Chris Hopkins

Hi, So 2 of my previous save games open fine. One however refuses to open. Windows 10, x64 There's no information in the current Player.log., the game doesn't crash, instead: 1) select Start Game, Resume Saved 2) Select the name and Load 3) The save window stays open, but the Resume Save, Start Game, Training text, that the box is occluding, is now highlighted. Now if you click on the still visible box but in the region where for example part of the text that Scenarios is you now get the scenarios window opening. 4) The delete and Cancel buttons on the still visible Continue Saved Game dialog still work. This only happens with this specific saved game. (othewr previous games that I've not played since about 1.6 still load fine) If I copy the saved game folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\saves\reusable) and give is a new name, then the same behaviour still occurs with the new copy of the saved game. When this first happened I had MechJeb 2 and Advanced Fly by wire installed. I've since uninstalled them, and see the same behaviour.

Success! I wasn't aware there were orbital parameters that had to be met, that were not listed either in the conract details, or in the oribital parameters information. Sneeky! I also wasn't aware there was that illustration of which orbit you had to reach. Live and learn! Thanks muchly!

Sorry for the delay in getting back with those images. Please find attached.

Hi, I'm doing an asteroid mapping mission and I need to put my sattelite in a specific orbit. I've done this before, but for some reason it won't work for me at the moment. I believe I've got it all set, but the mission paramters thing will just not go green as it has done in the past. Can anyone see what I've got wrong here, or any other suggestions welcome.: I'm at the stage where I'm convinced it's either user error, or a bug. Hopefully the former... Thanks in advance.

So I did my first career mode. Nothing much to report, it was great fun, but I'm guessing quite standard, so I present a few highlights: I made a lot of money out of a simple toursit craft. After a few itterations I had the SRB size tuned so I could take tourists to orbit and then mun/minmus really cheap. The only issue was that I had to use spin stabilization during re-entry: Since it was the first time I could collect science I actually bothered making tiny rovers. Thank heavens for MechJeb's autopilot! I then progressed to larger science rovers: Rovers on Duna for the first time (next time I would use more larger motors: And that was enough to complete my first Tech Tree! I think on the next play through I might limit myself to re-usable only. Which means I need to get a LOT better at landing planes!

So I took some Mining equipment to Duna! First a stop off at the fuel station: Then off to the great beyond! Then aerobraked for the first time! Unfortunatly I didn't capture the fireworks this spaghetti ended in. Ah well, time to move on!

So carrying on where I left off, a quick post today: The was lots of experimenting with larger tug craft (mainly for use in refueling) And I found a fuel depot just stiiting around in orbit! This was my first proper asteroid capture so I was surprised at just how useful they weren't. It turned out to be a surprisingly unprofitable venture by the time it was sufficiently low in orgit. On that note, does anyone have any links to good resources on some KSP scripting - I fancied automating the job of: burn to reduce apoapse, wait for ISRN to make more fuel, correct Periapse, correct orbital inclination a bit, all intermixed with waiting for ISRU to workwork, repeat about 30 times!

So I've not posted in ages, I've been Soooooo busy I'll try and spread this out over multiple posts In my entry in what's the stupidest shape of payload I could fit in the faring, I present you with: It was about as aerodynamic as you'd think! Fortunatly it was so badly aerodynamic, it was kind of like surfing and you could ride the wave! Yep it's the "While I'm sending a sattelite up, I might as well send a couple of Tugs up that I need for other purposes": Then some work on my mining base: only for me to discover I didn't have enough power, so I sent in a rover with a few solar panels attached. (also part of trial for a cunning plan to have a modular system where I could expand capacity on remote worlds gradually). I was very pleased with myself! It was glorious, the whole thing unfolded! Into Kraken bait - no point in a screenshot of the wreakage that ensued when I unfolded it. I have no idea why it worked when tested on Kerbin, but exploded when unfolded on Minmus or Duna. The Kraken is a fickle beast! More later...

Finally I set myself the challenge of could I build a rover that used the XL3 wheels? And if I could, could I design it such that a rover like that made sense beyond "it's a big rover". Well here's my submission: Retractable heat shields thanks to robotics, ISRU capabilities, full robotics and carrying capabilities for all your Breaking Ground requirements. Science lab, hover mode and in theory enough thrust to make it to orbit from almost anywhere you'd want to land and refuel it. On the downside, launching it required quite a large rocket. I then used my shiny new uber-tug to get it to Minmus where I could refuel the launch boosters, to get it pretty much anywhere! This is why I needed an uber-tug that could land and refuel itself. Refuelling this monstrosity would otherwise have taken *forever*. When I have finished this mission I think I'll start a new science game. I think I have had enough of building these huge ships just to see if I can.

I've also been having fun running with the experiment "How stupidly large can I possibly build my space tugs?" Behold, my latest insane spacetug! 16 nervs for when you are not in a rush for your dV, 4 skippers for when you sort of are in a rush. (I was really tempted to use the mainsail for this purpose instead, however experiments have shown that for most requirements the skippers do the job, and the ISP lost through the larger engine is not gained though burning for a shorter time). I've yet to test the aero-braking part of the design, but the ISRU works well if you leave it long enough. (I have a separate rover that's currently on the way to Minmus to supplement the power requirements of this beast while it is in ISRU mode, I didn't want to hamper it with too many solar panels.)

{insert swear words here} You are 100% correct. That'd explain it. Obvious when someone says it. I'll have a rethink how to redesign for that. Thanks!

Thanks, I'm 75% certain I tried that, but I'll try again. Won't be the first time I thought I'd done some steps and hadn't. :-)

Long time no post, so I'll break this one up into multiple per theme. I've been experimenting a lot with my spaceplanes. First of all I finally got my Minmus one back. Trying to land closer to KSC: Got my refueler back, a little closer to KSC: And having fun with my sattelite launcher: However I am determined to make my Pegasus style launcher work, where I have 2 space planes, one that is mostly for getting to the upper atmosphere, and is mostly fuel tanks and jet engines; and one that decouples and goes into orbit and is mostly payload bay and rockets. However I cannot get them to couple in the VAB for love nor money. I have a workaround planned where I have one plane *behind* the other, but if anyone can get the *on top of* to work, I'd love to know how you did it.

Well, I learn something every day. This might change my next Duna mission plan...

So I finally succeeded in getting my Super-Tug off to Minmus: This really is a beautiful game some days.Just look at the joy on Peggy's face! Here it is safely around Minmus with the ore tanks and ore lifter craft attached(with one of my tugs mid-docking - yes I use mech jeb for this a lot, have you seen the number of craft docked there?). It's really now a refuelling depot for all the craft I have waiting there for it: But that design is not without flaws, so I've fixed most of them for a MKII I am currently constructing - this time with (replaceable) heat shields on all front pods: And see, I can dock without mech-jeb :-p

Do you know if I should I be reporting this to some official channel?

So I had a mixed weekend. After driving the rover around Mimmus looking for the best ore, the highlight was discovering a rip in the spacetime fabric of minmas that destroyed any craft that touched it. And here we have the actual destruction: I didn't feel too bad about reloading after that. I couldn't fly over it as I had no rockets on it whatsoever, I tried landing one of my skycranes onto it, but my docking skills aren't up to the job. I came up with a plan. (Unfortunately no screenshots as I was busy doing the madness). I drove as fast as I dared parallel to the crack, downhill, then did a hard turn. As we all can imagine this flipped me into the air, and sent me spinning. I was able to use the onboard torque to remove the spin and correct myself to a straight just in time for landing. Do all the objects in the kerbin system have a crack like this? Should I be designing rocketry into all my vehicles in case I come across one of these in the future?

You're a genius, why didn't I think of this? It never occurred to me to turn one of the bays into a craft in its own right. I can now also imagine one of my spaceplanes flying along the surface of the moon dropping down one rover carrier for each biome!

I've had a long absence due to holidays (finally visited KSC - the one in Florida, not Kerbal). I've no new pictures from the game, but I could spam you with SaturnV pictures if you like :-) Getting back I of course fired up KSP as soon as my wife was in bed, and spent the next hour doing the last bits of docking to the bohemoth I've been building in LKO. I didn't press F5 enough though and had KSP crash taking all my work with it. By the time I'm back to where I started it's now 2:30 am. So that's most of last night's work in the bin. I also learned that the bohemoth that I've been building is fundamentally flawed. As soon as I turn on the engines the truss segments noodle and I'm off flying in a random direction. My plan to work around the noodlyness doesn't work, so that's most of the last few week's work in the bin. On the bright side I have a new design to try out tonight, will report back...

Okay so Now I need to come up with a triple or quad boom. There could be quite a lot of boom indeed

So the other thing I did was discover the tugs didn't have enough fuel to get the refuelling depot to minmus (comfortably). Fortunately I've been experimenting with some of the ideas I stolewas inspired by from kerbalX and I present to you: Lucy in the sky with fuel(shown here ready to de-orbit): And here it is about to land. If anyone asks, it landed fine. Hardly anything fell off and anyway they were loose to begin with and it'll buff out and...

So last night I mostly just grabbed the screenshots of the last week or so of play; so this last week I have been: Playing with my new spaceplane - I call it polo, the ship with the hole: (MK II shown above, MKI below). Works really well for payloads that won't fit in a cargo bay, you just widen or shrink the two main bays to make space for your payload and it seems to work. I forgot to get a screenshot of it with the fairing in place. However it works on some payloads without a faring: Lands okay too, if the pilot had not been drinking at the time: I've been using it to carry up ore tanks for my spacestation/reprocessing/fuel depot I'm currently building You can see hinges have made that much easier to launch (seen here with the 3rd stage still attached, just after docking, before I transferred all the spare fuel into the main tanks and dumped the 3rd stage) You can see how I seem to have hit an odd bug with the hinge moving through the girder - I did not launch it like that! It gets worse later so that I can't open my arms fully: This has really broken my design as where I planned to attach the ore tanks doesn't work, so I'm having to use some docking ports I planned for another purpose. After attaching the ore tanks I updated to 1.7.2 and the error got even worse: That's them now at their full extent, so I'm having to do a bit of a redesign of the station because the Mk3 tanks you see on the front section were supposed to attach to the clamp-o-tron-sr that's now blocked by the ore tanks so that the pull tug that is currently in the middle would have been at the front. Yes I could just re-launch a new one/save file edit - but it's not what NASA would do... More later, but this post was already getting long!

Yeah I have Making History but not the parts for it. I've been meaning to investigate why for quite a while now. Well I know what I'm doing tonight now :-)

Daft question: Are those folding wheels stock? I've seen loads of people use them, but I can never find them. Or are they an IR thing?

Cool ship! It's quite spikey; how about cactus?