Cpt Kerbalkrunch

Same here. I've staged by accident a couple of times, and it sucked, but I'm much more likely to hit F5 instead of F9; which is really painful.

Buddha's hand? Looks more like the Predator's mouth. Think I'd have to pass on that one. (Or maybe the Alien face-suckers? Could go either way, I guess).

Hey @Red Shirt, if you wanna feel better, check out @Zeiss Ikon's post in the Gameplay Questions subforum. He's got a laptop that's having issues with 30-part rockets. So it could definitely be worse.

With Gilly, it's more like an exercise in patience. It takes a looong time to land. And you'll definitely get better in your precision landings. I used to think 2km was close. Now I can knock my solar panels off if I wanted to. Although, in your situation, I would land outside physics range and EVA over. I can't say for sure, but I feel like just bringing a Kerbal (technically a single "part") helped me to ease into physics range. Or maybe it didn't make a difference at all. Who knows?

@Omaha, I had a somewhat similar issue on Gilly when 1.2 came out. The large part of drills could no longer enter the ground. Only the smaller part on the end. This meant that a few of my older bases now had their drills set too low. On Gilly, this meant when I switched to my base, it was very violently launched off the surface. I found a work-around, though. I landed another ship about a km away and EVA'd a Kerbal to my base. This allowed me to get it within physics range without taking control right away. I brought my Kerbal right up to it and then switched. Worked just fine. The station was under control and hasn't given me any problems since. Well, no more than anything else on Gilly, anyway. Don't know if that'll work for you, but it might be worth a shot.

Though I'm the manager, I work at a very small business. So I have a lot to do. Most of my day is very mindless and repetitive. This is great for a natural daydreamer like myself. However, for the past year and a half, I spend most of that time thinking about rocket designs and upcoming missions. If it's not busy and the day drags I get irritable because I wanna try it right now. By the end of the day, I have a need so powerful only a true addict could understand. As a former smoker, it is definitely comparable to a day without a cigarette (an unbearable travesty). The funny thing is, the moment the game begins loading, I'm already feeling better. Very much like an addict who just scored. Just having it in your hand is a huge relief. Come to think of it, that's pretty messed up. They really should do a study on this. This can't be good for you.

Sorry to crack wise. I just like to be humorous. Truthfully, since accidentally discovering the secret of the free-capture at Jool (then witnessing the awesome power of Jool in the Retro-Solar Rescue), this subject is of great interest to me. However, I understand it conceptually rather than mathematically. I think of it (and the entire game really) in low-tech terms; which helps me to make sense of it. Equations like those in your diagram make me shudder. Sounds like that's exactly what the OP is looking for (in which I will be of zero help, obviously), but I would just add that a huge breakthrough for me was raising my patched conics limit. Raising it from the default 3 was (literally) a game-changer for me. It allowed me to watch the effect an encounter with another body's gravity would have on my orbit. Playing around with maneuver nodes and being able to see the resultant path has taught me a lot. I highly recommend it as a gravity-assist teaching tool, so-to-speak.

Uh, does that say get low and go fast? Cuz that's what I do.

I'm not so sure if that's entirely true, but the casual namedrop of my first computer brought a smile. And talk of upgrading RAM really brought back some memories. My Tandy 1000 SX was a beast. With dual 5 1/4" floppy drives and 128k of RAM (yes, kids, I said k). I spent an unGodly amount of hours playing "Pirates" and the like (before Sid was famous enough to have his name in the title). It was a game called Camelot, though, that brought need of an upgrade. Bought a memory stick and installed it with my dad. Bumped us up to a whopping 256k. I was really rockin' then. Even installed a modem for it later. However, it never did have a hard-drive. Anyway, sorry for that off-topic bit of nostalgia. Your problem had me thinking about when I bought my current laptop 2 Christmases ago. I was spending a small fortune, so I did my homework as I saved over the months. The gaming mantra was always GPU, CPU, RAM, SSD. With KSP, that seems to get rearranged a bit. Going CPU, RAM, GPU, SSD. I've heard plenty of guys say they run 8gb just fine. With zero visual mods and graphics turned way down, that would lead me to believe that your CPU is to blame. The Intel HD graphics really are horrible, though. That's pretty much the entire reason I spent so much. For years I would see messages saying graphics were turned down, and some games wouldn't play at all and would just say "upgrade your graphics card". So, not that it's much help, but I'd say CPU or GPU. If you'd like, I could run a quick experiment tonight. My MSI has a button that shuts off the 980 and runs strictly off the onboard graphics. All my ships have hundreds of parts (and some over 1,000), so I would find out pretty fast how much effect the GPU has. It actually sounds like an interesting experiment, so I think I might try it anyway.

Thank you, sir. For the record, I think we're in agreement. I hate cheats as much as the next guy, and I take my career seriously, but he's put in way too much work to just reload or throw in the towel. At this point, I think you do whatever is necessary to make it work, and just think of it as "maintenance". If you wanna pay a price for it, just launch a 2 million dollar rocket and wreck it. Call that the maintenance cost. (Though none of this solves the greater problem of instability. I hate to see it, and am always thankful that it hasn't really afflicted me).

That makes much more sense. It's pretty much the way I've always thought of the small converter: useful for smaller ships that need to be self-sufficient. The trade-off being the amount of time it takes. Sixty days is pretty brutal, but perfectly doable when your transfer window is a year away anyway. My little rover on Tylo has always worked just fine. Glad to hear it's not ready for retirement just yet.

I think this has to be your culprit. I've looked at your screenshots to see if I can spot anything that clearly sticks out (nice base, by the way), but I don't see anything. I assemble bases on the ground as well; without these kinds of problems. Wheels and legs have always seemed a bit iffy, so I've never messed with the spring or dampener strength. I think this has to at least be contributing to your problem. As for lining up the docking ports, I find that as long as I build everything with the same base, and test one or 2 on Kerbin, they'll work just fine later. You're usually going to be building somewhere with much lower gravity so, although they'll sit a bit higher, you can easily "bump" them a bit if the alignment is slightly off-line. A little tougher with the fuel lines (how I usually refer to the little connecting modules), but they're so light you can usually bounce them up and down to get 'em in place. Anyway, that really sucks. It's a good-looking base, and I know the amount of work that went into it. My current Duna base I just constructed was an 11-ship convoy. And it was only 5, self-connecting modules. I wonder if there's a way to change the springs and dampener back to normal on-site. Maybe a mod, or plug-in of some sort?

In another thread, I saw Bewing say that this was purposeful. That the small converter was supposed to overheat. That it wasn't possible to cool it enough for continuous operation. I don't know if it's necessarily true or not, as I haven't used a small converter in a long time. The only reason I can think of is that it's meant to force you to use the large converter; trading mass for efficiency. I have a small refueling rover on Tylo that uses the 125. It's always worked just fine, so I'll have to check it out. If not, it's effectively been rendered useless.

Depends what you consider "practical". I've never used nukes or Ions, and I've landed and returned from every body in the stock system without difficulty. And I just started OPM as well. I probably build larger rockets than most because of it, but I don't feel it's limited me in any way. And I only play career, so cost is always a consideration. Plenty of others hate the Nerv as well, so I'm definitely not alone. I don't know if it'll be an entire family, but we'll certainly have some soon. One of the things I'm most looking forward to in MHE is the new line of parts (as I assume we all are). I can't wait to see the things we can do with 2.5/1.875 and 1.875/1.25 rockets (and I'd love to see 5m/3.75m rockets if they were ever crazy enough to make a 3.75m command module ). In the days and weeks after the release, the forum is sure to be bombarded with screenshots of some pretty cool designs. Should be alotta fun.

I keep seeing this, and I keep hearing it's a known issue, but I haven't run into it and I'm not sure why. I just built a base on Duna about a week ago. It's 5 different modules I assembled on the ground. I haven't had any issues at all. Is this maybe an autostrut thing? That would make sense since I despise it and never use it. Obviously not complaining about not running into a problem. Just a little confused as to the cause.

Got a couple of ships headed for Plock-Karen. What's 80 years to an adventurer like myself? Joking aside, I'm pretty excited. Been a long time since I saw a new planet. The transfer burn wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. The journey, on the other hand, is lookin' pretty brutal. You guys weren't kidding when you said Better Timewarp was mandatory. Only other mods are visuals and SigmaBinary. Flying blind, as usual, so this should be interesting.

This used to be much easier before 1.2 came out. I usually turn the camera as sideways as I can, when the target is within 100m. Then just ease the cursor over the nose of the ship and the docking port will be highlighted. You'll then get the option to "set as target". You might find it easier this way, though: when you get close enough, just double-click the target ship to deselect it. Now when you ease the cursor over the nose, the docking port should be the first thing that gets highlighted. Hit "set as target". It usually works pretty well. Just saw the screenshot you added. Definitely just double-click the ship to un-target it. Then bring the cursor over the top, where the nose is. It should highlight easily.

Thanks, @OhioBob. All good info again. Much appreciated. Those are some tough windows, but I guess it's about what I figured. It looks like, if I can get the timing right, that they would open one after another. I was planning on the "go big or go home" approach, with a convoy of ships to each planet. That would obviously mean a veritable flotilla of ships heading for Jool at the same time; some of which would need to refuel. And if anything went wrong after the transfers I'd pretty much be screwed. I may have to rethink it and launch direct from Kerbin. Not too sure at this point. Just nice to be trying to figure out unknown worlds again. I'm already excited. And when I saw that the Pluto analog can be a binary system, I could hardly wait. I really wanna see what it looks like; and how you go about a landing. Should be a lot of fun.

That was sort of the reason I was originally leaning toward OPM. From what understand, Eeloo gets moved, but everything else stays the same. I have tons of infrastructure around Jool's moons, so I thought it would be a good jumping-off point. It takes forever to swing around of course, bit I figured each time a window opened I could send a few more ships to each planet. Not sure if that's entirely feasible, since I've never tried, but I figured with Jool's huge gravity well (not to mention Tylo and Laythe if I need them) that the transfers would be pretty easy. Just a whole 'lotta warpin'. I would obviously go with the better timewarp mod. Nothing really left to do in my older career game, so I wouldn't much care about the inner planets. Power would obviously need to be addressed but, as for communication, I would mostly just ignore it. Definitely not goin' all that way to send probes. Everything will be manned. If I need to make an orbital scan for ore, I'll make use (finally) of the Mk1-2's remote pilot feature. It'd be cool to actually get to use it. Mods I want to keep to an absolute minimum. I'm gonna try to continue my method of "flying blind" without knowing any of stats but, if it gets too tedious with all the trial and error, I may finally give in and install KER. It would definitely be interesting (not to mention helpful) to finally know the d/v and TWR for my ships. I'll see how it goes. Of course, all this was before hearing more about GPP. It really does sound awesome. And I have several copies of KSP currently, so I'm not worried about updates. Plus, they've already said MH requires the 1.4 update. With them working on both, I don't think we'll see them before April or even May. Which is part of the reason I wanna change things up. Getting antsy while while waiting for the expansion. And one last thing, did some research on GPP last night (and it really does sound awesome), but I didn't get to New Horizons. That sounds intriguing as well, so I'd like to learn more. Anyway, thanks for the input.

The Terrier is probably my MVP. Almost every ship will have them. I'm a huge fan of the Spark for return stages, though. On atmospheric worlds like Duna and Laythe, I always use the Dart for landers. Just an all-around great engine (other than the lack of gimbal). And to get to orbit, the Kickback is my go-to guy. Cheap and powerful. For the question itself, in this order; thrust, mass/isp equally, then cost. I never use nukes, and would use an Ion only when I have to. For instance, if there were a gun pointed at my head.

Sorry about the delayed response. Work got crazy. Wanted to say thanks to all for the advice and feedback. I hadn't realized the 2 planet packs could coexist until now. When @joacobanfield said the OPM planets would orbit Grannus, I actually thought it was probably a gas giant. When @OhioBob explained what it was, I think they convinced me to try both together. The thought of a set of planets orbiting a second star sounds extremely cool. And I'll check out @MinimalMinmus's suggestion as well. I'm not familiar with OPM-VO. I'll definitely take a look, though. And the New Horizons sounds intriguing. I don't know anything about it, but you guys make it sound pretty cool. I'll have to do some investigating when I get home. Thanks, again.

I didn't realize they could be used together. That sounds like a pretty radical change. Not sure how many planets and moons, but I'm gonna guess it's a lot. Would sort of be like starting all over; but maybe that's a good thing. Any mods you know of that absolutely cannot be done without (at least in your opinion)?

Hey, guys. Been killing time waiting for the expansion (constantly stalking the Challenges subforum; lookin' for good ones), and I feel like I need some new horizons; so to speak. It's been about 2,500 hours with the stock game (and nothing really left to accomplish accept a proper Grand Tour), and I'd like to see what else is out there. I've heard the names of other planets and moons enough times that I'm definitely interested. So I was curious which route you guys would go, OPM or GPP? At this point, I'm leaning towards OPM. It looks like it can just be added on top of an existing game; which appeals to me. However, GPP sounds pretty awesome as well. I know I might need a mod or 2 (like better timewarp for the outer planets), but I'd like to keep my game as stock as possible. Speaking of which, I play without info mods or doing any calculations, so I'm wondering if that would still be possible. Basically, guesstimating my rocket based on distance and size of body, payload, etc (part of the reason I've been reluctant to add planets: I know the stock worlds pretty well by now, and adding new ones will sort of put me back to square one). Anyway, curious to hear what you guys think. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

All good advice above, @DrPastah. My personal recommendation would be Minmus. It costs a bit more for the transfer, but the rewards are worth the trip. Maneuvers there cost nothing compared to Mun. And not only is it an easy free-return home, but the low-g makes it a great place to practice your landing skills. If you EVA and grab the data on the way down, you can run experiments high and low, then again on the surface (remembering to grab the data again, because there's a good chance the equipment won't survive Kerbin's atmosphere on a free-return). And I don't know what your KSC looks like, but I try to upgrade the R&D building as soon as possible so I can collect soil samples; which are pure gold. Even just hitting a single biome can make your trip a huge success.

Whoa. Another Aussie on here? Good deal. My odds just doubled. Do me a favor, would ya? The next time you or @James Kerman find yourself in Melbourne, please tell Emily Browning I am her devoted slave. Thanks.