Aelipse

I see! That makes sense! Thank you.

Oh you'd be amazed! In combination with the atomic Nervs, rapiers are absolutely fine. For main burns you use nervs and switch the rapiers on only when you need extra thrust, like for example taking off from Duna or performing a suicide burn on the Mun.

I don't think anyone has ever come up with such a minuscule and insignificant idea as this, but... Could the landing gears have their lights switched off until they're fully deployed? Seeing my landing gears shine through the hull of my spaceship while they're retracted is mildly immersion-breaking. :-)

I am confused! Again! Today I concocted a mission to Laythe with a mining ship and took special care to scan its surface beforehand with the M700 Survey Scanner. What was my joy when the ore abundance at some places reached 70 %! I set a navigation point to one such location that in the resource map overlay didn't go blank under 70 % cut-off and made my merry way to that very place, almost killing three kerbals along the way. Alas, after landing and deployment of my drill (the large one) I was confronted with "nothing to mine" exclamation. Contrast that with my Minmus mining rover, which happily mined ore where the scanner only found 20 % of ore. How and why?

I am a sucker for SSTO spaceplanes, and back in the day when I was still playing stock, I managed to build a pretty decent SSTO. 4 Rapiers, 2 Whiplashes and 2 Nervs mounted on an Mk2 fuselage, wet mass was around 80 tonnes. The thing got easily into orbit even with some little payload stuck to its back, on its own had some 2,800 m/s delta v left after reaching the LKO, not to mention its mining capability making it a "all planets in one mission" candidate. The absolute key to a successful SSTO is perfect aerodynamics. You cannot afford any unnecessary drag, since you spend much more time in the atmosphere than a rocket would. That means no clipping parts, no fancy airbrakes or parachutes (a well balanced spaceplane can easily bleed off speed by pitching up and down), and you have to be particularly careful when attaching fuselage parts to cargo bays - it has to snap to the cargo bay itself, not the contents of it. Also, putting the nose cones backwards on the rapiers (creating the famous rapier-spikes) decreases the drag a lot (and I suggest lowering their gimbal limit as they have a tendency to incinerate the nose cones when doing harsh maneuvers). Long story short, if you pitch up to 10° to 15° and continue accelerating past the sound barrier, you've won. Rapiers are IMHO very cool engines and it's only fair that their ability to get you to high velocities within the atmosphere is offset by a rather low and crappy ISP in closed cycle.

I agree with the landing gears. It might seem like four variants of extendable landing gears are enough, but due to their varying sizes they're quite hard to combine. Also, the large landing gears should be steerable. Real life airplanes do steer when they're taxing, and they're not using Cessna landing gears for that.

An exit button on Review Stored Data window. Accidentally clicking Review Stored Data instead of Collect All Data mid-flight and then having to confirm Keep Experiment for 40 data packages is incredibly annoying.

Rover wheel's electric engines make sound. Doesn't have to be loud, just something that would make me "feel" those hours I spend roving.

Guys, a remotely related question. Since I installed the 1.7.3 patch, I am getting notifications about science being sent from my deployed experiments like every 5 in-game minutes. It's getting somewhat annoying, especially in time warps. Would anyone know how to reduce the frequency of data transmissions from those bases?

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I hadn't even known there was a part upgrade feature at all. I took couple of hours to browse through various related topics and came upon this one. I used the featured example as a template for my own upgrades, but I can't make it work. Strangely enough, the max temperature limit increases accordingly, but when I want to change maximum thrust or mass of the part, the changes are completely ignored and remain the same as default. My config file looks like this: @PART[nuclearEngineLightbulb] { @MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX] { showUpgradesInModuleInfo = true UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = LVT45-GenRocketry-Thrust techRequired__ = generalRocketry maxThrust = 600 } UPGRADE { name__ = LVT45-AdvRocketry-Thrust techRequired__ = advRocketry maxThrust = 900 } } } MODULE { name = PartStatsUpgradeModule showUpgradesInModuleInfo = true UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = LVT45-GenRocketry-Thrust techRequired__ = generalRocketry IsAdditiveUpgrade__ = True PartStats { maxTemp = 2500 } } UPGRADE { name__ = LVT45-AdvRocketry-Thrust techRequired__ = advRocketry IsAdditiveUpgrade__ = True PartStats { maxTemp = 2900 } } } } } PARTUPGRADE { name = LVT45-GenRocketry-Thrust partIcon = liquidEngine2 techRequired = generalRocketry entryCost = 10000 title = LV-T45 Thrust Upgrade description = The LV-T45 engine now generates 400 kN of thrust and has a max temp of 2500. } PARTUPGRADE { name = LVT45-AdvRocketry-Thrust partIcon = liquidEngine2 techRequired = advRocketry entryCost = 50000 title = LV-T45 Thrust Upgrade description = The LV-T45 engine now generates 900 kN of thrust and has a max temp of 2900. } I've overwritten the name of the part to be upgraded (Lightbulb is an engine from AtomicAge mod by Porkjet I believe) and updated the module name accordingly (ModuleEngines to ModuleEnginesFX) to fit the module name in the Lightbulb config. Everything else I left untouched for testing purposes. Any suggestions what else has to be changed?

Forgive me if this is a stupid question or if this has been already brought up and discussed before, but I have been mulling over this idea for the past couple of weeks and would like to hear the opinions of people who actually know the possibilities of the game mechanics. Is it possible to add passive upgrades for either all parts or parts of specific groups? For example, increasing the temperature tolerance by 25 degrees of all wings. My reasoning is this. I use the community tech tree, which expands the career mode a lot, but even though I use plenty of part adding mods, I deliberately avoided the "end game" technologies, like the Future Propulsion or the Alcubiere Drive, because they are in my opinion overpowered and game-breaking. I was thinking how to utilise all those costly high-tech research nodes, which are currently empty in my game, without introducing anything game-breaking or superfluous, and came up with an idea of passive bonuses. There could be multiple, very costly (science-wise) technologies, which would: 1) Increase the maximum temperature by a miniscule amount, like by 25 °C at level 1, 50 °C at level 2 and 75 °C at level 3. 2) Very slightly decrease the weight of a specific group of parts, say all the fuselage parts (fuel itself not included) are lighter by 2 %. 3) Struts and other structural parts get their maximum force durability increased by a couple of percent. 4) Nosecones and cockpits get their drag decreased, again very slightly. And so on and so forth; the possibilities are limitless. I think this idea is not at all unrealistic as new materials are being developed constantly to either improve the properties of existing designs or allow the construction of new ones. In terms of playability it would create sort of end game goals that are quite attractive without being game-breaking, while at the same time not depriving the players of the "good stuff" until the very end of the game. As a career mode freak myself who loves to keep adding new planets and moons through mods, I would particularly welcome the drive and motivation to gather science from everywhere. Soooo... my question is, what is your opinion on it, and more importantly so; would it be even possible to implement via mods?

I have taken the liberty of testing some of the aspects of deployable science to quench my curiosity and here's what I found (game version 1.7.2): 1) Each experiment device keeps gathering science until its science meter reaches 100 % (and I am a dum-dum for not having noticed that before). After that, all activity of the module stops. 2) During its operational time, each module sends the newly acquired scientific data to Kerbin. The rate of transmission taking place is a mystery to me. It definitely seems come at different times from Mun and Minmus, so maybe signal availability plays a role? Note that I had relay satellites orbiting both celestial bodies in question, so there was SOME signal available at almost all time. 3) Different modules generate science at different rates. Yep. By the time my goo camera reached 100 %, my ionograph was still at some 75 %. It goes without saying they were both deployed at the same time and on the same body (Mun). 4) Just like the in the stock game, deployed solar panels are not friends with time warp. It often happens that during the fastest timewarp, all power is either on or off, regardless of Mun's rotation in respect to the Sun. 5) No sliding! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that neither of my experiments have drifted anywhere, and that's both while being the active vehicle AND in the background during time warps. Granted, I managed to find a plateau that was slanted less than 0.4 %, so I don't know, that might have helped.

They do not. The craft is uncontrollable unless you extend your antennas, which is the only thing you can do without signal. Tested thoroughly.

Heya, I'm gonna resurrect this thread by whining about a bug: the antennas seem to do their thing even when they're not extended. Not sure if somebody mentioned that already or it has been fixed in the newer versions. Thought I'd just let you know. I love the mod though, the animations and modelling on this are superb!

Brother, I hear you. I have spent over a year now playing KSP, most of it doing the career mode, and I do agree there is something missing. I would like to share a couple of points though, if I may. One, being realistic does not equal being fun. Sure, there is a lot of depth just in the financial management of a space program, not to mention keeping your employees orderly and motivated, buying materials and parts from other companies (NASA collaborates with highly specialised companies from all over the world as far as I know) and so on and so forth. However, KSP is about building rockets and flying them to places. As Pthigrivi said, such aspects of the game would serve as a distraction from the main goal of the game. I love the idea of being able to slightly improve the parts that have already been researched. I too came up with this notion when I was fantasizing about the possible improvements of the game. Something along the lines of improving the heat resistance of your nose cones by something like a 3 % margin, decreasing the weight of certain parts by a percent or two or increasing the structural strength and stability of specific parts ever so slightly. These changes could be very costly - both in funds and science - to provide some attractive end-game goals while not rendering the early game unplayable nor the late game overpowered and boring. Having these features locked until the whole tech tree is done might be also taken into consideration. Otherwise, the idea of faulty parts would IMHO cause more anger and frustration than joy of excessive realism. A "fog of solar system" - generally just the idea of not knowing exactly the parameters of the other celestial bodies - is not a bad one. However people who would appreciate this feature the most are I imagine pretty much just the veterans of the game who can tell you the average temperature 5000 m above Laythe's surface from the top of their heads (hyperbole, yay!) and to them such a concept would be pretty useless. Also, what it would mean in practice is just having to send one more unmanned space probe to the place before you start building your space hotel and casino there (looking at you, Matt Lowne!). I cannot decide if all the effort of introducing this new feature would actually pay off in actual fun. I am currently in a mid-game of my second career play through, and before I started, I decided to make things interesting. I use many mods; outer solar system to add some significant challenge for the end game, and the community tech tree to make the end game flights worth while. I use the life support mod (USI?) in conjunction with planetary base systems and deep freeze. I have plenty of new parts from OPT, Mk2 Expansion, Nuclear age by Porkjet and some other ones. What these mods have in common is they provide a ton of beautifully crafted and functional parts, while not being too overpowered (unlike for example Near Future Technologies, which is IMHO tremendously overpowered). I also took the liberty of adjusting the properties of some of the most powerful parts provided by mods, lowering their stats and make them much more balanced with the stock parts, and then I scattered these parts all over the rather large tech tree provided by CTT mod. I have turned the G-force limit on, given up the option to revert flight OR quickload the game in case I goof up. I can tell you, with all these changes, KSP feels like a completely different game as of now. TLDR; The career mode is not too bad, and if you know how to improve and rebalance it with mods, your experience can be as fresh as playing a completely new game.

Are those three screenshots not enough?

Being an aficionado of SSTO space planes, I took a lot of time designing my perfect space-roaming jet plane. After months of refinements, I think Phoenix Lambda might just be the one. Pros: -> Very stable in flight with tanks both full and empty. Easy to maneuver and simply fun to fly. No unnecessary drag generated by the SAS having to keep pitching up. -> Given its size and mass, its drag is minimal. Everything that can be put into a cargo bay has been put into a cargo bay. On Kerbin, this puppy can glide at an angle of just 10° to 15° without losing speed. -> Gets easily into orbit with some 2800 m/s delta v left. Just pitch up to 10°, activate the Nervs at around 15,000 meters and press 1 to switch rapiers to their closed cycle mode when they hit thrust of 100 kN and lower. Wait till your apoapsis reaches 70,000, then hit 1 again to kill the rapiers. Done. You're in orbit. -> No parachutes, no air brakes, no ladders. Due to the design of the craft, it doesn't need any. Phoenix can land on Duna using just its wings and the Vernor engines mounted from the bottom. If you need to get back to the cabin from an EVA and cannot use your jet pack, simply retract your front wheel and the craft will kneel for you to climb onto its nose. -> High stability on the ground. The craft is equipped with one landing gear in the front for steering and four rear landing gears ensuring it will survive even some of the most violent landings. It is also equipped with small side gears for extra stability. Phoenix can drive on a difficult terrain at speeds up to 80 m/s on Kerbin, 30 m/s on Duna and 20 m/s on Mun. Who needs rovers anymore? -> The rear forked wings, other than looking cool and enhancing in flight stability, also serve as landing struts for bodies without atmosphere. Due to their position, the craft will always end up on its wheels with no assistance from the pilot. No more space planes stuck on their backs. -> Two drills and a small ISRU on board. Mining is lame, I know, but the freedom of choice where to go next is addictive. Phoenix landed on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Dres, Laythe, Val and Pol in a single mission, before safely returning to Kerbin. With full tanks, it boasts some 4,000 m/s of delta v in vacuum. -> Seats for 6 kerbals and a wide spectrum of science collecting devices. Nothing like ferrying tourists around while gathering science. -> Docking port included for easy interaction with other vessels. -> Phoenix Lambda can even carry some smaller, aerodynamically friendly load mounted on its back (preferably just above its CoM) into orbit. Cons: -> Fairly long burns due to low thrust / weight ratio. Those Nervs are no Mainsails... -> No landing on Tylo and no getting back from Eve. Moho is also pretty much out of reach due to the limited delta v of the craft. Download Craft

Sir, if I had any self-control, I would be studying and not playing KSP.

Today I ran into a minor issue with the supplies timer, a very similar one to iGGnitE's. The timer consists of the time left before you run out of supplies and the time you can survive without any supplies at all (starving stage). The latter gets reset to the default value every time my kerbalnaut goes on EVA and returns on board. I have been trying to think of a suitable explanation, but no matter how I turn this around, forgetting about your need to eat on EVA just doesn't make sense to me, and what's worse, it can be easily exploited. I am trying to set some hard rules to the game for myself before I embark on the more challenging missions and going on EVA with your crew every 15 days just to avoid dying of starvation, although annoying, would be probably way too tempting for me not to exploit. So, is there is a fix for this? I myself can only think of changing the set "starvation" time from 15 days to only a few seconds, rendering the EVA unlimited "snacking" impossible, but that does seem a bit too harsh.

Old, but still relevant topic. While I agree with the initial complaint to some degree, it has to be said (again) that the difficulty of the career mode is set to be challenging but not off-putting for a NEW player. People who spent hundreds of hours playing the game cannot be surprised that the game is not particularly challenging. I am currently at the "mid-game" of playing the career for the second time, but this time I decided to be hard on myself. What this means? I use a plethora of mods, all of which add more variety but no significant advantages to the game. All the parts added by mods, especially the engines, have been meticulously tested and tweaked to balance things out and suit my idea of challenge. This time I have also decided to go with the USI life support mod which should make interplanetary travel much more interesting (starving kerbals are killed, so no goofing around), and also got the research tree mod that significantly adds to the number of technology nodes, thus effectively increasing the amount of science required to unlock everything at least tenfold. I use the outer planets mod which adds new planets and moons, some of them ten times the distance from the Sun as Jool. I have turned on the G-force limit for Kerbals, somewhat reduced the abundance of ore and other materials, I have turned off the option to revert flights and also decided to only use quicksave / quickload in cases of bugs and crashes (haven't had any so far), meaning that whenever I goof and kill my kerbals just because I am a dum-dum, I just roll with it. I have been playing this way for a couple of days now, the highest of my achievements being getting to Minmus with a remote controlled probe. In the meantime I permanently killed four pilots including Jeb and Valentina, destroyed dozens of expensive vehicles in test flights and stood on a verge of bankruptcy. I have learned to utilise the abort button (which I never did before), I have learned to put a parachute and a decoupling device onto every module and every cockpit, I have learned to carefully plan even the most banal of missions. And you know what? I feel good about myself for getting where I got so far, and I'm also really excited about the future interplanetary flights. I haven't even used all the options to make my game more difficult. You could still set huge penalties to failing missions or even declining them, you could lower the gains from successfully finished contracts and set your ore abundance to zero, rendering all mining useless. All you have to decide is how much pain the game's gonna be. The possibilities are there. The one thing I do agree with is the lack of a bigger reward at the end or on the most distant planets. I would not mind a storytelling version of the game, as a fourth addition to sandbox, science and career. Something along the lines of Matt Lowne's Green Harvest, but this time you and your Kerbals would play the main part. And the grand finale of the story would await you on the most distant planet or moon. In the end though, as in most open world or sandbox games, the journey is the goal. If you find the game lacking of goals, you have to make them yourself.

Heya! First of all a big thank you for this wonderful mod. I cannot even imagine my space planes without the parts from OPT anymore. A great piece of work. For people I have seen complaining about the overpowered engines (and I cannot blame them, the engines really are super powerful!), I might have some suggestions. I went to the config files and tweaked some of the properties to make them a bit more balanced with the stock engines. The HAE High Altitude engine got its ISP lowered to 3600 (so that my favourite Whiplash still has at least one advantage over it) and its mass almost doubled (I was thinking it's almost twice the size of rapiers, so why should it be the same weight?). ARI Scoop engines got their mass almost trippled, so that the stock aerospike can still compete with them on lighter vessels, and the infamously powerful Dark Drive engine (and I am really proud of this one) got power hungry. I made the Dark Drive engine drain electric charge at a rate of 200 EC per second (the ratio is something like 0.9 LF / 1.1 Ox / 50 EC in the config file). This creates a really interesting challenge of providing required electricity for the engine and gives a very important role to all the nuclear reactors found in various other mods (I personally use Planet Base Systems and MK2 Expansion mods both of which feature nuclear reactors). All of the reactors are fairly heavy and require powerful cooling, while the most efficient radiators cannot be used when in flight in a an atmosphere. Having a huge pile of batteries and many many gigantor solar panels is the lighter (and cheaper) alternative, that on the other hand doesn't allow for longer continuous burns without recharging. This little change made my end-game so much more fun and I highly recommend doing something similar to anyone who finds the engines a bit too powerful for their taste. On a completely unrelated note, I think I have found a bug: the drone cores provided by the mod seem to ignore their attachment when it come to calculating the drag. No matter where or how I attached them, they seem to generate the same amount of drag as if put in the very front of the aircraft, slowing it down tremendously. I might be using an older version of OPT, so if this has been fixed recently, sorry for bringing it up. EDIT: I just discovered your OPT Reconfig. You beat me to it.

I want to extend my gratitude to the maker(s) and maintainers of this mod as it is one of my favourite mods in the game, the added parts fit seamlessly into the stock game design, and it overall makes the game so much more interesting and challenging on its own, and gives purpose to some other amazing mods like Planetary Base mod or the Deep Freeze mod (and many others no doubt). So thank you all.

Definitely hyped! Just a silly question that might or might not have been asked and answered already in this loooong thread: Do I have to be running the newest 1.7 version of the game to be able to run the DLC? I am currently on 1.45 for the purpose of being able to use some of the older mods. Thanks!

Hey. I have been playing around with the mod and discovered some minor issues: 1) The ESTOC engines fire the smoke trail backwards, that is to the front. (Or might that be a wrong installation on my part?) 2) The Banshee engines have a strange drag behaviour: when closing the cover, the drag drops for the time of the animation, but once fully closed, the drag jumps up back to the same value as it was when open. These are really minor problems though, and the main reason I am writing is to thank you for this wonderful mod. I literally just made my first account here (this being my very first post) to let you know how amazing this mod is and how amazing you are for still maintaining it. Definitely one of my favourite mods out there.