Blaarkies

The best way to use it, is to not click that "Transmit Science" button on it...ever. I am serious, it chips away at your soul piece by piece every time you click it. If you need science, hop around the Minmus binomes rather where you get earn real science(much more than you need anyway)...instead of making deals with the devil just a joke

Player programmable probe cores? At default when a probe is out of range, you can still activate parts on, throttle max/min and set to aim at orbital cardinal directions...it's a good compromise between real-time control and the limits of self-programming. The rest of the ideas are cool though(Life support is somewhat overrated...it's cool that it stops you from sending 1-man landers all the way to Jool, but it also causes headaches when missing Minmus intercepts)

What about all the stock-only challenges? Of course it would be stock then, but how does someone compare a top speed plane if one has upgrades and the others don't?...just kidding, that was the worst nit-picking i could achieve The upgrades, do they happen overall, or per part basis? Will the fuel tank upgrade do +5% on all fuel tanks(Xenon included)? Btw, i remember some special hidden stuff added to all part configs, upgrading stuffs(cannot find the thread now)

This! This is amazing, i have always just been content with the lander staying upright and being on land (i mean, its in the name). But i had an ISRU and could probably jump 10km at a time using only the bottom tank...good enough to find higher ground for sure, except repacking the parachutes is a small problem. No longer do we need to design Eve landers to be sea-level capable, thanks!

MP is much more limited than single-player. I mean it would be fun building a space station or base together, but only the part where you get there and see "hey, the new solar array module is already up and running" and then continue to do your part...not much there in the way of MP though. With bases you could really help each other "hey, hold that base module's landing leg out of the way please"(while you maneuver the new module with a crawler/assembler vehicle to attach to the base) Other than that, theres nothing really. ...though maybe to teach a newbie friend how to kerbal(set up maneuver nodes for them, take over the craft when they freaks out on Mun landing and whatever else), but thats a small portion of gameplay

Same here, I unlock them every career but only use them once on a useless probe, then never again. But now i learned they should be used like we do with nukes...not enough thrust? add more! To be serious, they should be added as a ratio of the payload(like any other engine actually): (1 ion engine + xenon tank + electricity supply) per 1 ton of payload, expect to get 0.1 TWR. (thats about 14 minutes for a burn from LKO to trans-Mun) ...sadly, that is where they fail. Long burns are not fun, even though those can go into low Mun orbit and back to LKO 5 times before refueling

From LKO you need 2000m/s to reach Jool(with a small margin for error). With a 800m/s at Jool you can definitely go straight to Laythe if you have confidence in the vehicle. My point is that you need about about 2000m/s to get to Ike/Gilly surface to refuel...but 2000m/s could just as well get you to Jool where maneuvers are really cheap: -Unless you start LKO with 1270m/s...then jump to Minmus, then to Ike and so forth(Minmus to Jool costs 1160m/s, i don't want to take that risk either) Sorry i don't mean to bash any playstyle, planet hoping is a valid reason for completionist exploration and all fun of the game...i just found it odd that it is so popular

Why does everyone think planet hopping is worth it? It takes much more fuel and a lot more effort. Look at the dv chart, from a trans-Jool orbit you can reach Laythe with about 400m/s dv. OP wants a "compact and capable Mk1, 2, and 3 spaceplanes", they can aerocapture much easier than interplanetary ships. @Palaceviking is onto something here: I am a big fan of Oberth, but realize that in some situations it is less efficient because of being "further away"(going back to eliptical Kerbin orbit) From Minmus low orbit it takes 1160m/s dv to reach a Jool intercept(the launch window depends on Kerbin-Jool positions, but also the Minmus relative position as to burn in a prograde direction). The advantage here is that using nukes(or even Ions) are certainly possible, since doing a 15minute burn won't be less efficient

Easiest: Add parachutes to your plane...lots of them. Glide slowly near the location and pop the chutes. Easy way to land and take readings, you could repack the chutes with an engineer and take off again, or just press recover button(top of screen) and launch a new plane from ksc to the second location. Easy: Add much more wings, enough to glide at 30m/s. This way you can land even on the mountains(a little practice is needed) Medium: Rocket with an X-15 tip(just a few fins on the final part, and chutes of course). Launch this in the direction of the location and guide it down like an ICBM to the target. Pop chutes when there. Then launch a new one.(this is the quickest way if the locations are scattered across the other side of Kerbin) Hard: VTOL...build a plane that can take off and land vertically. Built correctly, you can land on the VAB's roof easily(once you get skilled in controlling it) so landing on the mountains, hills, ocean becomes really easy.(Vernier RCS thrusters and lots of reaction wheels make it possible) Hardest: I don't know, walk there? All in all, in early career your best bet is probably extra wings or chutes.

Congratulations you won a thing! Are you a master-post-necromancer by any chance? 1047 days NECRO! 2 years, 10 months, 1 week, 6 days has got to be the ultimate record of all time!

You mean flags as in the the stuff we select at the start of new games, that are also displayed on the side of capsules(the pictures)? I like it, it really gives a "track record" and completionist feel to at least go and plant a flag on every planer/moon. If there is only one flag type for each planet, may i also add that these flags are displayed somewhere at KSC? Somewhere pretty obvious(beside the command pod statue?), where they literally show your exploration progression

44tons, thats really efficient! My lander was about 38tons fully fueled(but i only lifted a command seat inside a fairing). Maybe me going 5-stages wasn't as efficient as I thought at first. I used the same idea of extendable ladders on decoupling pylons(saw in in some video of a RO venus landing), and landing legs on big pylons. It landed empty with little fuel in the bottom tank. this gave me a low COM which leads to landing on 45 degree slopes easily. The shape profile was 2.5m only, so the small probecore+seat craft was kept inside a 2.5m fairing at the top. Used ISRU to fill up, while the kerbal landed in a separate rover elsewhere to collect science enroute to the EAV.

Pure Vanilla stock, it offsets up to the edges of the hanger(which is smaller cause stock). I used Extensions a long time ago for the B9 HX parts, but since 1.2 i decided it is time to give up the habbit

Hold down SHIFT

I love the design, sleek and pretty. How do you land that, and how does the kerbal get into the command pod? How is the drag losses compared to a 2.5m only rocket?...the 3.75m parts add lots of cross-section based on my experiments

As long as you are only aiming for Duna/Eve, you might as well just launch straight from Minmus low orbit. You save like 50m/s by going back to an eliptical Kerbin orbit before ejection(for Duna/Eve destinations)...but going to Moho/Dress/Beyond really benefits from the Oberth effect. Minmus' slow orbit means you will likely catch the optimal launch window by +-15 days though but it's not nearly as complicated as everyone here says. It is definately not a 6 different orbital maneuvers...it's more like 5

FAIRINGS ARE AWESOME! Trying to build a battery pack for your mining base with 8x large 4k batteries, but they wobble like a worm when stacked? Use the Fairings(under Payload category) as sturdy stacking containers. Attach each one to its own truss node on the fairing part. Now connect the fairing part anywhere you like.(you don't need the fairing shell for this obviously) Trying to get a Spaceplane to pass Mach 1 but it doesn't, even with turbojets and you know you built it as sleek as possible, everything clipped inside the fuel tanks? Try adding a fairing around those clipped parts(sometimes drag is still applied to parts like reaction wheels that are definitely not exposed to the atmosphere). Trying to send an ISRU lander down to Eve, but only the drills keep blowing up, even though they are hidden behind heatshields? Put them inside a fairing. Its stupid, but it works. Trying to build an Eve lander that can bring a kerbal back up to orbit? Put him in a command seat(on a probe core and some fuel + engine) inside a fairing. With 800m/s dv it is still lighter than a dead weight MK1-Lander-can.

Picture of craft? I am running a drill on a class E asteroid and I don't get any overheating issues(i do have radiators on it) although, i don't get as much fuel as I would expect...i am mining 100t of this asteroid to fill up a single orange tank

Don't shuttle ore up from the Mun, to do that you need to land with enough fuel reserves to lift all that ore...that fuel needs to come from somewhere(that ore won't convert back to more fuel than is used by the lander) ISRU works like @Sharpy explained. It takes electricity and Ore, converts that in to fuel and heat. The small ISRU weighs less, but it is very slow(it uses 10 times as much ore for a single unit of fuel production). Get your highest level Engineer on that ISRU craft(inside a command pod of course). level-0 engineer gives 5x ore mining rate, and a level-5 engineer gives 25x mining rate. Any mid-level engineer will bottleneck your ISRU with only 2 big drills, use that to your advantage. So all in all, refining should happen on the surface(mining base with fuel depot that you just "klaw" onto with a fuel shuttle?) I much prefer the least amount of effort per fuel unit...build a lander with 2x 3.75m fuel tanks, some MK3 LF tank, lots of nukes, ISRU stuff and then land the entire ship on the surface. Give it a week or so to fill up, take off and put it back in orbit. Now you also have a fuel depot in orbit for other craft. When you finally emptied the 160tons of fuel into other craft, just go land again, rinse and repeat.

Kerbals have a G-tolerance of around 5-6 G's. After some training and leveling up, this g-tolerance also increases to above 7. Maybe pilots have a higher tolerance by default? Anyway, YES that is a multiplier...so a lower multiplier would be more difficult, 0.50 would lead to kerbal passing out at 2.5G's(each Kerbal has an almost unique G-tolerance number)

The trick is to find a nice balance between power and weight saving to ultimately increase DV reserves. The drag losses are exaggerated(100 tons of drag force? for 200 tons of thrust? thats a brick with some engines on it). Planes generally have high dry:wet ratios, that is mostly true, but I believe @bewing has the real solution to OP's question:

But there are more inefficient engines running simultaneously, which at least uses more fuel per second of use. Your method definitely wins the reward per effort ratio to get stuff in orbit i guess...

Every engine on your rocket that is not active, is dead weight you are lugging around(this means the bottom stage engines needs to be a bit bigger to help carry those around). In most situations it is more beneficial to run all your engines at max thrust: -at launch, you want to minimize the amount of time that you are hovering or not-yet-in-orbit...those contribute to gravity drag. -at landing(i.e Mun) because hovering or "slowly coming to a stop" costs more fuel -burn/eject to Jool, because you only have a few minutes of burn time near Kerbin(the Oberth effect's advantages decay as you get away from a gravity well) *Note, this disregards mixed Isp engine setups(burning only your nukes might get you further than even though it takes longer...because nukes are super efficient) Activate all possible engines simultaneously. Exceptions to this is: -high isp vacuum engines(poodle, terriers, nuke) have very poor efficiency in low atmosphere, they waste lots of fuel to provide very little thrust below 10km altitude at Kerbin -when using jet engines, you want to get as much power from them before switching to rocket engines If you have to down throttle your main engine to less than 80%, your engine is too big. Remember, every ton of extra weight is less DV, and an engine running at 80% is already being 20% dead weight. Unless of course if you are role-playing a real-life space launch.

Thats completely true, the part config files show how twisted these things become in KSP. To clear it out I meant literal mass divided by volume, where volume is an eye estimation of the 1.25m tank sizes. I have an idea of using the tiny cube attachment part for this, to connect 5 engines onto one part(offset them a bit for aesthetics) and use that part as a sub assembly. This can cut down on the weight and part count for ion powered craft. Luckily Ion engines don't need much structural support strength since they are so weak. Maybe for larger ships it is fair to build multi-layer ion engine stacks(the upper clipped engines firing directly into the bottom engines). Even though that is horrible clipping, it's the closest we get to building a stock 100kN ion engine. ...but they do cost a lot of funds.

Not sure about the most dense, though it is used by a type of engine that has a very high exhaust velocity. The big xenon tank holds about 0.5t xenon fuel, thats a bad wet to dry mass ratio. The small 1.25m LFO tank holds close to the same mass within the same volume...but dv wise, the xenon wins by far. The square cube law is very very true. I did however see a "Ion launch from Laythe to orbit" challenge on the forums today...apparently ion engines can thrust while inside a fairing? Anyway besides clipping parts for aesthetic purposes, I would suggest engine mountings all over the ships surface...thus only battling the "square square law" ?