Fraktal

Did a session today with a second display plugged in and Task Manager open on second display to monitor resource usage. Observations: While KSP is running, average system RAM usage is 94%, climbing no higher than 98%. Literally nothing other than KSP and Steam is running. So I'm definitely RAM-bottlenecked here and should really put in an order for that 8 GB RAM module I've been eyeing on Ebay for the past three days. KSP_x64.exe's peak RAM usage is just below 2.7 GB, seen in the VAB. Note that I've got 3.8 GB RAM in my laptop. Being in the VAB uses about 200 MB more RAM than being in flight. I'm guessing the garbage collector throws out the models and textures my current craft isn't using? Upon entering the main menu, KSP's HDD usage spikes massively. Understandable when starting the game, but it also happens when I'm quitting my current session and going back to the main menu, with over a minute of continuous double-digit MB/s usage, followed by a few more minutes of single-digit, before the menu finally becomes responsive. What's it loading from the disk that time? The main menu is also using as much RAM as being in the VAB. During loading screens, Task Manager commonly shows KSP as "Not responding". Every now and then, the game window and Windows taskbar begin rapidly flickering, with KSP's taskbar icon rapidly appearing, disappearing and showing twice, coupled with Task Manager momentarily reclassifying KSP from App to Background process. It stops when I click on KSP's taskbar button, which leaves the taskbar rendered in front of the game window and forces me to Alt-Enter twice to make it go away. However, the Alt-Enter doesn't make the taskbar go away when I'm in the main menu, only when I'm further in. At one point, pressing Space to start my first stage caused a "KSP_x64.exe is not responding" to pop up even as my rocket was very much rising behind said popup! And closing said popup left the Windows taskbar rendered in front of the game again. Upon confirming the exit dialogue, RAM usage stays at 2.6+ GB for several minutes, then drops to 500 MB, then climbs back up to nearly 1 GB while HDD usage once again goes into the double-digits before gradually dropping down to 300 GB. It hovers there for a short while, then drops to 0.1 MB and Windows declares it "Suspended" for about half a minute, then the game window finally disappears and the executable disappears from Task Manager, leaving me at 28% total system RAM usage. Why the sudden resource loading while the game is in the process of exiting?

Okay, this problem has gone on long enough for me to ask. For the past few weeks, I've been having serious problems with starting the game, starting a while after I got MH. More often than not, it either crashes to desktop from the main menu or just freezes my laptop so badly that I'm forced to hard reboot (via power button held down) due to being unable to reach Task Manager. I'm suspecting Windows 10 memory compression acting up, as whenever the game does crash to desktop, I can see it hogging the hard drive at 100% for several minutes afterwards. I disabled it for now and we arrive to our current situation. Last night went like this. After running a Steam cache verification which replaced 83 files (I had autoLOC strings in the VAB since installing MH), I first attempted to start the game slightly after 9 PM but the Windows taskbar refused to not render in front of the game window and my attempts at trying to make it go away somehow resulted in me starting a second instance of the game, which completely killed my system and forced me to power-cycle. Next attempt at 9:32 PM, loading screen appeared at 9:33, main menu appeared at 9:43 but remained unresponsive for about five more minutes. Then I loaded my save with took another several minutes (not just the loading screen but to even display the loading screen). Got into VAB, click Open, game hangs for 10 minutes. Pick a small (~17 parts) craft, Load, game hangs for 10 more minutes and the screen turns completely black with only the Windows cursor visible for most of that. Then everything works fine with completely normal loading times up until I tried shutting the game down. Keyword, tried. I quit the KSC at around 12:44 AM. The main menu showed up but never became responsive; instead, the screen turned completely black again and didn't come back up this time. I let it stew for a while, hoping it would come around but after half an hour, nothing happened. So I tried Alt-Tabbing out, no dice. Ctrl-Alt-Delete, no dice. Start button, Windows taskbar showed up but unresponsive and disappeared after a few minutes (Windows event log says dwm.exe crashed with a stack buffer overflow and pulled explorer.exe with it). I finally power-cycled the laptop off at 1:33 AM. What's causing this? It can't be the fact that I installed MH, can it? No crash log was left behind. The end of output_log is as follows: System specs are a bit anemic, with a quad-core 1.1 GHz CPU and 4 GB RAM (which I'm thinking of expanding with another 8 GB), but it hasn't been a problem so far. Installed mod list: [x] Science! 000_ClickThroughBlocker 000_Toolbar 001_ToolbarControl AntennaHelper AutoAction BetterCrewAssignment ClickThroughBlocker CommunityResourcePack CommunityTraitIcons ControlSurfaceToggle CorrectCOL CraftManager CrewLight DistantObject DockRotate EditorExtensionsRedux EditorTime EngineLight ExtensiveEngineerReport KEI KerbalEngineer KerbalImprovedSaveSystem KermangeddonIndustries (Inline Ballutes) KSP-AVC KXAPI ManeuverNodeEvolved MK1CabinHatch NavyFish (Docking Part Alignment Indicator) OLDD (science part extended information in the VAB) PartAngleDisplay PatchManager PlanetShine QuickMods (Quick Revert) RCSBuildAid ReCoupler ReentryParticleEffect ScienceRelay ShipManifest TriggerTech (KAC and Alternate Resource Panel) VABReorienter XyphosAerospace (Deflatable Heat Shield) unBlur

Mine only exceeds 1 minute at about 50 km altitude. I go with 1.7 myself and dial the engines down in the VAB to be no more than that at 100% throttle. Sometimes it's less, when I'm launching a heavier payload that doesn't merit using a bigger launcher. I start gravity turning at 100 m/s vertical speed and target a parking orbit just above 120 km (for time warp convenience). I'm completely incapable of launching on the same trajectory twice but I usually hit the target apoapse altitude while prograde is between 10-20 degrees above the horizon and either cut the engines then circularize at apoapse, or I pitch down and start burning somewhere halfway between prograde and radial-in to try and maintain apoapse while circularizing if I'm still far away.

That sounds familiar. Is the issue you're talking about occurring during reentry and has the shuttle start rhythmically pitching-yawing an 8-figure with its nose if not going in full-prograde before finally going into a full flatspin? Because that happens to all of my SSTO designs and if you find the solution, please let me know.

Give Bob an OKTO core as absolute minimum. As the others said, SAS will work and you can set maneuver nodes while in contact with the KSC. If you go out of contact, SAS will still work, you just can't set maneuver nodes. Also, don't forget to pack an extra battery or two (or bring a solar panel, if you have one unlocked) and set the OKTO to auto-hibernate during warp (it doesn't by default).

Um... all of my designs do 800-900 m/s circularization burns. If I don't, I spend too much fuel while in the atmosphere.

Actually, that's not quite true. Capsule reentries with a Mk1 Service Bay have been a major pain since about 1.5 if you don't have a heat shield. Not because of the heat, which the bay is more than capable of handling, but because of something causing the bay to have astronomically high drag during reentry. Of course, he stated that he's using an SSTO, not a capsule, but I still think it's worth pointing out.

Games tend to start dying when a sequel is announced due to marketing's obsession with appeal to novelty. Hence why I'm in a low-key state of dread about KSP 2's announcement. And that's not sarcasm.

KSP is known to have a memory leak due to the way Unity handles RAM (the engine never releases any of it back to Windows due to the alleged performance overhead of re-allocating it again and again as demand changes). It always lagged out and crashed for me ever since I had it, but it was playable for hours on end for as long as I didn't revert to VAB too many times; since the 1.8 update, however, I have problems even starting the game to begin with because the minute it starts loading, Windows 10 memory compression kicks in and hogs the hard drive at 100% usage for 10+ minutes (which is ironic, considering that Microsoft claims the whole point of it is to not have to access the page file as often!), which causes KSP to lock up and refuse to let go of my screen, which causes me to be unable to bring up Task Manager for killing KSP, forcing me to hard reset my computer. Granted, I'm running KSP with only 4 GB RAM.

RCS Build Aid: absolute must. Not just for RCS, but also to tell you how many parachutes you need for a safe descent speed on non-Kerbin bodies. Antenna Helper: handy if you're planning on going interplanetary with CommNet. Craft Manager: really good if you have lots of craft designs you need organized. Dock Rotate & Docking Port Alignment Indicator: since you said you'd like to build stations, these will work out nice for you. CorrectCOL: a must if you want to build planes/SSTOs. Other convenience mods: VABReorienter: so that you don't have to rotate 90° every time you launch a rocket. QuickRevert: lets you revert to VAB even after loading an autosave if you find your current design is fundamentally flawed. Editor Extensions Redux: a collection of small trinkets in the VAB Auto Actions: conveniently sets throttle and auto-activates SAS before launch; in fact, you can set global defaults here to apply to all of your rockets

It doesn't usually crash in the middle of a VAB session. Usually, it's either while going from VAB to launch or reverting back to VAB after a flight. Similarly, most crashes at the KSC are when you select a building or go back out. Switching screens seems to have a cumulative effect: the more you do it, the slower and jerkier the game becomes until it finally crashes with an access violation.

The game really likes to crash when you're going from one screen to another at the KSC. You're not the only one with this problem. Hell, my VAB locked up my entire computer yesterday from me plugging in a spare mouse.

...ok, how the hell is anyone getting longer loading times with mods than me without mods?! Is it the RAM or the CPU?

About 30 minutes from desktop to KSC, of which 10 is on the loading screen, 5 is of the blackness afterwards, 10 is on the main menu.

If I recall correctly, going inwards in the system is most efficient if you: Drop out of your current SOI at the trailing end (ie. the part opposite of the direction the body is moving in). Start your burn about 90° away from your orbital position being directly between the target and the body you're currently orbiting. I think it's best to wait until Laythe is eclipsing Jool and then start your burn when your orbital position around Laythe is about 90° away from being directly between Laythe and Jool so that you only need to burn once, but I don't know if it's most efficient like that (basically, nudge your maneuver node back and forth until you get the lowest periapse around the sun with the dV you're burning). All I know is that once you're out of Jool's SOI, you are now orbiting the sun in a prograde direction and slowly falling inwards, so you only need to burn retrograde to drop down to Kerbin orbit. But as @VoidSquid says, the difference between hitting Kerbin's atmosphere prograde or retrograde is only a few tenths, if not hundredths, of a m/s at that point. If I'm wrong with any of this, everyone can feel free to correct me because I've never been to Jool myself and am extrapolating this from a Kerbin->Eve rendezvous.

First unmanned mission for Eve has left Kerbin orbit today. Payload consists of a relay satellite and a Gilly rover. Had some technical difficulties with the transfer burn because as it turns out, KSP crossfeeds the fairing's interstage nodes, resulting in the transfer stage engine having emptied the relay's and the rover's fuel tanks before its own. Nothing a quick manual transfer didn't correct, but still annoying. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull this mission off. According to maneuver node simulations, I need to shave off 1100 m/s to stay in Eve's SOI but I have nowhere near enough fuel for that, so aerobraking is my only option, which I've never done before. On the other hand, I'm still within Kerbin's SOI so I'm able to fine-adjust the Eve periapse with minimal dV expenditure. What do you guys say, how low should I go? I'm currently on trajectory for an 83 km Eve periapse and have 213 m/s left in the transfer stage, plus a couple hundred more in the relay and about 1k in the rover's internal and drop tanks.

I hope they continue the old part remodeling. Been thinking yesterday that the Swivel, Reliant and Thumper are in need of a Terrier-style facelift.

What did I do in KSP today? Nothing, actually. Some more experimentation was on the table but in the end, the game refused to work at all. First start, took nearly 45 minutes to reach the menu, after which it promptly exited to desktop without any errors. None on-screen, none in the logs, not even an application error in the Windows event log, it's just poof, exited. Second start, took about 30 minutes to reach the menu, then hourglassed for another 20 minutes, then hanged so badly that I had to physically restart the laptop because I couldn't even get to Task Manager. This behavior started since I installed Making History. Before that, the game loaded in about 20 minutes and had a few more minutes of idling at the menu before becoming responsive but since I got MH, it fails to launch at least as often as it does. I'm not even maxing out RAM, but Windows memory compression is spinning the hard drive so badly that it completely locks KSP out.

I for one didn't even know autostruts were stock until I saw them in the VAB despite explicitly remembering not having installed it as a mod. From the way everyone was always gushing over it, I always assumed it was just a popular mod like KER or FAR.

What I hate the most? When I'm trying to get a plane's trim (that is, rotating pitch control surfaces enough degrees to make the plane fly level with minimum SAS assistance) just right and the game crashes with an access violation after about 20 reverts. Or, more recently since I got MH, when the game suddenly decides to completely stop for several minutes to the point where every single click pops up a Windows notification that KSP is not responding and asking if I want to kill the process. At one point, I clicked no and Windows killed it anyway.

800 meters on Kerbin equals 4000 meters on Earth, which is within human tolerance without an oxygen mask.

Quick calculation says Laythe's sea-level atmospheric pressure is equivalent of being 800 meters high on Kerbin.

I've been considering snatching up the DLCs for a while now, was just waiting for a sale. Maybe I'll do it this time.

The Mun is close enough to rendezvous without maneuver nodes. From a prograde equatorial orbit, burn just as the Mun starts peeking out from behind Kerbin; it's not 100% efficient dV wise, but it works. It's apparently possible to rendezvous with Minmus in a similar fashion as well, but it's much more precise. With 10% science, I found that the tech progression is surprisingly well-balanced. You get just enough points from Kerbin and munar orbit to develop the Terrier, the materials bay and 1-2 other tech 4 nodes to reach the Mun with. Similarly, cleaning out the Mun and Minmus gets you enough points to develop all tech 5 and around 2-3 tech 6 nodes to get you interplanetary. Send a temperature/pressure rover to Ike and that's another tech 6 node for you. And that's if you don't minmax and conserve your points towards specific goals but unlock every node at the current level before proceeding to the next, nor does it account for science boosts from strategies and the MPL.

Haven't played career yet, but I'm planning on 10% science, no extra ground stations, no interplanetary flight until after Kerbin's SOI has been exhausted of all science, no Moho or Dres until after Eve orbit, Gilly and Duna/Ike are similarly done, no Jool or Eeloo until after Dres. I'd also prefer to limit my facility levels to: VAB/Launch Pad: no level 2 before lunar landing, no level 3 before Jool R&D: no level 2 before lunar landing and until all science within Kerbin's SOI that doesn't require offworld EVA has been exhausted Tracking Station: level 1 while within Kerbin's SOI, level 2 until Jool The only problem here is that without a level 2 TS, I can't use maneuver nodes, which makes it extremely hard to reach Minmus and the Mun's non-equatorial biomes, since I basically have to eyeball the maneuvers.