Tyko

You can see my layout in the picture below. It's set up for a 1440 screen. I also have popups for Landing and Rendezvous. I'm happy to share my Settings folder.

The Bollard engine is causing torque on this ship as reported by Kerbal Engineer. Attach the engine to a fuel tank and you get torque that's not present when other engines are attached it should be 0.0 since everything is inline. There's a pic below showing the Bollard connected and the KER readout in the upper right shows a torque of 0.81. Any idea why this is happening? Thanks!

Thanks for your continued help! I appreciate you taking the time... Do you have a sample craft that has a working interstage fairing? You say it's not designed to be used that way. If not, I'd love to see how it's designed to be used. Did you by chance take a look at the sample craft I uploaded?

The top node isn't open though. Please note the sample craft I sent. I attached the top node of the Interstage to the bottom of the engine and then used the Procedural Fairings adjustments to lower the top node down and raise the fairing sides up to shield the engine part.

@Ratchet Hundreda thanks for responding, I don't follow though. In the sample Craft A that includes interstage fairings they're snugged up against the next stage as close as I can. You said the way I used the part isn't working. How is it supposed to be used so it works?

Looks perfectly normal compared to every Kerbal I've seen

8 gigs is kind of low with SVE running IMHO. There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread, but if those don't pan out I'd suggest going to 16Gigs.

I'm trying to use Procedural Fairings to create an interstage fairing, but I'm getting really high drag - even more drag than if I just threw a decoupler on and had no shroud or anything. With the F12 Aero tools enabled I can watch the drag on the top tank of each lower stage get really high when the rocket reaches around 8000m around 300m/s Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but would really appreciate some advice on this. I've uploaded two test rockets made entirely stock except for PF, one using procedural fairings and the other with just decouplers and huge gaps between the stages. The one with huge gaps actually has less drag Thanks in advance for your help! https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s961tiv02orgyu1/AAAGbF_RKTIEgg_7MFwI8gFJa?dl=0 (these were made in KSP 1.3.1, but I've been able to replicate the issue in 1.3 and 1.2.2)

Thanks, I tried that, but something about the way fairings are created doesn't scale.

Has anyone successfully scaled the stock fairings to 1.875m? I've been playing around with it, but the coding is more complicated than required to scale regular parts. thx!

Thanks for updating this! Is there a parts list for this? I'm looking for interstage fairings and hoping they're included.

yea, having more than one asteroid model would certainly add some variety. Seems like all the stock asteroids have the same surface features.

If you're playing stock career mode you also have parts test, rescue and Kerbin surface exploration missions. these provide more money and sometimes more science too. Just running around KSC can return hundreds of science points - this got so bad that I've actually made house rule against collecting KSC science except for Launch Pad and Runway. I'll fly a dozen missions or more before I get to Kerbin orbit and then many more before I'm heading to the Mun.

I've seen this with VSR docking port lights. Never made the connection with PlanetShine though...I've just gotten in the habit of disabling the docking port lights. I'll try removing PS and see what happens

Yea @Helmetman you raise some good points. If there is a tech tree rebalance it really should be targeted at making the learning curve as simple as possible for new players. To your point, many experienced players are going to be using mods and/or tweaking the tree to their own interests. It may be almost there. Even looking at it from that perspective there are still things I'd change, but the changes wouldn't be as sweeping as they would be if I was just picking what I wanted.

If you're using KER it includes "time to burn" tools. I'm pretty sure it's smart enough to know that your first engine will run out of fuel midway and do the calculations including a second engine.

haha...I don't see it as a problem per se. I think the decision to shrink the solar system was brilliant - it let's players experience all the cool parts of getting into space with less time spent on the boring middle parts - I love that launches take 4 -5 minutes instead of 10-12 minutes. I've been playing a 2.5x game and the only detractor for me is how much time I spend watching rockets launch. It was fun the first 1000 times, after that... Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

fair point It'll be interesting to see what comes out of Making History. Adding HydroLox engines to the core game might be a bit OP. Once I learned how to build efficient rockets it became really easy to SSTO using the stock solar system.

I think all of that is interesting, but I'm not sure the base game needs it all. I remember my first months playing the game and it was already overwhelming enough with the choice already included. You already get meaningful tradeoffs - vacuum vs ASL engines, Power vs efficiency, weight vs power, LFO/Mono/Nuke/Ion, etc. This is all old hat for you, but you've been playing the game since...when? Reorganizing the tech tree a bit does not offer nearly the level of complexity that adding new fuel types, hardware failures, Throttling, etc. That's all perfectly fine for modded games, but if players give up due to complexity before they even reach orbit then it's going to hard to grow the base.

My game has come to a standstill because i can't figure out a new bug with Procedural Fairings - Interstage Fairings aren't shielding lower parts from drag. The launcher hits approx the speed of sound, drag goes through the roof, the rocket almost stalls, it wastes a ton of fuel pushing up past about 12000m where the air is thinner and then starts accelerating again. I'm using design concepts that have worked in many previous iterations of the game, but completely fail in 1.3.1. Unless I can find a solution I'm going to have to either revert back to 1.3.0 or go with less optimized rocket designs. I posted the following in the Procedural Fairings thread, but that forum doesn't seem to get much traffic. If anyone here has any input, here are further details Here's a stock ship with two Fairings on it. (stock except for procedural fairings of course) https://www.dropbox.com/s/3xjwm07ktct6qp0/Fairing Test 1.craft?dl=0 When it gets to about 7500m and just past the speed of sound its acceleration slows and it starts to decelerate. It continues to rise and when it reaches thinner atmosphere it starts accelerating again. Here is my log file too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iy07vztxr44pl18/KSP.log?dl=0

Agreed. If you ever want to go past a complete trial and error type of playing you'll benefit from being able to calculate DeltaV and Thrust to Weight ratios. The game doesn't supply these calculations so you'll either have to learn to do the math by hand (which isn't horrible, but does require at least a knowledge and desire to do lots of algebra) or use a mod such as Kerbal Engineer or MechJeb - they will do the math and display the TWR and DV for you.

Parking a lab and scientists on the surface enables the lab to generate more science. You can totally build a science ground station with a crew and a rover (or a biome hopper). send the rover to collect science (even if you've already returned a copy to the KSC) bring it back to the station, process in the lab and PROFIT You might need some basic ore processing ability to keep your hopper and other landers fueled. Once the lab has completed it's work the base you could continue to mine ore to send up to a refueling station. Long story short, you certainly don't need planetary bases, but they are fun to build and they do offer some in-game value.

A big way KSP deviates from real world is that there aren't huge up front R&D costs to building a successful launcher. A large percentage of the cost of the first launch of the rocket is the development. Also reliability tends to improve with multiple iterations. So, in RL it makes total sense to use a 10 ton lifter to lift a 9 ton payload. Launchers like the Atlas V save money by using a common core and then varying the number of SRBs depending on payload. In KSP, without BARIS or KCT/UPFM or any other failure mods, I tend to somewhat standardize my launchers because my limiting factor is my gaming time - repeatedly building the same launcher is not very exciting. I'll build a standardized launcher but use at least one procedural tank in each lifter stage so I can easily vary the fuel capacity/weight to account for different payloads. This seems to work pretty well and makes me feel like I'm somewhat following RL practices without needing the extra mods.

Still seeing the drag problem with Interstage Fairings. So, I built a completely stock ship (except Procedural Fairings & KER) run in a completely stock game and I'm still seeing the issue with Fairings not protecting from drag. Here's a very simple ship with two Fairings on it. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3xjwm07ktct6qp0/Fairing Test 1.craft?dl=0 When it gets to about 7500m and just past the speed of sound its acceleration slows and then actually stops. It continues to rise and when it reaches thinner atmosphere it starts accelerating again. Here is my log file too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iy07vztxr44pl18/KSP.log?dl=0

Are you aware that the console versions don't support modding? It's so worth it to play on PC and have the option of using mods