vossiewulf

More time I spend with it the more it feels only partially implemented. Two things to put on the list: 1. Doesn't show the burns it intends to do like say the rendezvous autopilot 2. It must.do.a.plane-change.burn. To confirm the lack of logic I had it do its plane-change burn, then turned it off and back on again, and its status was plane change and it wanted to do another orbit to do a .0002m/s burn... well actually with this location by the time it orbited again it would have to make a significant burn to have the orbital plane oriented as accurately as it was right at that moment. So it needs some judgment, <Xm/s plane differential let's skip that. It would also be handy to have an override so you can tell it to get on with landing already. It is still quite handy in its current form, I just landed all my base pieces pure manual by just using its landing point prediction. Detach unit, minor normal/anti-normal burn to align plane, then two-part burn near the target to first get downrange and then crossrange on target. Doing it that way was relatively easy to get them dropping pretty much straight down on the target, all of them have landed within 200m of target.

All I've been able to accomplish is having them kamikaze into the terrain, it does look like something is broken in the logic there. @sarbian if you think is an issue now I'll gather logs and post them for you. If anyone has more ideas how to make it work I'm listening

Trying to figure out if it's working or broken, if it's concluded it's not in face working I will post some logs. What I saw was a good plane-change burn followed by dropping gear and actively burning in a straight line toward the landing target, he had just stopped burning when he impacted with Minmus. I'm going to try it a few more times.

Progress I guess.... after switching to HAL control point and unchecking the cosine losses, he has Dv and conducted a perfect plane-change burn 90 degrees from landing. And then immediately put his gear down, and burned in a straight line for the target, right smack into Minmus mountains. Sigh. Also is there any way to override his plane change step? He is still insisting on going all the way around and doing another plane change burn for about 1 degree inclination change, and since they're in a very low orbit of 8k or so the distance difference there in terms of starting descent points is maybe a few hundred yards.

Thanks, was just about to go over to the Planetary Bases thread as indeed we are confused as to which direction is forward. Since the HAL, built specifically for this, is the underlying autopilot I figured it would be able to orient itself correctly, but even with me driving, when I tell it to hold (e.g.) retrograde, it's 90 degrees off. I still don't really understand control from here, only place I really know to use it is docking. I assume when you switch to a new location it reorients the control axes to align with the local axes of the part, all fine and good, but how do you know the local axes of the part? That is, I don't know how to tell which part to switch for establishing the correct axes. Anyway thanks, will go poke at it some more.

Thanks for the suggestion. I grab logs and post them once we confirm we have an issue where logs are needed, usually it's user error or user lack of understanding so I just ask first. In this case, your first guess is right - MJ doesn't recognize Meerkats as engines and thinks they all have 0 Dv. However that doesn't explain why the bottom stage, which is Constellation tweaked up to 5m. It says it has 2200Dv but it also seems to be forgetting about landing once I switch away. I'll look into that some more and see if I can figure out what is happening.

Question on landing guidance, or more accurately where is the user screwing it up? This is what I have, not exactly simple but if I wanted simple I'd be playing a game on my phone. Everything you see here is landing; the big black triangles on the bottom stage are big landing legs and it has its own HECS2 and MJ. Then we drop off 6 K&K units, each with a HAL, MJ, Meerkats and extra fuel in radial tanks so each has like 700Dv. Last up top we have the K&K base hub which is so festooned with stuff for the trip it's hard to see (goal is one trip, metal mining, fuel mining, workshop, launchpad, lab, rover and mostly use K&K), on top of it is a big storage contained tweaked to 5m and a 5m fuel dome on top of that. It has MJ and 8 x Meerkats, it took off vertical from Kerbin fully loaded so definitely enough oomph, and plenty of fuel with the 5m dome on top. So, I went through the whole complex separation sequence, as each is released I switch over to it, turn on MJ landing guidance, pick the spot on the map, tell it to land there with autowarp disabled but the various show trajectory options enabled. And it all seemed to go well, not a hitch and all of them are supposedly released and programmed with the correct landing point, leaving me to have some fun landing the weird-looking K&K hub. "The Denovans appear to be in attack formation, sir." I'm in the lowest orbit so I warp around until MJ stops it to do the plane-change warp. Then I wait for the rest of the formation to do their burns, but... nada. I switch to them and they're doing their best impression of a dead flounder that has miraculously escaped the freezing and sublimation desiccation of space and are still flopping around like dead fish. They've totally forgotten that whole landing idea, although they still remember they have a target. If I hit the Land at Target button again, they do their best impression of very stupid just waking up flounder, and try to go in a straight line from wherever they are to the target. In my case that means trying to go straight through Minmus. So, what am I doing wrong? Obviously before that warp they all seemed to be working, so it seems it should work. Is it my warp that breaks them, time starts going by fast and they didn't ask it to? If that's the case I'll have to go back in time a bit so they can do their plane change burn and land without having to do an extra orbit.

I'm going to clean him up a bit and post him on KerbalX, he's basically crossed 3.75m structural trusses filled with goodies and is absurdly fun to drive being impossible to flip over. On Kerbin you can do crazy turns at 30m/s, in low G it acts kind of like a hovercraft, can go just as fast and he still can't flip but changing directions takes a while. He also handles very well at low speed, something I tested for and tweaked a bunch after dealing with the battleship-type handling of some of the rovers particularly in low G. This one has a very reasonably tight turning radius in low G that improves with load. He has ten tiny augurs, a K&K smelter, K&K recycler, two inflated Pathfinder Wagons for metal ore and scrap metal storage, and an MSV-2000 metal storage can for 3k metal storage. Could easily switch out drills and the can for fuel tanks and make it just as monstrous a fuel converter. Plus every science instrument not used in orbit, a 15G relay antenna, BV and MJ of course, 45k of battery, and last is 12,000 liters of storage provided by the two buckboards, but I've upped that to 24,000 on the latest version. Doing Pathfinder/Buffalo, I'd fly it in from an orbital or moon launch pad, and with the storage you could be carrying a 20-building base + a couple S.A.F.E.R. reactors and at least one fully-equipped Buffalo to be assembled on site plus every single other thing you'd need for that base to be 100% operational with no additional deliveries. This one got delivered to my Mun launchpad empty. The most fun is when you get him on the Mun, set a save you can come back to, and then see just exactly how much a battlecruiser-class rover can take

I would have called it a feature. RCAS. Remote-Controlled Aerodynamic Stabilization.

Ok so I launch on a real attempt, and those rover wheels around the base hub destined for the Buffalo didn't break on launch this time, so I thought I was good there. Proceed to Minmus, get in a circular orbit of 6.5k-7.8k, lined up with my intended landing point, long complicated series of decouplings and I'm in control of the first unit to land and.... it has no fuel?!? Only thing I can think of is that I was using LFO OMS RCS on the lower stages, do they not respect crossfeed? Only thing that makes sense since I tossed a few thousand units of LFO when I dropped the third stage in Minmus orbit. Also when I got to that point, I found the wheels were all broken again. When they break they say it's from overstressing. Any idea why? I've flown three Buffalo rovers to the Mun just mounted on his stack mount with no problems, so I'm not getting why these are breaking. Funny thing is when I added struts to stabilize them, they broke instantly on the launch pad. That was my super spiffy out of box solution that was going to get all my Buffalo parts there in one trip as per goal, so it's particularly annoying. Sigh, more testing.

WOOHOO! He says, though you can't really see him, just an arm sticking up out of a pile of rocket parts...

Thanks! I'll feel better hitting the big red button now. It has 16 stages and weighs 2500 tons, pretty much exactly the same as a Fletcher class WWII destroyer, and working with new parts + trying to carry every single thing I need in one trip, let's say there has been lots of test flights. The last bug was driving me crazy where the second stage was decoupling and exploding almost immediately, taking out the third stage motor and I was moving ullage rockets around and fiddling all sorts of things until I finally realized I had set the drainex fuel sensor to trigger staging not at 0% fuel but 1%... so it was staging and then ramming the third stage. GAH! In other words, I've been having an enormous amount of fun on a Saturday afternoon.

He also goes along well with my new favorite mega-rover, that eats Packrats for snacks. I try to stop him, really I do, but he's 35tons and... well YOU just try and stop him why don't you.

Takes talent to make a pic that is innocent per se but anyone running with the obvious in comments is going to feel the ban hammer

Yeah I'm fine with automation but only after I've mastered doing something myself, so TCA remains on the shelf for the time being. I'm getting reasonably good at the manual landings, was quite proud of landing a 30t 12 wheel Buffalo rover within 50m of my Mun base flying manual whole way, I don't even use maneuver hold APs. I'm fine with the careful process also, I like tweaking things, but I don't like spending a bunch of time tweaking things if it's because I'm doin' it wrong If that's the correct process then I'm happy I found it on my own through testing, always happy when I figure something out from first principles rather than from reading directions. They are all perfectly balanced now down to the .5% on the thrust limiters so they all fly straight and their extra fuel is positioned such that CG doesn't change at all as it drains. Speaking of which, I didn't give them that much extra, they have between 700 and 900 Dv now. They'll need 150 or so for de-orbit burn from a low 8-10k orbit. I am guessing that's enough but honestly a wild guess, I'm not sure how you calculate Dv requirements from an arbitrary point in space to a dead stop on a surface. If that's not enough, please let me know 'cause she's otherwise ready to go and straining at the launch clamps Thanks for the very nice work with this mod, I also just downloaded the newly-update glass domes mod and I'm going to see if I can incorporate some of those into my new K&K base. I think that will probably look pretty spiffy. One small...teeny...eensy teensy tiny little request. So small it can't even use normal-size fonts. Ok yes Vossie we get the gag but clarity helps too The request is that you sort your huge numbers of quality parts into logical categories in the editor, having a master K&K category with sub-cats for containers, planetary base, space station, electrical, etc. etc. This is a self-created problem in that you've made so many great parts that even sorting everything into a K&K category as I've already done still leaves lots of scrolling and figuring out where that thing is I'll do it for myself anyway but it would make figuring out what you have so much easier, it's pretty annoying to get halfway to Minmus with some function being a less-than-great option only to realize I missed this totally awesome part just for doing whatever that less-than-great option is doing, it results in repeated facepalms. Having all those parts sorted out will really help players, and the sounds of forehead-slapping will be reduced 14% KSP-wide. And since I'm requesting something and I've already made great use of your mods, off to donate, I don't ask people to do free work. It'll be from vossiewulf, easy to spot. Um... where is a donate link?

Thanks for confirming, going to work on this one a bit more until I've done most things once and am not quite so flailing about at every turn, and then will start a new game.

Yes This is (for the sake of the challenge) the one-trip base for Minmus with full metal mining and rocketparts making, ore/fuel conversion mining, EL launchpad, ton of Pathfinder storage, and a Buffalo rover to be assembled on site. This is launching today.

Thanks for the quick response. For the first question, in your OP it say planet positions have been tweaked to provide better/more transfer window options in the first two years, and this may break existing saves. If that's a very minor risk I might try it now, if it's probably going to break things I will wait for a new game.

So like now that I've finally gotten around to replacing previously asploded high end computer power with a high-end laptop, first time I've ever not built my main machine, and I'm able to start playing around with all the graphics enhancements and planet mods. And boy am I confused. So many, half of which seem to include the other half, with no pattern of whether you have to install dependencies vs. OMG no we do that and you screw up everything if you install them yourself, or whether you can drop them in or have to start a game from scratch, etc. According to what I read above that you've tweaked all the planetary positions for better early game options means that I probably shouldn't try this until I'm starting a new game? No complaints, it's just what happens when so much core game functionality is actually delivered by modders rather than by the game studio, very thankful folks are doing that but figuring it out as a new person is pretty tricky And lots of people seem very enthusiastic about OPM, that is integrated here too, correct? So when I start that new game and am interested in OPM I should install OPM via Galileo and have it there from the start of that game no? Also, does this conflict with AVP? I wanted to try that as well. Thanks in advance and thanks for the great work... well what seems to be great work, can't wait to confirm it

Fixed that for you.

I'm getting ready to make my first attempt at using this mod for a base, I've used Pathfinder previously as I'm new and that is ridiculously easy, at least transportation-wise; toss them all in a big container and you have only one thing to land. But now I want to try this, and because I like challenges I'm trying to do a completely functional metal- and fuel-mining base with lab, workshop and EL pad in one trip. As such it ended up being about 70% PBS and 30% Pathfinder and Buffalo, the ore mining and fuel ISRU is going to be provided by a Buffalo that will be assembled onsite. Also explains why there are rover wheels attached on the outside of my lander. Questions - when I add the HAL or an airlock, or anything really, we have CG problems and testing on the Kerbin pad ended up with me testing each unit separately and having to set the thrust limiter down on one side or the other to achieve a launch that didn't look like someone flipping pancakes. Maybe the reaction wheels have enough oomph to overcome that, but that much torque can't make things easier so I took the time to balance them. Is this normal or am I doing too much or what? It seems a lengthy process. Do dual Meerkats have enough Dv to slow a unit from Minmus low orbit and land safely? Or do I need extra fuel/engines to do that? I'm not sure how one does this, I could use an engine to slow down a 3-unit pack, but then I have three of them trying to land at the same time. My plan instead is to drop one unit on each orbit over the base location, but to do that the Meerkats have to handle de-orbit burn and landing. Pics of the payload, lower section has its own 5m straight fairing.

Echoing a few other comments here, your Spacedock link is still pointing to the version for KSP 1.1.3. This caused me a loading asplosion and some confusion until I figured it out, I hadn't noticed on downloading since the thread clearly says 1.3 so I wan't looking too closely. This is one of the mods I've been waiting for my new laptop to install, so was just now trying it. I downloaded the Github version and all is good now. Like many other people, I'm thankful for your ongoing efforts Roverdude, KSP would be much the lesser for it without them.

Before I forget, if you're thinking about adding anything (he says, smoothly, in his best hypnotic suggestion voice), still being relatively new the braking performance or lack thereof in low-G environments caught me off guard but was a post-facto duh. Was thinking about it. What I think would be extremely spiffy are combo wheel/RCS units with a single upward-firing RCS port that fires whenever the B key is hit. Doesn't fire on reverse throttle so that's fine, only fires when B is hit. Wheel still functions fine without mono of course, you just don't get the extra braking. You could have some designed for monoprop storage elsewhere on the vehicle, and also some more like pods (structural pods, not KSP control pods) with integrated monoprop supplies. (Hypnotic voice to maximum) You'll make KSP Mods again, highest rated espisode ever.... You know, I just realized I suggested a feature thought up by Michael Bay in Armageddon. LOL

If I were doing it, I'd end with the standard craft files, not start there. I'd establish a series of weight classes and then a series of duty classes (light/medium/heavy) and now I have a matrix, and for each cell I figure out what the value ranges should be from EC use and SHP output (or whatever we use here), to size and structural weight (heavy duty has bigger structure), to load bearing and braking strength, all of those wheel params. Then I'd have a pre-rationalized set of buckets for which to make wheels, and as long as what I make looks like it should have the values I want to give it for this bucket, the whole set will make sense. And no reason you still couldn't throw in some special use ones that don't exactly follow your graphs. And then I'd use the existing craft files as a reality check to make sure my assumptions on weight classes and required performances made sense. When you model you can decouple size and weight bearing a bit and you should to give you more flexibility but if you do, it should be clear that although this wheel is bigger than that one, its structure is comparatively lighter. That's what got me with the wheels I'm using, that every part of them looked bigger and stronger than the truck wheels- but say you didn't give that a rubber tire with a metal wheel but a formed metal mesh wheel/tire like the Apollo rover had, and then it would make sense it's a lighter-duty wheel even though it's bigger.

All fixed now. It was weirder than that, for about 2/3 of the mods the directory structure was there but entirely empty. I don't even know how to do that if I wanted to. But something very odd must have happened, the files were fine in the google drive location, just bad on the new machine, and only 2/3 of them or so had their files stripped. All I did was copy one more time from the drive store and it works fine. Thanks! Thanks, will keep it in mind for next time.