Tyko

this works great. I did just that with one center Reliant and 4 Thuds. I dropped the Reliant when about 2/3 of the fuel was gone.

I've written a set of PartUpgrades for all stock engines and those that come with Vens Stock Revamp. I was looking for something that wasn't OP, but reflected reasonable improvements in engine technology. Here's how it works...each engine will get several upgrades to Thrust and to ISP in several steps after the engine is first unlocked. Thrust goes up to 110% and then to 120%. ISP goes up to 105% and then to 110%. Vacuum specialized engines actually have minor drops in ASL ISP to reflect the increased specialization. Vacuum ISPs will max out in the 385 range...I'm not sure if this is "realistic", but since Kerbals never invented HydroLox engines, I figured they worked extra hard on improving their LFO technology. Sharing this in case anyone else wants to use or create their own upgrades and needs a starting place. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jybl08q8o8eymrs/AADWurnw-GWKCWyg1dbc7_RGa?dl=0 As an added bonus for Ven's users I've included a config for the Thunder engine making it vacuum specialized and a new larger version called Lightning. Use if you'd like or leave out. Just keep in mind that the upgrade values for the Thunder are tied to the Thrust and ISP numbers i built into my Thunder mod, so you'll have to tweak the upgrade numbers if you use Ven's standard Thunder stats. I did this because I love Ven's model, but thought it needed a better niche to serve and they fill in the gaps nicely amongst the stock vacuum engines.

Yep, I've done that too...my second stage doesn't have to be stacked and could just be a central core with drop tanks/SRBs. Whatever is most efficient

I try to time my first stages to last until I've increased my time to AP to about 55-60 seconds. At that point I want to reduce thrust to maintain that time to AP most of the way to orbit. This works out to around 1500-1600 m/s DV. So my first stage (or SRB burnout if I'm using them) Is set up with 1500-1600DV. This also happens to put me at a high enough altitude that vacuum engines are at or very near 100% efficiency. So, first stage with a lifter engine and 1600DV, 2nd stage with vacuum engine and just about 100 DV short of full orbit. This lets me drop the 2nd stage when it's on a sub-orbital trajectory (no space trash). The payload then uses 100DV to circularize.

Glad to help This was my first attempt at modding a system, so not sure if there were any unintended consequences. If you run into any ways to improve it, please share them back to me.

That works great for re-used parts and I thing that the latest release offers something like that I the right-click menu. In my case I wasn't re-using parts. There's also a randomizer applied to new parts (that have been built before)

I'm with you on both of these points...I'm playing a 2.5x career game now. DV requirements are roughly 1.6x higher. Gravity assist courses are going to be more necessary than in Stock.

Got it. I wasn't aware of how the units work. That makes sense. Is there a reason you didn't add this to your ProceduralPart configs? Does it break something else or not work properly?

This is great! Is there a way to configure it so that Lab science also gets PYW credit?

I'm trying to figure out how to add cooling to Procedural Tanks. I've found the relevant code (below), but not sure how to write the CoolingCost line so that it determines cooling cost based on the tank size. Anyone know how to do this? MODULE { name = ModuleCryoTank CoolingCost = 0.09 CoolingEnabled = False BOILOFFCONFIG { FuelName = LqdHydrogen // in % per hr BoiloffRate = 0.05 } }

Can you point me to the info on changing part colors? are you saying it's something a player can do or is it a skinning function built into the part?

Wow, really nice ship! Is the torus from SSTU? Never seen that before

Vacuum engines achieve near-100% vacuum efficiencies at fairly low altitude - the Terrier and the Poodle are at 97.9% efficiency (TWR & ISP) at 20Km

Here's my process. Launch ship 1 into a nice circular 100Km orbit. Launch the second ship when the first is directly over the KSC into an 85Km orbit and circularize it. Now ship 2 is behind and below ship 1. Since it's below it will catch up. Drop a maneuver node somewhere in front of ship 2. Make it at least 15 minutes ahead so you have time to adjust it. Use the maneuver node to raise your AP to 100km to match ship 1. You now have a maneuver plotted that will get you to the right altitude. The only question is "when to start it?" You want ship 2 to reach its 100km AP at the same time that ship 1 is passing through that same spot. Grab the center ring of the maneuver node and slide it east until you get a close (less than 2km) encounter. Depending on how far you are behind it may take a full orbit or more to get the encounter close enough. You can keep dragging the node around the orbit - even past where your ship currently is. The node will know it's in a future orbit. This isn't the fastest way, but it gives you lots of time to think because you're starting with both ships in stable orbits.

Thanks for that...what do the '#attachrules[xxx]' portions of your code do? I'm using the code below, which mirrors the syntax of the CLS code, and it works fine. @PART[XXX]:NEEDS[ConnectedLivingSpace]:FINAL { MODULE { name = ModuleConnectedLivingSpace passable = true passableWhenSurfaceAttached = true // use if you want the part to be passable when surface attached } }

Being on a suborbital trajectory for part of a rendezvous isn't a problem as long as you circularize before you hit the atmosphere You may want to try setting your targets in higher orbits. At a minimum I'd want the orbit to be 15-20Km above the atmosphere so you have room to maneuver There's a great rendezvous tutorial here:

I've been noticing slow orbital decay when I am sub orbital but out of the atmosphere. Once ive circularized it seems to be fine. Not sure if this is related

I've looked at the other options and have found that to be the case. KLF is great because it doesn't create a ton of overhead management. I don't have to take each part and run a bunch of tests on it. I don't have to do inspections, maintenance, etc. It feels very KSP in that it enables players to get a feel for the real issues without burdening them with a lot of grind. Kerbal career and science modes are also about being able to improve through science points. I thought this idea would dovetail nicely Anyway. Thanks for responding. I can still manually change the failure rates in the settings menu

I think this has been fixed in 1.2.2. You can also lock your ore tanks while the drill heat up to prevent losses from drill running below optimal temp. 1.2.2 had a problem with heat on drills when drilling asteroids. This may have been what you ran into. I haven't tried drilling in 1.3 yet. I hope they fixed it.

Just wondering...would it be possible to tie reliability improvements to unlocking parts of the tech tree? if so, you could start the game with a higher failure rate, but have that decrease as more advanced engines are researched. It would be a much simpler model than doing per-part reliability rates but would still simulate improvements in reliability. Something like this Start - 15% Basic Rocketry - 10% General Rocketry - 5% Advanced Rocketry - 3% Heavy Rocketry - 1%

It's not hard to add it yourself. Look in the CLF folder for the config files and use a text editor to copy/paste one of the configs for a squad part into a new text file. Each part will have its own short config. So you just need one Replace the part name with the name of the part you want to make passable. Save the test file as 'filename'.cfg into the gamedata folder I'm not at my machine now so can't share actual syntax. If what I shared above doesn't make sense I'll post more detail later.

Two options. There's a mod called SnapDock or there's a lightweight MM config here: look under the Gameplay Changes section for the angle dock config This adds it to stock parts

I've been spending a lot of time customizing mods using MM configs. It's equally fun and frustrating. At some point I'll get my game just how I want it and play. After I've started a playthrough I generally avoid updating mods midstream because I've screwed up saves that way.

Similar question for drills - On asteroids you have limited ore. Does an engineer improve how much ore you get from an asteroid or only how fast it extracts it?

A real F117 is aerodynamically unstable and needs computers to fly. Maybe you made it too realistic