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karolus10

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Posts posted by karolus10

  1. Maybe I'm bit old fashion but I still respect FL-T400 as basic fuel tank "unit" - most of pre-ARM stack fuel tanks are pretty much up-sized version of it, It has same dry mass fraction and any larger tank fit rounded number of it, If I recall correctly (yet not shure) Orange tank hold inside 32x FL-T400 tank.

  2. I personally like the buff of ion engine, I would not mind having stock 1 meter version as well :). Ions are good with better thrust as long as their energy consumption is on legitimate levels... Electric propulsion is all about getting enough power to run them.

    From other hand energy requirements and output of all stock parts need some serious balancing IMHO... command pods and probes (stack guidance units also they need lager batteries than regular probes) should need more energy to run them making batteries and power generation parts (also we could use of having APU burning RCS fuel and fuel cells) more important.

  3. Stuff like deadly reentry, arcade/ (more) realistic aerodynamics, wind, weather, radio communications and delays or crew need to breathe and eat are perfect examples of features that ability to turn it ON and OFF decide about game difficulty level.

    Adding more complex set of game mechanics, flight instruments and editor/flight-planning tools is a good and desirable thing (It's adding more depth to late game) until you aren't forced to use them all to achieve anything in game - You can still slap few parts together and "go for it", but you will discover and use more and more of the game capabilities and tools as You progress (i.e. get some skill and knowledge) and look for another challenge.

    Also I believe that after game is pretty much finished it will receive more developed tutorial and training scenarios, making entry even more painless and giving more tools for the community to create complete missions and scenarios.

  4. Conservation of rotation when on-rails could be realistic and very useful for centrifuges (spinning craft for artificial gravity) or for tidal lock (ship rotate slowly so it's always facing ground the same way). from other hand I think that many people will like to had "kill rotation" button in debug menu as this timewarp rotation bug is often exploited to easily deal with spacecrafts that started to spin out of control...

  5. Flag at half mast could be ok in campaign mode, but I doubt that anybody would notice as flag aren't exposed much to player's view, so it's rather an eye-candy.

    Fallen cosmonauts could be mentioned separately in astronaut complex, when crew training, status, and missions statistics (how many missions each kerbal flown, Time spend in space, other bodies surface and EVA's, total distance traveled, medals, injuries and so on) would be implemented.

    In sandbox mode Kerbals are pretty much expendable cannon fodder.

  6. I actually build up far more horizontal velocity before coasting to apoapsis (I'm level at around 35~40km), but the 10km straight up out of the pea soup is just stupid. And boring.

    While I agree with this 100%, what I don't agree with is that that ascent profile has anything to do with the stock aerodynamics model.

    I start my gravity turn very slightly at about 5-7km, and slowly bring it down to 45 degrees as my apoapsis reaches 20km. When my apoapsis is at 30km I'm at 30 degrees (I even refer to this profile as "30 at 30") and when it hits 50km I go to 0 degrees and keep it there. My circularization burn is almost always 5-10 seconds.

    I like to use nav-ball to estimate time when gravity turn should start, I'm mostly starting turn to 60* just before yellow pro-grade indicator reach it in orbital speed mode so you meet with pro-grade marker at 60* mark... from my observation this allow you to simple gauge if you are climbing fast enough to start gravity turn... maybe it's not the ultimate solution for perfect turn but it's working well and even beginner can get good results :).

    Also I tend to fly into low orbit (more or less as minor corrections may be needed) in a single burn, without coasting to apoapsis, If You gain enough horizontal velocity Your upper stage doesn't need a lot of thrust (1-0.5G of acceleration) to complete the job.

  7. Who cares

    Make a rocket so complicated it'll explode or something

    That's what makes the game fun, when things go wrong and they are horrifically funny.

    No matter what type of staging you go with, make sure it explodes in some way I'm tired of things going flawlessly.

    KSP paradox: Enjoying the fireworks while everything went horribly wrong... this made trial&error learning fun instead being frustrating.

    EDIT_1: Personally I didn't used asparagus staging as most heavy stuff I had launched needed only single core with 2 mainsails in the first stage.

    TwinSail21.png

    If one mainsail aren't enought just add one more... right ?

    EDIT_2: I also think that larger parts won't stop people from building "Asparagus" (I hate this name) rockets, it would just create bigger versions of them.

  8. I'm playing the stock game from long time, and trying various mods on second installment but I still use NavyFish docking indicator (I would be glad to see Navball showing speeds bellow 0.1m/s instead freaking out) and sometimes one of maneuver nodes enhancements.

    I'm not fan of "instant" auto pilot programs but I think that we need Proper, precise flight instruments (as well as finished flight planning) in stock game as well as simple programmable SAS, so you can adjust rotation speed limit, lock certain axis and be able to enter SAS target for each locked axis (Pitch, Yaw, Roll, values).

    For other automation I would prefer having some way of simple command line/script automation that could be used to send very basic programs to probes as well as being improvement of action groups (like making timed sequences or custom action groups/programs visible and triggered from staging list). Making flight computer programmable in limited way sound better for me than mech-jeb as it would be versatile and would require player (or copy-pasting best command files from forums, lol) to automate some actions in same way like when designing rocket itself (+ educational value and satisfaction when everything will execute as planned).

    From other hand I'm very doubtful that such feature would ever make it's way into a game.

    I'm not very worried about planets looks and stock parts content until developers will focus on improving core features and mechanics so you cannot call any of them as being merely placeholder.

  9. EDIT: It doesn't show up in the staging? Am I required to right click on it to decouple?

    It is on staging list as an SRB icon, you can hover over staging icons to highlight parts they represent.

    After adding decoupler module both decoupler and rocket is triggered when activated from staging list so you can place it at the later stage and forget about getting rid of tower at the right time.

    To use tower for emergency purposes you had to use action groups, I believe it may be counter-intuitive for new players when you try use staging for triggering LES and it's just fly away... from other hand it's a desired behavior unless it's an emergency.

  10. Asteroids seem to float too. Either the asteroid is hollow or Kerbin's ocean is made of something that is as dense as mercury.

    I think that it's more about icredible buoyancy of parts attached to asteroid, if you "unclaw" all probes it will drown like rock in the water.

  11. I think that it won't matter much as stock parts aren't really balanced for now - in real life rocket engines are a very lightweight compared to it's trust and rest of the rocket ,but changing engines is only a part of the solution as it's very important to balance dry weight of fuel tanks and density (and bi-propellant mixture proportions) of fuel itself as they are largest fraction of the rocket mass...

    Other important thing would be changing fuel tank capacity units into liters or square meters (as well as displaying mass of the propellant inside as volume is good for defining fuel tanks capacity but mass of propellant in tank matter more during mission), so tank size can be calculated properly and give good point of reference for modding.

    Also important for engines balancing is that it's thrust is changing with air pressure (atmospheric curve in KSP) but for now thrust is constant and fuel consumption is changing with specific impulse (and it should be opposite).

    This causing vacuum upper stage engines with low sea level ISP to consume much more fuel instead having significantly reduced trust caused by nozzle underexpansion and first stage engines thrust won't decrease from exhaust over-expanding in upper atmosphere.

    Better modeling of engine and nozzle mechanics (nozzle expansion and thrust changing with ambient pressure) would made more realistic (upper stage engines don't work well in low atmosphere and vice versa) engines and made nozzle extensions and plug nozzles (AKA areospike) useful and working as intended.

    EDIT_1: I would say that new engines ISP are bit too generous when compared to older stock parts.

    EDIT_2:

    The Mainsail is basically useless now.

    I could disagree, Mainsails in quad configuration are creating real monster, nearly twice more powerful than stock SLS cluster part.

    Quadsail.png

    From other hand mainsails are much heavier... mass of old engines is too big and TWR too small :/.

  12. LAT1.png

    Welcome, fellow players.

    As you may know, our new LES tower from ARM update has no option of safe ejection without adding a decoupler or stacking it on top of docking port, if you want now escape tower with integrated decoupler, You may fix it quickly by adding few lines to escape tower part configuration file before SRB module:

    MODULE
    {
    name = ModuleDecouple
    ejectionForce = 500
    explosiveNodeID = bottom
    }

    File ready to download and replace (for lazy people).

    This little change is adding decoupler into the part so any additional decouplers aren't necessary to eject tower and tower will be ejected by default if activated from staging list (you cannot use it to abort without action group).

    Have a nice day !

  13. There wasn't any "delay" as there wasn't any release date in the first place... Dev's don't post any date as you don't know how much time it will exactly take and rushing dates was never beneficial for players as if it's out earlier than "when it's done", it means that you ask for incomplete (buggy) update that may bring more issues than joy.

    I really don't see a problem with all this hype and advertising new update, it's coming soon - not now, not tomorrow but it will come soon and Anyone can wait for a while as we waited last few months :rolleyes:.

    This game is still selling (and will be) and any way to bring new and old players into game and forums is the good one !

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