jimmymcgoochie

Mine them, science them, dump them. Or use them as an anchor for a space base, they should be pretty stable due to their high mass and are easy to connect stuff too due to their large size and thus large surface area.

RCS does use the normal WASDQE controls to rotate, but to translate (move around) you need to use IJKLHN- IK for up/down, JL for left/right and HN for front/back. You can change those settings if you like. If you have RCS enabled but no main engines switched on (or they’re out of fuel) the throttle controls will control the RCS thrusters to move forwards like holding H, only with more control. This can be useful to do small manoeuvres entirely on RCS thrust e.g. for satellites.

Don’t pick them up or their progress resets to 0% when you deploy them again. They disable themselves when they reach 100% because there’s no point in staying switched on when they’re full of science. I’ve had some deployed science stuff sitting at 100% done but 0% transmitted, not sure if it’s a CommNet bug preventing the transmission or it’s just blocking transmission beyond 100% completed for each experiment so you can’t keep re-deploying them and farming science (my money is on the latter)

I would send a single rocket to land on both Duna and Ike and do the rescue with a Klaw on the front, and a second rocket just to carry some fuel. Send the fuel tank to Duna and the rescue rocket to Ike. Land on Ike, collect the ejecta and then using a klaw grab the crew pod for the rescue contract and transfer burn to Duna but release the pod just before crossing over into Duna’s SOI, transfer the stranded Kerbal to the rescue rocket in Duna’s SOI, rendezvous with fuel tank if necessary to refuel then land on Duna, grab the stone, return to orbit and refuel again then go home.

@akron Have you considered updating the SSTL satellite’s SCAN patch to make it a visual scanner? Visual mapping was recently added to SCAN and would fit that satellite much better than biome mapping.

TST adds space telescopes and a rover camera which can both save their images to your hard drive if you like. SCANsat has recently added visual scans which can make colour images of the planet/moon’s surface and those can also be saved to your hard drive. ProbesPlus contains a part that does landing site imaging, although it’s just a science experiment and doesn’t actually take real photographs.

RAM is pretty low, you might have problems with crashes/freezes. If you’re on a 32-bit version of Windows then there’s nothing you can do about it, but if you have a 64-bit version then you can buy more RAM and plug it into your PC (laptops are a bit trickier but still possible) which will make the game run more smoothly. If you’re after the best looking version, you might struggle without a dedicated graphics card and you’ll probably need to turn some things down/off to improve game performance- terrain scatters and reflections both eat into frame rates.

Please don’t dump the entire contents of the log into a post, it’s a real pain to scroll through especially on mobile devices! Upload the file to a sharing site then post a link instead. To me, that looks like a graphics crash. Try updating your graphics card drivers and if that doesn’t work: - Right click the KSP.exe application inside KSP folder and create a shortcut on your desktop. - Open the shortcut properties, find the target address and add --force-opengl to the end. - Run the game from the shortcut; this will use the OpenGL graphics system which might solve the problem. I still recommend graphics driver updates though as I had the same problem until I updated the drivers and haven’t had any issues with it since.

There is a sandbox mode- it's called sandbox mode! If you dig into your save game (KSP/saves/your save) there's a folder called Ships which contains all the designs you have made and saved in the VAB, SPH and subassemblies; copy the files for the craft(s) you want to test out and paste them in the same folders in a sandbox save, then you can try them out as much as you like.

You can actually get into orbit from the surface of Minmus, just by using the EVA jetpacks. I don't recommend it though as it can be difficult and it will be pretty slow. There's an easy (but some would say cheaty) way to land right next to something: MechJeb's landing guidance mode. It'll plonk you down within a couple of hundred metres (or often even closer!) of the target and deal with all the plane change/deorbit/landing burns for you as well. Simple, reliable and doesn't waste too much fuel either- but on Minmus, you shouldn't have too much trouble with fuel due to the really low gravity.

I disagree on that point. It’s better to build one ship that is built solely for mining and has only enough fuel capacity to get itself to the ground and (maybe) back to orbit, and another ship(s) that are solely for fuel hauling. That level of specialisation is more efficient than hauling the entire thing into space each time plus the flying fuel tanks can be sent separately, are generally easier to dock and can be flown somewhere else afterwards- I used the two I sent to Duna as deployed seismometer impactors after the main ship was refuelled for MOAR SCIENCE! OF course, I also tried to land the miner on Duna, which was successful to a point; the ship landed relatively intact but the engines, solar panels and radiators broke off on impact so it couldn’t actually mine anything after that and I had to send a lander down to rescue the engineers.

Try the SimpleLogistics mod, it lets nearby landed craft share their resources so you could have miners, converters and fuel tanks parked within physics range but not have to physically connect them. Personally, I would build one big mining rig with the drills, ore tanks and ISRUs in one place plus all the batteries, radiators, solar panels and crew pod for engineers to make it work, and then use big flying fuel tanks to take in the fuel and then fly it up to wherever it was going. I used that system to do some Munar mining until the miner glitched inside the terrain and exploded one time I loaded it up. I also did a similar thing to refuel a ship around Duna by mining on Ike and flying the fuel to the mothership. Building a very modular system with lots of little trucks each with a specific task (e.g. one with a drill, one with ISRU, one with ore tanks) seemed like a good idea at first, but ended up with too many parts and combining robotic parts with klaws and much mass resulted in the entire assembly wobbling constantly before I eventually gave up on that idea. One big miner is the better approach.

1) If you’re modding the game you should copy the entire KSP directory out of steam and put it somewhere else so steam can’t interfere with it. You can make as many copies as you like (I have 10 currently- 3 base versions, unmodded; 3 nearly base games that I use for mod testing and bug hunting; 3 career games in different versions with a lot of mods; and one in Steam that will get updates when they are released) and each individual copy can be whatever version of the game, and have whatever mods in it, as you like. You will probably need to use CKAN if you’re running multiple copies/versions of the game as it’s difficult to keep track of mods otherwise. 2) Mods are installed for all saves in that game instance. However, you can copy saves to a different game instance and have separate copies of KSP for each with different mods. I have an old career game running 1.7.3 with OPM, one in 1.8.1 that’s fairly stock and another in 1.8.1 using the JNSQ planet pack and nearly a hundred other mods, and since they’re split up there’s no clashes between them. 3) KSP 1.8 changed the game’s version of Unity so there’s a chance that older mods won’t work, especially those that run code in the game. Kopernicus is version-locked so you can’t use it in any other version and planet packs are best not used in the wrong version either. If you want to use those, you need to stick with 1.8.1 at the latest for now. Parts mods are more likely to work in another version- I use mods built for 1.9.x in 1.8.1 with (almost) no issues- but crossing that 1.8 barrier could cause problems so use older mods compatible with 1.7.3 or older with care in 1.8.x or 1.9.x.

Which question marks are you talking about? Try pressing F2 to hide the UI which makes the game look prettier for videos.

KSP.log doesn’t have enough information in it to say what the cause is although there are some errors and warnings that could be clues. Try to find Player.log (or Player.txt) and upload that, it has much more information in it.

There’s no way around it. KSP can’t deal with huge crafts with high part counts and no amount of extra RAM or better graphics cards will fix it. The game is trying to keep track of each individual part, what it’s attached to and how and the forces acting on them (thermal, aerodynamic, mechanical etc.) and that takes a lot of processing; more parts makes it even slower, and flying in an atmosphere makes it slower too as there’s the aero stuff to worry about too.

You don’t need ANY RCS on a first stage booster (unless you want to try a powered recovery, that is, and even then reaction wheels are probably sufficient). And you DO NOT under any circumstances want to do a split-S in a rocket! A split-S is rolling inverted then doing a downward half-loop to fly on the other direction; in a plane that is, doing it in a rocket is generally known as ‘tumbling end over end and exploding’. Perhaps you meant a gravity turn?

KSP.log doesn’t have anything in it alluding to the cause, try to find Player.log or Player.txt (C:/users/your username/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program/Player.log or Player.txt) and post that as it has much more detailed logs in it.

Fun fact- the “dark side” of the Mun (and indeed the Moon) is the side that faces Kerbin/Earth because that side gets eclipsed by Kerbin/Earth whereas the other side never does, so on average it gets more sunlight. The correct term is ‘far side of the Mun/Moon’ because they’re tidally locked and always show the same face to their parent, thus the near side and the far side and the ‘Farside Crater’ biomes on the Mun. Landing on the far side is more difficult because there’s no line of sight back to Kerbin/Earth for a radio signal, so you’ll need a relay satellite to bounce the signal. This must use relay antennae like the HG-5 or preferably RA-2 as a direct antenna cannot relay signals from another ship. A useful trick is to put relays just in front of and/or behind the Mun, or any other planet/moon for that matter, which can cover almost an entire hemisphere at once and will stay in the same relative position all the time, unlike orbiting relays which move in and out of line of sight as they orbit. Just be sure to match the orbit of the target planet or moon as precisely as possible or you risk the relay falling into its gravity well and crashing or being thrown out of the system entirely.

XL3 wheels will only go really fast if you alternate left and right steering- they torque steer a bit like tank tracks, but for some reason if you’re already moving they add a huge amount of acceleration too which can result in very high speeds.

That’s a lot of drag, and a lot of it is unnecessary. Get rid of the first stage Vernor/RCS and the monopropellant tank, then use the weight saved by that to put a fairing over the payload which will reduce drag considerably and then pop the fairing at about 25km as by then it is no longer required.

It doesn't matter in the strictest sense, but it makes it much easier to figure out what way you're going. The way the rocket is oriented in the VAB is exactly the same as it will appear on the launchpad; the VAB doors face east towards the pad and you want to turn east to gain orbital velocity, so it makes sense to point in that direction. Most real crewed rockets used to/still do take off with the crew hatch facing towards their direction of travel after they start turning because a) if the crew can see the ground out of that window instead of the sky they know to hit that big red ABORT button, b) old rockets had very limited computing capacity (I've heard it said that Apollo 11's service module and lander computers combined would be outclassed by an old pocket calculator, and not even a scientific one either) so a straight forward pitch program was easier to compute and c) you're pulling up as you climb, a procedure familiar to pilots (and many astronauts during the space race were previously military or test pilots).

I second what @Gargamel said, 4GB is pretty low for running stock KSP 1.9.1 and mods will almost always increase the RAM usage while the game is running. Interesting that the same rockets will work in sandbox mode but not career, that sounds to me like you have a mod that's interfering with the career-based launch process- a full list of mods would be really helpful to see if any look like obvious candidates.

It's a space game, about space. Just because you can stick the parts together and make a submarine, doesn't mean that it should be actively supported any more than there should be special parts added to make a giant trebuchet, a Sherman tank or the Flying Scotsman locomotive. Submarines are still entirely possible in KSP using stock parts and there are multiple mods that add specialised submarine parts into the game. Even on Laythe, there's still enough land to build substantial bases and rather than trying to mine stuff underwater it would be easier to just get it from somewhere else instead so I don't see the point in adding even floating bases to KSP2, never mind submerged ones.

@ADKGuy if you are genuinely having a roll problem (rolling on the long axis through the rocket that's corrected by Q/E keys) then you might need to add either A- a reaction wheel to the first stage to give it extra torque control, or B- some controllable fins to the first stage, such as AV-R8 winglets or delta-deluxe winglets, which can add aerodynamic control and stability to your rocket at low altitudes. You may also want to try rotating the crew pod by 90 degrees to face either away from or towards the VAB doors in the editor and thus point west/east on the launchpad; you might find pitching is more intuitive than yawing during your ascent. Enable advanced tweakables in the main menu settings and use autostruts between the SRBs and their grandparent part, and between the nose cones and the root part, to keep them still and stabilise the rocket. You could also try turning the boosters' thrust limiter down to 50% which will decrease your raw acceleration- a thrust to weight ratio (TWR) of 1.5 to 1.8 is optimal, any lower and your rocket will waste fuel fighting against gravity, any higher and you'll lose speed to atmospheric drag especially if you go supersonic (~330m/s) at low altitudes. On a point tenuously related to the original but directly related to boosters- stick small fuel tanks e.g. FL-T100 or T200 on top of your solid boosters and enable crossfeed on the radial decouplers; the extra fuel will feed the main engine before the tanks in the central stack and are then dropped with the boosters to save weight. It's a nifty way to get a bit more range out of your first stage and as they're on top of the boosters there's no penalty in terms of drag and very little in terms of mass. Bigger boosters can handle bigger fuel tanks, but just remember to use the move tool to shift the boosters down on their decouplers or else the extra weight of the fuel tanks can cause them to collide with your central rocket and potentially damage it or use sepratrons to push them away. Here's a lander probe I just made; it's small, light and cheap but it can land on the Mun and return to Kerbin with fuel to spare. The first time I got a bit distracted finding the Armstrong Memorial and only made it back to Mun orbit with 1m/s left, so the second time I just landed right beside it then flew back to Kerbin. This design could easily carry a science payload (experiment return unit with some experiments on it, but not a materials bay) to do a return trip; I just made a proof of concept version quickly.