Daniel Prates

Success from my part then! BTW how do you view the idea of KSP-1 having it's development cycle ended in favor of a KSP-2?

@JPLRepo there used to be somewhere a chart that tells you exactly what converters you need in each planet/moon, to fully produce water, oxygen and food, explaining what local resource you needed. It was excellent to show what equipment you need to have a self-sufficient outpost anywhere. I can't find it anywhere, can you refer it to me here?

I use both 'atmosphere autopilot' and 'kramax', to aid with flight level, speed keeping etc. Both are working fine with 1.7.2. They are excellent if you want only piloting aid, short of the complete hands-off control that mechjeb provides. 'nav utilities continued' is also working great, its not an autopilot but rather a navigation tool, but still worth the mention.

It just crossed my mind that, in that case, a paddle-wheel type of thing could very well work like a gyroscope of sorts and cheat gravity!

At the end of the day, lowG bodies do have an excellent use. If they have resources, they can be excellent ressuply stations. It is convenient to place mining and converting outposts on the surface there, as ferrying that fuel to a supply station above cost little delta-v. I have never done it on Gilly, but Minmus excels in that role and is always a part of my overall travel plans. Every 1000 units of LF can be flown up with a 10% or 15% loss per flight more or less, which is excellent, making it worth while to create and ferry supplies to an orbital station there. And it being almost at the exit of Kerbin's SOI, it is indeed the best place from where to launch outwordly missions. I use TAC life support, and if I find water close to ore, even the life support consumables can be manufactured there (if all converters are used of course, which is a rather complex chain). I guess Gilly could be considered the right spot for a similar operation, even if your space center is located in good old Kerbin. A complex production outpost there can be a refueling point, a stepping stone if you will, to missions all over the inner kerbol system with more lax delta-v budgets than missions launched directly from kerbin carrying everything it needs.

@Geschosskopf, just to give this topic some closure: I went back there, to the rock I had already scanned with the big arm (hence, no science to do there). Since all science experiments in KSP can be done over and over again, even if they do not result in more science, I tried to see what 'rock picking' is all about. Turns out i got right next to it and no 'pick up' option appeared. However it was indeed blocking my path (unlike scatter), so I imagined, "do I have to be RIGHT ON TOP of it, like, really aligned with the rock's CoM or something"? You can climb the rocks (with the F key, just like stairs or a hatch). I climbed right on top of it, and voilá, the button appeared. I tried moving up and down, and the button would appear and dissapear as I got closer or farther to the center of the rock. So yeah, "grabbing" the rock is not the thing, getting right on top of it is. To my surprise, when I picked it up, it disappeared! Well, it makes all sense - you grab something, now you have it. But a big thing like that ... taking a 'chip' out of it would make more sense. Anyways, that is one less mistery in my book. Thanks for the help!

Sweet Jesus, I didn't think this would be possible with KSP physics. Well, that's that then. Time to fly to a desert sietch and recruit some Fremen. Long live the fighters!

@Pawelk198604 the truth is that your design looks very cool, but is very impractical All that mass concentrated too high up, with those tiny, close together landing gears... Think of an elephant sitting on top of a shopping cart. If you push it hard against its head, its going to tip over instead of rolling foward. Everything needs to be lower. Then, make the CoT pass through the CoM so that it does not push the nose down. Then check if the main gears have stearing turned off (leave stearing on only in the frontwheel), and move them foward as close as possible to the CoM, just a little behind it. Most planes flip and crash on the runway for infringing two basic rules: 1. Most weight has to be placed on the main landing gears and off the steering wheel; 2. when thrust pushes your plane, that force has to be foward and not foward plus downwards. Correcting the two will usually do the trick.

I use a system like that to label my planes heheheh... I thought I was the only one. Names like "gull", "firebird" etc do not do it for me. I use numbers in decens. Like 10, 20, 30 and so on. Numbers inbetween I use for versions of a same fuselage, say, when the same plane gets a better engine it goes from 10 to 11 and so on. Letters I use like this: F - fighter B - bomber R - recon H - hidroplanes PP - passenger C - cargo S - service or utility. X - experimental R - rocketplanes

Indeed the changes on the horizon do not seem to be savagame-breaking.

Wait. A 1.7.3 is nearing release? Or the question was just speculative?

Hmm.... RL wings generate speed when air flows through them. KSP mimics that relating speed to lift, as it should, but I doubt the under-the-hood calculations will consider that moving wings up and down generates lift.... .... or does it? Has anybody made an ornithopter fly yet? Like REALLY fly? KSP physics can be weird, if an ornithopter is gaining flight for a few seconds that may be just that it went all bouncy, not that the wings are actually generating lift.

Yep there is that too. Although, I always thought this should be unnallowed somehow, it is very weird. Alas, it's how the game treats docked vessels: they become a single entity and transfers are allowed from anywhere to anywhere, even if in real life that meant they are passing through the weirdest of places...

DUDE! Relax will you, with the facepalming and whatnot? It was said above that tourists can be transfered between modules and I merely confirmed that yes, but they can't go on EVAs. Besides as far as I remember rescue contracts never give you a tourist to be rescued, only kerbonauts. Edit: indeed there is a mk1 command pod, cant remember which, that has no doors and frustrates a rescue misson. There is a mod to fix that though.

Actually what I meant is, when a kerbal is a tourist, he is barred from going on EVAs

Interesting @Geschosskopf. Thanks. Too bad though, huh? The new surface features is one of the best new things in KSP for years now, but having them generate a mere sci report PER BODY is unworthy of the feature. At the very least I would imagine that one per biome would make it more interesting. If the idea was to avoid them yealding too much science, I wouldn't mind each one resulting less reward. The reason for them was to give us something else to do, more than anything - the arm making rovers interesting, and the picking up of pieces instigating crewed missions. The rock being brought home and the arm report being the same thing is pretty lame too, for the same reasons stated above. EDIT: just to be clear, I think the new features are AWESOME. But their sci result could be made way more interesting.

Hmmm.... I indeed managed to scan both things with an scanning arm. So far so good. The crater I was sure about, but the rock I wasn't sure if it was a mere scatter of if it was the fabled moon rock. Turns out it was: The problem is... I took one of my little guys next to it - the very same rock - and there is no interaction possible! Wasn't I supposed to be able to 'pick up' something? The image shows there is no interaction possible: @KerbalKore is the size the problem, perhaps? If it was smaller would I have been able to pick it up? How to you interact with them, do buttons show up in the kerbal's UI or you click on the actual rock?

Yeah thats my point. Frequently a sequel will leave abandoned a half-finished game which had potential, and replace it for a game that does not really lives up to its predecessor. Companies do that to buff sales: "here my minions, feed on these new giblets!". But in super complex games like KSP that will obviously result in loss of quality. The KSP gaming community would make me very proud if we sent a clear message when the fateful time comes: we are not consumer wh%%@s, we want constant improvement to the base game instead of new shiny but useless eye-candy from time to time, in form of alluring new versions. KSP2 would only be good for that: it would look better, benefiting from new techs, but "retrograde" on all other regards. KSP is worderful as it is, it only needs periodic overhauling to keep beeing interesting. If we go into a biannual DLC routine, that is fine! Being a long time player of Paradox games, which operates like that, I already am used to that cause it works well. So to me, squad and T2 deserve A LOT OF PRAISE for how they have been conducting themselfs, business-wise. Many kudos to them. I'm sorry if my ramblings became besides the point. This thread had no clear point however...

Yup. My point is valid in regard to the "ksp2 or not ksp2, that is the question" brought up somewhere above. But going beyond that, I mainly think it is not up us to say what they should or not do.

What a silly discussion. First, I dont think it is up to us to discuss, much less give expert input, on how the developer has to behave to stay profitable. What are we, an interventionist, 1980s 3rd-world government? They do what they feel they must and that is that. Secondly, there is no nonsense in mantaining a product for years unending. With proper periodic improvements, paid or not, a game can be interesting for years and years. Crusader Kings 2 still sells and it has been around for what, 12 years, 15 maybe? Thirdly, pushing for a KSP 2 is not in our interest, let alone their interest. Half the progress would be lost, since engine and UI alone is probably half the effort to develop a game. We would end with KSP1 ending as it is (when it could go so much farther), whereas KSP2 would start wonky, incomplete and would take years to get into shape. So.... quite the pointless discussion imho.

What to do: rejoice in the knowledge that you just went through what we all did at some point! The best thing we take from these failures is the lessons. For one, landers need wide and spreadout landing legs, and a low CoM, to avoid tipping over.

It seems like a decent workaround.

Oh, ok. Thanks. Those were great parts, absolutelly essential to hold naval wessels or airships in place. To my knowledge there is nothing similar anywhere. It will be good to see them back eventually.

On the subject of new versions, I remember some time ago to have used both a harpoon and an anchor which were supposed to be used with the winch. Now I can't quite remember if they were parts of another mod, or parts of KAS that have been since deprecated. Were they?

@The-Grim-Sleeper, sure, let me see if I can answer it all simply and usefully. The nav utilities intrument is actually two instruments. A navigation tool that in real life would be a navigation radio (the VOR), and an ILS which in real life is an instrument that follows a radio beam. The real life VOR is basically an instrument with a needle that points to a radio source you can tune into. If you chose a radio in a known location (say, in the airport you are traveling to), the needle will point to it, above a compass, so you can know in the same gauge the direction you are going and where the needle is pointing to. If is is UP, you are going exactly towards the radio source. I know, all you smarty-pants reading this, I am actually describing an ADF and not a VOR... I'll get to that later. Check this image: Note above that i am flying SOUTH (this the S at the top of the compass), but the needle points to my right, backwards (310 degrees more or less). It is pointing at the direction of the airfield I chose with the white, thick needle. It is NOT the runway! It is the 'administration helipad', btw (more on that later). That, my good sir, is an AUTOMATIC DIRECTION FINDING instrument (commonly known as ADF, the radio source being called an NDB - non directional beacon). A common navigation tool up until the 1940s. Afterwards they came up with a better version of it, which would be a DIRECTIONAL beacon, that is, a LOCALIZER, which is read in the cockpit in a similar instrument called the VOR. The VOR antenna on the ground is also a kind of radio station, but it transmits different beams at each degree, so that you can not only tune in to it and follow the needle to reach it, but also choose any of 360 directions spanning from the radio tower, which is better for navigation. However the mod does not emulate that (too bad btw). So basically you have an automatic direction finder, which will always point to the place you chose. In real life it would be a radio tower, in game it doesn't matter - it's just a set location. In real life too those antennas have ranges, but in the game the instrument will work everywhere, regardless of how far you are. The reason I say it is a VOR with dead functions, instead of an ADF, is that the instrument has info on both heading and course, which leads me to believe the modder wanted this to be a fully fledged VOR, but did not implement all the functions necessary, so you have an ADF that looks like a VOR but operates only as an ADF. The DME, you ask? DISTANCE MEASUREMENT EQUIPMENT. Look at the bottom left of the instrument, it says "DME 7.9". It means we are 7.9 kilometers from the radio antenna (if it existed). Note that it is a direct distance to it in a straight line, not the ground distance, so the higher you are, the farthest it will compute. Something else. Look at the following picture: What is that other box? It is the 'nav utilities' user interface. You open in with ALT+CLICK. There you can choose the runway you are focusing your instrument in. In the top of the instrument it reads "administration helipad", but you have to click "previous" and "next" to find KSC 09 or KSC 27, for the instrument to read the actual runway! otherwise your instrument will be pointing to the wrong thing. Also, in "previous G/S" and "next G/S" you can increase or decrease the ramp of the glideslope (meaning, if you wanna come shallower or higher). Finally, when you are close enough to the runway descent path (think of a narrow cone projecting from the runway, passing through were your descent path should be), the instrument will automatically change from the localizer needle, to the ILS instruments, like so: I made the mistake of not choosing "KSC 27" so instead of the glideslope, in the bottom right, it shows a red G/S sign, warning me that the glideslope is not shown. If it were showing, it would appear right there. If it is up, you have to go down, and if its down you have to go up. In the main instrument you can see shown above the localizer. You are pointing the same way as the runway if it is pointing up, and the smaller bar in the center will show you if you are offset to the right or left. Lastly, for the KRAMAX autopilot. I only really use two functions of it. First, I press THIS (in orange) to keep altitude (W and S will increase or decrease the target altitude) ... ... and THIS in orange to hold my speed (Z and X will increase or decrease target speed): That's basically it!