Cavscout74

Loved it, glad to see you writing some more!

Most of those are up-to-date or close enough that they still worked as of 1.7. I haven't gotten the DLC yet to see if that breaks anything. Most of the USI stuff is updated to 1.6.x and I haven't encountered any issues in 1.7. Here is a link to USI's github: https://umbraspaceindustries.github.io/UmbraSpaceIndustries/ I suspect several of the others were just waiting for the DLC to come out - it was announced fairly soon after 1.7 was released. My guess would be a lot of mod authors decided to wait rather than push out an update just to have to redo everything a month later.

Haven't tried it after today's update/DLC but as of 1.7, SpaceY was still working good for me. Some of @NecroBones's fuel tanks had issues in some of his other mods - specifically the radial tanks that were color coded to match the contents, but most everything else seems to work.

Personally, I thought 1.4 was the worst, and they've gotten marginally better since - mostly from adding the ability to adjust spring/damper values in the field. Dropping spring value & upping the damper does make a world of difference. Usually.

This must be mining base day @Brikoleur I got my large Minmus mining base landed & into production. By pure chance (as scanners were unlocked later on), my original small Minmus base was landed on a nice ore deposit (13.3% or so) - so I saw no reason to send my mining base somewhere else - especially since I already have a rover & a resupply drone with a few months of supplies for a 3-kerbal crew at the existing site. The base was landed remotely, with a crew of 3 following about 2 days behind. The base landed within 300-400m of the old one, and the crew set down within walking distance to the new base. After getting things running at the new base, Kelrik took the trip over to strip off some useful stuff from the old base before planting demo charges to get rid of it. Since the Universal Storage cores require node attachment, some inventive engineer was required. Specifically, surface attaching a fuel tank to the rover's roof rack, then node-attaching the US2 core to the fuel tank. First attempt was a little out of balance on the rover. Moved the fuel tank & US2 core forward a little & it worked somewhat better. I also hopped the supply drone over within reach of the new base. Combined with recyclers & the supplies in the new base, the 3-kerbal crew could stay here well over a year if need be, although they will be coming home much sooner to prep for my career first manned Duna mission. Finally, a few days later I landed a fuel tanker rover at the base as well:

I got my career first Eve landers in place today. I also landed a small remote rover, but when I staged off the parachute tower, all 4 wheels exploded so it's not a rover any more. Eve can lander: And the Formalhauf lander: I also launched a new mining facility to Minmus. Community Tech Tree really messed up my plans - my normal mid-tech mining base has numerous parts not available now, so I had to build something new

Haven't had much KSP time this week, but I did manage to complete a contract to send an uncrewed lander to Mun & return (NOT transmit) science to Kerbin. I've been playing long enough that most of my designs have become fairly standardized, but I don't have a standard uncrewed lander capable of returning home, so I got to be creative. And since I wasn't using a standard craft, I even built a new Soviet-style launcher for it - although I accidentally deleted the Korolev Cross screenshot. Lander with Mun transfer stage: Jettisoning transfer stage after deorbit burn. I was also playing with an online photo editor which is why Mun looks so shiny: Landing: Return to Mun orbit. I used the remaining fuel in the lander stage to take off before staging away the return capsule with it's single Ant: Kerbin return maneuver. I hardly every use the Ant engine - not that I dislike them, just that I usually use Spiders instead for something small like this that isn't intended to stay in orbit for years.

My craziest mission is probably a Minmus rescue for a load of tourists after the pilot of their tourist ship was asleep at the controls & smashed the engine due to a hard landing. I was using life support at the time, so time was an issue. Minmus crash landing, after losing the engine & half the landing gear. Happily the solar panels survived. Of course, there are no docking ports and the lander was full. I had no existing ground rescue craft for situations like this. I also have been imposing launch time restrictions on my career games, based on ship mass (1 day between launches for <18t craft, 10 days for 18 - 140t, 20 days for >140t), so launching multiple craft wasn't a good option - I guess I could have launched a rover with lots of snacks & waited for the next launch window, but where's the fun in that? So I made this ridiculous beast: Getting it to orbit was the EASY part. The top tank drains first & gets jettisoned - which then created a massive imbalance, requiring the Wolfhound to be throttled down to like 20% thrust. The two bottom tanks had rover wheels mounted in between them which my engineer had to rearrange to being mounted on the outboard for stability. Landing was actually much easier than the transfer to Minmus - killed most of my velocity with the Wolfhound, then switched to the Twitch engines for a VTOL landing. After a short drive, I was able to dock with the crippled lander with the claw. Once the tourists & pilot were transferred and the rescue craft's main fuel tank topped off, the stranded lander was released & destroyed with demolition charges Finally, the rescue craft departed for home, jettisoning the wheels & side tanks as it gained altitude:

Besides the previously mentioned VTOL testing, I made some pretty good progress in my career today. First, I sent a mining rig to Minmus for a contract. My existing base was happened to be at a nice concentration of ore, so I set down there for the mining: Another contract required putting a lander on the Mun and since I'd unlocked a few new science instruments since my last trip, I thought I'd send them on the lander: I also took the time to abuse sounding rockets by sticking a full-size SRB underneath for fun and profit (another contract, to send an impactor to Minmus) Finally, I sent Jeb & Kelrik on a test flight of a modified Falcon spaceplane. I think I may have fixed the reentry stability problem - mostly. I only lost control while attempting a split-S to return to KSC after overshooting it and I was able to recovery quickly without overstressing anything. I didn't even need to use the hastily added crew cabin escape system. Reentry: And approach to KSC:

During VTOL testing, Jeb once again proved the old adage that any landing you walk away from is a good one:

Remember the old saying: Happy wife, happy life. And from my personal experience: unhappy wife, no KSP time

Sounds like my first few (dozen) attempts to land a VTOL on the VAB helipad.

I had a wide range of activities in my career today, starting off with Jeb showing off during an eclipse by taking a jet up to 35km Then I landed a small remote rover on Minmus. Looking forward to the day I can do something with this rock..... Finally, had a rescue come down at sunset over the ocean, providing a nice view:

It's not the number of offers - I know about adjusting those already, I have mine at 20 I think - its the number of contracts I'm allowed to take that are ridiculously low in 1.7 vs previous versions. I might have found my issue though: In my 1.7 career, I accidentally smashed two loads of tourists into large objects (one into Kerbin due to a parachute staging error & the other into Mun due to not paying attention) which killed my total reputation. I just got back into positive reputation this morning, and I'm showing I'm allowed to take like 9 one-star, 7 two-star & 5 three-star contracts compared to 8, 6 & 4 yesterday. If the numbers continue going up, I'm going to guess that was the issue. I'm usually pretty good at not executing tourists, so my rep usually never goes negative like that. When I have a chance later on, I'm going to load the cheaty second career I was using to troubleshoot, add a bunch of rep & see what happens. Edit: Confirmed, my issue was due to low reputation not anything wrong with Contract Configurator or any of the contract packs.

I cobbled together a small lander & sent Jeb to the Mun to finish the last two anomaly contracts: One down: The second was examined after a quick sub-orbital hop, then it was time to head home. To maximize dV, the landing gear & 4 radial tanks can be jettisoned when empty. Even then, if I hadn't over-engineered my launcher & transfer stage, I wouldn't have been able to get the 2nd contract done - most of the landing dV was provided by the transfer stage rather than the lander and I made it back to Kerbin with <100 m/s dV remaining. Kerbin reentry - despite being pretty hot, I expended the last of my fuel & kept all the parts intact:

I've run into a strange problem and I'm wondering if anyone has encountered it before: In my 1.7 career, I am running into limits on the number of contract despite having a fully upgraded mission control. The limits are based on the significance of the contract & have varied over time. The last time I looked, 1-star contracts are only allowed 5 active, 2-star allowed 3 active & 3-star allowed only 2. I do have the newest version of Contract Configurator installed along with the following contract packs: GAP Anomaly Surveyor Additional Progression Contracts Sounding Rockets Field Research (newly added for 1.7, but no change when I deleted it) Tourism Plus (newly added for 1.7, but no change when deleted) Career Evolution Contract (newly added for 1.7, no change when deleted) When I deleted the 3 new contract packs, I also deleted & reinstalled Contract Configurator & deleted the MMConfigCache. There is a slider in Contract Configurator settings for "Active Contract Multiplier" that I set all the way up in both 1.7 & previous versions. I've even set up a new career, adding funds through the cheat menu to fully upgrade mission control & it is showing limits of 8, 6 & 4 for 1, 2 & 3-star contract. I also went back and used the "regenerate current contracts" tool from the cheat menu in my main career & got the limits back to 8, 6 & 4. I didn't remember ever running into this issue in previous versions, so I fired up my 1.6.1 copy of KSP & it does have limits also, but they are like ~50 1-star, ~40 2-star & ~30 3-star contracts allowed, which are well beyond what I would need at any time. It almost appears that the Active Contract Multiplier isn't having any effect on 1.7

Last night I got my first Duna landers on the ground in this career. I didn't set up the deorbit burns very well - they landed ~32 km apart purely by chance, in the same biome of course. I've had craft come down further apart than that when I was TRYING to land close together a few times. First down was a Formalhauf lander: Followed two weeks later by a cobbled together lander I originally built for other purposes. It only has about half the instruments it was intended to have due to most of them not being unlocked when it was time to launch for Duna: And last, I unlocked the last of the tech needed to rebuild my orbital recovery claw probe:

I managed to finish my retrograde rescue. By some miracle (and burning the last 300 m/s worth of fuel in the upper atmosphere) both the rescue pod and the debris bolted to the nose survived reentry & made a safe landing: I also got my career-first Duna probe into a polar orbit. Two more a close behind it (one for Ike with a relay & lander, the other for Duna also with a relay & lander), followed by a fourth about two weeks out from Duna's SoI with another lander

I've had a few ups & downs in my career the last few days. There was an unfortunate incident with tourists & a pilot on the Mun. The worst part of that is pilots seem to be in short supply this career - tourists don't seem deterred by the loss. I also got to perform my first repair in orbit of this career due to a separatron blowing up the engine of a survey satellite in polar orbit during staging. That is also the first time I've ever tried to repair a satellite in orbit, and repair anything in polar orbit. Kelrik the engineer on EVA to the crippled satellite Repair complete - I didn't quite stick the new engine perfectly centered, but it was close enough to send the satellite into it's intended orbit without problems. Afterwards, Jeb got to test out a new jet. My old "CF-02 Viper" design wasn't usable in this career due to a mod change, so it was rebuilt from scratch. The procedural wings look nicer anyway. Jeb pushed it up to 20km to satisfy a contract, then returned to a smooth landing at KSC. It still needs a few tweaks, but overall it was a nice flying plane. Finally, Jeb & Kelrik embarked on my furthest rescue in this career so far, in a ~17900km 156* inclined orbit. Unfortunately, I forgot it was a rescue Pallorf & her pod, not just a rescue. So Kelrik broke out the screwdriver & attached her pod to the nose of the rescue vehicle. Now I just have to wait 2 days to see how this thing handles reentry.

In addition to separate installs for different mod setups, the mod Janitor's Closet can be used to prune unwanted parts out of other mods so they don't load at all.

Why is it that every time I get to a point with KSP that I think "Ok, this version isn't too buggy, mods are working and everything is running smooth so I'm just not going to update any more" then within days Squad will go and announce something to force me to change my mind? Because I definitely don't want to pass up this new DLC. I'm sure it will have plenty of bugs on release - they are adding multiple new functions to the game after all - but it looks like it will be great.

I spent some time today getting my early career Mun base set up. I had landed the base last week some time, but hadn't gotten around to staffing it due to other launches taking priority. First, I sent a Packrat rover to provide some mobility around the base, then a crew of 3 was sent to check things out. One thing I hadn't planned for with this base was supplies - it only has 6 days of supplies for a crew of 3, so my first trial is a short one. The base was landed in the East Farside Crater, within a few hundred meters of my first landing sight. The crew took the time to clean up some debris from that first landing. Mounting the first jettisoned fuel tank to the Packrat Found the second tank. This would've been easier if I'd packed more than one explosive charge. I had to attached them together to blow And Kabooom!!! Getting ready to leave Farside Base after the five day mission:

Today I got several probes headed out for Duna in my new 1.7 career. Then I finally decided to address a pair of rescue missions I've been ignoring for a while in order to get all the Duna probes launched for the first transfer window. One contract was for a Mun rescue, the second for LKO. For something different, I decided to take care of both in a single launch & use KAS parts to clean up the debris instead of the (somewhat cheaty) self-destruct charges I usually use before the claw is unlocked. I loaded my Kelrik, my senior engineer at KSC, along with his trusty wrench and some KAS parts into a Girroc 2 MPV-1-ER (Multi-Purpose Vehicle Mk 1, Extended Range) and launched him to Mun orbit. On the way, he attached a cable winch near the bottom of the MPV and grabbed the two cable hooks out of the storage pod Kelrik on EVA after attaching the cable winch: First rescue complete, preparing for a small burn to put the debris on a suborbital trajectory: After that, the debris was unhooked & another burn completed to raise the Pe back above the Mun surface. After returning to Kerbin, they set up another intercept for the second rescue. This ended up a little more difficult as the debris piece was a full Mk 1-3 pod, so when I performed the deorbit burn, it was pulling the MPV all over the place. At least afterwards, I could just stage the entire contraption rather than needing Kelrik to unhook the cable On a side note, this was my first experiment with using the Universal Storage II fuel cells in place of solar panels and it did a fine job keeping the pod & life support running. Still had mostly full hydrogen & oxygen tanks at the end of the mission.

I tested out a new 6-seat LKO tourist craft. It worked perfectly, which is fortunate since I tested it with a full load of tourists & a pilot. Pictured here with the orbital stage drifting away after the deorbit burn:

After not accomplishing much the last few days, I sent Jeb & Kelrik on another highly classified mission to investigate an anomaly on Mun. They are bringing back some substantial science rewards, but to preserve the secrecy of the mission, they have not transmitted any information back to KSC.