Rocket In My Pocket

Wow, love the X-15 pics, I wonder how a hybrid skid/wheel system would work in KSP? As far as drogue chutes I haven't had a need for it yet as the friction from the girders plus drag from landing flaps seems to stop the craft pretty darn quick, plus I was at the 30 part limit of my level 1 SPH. I imagine a larger, heavier skid/ski based plane might need the drogues...or even possibly some kind of landing leg "brake" at the rear that digs in and slows it down. If anyone has built any more of their own skid/ski based planes, I'd love to see a pic!

RCS can be used to translate while reaction wheels can only rotate the craft around it's center axis. They have two very different purposes in that respect. That said, either one can be used to assist in getting the ships nose to point in the desired direction and in that case you have to decide between taking a bunch of monoprop/RCS thrusters or solar panels/batteries/reaction wheels. I think it's fine the way it is, and offers an interesting gameplay choice between using one or the other, or a hybrid of both on each craft. Removing viable choices is never a good thing,

I agree in principle. It especially shouldn't work on pavement. Lol. But at the same time I can't see any reason a real plane couldn't take off on a skid or ski, provided they used a grassy or sandy runway. It would just be terribly inefficient! As @Waxing_Kibbous said above though, realistic or not it's things like this that make KSP fun.

Yeah my first designs were very shaky, jittering and skipping about. The craft pictured deploys it's canards to lift the nose slightly for take off, coupled with the gentle curve of the "ski" it's a very smooth ride, it feel's rather like taking off on a patch of ice. The only issue I'd say it has is the tendency to bounce a bit on landing, which if not careful can result in a lost wing tip.

I haven't tried it yet but the relatively low impact tolerance makes me think they wouldn't be ideal. It's an interesting idea though!

Were talking about the plane pictured in the OP which I built in KSP. We weren't talking about the real life Me163 "Komet" anymore. Sorry if that confused you.

Nope it actually takes off on just the ski alone. I've tried carriage's before but I find that any wheels attached to structural girders tend to wobble out of control very quickly. Although last time I tried that it was 1.0.5 so maybe it's gotten better since then? I assumed with all the changes to wheel physics it would only get worse lol.

The ME-163 "Komet" is exactly where I got the idea in the first place!

So I never tried this before 1.1 but perhaps it was always possible? This takes off and lands with ease. (On the level 1 runway even!) A slight curve upwards in the front seems important to reducing friction and tip overs. 80 m/s crash tolerance is plenty even for bumpy landings. Anyone else tried this? I realize compared to actual wheels it's not as efficient but it's surprisingly passable. Considering all the bugs and unreliability of the new wheels system atm...it might be a (hilariously) viable alternative?

This.

I typically avoid this as I tend to get better FPS in true fullscreen mode for most games. I'll have to give it a try with KSP and see what happens. Thanks for the suggestion!

Windows 10 is notorious for making everything in the Program Files read only. What this means is your computer can only read the data, but not change it. When KSP goes to access the files it needs to change as you play, it's not allowed to do so and Blam! Bugs/crashes happen. You are most welcome!

I've been doing this as well, only problem is sometimes the act of alt-tabbing over to the task manager crashes the game lol. Anyone know how to write up a .bat file or something that would automatically start the game in high? Pretty please?

Welcome to the forums @ghost_sox ! You purchased KSP at a rather tumultuous time, having just made the big change from Unity 4 to Unity 5, this is a complete engine overhaul and unfortunately it's going to make some new bugs crop up. However it's still a pretty great game and if you are willing to have patience and hang in there, these nasty bugs are going to be all patched out in due time. I too have not been entirely impressed by the instability of the newest version but try to bear with Squad as they work to make their game better. Nobody here wants you to regret your purchase, so try to be a little more polite and I think you'll find that the forums can add a lot of value to your KSP experience. If you keep having problems like crashes to desktop make sure you visit the technical support forum and make a thread about it, everyone here is very helpful and will practically bend over backwards to get you playing happily. Some day you may be a veteran player with a 1000 hours in KSP and hundreds of posts on these forums, looking back on these days and laughing. I hope that's the case, best of luck!

Well besides some odd errors being thrown about rigid wheel bodies (which may be perfectly normal in 1.1) I can't see anything wrong with the log. Oddly the dxdiag seems to feature at times a different language. But I did spot this one entry that references KSP. Analysesymbol: Leter etter løsning en gang til: 0 Rapport-ID: 8d94f97a-0994-11e6-83db-7824af85d9f9 Rapportstatus: 4 Hashet bucket: +++ WER4 +++: Feil-bucket 129015073468, type 5 Hendelsesnavn: RADAR_PRE_LEAK_64 Svar: Ikke tilgjengelig Cab-ID: 0 Problemsignatur: P1: KSP_x64.exe P2: 5.2.4.2391 P3: 10.0.10586.2.0.0 P4: P5: P6: P7: P8: P9: P10: Vedlagte filer: C:\Users\adahl\AppData\Local\Temp\RDRBAB6.tmp\empty.txt C:\Users\adahl\AppData\Local\Temp\WERBAC6.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml Disse filene er kanskje tilgjengelige her: Perhaps this has something to do with your problem? Also, what you said about admin mode making it work, makes me think it could be a read/write protection problem, try moving your entire KSP folder somewhere else, like my documents. Then right click the KSP.exe, set properties, compatibility, then select run as admin so you don't have to do it each time you launch. Then right click the KSP folder itself and make sure "read only" is unchecked.

I love your logic, best post ever. That said, to play the devil's advocate... Doesn't that mean that KSP technically costs 80ish Euros? (40 for the game, 40 for the assumed 1000ish hours you'll play.) I mean...you have to have electricity to play, and no one is giving it away for free.

Mainly, but having the engines/clamps in the same first stage could cause problems with larger, heavier, low TWR crafts, who may fall and strike the ground before achieving enough thrust. Although I admit that would be a rare edge case. But so long as I can manually change the staging, I guess I don't really care where the game defaults them to.

Well depending on the craft it may need that upward thrust to keep it from tipping over as soon as the launch clamps are released. I mean, if I'm putting launch clamps on something in the first place it's because it doesn't stand up well on it's own. So loading it on the pad, releasing the clamps, then lighting the engines would just result in it falling over and exploding spectacularly.

I've definitely noticed the new version is far less tolerant of alt-tabbing than it was before. I've had several crashes when alt-tabbing, I'd wager closing your laptop is a similar sort of problem. Best of luck.

Your KSP.log file would be helpful as well, it's in your KSP install folder. Just copy paste it here under a spoiler tag. (It's going to be quite long) A dxdiag wouldn't hurt either, press Windows key+r and type dxdiag into the field. Click the button on the bottom right that says "save all information" and then copy paste the resulting text file here, again preferably under a spoiler tag.

I think the lack of replies has more to do with a lack of crossover between players who play KSP and who also play MGS. I do like the idea, especially having non astronaut Kerbals to manage like workers and such. My lack of actually having played the game you are referencing limits my ability to discuss the idea and it's merits in more details though.

Even real rockets start their engines and burn for a bit before releasing the launch clamps. Most of my KSP designs follow the same philosophy, start engines, max throttle, then release clamps. I typically place them in the second staging group so I'm going to have to disagree with your suggestion.

I wasn't accusing you of anything, just musing. My point was mainly that Kerbals are likely asexual. I don't really have an opinion on feminism one way or the other nor did I intend to imply that you did. Apologies for any misunderstandings.

From the KSP wiki: In career mode, hiring applicants requires Funds, at a quadratically-increasing rate for each additional hire. The formula for hiring cost is 150n2+12350n, for the nth hire. Note that the Original four are already hired by default, so n begins at 5. Depending on the upgrade level only a certain number of kerbonauts can be hired, but kerbonauts rescued will still join the roster even if the limit is reached. Basically every Kerbal you hire costs more than the last. That way as your career game continues and you can pool more and more funds, the cost of hiring a new Kerbal remains significant.

I've been using KER in 1.1 and although I haven't done any empirical testing with this effect in mind I certainly haven't noticed any tendency for my crafts to lean one way or the other despite typically placing the KER part on one side as you've described. That said, once I unlock service bays, the KER part goes in there from then on so I didn't fly too many missions with it being placed like that. Next time I'm on I'll try slapping about a dozen of them on one side and see what happens.