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jimmymcgoochie

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Everything posted by jimmymcgoochie

  1. Can you provide a list of mods being used and the logs please? It's a whole lot harder to debug without those.
  2. I looked at the very end of output_log.txt and found two errors: I'm not entirely sure if they're related, but one of them is a graphics issue (d3d) and might be resolved by updating your graphics drivers; the other seems to relate to Science Checklist, but I don't see anything called that in your mod list so I don't know where that's coming from- possibly [x]Science! Try uninstalling or updating that mod and adding ZeroMiniAVC as suggested above, then replicating the steps in the video- if it crashes again then something else (perhaps better time warp?) could be to blame, but if it consistently doesn't happen then you've found the cause.
  3. With enough vessels in a save, the whole game starts to slow down- loading and saving takes longer and the game itself runs a little bit slower especially if you're using the CommNet as the game still has to keep track of every vessel's position and what it can connect to, even in the background. If you don't need a vessel it's best to delete it to reduce the size of your save file and make the game run a little bit better. For keeping track of many active missions at once, I use Kerbal Alarm Clock- an indispensable tool that will alert you when a vessel has a maneuver to avoid those 'whoops missed the node and my probe is now going interstellar' moments. I also use 'Tracking Station Evolved' which adds the ability to sort vessels by their SOI, vessel type or their total MET (or time to the next node) in the tracking station. Most of the missions that I don't want to look at much but might still be useful I labels as relays and then turn the filter on so relays don't get shown on the map; an imperfect solution, but it works.
  4. You have no pitch control on that plane, so it's not surprising that you can't get off the ground. Your rear wings are fixed (never a good idea) and the elevons on your main wings are right on top of the centres of mass and lift so have pretty much zero effect on pitch, assuming they'll even deploy at all. Swap the rear wings for tail fins or winglets with control surfaces (AV-R8 or delta-deluxe) and you should have no trouble at all getting off the ground; at that stage the real trick will be getting back on the ground again in one piece. I think your wheels should be OK, or possibly moved back a bit depending on how much fuel you have in that rear tank- moving the gear further back also increases the angle you can pitch up before you hit the back of the plane's body against the ground, which is a good thing if you want your plane to stay intact when taking off and landing. One other thing- unless you want to carry more than one Kerbal, passenger cabins are a waste of space and you'd be better off with either a Mk1 fuel tank for more range or a structural fuselage for reduced weight.
  5. Got some nice images today while completing various missions: Although admittedly some went better than others:
  6. This one's a particularly long update as it contains the combined efforts of 3 days- the first two days were short stints and I didn't have time to write them up, so they're lumped in with today. Some part grabbers were launched in bulk for future use: A Kerbal was recovered from LKO, inside an inflatable centrifuge with no crew capacity when deflated, and which had some very odd aerodynamic effects in the lower atmosphere which actually caused it to glide towards the Whoopstooshort Mountains west of the KSC (I believe that's their official name ) before rolling downhill for a while until I ditched the engines and heat shield and it eventually stopped. . A probe entered Duna orbit and began high-res resource scans to complete the last part of a contract. A new version of the Kronus SSTO was created which successfully reached orbit and returned to the KSC. The flight was recorded with KSTS allowing up to 24 Kerbals to be shuttled up and down for the bargain price of 5000 funds per flight (the previous passenger flights used a rocket shuttle that cost over 13k funds and carried only 4 Kerbals so this is a HUGE improvement!). After saying several times that I would build the propulsion system for the Gilly base, I finally went and did it. On-orbit construction followed by some light surgery to the base itself (adding a docking port and some KAS attachment sockets) and the Gilly expedition was fully assembled. The crew of Space Station One were showing some signs of radiation exposure, so a replacement crew were sent out. A minor mishap occurred when the old crew undocked from the station without checking their fuel reserves, which were too low to get back to Kerbin, however the incoming ship had fuel to spare so the two ships docked and transferred fuel; completely unplanned, this also fulfilled the 'orbital rendezvous', 'docking', 'build a station' and 'transfer crew' world firsts for the Mun before the old crew headed home and the new crew made themselves comfortable on the station. A set of Sentinel telescope probes were launched into solar orbit, to be deployed over time. With some time to spare before anything else happened, Flying Lab 2 was upgraded with the recently unlocked Mk3 parts (used on the passenger version of the Kronus earlier) and new Panther engines to greatly improve its speed, and dispatched to the southern ice shelf to gather science. But, not everything went according to plan: Kronus has another 'everything collided into everything else' incident during its takeoff roll. The new design was supposed to fix this, but first time out it didn't even get off the ground... And Flying Lab 3 turned out to be an absolute stinker to fly at low speed. Landing on the ice cap went fine, but landing on the shores beside the KSC (to then roll into the water and skim along to get an atmosphere analysis from the 'water' biome and complete the set) ended with a 70m/s nosedive into terrain and a lot of explosions. Expensive (the lab and several other pricey parts went boom) but not as bad as it could have been (a few km from KSC so the surviving parts were still worth almost all their value). Final scores after this bumper update: Funds are perilously low, barely enough for a single medium-sized mission; this isn't too much of a problem now that the Kronus flights have been recorded on KSTS and launches can be done on the cheap, plus several contracts are due to be completed with vessels that are already in flight. The four Rolling Labs currently parked around Kerbin are worth about half a million in total as well, so once they're done gathering science they can be recovered and then re-launched to visit more biomes. Full album and more information here: https://imgur.com/a/eekHKWE What's next? With limited funds there won't be any new missions particularly soon, however there are plenty of existing vessels that will be doing maneuvers and completing contracts so the next update will probably race towards year 5.
  7. If you want to get into a polar orbit, simply aim north instead of east when you launch- getting into an equatorial orbit and then changing the inclination is a hideously inefficient way of doing it! If you want to launch from a different launch site, make sure that you've enabled them in the difficulty settings. When that option is selected, look carefully under the launch button and you'll see a drop-down menu; hover over it and it should give you a list of available launch sites which you can then launch from by pressing the arrow-like button beside the name, or clicking the bullet point button and then the green launch button.
  8. I considered that, but I don’t know if you can connect those cables up in the editors.
  9. @harrisjosh2711 where did you get that cable for the skyhook?
  10. Actually, you want to use Kerbin’s rotation to your advantage as it gives you around 200m/s of orbital velocity for free. Launch from the KSC, every time- even with other launch sites available, the only reason I ever use them is if I’m hunting science on Kerbin and it’s easier to get to some biomes from the secondary sites (Woomerang and Dessert come with the DLCs, some mods add others). On Earth, orbital velocity is around 8km/s so that’s a lot of velocity to gain, but rockets lose speed in 2 ways- drag and gravity. Gravity is essentially constant at 9.8(ish) metres per second per second, so a rocket has to accelerate almost 10 metres per second for every second it’s flying vertical, just to hold its velocity; drag increases as you go faster, but decreases as the air gets thinner. Rockets launch vertically, gain a bit of height and speed to clear the thickest part of the atmosphere and then begin to pitch over towards the east (the exact bearing and both the timing and angle of pitching are dependent on where the rocket is meant to be going). As they pitch over they begin to follow a more ballistic trajectory, but because they’re accelerating constantly the top of their arc (apoapsis) will continue to rise. Pretty soon the rocket is flying almost horizontally through the upper atmosphere to gain enough velocity to stay in orbit. If that was too wall-of-words-y for you, watch this: The Space Shuttle is a good example as it’s a really asymmetrical rocket so it’s easy to see what it’s doing, plus it has a very obvious roll program too so the shuttle itself is ‘down’ before pitching. When the video shows a long distance view of the shuttle you can clearly see how much it has pitched over from vertical. What does any of that have to do with KSP? Well, Kerbin’s orbital velocity is a mere 2.2km/s but the atmospheric density and gravity are the same as Earth’s so the same rules apply. Climb vertically until you reach around 100m/s, then pitch over 10 degrees to the east and hold surface prograde until you reach about 40km, then pop your fairing and switch to orbital prograde. Keep an eye on the ‘time to apoapsis’ indicator and if that starts dropping below 30 then pitch above the prograde marker to try and increase it (it’s wasting a bit of fuel but better than falling out of the sky!). There’s a mod called Gravity Turn that can do this automatically, it’s a useful tool and you could learn a lot from watching it try (and sometimes fail) to get to orbit to them do it yourself in the most efficient way possible.
  11. After building a big base to land on Gilly (which will eventually be the interplanetary mission in my current Kerbalism career) but completely ignoring the whole ‘getting to Gilly in the first place’ bit, I created a huge transfer stage complete with 3x ‘Cherenkov’ nuclear engines (the 2.5m super-NERV from Restock+, it’s 4x the mass and cost of the NERV but 5x the thrust and less than 3x the radiation output), built that in orbit beside my LKO space station using KSTS, then took the escape pod from the station with an engineer and one of several spare docking ports, docked it to the transfer stage and moved it to beside the Gilly base (obviously, it was on the other side of Kerbin from the station) then stapled the spare docking port to the bottom of the base’s engine, docked the two together, went on an EVA to try and secure the connection using some KAS tow bars and- game crash. I have no idea when the last save happened or what state they’re going to be in when I reload the game tomorrow. Hopefully they’re docked and undamaged, but the last version of that same base had a tendency to do MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS or else mangle itself into a barely recognisable mess and eventually I swapped it for a new one which has so far been fine. So far... And I finally managed to make a passenger version of the SSTO I found on KerbalX and fly it to orbit and back without anything exploding or falling off- well, almost everything, but it’s my fault for sticking solar panels in the path of rocket exhaust. Even if the solar panels were right at the back and the rocket engines are right at the front.
  12. Nah, you’re not late, we haven’t even decided if we’re doing it yet! The more, the merrier because that way the thread won’t get filled up by just me like last time (I think I spammed everyone into submission)
  13. Change the title to say it’s been answered, I don’t think you can close it. Just out of curiosity/for future reference in case someone else has the same issue, which mod was responsible?
  14. Uh, days on Kerbin are 6 hours... I suspect your settings have changed, specifically the option to show Earth time (24h days, 365d years) rather than Kerbin time (6h days, 426d years); you can change it back in the main menu settings.
  15. If you want to start using mods, there are a few places to start: The guide to installing mods, found in the 'add-on discussions' section of the forums https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/4-add-ons/ The add-ons section of the forums, where you can find the forum threads for many many mods, discussions about mods and even mods that are still work in progress and haven't been officially 'released' yet. https://spacedock.info/kerbal-space-program Spacedock, a website that has mods available for downloading. Many mods will be listed here and a lot of mods' forum pages will have links to their Spacedock page for downloads. https://www.curseforge.com/kerbal/ksp-mods Curseforge, another site that has mods available for download. CKAN, a program that can do it for you- version control, updates, dependencies and more. Not everything is on CKAN, but pretty much all the major mods are and you can add or remove mods with a few clicks. CKAN can also clone instances of KSP and track as many copies of the game as you like, even on different versions and with different sets of mods in each.
  16. Advantages of sending a crewed pod or mission: More science can be gained directly, through EVA and crew reports, surface samples and some Breaking Ground surface features that can be picked up, and indirectly through bringing materials bay and mystery goo samples back. There’s also the mobile lab that can generate a nearly infinite amount of science by processing science data even if you’ve already returned 100% value for that experiment to the surface, and scientists can reset materials bays and mystery goo cans to use them again as well as collecting data from any science experiment part. More achievements for doing EVAs, crew transfers and planting flags. The ability to deploy Breaking Ground surface experiments which slowly gather science over time. At least partial control under all circumstances (only matters with CommNet on). Levelling up Kerbals to make them better at doing stuff (pilots get more SAS modes, engineers can repair things and scientists get more science from flights). Disadvantages of sending a crewed pod or mission: They’re heavier, so require more fuel to go places. They’re more expensive, plus the extra fuel needed makes them even more expensive. If using a life support mod, you have to make sure they have enough supplies for the trip or they could die. The risk of killing or stranding the crew if you make a mistake (although there are no penalties for killing Kerbals in the stock game, it’s generally frowned upon to not bring crews back from space- preferably alive!) Advantages of using probes: Cheaper than crewed missions. Can be sent one way without anyone caring (nobody is complaining that those Mars rovers will never come back to Earth). Probes tend to be much smaller and lighter, making them easier to launch and needing less fuel to get to their destination. Can carry relay dishes to boost communications (only if CommNet is on). Can be booted on to the side of a crewed mission then dropped off at the destination to act as relays, gather science etc. Almost all probe cores have SAS in them to stabilise the craft, and some come with upgraded versions allowing direction holds (pro/retrograde etc.) which pilots need to be levelled up to do and other Kerbals can’t do at all. Disadvantages of probes: You can’t get as much science from a probe. With ‘require signal for control’ you need a CommNet signal to have any control at all over it; with that option off but CommNet on you still can’t fully control a probe without a signal. Some probe cores don’t have built-in reaction wheels or even SAS (looking at you, Stayputnik) so can be harder to fly. Probe cores use power constantly and most have tiny built-in batteries; run out of power and a probe is totally useless, and it’s easy to forget to deploy solar panels or have them facing the wrong way. Solar panels also unlock later on the tech tree than the earliest probe cores so unless you have them unlocked they will quickly end up dead. @steuben I dodge that issue by calling it ‘crewed’.
  17. That log link you’ve posted isn’t a hyperlink, can you check it again and re-post? I suspect something is causing an exception in the tracking station which then crashes the game. What version of KSP are you using and what mods do you have installed?
  18. Which mod are you trying to install? Some will include their dependencies in the download but others will just list the dependencies and you need to get them yourself. You need to make sure that you copied the folders over correctly or the mod won’t work- just copying the entire folder over after unzipping it is rarely the right thing to do. CKAN is a great tool if you plan to install a lot of mods as it can do version control (which you can override if you want), automatically install dependencies and check for mod conflicts, however not everything is on CKAN and sometimes the information it has is incorrect. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but it’s much easier than trawling through several different sites to find new mods or updated versions. I strongly recommend that you copy KSP out of steam’s control and then add mods to the copy, leaving the steam version completely stock to get updates. KSP has nothing to prevent you from copying it- in fact CKAN has several ways of copying an entire instance of KSP and will happily track different copies of the game, on different game versions and with different sets of mods installed. I have at least 10 different copies of KSP ranging from 1.7.3 to 1.10.1 and with various mods installed- stock copies to clone and add mods to, three different copies with different career saves in them (my first in 1.7.3, a 1.9.1 JNSQ save that I started in 1.8.1 and a 1.9.1 Kerbalism career) and some extra copies which I use for occasional mod testing or for doing forum challenges.
  19. Report number 10, into double figures. Pity it's a pretty boring one... Today was pretty mundane, knocking some easy contracts out one after another. Stray parts and stray Kerbals were retrieved from LKO, one tourist was launched with a TWR of 12 to knock her out (and she paid good money for the privilege too!) and a Sepratron was tested on the pad. Not all space missions are exciting! Gilly Base got hideously mangled somehow. The first few times I switched to it, it exploded considerably; when I finally got it loaded without exploding I was confronted with this: It was promptly cheated back to the launchpad and recovered, before re-launching it and cheating it back into place. Bonus funds from massive scale launches refunded, there was no net gain or loss; it's like it never even happened... Two rovers were sent out towards Eve- the first based on the Duna rover (but with a rover autopilot this time!) and the second including a scanning arm and a self-righting device, just in case. Finally, a passenger variant of the Kronus SSTO was tested- 24 seats thanks to a load of Mk1 cabins as the payload, secured using ReCoupler to hold them all together with stack quad-adapters. The first flight went fine but overshot the KSC a bit and had to glide to the Island Airfield after running out of fuel. BUT- I forgot to save the flight in KSTS before recovering and it didn't save, so then I had to repeat it. And then this happened: At this point it's too late to do anything else, so I upgraded the launchpad and called it a day. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/AFmDlKV What's next? Another attempt at the passenger version of the Kronus, which will cost considerably less than the current crew shuttle but carry several times more crew; transfer burn for the second Eve rover; provisioning the Gilly Base and (eventually!) designing the transfer stage for it; and in around 30 days there's a probe arriving at Duna. There's a bit of a lull in operations right noq, however Space Station One might need a new crew sent out soon as the current crew have been exposed to quite a bit of radiation.
  20. Ran a mission using an SSTO with a load of passenger cabins to record it for KSTS and later re-use; ran out of fuel on the way back down and had to glide to the Island Airfield; forgot to hit ‘stop and save’ on the KSTS panel so I then had to fly the whole mission again .
  21. I could do it myself, or I could press some buttons and let the computer do it for me, faster and more efficiently than I could, with six different vessels at the same time, while I check if the food I put in the oven earlier is edible yet and if so, eat it.
  22. Mods? No. The functionality that mods provide? Yes. An integrated autopilot system for both planes and rockets with manoeuvre creation (and execution would be nice), and at least steering assistance for ascents and descents, would be a valuable tool in KSP2. I haven’t used the majority of MechJeb’s functions and see no need for the parts, but things like rendezvous and docking are best left to the computer to crunch the numbers. Mapping from orbit would also be useful but without the complication of multiple parts for each type of scan- one part for doing radar scans for terrain mapping and one for visual/biome scans would be sufficient. Surface operations (for resource gathering and colony building) will be a big part of KSP2 so knowing that there was a nice flat area within easy reach of several biomes and valuable resources would be of great benefit. I recently started using KIS and KAS and while they’re useful in some cases they also have some irritating flaws (cardboard box takes up 3l of space, holds 750l of stuff, can put 16 full boxes inside another identical box ). A stock implementation of an inventory based system or the ability to attach and detach parts to existing vessels- with angle snap and a bit of clipping into other parts, neither of which KAS can do- would be useful up to a point, but since much of the later stages of a ‘career’ will be based on building craft from colonies or space stations it would be logical to assume that they could be refitted there using the VAB/SPH editors, making it easier and faster than the long and laborious process needed with KIS/KAS. Without seeing all the new stock parts being added and the revamps to the existing ones, it’s hard to say what else might be “needed” from the current set of KSP mods, and besides which your set of ‘vital’ mods will probably look considerably different to mine and so on.
  23. A quick update for a fairly short day: A probe was launched carrying extra supplies and a small relay sat, destination: Gilly. It's cutting the transfer window quite a lot but had a fairly generous delta-V margin and will arrive well in advance of the crewed mission. This mission also experimented with a core stage that would make it to orbit and then perform its own retrograde burn to return to the KSC. It worked better than expected, semi-gliding over the mountains before popping the chutes and landing barely a kilometre from the KSC. Then I thought- there are loads of people playing KSP, surely someone has invented an SSTO using only tier 7 or less parts that can work with level 2 facilities? And I was right! Introducing: the Kronus. A 20 ton SSTO powered by Panther jets and Reliant rockets (and a whole lotta fuel tank clipping under those twin boom fairings!). Using a dummy payload of fuel tanks, two runs were done using KSTS to record the flights for future use: the first was a deployment mission whereas the second is a transport mission suitable for transferring resources to orbiting craft such as Space Lab Two. Both flight profiles are extremely cheap- 4699 and 5027 funds respectively- and their cost per ton is drastically lower than any rocket previously recorded. They also came with a nice surprise- due to their mass, both flights gained a 40k funds bonus from the 'massive scale launches' strategy as they were over 40 tons upon reaching orbit. Full album and details here: https://imgur.com/a/tSddCXw What's next? A couple of SCANsat probes to Moho and Dres to complete contracts, an additional scanner probe arriving at Duna to complete resource mapping and another contract, and a few more missions to mop up. Designs for the Gilly Base's transfer stage are on the to-do list as well, but I'll need to check if the 2.5m docking port is unlocked or unlockable first as the regular sized one will probably be too flimsy with a hundred ton base on one side and a several hundred ton nuclear propulsion stage on the other.
  24. Maybe next time we could try a different planet pack, like GPP, Alternis or Beyond Home. I’ve never tried any of those before and Beyond Home in particular looks really good from what I’ve seen. But next time, do it in Science mode for an extra challenge.
  25. I’ve seen videos of some truly staggeringly complex vessels which were able to fly right down to mere centimetres above Jool’s death line at -250m, which used electric propellers, NERVs and ions to get back into orbit. I just can’t see your design getting back into space, especially not with swivels/reliants for propulsion, if you go ‘low’ in Jool’s atmosphere; the delta-V requirements are too high and there’s a risk that it will burn up depending on your re-entry heat settings. Your best bet is probably that diving rocket with a fairing to take the heat and a very elliptical flight path to avoid being dragged down by the, er drag. Ditch the wings as they just add unnecessary mass and unwanted drag.
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