jimmymcgoochie

Built a new space station and lobbed it at the Mun to do science and stuff. Since the old station is no longer needed (all the science experiments keep vanishing for some reason ) I started to bring the crew of the old station back to Kerbin. PSA: if you have life support that requires power to operate, DO NOT try a Mun to Kerbin return when the Mun is being eclipsed. Bad things will happen to the crew, including (but not limited to) CO2 poisoning, hypothermia and having to peel the lids off those little coffee (sorry, koffee) machine pods and consume the contents like shots. Fortunately for that particular crew, the game crashed because I accidentally clicked KSP.exe instead of KSP.log resulting in the game trying to open twice- never a good idea!- and the previous save is from before they undock from the station.

Grannus and GPP_Secondary might be close enough for you. On its own Grannus is a red dwarf within reasonably close range of the stock solar system; GPP is a larger star system and Grannus ends up orbiting that too. If you find some good solar systems that are too far away, just edit their configs to move the stars closer to the Sun and reduce the flight times between them.

1.10.1- all the latest game features, but not all mods are updated to include those changes (e.g. to the drag system to allow open-ended fairings). Some of the very newest mods are listed as only compatible with 1.10.x, though they may work in earlier versions too; sticking to the latest version of the game and mods means you get the latest and greatest additions at the expense of a potentially smaller selection. Also has a few annoying bugs in it. 1.9.1- nearly as many core features as the latest release but has been out for far longer so more mods are compatible; expect some occasional issues when using the very latest versions of some mods which are intended for use in 1.10.x but on the whole it should work without (m)any problems. Also has a couple of minor bugs in it, but some mods exist to correct these (e.g. fuel transfer issues). 1.8.1- a bit older again, still keeps the most useful new features and parts (on the fly part action assigning/changing) but does without some recent additions (ultra terrain shaders and some performance improvements). Generally anything that works in 1.9.1 will work in 1.8.1 and vice versa and 1.8.x to 1.10.x mods are largely inter compatible, but exceptions exist with the conspicuous example of Kopernicus which is version locked; parts and planet packs tend to be OK if you use them in different versions but if something breaks it’s that much harder to find the cause and solution. 1.7.3- the last release on the old Unity system, meaning that many mods that include scripts or code that run in-game had to be changed between 1.7.3 and 1.8’s release. Supports many older mods and those which haven't been updated in a long time but newer versions of mods for 1.8 and later have a high chance of not working. Also does without a lot of the newest features and performance can be worse too, but if you’re using old mods this might be your best bet.

A few hints from me- Autostrut your engines to the root part, it makes your rockets much more stable when you turn physics warp on when the engines are producing thrust (either during atmospheric flight, or by pressing control and < or > in space). Bigger isn’t always better; a small and lightweight probe launched by a small rocket can often exceed the range of a much larger one due to the much higher mass of the latter, as well as being cheaper. Save regularly to avoid lost progress due to game glitches/crashes (or pilot error). In stock KSP the best way to do a recoverable rocket is to use a core stage that can reach orbit, drop off its payload and then deorbit itself when it comes back around to the KSC, with small strap-on boosters (if needed to help it off the launchpad or boost its range a bit) that drop really early in the ascent and can parachute back to the surface before the rocket moves out of simulation range. Other designs will require mods such as FMRS or Stage Recovery to catch and recover the dropped stages and boosters, as anything that drops below ~25km altitude over Kerbin while outside of simulation range is automatically destroyed by the game and you don’t get any refunds. You can get a great deal of science from the KSC itself if you walk/drive/fly around with some science experiments and get readings from all the areas and buildings; there’s also a whole lot of science to be had from Kerbin itself without ever having to leave the atmosphere, so you don’t need to go racing to other planets when there’s so much easy science to be had at home.

I completely agree- when I added them in all I got was a gigantic wall of parts that made little sense to me. I’d much rather use the mods I used last time (Near Future/Restock family and a few others like Mk33 which are balanced for JNSQ-scale systems), so maybe an agreed set of parts mods would be a better idea than a unilateral decision.

Kelvin to Celsius- add 273 and it’s close enough. Celsius to Fahrenheit- it’s something like 9/5 + 40. KSP uses SI units for everything- distances in metres and multiples (km, Mm, Gm), velocity in metres per second (m/s), thrust in (kilo)Newtons (kN), pressure in (kilo)Pascals (kPa), temperatures in Kelvin and masses in tons- which are 1000kg, so technically megagrams, but who calls them that?

We need log files to investigate this. Look for C:/users/your-username/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program/player.log and also the KSP.log file inside the KSP directory, upload to a file sharing site of your choice then post links to them here. Freezing on the load screen usually indicates an exception has occurred and the game can’t load, which is why the log files are so important as they’ll contain details of what’s going on and why.

No. Contares has SO MANY PARTS and it's totally unnecessary to include it at all. Nobody else has expressed any interest at all in using those mods, and after seeing them in-game I'm definitely not interested.

A few more questions: Are other parts mods allowed besides Contares? How about science experiments? It would be easy to unlock everything by adding a load of extra science experiments and turning the science gains up really high, so how about a cap on science gains and no extra science parts? What are the goals for the race? Besides making a few basic launches into LRO there's nothing until 'land a 10 Kerbal base on Janus' and I would like to see a set of goals for different planets/moons to add more of a sense of progression. Can you use the launch site on Rhode's moon? With less air and gravity to deal with it would be a lot easier launching from there.

It should be; although to be fair the JNSQ space race was also game-time based but I bombed through it in real time and everyone else gave up... This time round, between this, my Kerbalism career that I'm also doing reports for and still plugging away at Audacity (plus boring stuff like 'work' and 'life') I'll probably be a lot slower. Probably.

https://github.com/Morphisor244/Beyond-Home-Rescale A ready-made config to make Beyond Home match the scale of JNSQ. Is Contares mandatory? I'm not a huge fan of the 'you must use these mods' thing, but I'm prepared to live with it if it means things are more balanced than the free-for-all that can so easily happen otherwise.

Pointless radiators will only add mass and drag, slowing you down. Unless you're building some kind of monster plane that needs all those RTGs, you'll be better off using solar panels and just landing before it gets dark or bringing just enough RTGs to stay in the air until you find a good landing site. What kind of propulsion system are you using that needs so much electricity?

If you want an easy way of recovering dropped rocket stages, there are a few mods that can do that. My personal favourite of those is Stage Recovery as it's simple (slap some parachutes on, or a control point and extra fuel for a powered landing when the rocket is too big for chutes) but also very configurable (you can change the min/max speed for recovery, % of the value returned depending on distance, speed, risk of stages 'burning up' before recovery and more) and requires no in-flight input- just drop the stages with enough parachutes or some reserve fuel and a probe core and the mod will detect when something drops below the 'death zone' of ~25km and recover it for you. It even works with crewed vessels and science experiments/data stored on board. It's feasible, but very difficult to do a 'proper' recovery with a rocket and requires either an inefficient launch profile, which wastes quite a bit of fuel, or a landing some distance away from the KSC, which gets less funds from recovery. There is another way, however- build a single stage to orbit (SSTO) rocket that can reach orbit on its own, deploy a payload and then re-enter to land at/near the KSC; the 'Twin Boar' engine is particularly good for this as it has an unusually high impact tolerance of 20m/s, meaning you can drop it pretty hard and it won't explode (which saves mass and drag from landing legs) plus it's a powerful engine with built-in fuel and a pretty reasonable cost making it an economical choice too. When you see SSTO, it's usually referring to a plane rather than a rocket and spaceplanes are definitely an option worth pursuing to carry payloads into orbit for minimum costs- unlike a rocket which has to fight directly against gravity with thrust, a plane can use aerodynamic lift during the ascent meaning it can carry more mass and needs less thrust; there's also the bonus of using a combination of air-breathing engines (which are much more efficient than any rocket) and the NERV nuclear rocket engine (most efficient stock rocket engine) which both run on liquid fuel without the need for oxidiser, saving mass which is always a good thing. If you're looking for a good SSTO for a career game, I recommend this one- requires only level 2 facilities, cheap to operate, can carry 20 tons or more into low Kerbin orbit (LKO) and flies well both with and without a payload attached making it a great workhorse. https://kerbalx.com/Kronus_Aerospace/Kronus-LowTech-20-Ton-SSTO There's also this pretty simple SSTO rocket which apparently has a similar payload capacity and can be easily recovered using the sturdiness of the Twin Boar to save on parachute mass, although I haven't been able to make it work myself (probably due to too many mods in all my games ):

While it is rather hot on Eve, KSP has rather ludicrous heat tolerances for parts and most (all?) crew parts can survive an internal temperature of up to 1000K, which is hotter than the melting point of Aluminium... Drills and ISRUs generate heat while operating and need radiators to cool them, otherwise you don't need radiators. RTGs generate a bit of heat, but they should be able to dissipate their own heat as well. Why exactly do you need so many of them though? Eve is a good place for solar power and some big static panels mounted flush with your wings will generate plenty of power without adding too much drag.

I may have broken the game with this mod by doing something a bit silly: - Froze a Kerbal in LKO; - Brought the craft down to the surface; - Recovered craft with Kerbal still frozen inside it' - Kerbal disappears from the roster, all the scenery disappears from KSC view. Upon closer inspection of the save file the Kerbal is listed as 'unowned' and 'dead'. Looking through the logs I found these entries: Perhaps there should be a warning in-game about recovering crafts with frozen Kerbals, or else a way for the game to un-freeze them during recovery?

Has anyone created a thrust curve config that's completely flat (i.e. starts at 100% and stays there the whole time as for stock)? It's going against the purpose of the mod a bit, but might help with compatibility with stock or downloaded crafts that use SRBs. If not, can someone explain what the numbers mean? thrustCurve { key = 0 0.1 0 35 key = 0.03 0.801 0.76 0.76 key = 0.61 1.2418 0.76 -0.62 key = 1 1 -0.62 0 } I'm guessing the first number is how much fuel is remaining, and the second is the relative thrust being produced, but the other two I have no idea.

Fixed, thanks.

@Gameslinx I hope these uploads work, never used dropbox before. Minimal install with just KSP 1.10.1 plus both DLCs, then Kopernicus bleeding edge release 41 added manually (with MFI and MM included) and EVE, scatterer, DOE, Beyond Home and Show FPS added through CKAN with their dependencies auto-installed. I found the setting to make the FPS counter bigger for the 1.5.2 images but after I'd already done them for 1.4.2, but in 1.4.2 they're all sitting at 30FPS and limited by V-sync or they'd be higher. Here's what happened with Beyond Home 1.5.2 plus Parallax: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eeqhebph12ko824/AABAejcSCKs15l3v3izmlmC5a?dl=0 And here's what happened with Beyond Home 1.4.2 without Parallax: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hyxwsvrkmhfu7wt/AADsjkiX4JrayJpjGQ_DEMXNa?dl=0 I've included a screenshot of the graphics settings in the 1.5.2 folder, they were unchanged when running 1.4.2; full PC specs are in KSP.log

I'm trying to use Beyond Home 1.5.2 in KSP 1.10.1 but the performance is really bad- it sits at about 7FPS in KSC view and drops to less than 4 when I put even the most basic vessel on the launchpad or runway. Downgrading to BH 1.4.2 (without Parallax) completely solves the issue, so to me this seems like Parallax is the cause; turning all the settings down in the Parallax global config file didn't help, nor did dialing down the graphics in the KSP main menu settings; deleting Parallax causes the stock system to be loaded instead. Is there a way to use the latest version of Beyond Home without Parallax? Or do I need to use the older v1.4.2 instead?

I've got KSP 1.10.1 running with Beyond Home, but the addition of Parallax (terrain shader) is causing terrible frame rate drops and the game is running at about 1/8-1/10 speed with even a simple craft on the launchpad. I'm playing around with the settings to see if there's a way to improve performance, but if not then it looks like Beyond Home v1.4.2 is the way to go as 1.5.2 forces you to use Parallax as well.

True, it also the worst ISP engine in the game- I think someone calculated it as 5 seconds. Five.

All I can see are what’s printed underneath them- ‘Chancellor’, ‘Board Member’, ‘Table’ and ‘That Other Important Guy’. There’s also some writing on the seal, but I can’t read it because it becomes too pixelated if I zoom in that far.

Why would you dump fuel? To lose mass- either for a rocket or a plane, extra mass makes for harder landings which could break stuff. Visual effect- a few small tanks with valves could produce an effect like the vapour trails coming from real rockets on the launch pad as their cryo systems keep the liquid oxygen (and sometimes methane/hydrogen too, as well as helium) liquids. Not particularly practical if you’re not making a cinematic video, though. To lose mass- too heavy? Dump extra mass and you might be able to take off/make orbit/make that transfer burn back to Kerbin. Excess oxidiser on a nuclear rocket would be one example.

I’m in too- I even have a Beyond Home version of KSP already made (I was curious to see what it looked like as I’ve never used it before). I would say that Luciole is a bit too OP as demonstrated by the last race where rockets made entirely from Luciole parts could fly to the Mun and back- in JNSQ! I vote for science mode in this race, sandbox removes too many constraints on designs but career has too much extra stuff to deal with for a space race.

Quite a few part tests for contracts, with a couple of parts actually used on some real crafts first- the Mastodon rocket on a 70 ton launcher (which turned out to be much more expensive than anticipated considering how much of it got recovered) and the Whiplash ramjet on both a flying lab (which crashed on landing due to poor mass balancing- too nose heavy so it didn't pull up) and an SSTO (which also crashed on landing, several times, due to poor mass balancing- this time too tail heavy causing much back-flipping and tail-spinning). And I fired some small missiles at the Mun and Minmus to get deployed seismic science data from them; impacting at 6km/s really racks up the numbers even when the impact wasn't that close to the sensor and the sensor setup is poor (35% due to low skilled scientist deploying them a while ago). I also attempted a laughably ambitious aerobraking at Eve, resulting in many parts going boom due to excessive heat or G-forces, however the game then crashed so I can try again for free.