Tyko

great idea...while they're at it they could make the same category system work in the VAB/SPH so you could assign designs to certain missions / destinations.

Agreed..I think the designers chose the right level of complexity for the out-of-the-box game. Today stock feels really simple...now, but I've been playing for a year and recall the when I first started everything was a real challenge. So, I'm glad there are mods to allow me to selectively make the game more challenging (Life Support, 2.5x scaling, etc), but I think that if the base game were more difficult we might lose players who get too frustrated to put in the initial work of learning how to fly rockets.

Great Rover! Which wheels and which underframe or you using? any more pix?

what planet did you add? Does it have a breathable atmosphere?

You're correct. With a perfectly timed burn you can return from the mun back to aerobraking on Kerbin for around 300. The trick to leaving the Mun and returning to Kerbin is placing your maneuver node correctly. Try this: orient your view so the Mun is at the bottom of your screen and Kerbin is directly above at 12 O'clock. If you're in a prograde orbit ( counter clockwise) your maneuver node should be placed on your Mun orbital line at about 1-2 o'clock position. This will cause you're to leave the Mun's SOI more or less directly backwards relative to the Mun's orbit. Orbits are defined by speed. To lower your orbit you have to slow down. By leaving the Mun heading backwards from the Mun's orbit you'll leave the Mun's SOI going slower than the Mun. drop a maneuver node at that 1-2 o'clock position then play with it. Increase or decrease your burn and also try sliding the maneuver node back and forth around the 1-2 o'clock position and you can see how you projected orbit will be affected. Hope this helps.

Good call. If you can get your fuel centered on the COM you don't have to worry about how full the tanks are

This is spot on. I normally try to estimate how much fuel this ship is likely to have when docking and lower the fuel level to that in the VAB to see how it affects you COM anothrt useful trick is to enable fine controls mode (caps lock by default) and put sets of RCS ahead of and behind your COM. The benefit here is the fine control mode tries to adjust the power if different RCS based on the changing COM. If expending fuel makes you a big nose-heavy, for example, it will adjust the thrust so the back end doesn't try to swing around the nose when you translate

1.3 because of stutter improvements. 1.2.2 for Galileos Planet Pack. As soon as GPP updates i'll switch entirely to 1.3

Using KAS struts is fun because you get to use you kerbalnauts to do some on orbit assembly. Attach the strut attachment points in the VAB, then have a kerbal eva and attach them together. Works great and feels more like something that would actually be done

All y'all is another option.

What about Science mode? That's my fav because I enjoy tech progression but not budget management

The interesting part is that all these ideas can help depending on your particular build. Im seeing more oscillations on essentially identical ships I've flown in 1.2.2. Are others seeing cases where the culprit seems to be a change in the base game rather than the design issues mentioned above? I need to do some more testing too

My first two attempts at a Munar orbiter both failed due to problems with new equipment...the first one lost all attitude control - fortunately I was already pointed on course for a Munar transfer burn, so I altered the burn length to send it onto a collision course instead of a flyby. Got some good science on the way down The second had a fuel tank rupture and is currently dead in orbit around Kerbin - have to clean that up sometime. The third...well, the third actually achieved a retrograde flyby of the Mun on a free return trajectory and came back with lots of sweet sweet science. I'm starting the think about redundancies and flying shakedown missions for various parts...it's awesome

Yep. This is a good explanation of what I'm seeing. Reducing gimballing, SAS and roll control all are good fixes, but it sure seems like the sensitivity is higher in 1.3 because I've flown the same ship designs in 1.2.2 and didn't see this thx!

Got it. So why ever use @ then?

When do you use % and when do you use @? They seem partially interchangeable. Thx

I'll have to de-mod a ship to send...running Ven's, Procedural Parts, etc. here are some pix

Thanks, but it's not the rocket wobbling along its length I'm familiar with what that looks like. It's a rocket that's correctly auto-strutted that would have behaved just fine in 1.2.x which is oscillating in its course. It's not a large rocket either I'm seeing it in rockets comprised of a mk1 capsule, small sustainer stage and a single tank booster stage. Not long enough or big enough for the need for moar struts Ive been using the exact same autostrut layout for several releases and this behavior is new thanks for the input though Yep. If it was a complex rocket I'd agree. I'm seeing this on the most basic of "mercury/atlas" style rockets. I also noticed that reducing gimbal down to 5-15% max helps a lot. This points to an issue with how SAS is using control authority rather than structural issues

Since I shifted to 1.3 I've noticed that ships with SAS wobble frequently. It seems like SAS keeps over compensating and then trying to correct only to overcompensate the other direction. Sometimes the oscillations keep getting larger late others seeing this?

I've been trying to add an integral decoupler to the top node of stock fairings so I can use them as interstage fairings without stacking an additional decoupler on top of each. I tried adding the code below to the stock fairings. It kind of works, but the decoupler symbol doesn't show up in my staging diagram, so something is still wrong. Any advice? MODULE { name = ModuleDecouple ejectionForce = 250 explosiveNodeID = top }

The hitchhiker is Ven's. I'm pretty sure the solar panels are as well.

Great ships and I might steal your station design

LOL...yea random percentages have a way of grouping up for some reason...I've had many flights with zero issues and then I'll just have an Apollo 13 moment. Which, by the way, is really cool. Had to McGyver my way out of a couple of problems already

There's a great discussion about how the failure model works back on may 21st in this thread. Here's one comment from @severedsolo that addresses your question "It fudges it a little bit, everything is rolled when the vessel is loaded, and then any failures that are rolled are assigned a "failure time" - so the actual failure will occur at some point in the future."

Here's my log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqt1pfa6qbft46g/KSP.log?dl=0 EDIT: Just loaded a ship in VAB, saw 12% failure rates on all parts independent of number of flights. I then rolled it out to the pad and verified that the failure rates had corrected to account for number of flights. Included a new log and a couple of screen shots. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h8xrnn9i63jmeio/AABL9NRgW99YELTSWa9OK2hza?dl=0