aluc24

I have attempted around 20 more test flights. It appears that no matter what altitude, speed and throttle level I choose, engines still overheat. Any advice?

[quote name='More Boosters']Well if you fly a bit lower you'll go through more air which results in more heat getting convected away per second.[/QUOTE] I tried that, but it doesn't seem to work...

Also, after several experiments I noticed that even at half throttle, engines still overheat.

[quote name='GluttonyReaper']More wing surface might work, gives you more lift, but also acts as heat sinks, or at least it used to.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I tried that, but it didn't seem to help the engines. And I really want this thing to go as fast as possible :/

I tried throttling down one notch, and it brings the speed to 400m/s, requiring higher pitch-up, ruining fuel economy due to unsustainable altitude. Any other solutions?

Hi all, I started a new career in 1.0.5, and now I arrived at a stage where I have unlocked Wheesley engine. Since I like Kerbin a lot, and often do science missions that require me to travel very long distances, I designed a high-speed 3 engine bird, called the Traveler (needs a better name, I think): [URL="https://static.dyp.im/Thbz3OBkGP/cf405a7380dfd38f29c6ed6a9586d229.png"] [IMG]https://static.dyp.im/Thbz3OBkGP/large/cf405a7380dfd38f29c6ed6a9586d229.png[/IMG][/URL] Now it flies okay, can recover from any kind of stall (including spin), has a lot of power, and at 5° pitch and 10,000m altitude it can cruise at 500m/s with a range of around 3500km, almost enough to circumnavigate Kerbin. It even has a emergency parachute. Part count is exactly 30, so I don't even need to upgrade SPH yet. The only problem is that 5 minutes into cruise mode, it starts overheating. First, the engines, then random parts all over. If nothing is done, engines explode after around 20min or so. I thought the smart thing would be to add small radiators in a way that would add as little drag as possible. However, radiators are the first to overheat, and in the end, seem to be doing nothing to prevent engine overheat. I have not yet unlocked precoolers or any of the fancy stuff. I know I could just throttle down, but that would defeat the purpose of the plane. Any ideas on how I can keep the engine temperature down at low tech level?

Ippo, a suggestion for this great mod, if I may. Currently, the failures happen only on the active craft, the one you're flying. But not for other on-going flights. That is not logical, and it encourages player to spend as little time flying the craft as possible. I suggest that the failures would be calculated for all flown vessels. For example, when player is exiting a specific flight, calculate the odds of a failure for all and any parts present in that craft, and if dice rolls for a failure to happen, set an invisible alarm (time warp stop) when that failure is to happen, then display a message like "Fuel leak on Eve Rover-1". Mechanics could be different from what I suggested (like, real-time failure calculation, but that may slow down general game performance), but you get my point - no craft should be safe from failures, both active and inactive. Could this be implemented?

What angle of attack do you use to re-enter? I'm asking because I see that a lot of people just keep the nose horizontal. Personally, I always go for 35-45° AOA, which makes wings stall and produce more drag. If the spaceplane falls too fast, you can reduce AOA to have more lift. However, to keep this AOA, you need perfect weight balance, powerful reaction wheels or a lot of RCS ports. I use the combination of these.

GoSlash, I have re-created your craft (more or less), and it seems that Panther is unable to bring the vessel to any decent speed and altitude, even with afterburner on. That is, in 1.0.5. Other than that, your space plane is gorgeous.

Okay, but what if one is playing Career mode and doesn't have Action Groups unlocked yet?

Just updated to 1028. I'm not sure, but it seems drag increased a little. Great, thank you! Any ideas for good deorbit/interplanetary aerobrake altitudes?

It'd be great if someone could document these changes, because it throws away a lot of what we knew about KSP aerodynamics up to now...

Try it Hard, like me

I've been playing KSP 1.0.4 for a while now, and launched at least 50 missions, so I got pretty much used to the way things work in it. So when I installed 1.0.5, I immediately noticed that drag and heat have been reworked. Namely, having a capsule on a suborbital trajectory (not even reaching 40km apoapsis) will make it reach ground in speed too high to deploy chutes. Before 1.0.5, I used to do all kind of suborbital hops around Kerbin, but now, it is impossible without drogue chutes, which aren't available in early tech tree. So it appears that drag values have been decreased. Also, it seems that parts now generate much more heat upon reentry. As I tried to reenter with small capsule with a science bay and heat shield attached to it from a 71x71km orbit to 71x25, it exploded due to high temperatures. Anyone else noticed this? BTW, I'm not using Deadly Reentry or any related mods.

If I enter coordinates manually, I do not see green cross at all. I know it is sometimes hidden, but zooming out usually makes it visible. Not in this case. It is visible only if I do "set current impact". If you have problems with fixing green cross visibility, I'd like to suggest that there could be a numerical output of distance between crosses. Like "impact 2km over, 1km nominal of target site". That would be a huge help when executing precision landings.

I really hope they do something about the part count. Having to limit ship size because of the performance is no fun. It would be great knowing that no matter if your ship is 1 or 1000 parts, you'll have the same performance. Think of the possibilities... Oh well.

Thanks, man, but I already have physics delta-time slider all the way to the right...

Yes, I know, I used to do the same, but in certain cases, one big mothership makes more sense. Also, it is cool. Anyway, I've seen people making motherships 10 times larger than mine, and still getting decent fps enough to record a video. So it must be possible, right?

In any case, that mod has a lot of limitations, making it a bit unpractical. Also, I tend to modify ships once in orbit (like, adding a solar panel, removing engine, and so on), and it would be impossible with weldment mod.

I know this question is old as the game itself. My fps drop dramatically (down to 2fps) when flying large ships. I am now building a modular Duna mothership (with 6 landers), 180t vessel made of 200 parts. It is unflyable, even in orbit. I am running KSP on Lenovo Z500 laptop. I know laptops aren't great, and that having multiple cores instead of one powerful core isn't good for KSP too, but still, what can be done about it? I know, you'd say 1) buy better pc; 2) reduce part count;, but I already made this vessel of as few parts as possible. Better computer is not an option at this time. I already edited config to do that physics-fps trick, and reduced orbit debris to a minimum. What else can be done? I know there were mods that "welded" ship into one part, but I can't find any of them updated for 1.0.4.

Youen, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but if I enter target coordinates for a specific spot on Duna (0N 100W), and then burn retrograde until landing prediction is very close to these coordinates, the round dot on the Navball is completely way off, as if I were on wrong trajectory. If I use "set current impact", which is close to 0N 100W, the dot is in the right place, but not of I enter coordinates manually. I write 0, 100 in the field. Is my coordinate format wrong, maybe? If you or anyone else could help me out, it would be great.

Youen, great mod! Might I kindly suggest implementing numeric information on landing zone? Like, the longitude and latitude of calculated impact spot. Or, instead, a distance from the target (like, "2km overshoot, 1km nominal"). Right now, it is sometimes hard to judge from map view, especially when one aims for landing accuracy under 100 meters or less.

This is great tutorial for non-atmospheric bodies, but as I said, what I want to make is a precision non-powered descent, using parachutes only... With engines, I can land within 100m of my target, it's no problem. But I want to do it without engines.

But doing this requires to kill almost all of the orbital speed. That's quite a lot of fuel...

Well, okay, I see, but I play KSP with Hard mode, meaning - no reloads. First shot must be the the right shot. That's why I'm investing a lot in planning... I'll try Trajectories mod. Any other advice?