jimmymcgoochie

I knew I could do better, so I did: 7kt rocket, 1kt payload into a 200x200km orbit- IN JNSQ. Orbital velocity there is higher than the escape velocity of stock Kerbin. The original Black Hole managed 750t to a 750x750km orbit but some upgrades made the Supermassive version put a whole thousand tons up albeit into a lower orbit. Eight 5m side boosters plus a 7.5m core made well over 100MN from its 43 LFO engines but the TWR was only 1.3 at liftoff. It was hideously expensive (over 2m) but a combination of NFLV oversized probe cores and StageRecovery meant that all 8 side boosters and the first stage core all got recovered by (simulated) powered landings and I brought the second stage down myself once the payload- a thousand tons of ore because it was very heavy and very very cheap- was deposited in orbit so the overall cost was relatively low. Thanks to the KSTS mod I can now re-use that launch profile to put kiloton payloads into orbits of up to 200x200km for under 600k with a cost per ton of under 600 at full load. Saves a lot of effort trying to build interplanetary ships or space stations piece by piece in orbit when you can build them in the VAB and then put them in orbit in one go instead.

You should close all other programs when running KSP on 8GB of RAM, KSP itself can fill that up without even beginning to include memory-hungry mods; I regularly see 10GB of RAM use running KSP, albeit with a hefty load of mods, and 97% of 16GB in use before it starts grinding to a halt or crashing. Unless you really really need something to be running, close it down and free the RAM for KSP to use instead.

I haven't seen anything in the information for KSP2 that suggests 'near-c' travel; Daedalus drives and other fusion tech with delta-V in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions, yes, but that still only grazes 1% of light speed, or 10% if light is scaled to the same scale as the Kerbal universe (~1/10 of real size). I don't see the value in trying to add this sort of thing as it would only complicate things for no obvious gain except 'realism' and would detract from the game's playability by adding another layer of stuff to wade through in order to lob some Kerbals at another star.

Have you looked in Player.log? If it stops at ‘expansion loading complete’ there’s almost always an exception crashing the game. Look in C:/users/your user/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program for a file called Player.log or Plyer.txt, open that up and look at the end of the file for Exception, EXC, ERR or Crash; alternatively upload them to a file sharing site and link to it here so someone else can check it out. I see that you’ve been modding KSP inside the Steam folder- big mistake! It’s a much better idea to copy KSP out of Steam’s folder tree and then add mods, so that game updates can’t break anything. Check your game version and if it’s 1.10, you might need to roll back to an earlier version e.g. 1.9.1- right click KSP > properties > betas tab > select 1.9.1 in the list. Once that’s downloaded, copy the entire KSP directory out of steamapps/common and put it somewhere else e.g. your desktop, then run the game from there and see if that works. If you didn’t already know, you can have as many copies of KSP on your PC as you like even on different versions and with different mods in each (I have 12 at the moment plus the one under Steam’s control to get updates). If you don’t use CKAN, I suggest you give it a try as it makes version control and copying game instances vastly easier than doing it by hand; it’s not perfect and it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s well worth the effort to get it set up.

Player.log/Player.txt will have the most information, on windows it’s under C:/users/your user/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program. The KSP.txt log file inside the KSP directory might help but it doesn’t have nearly as much information. You could also try removing persistent rotation (unless you really need it) and launching the rocket a few times, which might help identify what part(s) are causing the spinning or prove PR’s involvement (or not) in the problem itself; disabling all auto struts to see if that helps; hitting F3 when the ship starts tumbling to see if something broke; quick saving and loading again when you reach space, if possible, to see if the problem persists if you come back to the ship; or unclipping all the parts on your rocket to make sure they can’t ‘collide’ with each other in weird ways that induce a spin. You should also check that no parts have zero or negative mass, but that tends to have the opposite effect and make ships stay still when they should be moving. Try rebuilding the rocket from scratch and see if that has the same issue, it might just be a corrupted craft file. A full list of mods would be useful, but check that you have the correct versions of them all.

If it works properly in flight then it’s a problem with a mod somewhere. Try removing some mods (the flight information tools etc.) one at a time and maybe that will narrow it down, although it will take a lot of reloading to find out; check the logs for exceptions or errors, unfortunately I can’t access them.

Does the keyboard work properly outside of KSP? Try changing the key binds to use different keys for throttle control e.g. home/end or +/- and see if they have the same problem. Also check if you have sticky keys enabled, that could cause this type of problem. To find out, press shift 5 times quickly and if there isn’t a prompt to turn it on, it’s probably already on (or you’ve disabled it entirely).

Pictures/video would help here, without actually seeing the rocket in question it’s hard to guess at possible causes. Have you tried a brief burst of time warp when you leave the atmosphere to kill the spin? It would also help to know all the mods you’re using and what version of KSP/DLCs if you have those. Are there any errors in the logs? Might help narrow it down if there are.

Can you put that mod list in a spoiler? Quite hard to scroll through on small (mobile/tablet) screens. What version of KSP is this? I’m guessing 1.8.1 What engines are on the upper stage and are they set to 100% throttle? If you launch the rocket manually do the engines work as expected?

There are a few mods out there that might help, including one that adds xenon production to the standard ISRUs. Near Future Propulsion has a dedicated part that can harvest xenon (and argon) from atmospheres, but xenon is really rare in most cases so it takes a long time to get any plus it’s on the surface of a planet so you then need to carry it into space. Near Future Electrical has a part that deals with nuclear waste and can produce xenon from that, but it’s pretty power hungry and you’ll probably need one of the reactors from that mod to power them if you want to produce xenon at a reasonable rate. Depleted fuel is cheap but pretty heavy too. For a ship in a solar orbit you’ll need to send either a refuelling or a rescue mission, or just cheat and enable infinite propellant/change the values in the save file.

I can imagine it going something like this: Squad: version 1.11 is now live, featuring Kerbals that blink! Just like you wanted! Everyone: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH IT’S HIDEOUS MAKE IT STOP!!! Squad: but... Everyone: they keep blinking in all my screenshots MAKE IT STOP!!! Squad: 1.11.1 is now live, and Kerbals don’t blink any more. Just like you wanted! Everyone: BUT WE WANTED KERBALS TO BLINK! Y U DO DIS!!?! Squad: ... I suspect it was either too difficult to implement or nobody thought of it at first, and the lack of demand means it hasn’t been done since as other things have taken priority.

I’ve been playing with Kerbalism in a pretty stock career save (well, stock plus lots of visual stuff and some helpful tools, but minimal extra parts) and had to edit save files many times over the last few days as autostruts keep destroying my space station by making parts collide with themselves; maybe having all the heavy stuff (engines and fuel tanks) on the outside ends and docking it together with the junior docking port wasn’t a great idea, but that was all I had. I’ve decided to try KIS to see if I can reconfigure the station with proper docking ports. At some point I’ll go back to my JNSQ career and get those Kerbals off Tylo again, but it’s a lot harder to play when the game runs at 3FPS.

Glad I could help, and sorry about the borderline rudeness of my initial reply, it wasn't supposed to be so shouty.

[snip] Access violation suggests you don't have permission to access the files where it's installed, so try moving the game to another disk or a different location on the disk, verify the files if you installed via Steam or uninstall/reinstall the files.

KSP2 is a separate game made by a separate developer so it will probably go out as version 1.0.0 while KSP(1) continues on as a completely independent piece of software with its own version. Out of interest, does anyone know any game sequels that went from version 1.x.x to 2.0.0 when a sequel was released? I work in software development and that sounds really weird to me. Ah, so all those FIFA/GTA/Halo/etc. sequels are just the same game then? You have to buy the new game, it isn’t an update to an existing one. Try telling EA that you bought FIFA 1998 so that means you can get FIFA 20 for free because it’s just an update to the same game, and see how far you get...

Have you tried holding prograde instead of switching off SAS altogether? It will make little difference to your launch profile but could help stabilise a wayward rocket without any need to change the design.

^This^ If KSP is listed with [1.8.1] after it in your Steam library then you've set it to download 1.8.1 specifically and not update beyond it. It's probably because you have/had mods installed that wouldn't work with 1.9, but there's a way around the problem entirely: Copy the entire KSP directory out of Steam and put it somewhere else. Install mods on that one and Steam will never update it. You can even download multiple different versions of KSP and put different mods in each; CKAN is particularly good for doing this but you can do it by hand if you want. Leave the version inside the Steam folders free to update when new game versions are released. It won't affect your modded games, break saves or anything else because it's a separate copy of KSP.

Now that's a proper challenge! Mun landings are easy enough, but it took a nuclear mothership and a pretty significant mining operation on Ike to make a round trip to Duna with a lot of mod parts involved. I could probably cut down on the number of crew and use either NERVs or Wolfhounds to propel the ship but in pure stock it's going to be a much more interesting challenge. Minmus is actually easier to land on than the Mun, the little delta-V you need to get to Minmus over the Mun is repaid several times over by the much lower orbital speeds meaning landings and returns are both much easier. If anything, Mun and Minmus should be rewarded equally. Or we could shake things up and activate Minmus' Principia orbit (some minor config hacking editing would be needed but it's pretty easy to do) which puts it inside the Mun's orbit and use that as an easier first target before the Mun.

2 weeks from today. Haven't been home to see family since early January so I'm grabbing this chance before someone changes their mind and locks everyone down again. Re. mods, I think just saying no non-stock parts are allowed would make it clear for everyone. Visuals (both for planets and Restock/other part revamps) and tools like MechJeb/KER/etc. are fine for me but just going to the Mun can be done using purely stock parts in JNSQ (I've done it a few times). I might just use a stock flag with some minor tweaks or else poach one from the internet- I might go with the MCR flag from The Expanse and retouch it to look more Kerbin-y.

@Misguided_Kerbal I won’t have access to a PC that can actually run KSP for most of next week so will have to sit this one out. Happy to join in another time though.

Distance is one thing. Actually getting there is another thing entirely- it took a very convenient planetary alignment and some massive gravity assists to get to Neptune, once, and that probe was just coasting at that point with no real control of where it was going, never mind trying to slow down and orbit. Now consider this: Neptune orbits at 30AUs from the Sun (Earth is 1AU); the closest star to us is Proxima Centauri, and that's about 270,000AUs away. Neptune is 3.5 light hours away, the closest star is over 4 light years away. Assuming you could build a spaceship capable of reaching 1/4 of light speed, it would take about seventeen years to get to the closest star (and would pass Neptune's orbit in about 14 hours). Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our own, and it's 2.5 million light years away. There are estimated to be between one and four hundred billion stars in our own galaxy. Why exactly would anyone ever bother going to another one with so many stars (and inevitably planets) within easy reach? I don't expect more than five solar systems in KSP2 and none beyond a couple of light years away (or possibly a lot less, given how small KSP's planets are) from the Kerbol system. A small star cluster would provide more than enough places to explore and colonise, anything beyond that would require too much development for relatively little reward.

4 miles, the length of the Grand National and easily walkable. 50,000 miles, around the world twice. 2.5 million miles, to the Moon and back five times and then back to the moon a sixth time. Barring some kind of magic faster than light drive or the discovery/creation of wormholes, travelling from one galaxy to another is utterly infeasible and dismissing it as ‘only’ a couple of orders of magnitude further than before missed the (quite literally) astronomical distances involved and the impossibly durable spaceships that would be needed in order to make the journey. Pinging from star to star a few light years at a time is much more practical and there are more than enough in the Milky Way alone to make going anywhere else not worth the effort.

Now I have to try and make a flag and stuff... This might take until tomorrow

I already stole borrowed the idea so go ahead. I might reuse it later too. I am but it's the day-to-day details that are causing the biggest hold-ups right now. I don't want to call it "filler" because it will serve a purpose (or a few) but there's a big difference between coming up with big, broad-brush ideas and actually turning those into a coherent story. I have a nice little story arc for the next few chapters all laid out and ready to go.

I would say game time is better than real time, otherwise you could just build rockets etc. in another save and then use them in the competition. It’s also a lot easier to track than having to clock watch (and what if your hour runs out half way through a launch/landing?) Personally I don’t have any preference for 1.8.1 or 1.9.1, the few extra parts won’t really help and 1.9.1 was largely about aesthetics which aren’t really relevant for JNSQ.