Axelord FTW

Yeah but does it have a rover and a crane system that can unfold out from its side?

Built my AM harvester in Munar orbit. With all the scrap metal already on board, I only had to do a single delivery of rocket parts. It can hold over a million units of antimatter, though I don't think I'll fill it up completely before I head back to Kerbin. Lowered it to LKO and lifted up some crew to man it. Two pilots and two engineers, no scientists. I had to add some LH2/Ox tanks back afterward, as I always forget that for bipropellant RCS thrusters you need oxidizer! Everytime I make a nuke-powered ship I forget about and all the RCS thrusters are useless with only LH2. The crew transfer also included a small exospheric detector pack, just in case. Most of the bands I'm interested around Jools already have been discovered, but there was no harm including them for future prospects. I could have gone for another NSW driven craft but I decided to give Kerbal Atomics some love again, and I also used parts I normally don't touch (spaceplanes, ew!). The ship's direct dV is pretty puny in comparison and I can definitely strand myself if I screw up.

Though I don't think I'll be using AM engines all that much (if at all) in this career, I still feel like some facilities would be appropriate anyway. Antimatter storage is very power hungry, and since I'm trying to keep my Kerbals out of the field as much as possible at the moment, that means solar power was the answer. That said, the problem with solar energy is having pesky planets and moons get in the way of that sweet Sunny-D. Solution: Batteries. Lots and LOTS of energy storage was needed to live through Munar orbital nights and the occasional solar eclipses. Next step is either refine AM on or around the Mun (which is boring!) or have an AM collector ship being sent up to Jool for that sweet Spacedust. Heck, I could probably also send along a Jool diver with an atmo scoop. Haven't done that either yet. Anyway, here's the AM storage facility. A small AM tug will be sent up to it eventually, as directly docking with it with larger ships could be a problem. It has attitude control, but no ability to translate.

Did a sun-diver probe thingy, just for kicks. Got some near-the-sun science before it turned to dust. I was also working on sending an automated factory to follow after the first interstellar relay I sent a few years back. It's basically just an automated factory with some RP containers strapped on top of a NSW engine. The 'catch up' burn is still over 200,000ms, which is still happening in the background as I type. This factory doesn't have a stadium-sized dish on top of it, though, and will need to contend with being in range of the relay once it nears its destination. On these sort of scales, it's all too easy to miss the mark entirely or screw up my timing. If I screw up, this thing will just coast past the target system at roughly 200 kilometers per second. Since the relay is already about 15 times as far from Kerbol as Plock is, my options are either to cross my fingers and hope for the best, or burn for an encounter with the relay earlier and then match velocity again once it gets near so it stays in range. Still a long burn to complete. I started it while in low Munar orbit, and I'm only a quarter of the way through it even as I've long since left Kerbin's SOI altogether.

A few things happened. First, I repatriated the Moho surface-base crew. They used the NSW-ES left in Moho orbit to get back to Kerbin. With that, this particular engine stack has done three Moho roundtrips without getting refueled once. The first 'interstellar' shakedown voyage was completed, with the crew taking a shuttle back down to Kerbin while the ship itself boosted back up to the Mun where it got turned to scrap metal at the orbital station. I decided to do some more housekeeping on the station for a little while, though I had some issues getting everything squared up. I realized I was being stubborn and that I quite literally had the means of making a new station with the current one. Most importantly, this new station would all be a single craft; no modules, no docking ports part of the superstructure. With all that scrap metal from the previous ship at hand, I only had to do three rocket-part deliveries to feed the factory. I could have cannibalized from the station itself and only do two delivery trips instead but that would just lead to more of the same stuff that got me to this point in the first place. All in all, a bit over 20 days to complete... Meanwhile... I had also sent the new Interstellar ship on its own shakedown voyage, to Plock/Karen (OPM's analogue to Pluto/Charon). Once there, the onboard factory churned out a small ScanSat probe which handily did it's thing above both worlds before landing on Karen itself. With that done, a choice LZ was designated on Plock, where a crew of 4 soon landed. Although not as outrageous as the previous Lithium-powered lander, this one can do something like 90ms2 of acceleration, which is definitely asking for G-LOC if you're not careful. Since it was originally designed to land on Tylo, this bby had absolutely no issue landing on Plock. While the region I was landing it was pretty uneven, I chanced to land upon a very small, almost perfectly flat and level plateau! All I needed to do now was make another Fat Cricket rover-factory using the 6000RPs carried by the lander, and from there do the usual by upscaling into a full fledged ground factory (though, this one is 100% automated, no crew space). That done, the new factory will now be used to refuel the lander (though it could probably easily get back to the mothership with what it still got). That's currently ongoing, though I'm in no hurry. The Super Mun Station was eventually completed, the crew was transferred over, and then succinctly ate the old station for breakfast. One of the best things about this new station is the upscaled reaction-wheels core. It has excellent attitude control, and doesn't wobble one tiny bit either. Also, the SystemHeat side of things has been beautified too, now using heat exchangers (which I finally figured out recently). Well, there are only two active loops to take care of, but still. Haven't found a good name for it yet.

The radiators should also display legacy/stock values. Is that what you're seeing? In other news, I believe I have, for the very first time, actually made good use of the exchangers! I'd never gotten them to work (i.e. I r 2 dum) but for once I saved on parts count or mass and the loops are stable! I've made interstellar ships, for goodness sake, but couldn't figure out those swarthy little loopknobs. Two radiators, for four distinct loops! It's also quite poggers, as kids say. I shall strive to incorporate this new mastery into future designs! On a more serious note, I can't be the only one who has had troubles getting everything squared up. Radiators are pretty straightforward. Big numbers better, for the most part. Coolant tanks are so situational I can't think of a situation where they would be better to use than just using more radiators. Exchangers... Well, as you can see I only just managed to figure them out, even though I'm been playing with System Heat for a good while now.

Neat plane. As for me, I swapped out the Deut/LHe3 storage on the orbital station for scrap metal storage. Everything was done 'in house' and nothing was wasted. Started by building a simple tug, pulled out the Deut/LHe3 tanks off (bit of a sticky docking port problem but nothing an engineer couldn't fix by hand) and feeding it into the shredder. Then I built basically the same tug once more but with some scrap metal tanks. Same process was repe7ated, but in reverse. In total, this raised the SM storage capacity of the station from just over 6,500 to over 74,000. It should now be capable of eating up almost anything. Edit: Oh, and also!

heh

Did you try right clicking on the icons in the VAB/SPH?

Had a contract to get a craft to fly-by Moho and recover science from its surface. I simply loaded up a surface sample into a quickly put-together return pod and sent it home. Simple stuff. Started thinking about interplanetary stuff, and decided to start with a totally-not-a-radiotelescope-dish relay that I would send in the general direction of whatever solar system I decide to go and see first. Can't launch from Kerbin, and even launching that from the surface of the Mun might just spell trouble, so it has now become a job for the Munar orbital facility. It doesn't have the required storage for the deuterium and Helium-3 needed to power the relay's fusion engine, so one of the first thing that had to be done was to add some tanks. While the station is capable of completely automated assembly, I decided to finally send some crew up. One pilot, one scientist and two engineers. The pilot would be lowered to the surface facility to work as a trucker for the Helium-3, while the scientist and engineers stayed in orbit to man the station proper. The shuttle was then fed into the grinder. That done, the new storage tanks were made and installed, after which the RCS gantry was also fed back into the station's grinding maw. Then I started lifting some rocket parts from the surface to feed the station, The Relay would require just short of fifty-thousand units, which the station can actually hold all at once. Another trip would be necessary to top the RP stores, but I'll wait and see if anything else can be recycled first. A day later, I got an alarm telling me my mission to Neidon was about to enter its SOI. At a respectable clip of 14,000m/s relative to the ice giant, the deceleration burn would take a little twenty minutes, which is still happening, right now, as I type this. EDIT: Well, there it goes! EDIT2: Even though the Interstellar crew is still doing a 'shakedown' voyage to the outer planets, I churned out another, better version of the ship with a better lander (which is mostly the Tylo lander with some tweaks, instead of the monstrous lithium powered lander). The current vessel will probably get recycled (I'll also need to vastly expand the scrap-metal capacity of the facility in Munar orbit. It can eat through most tankers and other miscellaneous stuff with room to spare, but just. If I don't get more storage space, most of it will just get sent to the shadow realm or something. Not that it's really a pressing matter, as the recycling will not happen yet for at least two years. In any case, one of the things I changed for this version was tone down the amount of lithium on board (it was totally overkill) and put on some liquid hydrogen and liquid methane (plus needed oxidizer). No real uses but it gives me more options for the creation of small probes.

Thanks! Just the fact that they are colored will help greatly when managing complex production outposts.

@Krazy1 Ooh, I'm liking those resource icons. Is it a standalone mod?

Well, it didn't blow up, which is nice, but it bounced pretty hard. No wheels were broken either, but I'm thinking launching anything heavier than this would be pulling the devil's tail.

With 500,000ms of dV at my disposal, hohmann transfers are merely a suggestion. I could have gone for 20,000ms burn instead but I decided to wait until Kerbin was traveling in the right direction. NSW-ES+ is just shorthand for Nuclear-Salt-Water Engine Stack (plus hab modules). It's not a real thing or whatever. Anyway, the Tylo mission had some issues the very moment it touched down. Namely... ladder, or lack thereof. Had to send the scientist on the crew down with the stake and stay down there, all alone, while the Fattest Cricket was being built. That done, everyone took the plunge off the lander and succinctly faceplanted, before getting into the rover-factory. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the science data with me, which meant I had to somehow get back up there. Built a small crane and lifted a kerbal back to the top, where he collected everything that could still be of use before jumping back down. Sure, it would have been simpler to churn out a few ladder bits and weld them unto the lander but @Ben J. Kerman up there inspired me. Next I built a rover to get some science from nearby biomes, place down some surface stuff, and scan surface features (most of which was also something that needed to be done for contracts). That done, I launched a very light relay satellite so I could call home and send data. I also built a lab-on-sticks to get everyone leveled up to 4. Next would be to upscale the operation on Tylo. Still got plenty of time before the next alarm for another ongoing mission arrives. At this point, the factory greatly outpaces its ability to create rocket parts, which makes producing small stuff like a rover can take up to ten days. I'm thinking of maybe making the next big step in rover-factory technology by upscaling the idea once more. I haven't done a launchpad-on-wheels yet. EDIT: Well, that's done!

Bit of a refueling mission to top off the liquid methane and oxidizer on the Tylo lander (ended up being short by around a hundred units but it'll do). Then I sent the whole thing off with a transfer burn of 5,000m/s. Hot damn, that was painful to look at. Yeah I scrapped careers for less. EDIT: Well, a few more things happened. I ran the Sarnus gauntlet with the Verne-powered ship, visiting all of its moons (though no landing). Got some pretty good pictures, and then burned for home. I also had a landing happening on Gilly around the same time. EZPZ stuff for ground science. That done, I had a pretty good gap before the next mission needed attention, I decided to expand the Mun orbital station into a full-fledged recycling and production facility. It already had storage for LH2, LF, Ox, lithium, Mono, RP, scrap metal and metal, but no recycler, no furnace, no printer, and no storage for liquid methane, nuclear salt water, fission fragments, and fission pellets. The recycler part is kinda important considering the amount of junk and spent stages I purposefully crash into the Mun. It came into use immediately after being attached, eating its own spent stages, the stages for the next modules, and the monoprop-pod that were used to put smaller stuff into place.

Quite a few things today. First, I completed, launched and docked the crew+lab+storage (mono, lithium, rocket parts, misc)+a small onboard factory section to the NSW-ES in low Munar orbit. Second, I sent up a tanker-probe to top-off the lithium stores. I kinda forgot about how tight the tolerances were for the octo-docking ports and I had to 'shed' some solar panels in the process by crumpling them against the side of the NSW-ES+ craft. Unfortunately, I kinda bumped them a bit hard and managed to break a few things at the same time. Namely, some large radiator panels and both reflectors. Third, I sent up a small repair craft up. I forgot that you needed your engineer to be at least level 1 to repairs stuff, but I remembered that the NSW-ES+ had a lab on it, which solved the issue by leveling up the kerbal in question to 1. Fourth, I built and sent up a very over-designed factory-starter/lander. Damn thing requires 18000EC/s to run, which means a fusion reactor had to be included. The deuterium and He3 required to run it, I lifted from Kerbin properly and flew to the Mun and did the transfer on the surface. I ditched the extraneous bipropellant RCS pods at this point. The ship has surprisingly good attitude control by itself. Fifth, I lifted a mix of veteran and fresh recruits to man the NSW-ES+. It can technically accommodate 18 Kerbals, but I'm leaving the lander empty, writing the final manifest at 10 souls. Damn thing overall has just over half a million meters per seconds of delta-v, and the lander by itself a few thousands. Shakedown voyage will be to Neidon (OPM), since both Sarnus and Ulrum already have missions staked for them. The Kerbin ejection will burn through 10,000m/s for a rather pedestrian voyage (compared to what it can truly do). Only thing I gotta be careful about is that the NSW-ES+ doesn't actually carry any scientific or scanning equipment and will have to fabricate small probes for that. EDIT: I just passed a brain fart. Also known as a why-the-heck-have-I-been-busting-my-jewels-over-this sort of realization. I don't need to land fully functional factories. I just need to land enough Rocket Parts and an assembly module to build a small, functional factory! I'm not giving up the ridiculous lithium-powered-Marvin-getting-shocked-ridiculous factory lander for the NSW-ES+, but I am dumping that whole scheme from now on. I'm trying to get about 8 contracts for Tylo completed, included Kerbal-ground stuff, and I couldn't figure out a way to make it work without going ridiculous overkill on the lander. After my little epiphany, I realized I just needed to land a bit under 6,000RP to build a Fatter Cricket factory rover. That was much easier to design for. It's so simple compared to my previous designs! No even a single heat-loop to keep an eye on! Just an assembly module, and a big container of rocket parts on top of a (somewhat) ridiculous engine stack. Kinda looking forward to that, as I haven't landed on Tylo, I think, since it was first introduced (v0.17).

The Gilly 'rover' has returned and was landed without a hitch. I tried to also land the engine section but it burned up in the atmosphere upon reentry. I also went and got the available science around Bop and Pol with the DS probe I had left in orbit of Laythe a little while back. With science finally reaching over 10k, I was able to unlock the top-tier NSW engine, which means... CONSTRUCTION! Unfortunately, the Niven is big enough that launching from a launchpad is inviting the kraken. Even with cheats to support, the sudden shift in weight can lead to the whole base achieving a dozen times over the speed of light, in various direction. So, mobile build it is! As it is, however, the nuclear salt water isn't actually available at the factory, and the HEPF if a few kilometers east. This means... a rover! A huge rover. Initially set out to do a fully robotized launch platform that would lift the NSW-ES to its vertical launch position once fueled up, but I figured this was a lot of trouble. I effectively just slapped some wheels on the finished, standing product and set to building. It is currently driving in the background. It's kind of a problem that the HEPF is at the bottom of a crater, but it should be able to tip over and into if it goes at it square. If not, I'll go back to the drawing board. EDIT: SUCCESS!

The Gilly 'rover' was a total success. In fact, by being a more efficient with my hoping, I probably could have done without in situ refueling. That done, I focused back on the Moho side of things. I redesigned the Fat Cricket into the Fatter Cricket and built one in ten days. Ditched the two jr. drills for a senior and prettied it up majorly with some robotic stuff. It works wonderfully, and it churned out a small surface lab outpost thingy to level up the Kerbals that were on the surface (two of them were level 0). Thing is, I normally don't bother putting lights on swivels, and often just forgo light sources completely. As it is, the location on the surface of Moho is in perpetual darkness so I decided to 'splurge' a bit. Here's the Fatter Cricket being tested on Kerbin: https://i.imgur.com/uRJtQ7s.mp4 here's the finished product, plus the surface lab: https://i.imgur.com/jGLzGtH.mp4

Started completing contracts that have been left standing for a while now, since I was focused on other stuff. First, going to Gilly and back to Kerbin. I made a 'rover' for it. A self-sufficient micro-refinery on struts and entirely powered via RCS. After having had to deal with Moho dV shenanigans one too many times, I decided that overkill was the way. Even without the LF/Ox booster stage, the damn thing has enough dV to reach Gilly and come back to kerbin three times over. Once some science is collected, the 'rover' will dock back with the Li-powered stage and fly back to kerbin before being recovered. There's actually a non-retractable solar panel that will get in the way but I'll just let it break during the redocking procedure. Then I got the 'unscrew' module to land on Moho and got to work making the factory there actually viable. Some troubles aside with rovers and KIS/KAS wonkiness, I was able to refuel to crew module enough so it could hop the few kilometers between it and the factory module. The Unscrew module was able to hop back by itself no problem.

Chalked up a multi-part mission to Moho. The automated EL factory was delivered with a NSW engine stack while a secondary crew was transferred with a more conventional rocketry design (mostly liquid-methane powered). As usual, I did a woopsie. I designed the two missions a few days apart and I built them as though they would each rely on the other to do the final assembly. I only realized when I landed the crew that I had exchanged the 2-seater survey station for a 2-seater landing can. Worse, I forgot to include some KIS/KAS parts to link up the two missions on the ground. Finally, I overshot the landing with the crew and touched down a few kilometers off with less than 10ms of dV left. It doesn't help that the landing site (chosen for its high concentration of metal ore, ore and LHe3) is near Moho's north pole and there isn't much in the way of light shining there. I had planed to have the factory provide power via fuel cells but I can't exactly move it anymore... I will use the rover that has been sitting in the norther crater for a few years now to ferry fuel and power from the automated factory to the crew lander, as soon as the tools needed get there. The NSW engine stack was detached and sent back on its way to Kerbin, where it will grab a light survey-station lander (plus the other missing stuff) and transfer back to Moho. I might have to refuel the stack, but maybe not. Oh, the transfer window to Sarnus has opened up and another crewed mission has been launched! Total travel time will be over two years. No landers of any kind will follow that mission, it's just orbital recon and science gathering.

Mass Effect (the one and only game) had a codex entry on large capital ships using liquid-droplet radiators to dump excess heat. Even went as far as describing the sight of a capital ship out-maneuvering its radiators and shedding coolant in combat. Solid radiator designs are just cheap and easy to implement and effectively requires no upkeep in the radiator surfaces in and of themselves. I hope KSP2 handles progression of radiators not just in size but also emissivity. I think Nertea's System Heat system (plus his Heat Control parts) does this quite well.

You mean to say open clusters, then. Globular clusters can't really stay coherent (for long) with less than 15,000 stellar masses, and most are much bigger than that. GCs are unstable because most stellar ejections would be unrecoverable, and they will evaporate quicker and quicker as they lose mass. Ten to a hundred stars is still overkill, both in terms of design space and software/hardware limitations. Handcrafted worlds are always better, and there's no reason to go through all the trouble of making a PG program that will still, in the end, generate singular star systems and burden the heck out of the game until it runs into memory lock. There's no absolute upper limit, but anything more than 30 worlds generated in KSP is generally considered to be a bad idea. I'm currently running something of that magnitude on a pretty high-end PC at the moment, and even I'm feeling like I'm butting my head against a wall. Simply put, KSP1 is just not suitable.

That's a lot of stars. A LOT OF STARS. In fact, you could say it's full of stars. You'd need to use procedural generation out the wazoo to even get close to such a result, and probably run into pretty hard software and, worse, hardware limitations trying to render even less than 1% of all that in Unity. Let's not mention how pointless it is all, in fact, compared to maybe half a dozen handcrafted systems. Running a few planet packs with distances tweaked down majorly would be more expedient, lighter, and effectively deliver what you are describing without needing to own a modern supercomputer.

Alright, this time with pictures. Primo, I created a new micro-factory rover (called it the Fat Cricket) and sent it eastward on the mun by a few kilometers to begin work on a new High-Energy Exotic Fuel Facility. Estimated build time: 115ish days. That started, the main factory started building the new VLR probe. Build time: 2 days. That done, I launched it and parked it in an orbit between the Mun and Minmus. As luck would have it, there is a moderately efficient transfer window opening up, though I overshot the best possible time by two weeks due to the orbital period. Still, the probe has enough dV to get me to jool, and back 30 times in a row so I don't care about efficiency all that much at this point. As I type this, it's about 40% of the way through its transfer burn.

One of the things I am aiming toward right now is using some of the less... expedient KA, NFP and FFT engines in my unmanned designs. The X-6 Clarke engine is currently being used for my Dres mission, and I'm planning to use it again to visit some of the OPM worlds. It's got a (somewhat) low TWR but the 'throwaway' fuel design and great ISP are making up for it. The next probe will have a large contingent of mystery goo and the material study parts. Something else I generally don't do. Its first destination will be the Joolian system. With something like 100,000m/s of dV, I expect to get most of the orbital science done, and then move on to Sarnus, which I've never been to before. After that, it'll probably still have inordinate amounts of dV left, but I'm undecided.