Zephram Kerman

Vsync is "on" by default (Every VBlank). But changing it to Every Second VBlank did the trick. Frame rate during the Space Center menu dropped from 60FPS to 30, which is all I wanted.

Well, I like to use orbital stations as fuel stops. My SSTO reaches orbit on vapors. But after docking to refuel, it can reach Laythe. For resource gathering, what you describe sounds a lot like Kethane. It's very popular. Not sure if the current version is compatible with 0.19 though. Perhaps you can find an older version.

Kevin MacLeod can be found here. Lots and lots of good royalty-free music, some of which you'll recognize from other projects as well. Scott Manley gets his music there. So far, I found three of the songs used in KSP: Frost Waltz, Frozen Star, and Wizardtorium.

For me, the "stop size" is when my station plus active vessel add up to my parts limit. It's not really the station mass that stops me, it's the number of parts adding up to cause lag. Looks to me like you're about there already. So you might want to go straight to docking an orange tank to that node. Here's what I did a few versions ago, just for your inspiration:

Perhaps that was confusing? I want to add 40 FPS to the 'frame limit' option. Anyone? Anyone?

Who else came to this thread expecting little mushroom clouds?

In case of this, my crazy suggestion is to make the entire base capable of a short hop. Each module had to get there somehow, so just keep the engines and a bit of fuel on each one. (Even crazier if it can fly while fully assembled.) Anyway, my thinking is if a future update causes "tectonic activity" on the munar surface, you can revert to the old version, launch it some distance up into the sky, then save and safely import to the new version.

I think it's 2.6 km. Yeah? But one could still do this, at least on an airless body like Mun or whatever. Just put your observer on a mountain top, then the large structure in a terrifyingly low orbit near that spot. I recommend the highlands near the equatorial canyon.

How weird! Please post here what you find out. I'm pretty sure JumpsterG is correct though; it seems like a fuel routing thing. I've always avoided the problem by positioning all fuel tanks to match the Center of Mass. But if this effect can be tamed, it would allow more interesting arrangements.

My GPU heats up whenever any of the menus are left too long, but calms down when running the game. I noticed the framerate maxes out while using the menus. So I think it would be helpful to have a lower framerate limit. Currently, the Graphics Settings dialog has "frame limit" options 180, 160, 140, 120, 100, 80, 60, and default. I would like to use 40, 30, maybe even 20 in order to spare my GPU. Presumably, this would be helpful to others as well. Your thoughts?

I've only found one solution so far: CoM, CoL and main gear very close together but still in order. This gets me off the runway at a very slow speed before any swerving. In this very nimble configuration, canards are practically suicide, so it's limited to delta-type planes.

Turbojets, definitely. In thick air, keep your speed down. (Think of the Goddard Dilemma, although this case is only similar.) If gathering data while in flight, you'll need a lot of those fixed solar panels, or a very slow duty cycle. In KSP (not real life) mass affects drag. So it's doubly important to make your plane as light as possible. All of my sciencey planes have just one turbojet. But if you need two, consider mounting them vertically instead of horizontally. The second one should be on the bottom, so that if it flames out, the resultant force automatically pushes the nose down to safety.

It seems to me the outer tanks are attached to the trusses slightly off-center. So when those engines fire, they will cause the truss connections to twist a little bit and spin your craft.

This bit made me lol. It sounds like a Steven King novel. There are always naysayers: "Just restart." "Oh, it isn't so bad." "It hasn't really affected my game." "As long as it doesn't affect my property value." "Dif'rent strokes for dif'rent species." But I'm a true believer. I know the foul creature walks among us, disguised, lurking in the shadows, biding his time, waiting for some rare malfunction and his chance to strike and devour. But I'm ready! If the hellkraken ever tries to posess my computer, I have a squirt gun full of holy water right here ready to go. And a spare computer.

I think this was changed in 0.22. I, too, saw a situation where Jeb was accidentally killed. (Iwasn'tThereNobodySawMeYouCan'tProveAnything!) He respawned after just a few flights, when previously it used to take quite a long time.

This is a valid topic for this thread. As with most games, the quest to "level up" may interfere with immersion and the actual fun. It depends on what each person finds fun. Since KSP tends to attract engineer types, it's only natural that a lot of the players would want to maximize efficiency of the new feature. Personally, I'm interested in the game mechanics, but when I ignore them as spoilers when I play the game. KSP has always been open ended and free-form. Part of the fun is figuring out and planning what the missions should be. Having to set goals is realistic. Other than Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon" speech, NASA did not have any goals spelled out for them, either.

That list is all of the parts in the /command directory (pods, probes, etc.). Yeah, Notepad works fine. I used it to make that list. So it's pretty easy to get the specific info you want, and to change things. I like that description, "camel case".

I went through the /parts/command/ directory and made a list of the tech tree nodes for each command part. The appear to be simply the node name, without spaces, and with the middle first letters capitalized. TechRequired = start specializedControl advFlightControl advScienceTech specializedConstruction largeControl flightControl heavyAerodynamics largeControl advUnmanned unmannedTech largeProbes fieldScience

So what you're saying is the total amount of 'science' available from a biome isn't wasted if you 'beam' the data home. It just takes more time and patience. For the purpose of this thread, that one idea is a big deal. All my science probe rockets just got smaller! I've got to verify this next session. The goo seems quite at home here. Set it freeeeeeeee!

Based on all the above, I figure the best way is to bring several canisters. In each biome, commit one canister for return to Kerbin and recovery of the most valuable data. Use the first canister for recovery, then the latter ones for repeated beam reports. Move on to the next biome, then use the second canister for recovery of the first sample there and others for beamed reports. And so on.

Multiple transmissions is fine for crew reports, but I try to avoid it for other things because of the penalty. It's easy to stack a few modules instead.

I assume you built the whole thing in the VAB. Try building the rover section in the SPH, then copy the file into VAB and build the launcher there. The two buildings do symmetry differently. Since you seem handy with manipulating files, you could redo the rover as above, then edit the file to replace it with the one already on Minmus.

Well, the kerbal way is to 'just try it'. Find out the performance of your craft 'in simulation', then do it 'for real' using those numbers. Hopefully someone comes up with a better answer than this!

Here's another thing to consider. If you're talking about the plane swerving left or right when it gets close to takeoff speed, just pull up a bit earlier. What's going on here is the wings are making some lift and taking weight off the main wheels, but not the nose wheel. So if you pull back on the stick early, everything becomes more stable.

Hey, thanks for the plug. I'm rather proud of that plane. Just for the record, Intrepid didn't do the actual mapping. My first shot to Laythe was a simple scanner satellite that mapped the whole globe first. In my case, it found eight deposits that sortof overlap land masses. So I built this plane to investigate all eight of those overlap sites, and to pick the best site for a colony. Except for the kethane stuff, and MechJeb, it's all stock. Intrepid can refuel at each landing site, land almost anywhere using VTOL (including water), rover around using Brotoro's Bird Dog idea, and cruise very high and fast without airhogging. I forget the altitude and speed on Laythe, but it'll do 1600 m/s at 26km on Kerbin. Fuel range was sufficient to reach high altitude cruise twice without refuelling. (Once, we hit checked spots in a row that did not overlap, so we safely ditched in mid-ocean.) The one in the video is an old version, from before kethane had the geodesic map. Nowadays it's a lot easier to determine if the kethane is on land or not. So Intrepid II replaced all those solar panels with a kethoelectric converter; now it is even more efficient and effective.