Duban

Because the earth has four times the escape velocity of Kerbin? For reference, a round trip to Tylo has comparable delta-V to a moonlanding IRL. That's why SSTOs have always worked in KSP. Not because of the physics. Agreed. The new aerodynamics are incredible. I just glided a spaceplane onto the runway unpowered after missing my target. It's so much more intuitive and reliable.

Gameplay trumps realism in video gaming. Realism is the worst argument you can use for balancing video games.

We're not talking about the general nerf to all "parts" though. Everything was retweaked, but the SRBs in particular were nerfed far beyond that of anything else in the game. It wasn't just a tweak for SRBs. Think about this. A third less ISP, 50% heavier dry mass, and a third less fuel mass. That's a crazy nerf even with the atmospheric changes. You would literally have 50% more delta-V for the same fuel mass before these changes, but you still have a third less fuel to work with anyways

Do you realize just how nerfed SRBs are now? The changes are. An ISP of 160 down from 225-240. 160! That’s literally 80s worse than RCS engines, and is exaggerated farther by the exponential growth of mass. A 50% heavier dry weight. A third less fuel mass down from 3.25 tons to 2.25 tons. And nearly double the cost going from 325 credits up to 580. We aren't talking about a few adjustments for the new meta. This is nerfed into oblivion changes. I can't recall a nerf this massive to ANYTHING in video gaming history.

Tylo, Definitely. I've done so many missions to that planet, always a little better than the last. In my last mission I managed to do it using less than 20,000 credits. It was great!

Ok, thanks much for the help guys. It won't be the first time I've edited the save file so I'll try that. That's a really weird issue for it to only affect 64 bit.

I started a new Career mode game. In the space center all of the buildings have the models of them being fully upgraded and right clicking on the building states that they are fully upgraded (no option to upgrade). The features are that of the tier one buildings though. I can only accept 2 contracts at a time, launch <18 ton rockets, and play as if I had tier 1 buildings. It's literally impossible to upgrade the buildings beyond their lowest levels. Creating a new career save does not help, and re-downloading the KSP client did not help either. Help, the game is unplayable like this.

Back in 2012 ships would spin wildly out of control for no reason because of floating point errors, and randomly explode when switching out of the mapview. This was back before any sort of save/load feature was added so your entire mission would be lost when this happened. Also, for a while if a part exploded point 0 at the EXACT position of the it would cause a divide by 0 error that would crash KSP. I think they fixed it, but I'm not sure.

An aerobrake assist from Jool or Laythe only saves ~2-300m/s over going straight to the planet from the edge of Jool's SOI. You'll probably spend that much more fuel or more getting an intercept anyways since it's a lot more difficult to intercept Tylo from a close orbit anyways. What most people fail to realize is that Tylo and Jool's massive gravity wells negate most of your initial momentum through the oberth effect.

Drop 1 liter of mono-propellant.

This is my kind of thread. I am a master when it comes to ultra-light designs. The trick is to create smaller, smarter, and more detailed landers. I could reduce their weight/cost even farther if I wanted to replace the capsules with rover chairs, but that's too cheaty for my tastes. 3.8 ton round trip to the Mun: http://imgur.com/a/AUAyj 4.61 ton round trip to Duna: http://imgur.com/a/5NSFg 15,500 credit round trip to Bop and Polhttp://imgur.com/a/BI4TO 19,300 credits round trip to Tylo (with help from reusable shuttle and lifter): http://imgur.com/a/M68qg

http://imgur.com/a/z26Yz

There's never any reason to get a gravitational assist off the Mun. The oberth effect by burning in Kerbin's much larger gravity well is better than a weak slingshot manuever off the mun for reaching every body in the game. Gravitational assists off the Mun are a waste of time/fuel. Let me give a breakdown of the planets and why gravitational assists are/aren't useful on each. Moho- Performing a gravitational assist off Eve is the way to go with landing on Moho. The unpowered section of the gravitational slingshot will help match Moho's high inclination while Eve's immense gravity well will improve your rocket's efficiency (oberth effect) when reaching the inner solar system. This is by far the most useful and necessary slingshot in KSP. Eve/Gilly- Nothing to slingshot off of to reach. Eve is a useful body for reaching Moho though. Mun/Minmus- Again Kerbin's gravity is more useful for getting to other planets the Mun is. Gravitational slingshots off Mun/Minmus are a waste. Duna/Ike- Duna and Ike are too small and have orbits too similar to Kerbin's to be useful for gravitational slingshots. Kerbin's gravity is more useful than a Duna/Ike system slingshot. Dres- Is in a useful position for slingshots, but is too small to be worth bounching off of. Jool- Is more likely to hurl you out of the Kerbol system than send you anywhere useful. Its gravity might (in theory) be useful for matching Eeloo by performing a powered gravitational slingshot using its immense gravity (oberth effect). I haven't tried though. Laythe- Has a nice atmosphere for aerobraking off of which can be useful for matching a few other planets. Vall- Reaching Vall directly from Kerbin results in your ship blasting toward the planet at high velocity. Vall lacks Laythe's atmosphere for performing an aerbrake into, and doesn't have Tylo's immense gravity to cancel out your momentum from falling into Jool. Consider performing an aerobrake maneuver off Laythe, or a gravitational slingshot off Tylo to match Vall's orbit better before landing. Tylo- Tylo's gravity cancels out nearly all of your velocity on approach. You're best just going straight from Kerbin to Tylo here. Bop & Pol- Laythe/Tylo can be useful for getting into a closer orbit and losing all the velocity you have on approach to Jool. Eeloo- Nothings to really slingshot off of to reach and nowhere to go after sling-shotting off Eeloo.

I chose Tylo! I wonder who the third person that voted Tylo is. It's such an awesome planet with it's hellish 8m/s^2 gravity and 2km/s orbital velocity.

Link: http://imgur.com/a/MMSoR No mods, tools, mechjeb, or other calculators were used in the execution of this mission. Everything was done 100% by eye and with lots of experience in KSP. This mission was accomplished in hard mode so all missions were completed in one attempt, and any mistakes are included as is. Ultimately the entire mission cost less than 12,000 credits while "Explore Laythe" paid out about 4-500,000 credits in return. I.P.I.S. .craft file- http://www./view/z51se4un00sp21y/Artanis_(I_P_I_S_).craft LCEV-3 Hydralisk .craft file- http://www./view/mw3ocgvwtox82ry/LCEV-3_Hydralisk.craft Edit: If you enjoyed this take 5 minutes to leave a message. I love reading comments and answering questions.