suicidejunkie

I had Valentina delivering a load of radiators to my Mun miner which, due to a design flaw, had none at all. She had enough dV to cancel her orbital velocity, and I figured the landing margin would be made up by surface velocity. Unfortunately, the surface velocity of mun is around 10m/s, so she came in about 20-30m/s short of fuel after the suicide burn. The entire craft including the kerbin-return vehicle was used as a crumple zone, leaving just a capsule, TACLS canister and a docking port, plus Val with three radiator panels in her backpack. Mission Successful!

You should probably visit Dres at some point to make it an actual Grand Tour. Also, starting from Kerbin sounds a bit too practical. Put the Kerbin landing somewhere in the middle.

I'm using 1.0.5 as well, and it works fine for me. Perhaps mods are affecting it? If you have an ISRU active while away, it could be eating the ore before you see it on return. Make sure to check if your fuel tank levels have gone up instead of the ore levels.

If you timewarp above 100x, then the thermal system starts to break down. I found that after suffering some overheats and engineers in external seats melting. Switching away from the vehicle is best as of 1.0.5 or possibly earlier. The arrangement of panels may also matter. The fixed panels are supposed to only pull heat from components attached to the component the radiator is attached to, and anything further than that could suffer.

That's perhaps the biggest thing; if you are watching your mining rig in timewarp, you're doing it wrong. Set a KAC alarm if the mining process is the lynchpin holding up a time-critical mission, or you need to launch the ore up to orbit for processing on a regular basis. But for a surface refinery, just leave it. Fly another mission, and by the time you want fuel, the base will have it.

Stockable: EVE + Scatterer in the graphics options, but off by default to save the potatoes and ensure the game starts well on a fresh install. Chatterer. There is already a voice volume slider in the configs, but what does it control? BULB-lite. Sliders to adjust the color of your lights; simple, unobtrusive and cosmetic fun. Radar altimetry might be nice, squeezing it in might be trickier. A toggle mode for the big altimeter in flight perhaps. Maybe: Adding lifesupport to Hard, and removing parachute aero-damage from Easy would be nice to make the difficulties change in actual difficulty, but that's a bigger discussion. Not Stockable: KAS/KIS, KER, MJ, EL, RO, ETC, these all change the game notably and should not be stock unless Squad really wants to take the game in a new direction. Front-paged when you click 'get mods', sure. Part of the installer, no.

The way I see it, is the problem is not the quicksave. It is the quickload and instant revert. Non-Kraken disasters can be strongly mitigated by buying sim time in KCT, sending your renewable supply of greyshirts to do the prototype testing, building in safety margin, and building out infrastructure for rescues. Rescue and repair actions seem to me to be grossly underrated fun.

The engineer simply needs to be aboard the vessel anywhere. Command seats are fine too. To minimize jumpiness, build your mining rig with large fuel tanks. You can then dock (using claw or hose), quickly fill the visiting ship's tanks, and then disconnect the two vehicles again without leaving the scene. The mining rig can then resume its drill and fill safely. Rather than stationary fuel depots, consider having >100 ton nuclear tankers that can land on Minmus next to the mining rig (or mine independently), and then bring the fuel to whomever needs rescue and/or resupply. Edit: My main reason for mining is that I don't like letting anything go to waste. Past the early game, what goes to orbit stays operating in space indefinitely. (Service only ends when the vehicle is damaged beyond KAS repair, and in that situation it is broken down to act as spare parts for other vehicles) SSTO spaceplanes are allowed to deorbit because they can be refuelled on the lawn and sent right back up.

Aren't they called "world firsts"? I'm pretty sure I've gotten money and rep for doing those things mentioned. All you need to do is close the message popup instead of deleting it, but having a tab in one of the KSC buildings to show them in a better-organized form would be nice.

There is one thing: Patience. As long as you have some translational option, a separate attitude control (gyros or a second RCS thruster) and a lot of time, you can get the job done.

Performed a three way spaceplane rescue rendezvous after Jeb managed to burn the starboard wing off during an aerobrake pass coming in from Minmus. The two tourists are home now, while the Big 3 and some random scientist are waiting for KSC to rotate under the orbital track. Before leaving for the last time, Jeb set the damaged SSTM Enterprise on a suborbital track with the emergency chutes armed, so we can test the safety systems safely.

"The European launch has been delayed due to a staging mixup. New boosters are currently being assembled."

Only to catch pokémon. That is a prime career overhaul idea: What better way to find a few more cheap parts by the side of the road to assemble into a rocket!

You've misread my intention. Also, humans are not involved in this. The *launch vehicle* must be crewed. Meanwhile a satellite does not need engines to float in space The satellite itself is in fact required by contract to be just a probe core, solar panel and transmitter and whatever else is demanded, but you don't have to let it drive. - For examples from my current career game: Initial RT network is deployed from primitive aircraft with parachutes onto mountain peaks for extended link angles and range. Jeb drives, Bill assembles relays and repacks parachutes upon landing, Bob carries spares and does science at the first few stops. Val does contract missions to fund the operation. Science probes to Mun and Minmus are crewed for maximum science. Additional Mun landings are done by rescued engineers who can assemble radio reflectors on the surface while collecting samples and jury-rigging launch solutions after inevitably tipping their craft. An orbital tourister rocket with the tourist capsules removed and an ore scanner bolted to the top with a separator. Upon reaching space, the pilot stages off the booster and the payload. Hijinks ensue as the Kerbal bumps and nudges the accidentally-loosed satellite into a semi-decent inclination orbit, which is good enough to cover the useful latitudes thanks to scansat. (later a contract to adjust the satellite's orbit is completed by nudging the engine-less satellite half a degree with an EVA suit) Multi-crew, fancy mining/science hoppers keep all classes gainfully employed during the later tech rampup and Minmus colonization. Recently: SSTO spaceplane launches with the required pilot for the SAS to reach space. Fly to designated mun orbit. Engineer gets out and assembles the contracted satellite in situ from the parts in the storage bin. Money and success. Tourists in the back seat applaud and snap pictures. Soon: A self-sufficient mining/science/EL constuction mothership will be heading out to Dres. Initial interplanetary kick will be provided by a crewed booster that will return to Minmus base afterwards. - What is the goal of your space program? To fling chunks of lifeless metal around for fame and riches, or to realize the dreams of your Kerbals? If, as per the OP, you want multiple Kerbals to remain important, doing something like I suggested will help immensely.

The PS4 has USB ports right? What happens if you plug a mouse and/or keyboard in there?

I suggest: 1) Make Pilots useful with "Skynet mode" - Do not allow probe cores to be in control of engines. (Satellites for contracts or RT-comms can be placed by crewed vehicles) 2) Make Engineers useful with KIS/KAS - Tinkering in space and building your own rescue ship from the debris is awesome. 3) Make Scientists useful with Career (or science) mode. If 1&2 are in action, then scientists are also useful for muscle when an engineer needs to lift heavy parts and you can't afford to take an extra engineer or pilot off their task.

I have done some science to it recently. The 50% EC cap is based on ONE of your energy-storing devices aboard the ship, not the total EC. Also, only unlocked EC is considered. Which exact battery is chosen for what reason, I do not know. For optimal automatic fuel cell operation: Avoid mixing battery types, and lean towards a small number of large batteries. Lock all EC storage with lower capacity than your main battery. (Murphy's law says the fuel cell will pick the worst battery to pay attention to, but it isn't allowed to look at locked batteries) Mod the cap % down to about 20% (>10% to avoid Lifesupport alarms, but small to avoid burning LFO unnecessarily) For practical example: You start with a z100 and a z4k battery on the ship, both fully charged. You spend 110ec transmitting science. You now have batteries with 45/100 and 3945/4000 Murphy's law says that the fuel cell will pay attention to the smaller battery, which is at 45%. The fuel cell turns on almost immediately. You start with a z100 (drained/locked) and two z4k batteries (unlocked), fully charged. You spend 3900ec doing mad science. You now have batteries with 0/100 and 2050/4000 and 2050/4000 The fuel cell avoids the z100 since it is locked, and sees the z4k batteries >50%. The fuel cell remains off. Spend 200ec more, and the 4k cells drop below 50%, turning the fuel cell on.

Z100 for the indicator light (Using a mod to recolor the indicator based on EC%) Z200 stack beneath docking ports to act as a shock absorber when mashing ships together. Z1k or Z4k depending on rocket size for actual electricity storage.

I'm not saying it doesn't accelerate slower. But anyone installing ion engines on a ship cannot be very concerned about low acceleration. The ion is basically an upper stage that gives you tons of dv. You can't just leave it off the design. What I'm saying is you could get more dv by leaving it as inert mass and saving it until your ship is lighter instead of doing the cogeneration thing and wasting Xenon pushing liquid fuel. Except in those situations where every notch of acceleration is critical, like landing and takeoff.

I believe a rechargeable (from Minmus) set of max size fuel tanks is much more useful as an LKO station than a one-shot asteroid mine. As a fuel tank on a vehicle, however, I believe I've seen resource mass %ages significantly better than rocket fuel tanks, so they'd make good disposable middle stages.

I haven't gone interplanetary or used ions, so my longest burn is the 10 minute SSTO plane ascent on LV-Ns If you count jet engines, then the burn times jump dramatically.

I'm running 64bit 1.0.5 with KCT, RT, EL, KAS and a bunch of smaller mods. Rapidly polluting the surface of Minmus with debris from rovers and ships, but I've managed to keep space somewhat clean by building out my comms network on the surface. No crashes at all, which is why I'm still here; my Kerbals have zero existential fear about flying a subsonic plane to the poles of Kerbin and back (many fears related to engineering flaws, but that's different).

I mine at Minmus and have 200t LV-N tankers land next to the refinery to fill up, then the tankers travel to LKO where they become fuel stations. Once empty, they can return to the refinery and land on their own to repeat the cycle. When using KCT, the 14-day ping time for fuel tankers isn't a problem, and even with just two tankers, there's always one ready in LKO. I do have a fuel service set up on mun as well, but it is small and extremely inefficient by comparison. Just enough to keep local operations running. Crew cycling and upgrades are so much easier on Minmus as well. My SSTO plane can go from KSC to Minmus, and then back without refueling, while to even land on mun requires a top-up in munar orbit.

This sounds misleading. The inefficiency isn't the low thrust of the Ion causing the ship to accelerate slower than if the ion engine wasn't installed. The inefficiency is in running the high isp ion engine while there is still liquid fuel as payload instead of burning off the "low" isp LV-N fuel first.

Southern Ontario Here. Low-planning space-cowboy career in Kerbin SoI for me. KIS/KAS to patch up all the incidents that inevitably occur. I use a mix of rockets, aircraft, spaceplanes, and rovers. Currently deploying a ground based network of RT relay probes around Kerbin with a MK3 bomber, building farms on Minmus with EL, and preparing a first interplanetary launch to Dres. Though I doubt the interplanetary mission will arrive before 2017.