jimmymcgoochie

Look on the RO/RP-1 GitHub guides, it’ll tell you there somewhere. Realistically though, I’d say 16GB RAM at least, more if you use higher resolution textures or a chunky parts mod like FASA. RP-1 works fine in KSP 1.11.1, the only real issues I’ve had so far were the broken drag cubes for the LEM (mentioned above, solved by just deleting the part), missing EVA chute and jetpack (due to 1.11 making them separate parts, easily fixed by adding them to a list) and no propellant for said jetpack with RO Kerbalism installed (disable the fuel patches for it so it runs on stock EVA propellant and it’s fine); other than that it’s been more or less plain sailing. That said, I thing 1.10 would be a better choice if you wanted to move on from 1.8.1, the features that 1.11 added aren’t useful in RP-1 and are more of a hindrance than a help in some cases e.g. the jetpack issues above.

Have you tried adding a pair of the Mk-33’s tail fins as forward canards? It seemed to greatly improve its flight performance when I tried that, set the “rudders” to act as pitch control instead then watch your CoL and CoM stay in the right places.

Frame rates in KSP can be affected by your CPU just as much as your GPU, or even more. A big, complex craft low in the atmosphere requires a lot of physics calculations to model it correctly to see if e.g. something would break off, lift/drag /thrust and so on, and since it can only run this on a single processor thread your CPU can easily become the bottleneck. Smaller craft or those with fewer parts are better in terms of physics performance. Turn some of scatterer’s features e.g. the fancy ocean stuff down or off, reduce reflections in the main menu settings or use lower resolution terrain textures and you might see an improvement in your game’s performance.

Who exactly is this addressed to?

No. No. And once again, no. This is KERBAL Space Program. No realistic anythings are required in the stock game or as DLCs. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again even though I’ve been playing RSS/RO/RP-1 for the last four months now. RSS is already a mod, is widely used and well supported by related stuff like RO/RP-1 and also by both visual mods and mods which add more bodies (moons, Trojans, long period planetoids etc.). There’s also KSRSS to combine the real planets with Kerbal scale. Squad should be adding features that benefit as many players as possible, not catering to the relatively small group who want to play Human Space Program. Just like every other time someone tries to suggest this, it isn’t going to happen. Use the mods like everyone else.

How about a mod list? It’s going to be very difficult indeed to just guess a mod with no context. Mod list, KSP version and the full log files please, see: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/

I suppose I should finish that Moon mission, Arkady and Gloria have been out there for a while now... The first rendezvous wasn't spectacularly accurate, but 600 metres is still perfectly doable with the EVA jetpack and the relative velocity was pretty low. Unfortunately, all that waiting around hadn't helped with the whole "land in Mare Fecunditatis" thing: The dark area with the marker in the middle is Mare Fecunditatis, where I'm supposed to be landing, but it's considerably out of plane right now. The good news is there's still a good amount of fuel in the transfer stage... One plane change and deorbit burn later and the lander was hurtling at terrifying speed just over the surface. I spent a very large proportion of the braking burn actually gaining height in order to avoid hitting the terrain at lethal velocity, and to manage the landing site too. With the SCANsat biome overlay switched on, the target biome is the yellow bit. Landing is a balancing act- slow down too much and you descend more rapidly, but burn upwards to reduce your descent rate and you're losing delta-V to gravity. This design has excess fuel for landing though so I can afford to waste a bit in order to land in the right place at a safe speed. Landed with ample fuel to spare. The ground around here is nice and flat with a slope angle of less than one degree for much of it, so there was no danger of the lander tipping over this time. It's the 18th of May, 1961, so there's a bit of a gap since the last Moon landing as I had to focus on other missions instead (and they're pretty expensive!). The usual Moon landing activities followed- plant flag, salute flag, get picture of Earth, get science and stuff... But this time I had to stay on the surface for 36 hours in total for the contract. And once the contract had ticked off its required time, it was time to head back into orbit and attempt a rather tricky out of plane rendezvous with a vessel going at one mile per second. The trajectory I ended up with was far from ideal- very sub-orbital, coming in at a relative speed of over 600 metres per second and with barely enough fuel to make it work: But I made it work. More or less... It was at this point that the lander's fuel ran out completely, making actually docking the two vessels together rather challenging, but I got there in the end through just ramming them together until they stuck. With no fuel left, the lander will continue to orbit the Moon; this is fine though as there's a TV camera on board which can continue to gather science until the fuel cells run out of fuel to keep the batteries charged. The return trip was uneventful, right up until I separated the service module too late and ended up with it stuck to the back of the pod: Once that had exploded away, everything went fine; well, except for the whole "landing in the middle of the Sahara desert" thing, but I'm sure we can scramble some helicopters to pick up the pod and its crew. A very successful mission indeed- huge contract payouts, plenty of science and some substantial retirement delays; over 2000 days for Arkady, a new record! So of course, I accepted the same contracts again, but this time they're worth even more than before. This has led to a rather unusually large surplus of funds: And now back to the simulator (sorry...) for a fully integral tanked version of Red Cottage, named Red Bungalow: 75 ton payload to LEO confirmed. The tooling costs for this are a bit steep, but I can reuse the same parts for an integral tanked version of White Cumulus to put double the payload into orbit so it's money well spent. After testing out the newly named White Stratus with a payload of lead ballast, it was time to test it with something more realistic- a trio of imaging sats, which in this case were built to deploy into near geostationary orbits. I have since discovered that you can actually aim a dish antenna at a specific target rather than just at Earth, so I won't actually be doing this in reality, but the test is still valid. At close to 100 metres high, this thing is taller than the VAB! Final scores for today. More contract sats are rolling out; these will be some of the last Green Condors and Grey Toruses (Torii?) because I decided to make fully integral structure versions of them to reduce the build cost and time; they had more than enough delta-V as it was so it makes no difference to their performance. More on that in the next update. Yellow Doughnut is my Moon "base", currently at the end of the build queue but liable to be moved up since the interplanetary probes won't be going anywhere for a year or so. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/12d3Ka1 Coming up next time: More rocket redesigns, more simulations and some waterfalls.

Swim. Around Kerbin. Swim, at the heady speed of 0.8 metres per second (or even less once physics warp messes it up) around an entire planet!? Do you have 17.4 days free to continuously hold down W just to swim the circumference of Kerbin, or considerably more to actually swim the whole way around without touching land? Because I certainly don't...

Alt+F12 (or escape > version information in the bottom right of the pause menu) > cheats > set orbit, you can set most of the parameters there and it’ll put your vessel where you said. There’s also a set position mode in (I think) 1.9 and later which can also put you at any co-ordinates and any altitude you like, though it’s best to be careful when moving to somewhere near the surface as you can accidentally end up underground, which caused many explosions and no more craft...

I’m not really sure you’re on topic for this (three year old) thread, but CKAN should install Kerbalism perfectly well in just about any recent version of KSP- you may have to search in ‘all’ rather than ‘compatible’ to find it as it hasn’t had an update in a while, but it still works in 1.11.1. Make sure you get the right config for it too: the full config does everything- science, radiation, life support, part failures- while the science only config just does science and the RO Kerbalism config is intended for use with RO/RSS, not the stock solar system. (Unlike when the OP originally asked this question, today there is a proper Kerbalism config for RO and if you’re using RO/RP-1 then I recommend it for a more realistic experience, with science experiments that actually take some time to run, proper life support and radiation effects too; no part failures though, that’s covered by test flight/test lite instead.)

I’m going to say it now- don’t go for RSS/RO unless you’re well and truly familiar with KSP. It’s a very steep learning curve and you will definitely need to do a lot of work- reading guides, watching tutorial videos etc.- to make the most of it. If you haven’t even landed on the Mun yet, you’re not ready. Not even close. Start again in career (or science) mode in the stock system, use a minimal number of mods- graphics and tools are OK, but go easy on parts mods as they can just add confusing clutter and slow your load times- and only once you’ve landed Kerbals on the Mun and Minmus and probes on at least one other planet should you consider trying something a bit more challenging like sending a crewed mission to Duna and probes to land on Jool’s moons. You don’t have to land on everything before stopping a particular play through, set yourself some specific goals and don’t be afraid to leave it when you complete those goals; there’s no fixed end point in KSP! If you’re looking for parts to fill certain gaps in the stock part lineup then there are a number of options- my personal favourites are Restock and the Near Future series but there are many more to choose from if you don’t like that particular style. In terms of graphics mods, you’ll probably need EVE and scatterer plus a config mod like AVP or Spectra (I personally like Spectra better), then there’s distant object enhancement, planet shine and engine lighting to name just a few. Tools like MechJeb can make your life much easier, but there are several that I recommend for specific things- gravity turn to launch your rockets efficiently and consistently, stage recovery to recover the dropped stages and get refunds for them, Astrogator for when you’re going to other planets and where can I go to see if you can get there in the editor, and Bon Voyage so your rovers can drive themselves. You could even try a different tech tree that, for example, puts probes first and crewed capsules later, or adding a mod for life support, part failures or a different science system (Kerbalism does all three of those) to add more of a challenge. If you want to try a new solar system later on, there are plenty of options out there- additions to the stock system like OPM and MPE (AVP works with OPM but spectra does not, keep that in mind); more stock(ish) scale solar systems like Beyond Home, Galileo’s planet pack and/or Grannus expansion; and larger scale systems like JNSQ or the rescale mod to resize the stock system. RSS and RO are very challenging and it’s best to build up to them by trying gradually more difficult playthroughs with the difficulty settings turned up and/or more mods. Alternatively, try some of the many and widely varied challenges on the forums- from the lightest and cheapest rocket to orbit to landing on every planet and moon possible to using the KSC as an obstacle course, there’s going to be something that you like the looks of and which will challenge your creativity and improve your skills one way or another. RO and RP-1 is not for beginners; trust me, I’ve tried it twice- the first time I tried, I was still fairly new to KSP, the experience was horrible and I lasted less than an hour before giving up; the second time around, over a year later, I actually understood how to do things in KSP a lot better and it has been an enjoyable, but very challenging, experience so far. Jumping from Mun flyby to RSS/RO is like learning to walk and then immediately trying to run a marathon. Take your time, you’ll learn much more that way and it will be a more enjoyable experience when you eventually build up to it.

The version of procedural parts for 1.8.1 also works just fine in 1.11.1, I’ve been using it for over a month without incident.

Set her to female then. Check if you have any female Kerbals available to hire in the Astronaut Complex then copy their gender code over to Val, that should ensure that it’s correct and will work. There’s also the less hacky way of doing it- sack the male Val and then use the in-game cheat menu (alt+F12 or escape > version information) to create a new, female Val with the Veteran and Badass traits to match the original.

How and where does it freeze? Does it stop when the loading bar reaches “expansion loading complete”, with the little loading icon with the planets, on the main menu? Can you hear the game’s theme tune playing? A screenshot would be useful here. Check your RAM use, you might be running out of RAM which will cause things to grind to a halt; close everything else but KSP and see if that helps. If that doesn’t help, try checking the game files (if you got it through Steam) or uninstalling and reinstalling the game as you might just have a bad installation.

I’ve had no issues running visual mods in 1.11, if you get the most up to date versions of EVE, scatterer and whatever configuration you want (stock visual enhancements (SVE), spectra, astronomers visual pack (AVP) etc. or just the EVE default config) you should be fine. CKAN is good for finding and installing dependencies, correct versions etc. and generally makes modded life much easier than doing it by hand.

Check the save file you’re using, there should be a male/female parameter for every Kerbal; if Val is set to female then it’s just TU doing something odd, but if she’s set to male then try changing it to female.

You... you mentioned me... (ok, that turned out slightly bigger than I thought...)

I just realised that this could be a nifty little addition to RO/RP-1, given the history of the real thing. Maybe I could find someone to do that job, or try to learn the dark magic of RO/RP-1 configurations and do it myself. If anyone happens to have done that already, please share!

Will either of these do? Mk33 is very large, X-20 is very small.

Yes, they work in 1.11.1; I’ve been using RSS in 1.11.1 for some time and got KCC and the extension mod working there too when I tried them. Just because it says it’s compatible up to 1.8.1 doesn’t mean it immediately breaks in a newer version, it’s just not officially supported there.

I don’t mean to sound rude, but that plane is ugly. Huge engines dangling off the back, excessively long and with some really weird wings scattered along its length; I’m not surprised it doesn’t fly well. The weight is pushed too far back with all the engines and most of the fuel in the rear third of the plane, causing it to flip so it travels heavy end first. The middle wings’ control surfaces will do nothing for you except a little roll control as they’re right in the middle of the plane, so will exert absolutely no force for pitching, and one tiny tail fin is probably not enough for something that long. You seem to be trying to do too many things at once with this plane- is it intended for passenger transport, payload deployment, both, something completely different..? My advice is to chop several of those fuel tanks out, move the jet engines much further forward and try to balance the mass better by repositioning the fuel tanks and passenger cabins/cargo bays so that the centre of mass is ahead of the centre of lift, regardless of if the tanks are full or empty, then configure the fuel priority to keep it there. Specialise for a single purpose e.g. carrying passengers into space, rather than trying to do too many things in one design (you could make a separate cargo variant by swapping the passenger cabins for cargo bays later). You should also make sure that your landing gear isn’t too far back otherwise you’ll never be able to get off the ground before running out of runway and landing will also be tricky.

Dun dun duuuuuunnnnnnnn! Now I have to re-read the whole story from the start again (what a shame )

Yet again, lots of simulations in this report and not that many "real" launches. First up, a test run with that Moon base and my latest heavy lift rocket: Launch successful, but the game decided to close itself before I got all the way to the Moon; there was enough fuel in it though. With close to 2 million funds lying around, it was time to spend most of it. As usual, on KCT points for R&D: A simulated landing on Ceres didn't quite go to plan, but not just because of poor piloting... Now for an illustration of the tyranny of the rocket equation: A tiny probe, weighing about half a ton in total, requires nearly 700 tons of rocket underneath it to get to Jupiter and stay there. Getting into an orbit is more than feasible, but getting into an orbit that might eventually meet up with one of those moons will take a bit more work; there's also the danger of Jupiter's mighty radiation belts which could fry the probe's electronics, though I don't know yet how RO and Kerbalism work in that respect... Now for a real launch- Yellow Scone 3 heads up to make its way to the Moon, where it will be joined in due course by Yellow Crumpet 4. Before the Earth rotated back around to allow Yellow Crumpet 4 to launch after it, there was just enough time to launch the first Grey Burger satellites with the ludicrous planetary photography experiment on it: More about these later... Now it's time for the crew of two to head out to the Moon. There are two contracts (still) waiting out there for them to complete so this mission could be very profitable indeed if I actually complete them this time. It was only after the second Grey Burger sat launched that I realised the fatal flaw in the design... Data is generated at 30kB/s, but transmitted to the regular ground stations at a paltry 500B/s meaning the ~19 terabytes of data will take literally centuries to get sent back... Clearly this design is non-viable, so I have two options- use a sample return capsule to physically return the data in a science core's hard drive, or launch with two S-band dishes to a near-geostationary orbit and transmit the data back at full speed that way. Right now I'm looking at sending three of these sats up on one single, very large, launch rocket and then deploying them with a relatively even spacing to try and ensure they all have a signal all of the time. There's some kind of trickery that can be done with omni antennas using X-band communications, but that would require a proper geostationary communications network first which I'm not particularly interested in making. Orange Canyon V arrived at Venus, but like its predecessor the positioning of the planets is completely wrong to deploy the lander- it would land in the dark and with Venus blocking the orbiter's signal back to Earth for most of the time it was overhead and able to relay- so it'll hang onto it for a while until the situation improves. In the meantime, the orbit covers space high and space low so there's plenty of science to be gained. And the Venus orbital probe contract completes too: Now here's where things get a bit technical, as I delve into the wonderful world of fuel tanks... Here's the Red Cottage launch rocket I made a couple of days ago, complete with 75t reference payload: And here's the same rocket, but with the balloon tanks swapped to integral structures: The delta-V goes down a bit due to the higher dry mass and reduced fuel capacity that integral tanks have, but the cost also comes down a bit and the build time drops by a third; the change in total mass is irrelevant at this point as tweaking the utilisation of the balloon tanks would wipe that out. Integral structure tanks are a bit cheaper and a lot faster to build, but they hold less fuel and are heavier which reduces delta-V. For this particular rocket it's unlikely to make a huge difference to its capacity but will make a big difference to its utility by shortening the build times noticeably. Now for something even bigger- the brand new White Stratus B, my biggest launcher to date! The original, with reference payload of 155t on the top: And three variations with the (red and white) balloon tanks gradually swapped out for (black and white) integral tanks: Swapping all the tanks, the price reduction is small but noticeable, but the build time reduction is pretty dramatic- from 109 days to just under 63. Unfortunately the delta-V also drops by 400m/s meaning the pure integral tank version wouldn't make it to orbit with this payload. Solutions include using a balloon tank for the second stage only (makes a small difference to delta-V and cost but a bigger difference to build time), stretching the stages to maximise burn time (but this reduces TWR and so increases gravity losses), using the newly researched J-2S configuration for the second stage engines (no down sides to that, it's cheaper and has better performance in all respects than the current config) or reducing the payload mass. This last point is particularly interesting, as while 155t for 87k funds and 109 days is good, launching, say, 145 tons for 74k funds and 62 days is much better in terms of cost per ton and build time per ton. I have ample funds available to tool any combination of tanks I like for these rockets, so will do some additional work to see what's the best combination and move forward with that in future. It might also be worth reworking some existing rockets to reduce their build cost and times, especially the Green Condor and Grey Torus which get launched regularly. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/rl9dYAn Coming up next time: I need to finish that Moon mission! It's half way through (the crew are orbiting the Moon and so is the lander) and I got distracted by fuel tanks and data transmission rates elsewhere...

@BadOaks Drop some of the visual mods and reduce your textures/settings as low as you can tolerate, it can make a big difference to performance. When I tried to run RSS with every visual mod I could find and everything at maximum detail it caused me issues with running out of RAM (even with 32GB of it available!) but downgrading some visual mods, dropping others and turning stuff off for scatterer etc. brought the load down substantially and it runs much better now.

After spending most of the weekend working on a new series of launch rockets, it just occurred to me that maybe using the most expensive type of fuel tank everywhere might not be the best idea. Further investigation has revealed that while a lightweight, high capacity balloon tank gives the best delta-V, it comes with a higher cost than a more traditional integral structure tank as well as a substantially longer build time; swapping balloon tanks to integral structures knocked about 500m/s in total from my current biggest launcher (out of a total of just over 9km/s, because RSS RP-1) but reduces the cost by about 20% and the build time by over a third once the tanks are tooled. How exactly I’ve managed to get as far as I have without it all going horribly wrong is beyond me...