suicidejunkie

Another factor I have noticed: 1) Wherever you do the 'calibration' test using the surface ore scanner? That location will always be exactly the value claimed as 'average'. 2) On a large biome, you can usually see some variation in ore concentration from the orbital scanner even before calibration. Thus: Find what looks like the lowest concentration on the low rez orbital map, and calibrate the ore concentrations from that spot. Everywhere else should then be even higher value!

Fuel Cells and their "FillAmount = 0.95" setting. Can that be made tweakable? I hate the idea of wasting LFO when the batteries dip a teeny bit, but having some fuel cells kick in at 50% energy, and then more emergency cells kick in when the energy gets below 10%, that would be awesome.

In my current career game, I have a policy that no probe core is allowed to be attached to a rocket engine, in order to prevent an AI doomsday scenario provide job security for the Pilots. This has backfired a little, in that most of my flights are with Engineers so that they can assemble equipment on site, so I'm still not using many pilots.

Personally, I haven't bothered with non- career mode. Take only the contracts that sound fun or can be added to what you were going to do anyways, and you're golden. Money is no object once you've got the T3 science labs paid for, but the simple existence of that number is important psychologically. The main trick would be finding good difficulty settings, and I'm thinking I need to scale the finances down more (Building costs are too high compared to the rockets).

I dare say that the aerodynamics of your craft should play a large part in determining an optimum setting as well. A more streamlined craft would benefit more from the increasing TWR, and an ugly blob of rovers on a stick would benefit more from the lower speeds in the heavy atmo using a lower TWR. Varying the throttle to get off the ground fast, then cruise subsonic until the air is thin enough to go faster sounds like the best of both to me. PS: If the mainsail is too big and thrusty, try adding more payload

Normal? As in towards the north pole for an equatorial ring? Or Radial? As in towards the sky/ground? Which symbol on your maneuver node is each of the engines pushing towards? If you're thrusting towards cyan (radial), you either squish or stretch your ring into a bit of an ellipse if the engines are opposing each other, or drive one side of it down into the planet if the two engines are cooperating. If the ring is spinning, you'll need to thrust sharply or you'll cancel out your thrust as you progress in your orbit. If you're thrusting towards purple (normal), you either change your inclination if the engines are opposing, or pop the ring due north or south if they are cooperating. If you pop it due north, gravity will pull it back down towards the equator for it to oscillate back and forth. Assuming it is rigid and uniform, and equatorial, the ring won't apply any net gravitational force on the planet, and vice versa. This is a bad thing, since your ring is close to (and thus likely to randomly collide with) the planet, given tiny random perturbations. In practice, lumpiness will induce tides and slowly wobble things around more chaotically. Note: if the ring drifts to one side such that the left is closer to the planet than the right, that doesn't change things. There is more force per unit of ring on the left side, but there is also more ring on the right side, and that balances out exactly. The ring will keep drifting at the same speed until the fact that the planet isn't a point mass becomes important and you encounter tides, air and/or mountains.

I recall seeing a video including a mod which would fork the savegame, and allow you to fly to orbit, then rollback to the separation point and fly the aircraft home. Then it would merge the forks back together at the end so you'd have your plane on the ground and the probe in orbit at the same time. I can't think of what it was called, or a proper search term to find it unfortunately.

Build a land-based remotetech communications grid covering Kerbin. I'm working on it, but it takes quite a bit of doing to plant a relay on every mountain and many of the hills.

This is what I use for fuel to LKO, though it is outdated and a not terribly efficient multirole vehicle. Needs a hearty boost to get into space, but once there, it can: 1) Travel to Minmus surface. 2) Hover slowly up to the mining rig on minmus slopes, and then land on the LV-Ns. 3) Tank up to full. (KAS fuel lines hookup by the engineer on the miner) 4) Travel direct to LKO with no aerobraking. 5) Dump the full 3 popsicles into the orbital depot, plus all the monoprop. 6) Goto 1 The LF stacks are dedicated to the nuke engines to go the full cycle with about 15-25% reserve. The popsicles, KIS saddlebags, and any Kerbals in the lander cans are pure payload. Gigantors were for cooling the nukes (before radiators were a thing) but also assist the mining rig when it is loading. 96 tons of LFO per cycle with one docking, one hose hookup and not a lot of maneuvering.

Landed a second mun lander near the north pole to set up a Kerbin-Mun-Minmus link with better uptime. Since this lander has the parts to build a bunch of relays, I set 'er down without dropping the descent stage or deploying the landing gear. Instead I just laid it down, stripped off the excess tanks with my engineer and then rolled a barrel of fuel from the old descent stage down the hill to my new lander, since that was faster than carrying it. Indiana Kerman or Donkey Kong? You decide. Edit: Well, that didn't turn out so well. Exploded all the engines trying to lift it to launch position. Fortunately Jeb's Junkyard & Spaceship Parts has recently opened a franchise on the mun, so there are spares avaialble!

Adding more battery is the main thing. Observe the e meter and the stats of the antenna you choose; e drops by a fixed amount per packet, and you need some number of packets to trans- all the -mits for your experiment. Multiply to find the battery requirement for your ship. Avoid relying on the partial transmit thing: I've found If you transmit chunks of 15+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 = 45 mits they add up to much less science value than doing the full 45 in one stream. You can always do another sample and retransmit for another attempt at the remaining transmit value, but the out-of-energy drip packets quickly become worth nothing at all. A 4k battery solves the problem in one go and fits nicely on your lab at higher tech levels. Bringing the experiments home also solves the issue quite well.

If the probe is only 20m away, EVA a kerbal and then you can right click on the probe to manually repoint its antenna towards KSC. In real life, wheels and ladders are available much sooner as well KSC has a fixed range. Upgrades would be cool, but anything of practical significance would mean an orbital network isn't required. The current range is a balance decision.

Which antenna? Are you simply getting out of range? You'll want the DTS-M1 folded out and aimed in order to achieve a Kerbin-Mun link.

Yeah, the implementation isn't important, the key is the idea of "faster service = more money" Also having multiple hotels in different places dynamically added to the choice of destinations would be cool, so you can have both spares and variety.

Moving content from a different thread: Yeah, in that example, it would be minimum 2 maximum 3 week stay. Overall contract should have a time limit (4 month window say) much shorter than stock contracts. Oooh, could you have optional sub-goals? That way, you could have a contract worth say $50k (scale to taste) for a prompt visit to Minmus, with reduced value if you take too long to do it. Slow service = no tips! Required: (+50,000) "Visiting a Hotel" - Timer: 6d 0h - - Stay at Midrange Quality Hotel (>$250k value) - - On Minmus - ($0 +10*) "Going Home" - - Recover tourist on Kerbin Optional: (-$10,000; -3*) "Delayed Flight" - Timer: 20d (-$10,000; -3*) "Quite Slow" - Timer: 30d (-$10,000; -3*) "Poor Service" - Timer: 45d (-$10,000; -3*) "Steerage Class" - Timer: 60d Failure: (-$50,000; -10*)

Yeah, in that example, it would be minimum 2 maximum 3 week stay. Overall contract should have a time limit (4 month window say) much shorter than stock contracts. Edit: This should probably be in a contracts thread; its getting off topic.

By cruise control, I meant like in a car; automatic throttle adjustment in order to maintain a fixed speed. For reduced power, you can disable some of your wheels in an electric rover, although that is quite granular depending on the wheel layout.

There are two things I see as a must-have for rovers: 1) Remap the gas/brake keys from W/S to +/-, and the steering from A, D to /, * 2) A 6-sided die on the + key and a wallet to hold it down while cruising. Remapping the keys allows SAS independent of driving. First up, it stops wasting electricity, and it also allows the SAS to actually hold your course instead of being continuously reset by the command inputs. Zoom out to find a reasonable heading, quicksave and then go for lunch or read the forums, and occasionally make course corrections. Having an unaerodynamic vehicle helps keep the speed under control on the downhill without preventing you from climbing hills. An actual cruise control setting would be much nicer, but it works.

Could you allow multiple hotels, and have the tourist contracts distribute between the ones that still exist, or even combine some? 5 night stay at Minmus slopes ski resort plus a day trip to Highlands Peak lookout point! All-inclusive tickets on sale now, starting at 10k funds!

I had a similar problem; terminal velocity of the capsule became fatal. Solution; run the game directly instead of using a shortcut; the current directory being different caused it to miss some physics files apparently.

Speaking of descent damage, my mun landers lately have all been belly landers, but not intentionally. The one time it did land vertically, I came back from an EVA walk to find it face down again. The 909 is great since it has enough thrust to avoid most of the gravity losses at mun while still being very light. That ship got back to Kerbin for only about 800m/s (direct ascent to munar retrograde) after I managed to get it tipped back up.

I think you're overestimating the rate of depressurization to Hollywood levels. Unless you're talking about the whole wall coming off, you should have lots and lots of time to find a patch kit and fix it without getting dressed. If you accidentally a spacewalk, you won't be in reach of a suit locker anyways. Still, rather than suiting up, why not something you can wear all the time as an undershirt like the corset? There will be lots of pressure for garment makers to refine things with a space economy going. Keep the mask folded up in your utility belt instead of in a locker.

One more little labeling issue; the Distance to target is labeled as km but is actually reading in m. EG: The mountains just west of the space center are listed as 50,000 (km) away. Regarding the AMP meter, I think it could be improved with extra precision near zero. Many times with low tech stuff I'm dealing with 0.05 e/s net energy rates, and the difference between +0.05 and -0.05 is critical to long-term survival, but such amounts are not visible when the smallest part of the scale is +1, 0, -1

"In older versions" yeah. In regards to passage of time, I'd like to see crew salaries and space hotel bills for the tourists too. (eg; 2-3 week stay at Minmus Slopes Ski Resort Base for $1000 per day plus an optional day trip to Highlands Peak Lookout for an extra $1500)

In regard to the player weighting the contracts, that sounds like it could be in the form of bidding on the contracts. If you are going to do any rescue contracts you see, but don't want too many of them, then set your price to 3x normal. If you want more satellite contracts, you can lower your bid, and then try to do them with even lower costs. Perhaps keep it simple with a third button on the contracts: [ ] Accept (contracts like this become slightly more common with slightly lower rewards) [X] Demand more money (+10% reward for this contract, contracts like this become less common but with slightly higher rewards) [ ] Decline (contracts like this become much less common, but with notably higher rewards)