. Rocket getting wobbly and twisting up? Consider adding struts to strengthen it. Rocket tumbles end-over-end? Make sure you have a weighted tip, like a dart. Think about what happens when your fuel burns off and the center of mass shifts. Consider the effects of staging on the balance of your ship as well. Can't control your rocket? Make sure you've added a pod with SAS control and make sure your engines can gimbal (aim themselves). Consider adding tail fins as a last resort. Don't bother trying to fix it with RCS, either. Make sure you've enabled symmetry mode when attaching radial parts to balance your weight, otherwise it'll always pull in one direction over another. Check if you've designed something that is aerodynamically unstable. Still can't control your rocket? Make sure you didn't use overpowered solid rocket boosters (SRB), which cannot gimbal and can make steering sluggish. Rocket overheats and explodes? Try throttling back.

And oh look, it just fits in the VAB! The conning tower, that is.

I use autostrut sparingly. If I had a nickel for every time an over-strutted ship twisted itself to bits because the weight shifted... Larger rocket monstrosities (which are my specialty, like Sith Lords) require at least some amount of strutting, but I do so with a careful hand. Two things I've learned to bank on in every design: Autostrutting my center engine to the root part avoids a lot of wiggle-wiggly on taller stacks without RUD issues. Also, radially-attached SRBs usually autostrut well to the heaviest part. Everything else is case-by-case. I'll even bust out a manual strut part if I have a kooky design that defies autostrutting. I do find it helpful that I can autostrut on the fly as well. Comes in handy when I've missed something, or I see something new begin to bend or wiggle, and I can just strut it in-flight.

I would give it a 5.5 without mods, 7 with mods. But that's on a scale of 1 to 8, because that's how many fingers Kerbals have.

I'm a runner-up in the contest because I'm almost funny enough. Did printed versions of this ever go out?

I have the exact same problem. Running 64-bit KSP, I was trying out a new mod and it exhausted my 16 gigs of RAM, so I resorted to OpenGL mode. I hadn't used this mode since the 32-bit days. This single change saved several gigs of RAM and I was able to try out my new mod. The thing is, OpenGL rendering worked. That is, until I updated my nVidia drivers. Then the textures croaked, just like the screen-shot above. So, I reverted the driver and the textures came back... until the next reboot. After a few attempts reinstalling drivers, it seemed that I'd have textures until the next reboot no matter what version of the driver. I stripped out every single mod I had and also validated KSP from Steam and nothing permanently solved it. Is this mode not supported anymore?

I use TweakScale on my SRBs, usually when I'm trying to haul an actual building into space.

I predict a mod that can automatically generate these for the next expansion.

Starbase Biggus Shippus...

Sigma Binary adds the ability for bodies to orbit about a barycenter. Nothing in stock does this, but the Outer Planets Mod adds a Pluto/Charon equivalent called Plock/Karen. With Sigma Binary, they twirl about each other like two ice skaters. With time acceleration, the effect is profound. It's cool to plan an approach to a system that's wobbling like that. One false move and you'll impact your molars into a dwarf planet. One doesn't need Sigma Binary, which is why I was cool with dumping it. It's just interesting fluff. I have not tried running just that and OPM with no other mods.

Sometimes I'll name the ship based on some design element I intend to focus on, like "Truss Me." Usually this means the ship is going to be a stupid design, so the name is apt. I find it interesting to go back and look at the end result of one of these misguided attempts and laugh. The very fact that I got a ship called "That's Armageddon!" to actually fly, never mind make it past Jool, tickles my design sense. Oh, and I often find naming inspiration from movies... And now by remembering The Kentucky Fried Movie, I'm inspired to build another rocket...

A Pandaren definitely won't.

Except wheel physics...