nepphhh

Here is a partial roadmap:

Hey! That's my plane

this is horrifying

Because of the non-linear nature of rep gains & losses, you'd probably get a lot more mileage if you accepted those high-rep contracts before the rep hit (while they are still available) but waited until after the Venus contract failed to complete them.

You haven't tooled the engines. The price is 1000 times higher until they're tooled. Sometimes even if you tool the engines, the tooled configuration isn't properly selected. Make and save a second configuration (no need to tool it) and try switching to the new configuration and back. It should now realize you've tooled your engine.

The Vandenberg Program, Chapter 5. Half a year passes before we fly again. The sounding rocket program (as previously detailed) continues a regular launch cadence through 1954, but the X-Planes program is on hold. First priority is given to ensuring this particular failure mode can not reoccur; of nearly equal import is mitigating the ignored dangers that have been latent in the Redbird program since its inception. When we return to flight, it is in style. Redbird, besides a yellower pain job, has been redesigned with larger, low, dihedral wings and lower and further back stabilators, optimized for increased stability at low speeds & altitudes. The bird, everyone agrees, is better looking. It is christened Redbird D (-C was taken by a test article identical to Redbird B that was modified into -D). Figure 5.1: Christine Freeman takes Redbird D past mach 2.5 on its first test flight. The skin of the plane is licked by flame as the atmosphere heats around it while flowing past the curved surfaces of the wings & fuselage. The flight marks Vandenberg's return to the air after the death of Samuel Greene. Figure 5.2: Freeman takes Redbird D on its second flight, rocketing to Mach 2 on a climb up past 30 km. Flights in March and August do what the -B could not: we accomplish level flight records above 20 km and in excess of Mach 2.5. Our flight reclaims the speed record for Vandenberg; Freeman is finally the fastest person in the world. We are acutely watching the progress of the USAF's X-2 program, and it is against them that we begin the race to Mach 3. As 1954 concludes, our funders agree that despite the tragic loss of '53, the X-Planes program is back on its feet. But we are struggling to break the Mach 3 record. A series of test flights proves that it is a record we will not be capable of breaking in this airframe. We retire the D temporarily to the hanger, where the mad engineers have their way with it... Figure 5.3: Freeman and Redbird D. But 1954 is not all planes. We continue to throw rockets into the Pacific, with launches in late August and mid-November. The August 22 launch is the second of the R-IIB (Editors note: remember that from a few updates ago?) Figure 5.4-6. Sounding Rocket 17 is the second flight of an R-IIB, demonstrating our ability to launch a metric ton 700 km downrange, thus concluding the certification process for the R-IIB as a Class II sounding rocket. We also dig out the last of the R-Is and strap a W-III atop of. We shoot it off to 1025 km in a landmark launch higher than has ever been done before to collect a profile of atmospheric temperature and pressure into low space. Riding along is a pair of small stowaways. A pair of mice, Jack and Caroline Evelyn Moore, ride along on the high-G ride to a million meters and back. They are safely recovered to much hullabaloo by the more sensitive side of the press and shortly our gift shop sells out of stuffed animals dolls named after the two. A unique launch of a unique rocket. Figure 5.7-8. Sounding Rocket 18. A leftover R-I stage boosts a new W-III sounding rocket as its second stage, "bumper"-style. It is now 1955. For about six months, we have been prototyping newer, lighter tanks as an alternative to the heavy components that have holding back the capabilities of our engine research. Tsiolkovsky might be twenty years dead, but his rocket equation is no less tyrannical. We take the same engine that powered the R-IIB and put it in this new, lighter, tank frame. Rather than call it the R-IIC, it's the R-III, and with its inaugural launch we begin the Class III certification process. Figures 5.9-11: Sounding Rocket 20. The February 28 launch of SR-20 is a smashing success for the new rocket, delivering a test payload to a 200 km apogee and 550 km downrange. But it's not the only new rocket to be launched that week! Monday's R-III launch is followed that Friday by SR-21, the debut of W-IIIC. W-IIIC is not much different from W-III, first launched in '53, but it is specialized for an 8-launch campaign to explore the spectroscopic environment of the upper atmosphere. The success of this flight-tested hardware lends our funders confidence in our capability to complete this campaign. Figures 5.12-13: Sounding Rocket 11. It is March 29, 1955. Christine Freeman has just strapped herself into Redbird E, an incredibly dangerous modification of Redbird D. We have procured two more of the experimental XLR-11 RM-5 motors and bolted them onto the sides of the vehicle. After months of re-plumbing and test burns, the resulting rocketplane is possibly more plane than rocket, entirely un-flight-tested, and has spent the morning being bolted to the airlaunching mother plane. Ten minutes after takeoff, it is at altitude and speed. It drops from the plane and Freeman flips the ignition toggle. Figure 5.14: Redbird E, as seen from the mother plane moments after airdrop and ignition. They light. Figures 5.15-16. Redbird E in a climb. They light, and they stay lit. She climbs to 25 km, gaining speed the whole way. As the plane approaches 1.5 kilometers per second in the low atmosphere, Freeman sets Mach 3 and 4 records, cementing her place among the record books. Figures 5.17-18. Redbird E, 10 seconds and 1 second before disintegration. The plane trembles and groans as it rips the air apart. The engines continue to burn, but as the vehicle continues its inexorable acceleration under the thrust of a combined twelve combustion chambers, a shroud of opaque plasma descends over the cockpit. Freeman is flying blind, under nearly 10 Gs of acceleration at speeds this airframe was never intended to fly. As it passes 1.6 km/s, the plane begins to bank. This is not because of Freeman's inability to hold the plane straight. Despite her lack of visual to the horizon, she is capable of negotiating the vehicle's stability through instrumented feedback alone. This is a coupling of pitch, yaw, and roll. Such linked instabilities emerge in the hypersonic regime, as shock effects begin to completely dominate flight dynamics and the atmosphere begins to disassociate during its interactions with the vehicle. Inertial effects and asymmetries in the pressure exerted by all and any surfaces become all-important. The dihedral construction of the wings, and their low-riding position, wreaks havoc on the control dynamics at these velocities. The single vertical stabilizer means that roll and yaw will be tied together more strongly than can be compensated for. The plane pitches up slightly, then it starts to roll. This roll continues, and as it does so it yaws dramatically. The yaw causes a further increase in pitch, and now Christine is tearing through the air at over a mile a second, at an angle of attack of nearly 20°. The frame of airplane crumples like a beer can under the force of the angry atmosphere. The plane ceases to be a plane and starts to be a field of debris. Figure 5.19: The cockpit of Redbird E survives the disintegration of the airframe. Freeman is knocked out from the rapid deceleration, but she is not yet dead. Unconscious, she falls 20 kilometers over the course of two minutes. Finally, she wakes up. The cockpit has no parachute, but Freeman has her wits about her and is practiced in the abort procedure for just this possibility. Figures 5.20-25. Freeman extracts herself from the cockpit and pulls her own chute. Her landing is rough, but survivable. Freeman lives to fly another day. Figures 5.26-27. Christine Freeman realizes all of her arms are broken. Editors note: this is shockingly similar to the final flight of Milburn Apt and the Bell X-2, the first flight to break Mach 3. Although his cockpit also survived the breakup of his plane after it suffered roll coupling at high velocity, he did not wake up in time to deploy his own personal parachute.

Understood. I'd like to set the default score reward for each difficulty setting. If I start a Moderate game, it'll be 1000 funds per score and 1 rep per score by default, but I can always change that (thus creating a Custom difficulty setting)

@garwel Very exciting stuff. Going to use it for HistoricalContractOverhaul. How do I change base score reward? @GAMEPARAMETERS { @Easy { @SpaceAgeChronicleSettings { @fundsPerScore:NEEDS[~HistoricalBudgets] = 1850 @repPerScore = 1.85 } } @Normal { @SpaceAgeChronicleSettings { @fundsPerScore:NEEDS[~HistoricalBudgets] = 1350 @repPerScore = 1.35 } } @Moderate { @SpaceAgeChronicleSettings { @fundsPerScore:NEEDS[~HistoricalBudgets] = 1000 @repPerScore = 1 } } @Hard { @SpaceAgeChronicleSettings { @fundsPerScore:NEEDS[~HistoricalBudgets] = 800 @repPerScore = 0.8 } } } doesn't seem to be cutting it.

Been a long time testing, but I finally realized why the downrange contracts weren't working as intended. Turns out you can't get parameter level rewards from within a VesselParameterGroup. Well, that's fixed. I think this final structure is less confusing as well (even though it's a lot hairier under the scenes!) And here's the way it tells you that you've completed a partial or stretch target. The partial rewards don't reset after a flight that didn't quite make the target, so you can't abuse those rewards by grinding with intentional sub-capable rockets. The numbers for this contract series are based on the capabilities of historical rockets, ad determined in log base 10 throw-masses [log_10 kg m]. The V-2 and its Soviet clone, the R-1, could respectively throw 1,000 kg 320 km and 815 kg 270 kg, giving them respective throw-masses of 3.2 million kg m and 2.2 million kg m. That gives us log throw-masses of 8.3 and 8.5. The first contract series asks for you to throw 800 kg 300 km, for a log throw-mass (LTM) of 8.4 The second series requires 1,000 kg thrown 700 km (LTM 9.2), right between the Soviet G-1 (LTM 8.8) and R-2 (LTM 8.9). The third series requires 2,000 kg thrown 700 km (LTM 9.1), comparable to the US Redstone (LTM 9.1) and the designed-but-unbuilt Soviet R-3A (LTM 9.2). The fourth (and, for now, final) series, reqiures 1,000 kg thrown 2,400 km, very similar to the US Jupiter, Thor, and Minuteman (although we ignore that one since it's from the early sixties, not the late 50s) and like the unbuilt Soviet G-2. All have an LTM of 9.7. Further contracts (all the way through UR-500/Proton-sized ICBMS!) have been designed in the same way but I'm not sure they have a place in a normal RP-1 career. We'll see if they make it in. Next: early satellite contracts! (And maybe more work on science sounding rockets...)

I've got a very simple contract: // ************************ PARAMETERS ************************ PARAMETER { name = VesselGroup type = VesselParameterGroup title = Build and fly a rocket PARAMETER { name = NewVessel type = NewVessel title = Launch a New Vessel } PARAMETER { name = Crewmembers type = HasCrew minCrew = 0 maxCrew = 0 title = Uncrewed } PARAMETER { name = ReachStateFlying type = ReachState situation = FLYING minRateOfClimb = 250 } PARAMETER { name = ReachStateLaunch type = ReachState minAltitude = 2500 title = Reach @minAltitude meters hideChildren = true } PARAMETER { name = ReachStateLaunch2 type = ReachState minAltitude = 5000 title = Reach @minAltitude meters hideChildren = true optional = true rewardFunds = 2500 } PARAMETER { name = ReachStateLaunch3 type = ReachState minAltitude = 10000 title = Reach @minAltitude meters hideChildren = true optional = true rewardFunds = 5000 } } As you can see, there's several optional contract which reward their own funds upon completion. And yet... ...clearly no such thing is happening. So something's broken. Is is CC? Peering through CC's code... From somewhere this thing called GenerateContract is run on a list of ConfiguredContracts. ConfiguredContract has got an Initalize(contractType) method which runs a method called GenerateParameters off of contractType which just runs ParameterFactor.GenerateParameters and makes sure it returns true. ParameterFactory.GenerateParameters calls this Generate method for each parameter that is stuck onto ContractParameter and Generate runs the SetFunds/Reputation/Science methods as provided by stock. And then in the SetState method for ContractConfiguratorParameter (which extends stock's ContractParameter it runs stock's AwardCompletion which presumably rewards these funds etc. So all the relevant stuff is in the black box that stock handles. Help! What do I do from here?

How do I suppress this log spam? (RO, 1.8 but it's persisted for several versions.)

@moguy16 Right now! The Vandenberg Program, Chapter 4. While the sounding rocket program has been maturing, the daring test pilots & bold aeronautical engineers of Vandenberg have not been at rest. Regular flights of ever more ambitious aircraft, dubbed "X-Planes" by the press in honor of the famous Bell X-1 and X-1B flights of Chuck Yaeger & Co. nearly five years prior, have been awing & deafening nearby locales since Greene & Freeman broke the sound barrier over the Pacific in the holiday season of 1951. The hard splashdown that concluded that flight put the airframe out of commission for two months. In late February 1952, our brave pilots return to the sky. Figure 4.1: Green & Freeman get the Panther 104 back in the sky and set sustained flight records for level supersonic flight above 12.5 km. While the first flight of many in 1952 for the duo, it is the last flight of the Panther. Their sophomore supersonic flight pushes the limits of the sturdy but anemically under powered vehicle as far as it could go. The four Derwent Vs that drive the vehicle are down scaled versions of the British Nene engine, itself a small and aging powerplant. Initial designs for the Panther had hoped that it would be able to be developed into a rocketplane after early jet-powered flights, but exploratory flights & simulations reveal that the vehicle is simply too heavy to be useful when taking off from a runway fully loaded with rocket fuel. The alternative is to be airlaunched from a larger vehicle, a bomber or larger transport, and the Panther is too large to be carried by any of our large planes. After the pilots' safe touchdown, the Panther is permanently hangared. Later in 1952, the Redbird debuts to much cheap champagne and expensive beer. The first true rocketplane to fly out of Vandenberg, it is powered by a pump-fed XLR-11-RM-3 and designed from the start for sustained supersonic flight. The shock cone, fully-rotating elevators, and delicate wings belie its speed-record-setting goal, but less apparent is the careful arrangement of structural elements to smoothly transition the cross-sectional area down the entire length of the vehicle--this plane is carefully area ruled. The careful design will minimize drag lost to shockwaves that form when air, moving at supersonic speeds around the curves of the vehicle, suddenly becomes subsonic again. These effects occur when the plane is not yet supersonic but close to it--and it's a critical source of drag for a vehicle trying to break the speed of sound with the least amount of effort. (Editors note: go wikipedia "area rule" if you aren't already familiar with the concept.) The extra-reinforced tanks required to pressure-feed the rocket engine are heavy, and the plane only creeps off of the runway. But we can airlaunch the compact Redbird. On July first, in view of a VSC packed with most of the Program associates, a select few reporters, and his wife & two small kids, Samuel Greene, around whom is strapped the tiny single-person Bell X-1-class cockpit, falls from the belly of a repurposed Flying Fortress. A few heartbeats pass as plume unravels from the rear of the plummeting plane and grows into a jet of flame. Seconds later, the sound arrives. Our first rocketplane begins its minute-and-a-half-long tear into the sky. The crack and echo of the sonic boom released just a few kilometers overhead rattles the windows and sets the crowd on the tarmac ahollar. The rumble rebounds back and forth off the nearby mountains as Greene's kids and coworkers cheer him on. Figure 4.2: July 1st, 1952. Samuel Greene breaks in the Redbird. Image taken from the host vehicle shortly after airdrop. Greene will gain speed and altitude before breaking the speed of sound in a climb above 11 km. Figures 4.3, 4.4: All four chambers of the XLR-11-RM-3 roar at full tilt as Redbird accelerates through clouds during a rocket-powered climb to altitude and supersonic velocity. Figure 4.5: Redbird maneuvers at the speed of sound back around to the runway after setting a 20 km altitude record. Figure 4.6: Samuel Greene succumbs to the temptation that is the unpowered transonic loop-de-loop in a priceless bespoke experimental scientific vehicle. Figure 4.7: Green glides through early-morning clouds to the north of LA on final approach to land. At the end of the month, just days before the end of the quarter, Freeman puts the vehicle through its paces herself, setting a speed record for sustained level flight and a speed record for womankind. Her historic flight is covered extensively by the Daily News and her face, beaming as the cockpit is cracked open back on the ground, finds its way onto the cover of Life later that year. (Editors note: if you weren't already familiar with her name, now would be a good time to learn more about Jacqueline Cochran. Cochran helped to found the WFTD and WASP programs and was the director of the WASP program through all of WWII. Alongside her second husband, Cochran sponsored of the Mercury 13 program, which put thirteen women through the same training as that of the Mercury 7 astronauts. A highly distinguished aviator in her own right, Cochran was the first woman to break the sound barrier in May 1953.) Vandenberg begins to garner national name recognition. The salience of the moment is not lost on our funders, who are more than happy to give alongside Freeman and her craft the press as much publicity material as they desire. These clear successes that are the third and fourth flights of the Project's X-Planes program bolster our reputation and our funding. The budget of the Program leaps by 20% heading into Q2 1952. Figure 4.8: July 29th, 1952. Christina Freeman becomes the first woman to break the speed of sound, shortly after MECO. After accelerating to 1.4 times the speed of sound, she holds Redbird in steady level flight over Mach 1.25 for a minute, demonstrating the stability of the vehicle at inarguably supersonic speeds. Several more flights of Redbird, performed amid sounding rocket launches, fill the X-Plane itinerary through the end of 1953. However, the limits of the pump-fed XLR-11 were apparent to the engineers and program directors even before Redbird took wings. It was early 1953 that discussions with Reaction Motors regarding the possibility of uprating the motor and installing a turbopump for feed began. It is in December that the experimental motor, denoted -5 of the XLR-11-RM series, is delivered and installed into the Redbird airframe, to now be known as Redbird B. Figure 4.9: April 28th, 1953: Greene rockets to another record in Redbird's third flight. Figure 4.10: While safer and more reliably available than trying to set down in the middle of California, sea-ditching Redbird would soon be abandoned as modus operani of the program, as saltwater and forces of impact invariably tended to destroy the expensive XLR-11 after each landing. Despite being much more powerful and efficient, Redbird B sheds nearly a ton of mass compared to Redbird during the renovations during refurbishment. Replacement of the heavy steel-reinforced tank by a lighter lower-pressure version is enabled by the turbopump: the engine no longer requires very-high-pressure propellant to maintain proper feed into the combustion chambers. Greene and Freeman have been alternating flights and speed records since the Redbird program began. It so happens that Freeman is the lucky winner of the shakedown -B flight, with Greene scheduled to take it to 20 km and sustained Mach 2 on its second flight. In mid-December, Freeman falls from the carrier plane and blasts into the sky. In a remarkable demonstration, she rockets to 18 km, holds in Mach 1.5 level flight, and sets the Mach 2 speed record for Vandenberg. But she is not the fastest person alive--Chuck Yeager, watching as a guest from the Vandenberg runway, retains the title he won just a week earlier, in his record-setting flight to 23 km in level Mach 2.44 on the 12th. Freeman must be content to break her own record. Figure 4.11: December 19, 1953: Christina Freeman lands the uprated Redbird B on a desert plain, concluding its inaugural flight and the seventh flight of the X-Planes program. Redbird B performed spectacularly. The reduced mass provides it with better landing characteristics and the XLR-11-RM-5 gives it much improved thrust and performance. While still a heavy bird on release, it has the thrust to climb to altitude while gaining speed--the previous engine had insufficient power to climb any faster than subsonic. It is up to Samuel Greene to put the redesigned plane through its real test, with the goal of repeating Yeager's accomplishment before the year is over. On the 29th, the weather clears, and his chance opens. The clamps let the plane go over the California hills. Greene yells a joke into the mic and the XLR-11 pumps scream to life. The rocketplane is away and climbing. Figure 4.12: December 29th, 1953. The final climb of Redbird B and Samuel Greene. The vehicle will remain powered for 6 more seconds. 30 seconds into the ascent, Greene is about to break the speed of sound. As the vehicle burns its propellant mass into exhaust, it accelerates faster and faster. HTP, >95% hydrogen peroxide, is nothing like the 5% solution sold as topical disinfectant at the drug store. It is a volatile, dangerous fluid, ready at a moment's notice to exothermically decompose into superheated steam and oxygen gas. This decomposition is of utility to the designers at Reaction Motors. Like the A-4 before them, they run HTP over a catalyst that induces the decomposition and ejects the stream of hot, dry, steam and oxygen through the blades of the turbopump turbine. This turbine drives the pumps that that force fuel out of Redbird B's tanks and into the high-pressure combustion chamber of the XLR-11-RM-5. This is standard operation, and it is how the -RM-5 achieves such remarkably improved performance over its turbopump-less little sister. This engine's HTP tank has a silicone seal which has become contaminated by a stray hair during refurbishment of the engine. The hair lay on the far side of the seal during preflight preperations, but the vibrations of ignition and sustained combustion have worked the hair around the seal and into contact with the HTP. That hair is enough. Within the tank, HTP decomposes into H2O and O2; the heat and oxygen instantly ignite the hair, and the pressure and heat cause the rest of the tank's contents to decompose a moment later. The shockwave destroys the tank and travels up through the HTP plumbing and into the turbopump reaction chamber. The turbopump stator is shattered; moments later, shards of turbopump perforate the conrol surfaces of the empennage and fly into each of the four combustion chambers. The engine explodes. Greene is still accelerating, but he is accelerating the way Newton demands--ballistically, on an unpowered course to the ground. Redbird has not broken the speed of sound, and the hills below are fewer than 4 km away. Greene has insufficent energy to negotiate a landing in the almost-fully-loaded Redbird. He does not have an appropiate lift-to-drag ratio to achieve level flight before he encounters the ground. For two and a half minutes he struggles with the controls, trying to retain sufficent speed while pulling up. It is not his skill that is lacking, it is physics that is against him, and the heavy, highly-wing-loaded plane that he is trapped in. He cannot do it. He falls. Figure 4.13: December 29th, 1953, 1616 hours. The engine has exploded. He dies. Figure 4.14: December 29th, 1953, 1619 hours. Remains of Vandenberg X-Plane Program Flight 8. And Vandenberg mourns.

Just want to be the second to chime in about Gaganyaan. It's a beautiful capsule, a fairly unique design, and would be a lovely addition to round the mod out nicely.

Might be worth posting your tech tree via a slew of screenshots. My intuition is that you might have a bad install of DMagicOrbitalScience. My unrelated advice is that you'd probably enjoy Kerbalism with ROKerbalism configs. Among other things, it lets you integrate whichever experiments you want into any probe core you want.

Shoot that's an awesome model!! You should get RealPlumes on it! I love the CZ-5, fantastic rocket.

Is there anything special I need to be able to do to use the parameter-level rewards? While the parameter is being properly satisfied, parameter-level `rewardFunds` isn't being given.

Repo & installation instructions: https://github.com/nepphhh/HistoricalContractOverhaul I'm working on a total revamp of RP-1 contracts and progression. Includes full Kerbalism and KerbalismContracts integration, new art, and a very well-tested early game experience that much improves on the base RP-1 experience. All contracts are grounded in historical missions but written very flexibly so you can complete them however you want. However, this level of groundedness guides the player through an alt-history progression far more than RP-1 does with its zany caveman orbital contraptions and mega-bumper sounding rockets. I've got overhauled satellite contracts too; they'll be up soon. Right now this is only through First Orbit. Pretty soon I'll also let you research two techs simultaneously and give you more granular pad upgrades than what RP-1 currently offers.

Any interest in developing the inflatable mission module or single-person bubble copula as seen in this image? https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F1ZSy4jk.jpg&hash=d4f1b8274bbd5d3cc9c5e85f0c0f5776

These are beautiful! What is the license on this mod? Folllower #8 for this thread

@Zeiss Ikon Might be helpful.

You can start collecting science in the flight scene as well? Wrt your temp/baro taking a while... are you sure you're not running the stock Kerbalism configs instead of the ROKerbalism configs you should be using?

@CobaltWolf Can we get a look at those tasty, tasty strapon tanks as they'd be used in a build? I'm having a hard time visualizing it from your descriptions alone (I swear I'm not just making an excuse to get more sweet sweet BDB indev renders out of you)

Can you submit it as a PR to RO official? If you don't want to or want to learn how, I can.

Respect, king. Put what's important first.

Incredible