EivlEvo

I actually looked at this as one of the major reasons they went to the 64bit shift. I really enjoy what Squad has done (apart from my Duna base getting shredded in the 1.1 upgrade heh) but from a business standpoint, they could probably pretty easily monetize the expansions now. I also would like to consider that KSP turbo is basically the beta for an interstellar version. I suppose time will tell.

But you're probably using WAY more deltaV using this method. I honestly don't know that it's changed, but it's worth noting that if your game has progressed, and the planetary alignment is different... perhaps you just got lucky the first time round, and now you're just unlucky?

I had intended to build out an ION craft in post 1.0 for Duna... but that plan went to hell, and it ended up being nuclear powered. I get that the ION engines compared to real life are silly overpowered, but man... having ION powered flight again would be sweet.

Yeah... tbh I think my plan is probably to mothball them for a bit and head further out. Or... just go play cities skylines lol.

Lesigh. Had my base finally setup. Got my plane there. Science lab. Mining stuff. The whole nine. Of course the first time I loaded it... it's sliding (on the slightest... maybe 2 degree incline) nbd. Pack the drills up, and move it to a more level surface. Switch over to my Duna plane, fly it back to the Duna base, and dock it. Well. This caused it to do a crack the whip type ripple, and blew all the tires on the science half of the base and 2 of my gigantor solar panels just fell off. Not really sure if these are bugs or what tbh. Not even sure why I'm posting other than to whine. Probably time to burn and rebuild it seems. Be a good time to rotate the crew out anyway.

Have you noticed that they have an option for you to close the science bay so that it's internals are protected from heating? Are you perhaps leaving it open (as has always been the case) and this is maybe causing the experiments to heat up too rapidly? They also added (for some stuff) an internal max and external max temp. So this might be the issue...

Funk. Let me chime in here as I've just accomplished what you're attempting (maybe). My quick version is... I ended up launching 2 components of a landed base for Duna somewhere around .9 (don't remember) and then I moved across the country, and came back to a version where the atmosphere on Duna changed a bit. So I didn't have enough chutes to land safely and my science bay ended up with blown tires at the south pole, and my mining bay ended up at the north pole. Also with blown tires. I sent a ship up that could hop about the surface, and refuel as necessary, but it couldn't achieve orbit on Duna once it landed. I sent it with a pilot (obv) and a level 2 engineer. Wellll... level 2 engineers can't actually fix wheels like it says, so I de-orbited my solar base hoping that one of those engineers had gotten enough experience to get to level 3, and went BACK to my original idea of designing a Duna plane. Which I did (pics below). Anyway. First... I don't believe that plane will fly that well on Duna. For my craft, after struggling with trying to go as light as possible (I really wanted to use ION), I ended up using the mk2 cockpit (I think) with mk1 parts behind it, and the huge 737 wings. I mounted the main gear along the centerline (like a U2) to prevent any pitching or yawing about on the surface. I ran 2 nukes (wing mounted (inline)), and I put an aerospike on the tail so that I could be sure I could get off the ground as quickly as possible. The plane lands completely via parachute. Fly to site. Deploy drogues, deploy mains. Use reaction wheels to control everything (though it's well balanced) and it floats on down. (I thought I had better pics) but... it uses 2 of the hypersonic jet engines to fly itself off the runway to altitude (mounted to the back of the nukes). This... as you're experiencing uses lots of fuel. I carry 3 drop tanks (which you can see in the photo), and I stage them first to ditch the frontal area. Once we're at altitude, and pushing hypersonic speeds (900-1000m/s), I fire the aerospike, ditch the jets, and light the nukes. This leaves me JUST enough to achieve orbit. Once in orbit, I send up a tanker, dock to the jr. port just under the nose, and it has again... just enough delta v to get to Duna (at the phase I sent it at anyway... I think it carries about 3k dV iirc) Once at Duna, I aerocapture (carefully, as heating is an issue) and use whatever fuel I have left to finish the maneuver. Then the craft glides forever (even at high altitude). Get where I'm going... pull the chutes, and sink the drills. It flies on Duna beautifully at about 20% throttle on the nukes. Aerospike to get off the ground and climb like whoa. The ONLY thing I forgot... was the bloody storage container for the ore. But I posted about that, and a few people put a mod out that enables the ISRU to "store" 1 unit of ore, so it can function as designed. My logic here was that if this were the case IRL, they would just shovel the ore directly into the bloody thing, and make it work. Anyway... a few pics (thought I had better screens tbh, but whatever) Ready for takeoff. Fully loaded. Just landed and refueled on Duna. Going to deliver the level 3 engineer to the first outpost! And last but not least... after delivering components and people to each pole. Launching the main hab (which has a jetbridge type docker on it) as well as a tug type general rover, AND relocating everything to an ore heavy area (based on my satellite, and the surface scans)... docked up and refueling at the base with all of my equipment. (Please consider that this base was designed close to 30 game years ago... and my aesthetics and whatnot weren't all the same back then. Ha... If anyone wants the craft file... and I can figure out how to do that... I'll make it available.

Vanamonde! Cool... do we know what the triangle above it is? I see it change from red to blue?

Just the external view thingy. At the top center of the screen where it shows your altitude.

Anybody know this? I'm a real pilot and it's driving me mad!

At some point between the introduction of service bays, and going to 1.0.5 the doors opened wider, or became more robust. This has posed an issue for me because I have one attached to the back of a rover that was originally setup iirc so that the doors wouldn't impact the ground, but alas... now they impact the ground... which blew up my Duna base (quite spectacularly I might add). Anyway, it would be helpful if we could have door opening limits on these similar to the cargo bays.

I have so many questions. What's that main landing gear strut for on the cab? Does this actually work easily like a 5th wheel? Are you able to detach the trailer and re-attach it? Why did you use landing gear on the trailer? How did you get the lights to work on this gear... mine never do even when I select it to. Sorry... awesome design!

This is the craft in takeoff trim. It has a center mounted (tail) aerospike powered by 1 800 model fuel tank, and 2 nukes that are center wing mounted that have turbo ramjets mounted to get to hypersonic speeds. Additionally, as you'll see in the following photo, it carries 3 drop tanks that have juno's and the matching intakes on them (mostly for look, but a few extra kN's never hurts). You can see that I have the main gear center mounted (like a U2) this helps with the uneven terrain, and prevents ground looping should I ever need to do a conventional landing. Additionally, I have main gear under the engine "nacelles" to prevent damage. They're mounted slightly higher. Lastly, I mounted wingtip guards, and a tail guard gear just to ensure nothing crazy happens. The plane carries enough dV to get into LKO+, but I do a full refuel in LKO. From there, it heads to Duna under nuclear power. Upon arrival at Duna, I like to aerocapture since the plane is built to fly prograde (obv) but to slow down it need retro-grade. I typically fire the aerospike prior to periapse, and then re-orient to prograde in the high Dunar atmosphere. From there it's simply s-turning to slow it down to suborbital velocities. Once you reach your desired landing site, simply decelerate like a glider would, and deploy the 4 radially mounted drogues mounted by the aerospike. Once this slows your velocity enough to deploy the mains, do just that, and the craft is both balanced well enough to remain wings level, pitch neutral all the way down. I've also employed an advanced reaction wheel in the center fuselage (behind the mini ISRU that the drills are mounted to) that supplies additional control authority. Touchdown is typically 10 m/s pending site altitude. Once on the surface, deploy your panels, your drills, and activate the ISRU to refuel (typically about a 3 month turn it seems). Since I made this craft specifically to transport crew around the planet of Duna, I wanted it to be able to cycle repeatedly. For takeoff, activate the aerospike, and you'll be off the ground VERY quickly. You can use that for a steep climbout to the thinner air, and at 12k it flies at 500 m/s at about 20% throttle with the nukes. Extremely efficient. Very maneuverable, and reliably VSTOL. I can probably make the craft file available (if I can figure that out) if anyone is interested. But I'd make some minor changes to a few spots if that were the case. Thanks for the help... let me know if you have questions!

So... it worked perfectly. It took me 3 months to refuel my ship with the 2 mini drills and a mini ISRU (learned about balancing that), but it worked... and it flies amazingly. This has just been a 25 year long mission you lot have helped save. Thanks a ton! One last q. I assume once the game goes to 1.1 this would need re-doing? Or is it anticipated to keep working? And lastly... was the code you wrote above the code you stuck with? In case I get ambitious and look to mod something as such. Thanks again all!

Thanks a ton. I'll try it this weekend. Be advised you have two minor typos in the description here... Store and unit of. only stor a single uni tof ore, so once you leave the surface you wont be able to keep producing fuel.

Haha it'd prove useful to at least me!

Hey team. I suspect I've answered my own question in the title. But apparently ore tanks are required to use the ISRU to produce fuel which kind of sucks... because I just flew my first Duna plane to Duna, and well... it needs refueling. The next question this brings up is ModuleManager? Apparently this is a thing... (sorry... I don't really use mods). My question is, if I figure this whole thing out and just add like 10 units of ore storage to a mini ISRU or whatever... does it apply to my ships that are already in progress (I'm assuming yes) or am I essentially creating a "new part" that would need to be added which doesn't really solve my Duna plane crisis? Additionally, if anyone knows of a better way to solve the issue, lmk. Or if you already have the lines of code for the mini isru handy. Grand. I've got the rage over here. Thanks.

Sorry, I assume I missed this somewhere but do these work with stock 1.05? I'm also assuming (since it wasn't mentioned) that these aren't powerful enough to operate on Duna?

Thanks Francois. It's just strange that it was working fine prior, and also that my ladders can't be selected.

Greetings crew. Longtime ghoster. In 1.04 I finally made a concerted effort to colonize Duna. I have 2 separate ships landed there that had landings go less than ideal. When I opened the save in 1.05, if I open my service bays, the ships explode. I reload the quicksave, and now I don't have an option for opening service bays, and I'm unable to select any of my ladders. Is this just one of those things from moving to the updated version? Is there a way to salvage this mission? Can I get my crew back? I'm heavily invested (financially) in this group of missions, and as such... this may actually break my career. Sorry for such a noob question. OTOH at least I didn't post about SSTO's or where to land on Duna?