AHHans

That's how I understood it.

So did I ... a week ago.

Ha... haha... haahaaaha... haaaaaaaaaaaa... *collapses into hysterical laughter* I just spent the night wracking my brain on how to get my re-configurable, ion-, spark-engine hybrid monstrosity to be in budget while also adding the needed delta-Vee. (I'm still not sure if that can be done, but I'm not yet ready to call it quits) You did notice that to get flagship class in the stock system you either have to do a Jool 6 (land on all Joolian moons, and on Jool itself - although the latter can be a separate lander) or land on all 9 moons in the stock system? (See the discussion between me and @The Doodling Astronaut in the last few days.) Well, my idea was to have the fuel for the Laythe part in a separate tanker that remains in orbit.

Errrr... Only the RCS thrusters can be used for RCS, the normal rocket engines cannot be used for RCS. What you can set in the "activation toggles" is that RCS thrusters can be used with the regular throttle just like a normal engine.

Well, a general suggestion from me would be to first build regular planes that fly well. So that you learn where you need to put the CoM and CoL for a plane to fly well. Once you have a feel for that, then keep in mind that the CoL that is displayed in the SPH doesn't represent all aerodynamic forces. In particular when planes fly high (where the air is so thin that it doesn't generate much lift) and fast (at close to orbital speeds) then the drag becomes much more important in comparison to the lift, so then the center of the aerodynamic forces on your plane can shift.

I agree, it isn't like KSP is lacking in bugs. And I also prefer to use defensive language when I'm not 100% sure.(*) But this is one of the cases where I'm sure enough that I don't feel the need to use qualifiers in my statements.

Robotic part are notoriously floppy. There are ways to mitigate this, but nothing that completely eliminates this. And for you problem autostruts are a good idea, but autostruts stop at non-locked robotic parts. (Well, in some cases they cause the robotic part to freeze up, but that isn't better.) So what you can do is set the hinge (or servo?) to locked once the wing has moved into place. One problem is that just saying "please set the lock" doesn't always work, you usually have to give that command a few time to make sure that all parts are locked. So use "set lock" on an action group (and "unset lock" on another) and hit the corresponding button often enough. [Edit:] I forgot the other problem that I wanted to mention: when the lock is set while the wings are bent, then this bend is "frozen in". So for my planes Itry to set the locks when there isn't a strong force on the wings. Another issue is that activating autostrut on the robotic part itself often causes that part to freeze up. So I don't do that.

Let me correct that for you. (O.K. You can argue that they don't "break" but "vanish" as soon as the two parts that they connect are no longer part of the same craft.)

Make them fly:

I guess this is a FAQ now... Have a look at what I wrote in this thread: Go-ob ED lost connection with control station after collecting all science

Not permanently permanently. The settings you do in the cheat menu will last while the play-session is running, so if you e.g. test a craft, set "infinite fuel", revert to the VAB, go out of the VAB, and go to one of your existing craft, then it will still be active. Also when you (quick-)load a savefile in your current session then the cheats will not reset. But if you exit KSP and then start it again then all the cheats will be reset. P.S. But the "Set Orbit" and "Set Position" cheats are obviously fairly safe to use.

As I wrote in my other post: the problem was not "new" or "not new", but "unmanned" or "not unmanned". A probe that is docked (or otherwise connected) to a crewed craft is not unmanned, but when you undock it from the crewed parts then it is unmanned.

That was the original idea. But then I noticed that I need a better engine (I'm not going to use three spark's for interplanetary transfers!), and a place to store the heat-shield, and why do I carry around the heavy solar panels if I only recharge in orbit anyhow...

O.K. Calling it a "mothership" wasn't the best choice of words. I don't plan to give it a probe core, or any other form of control. What I'm think of has all the other parts of a ship (a big fuel tank, the big engine for interplanetary and orbit-to-orbit transfers, a docking port to connect to the lander, additional solar panels to recharge the batteries on the lander, the heat shield for the Jool aerobrake, and probably more) but won't be able to do anything without the lander attached to it. Another idea would be an (even more) modular lander: still only one probe core but several parts that can be attached to it to adjust to the conditions on the current destination. That's fine. My suggestion would be anyhow to use the version from the screenshot that you like best.

O.K. After having scrapped the other design and started with a clean sheet I got another question: is having a "mothership / tanker" that takes the lander from moon to moon, but stays in orbit O.K.?

Well, I expect that the "DSN Modifier" slider affects all DSN sites, i.e. including the KSC. The "Enable Extra Groundstations" option on the other hand leaves you with only the KSC as a DSN site if you deactivate it.

.oO(Maybe you should upgrade to a version that has the castle implemented? SCNR!)

Well, my 1.8.0 VTOL has servo range of (0, 90) and still works fine. So that is not the reason that old designs work.

Yes, that seems to be a new(-ish) bug. But a workaround is also rather straight-forward: set the servo-limits to be symmetric around 0. E.g. instead of (0, 90) do (-90, 90). Then both servos will rotate the full range.

As @HebaruSan said: no you cannot use the DLCs with any other version of the main game except the one it was compiled for. But why would you want to?

The craft is no longer uncrewed! You can see that in the commnet display in the upper left corner of the GUI. (Having an empty command capsule is fine, having a rescuee in there is no longer fine!) But it should be fine to have the Kerbal go out on EVA once you are on the correct orbit, and switch back to the satellite for 10 seconds. I would guess that the Kerbal can even hang on to the entry hatch, as long as (s)he isn't in the capsule. Also sometimes there is a bug that a new craft incorrectly isn't recognized as a new craft. But switching to the tracking station or another craft outside physics range and then switching back seems to help.

Hi @The Doodling Astronaut, thanks for the clarifications. Yes, it would be nice, and for the Mohole landing I did just that. But you cannot reasonably enter an atmosphere with an extended communotron (any communotron, but for Jool you need the big one) without having that ripped away. And biome hopping on a planet with atmosphere with limited control is hard to impossible, depending on the lander. (I usually play with "signal required for control" which means that once I retract the communotron somewhere in the Joolian system then I wouldn't have any chance of getting control of the craft back without relays.) O.K. But just to be clear: to get the flagship class in the stock solar system you have to do the Grand Tour of the Joolian system. Or am I missing something?

(SCNR!)

Well, yes. But in this case it's more like a debug menu. Unlocking inputs that shouldn't be locked in the first place isn't really cheating.

Well, on Minmus (or any other airless CB) I do: Have a rescue craft with lots of dV to spare. Precision landings eat up a lot of fuel! Get into a suborbital trajectory that passes over the spot where I want to land. Once I get close to the target kill my horizontal velocity so that I come to vertical fall or a hover more or less directly over the target. Fine tune the approach while slowly lowering to the ground. SAS in surface mode set to radial out can be very helpful here. If needed I can do another "hop" to get even closer than my approach. But on Minmus you don't need to get all that close. The EVA jetpacks have enough juice to fly a Kerbal for several kilometers.