Magzimum

So... Bigger better KSC: Yes. I would love some upgrades. An East-west runway would be cool. A windtunnel would be awesome. And some test-tracks (with bumps and slopes) for rovers would be a lot of fun. Multiple usable KSP bases. Not as important as the upgrade above. Would be fun though, as long as the user interface does not get cluttered with too many options before launch. Career overhaul. Disagree. I like the career. It's unrealistic how you unlock new parts directly from doing science, but from a gameplay perspective this works. You got a budget. You need to achieve something. Then you unlock new stuff and you get new budget. Repeat. Maybe people who like the career are less noisy than those who dislike it? Controller / gamepad support. Don't care. I cannot ever see myself play a game on a small controller. I use nearly all the keys on my keyboard in KSP. Better mod integration. Sure, I think that's already high on Squad's list. The game was designed with mods in mind. That was not an afterthought. However, I am not sure you can compare Fallout to KSP. In terms of budget or history (Fallout runs since the 90s, right?) it is not the same. Multiplayer. Mixed feelings on this. I like the fact that you can play KSP while being offline, and alone. That should always be possible. If multiplayer becomes an optional extra, I'd be all for it, especially for cooperative missions. Dealing with warp may be a major problem though... and I am not gonna sit and do nothing in interplanetary space while someone else spends 30 minutes to complete some docking procedure. Soundtrack. Meh. I really could not care less. I play without sound. I don't have the house to myself, so every soundtrack would eventually drive other people nuts. But I hope that one day some nerd with the right connections can record high-quality actual sounds of related parts, and turn that into a mod which eventually becomes stock. As for the actual music, don't you have some music on your computer? Yes, there are many threads like this. In fact, the entire Suggestions & Development Discussion forum exists to discuss stuff like this. I think that all points were discussed before. But we can always start a new thread! But because you put so many different points of discussion in this thread, this will probably become a very messy discussion...

I applaud this performance. Of course it can be done better - but I think a lot of us would struggle to get close.

The last time I did a big refuel mission, I just attached some disposable mining gear to the bottom of the mothership, and landed the mothership itself. That was surprisingly simple compared to all other variations that I have tried. Spoiler: two pics of that mothership. I tried all kinds of refueling strategies: stationary mining, with a rover, or a tanker-rocket, that carries the fuel to where it's needed. I also once carried the ore - but this solution requires by far the least additional infrastructure. Of course, it totally lacks flexibility - it's just this one mission. [edit] Hmm... or did you mean the contracts where you gotta mine ore from planet/moon A, and deliver it to planet/moon B (in your case Kerbin)? I never do those, but I would recommend to make the rocket as simple as possible - probably still with the mining gear attached to it - possible even disposable.

I also upgraded to 1.2.2, and now it works fine. Also it appeared that the time was different in 1.2.1 (I believe it was set to t=0, so Y1, 0h, 0m, not day 7 as in the Dakar file). I only noticed it because the sunlight was different - the Dakar was twilight or even dark when I opened it in 1.2.2, while the sun was high overhead when I opened it in 1.2.1. I did notice that the flags were present in the persistent file as I downloaded it, and vanished as soon as I had opened it. I did not dig deeper than that, because I started building a rover after I upgraded. I guess I am not much of a bug hunter.

Work your way down this checklist: Check the cheat sheet to see how much dV you need to get to Duna (depends if you want a flyby, orbit, landing, or even a return flight). Install KER. It will give you the dV of your rocket. Design the satellite (the payload). Add a tank and an engine to that satellite. Add a decoupler. Add aq bigger tank and a bigger engine. Keep adding more and bigger engines until your dV is more than you need according to the cheat sheet. So... I basically completely agree with the construction guide of @Aegolius13 in the post above.

We went to Dres. We chose to go to Dres. Not because it is hard. But because Dres needs love. And we chose to drive around her and do the other things... not because it is hard, but because Dres is round. Eight Kerbals. Twelve wheels. One Planet. The Circumnavigation was on. It is part of a much larger mission to give Dres the attention she deserves. (The other Dres mission posts are in that same thread, the link here should lead to the Elcano challenge post, which is the 3rd post in that thread). [edit] It is all stock. I believe that's relevant to some people.

Before deciding whether this Elcano was actually going round Dres to the right or to the left, the boffins of the Kerbal society of Advanced Navigation had a long and arduous discussion whether mandatory satnav on planetary rovers would influence its apparent lack of decision in this matter. Also, after having realized the pointlessness of the discussion, several members of the society replaced themselves with advanced drone cores. None of this influenced the upcoming Elcano mission in any way, because as you probably guessed by now, this is where we came in. Just to be on the safe side, the we decided not to go right, and not to go left either, but just to go straight ahead all the way. It is the quickest way around a planet. Since there was a contract-related waypoint to the north of the Resort, it was soon decided that this Elcano would visit both poles. The Elcano run had begun! Off we go! The rover has 8 seats for Kerbals (4 forward-facing seats for the more serious Kerbals, and 4 in a picknick arrangement) , and 8 indoor seats. Kerbals can spend the night in the indoors, but at least one Kerbal has to take a seat to move the rover. It has no drone core. Below is the night-configuration. The crew did not get very far on day one, because as missions go, they just start whenever they start and this is usually not a first-thing-in-the-morning affair. Building on experience of the Minmus Elcano, an average speed of 30 m/s was adopted. And soon adjusted to 20-25 which was a lot safer. Dres ≠ Minmus. Anyway, to save the servers of the forum, most 'regular' pictures will from here on be put in spoilers. Let's just say that the crew stubbornly kept the rover pointed north until north ran out and south was the only option. When the crew inevitably reached the end of the north, they did the Kerbal thing and planted a flag. Here Jeb is doing his "bunny caught in the headlights" impression at the North Pole. The picture below clearly shows that the Great Kraken has applied his Giant Rake to create the landscape at Dres. The small speed bumps were placed almost perfectly perpendicular to the direction of travel, to ensure a maximum amount of time spent airborne. Here, a .gif shows how the bumpy ride went most of the time. (For some reason it does not embed automatically, like the pictures). The Great Kanyon is called "great" because it's great for making pictures... Obviously, we planted a bunch of flags in the Kanyon (in the spoiler below). Kerbals are very good at planting flags. At the South Pole, it was Valentina's turn to do the flag thingy and look all awesome. It is a pity that the lighting at the poles is always so shady. Dres has some stunning landscapes (if you happen to like grey). Take this crater for example... And Dres was a present that kept on giving. As we approached the finish, Dres presented us with flats! Actual flat ground, where we could safely accelerate to 40 m/s! It is not as flat as the Minmus flats, but it was most definitely the flattest bit of Dres we've encountered. Dres Circumnavigation by rover completed! We placed over 40 waypoints to show we really went around Dres. Was it worth it? Yes, it was. We can now safely say that we explored this planet. Some of the features (craters and especially the Great Kanyon) are totally worth a visit. The rover had performed better than expected. Perhaps it is not such a bad idea to bring a big rover for an Elcano challenge. This rover was stable, and it was possible to make small adjustments to the direction of movement while going 25-30 m/s without flipping the rover. The rover was pretty stable also in terms of impact resistance, and only a few reloads were needed - and except for once, those reloads were for crashes that had only caused cosmetic damage: lamps and antennas, all of which were redundant. (But for the sake of nice pictures, I still reloaded). So, with our 8 brave Kerbals back at the Resort, it was time to start wrapping up. There was still one contract to be completed, and of course all Kerbals were scattered around the planet and would have to be shepherded into the Shuttle. Which is where we come in. Stay tuned for the final episode of our Dres adventure! Thanks for reading, and sorry for having so many pictures Imgur album for the archives. (Nothing new in there).

The reason people may send an empty tank up first and then fill that with smaller tanks is that they may (1) not be comfortable flying large rockets or (2) have a default launcher which works really well but is too small for the big tanks, or (3) they enjoy repetitive work. Assuming you can launch the big tank as efficiently as the small ones, there is no bonus. In fact, the net effect is that your total launch mass has increased by the dry mass of those small tanks. Awesome idea. Gonna build that immediately! I often come home with spare fuel in the tanks... and I am about to launch a big over-dimensioned mission.

An area that looks flat from orbit may actually be a very rough terrain that on average is horizontal, but contains many tiny hills. That is why I scout ahead to take a look up close. Minmus obviously has large flats and gently slopes so there scouting is not necessary. But other bodies (e.g. Dres, Pol) are far too bumpy. Flat areas are sometimes only the size of the station, and require detailed scouting, marking and finally also detailed landing.

Pol is fine. I've done low and high orbits, landed my lander, hopped it around, jetpacked around, planted flags and landed the mothership too. No problems. (Jool-5 story is found here)

There has been a pretty lengthy thread on the topic of stock life support. I looked up my own contribution to that, and it is still relevant.

After a few frustrating landings with similar slippery results, I now launch a small lander to scout out a good horizontal location for a larger base. Then I plant one or several flags there, and move the scout out of the way.

Ok, here's my probably rather silly problem: I am not seeing any flags. I downloaded the save file (the whole folder). Placed it with the other saves. Replaced the "1.2.2" with "1.2.1" in the persistent file as instructed. Started KSP. Opened the save file (it's there, and it opens without error). Went into the Tracking station and saw no flags (yes, I toggled the flags at the top of the screen, it reads 0 flags). Also when I load a vehicle onto the runway, I don't see the blueish marker near the horizon that I expect from a flag. Any thoughts?

Well, then how do you explain that my first ever Duna lander got to Duna with all hatches accidentally blocked? Or that my first space station had its docking port put on backwards? Kerbals aren't really dumb. But I am. And that goes for a lot of newbies. The junkyard descriptions and the funny Kerbals give me a chance to roleplay my way out of my own mistakes while I learn. The fans of changes in this thread appear to be players with a lot of experience. You don't need to roleplay any dumb mistakes, because you probably don't make any such mistakes anymore. But I only got on board about 6 months ago, and I remember quite well how my first contraptions wobbled themselves off the launchpad. KSP is doing an excellent job in making rocket science accessible for many people. Making the game all serious will not improve that.

We're talking about this ship (there's no shame in posting it again): I will gamble a few first impressions: Drag should be as far to the bottom as possible. So the fins/wings are too high up. The 4 fins at the very top are probably your worst offenders. They can only be used to turn the ship away from prograde very efficiently while going up (which you don't ever want), or for stability during descent (which is not the problem). So they serve no purpose during ascent and make stability much worse. Such canards are common on stuntplanes or jet fighters, but those are designed to be unstable! Rockets pretty much never have canards. The other fins at the top of the boosters are also much higher than on conventional designs. You appear to have placed the parachutes only on one side of the passenger modules. They actually have significant mass (0.1 ton each, I believe) so your center of mass is not in the center anymore. That means that your rocket will continuously pull to one side, which must continuously be compensated by the wings and rocket engines (gimbals).

I agree with the things @tseitsei89 said. If you want to change the hitchhikers storage container, so that it has more realistic looks that match its purpose, which is exclusively in vacuum, it should be covered in gold foil on ALL sides. All structural panels on the outside should be removed. Its drag should be increased by a lot. It should be carried into the vacuum of space inside a fairing. Impact tolerance should be lowered. It should be designed so that it breaks up upon atmospheric re-entry outside a cargo bay. No Kerbals should be allowed inside it during launch (or re-entry). It is a storage device for Kerbals in space. The orientation, description, internal seating arrangement all point towards application of this part in space, not airplanes. We don't have enough 2.5m plane parts (I'd like one or two extra LF tanks), but revamping the HH container is not the solution. There are however a few good reasons to make it look and act like it does: Most of us are not nearly good enough with EVA-jetpacks to not crash into the sides of a HH container when we approach it. If it was as flimsy as I proposed, our clumsy Kerbals should then realistically destroy their rescue pods when they approach it (and inevitably miss the handles). The current looks allows it to be used as a space station module as well, with a longer lifespan than a one-time-use container to store Kerbals. In other words, it looks like stuff on the ISS, even though the description does not suggest such application. So, the devs already simplified things. The learning curve is steep enough already. There is no need to make it even harder by adding all the restrictions that I proposed above. You just cannot have a lightweight storage for Kerbals in space, a space station habitat and an airplane passenger module in one part, and make it look like it's right in all three such applications. And again, personally, I like the current rugged looks of many of the parts.

Merry Christmas everyone, and I wish you many happy landings and lots of fireworks in 2017!

Where I live (NW Europe) the apparent magnitude of our star is just dim. It's really low on the horizon, and it's covered by thick clouds for extra bonus darkness. You leave the house in the dark, and you get home in the dark after work. I only see the house in daylight in the weekends! As far as I'm concerned "the most beautiful time of the year" is definitely spring / summer.

Whatever info you need in KSP that isn't displayed on screen: Pen(cil) & Paper. I write checklists, action keys, names of relevant save games on a paper. Often also all kinds of other notes while I am in a design phase.

I think it's actually rather difficult to sink a craft. Most (all?) crew parts will float. Fuel tanks (especially when empty) will also float. You have to put a lot of metal (girders) onto a craft to make it sink in my experience. Adding ore tanks (full!) will also sink your craft. Can you share a picture of a craft that sinks? Maybe we can identify the parts that aren't buoyant. As far as I know the buoyancy of parts isn't listed anywhere.

It's true that the small one is far less efficient. However we had a recent discussion on the matter. It's lower efficiency makes both sense and no sense, depending on the arguments. As I explained however in the thread I mentioned, the real bug is the low electricity consumption of both ISRUs. It should be a LOT higher if it was anywhere near realistic. It makes no sense you can power ISRU units with fuel cells. But from a game-play point of view, the current two ISRUs are decent options which both have their design challenges.

I got a couple that I don't use: Mk3 monoprop tank - Just never need that much monoprop on Mk3 designs, unless they are huge motherships, in which case I can spam radial tanks everywhere next to the solar panels or so. Launch escape system - I use "revert to..." when shuff goes boom Fly-by-wire avionics hub - because I haven't understood what it does yet Stack-separators - they are heavier than the decouplers of a same size, and I don't see the point of them Rovemate - I get other (smaller, better) probe cores before this, and I can never figure out which way is the front with this thing I'd be curious to hear if anyone disagrees, because as I mentioned above, a few of the decisions not to use a part come from lack of understanding. I actually used that micronode on a few rovers where mass is not a restriction.

You could fly? If you don't mind ISRU, this can be done without any problems. I only use rovers for either really short distances, or when I do a really economical (low-budget) mission, and therefore refuse to use fuel to get from A to B. In my current Dres mission, I created a rather extravagant example of this flying-biome-hopping concept, but more economic options are of course possible too: Basically, it is just a lander. Engines facing downwards. Landing legs. Reaction wheels to orient it retrograde on final approach of the landing spot. ISRU to fill the tanks. All stock. The engines are just much bigger than I needed... and that made it fun.

Nice post, and a brave mission to undertake. What kind of velocity does your rover do, on average?

The Dres Faculty of Touristic Geography had for at least several minutes wondered if its own existence was relevant for its inability to plan any upcoming events. Of course, the agenda of the faculty would in no way influence the plans of our brave crews and since we had 8 pods attached to our station, and only 3 inhabitants at the station, it was clear that, as you have probably guessed by now, this is where we come in. Also, to prevent this thread from burning holes in the KSP servers, we'll make use of spoilers a little more than in the 1st post. Megcy Kerman and Nedrien Kerman were either ecstatic with the mission or just scared of heights when they undocked from the main station, en route to the orbiting shuttle. The mission: to have a party at the station. After the pod returned, the station's crew had increased from a puny 3 to a reasonable (but by no means impressive) 8 Kerbonauts. Whatever. The station was now officially open for party party party! Lights on! Next, the Hopper got some action. tl;dr, the Hopper landed in the Grand Canyon of Dres for a bit of tourism. In the spoiler some boring pics of how it got there... but don't read those. Really. Next Val developed the first extreme sport fro Dres: jetpack-base-jumping. Base jumping is of course a brilliant plan when you have such a fantastic cliff. If you wonder about the anomaly sat (hint, it hasn't found any yet) or the ore transport (hint, it hasn't transported any yet), then be sure to open the next spoiler. But perhaps you can also watch the paint dry on your freshly painted wall. Just as interesting. (Also, spoiler alert: I will actually mention something about anomalies - who would have guessed). The Hopper meanwhile was going to find some asteroids. Of course we chose a class E asteroid. And of course we're going to bring it to a lower orbit. What else? We got LOTS of power! Also, we got our engines spread out over a large area, so we could easily tune the engine power to make this thing fly sort of straight even when it didn't connect in line with the asteroid's center of mass. (I'm quite proud of this, actually). Pictured: Valentina is the first Kerbal to set foot on the Asteroid in its new 101x101 orbit. "It's a small step for Kerbalkind, etc". And finally, the hopper went back home to the Resort. In our next episode, we will do a bit of Elcanoing. We are in no shape to say whether elcanoing is a word or not. Also, the crew is still debating whether they are elcanoing, or just having a picknick in a rover. But as you have probably guessed by now, that's where we come in: Thanks for reading! imgur album, linked here only because you never know - contains just these pics and no text.