Biggen

I've been playing KSP for about two months now. I think I bought it on a Steam sale during Christmas. I've got a bit over 200 hours in now and I finally feel like I "get" what it is I'm supposed to be doing. I can finally dock, build rockets, build stations, go interplanetary, etc... I'm no expert by any sense but I finally feel comfortable doing most things and no longer abuse the search tool on this forum for every minor detail like I once did. I've never put this many hours into a single game. It is an amazing piece of software that really is limitless in what you can accomplish. Look forward to the next 200 hours and beyond! Just curious on how long it took others to finally feel like they were accomplishing their goals and not just floundering about.

I would say it's not worth it to send the MPL outside of Kerbin's SOI. If you packed it full of data just from orbiting Kerbin proper, than that alone will give you thousands of science points and will unlock 3/4 or more of the tech tree by itself. No need to ferry an MPL out beyond Minimus. I setup my MPL at Minimus, biome hopped, and filled it up. I was able to unlock the entire tech tree doing it this way. I don't enjoy biome hopping so I wanted to get that out of the way pronto and get my hands on the cooler tech toys deeper in the tree before sending crafts interplanetary.

Go here: This will tell you what range you can expect to get out of every antenna in the game.

If you didnt time warp then why even use the MPL? Might as well recover the science on Kerbin and skip using the MPL so you can get instant science gains with new unlocks. You HAVE to time warp to play the game. No one here is playing realtime missions I assume, right? We could argue all day what is OP or not I guess. What I find tedious is something someone else may find fun. Snark does a good job explaining the phenomenon of balancing fun vs challenging gameplay for a sandbox game.

This was the 1st time ive used the MPL but I didnt have Gigantors unlocked so I was limited to the smaller retractable panels and the smaller batteries. No fuel cells either... Allowing partial does work, but takes a loooong time. If I did it again Id load up on more batteries/panels. Also, there appears no way to choose what antenna the MPL uses to transmit if you have multiple ships docked to it with different antennas. One tranmission would use a Communitron on a docked ship while another would use the relay attached to the MPL itself. The MPL is definitely OP. I biome hopped Minmus and had a ton of science. I then stuffed all of that into the Minmus orbiting MPL and it unlocked the entire tree after a couple years of warping. But, I find biome hopping teadious so Im glad I dont have to mess with this again in my career. Id rather be building stuff and doing contracts for funds.

The Kraken summoner? I dont have the Klaw unlocked. Although i dont consider this cheating. If you can partially transmit science then the same should hold true for the MPL.

Im fairly confident it doesnt work as i tried it. But ill try it again in case i misclicked the button. This sucks if this is the case. Its basically worthless now if i cant transmit. I guess ill turn on infinite electricity to transmit it back.

Hmmm. I tried this and it didnt work. Said something like "Out of power, reverting transmission" or something like that. Im not at my computer now to check but Ill try it again this evening. Perhaps I didnt click it. Thanks guys.

So i guess you live and learn. I jam packed my MPL full of data (maxed it out), put a scientist in there, hit research, and time warped to fill up the science buffer. Im thinking, "Man, thats a crap ton of science i just earned. Just gotta transmit". I go to hit the transmit button and I see my power steadily decreasing until its at zero but the science is only 50% transmitted. I try it again after the batteries are recharged, and the tranmission starts over at 0%. WTH? It wont partially transmit and just pick up where it left off once the batteries are recharged!? So now Im stuck. I cant research because the science buffer is full and I cant transmit since it needs a nuclear reactor worth of power to push it to Kerbin. Ideas?

I think the problem holding it up was that it required it to be an "unmanned sat". It wasnt unmanned until I finally decoupled. I had a pilot flying the ferry and carrying the sats. At least, that is my guess.

So i figured out the issue. After i placed them in orbit (again!) the contract still wasnt completing even though it had green checks for "put it in this orbit" and "maintain for 10 seconds". Frustrated, I hit the [ ] keys to switch to each sat to make sure they were charged and all of a sudden the contact was completed. So just dropping them in the orbit was not enough. I needed to physically switch to each sat after placing them in the correct orbit. Good to know if i ever deliver sats with no engines to orbit again.

It does say (and show) their needed Ap and Pe so I make sure I setup the ferry into that orbit before decoupling. I have both decouplers set at 1% force so the orbit doesnt get messed up upon decoupling. Usually, you dont have to be exact for the Ap and Pe. But ive made sure im within less than 500m of each to see if that was the problem. I started a new career so i havent unlocked the Ant, Oscar B, Spider, etc... That was why I thought i could just strap them to the ferry since I had to go there anyway for a tourist contract. But something is amiss... I may try it again and put on a regular antenna in addition to the relay antenna and see if that makes a difference. Edit: Oh crap. I just thought of something. I bet I have the goo sat in the orbit for the non goo sat and the non goo sat is in the goo sat orbit. Im not at my computer now to verify but I bet that is exactly the problem. Duh...

Trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. Both contracts require an antenna and power generation. One also needs a goo canister. Both are low Mun retrograde orbits only about 10km apart. Im using a relay antenna for each one so they arent just useless trash orbiting once contract is completed. Thats counts for an antenna, right? Neither has an engine. Im carrying them on my tourist flyby/orbit mun vessel so I can ferry tourists at the same time. I just get my ferry in the appropriate orbit, drop off via a zero force decoupler, and move to the next orbit. However, this doesnt work. Everything is checked when I see the contract but it doesn't complete for some reason.

Not wanting to speak for the mod maker but but judging from the visuals and descriptions of the mod you linked, it is missing volumetric clouds, dust storms, different textures, etc... This mod here has "brighter" colors and more oversaturation of colors in general to give it more of a movie sci-fi look.

This mod has breathed new life into career for me. I was so sick of clicking all the science parts that I had gone to sandbox. No more! Career is now fun again. Hope this mod stays active for a long time. Great work.

Great Foxster! When I get home I'll download that craft file and give it a try and let you know how it goes.

Thanks Michal. It seems that when I leave Kerbin, I'm already at an inclination node. At least, when using the launch window planner it seems that is always the case from what I remember. The next node is, of course, 180 degrees opposite which generally sits just outside the SOI of the target. So, are you doing a midcourse burn to get your encounter Pe setup at the right altitude, then coasting to the AN/DN node, and then finally doing another burn at the node right before the target SOI to reduce inclination to zero?

I'm not at my home computer currently, but I was trying to play with some designs I saw in the Eve Lightest Lander Challenge: I was attempting to get tseitsei89's lander into orbit and I could never do it even when modifying with larger tanks and lifting off from 1000m.

Wanted to say that I had uninstalled your mod to try out SVE with Scatterer a couple of days ago and I've already gone back to yours. I actually prefer your Eve better than SVE's Eve. Your seems more "crisp". Also, SVE would cause KSP to crash occasionally and I've never had that problem with yours. Can't wait to see what you have in store for the next version!!

I'm trying to get more comfortable and gain more experience with KSP but transfers to other planets are still a bit confusing for me. I wanted to lay out the steps I use to reach other planets and see if it makes sense the way I'm doing it. Use Alex Moon's launch window calculator and time warp to a day or two before the ideal window. Plug in the amount of prograde and normal/anti-normal the window says I need with the correct ejection angle. Look at map mode for closest approach markers. Fine tweak maneuver gizmos to either get an encounter or at least keep markers as close as possible before ejection burn. Burn at node when I'm happy with closest approach markers Exit Kerbin SOI, move 1/4 to 1/2 way to destination and drop another node for mid-course correction. Here, I'm just trying to get the encounter finalized and get my Pe at the right altitude and on the equator in order to set myself up for an easy burn for equatorial orbit once I'm captured. Arrive at destination SOI, burn at Pe to barely capture, coast to Ap and burn normal/anti-normal to reduce inclination to ~0, coast back to Pe circularize. Does the above sound like the correct way to go about most transfers (Moho excluded)? I never end up burning at a AN/DN node this way during a mid course correction burn which I see people saying they do during transfers. It seems that the launch window is already directly on top of one of the nodes when I leave Kerbin and the other is usually right outside the target SOI. (Well, I guess technically I am burning at an AN/DN node since the node is where Kerbin is when I do the ejection burn). Also, does the higher I setup my Pe for the encounter mean the more dV I need to circularize once in the SOI? I was going to Dres this morning and my encounter Pe was 250km. Once I was within the SOI I dropped a test node at my Pe to check and see how much dV was required to circularize and it was ~1800dV+. The cheat sheet said it should have only been 1290dV from a 12km Pe. Is the difference because my Pe was so much higher??

Thanks guys! I've been playing around all weekend trying to get a functional lander/return rocket for Eve working with no dice so far. It's a damn hard feat! I may put my Eve plans on hold until I continue to learn and get more experience with KSP. I know have more than 200 hours on this game which seems ridiculous to say about one game.

Well I guess ill abandon my exploration and just do a lander/return. Bummer...

Ugh, I had forgotten about this... Well crap. The only way to do it efficiently would be ion engines then. Wouldnt imagine you woukd get a ton of flight time with rocket engines.

Will a plane that works on Kerbin work on Eve? Im pretty terrible at plane design so I usually avoid them but I wanted to explore Eve a bit more than I normally do the other planets. My rover is too slow at 10m/s so id look to come up with another solution. Are there any recommended Eve planes on the exchange? I can manage getting it there and down. Its just the design of a working plane that eludes me.

I guess I just realized that if I put my Pe on the equator as mentioned, barely capture, then I could simply burn normal at the Ap to adjust the orbit to equatorial. Im not sure why I wasnt seeing this... Embarrassing...