jclovis3

I went back in to KSP recently waiting for KSP2 and decided to try playing on one of the harder difficulties. I still allow reverting flights however. Currently, I am working on my second land and return ship. The first was a single seater that I messed up and forgot to add a way to move science back up to the departing ship, so I have to go back for that Volcanic Rock. I found this discussion because of your statement about the contract system being flawed. It does not pay well enough for any of the contracts requiring you to land and escape into orbit. As for how to do it, and this is purely vanilla with the DLCs but no mods, the concept is that you use the cheat menu for testing steps only while you design, but then use your design for the actual mission. First build a ship that takes off rather quickly and can escape the sun purely on launch from Kerbin and test that. You will want stages and expect to have barely any parts left by the time you set your orbit. My ships all have a docking port on the base of the command module so I can release that last tank and then dock with the "taxi" shuttle. This taxi shuttle has the larger liquid fuel engines and refinery for visiting Minmus and Gilly on the way there and back. In my second build, I am using the Mk1-3 command module as it seats 3 and I am preparing for tourism and training for my own Kerbals. I have completed all my testing on descent and landing to take off and orbit already so its good to go. Once you have a tested ship for takeoff, you have to add on everything you need for landing and anything you might want to do on the ground. Stuff has to be ready to be released either before or as you launch from the surface, and expect to release everything you don't need to ascend (including parachutes). I advise having a girder structure to build a cage for having 10m inflatable heat domes at both ends of the ship. The end you want to enter into the atmosphere first should be concealed behind just one of these, centered. You can use smaller heat shields around it as necessary for your cage as I did to protect the vertical frame and parachutes. The tip of your ship, if you are entering retrograde should have 3 or 4 of these and opened up like an umbrella to slow you down. The frame of your cage will have any parachutes you need and landing gear. If you plan to refuel from the surface (Eve has rich ore), your cage will have to support that too, but then plan to descend with empty tanks to make up for the weight of the converter and drills. In my latest rig, I have just an X200-16 fuel tank and RE-J10 "Wolfhound" engine to push me gently into the atmosphere from under 110 km Pe/Ap. You want to skim for good aerobraking rather than trying to dart straight down so expect to set a maneuver node and quick save so if you miss your target landing area, you can reload from that to adjust the location of your maneuver. More direct descents can be done if you have fuel and engines to burn on your way in, but this will require rethinking your heat shield situation. My newest ship has 16 S3 KS-25 "Vector" engines around the first detachable parts and a RE-M3 "Mainsail" down the center. The four detachable side stacks are installed in pairs so I don't have to carry all of them for a long ride up. Staging a pair off at a time keeps you balanced and you can have six or eight outer columns depending on what size tanks you're using. I started with Mk2 tanks at the top and used the adaptors to work my way down to a X200-32 fuel tank on the bottom of each of those four outer columns. Then the TVR-400L Stack Quad adaptor supports four Vector engines. The side columns on mine remain in a single unit with only the vectors at the bottom but some ship designs used several stages to drop lower tanks and use engines higher up the stack. I did that only for the center column. I wanted more time with good control surfaces to stabilize my heading in case of a sloped landing (high chance of that on Eve). In my testes, the speed actually gets up so high so quickly, that if I don't turn down the thrust, I'll run out of fuel in the last side pair before getting high enough to remain stable after release, which means the center column flips back. I also realized that once reaching over 750 m/s with this design, I can cut the thrust back as I'll be reaching a high Ap already and use some of that to help with setting my orbit, but ultimately, the "Wolfhound" engine will be my last stage to push me into orbit because of the high ISP (70 ASL - 380 Vac). It has only 375 kN of thrust in the vacuum, but that is sufficient to push a single X200-32 fuel thank and the attached command module and probe core out into orbit. The "Taxi" is just a separate ship which uses a bunch of Nerv Engines and has a refinery for refueling. It is one of my reusable ships so the expense of all those Nerv engines is made up for in the long run. It uses the largest docking port on the top to join my command module after getting back into orbit and the full ship with cage will have a large docking port at the bottom for the taxi to connect with for traveling in route. The taxi does not launch with the Eve lander as it may already be in orbit of Kerbin or Minmus waiting to tag up with it. I have another reusable booster ship that pushes the Eve lander into orbit of Kerbin and then drops back down for collection by the KSC. Having such a reusable liquid fuel ship for this purpose saves a lot of money as well. This kind of ship uses plenty of parachutes and some braking heat shields on the sides to return safely and land or splashdown without losing a single part. What I find messed up about these contracts though is that even without counting any reusable taxi ship or launcher, just the Eve lander itself will cost way more than the contracts will pay. Mine is at about 442k funds with full tanks. Oh, that's another point. To aid the taxi in getting my ship there, I drained the Oxidizer of all my tanks and set up a fuel piping system to push liquid fuel from all the tanks down to the taxi upon hookup. The taxi comes with some cargo boxes containing more struts and fuel lines that the engineer can attach after docking if need be. These fuel lines can be set to disconnect with an action group, and to ensure I don't accidentally do this early, I use one of the alternate set groups. I plan to run dry of oxidizer all the way to Gilly, then refuel there using the docked Taxi and release those extended fuel lines to ensure the ship for descending keeps all the needed fuel to take off. My first ship, the single seater, did not have this and I pushed full tanks all the way there. Uh that was tough. One more thing. If you do decide to stage both laterally and vertically while taking off, complete a full vertical stack first before moving on to the next as this will decrease your air resistance considerably. Using fuel lines rather than allowing cross-feed makes it easier to see when an engine runs dry and is ready to release, but you may want to allow the cross-feed in parts to keep those engines just a little bit longer, like half of the next tank or so, if needed for the control surfaces or extra boost. Just remember that the fuel lines are sensitive to the order you attach them, like struts. Struts should always be attached on the first part to leave and then connected to any other part so you lose them when the part leaves. I won't be video recording the whole process from KSC to Eve and back because I am running several other missions at the same time and want to close this posting out now. I hope I gave you enough to think about in your design. In my first single seater design, I had column stacks of the smaller tanks with "dart" engines along the way as they were the appropriate size for those tanks.

I'm not sure if this is still relevant given that now the contract seems to require atmospheric flight when he blacks out so have to do it all while under 70 km altitude. I found that using the solo capsule for the tourists and a small drone to pilot (I'm still early in a new career mode) can work. I put a hammer under the capsule with four flea's attached radially. Use any larger booster to get up into the upper atmosphere and release with enough room to turn away before firing the hammer and fleas together. The fleas help give you the pickup while the hammer still has a full load of fuel and you can dump the fleas as soon as they are empty. By then you should already be in the red on the G-force meter and the hammer will only help carry you while the tourist builds up in his personal blackout meter. All this was done above the point where the speed indicator switches from surface to orbital. I want to note that I tried a centrifugal device using rotors both top and bottom of the spinning part and attached the top and bottom frames with the launch brackets (structure that connects with the ground). With four pods equally balanced and filled with Kerbals (tourist and 3 pilots sans parachutes) I spun it up and noted no G-force activity. It seems centrifugal G-forces are not calculated, even on the individual pods. It was during this attempt that I realized the kerbals had to be in flight. Then a successful blackout in space failing to meet mission requirements confirmed they had to be in atmosphere. This test current as of the last patch before they shutdown for work on KSP2. There is still a bug with trying to attach pods radially (you can't man each of them) so you'll have to attach them one at a time.

So right now, we can run multiple missions and maxing out your mission load (which is not unlimited as it says in the game), you can have jobs between Eve, Kerbin and Duna that take a relatively small amount of time while still running longer jobs out to Jool and Eeloo, the longest being any mission to pass across multiple planet SOIs along the way to Eeloo. So while you're waiting on years to go by for those distant missions, you're still running some more local stuff and improving your infrastructure (more relays, gas stations, surface rovers and bases, etc.). In the end, I always seem to come down to tourism as my primary mechanism for game play. The question here though is about the interstellar travel and the time it would take to get to another system. It can take IRL a lot of play time for one of my Jool or Eeloo missions to play out while still handling local stuff. Wirth KSP2, we're going to have colonies that probably require a lot of management over time as well. How long do you think it will take us in real play time before we even get to explore any of these other systems, let alone colonize them and create new space construction in them? On a side note, it has occured to me that our communication system might need an upgrade as well if we are to send data back in between systems, or control a drone piloted ship along the way. I imagine that the interstellar ships might run on an engine that can only be fired up when far enough away from a star, and will travel so fast that there would be no orbital trajectory to intercept. This could speed up travel times in between systems, but to what end can we expect from this? The restriction on being far from the star might be necessary to prevent straight jumps between planets.

Did the size of Kerbin change over the years? As of this date, the Eq.Radius of Kerbin is 600 km, so apply the formula 2*Pi*600 and the circumference is 3,770 (rounded up). You said it was 4,214 and if you halved this to get the distance on the opposite end from the KSC, it would be 2107, which is where you get zero funds back. So your circumference math is off, and your method of calculating the farthest point around the surface is off too (assuming the size was 4212 back when you posted this). At the preset size, the point opposite the KSC would be 1,885 km around the surface with a factor of 10.33%. There is also the Strategy called Recovery Transponder Fitting which can change the maximum return by -6.04% to -10% to raise the minimum return by +5.1% to 15% respectively. This strategy is good if you think you will land far away most of the time. It is worth noting that this formula is on parts only. Fuel on board is refunded at full value, anywhere. I like to make ships that can parachute down and refuel from the surface near the KSC before turning them in (at least any ship with a lot of expensive nuk engines). To get them into orbit, I have a single stage booster pack that can parachute down to splash down so only the fuel is lost. With some modifications, I can give this a refuel option and engineer but it would need more fuel to finish the complete orbit first so I can control the landing to actually be on land.

For starters, take a look at air breaks and try this test. You will find that if you right click on them or any control surface, you can click a deploy button. With breaks, hitting the break key will deploy them. Air Brakes can also be used as control surfaces. Any control surface will apply control authority settings when used for control. Anything that deploys, such as breaks, will use the deploy setting. Note one other thing. If you mirror control surfaces, they will turn correctly for control, but will turn in opposite directions for deploy. This can be used to add mirrored rudders to your breaking action if you want them to invert opposite one another. You might want air brakes to use a smaller control authority if you're going to apply them as a control surface to pitch but the maximum deploy to be effective in breaking. It took me a while to figure this out so don't feel bad. The answer came through testing.

I was thinking something along the lines of adding to the robotic parts in KSP1 some sensors and gauges that output a trigger when certain conditions are met. Like the robotic controller, you would need a processing unit to respond to those triggers, setting parts to do things like automatically processing science experiments into a mobile processing lab for research, or transmitting data when the lab gets above a certain amount of data stored. These things should be performed even while not in control of the vessel, like how the surface deployed science stations just keep running and occasionally send data or how asteroid scanners are passively working in the background. I find many of the robotic parts to be missing some very important features. Sensors can help to determine how far to move a joint or extend a piston. They can be touch sensors that trigger when the tip is pushed in or released. There can be temperature sensors that trigger when set highs or lows are achieved. Even G-Force triggers that reduce thruster limits should you want to use them. Finally, in reply to the OP, logic gate components can tie the trigger signals from multiple sensors together before being fed into the processing unit, or other devices that can act upon trigger signals.

In response to schwank, I tried lowering conics all the way down to 2 and that didn't fix the problem either. I then removed the maneuvers all together while already executing one and focused view on Jool. As soon as my conic moved into an orange line within the Jool system, the crast to desktop still occurred. At this point, I'm going with the notion that this is not a fault on my own, and is just a bug with the game. The developers of KSP did not start right in the beginning anyway and it was never rebuilt from the ground up to help fix all the many bugs it has but I look forward to KSP2 which is developed from scratch by more experienced developers. As for the workaround to my problem right now, I'll just cut engines, use the cheat to set orbit around Pol, and discard any parts that should have been tossed during the transit. The Cheat menu can be access with Left Shift+Alt+F12. Because the Shift is used to increase your thruster, you may need to cut engines before use.

Previously, on “The 100”, you flew 100 colonists to Laythe to establish a bright and explorative future for all of Kerbal Kind. With the first outpost established, you will be able to explore the outer planets much easier, starting with Jools various moons. Buzz Kerbal, one of the colonists transported to the colony, had been given a special mission to build a small VAB facility on Laythe. He couldn’t build a very big one yet, but he has managed to gather enough resources to fabricate a few basic parts for you to use. Valentina and Bill are on site to aid Buzz in gathering materials for his work. Jebediah couldn’t make it because he, well, retired early. In this mission, Valentina will be your lead role. The 100 - episode 1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iwg7XpY638dL1C1b_Bi3blRu13yXSSsY The 100 - episode 2_ Buzz's Biz: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gI4tANbX5Utv-4_QFkK06C_jpuD_V8mJ No mods required, EVER... and only bug tested without them. To install as mission packs, place only the zip files in your Missions folder. Then Open the game and Play Missions. They will be imported and grouped as a mission pack under the same category heading.

I have a similar problem, but not as easy to explain. Please see my video. https://youtu.be/1dsFp2cTdZE I want the boarding ship objective nodes to be hidden until the flag is planted. Why is the Event node setting not doing this? Upon start up, both nodes can be seen under the lightning bold flash of planting the flag. I understand that this lightning bolt means it is an event node. When the flag is planted, the two boarding nodes gain a blue block next to them, which means they are now enabled. So why were they visible before they were enabled and before the flag was planted?

Yeah, just change that node to reference "any" vessel rather than the named UFO.

I discovered the MissionPacks.cfg file can be placed in each mission folder along with the persistent.mission file and it will still be read. This clears things up quite a bit. So if I want to distribute a series of missions under the same pack, I just need to be sure each one gets a copy of the MissionPacks.cfg with the same information in it in case they don't download all of the missions but only the ones they are interested in. The easiest way then to create the first mission for the pack is to create the mission pack first, and place it in the Mission directory. Once you've created the mission, you can move or copy it into the new folder and it will still be available in the list for new missions when you create them.

OK, but then to make a MissionPacks.cfg file for the community missions, it would have to go in the Kerbal Space Program\Missions folder where a person might have other missions already. How would you go about adding a mission pack without overwriting their existing MissionPacks.cfg file (if they had one)? There's gotta be a way to create some sort of stand-alone file or import document that adds your mission pack data to their MissionPacks.cfg file or creates a new one with your mission in it.

I don't see a link to your mission pack. I am curious how to set one up as there is no option in the editor to create mission packs.

Laythe has air and water. We believe it's about time it had life too. You've been tasked with the momentous mission to put 100 Kerbals on Laythe. "The 100", as we have so named them, will all be specially trained colonists. They are not to become a part of any ship crew and to ensure this, we have designated them all tourists. There is a colony structure already in place. Just dock with it and load them in. You'll have 8 years. This is the first episode in what will probably become several (not sure how many though). There is a main mission, and several side jobs that will be thrown at you for extra points, but not to interfere with the main mission. This mission features a few artistic structures, some of which you won’t see until their respective events are triggered. Due to a bug where by you cannot set icons in mission vessels to anything but Rockets and Aircraft, it is advised once you get started you rename the Colony structures and any other ground bases when they appear to change the icon only, not the name. This will make it easier to review only your own vessels. I’ve tried to work around all the known bugs with mission builder as best I can, but some required inserting little notes within the mission to remind you. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iwg7XpY638dL1C1b_Bi3blRu13yXSSsY This is also my first Mission Pack assembly so to install it as a mission pack, just drop the zip file in your Missions folder. Don't unzip it. KSP will do that for you when you load it up and view the available missions.

Abacus, and anyone else still playing the bugged versions: Chapter 2 fix: The mission doesn't always end. Taking a look at it in the editor, I noticed you have a condition that checks if the game time is less than 15 minutes. If that is false, the buck stops there. There is no path way to the Finish marker. If you add another connector from the last green Display Message node directly to the Finish location check, then the player can either get the quick time bonus, or finish when they land. Chapter 3 fix: The fix for the EVA node is to replace the reference to UFO with just plain ANY because by this point, if the specified Kerbal goes EVA, he will already be exiting the UFO craft. This node only triggers as you exit the craft, so if you jump out and use personal parachutes instead and let the craft crash, the game will never end.

The easiest fix for the timing is to create two paths after the last dialog. One that goes to the end node, and the other that goes to the timer. Since by this point you want to award if still less than 15 minutes, the award will go through and pass control on to the end node. If 15 minutes has already elapsed, then the other path straight to the end will be the one that is taken. The paths are both waiting for one of the nodes to be true, so you need two paths to make both enabled. As for the fuel dump, I find that removing 9,999,999 of the fuel type works (without comas). If you ever enter a large enough number that gets converted to scientific notation, then it won't work as expected. 1E+30 evaluates to only 1 unit of fuel until they fix that bug. Adding more fuel than a vessel can hold won't cause an overflow either. It will just be filled up. The fix for the EVA node is to replace the reference to UFO with just plain ANY because by this point, if the specified Kerbal goes EVA, he will already be exiting the UFO craft. This node only triggers as you exit the craft, so if you jump out and use personal parachutes instead and let the craft crash, the game will never end. You'll probably need to add a fail if the craft is destroyed (the controlling pod will determine that).

I just tested with two spots on the runway and found you also get 100% in both spots, but right in front of the SPH, you get less. Go figure.

Chapter 3 bugs: From the launch pad, you prevent all engines from operating while supposedly loading oxidizer. It would make more sense to first drain all the oxidizer, and then load it slowly over time. Before the 45 second message, I was already trying to launch because all my oxidizer was full. Also, the EVA node at the end did not trigger when I landed and went EVA. I've updated a reported bug on this submitted a couple months ago (https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/18027#change-97966) Give the video about ten minutes to finish loading.

Chapter 2 is bugged: The mission doesn't always end. Taking a look at it in the editor, I noticed you have a condition that checks if the game time is less than 15 minutes. If that is false, the buck stops there. There is no path way to the Finish marker. If you add another connector from the last green Display Message node directly to the Finish location check, then the player can either get the quick time bonus, or finish when they land. Also, I recommend moving the Finish circle to the right a little bit as it doesn't quite go up to the construction block (which seems to float in the air on a quick load). Something like -74.684, -0.050 looks good, same radius.

"Eve Shuttle Builder" : https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-p5Yx7w4AjyLCMhnH-swTL_qVbEOBLbV Provides you with step by step guidance and platforms for building up and testing ships for landing on Eve, taking samples, planting a flag, and getting back up again. Starts you with a launch pad on the surface to build for launch, then puts you on the ground to mine fuel in the second stage. Third setting puts you in orbit with added parts to descend safely and land. The final build will be to launch from the KSC and fly your ship to Eve. In the final mission, you will receive free full serve fuel refueling at Minmus and Gilly with a self serve station in a lower orbit of Eve for a final top off before you land. That way you control how much fuel you bring on board for this maneuver. You will have requirements to plant a flag, do science, and bring tourists along. I built this as a tool for trying out different ideas quickly and easily and am happy to share it.

Does anyone know if there are any special variables that can be accessed in a message or dialog text? For instance, suppose you want to display your score progress thus far. I would think something like "Your score is [%%Score]. Keep it up" might work, but it doesn't.

"/n" isn't correct. It's "\n". There is one bug that bugs me though. Typing this in the editor will make the characters "\n" disappear and be replaced with the new line, but editing text after that point (like back space or delete) causes things to happen in the wrong place and you end up inserting text wrong or deleting the wrong characters. You almost have to just do the whole thing in notepad where you can see the "\n" the whole time.

Thank you for posting the image for me, and now that I have that figured out, I went on to discover why this wasn't working. Nodes like checking fuel levels and orbit parameters are not good nodes to have as "Catch All" because they can fire repeatedly in rapid succession. After all, just because you are low on fuel doesn't mean you won't be low on fuel a few miliseconds from now, right? In this case, a Kerbal won't even have Liquid Fuel and will always be low. All of this was just a test trying to figure out how to create an automated refueling station when you enter orbit of Minmus or Gilly but it had to be repeatable so you can return for more in your mission. I started focusing on that rather than just detecting fuel levels, and fought with the always true orbit parameters constantly taking control. Then I discovered that Entering SOI is a one time event that doesn't repeat until you leave SOI and return again. That was my gateway into this algorithm. So the simplest loop without any messages would look like this: Right away you can see how logical this looks. There is no way to determine how much fuel a vessel can hold, so large numbers like this are just estimates. If your number is typed too large, then it will be converted to scientific notation like 1E+12 which will then be interpreted as simply 1 by the time this is processed, so make sure your number is small enough to not switch over to scientific notation. I actually found "9999999" (10M - 1) to be the highest you can go before it switches.

If a node that checks if you are low on fuel is a "Catch All" node that is also allowed to repeat, how does it progress to the next node when the condition that triggered it would continue to persist. For instance, say the next node is to tell you that you are low on fuel and then the 3rd to fill your tank with liquid fuel. As soon as control jumps to the message, you are still low on fuel and it should jump to the fuel check as a Catch All again. How does it ever move on? Is there any way we can suspend jumping to any catch all nodes until another specified node is reached? Can't they make a "continue" node to say prevent all "catch all" nodes from triggering until this "continue" node is reached so we can guarantee the execution of all the nodes after it?

The view can only be zoomed out to 20% so if the drawing board had only a finite amount of space, I'm sure they would have figured out a way to move nodes down to start another row. There is an infinite amount of space however so the linear arrangement is a sound one. Arrange nodes is not meant to fit them all in the screen. It makes them more aligned to a grid. The Fit in View option will attempt to zoom out as far as it can to fit most of it in the view, but it won't go past the 20% zoom level because they wanted the nodes to be individually distinguishable so you can select multiple nodes (holding shift) and move them around together. You can use the arrange nodes to line them up, then select a series of them and drag them down below the first row if you want but the moment you use the Arrange Nodes option you will lose that move. You can only expect the tool to do what it was designed to do, and it can't know how long or tall you want your structure to be. Suppose you had 1000 nodes. You couldn't even arrange them all to fit on the screen without overlapping them, so how can you expect the algorithm to know how you want to resolve that problem. The best thing to do is to understand what it can do, and use that. You can also submit a feature request to allow node shrinkage to something like a small colored dot so you can move them about as you want. I would also request a lasso selection option as well if they do this or you won't be able to grab a lot of nodes while being zoomed out.