Tyko

I use descriptive names for the type of ship in the VAB so I can easily find it again in the list. When the mission is launched I will give it a unique mission name so I can find it in the tracking station. My first robotic landers got renamed several times: VAB - Robotic Lunar Lander 1 - "1" denotes it's my first design Mission name - RLL-1 - "1" now denotes that it's my first robotic lander mission to the Moon. The next robotic lander sent to the moon would be RLL-2 even if the design of the craft had changed. After it's landed - RLL-1 Moon Midlands

The situation: I recently launched my first Mars mission. En-route to Mars I decoupled the transfer stage but one of my engines on the payload broke off due to (i think) an issue with the part's collider - the design looked fine visually, but when the lower stage decoupled I think the engine's collider ran into the top of the booster stage as it started to drift away. The question: How would you handle this in your game? Count the bug as a "real" equipment failure - There are plenty of cases of real space programs having missions lost or impaired by parts failures. Delete the craft (or load a quicksave if you have a recent one), pretend it never happened, fix the bug and run the mission again. Edit the save file to fix the broken engine and pretend the failure never happened. Some other answer. In my case I chose "1". I had 4 engines in an X pattern. I decided to power down the engine opposite the one that failed. I loaded a test version of the craft in the VAB, played with the thrust level of the opposing engine until it created just enough thrust to offset the extra weight of the engine on that side.

I'm there too...I've planned my missions to eliminate debris. This has worked well for local Earth and Moon missions (SSRSS 2.5x). I've also been able to do the same on my first Venus and Mars satellites. I usually follow the Apollo model - my Earth escape is handled by my final booster stage and I set the course to impact my target body. Once enroute I detach the booster stage, do a course correction and then enter my target orbit using the next stage. I expect that I'll end up with debris in the future when I start using drop tanks to do high DV missions like those to Mercury or fast transit crewed missions. Question: if you have debris that's flung into high solar orbits do you still track it or do you eventually delete it? I always keep debris that I may encounter again - say a failed mission in a planetary / moon orbit. I kind of lean towards deleting most things that are in solar orbits because they're never going to be encountered again and it's just taking up memory.

your pix didn't come through in your post

No, you need a pilot or probe core to control a ship. You can switch to random debris in any game mode, but all you can do is look at it

Yea, I saw that. On the real LEM the RCS were placed really high, but that's because the lower half of the craft was left on the moon's surface...it is a cool little lander. If the command module is performing the docking maneuvers maybe just drop the RCS and monoprop from the lander entirely and save weight? By the way, where are your parachutes?

Congrats! Just some quick (totally unsolicited ) advice...the placement of your RCS on your lander is way forward of the center of mass (CoM). Since the thrust coming out of the RCS isn't aligned with the CoM it's going to try to rotate your lander each time you fire them. That's going to make it a lot harder to control. Try loading your lander in the VAB all by itself. Pull up the CoM indicator and align your RCS thrusters with the CoM. This should make docking a lot easier because it won't be spinning when you try to translate. Hope this helps!

The amount of science you actually get from KSC is rarely worth the time if you're just trying to get your game moving. My current game I only allowed science to be collected from launch pad and runway. Nothing else in the KSC has been tapped. I viewed it as a challenge to get to space/orbit with as few science points as possible. That said, I bet 100(ish) science points would do it...just enough to get the basic science parts and the swivel should make orbiting pretty easy.

This video does a great job of exploring issues of space warfare - especially stealth and issues with targeting. Totally worth the watch

Terminus was pretty cool...you could design your own ships and outfit them for all kinds of whacky missions. Normal flight was very fast, but not FTL. There were gates near all the inner planets to facilitate jumping, but nothing kept you from slow-boating from one planet to another. The craziest thing I ever did was to send a ship to the ice giants - there aren't any gates out there. I had to build a ship that could go for days. If I remember correctly it took something like 5-6 real-time days for the ship to fly to Uranus and I just had to leave the game running and hope it didn't crash. Sadly when I arrived and fired up my sensors there were no easter eggs...I was a bit let down that the devs couldn't have dropped an abandoned base or pirate base out there for me to find.

it's in the TweakScale documentation. There's also a text file in the download folder with some examples in it.

Couldn't you land with drilling gear and empty tanks, then mine/process the Fuel you need? The benefit here is that you're using the contract to create a reusable fuel depot.

Another benefit of Lunar Rendezvous...you can leave the lander in orbit. Next mission you just need to bring enough extra fuel to fill the lander back up and you can do as many landings as you like with that one lander. In my game I eventually graduate to having an orbital lunar station and bigger landers, but I'll still keep the little lander around docked at the station as a rescue vehicle.

wow quick work! thanks

If you're not getting a lot of stuttering I'd say it's fine. Last time I put up a big station the screen stuttered like crazy. I think my problem was that I had too many lights on it

This is looking really cool. How are your frame rates?

Totally doable and fun. Here's a series of pics from an Apollo style mission using 1.25m parts and the K2 command pod In this version the CM had all the fuel for both translunar injection and return. In real life they used the final boost stage to complete TLI, so my CM fuel tank is a lot bigger.

2 build tips for your ship that help Make sure your RCS thrusters are situated around the center of mass of the ship that will be docking. bring up the center of mass indicator in the VAB and use that as a guide. Don't forget to consider how much fuel you'll likely have. Estimate how much fuel you'll have left and temporarily empty the tanks to that level to get a better COM estimate. on the RCS thrusters turn off rotation, pitch and yaw thrust so that the thrusters only activate for translation (Up/Down, Forward/Backward, Right/Left)- This is in the right click menu for the RCS, I don't recall the name of the setting in the right click menu...sorry, but it's pretty obvious.

I follow the same rule about quick loading 3 times if there's a Kerbal life on the line. IRL NASA can bring experts on to try to model and solve issues (Think Apollo 13). Trying a few different ways to save a Kerbal is my analog for having expert teams working out every possible permutation.

I don't think so...It very consistently occurs every time I switch of the Action Groups tab. Each time I have to click twice on the RCS B.A. button to make it go away. The first click opens RCS B.A. the "rest of the way" - the actual menu screen pops up and then a second click to the button closes it. Yes, not a deal-breaker by any means and you have quite a lot on your plate already...

Hey @linuxgurugamer! Thanks for keeping this going! There's been a persistent ... odd behavior (not sure if it's a true bug)...If I have RCS build aid installed, but not activated it likes to pop up the Red/Orange/Yellow center of mass balls whenever you go into and then exit the Action Groups tab. Start in the normal build tab, switch to the action groups tab and then back to the build tab. When I do this the center of mass balls always pop up. Are others seeing this?

Agreed. In my latest 2.5x game I was getting bored with (almost) endlessly repeating long launch times and started using Gravity Turn. Right off the bat I was saving a couple hundred DV, which made me sad because I was pretty sure I was doing efficient manual launches (my Stock game manual launches usually took about 3300m/s, GT was doing Stock launches with closer to 3100m/s) You can also set the target altitude and can even set launch azimuth and add roll programs - a really solid piece of coding that's easy to use.

I've noticed that after a stage event happens the next stage drops below ideal time to AP because it takes a portion of a second for the stage event to happen and the next stage to kick in. The next stage is now below the AP target and Gravity Turn tries to compensate by lifting the nose to increase time to AP. The result is a series of "porpoise" bounces. There would be two ways I could think of to fix this bouncing: in the last moments before a stage burns out allow time to AP to rise about 10-15 seconds above the target time. This way when the staging event happens the rocket will be back down to correct time to AP when the next stage kicks in. Slow down how quickly the computer reacts and corrects so as to smooth out the pitch changes. Thanks for maintaining this mod. it's really cool.

@Julien Kerman: I agree. As that seems to be an S-IV, I wonder why you didn't put on another Centaur? Actually, for that payload Saturn1+Centaur would probably have served you better than a full Saturn-5. @Laie : Just for the record, I wasn't critiquing his choice. I was asking about why he made the choice he did so I could learn.