jimmymcgoochie

I like the lightning, but it isn't tied to the cloud positions so I sometimes see lightning flashes in clear blue sky. I also think that there's too much green in the atmosphere, particularly at the terminator; seeing the sky turn yellow/orange/red is fine, but I don't remember ever seeing a green sky during a sunrise or sunset!

I’d say about 20 would be enough. Through the judicious application of Science! to determine *ahem* optimal genetic mixing , a sufficiently genetically distinct population could be created to remain viable into the future. Another option is frozen embryos, which would be defrosted as needed to maintain genetic diversity for potentially centuries. Combine the two and you don’t need a huge initial population, just enough to simultaneously look after all those baby Kerbals and keep the colony running at the same time.

Task manager regularly underestimates how much RAM KSP is using by up to 10GB for me based on how much RAM is in use vs what it says KSP is using; I'm genuinely amazed that you even got RSS/RO to work with only 8GB without the whole game stuttering to a halt when you launch anything bigger than a large firework.

I still say SCANsat is better as it provides permanent maps with the anomaly locations on them while scanning in the background (plus you get more science by doing the scans and usable maps of terrain and biomes). In my experience KerbNet isn’t nearly as good and the odds of spotting an anomaly are pretty low for most probe cores.

You’re running far too many mods for just 8GB of RAM- I have trouble running RSS with 32GB of RAM! I can’t see the logs properly (they never work on a tablet) but FAR looks broken and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were just running out of memory. You should probably cut down on the mods you’re using- especially memory-heavy stuff like BDB- to improve overall performance and loading times, and I suggest creating a completely clean install of KSP then redownloading your mods into that.

A lot of things could be going on here, can you provide some screenshots of your rocket in the VAB and the launchpad with the MechJeb delta-V readout in both and the MJ ascent guidance window open in flight? A full mod list would also help, as would some log files in case there’s something going wrong inside the game:

There’s one per planet/moon, but their positions are randomly generated for each save game so they won’t be in the same place twice. The tech bonus is particularly useful if you’re playing with an extended tech tree mod as it’s unlikely you’ll have any nodes left in the stock tech tree by the time you start going to other planets. They can be very hard to just stumble across by accident, so I suggest you use the SCANsat mod to detect them from orbit and then help to hunt them down on the surface; the anomaly scanners also find the other Easter eggs in the game such as the [REDACTED] and [SPOILERS] on Duna and the on Kerbin and the Mun.

@Wubslinyou do know that the feature you’re asking for already exists, right? When in map view, click the little pinkish icon at the bottom left of the screen and it opens the maneuver widget instead; you can switch between nodes, adjust nodes precisely either by using a snap-value version of the node gizmo in map view (it can snap to values from mm/s to km/s) or by typing in the numbers manually for all three axes, as well as moving the node around your orbit and moving forward/back orbits. Very helpful for adjusting your trajectory when the node is far away from what you’re looking at, just be careful not to click the same button too many times as they have a habit of expanding until they block off all the other buttons if you do that. There’s a mod that can change how nodes operate, changing the normal/anti normal adjusters so that it changes the inclination without affecting apo/periapsis, but I can’t remember what it’s called. I’d like to see a small selection of auto-node options added as a stock feature- things like circularising, Hohmann transfers within the same SOI and inclination changes would be particularly useful. Select a target e.g. another craft or a moon as your target and clicking it again would offer you the option to create a node to match its inclination, intercept the target etc.

There’s a big difference between “a” solar system, and “the” Solar system; one is a generic term for any star and its planetary system, the other is specifically talking about Sol and it’s planets a.k.a. our own Sun and planets including Earth. I tend to use Kerbol rather than “The Sun” because the Sun (Sol) is a different star; this has been influenced lately by playing RSS/RP-1 so the sun actually is the Sun.

I just use MechJeb’s advanced transfer maneuver planner mode to do all the calculations for me, make a nice pork chop plot to show the combinations of time until burn, time to destination and delta-V required and then pick what transfer I want to go for; sometimes there are high-energy transfers that are much faster to get to the target at a cost of a bit more fuel, which work well if you want a probe flyby, or you can pick the ideal point to launch that will save every drop of fuel by using the most efficient timing for your transfer, both with and without considering the capture burn. A few clicks and it’s all done for you, node created exactly where and when it’s needed plus MJ can execute the node for you with reasonable accuracy (longer burns are inherently less accurate no matter who does them).

Try a different file sharing site. You’re probably getting an error or exception when the game tries to load which is causing this problem, but without the logs (and a mod list) it’s impossible to say what’s wrong. You’d be better off starting a new thread with your issue than resurrecting this one, it’s several years old and is referring to a much older version of KSP so is unlikely to be caused by the same thing, plus it can be hard to keep track of what people are talking about if there are several different discussions on the same thread at different times.

Deploy a rescue mission, with enough fuel on board so you don’t need to deploy another rescue mission to rescue the first rescue mission. Cheat a rescue mission out to the pod instead. Cheat the pod back to Kerbin’s surface and recover it. Destroy the pod in the tracking station and let the Kerbal respawn (if that’s switched on) or just “RIP Stranded Kerbal, Press F, much sad” etc.

Since I started this thread, I’ve got as far as designing and testing my Moon landing system using a Gemini pod and a lander with lunar orbit rendezvous, and have a possible 1960 landing opportunity if I ignore everything else for a year, or 1961 if I do other missions to other places. I’m also now running that career in KSP 1.11.1, which is mostly fine except for the EVA jetpacks being broken due to the separate jetpack part not being recognised properly by configs written for the old system. That’s what happens when you upgrade to an unsupported version of the core game with a huge and complex set of mods, but I’m quite surprised that that’s the only real issue I’ve had after the initial configuration problems were ironed out within a day. Hopefully the next chapter of Audacity won’t take 3 months like the last one did!

Ooh, double bill! edit: I recently discovered that the fifth or sixth configs for the RD-107/108 have a failure rate of 0.06%- yes, 6% of 1%- with no data units at all. edit2: That inclination change though... Why change inclination AWAY from the station? Just dock with the station, do that contract, then go off and change inclination for the other contract, instead of moving to a retrograde orbit at a high fuel cost then trying to change back to where you were before for even more fuel?

Unless you have a massive tablet you won't be able to fit all the necessary information- navball, altimeter, staging, the info bar, the controls themselves and of course the little Kerbal portraits- on the screen, whilst still actually being able to see your rocket and where you're going, and if you do have a massive tablet then it's one step below a small laptop and you'd be better off connecting a keyboard and possibly a mouse (or a keyboard with a trackpad-type device), by which point you're just remote connecting from one computer to another. Now think what happens when you get a bit of an internet hiccup at exactly the wrong moment and your huge, expensive Duna mission that you spent ages working on crashes, burns up or misses its capture burn entirely. How are you meant to control a vessel's movement and rotation in three axes with two thumbs? It's tricky enough to do with a proper keyboard, a console controller can more or less manage it but a touchscreen? The work required to design a whole new UI and control system just for a very niche application like this isn't worth the effort; I'd much rather see the development focus on enhancing and expanding the new EVA construction system, maybe by building parts in situ using ore, continued part revamps or something completely new and unexpected.

They can be assigned in action groups I think, for things like throttle limiters or Breaking Ground robotic parts if you have that DLC.

Scrapped a new vessel without it ever being used- despite putting a lot of hours into getting the design right, advances in technology (hydrolox engines with ~100s higher ISP) have rendered it obsolete. Hydrolox comes with its own issues- low density requiring large tanks, fuel and oxidiser boil off even with the maximum possible tank insulation- but the tradeoff is a much lighter vessel which means more delta-V across all stages, a more reliable engine that can restart twice as many times and more margin for error during the planned mission- to the Moon! Now all I need to do is fix those pesky jetpacks, otherwise getting in and out of the lander in space will be a bit tricky.

It might be your settings- check what patched conics setting you’re using (I prefer dynamic mode) and if you have “always show closest approach” turned on.

I don’t often do ISRU mining, but when I do I make the mining rig itself have all the drills and converters as well as enough fuel tankage to fill up the tankers; the tankers themselves are just a big fuel tank with some rocket-related gubbins on each end to make them fly, and wheels on the bottom in case of inaccurate landings. After trying to assemble a very modular mining system on the Moon which slowly tore itself apart with terrible frame rates, I now use Simple Logistics for everything to save the hassle of precision landings and surface docking-grappling/KIS and KAS shenanigans which also tended to break stuff when I connected/disconnected the KAS hoses. Now my mining operations can be as simple as landing the tanker, transferring fuel with a few clicks and flying away again while the miner keeps on mining.

Right out of the gate, a few more KCT points and an upgrade to the Tracking Station used up most of my remaining funds: That upgrade was possibly the quickest one yet, taking just a few days. A one-off mission called Green Albatross- a modified Green Condor with a biome scanner on it- went up into a fairly high polar orbit of Earth for a contract, which due to the wide FOV on the scanner and the 2500km circular orbit covered the required 80% of the Earth's surface in only a few days. Big fairing covering the second stage because MLI will definitely catch fire and explode otherwise. It was also the first time I've used a hydrolox engine in a real launch; it performed exactly as expected and still had a generous fuel margin left when it had reached its final orbit. Now let's play a game: name that speck! Is it a) Ceres, b) Vesta, c) the Moon, d) Venus or e) just part of the skybox? As the flyby continued, I checked just how much delta-V was needed to capture into an orbit- a little over 10km/s it turns out. Another flyby contract completed, more science data gathered, now the contracts system wants an orbiter, lander and rover on Ceres, which will go in the 'never gonna happen' bin with the same contracts for Mercury. There are better places to go which are also easier to get to, like... Venus! I had a crewed mission on the launchpad when a notification came up about science coming back from space high over Venus and had to switch to Orange Saucer 1 and do its mission instead. The design was flawed, as the failed launch of Orange Saucer 2 revealed, with the thrust from the SRB braking stage misaligned with the probe's COM resulting in an uncontrolled spin and the loss of most of the braking delta-V; however the probe's own thrusters were enough to capture into a very elliptical orbit and some fine-tuning allowed the lander to be dropped. This is November 1959, a decade ahead of the first real landing on Venus by Venera 7. The heat warnings are nothing to do with residual heat from re-entry and entirely due to ambient heat from the near 700K temperatures on the surface, even at night near the poles. With the orbiter, atmospheric probe and lander contracts combined this mission pulled in almost 3 million funds! Unfortunately, the orbit I ended up with meant that the lander touched down in a position which limited the communications back to Earth- it needed the orbiter probe overhead to relay the signal, but for part of the time the orbiter was in position Venus was between the orbiter and Earth plus the elliptical orbit meant that the orbiter was racing past at considerable speed so the window to transmit was short. Most of the science got transmitted before the batteries ran out, I think... Close to 900 science so far, with more still trickling in as the orbiter continues to gather data long after the lander died. Now we come to one of the weirdest contract completions yet: So apparently just leaving this thing parked on the launchpad for a week completed that one? But the two previous missions that spent over a week in space each did not? Liftoff went as planned, but something wasn't right with the ascent trajectory almost from the start of the gravity turn- it was going far too low far too soon- then a booster failed, then this happened: With no other option available the crew bailed out, but things kept going wrong- Arkady simply didn't have the option to deploy his parachute, even though he clearly had one in his inventory, while Alexei's parachute did open only for him to be snatched by the Kraken and smashed into the ocean at a significant percentage of light speed. I was prepared to accept the launch failure with the crew parachuting down into the ocean, but two separate game fails after bailing out is just not on. I don't like to do this, but... REVERT! Everything worked fine the second time round. It's possible that Arkady's Making History-spec Vintage suit is to blame for the parachute weirdness, however neither of them had a functioning jetpack despite my best efforts to patch that so their EVAs were spent clinging on to the doors for fear of floating away like Ann Horton in the previous flight. Once their crew science experiments and orbital flight contract were completed, they headed back down with an exploding heatshield as the only concern; my own fault for not putting enough ablator on it and something I'll fix for future missions. And then I did it again... I'm sorry, but when someone dangles nearly 5 million funds in front of me for something that seems fundamentally easy (build a "station" and crew it for a month) I just can't resist... That screenshot is after I started building an unlimited class launchpad with no mass limit at a cost of 2 million funds. Six million will buy A LOT of KCT points especially with 50 freebies for returning a thousand science: The R&D upgrade completed at some point too so I blew all the science I had saved up on a wide selection of new nodes including station parts, two blue-sky nodes, better rockets of all varieties and some probe-related parts too. Next up is Blue Nougat 2, another sample return mission to the Moon: Another dicey landing running on fumes, but this time in a brand new biome- Mare Orientalis. This is good news as the lander part of the mission can stay behind and gather more data while the return part brings back the sample, but unfortunately the landing was near the beginning of the Lunar night so it'll be almost 2 weeks before it gets any power. As with the previous mission, returning wasn't too difficult with a decent fuel reserve (even though I forgot to decouple the drop tanks for quite a while after they were empty ) but the invisible ocean and burning avionics happened again; maybe focussing on the same mission when it goes that far from Earth is tripping something up somewhere? Sample returned, contract completed and the science gained was immediately spent on two more nodes- improved scrubbers and improved nuclear engines including the first NERVA rockets: 60 ignitions, almost 900s ISP and 250kN of thrust, but it weighs about 12 tons and liquid hydrogen has terrible fuel density and boils off ridiculously fast. I don't know if nuclear engines are actually any good in RP-1 or if high efficiency hydrolox is the way to go- will be interesting to find out. Ending like I started- not a lot of funds or science but lots going on in the background including several hundred more KCT points spent. The upgrade to the Astronaut Complex kicked in just in time to have one of my veteran pilots trained and ready for the next Gemini flight along with a newbie engineer, who would otherwise have to repeat the Gemini mission training as it expires in only a few days. It's December 1959 and I feel fairly confident that a crewed Moon landing will happen, if not in 1960, then in 1961- all the necessary elements have been designed, tested and are in the build queue, now all I have to do is sort out the crew training and decide who gets to make those famous first small steps. I also have until then to fix those pesky jetpacks! Full album: https://imgur.com/a/adaEAsW Coming up next time: I don't actually know. Between spending a slightly scary amount of time playing Factorio at the weekend (wow, that game sucks you in and time passes at a terrifying rate) and spending most of this evening testing out various visual mods for RSS (EVO is like RSSVE but much more detailed and prettier, but has a couple of issues around city lights that I don't like and will probably disable those; Katniss' Cape Canaveral looks good especially with the extension mod that adds more buildings and such, but I didn't like how the stock space centre was just stuck down in the middle of the Kennedy Space Centre's car park so I dropped that one) I haven't actually done all that much KSPing since these screenshots were uploaded on Saturday afternoon. More Gemini flights, another sample return and another rover on the Moon will most likely feature, plus I'll be culling a load of old probes whose missions are completed in an attempt to resolve load time and performance issues by cutting down on the size of the save file a bit. EDIT: I just realised that I accidentally deleted all the screenshots from the first ~38 or so of these posts along with the old 1.8.1 instance of KSP that I was using before updating to 1.11.1, and of course I realised this after emptying the recycle bin too . At least they're still on Imgur, but not all of the screenshots I take end up on those albums...

I installed the 64k version of EVO but had some issues with it; uninstalling RSSVE fixed some of those, but a few have persisted: City lights at Cape Canaveral. There were also city textures during the day with RSSVE installed, but not any more- I'm not sure if that's intended or not. This very conspicuous grid pattern in the city lights is particularly bad across the eastern half of the USA, but is visible in other places e.g. China, Europe and for some reason the northern coastline of Siberia(?). Is this intended behaviour or is something wrong? I tried applying the EVE settings but managed to break it entirely, eventually they came back but still looked like this. No sunflare from the Sun in any view I've tried so far- KSC, tracking station or flight. I'm running RSS/RO/RP-1 in KSP 1.11.1 with the latest versions of EVE (redux 1.11.2.1) and scatterer (0.0723) as installed by CKAN, can provide logs and a mod list if you need them. Aside from these issues, I really like this mod- it looks so much better than before!

Snack every time- it has a K in it (as all Kerbal things apparently require), plus food typos are the wurst- I mean, worst... It’s good to hear that people actually read and like Audacity! There’s still a long way to go yet, I’ve only done 15 chapters so far, so if you’re in a reading mood here are a few of the stories that gave the inspiration to try my hand at writing one of my own: I’ve thrown in a couple of references to each of these in Audacity (or possibly outright stolen some ideas ) and all are well worth reading.

Electric propeller powered planes for places where jets won’t work (like Eve, or inside Jool’s atmosphere!); long(ish) term deployable science experiments that your crew can set up after landing then leave them to gather science over time or by smashing stuff into the surface; surface features that you can sample or scan for even more science, plus some rover scanning arms much like real rovers have on them; not to mention all the crazy contraptions you can build with robotic parts and a sequence programmer- model engines and gearboxes, functioning clocks, giant trebuchets to lob Keebals at the Island Airfield... And that’s not even mentioning the cool new spacesuit with neon glow lights on it! Everything is better with neon glow lights on it!

I found this page by accident, but I’ll definitely be pinging this into my 1.11.1 RSS game as soon as I can.

I would like to see some proper water features instead of ‘rivers’ at sea level surrounded by several thousand metre cliffs on all sides especially in the mountains; however this would then require the water to either flow downhill as it should, which would be a real pain to code,, or else be a stationary object with a slight slope on it which could be a real pain to code too. I doubt that nice water features are high on the list of a space simulator type game’s priorities.