enewmen

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My 6000-hour KSP-IE review shows how to get all data from biomes from all planets and moons and fill the tech tree. I've gotten all science data from all biomes from all planets and moons. KSP-IE is special to me because it got my kids interested in physics, especially nuclear and beam power, without physics cheating or parts working magically good. But in the past, I gave lousy advice a couple of times because I included KSP-IE with other mods such as Near Future and similar mods. They all worked well with KSP-IE, but not most people on the KSPI-IE forum don't have Magnetoplasmadynamic Thrusters, for example. This time I was getting all data from all biomes; the ONLY mods installed were KSP-IE and USI Life Support. Not having life support makes the game too easy, I think. I also powered all ships using beam power, making the ships much lighter and cheaper than including a reactor. Let me begin where the stock tech tree ends. Normally my ships, I received a lot of beam power, then powered the Magnetoplasmadynamic Thrusters, which worked very good-almost too good. I needed an alternative using only KSP-IE. First, to use any beam power, I needed a beam. I found the low-tech Multen Salt reactor to be one of my favorites because it is also one of the longest-life reactors. A 5-meter molten salt reactor with an Inline Wrapped Phase Array Transmitter using the Infra-Red wavelength(the highest frequency in the early beam transmitters) is a great place to begin. One placed in a high Kerbin polar orbit can supply ample power to all within the Kerbin gravity of influence. The best combination of high ISP and high thrust early using beam power I found is the Thermal Turbojet. The thermal turbojet uses a wide variety of propellents, but I found plain Oxidizer to work well, and Ox is easier to mine and refine than other propellants such as CO2, Carbon Monoxide, Neon, Argon, Xenon, etc. The Thermal Turbojet is a thermal rocket that requires a thermal-type beam power receiver. Relays are also needed to get power to all sides of Kerbin and Mun. I use two relays in the perpendicular polar orbit and one in the equatorial orbit around Kerbin and Mun, which works well. I made a spaceship to reach Duna with a miner for mining ore and refining, a rover for getting science data from Ike, and an SSTO spaceplane for flying across Duna. The spaceship had a molten salt reactor with a Double Pivoting Phased Array Transceiver transmitting IR, which gives plenty of power and a small enough spot size for a small rover or spaceplane to receive. The spaceplane had a thermal turbojet that could use air and oxygen as a propellant. The plane also had large elevators, airbrakes, and wheels for control in thin air and rough landings. If you are higher tech, you can build a powerful X-Ray transmitter in polar Kerbol orbit near the sun getting loads of solar power from a large Blanket solar receiver. A large enough X-Ray transmitter can then beam power all the way to Duna and most planets with a small usable spot size. However, X-Ray can not relay, so make sure you stay in line-of-sight. The highest frequency that can relay is Vacuum Ultraviolet. It is possible to build a Super-Size vacuum ultraviolet transmitter that can transmit power to most planets with a small enough spot-size to be usable while still being able to relay and cover all areas. I used the same spaceship to enter all biomes of Moho and Dres, and even Eeloo with extra fuel and living space and a miner providing a refuel for going home, but Eve was more of a challenge. I needed a spaceship with a stronger beam transmitter, and the spaceplane used on Duna was not strong enough to escape Eve's orbit. The Eve spaceplane needed a higher ISP ATTILA thruster while receiving enough power to be powerful. I tried many propellents, but simple monopropellant seemed to work best. The ATTILA is also an electric engine requiring a lot of energy received in the form of electricity. The added power and electric engine also required large graphene and titanium heat radiators. The plane was also heavier than the Duna plane, which needed two thermal turbojets to get a high enough speed before using the ATTILA to reach Eve orbit. Once flying near the Eve surface, the more heavy plane has no trouble flying at low speed with easy landings. After some practice, the plane could also take off and land off the water. Jool and its moons required a different starship because I wanted to level up lots of Kerbals, which needed lots of living space and a powerful transmitter to send power to all the moons. By then, I had a Quantum Singularity Reactor, which gave lots of power for thrust and beam-power transmitting in Vacuum Ultraviolet. I tried many high-tech engines, but the simpler Plasma Nozzle attached directly to the singularity reactor gave a good combination of power and ISP when using a hydrogen propellant and a fuel. Ironically, the more high-tech plane used on Eve did not do well on Laythe because it was too fast and heavy. The more simple Duna plane did nicely. To mine and refine hydrogen, you need the All In One ISRU, but that requires regolith, which is not on all moons. Tylo was also a challenge because the heavy gravity and lack of atmosphere made it difficult to land and maneuver after landing. After my lunar lander landed, there was not enough fuel left to hop to all biomes, so a rover was needed and stay on the ground. The same rover used before did not climb Tylo hills well, so larger, more powerful wheels were needed- even if a powerful beam was available. After landing the rover, there was not enough fuel to get back into orbit, so after visiting all Tylo biomes. I needed to drive to the miner refinery, which refueled my Ox tank on the rover, then I had enough fuel to reach orbit and dock. That's about it to getting all Biomes from all bodies. After finishing Duna, Ike, Eve, and all Jools moons, any remaining planets or moons will seem easy. I already finished getting data from many biomes in the stock game, but that required a LOT more refueling because of the lower ISP and weaker engines, even when using the Nerv engine. Escaping Eve required landing a HUGE rocket, and Tylo required a large rocket to take off and land and refill for each biome. Instead, reaching all biomes using KSP-IE was fun and easy after I knew what to do while using real science. I hope someone finds this post helpful.

I've played KSP over 6000 hours and I'm giving KSPI-E most of the credit for adding so much replayability.

It works. Just need to charge it first. But can't charge in the VAB for some reason.

Yes, but I never saw RoverDude on the KSP 2.0 team.

"Nertea is now a part of the development team" Awesome. I hope Freethinker, RoverDude, ihsoft, NecroBones, and Sarbian also join the 2.0 team.

I agree and I like DLCs. More than relying on modders do all the work. DLCs will then be well(EDIT: MUST be well) designed and well tested to work with other DLCs. Often mods are not tested to work with other mods. My concern from the beginning is getting the physics perfect from the first version. If the first version only has simple Newton physics LF/O and 1-2 types of propellant, it will be difficult/impossible to make good a DLC later with futuristic engines/fuels/propellants that require realistic atomic physics. KSP was always about doing missions and making wacky spaceships that all use real science-no magically good engines. If KSP2 will be done "correctly" from the beginning, then future DLCs will be easier to make and not clunky.

I gave you a thumbs up. But if you want to visit other star systems in KSP 2.0, I think you will need more than the stock 1.0 LF/O fuel and engines. Ultra-high ISP becomes important at some point.

I understand. It just looks painful and unnatural to see a kerbal stuck in the same seat all day every day for 1 year - even if they look happy.

Exactly. This is why (in real life) interplanetary missions need a capsule a lot larger than 10 chairs. I personally will like to see life-support in a settings menu that can be enabled or disabled. Life support will also not be an issue until going farther than the Mun and should not be available until later in the tech-tree. It will take a lot of creativity to build a ship big enough to comfortably 10 kerbals on a very long trip. But some people just don't want that kind of realism. I've personally done interplanetary missions with a team of kerbals using USI life-support. The vet kerbals can also be more hardy.

I understand and I agree with what you are saying. The reason why I don't see a problem is because the KSP 2.0 tech tree will go well beyond the stock KSP 1.0. For going to the Mun, SSTO, and all casual throwing kerbals at a celestial bodies, this is all done in the early part of the game. For advanced players that care about life-support, beam power, atomic fuel refining/recycling, different engine types and fuels that have ultra-high ISPs, engine cooling, etc all play in the far right side of the tech tree. These techs are all part of the existing/current community tech tree. So, all the casual players that only have hour to spare will never get into the complexities of the right side of the tree. There will also be people that want a big challenge with RSS to land on Duna using real Earth and Mars gravity with Apollo/Saturn V tech. So yes, either way, the game will start simple.

It seems all features in KSP 2.0 was decided a long time ago. A wish-list like this is now inappropriate. People also voiced to keep KSP simple. But I still have some concerns even if KSP remains simple. From the very beginning, KSP should scale easily even if it is kept simple. Will the parts be procedural and easily scalable? Will the physics scale to multiple CPUs? Can new fuels and propellants be added easily and have different types (solid,liquid, gas, plasma)? Will nuclear physics be added to make adding new reactors/engines/fuels/reactions/coolants possible ? This way it will be a lot easier if others wanted to add features. For example, changing or adding weather is difficult if weather never existed. I can go on. But as a programmer, I know some designs are too difficult to change after the project is completed and would require re-making everything from scratch. Maybe little/no scalability is by design? Ok, I'll keep quiet.

Fixed

What engines are you using?

Scaling with Tweakscale? Some engines can not scale. Many have upper and lower limits.

I agree. This list is just to give an idea of the types of features people want.

I can't find if this was not done already. Please list your favorite mods that are good enough to be stock for everyone. Here is my list of KSP 1 mods that I think are good enough to be stock. Use Multi-CPU core physics. Put those 16 logical cores to good use. Tweak Scale: Should not be so hard to double the size of something all else equal. This makes larger or smaller rockets a lot easier. KAS/KIS : KSP 1.11 has a basic attachment system/inventory, but the mod is still better MechJeb: KSP has basic maneuvering, but the mod is still a lot better. Possible now here on Earth. Futuristic Kerbals should be able to do this. USI Life Support/OKS/MKS : This was already discussed in the forum for 2.0. There needs to be some life support for long trips, but the devs also don't want forgotten kerblals dying. SpaceY/Modular Rocket Systems: Makes building large rockets a lot easier Cryogenic Engines and tanks: I think this is already planned Near Future engines/reactors/nuclear storage. I think this is already planned. KSP Interstellar Extended: This one is BIG. It not only adds engines (electric/thermal/charged particles) and reactors (fission and fusion), but in a very correct physics way with different materials having different characteristics(half-life/propellants/burn-time, etc) and needing to solve issues like waste heat and depleted fuel removal. There is also beam power which allows a large power station to beam power to smaller ships with a lot more power than solar. Different frequencies have different characteristics and the lasers can relay/mirror like the comm relays. When KSP 2.0 starts getting high-tech, the science must remain real without getting magically good. This will be difficult to keep the physics/science real without getting magical. Chatterer: Kerbals need to talk sometimes. I don't care if they sound Russian or Spanish. Free IVA: Lets kerbals walk around inside spaceships in 1st person and 3rd person while having realistic gravity. Kerbals also need some daily routine to move from sleeping to working to dining. This was done in the Sims 20 years ago, can't be too hard. Galaxies Unbound: Adding star systems already planned. EDIT: Alcubierre Warp Drive: No Plan Robotic Arms: Guessing planned, but I didn't see yet. Scatterer/EVE: Looks like some of these features are going to KSP 2.0

OK. Let me try to be more constructive and fix instead of complaining. I'm also having some problems. KSPI-E is a volunteer effort and the creators do not really owe anyone anything. Its a labor of love and a huge amount of work went in this already. I have a background in programming. I'll ask FreeThinker if I can fix some problems, then update GitHub. If I am allowed to do that, I need a some time to get familiar.

Some things can not get more simplified. I'm no physics expert, so someone else can explain better. In the stock tech-tree, it basically stops with LF/O, NERV, and Ion engines. These engines are fine for getting to the moon or sending small probes farther, but large payloads require huge amounts of fuel to get to other planets. Any LF/O can only burn so fast, so a completely different type of engine is needed to improve efficiency. Expanding the tech tree allows completely different kinds of engines that require different types of fuel. These new engine types make the other planets a lot more accessible. About one or two generations beyond the stock tech-tree are nuclear-thermal rocket engines and electric/plasma engines. Some techs go way beyond this, but I'll try to simplify. The real-life thermal engines use fission to create lots of heat that pushes a propellant out fast, with a much higher ISP (efficiency). Liquid fuel used in the stock LV-N NERV works but is not efficient. One fuel is not ideal for all future rockets. Without getting into many details, a nuclear-thermal rocket has the highest exhaust velocity when a propellant gas with the lowest possible molecular weight. Hydrogen gas has a low mass and is ideal for thermal rockets. Electric engines require heavy gas, and xenon is ideal for high efficiency. Lithium vapor is less efficient but gives a higher thrust. There is still no free lunch, and nothing is magical. To get super high efficiency or high thrust, many other kinds of energy are needed like heat or electricity. Creating lots of energy also creates lots of heat that do not go away magically. Why is this important? Why should anyone care about these ibbly things? For example, the hard part of getting to Duna is reaching Kerbin orbit first, which can be done using regular dumb rockets. Once in orbit, there is no fear of crashing; a super high-efficiency electric engine can take the ship all the way to Duna easily - but with very low thrust. The ship will then do a fly-by of Duna. However, the ship will likely enter Duna gravity and then leave Duna gravity before an orbit is possible. A thermal engine with high trust is needed to put on the brakes, prevent the ship from escaping Duna gravity, and reach an orbit. This is one example of why one engine type isn't best for all scenarios, and two or more very different engine types that use different fuels are sometimes needed - if you don't want to use tons of fuel. EDIT: The same goes for reactors. Some reactors are slow burning and work well if you want it generating power for 50 years. Other reactors burn a lot faster but also produce a lot more power. The molten salt reactor uses thorium that burns slowly and the used fuel can be recycled to give continuous power for as long as most anyone needs power. This works well in real-life also. However for SSTO, the molten salt reactor does not give enough power to reach orbit using a thermal nozzle. For that you need a pebble bed reactor using a very different type of fuel uranium nitride. There are other types of fission and fusion reactors that can for example generate electricity with less heat or create charged particles. For faster that light and anti-gravity, yet another completely different type of reactor and fuel is needed. Suppose the goal is to make KSP more simple. In that case, some engines should be avoided, like the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) can use lots of different propellants like argon, xenon, or other natural gasses with different characteristics. This engine may add confusion. It would be magically good if someone made a high-tech 1.25 meter LF/O engine with 1000 kN power and 3000 ISP, it would be magical no matter how high-tech or expensive. Like pushing the hyper-drive button in Star Wars to reach the speed of light that is not based on any real physics. High tech and expensive can not break physics laws. Like a huge high-tech canon can not blast people to the moon and have them land safely (like in the movie 'Trip to the Moon'). Someone that knows physics better should correct me. These issues are coming up in KSP2 as developers also try to keep KSP simple while getting more high-tech that still use real science.

LiquidHelium is created using the ISRU Nuclear fuel processor. It requires uraninite, empty container of enriched uranium, and empty container of depleted uranium. However this technique creates very little Helium. EDIT: I'll check for a better way to harvest LiquidHelium. Such as scooping it out from a Helium atmosphere. EDIT2: I was able to harvest 3He using the Radial Atmospheric Scoop. However, you need to get close to Jool to get any decent amount. In case you meant hydrogen: LH2 is a lot more simple and you can use stock(ish) parts after installing KSP-IE. There is no way to mine LH2 directly. First mine ore using the stock Drill-O-Matic like you normally do. Then you need the stock Convert-O-Tron 250 to convert the ore to LH2. Then need a cryogenic LH2 container to store the LH2. You need lots of power for the mining, refining, and powering the cryogenic fuel container. If the power runs out, the LH2 will slowly leak. EDIT3: The Near Future Mod makes this easy. There is a more correct KSPI-E way to do this using the All In One IRSU Refinery.

I think the Nerva is a stock engine KSPI-E replaced/upgraded to use many different types of propellants. I didn't have the problem you are describing and you may be missing some component. Anyway, please give a screenshot. I used KSPI-E nuclear engines a lot.

I disagree (sort of). The Near Future parts seem easier to use and look more stock. However, KSP-IE seems to have more realistic physics. Fuel decay, atomic reactions, atomic waste, half-life, ideal operating temperatures, waste heat, and more propellants than just LF/Ox/Atm, are all important. There is also a huge section on beam-power. Very different than rather just install it and turn it on to get electricity for n-number of years. Anyway, if you want to learn real physics which KSP always was based on without as many internal workings hidden, then I think you will do better with KSP-IE. Anyway, my 2-cent option.

I understand. Most people don't want ultra-realism. But if additional realism (n-body Newtonian gravitation, life support, light-speed communication, nuclear physics, etc) is selectable in some hidden advanced setting. then an even larger population will want this. The added (optional) realism will also make KSP2 suitable for professional use - IF the devs want this game suitable for professional use or teaching physics (newton and atomic) & logistics. My 2 cent opinion. @EnderKid2. "we're at most getting fusion/antimatter torch drives capable of getting to a few percent of c " Ok, didn't know that. There will be lots of time-warping and babies born between stars then.

I see two problems. 1, the Pebble bed reactor only outputs thermal power. 2. you have no CP generator if the reactor did create charged particles. There are some reactors (like the Tokamat) that produce heat and CP, but then you need both a thermal generator and CP generator. Anyway, your pebble bed reactor and thermal generator seem to be working fine. I tried myself and it works the same. I don't know why your reactor window says it can produce charged power when it can't. Pebble bed 500MW CP should not be possible.

Use an antimatter reactor for your warp drive. It just works a lot better. Also check your waste-heat. That can severely limit the power you can generate. For doing warp, stay FAR away from a gravity well. That also makes a big difference and uses more power, even if you think you have enough power.