jimmymcgoochie

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My advice is to think of a specific goal e.g. get a 100-Kerbal colony set up on Duna, and then pick some mods that you think will help you get to that goal. Just going in and blundering along without really knowing what you're going to do next can often lead to losing interest and giving up, but so can adding a ton of mods and being bewildered by the vast array of parts and systems. My very much not comprehensive list of suggestions is as follows: Economy: StageRecovery/FMRS to recover dropped stages, The Gold Standard for a mining-based source of income. Science: Kerbalism to make experiments run over time and in the background, DMagic Orbital Science for more experiments, [x]Science and ScienceAlert if you're using the stock science system, Tarsier Space Telescopes for, well, telescopes in space, but also a rover mast with a laser, SCANsat to make terrain/biome/visible/resource maps of planets and get science. General gameplay: Strategia to shake up the admin strategies, Kerbal Construction Time to make rockets take time to build instead of instantly appearing on the launchpad, ResearchBodies to hide most planets and require you to 'discover' them. In-flight tools: MechJeb to automate almost everything, Kerbal Engineer Redux for all the data the stock readouts don't give you, Extraplanetary Launchpads to build vessels in flight, Sandcastle to make individual parts in flight, SimpleLogistics to move resources between different vessels when landed within physics range (no need for hoses!). KIS and KAS still have some things to offer that the stock EVA construction doesn't, but a lot of what they can do is now covered by the stock systems and I don't think KIS/KAS are fully compatible with the stock inventory stuff, so it's up to you if you want to use those. Crewed vessel parts: Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux (SSPXR) for many great-looking parts for your stations and even bases, all with (optional) internal views too, Kerbal Planetary Base Systems (KPBS) for many modular base parts and tools to assemble them on-site, Near Future Spacecraft for additional crew pods in varying sizes. Probe parts: Near Future Exploration which includes a variety of new probe cores, structural parts to match those and (Re-)stock probe cores and a whole new antenna system, ProbesPlus for semi-Kerbalised versions of real probes such as Venera, Surveyor and Cassini-Huygens (it says 1.4.3 on CKAN but it works fine in 1.12.3 as far as I can tell), OctoSat Continued if you want a really modular system to build your probes from, SSR MicroSat for a dinky little probe that can still pack quite a punch. Rocket parts: KeR-7 if you have the Making History DLC as it fleshes out the Soviet parts with service modules, engines and a proper core tank for the R-7/Soyuz rocket among others, General parts: Basically anything by Nertea (Restock/+, Near Future everything, Far Future, Kerbal Atomics, Cryo Engines/Tanks) and Angel-125 (Mk-33, Sandcastle, Buffalo, Blueshift...) as their stuff never disappoints. Stock system planet packs: Snarkiverse (rearranges the stock system), Outer Planets Mod (adds stock-ish Saturn/Uranus/Neptune/Pluto), Alternis Kerbol (rearranges the stock system and redoes some stock bodies). OPM can be used with both Snarkiverse and Alternis Kerbol to expand the system. Stock-scale planet packs (replaces the stock system entirely): Galileo's Planet Pack and Grannus Expansion Pack, can be used separately but are designed to be used together, options available to make either system the home one or put both as interstellar options from the stock system; Beyond Home, has a binary star system so requires a special Kopernicus config or solar panels won't work right, also features (some of) Kerbol system as a second star system, Kerbal-scale Real Solar System (KSRSS) does exactly what it says in the name. Upscaled planet packs: JNSQ redesigns and expands on the Kerbol system at 2.7x stock scale, some other planet packs also have dedicated configs to make them larger (GPP/GEP, KSRSS and Beyond Home have configs to scale them up to a similar size to JNSQ) while you can make many others- including the stock system- larger using Sigma Dimensions and appropriate rescale configs. Above ~3x scale you'll probably need a mod (e.g. SMURFF) to rebalance parts as stock and stock-balanced parts become very underpowered. Realistic KSP: Real solar system, Realism Overhaul and Realistic Progression 1 (RSS/RO/RP-1) to make KSP as realistic as possible- real rocket engines and parts, technologies unlocked in the order they were developed in reality, engine failures/ullaging/performance variations and more based on historical data. Not for the faint-hearted and not (yet) fully compatible with KSP 1.12, but rewarding once you get over the learning curve. I haven't used all of these mods so I can't say that they'll all work properly or that they'll play nicely together, but I hope there's enough in there that you can find something that you like the look of.

The launch of the first (and only) Orange Flugelhorn didn't get off to a great start with an engine failure right there on the launchpad. Fortunately it's easy to fix- roll it back and roll it back out- so the launch was only delayed by a few days. The objective was to throw a sample capsule up to 150km and 6500m/s and then bring it back safely, which went without a hitch. A mass spectrometer was included to try and get some high atmospheric data, but it didn't work because it was inside the sample capsule which was closed for nearly all of the flight. Oops. This single contract paid out enough to get 9 KCT points, so I added a bit of the reserves to make it a nice even 10 and split them between the VAB and R&D. Obligatory Orange Cornet contract sat launch: Followed by an X-planes high contract for the AR-3.1 which flew the entire mission without any issues but managed to bounce off a seam in the runway at 25m/s and leap into the air before coming straight back down onto the cockpit and bouncing both wingtips off the tarmac; fortunately the cockpit held up and the wingtip wheels did their jobs so no damage done. I made a token effort to convert the AR-2 into a supersonic jet, which didn't work very well. It could fly at over 550m/s in level flight, but the low speed performance was dismal and there were a few incidents during the simulations... That idea got scrapped, since despite the significant money on offer for the long-overdue X-planes supersonic contract the risk of losing a pilot is simply too high. And now for the main event- Orange Bugle 1 shooting for the Moon to complete orbit and impactor contracts. It was all going so well, until- Yup, two consecutive RD-0105 engine failures- first the second stage gave up half way through its burn, then when I tried to light the third stage to salvage the mission as a high-Earth science probe that one didn't ignite at all. The probe itself fell back into the atmosphere and burnt up over the Atlantic, well short of orbital velocity. If there's any consolation to be had, at least it gave a lot of extra data units for the engine so future missions are less likely to fail. Coming soon: Going to the Moon again, and actually getting there this time!

Looked like the second stage engine had an explosive failure to me, F3 or the TestFlight window would have proved it either way.

If stock KSP is causing your GPU to crash, then I'd suggest the problem is in the GPU, not KSP.

Repeated the Moon orbiter launch that failed last time, everything worked fine second time around and the probe is now in orbit of the Moon gathering all the science it can, while the upper stage successfully crashed into the Moon for science and profit. I also lost my two remaining Kerbals to retirements, but hired two more to replace them; I just realised as I write this that the new crew will be going for training on an orbital pod- Mercury or Vostok- so now there’s nobody that can fly my rocketplanes.

That’s not a relay…

Obligatory “you’re coming in retrograde” warning for that Jupiter probe.

First question- crew or no crew? For crewed vessels, maybe something like Angel125's Buffalo or Nertea's Near Future Spacecraft will have what you're looking for, or possibly NovaPunch which is currently being maintained by Linuxgurugamer (along with about half the total mods on CKAN); for uncrewed landers, I'd suggest Near Future Exploration (though that more or less requires Restock), possibly SSR Micro-Sat if you want something small and cheap to drop in groups. I don't use any mods specifically for landers, generally my strategy is "stick a rocket stage under a probe core, add legs and call it a day".

It’s not really a good idea to look at CoM/CoL when the plane is vertical in the VAB, look at it in the SPH instead.

Last year the GPU on my PC failed. Despite having the same processor and 32GB of RAM that it had before, running KSP through the integrated graphics system made it perform noticeably worse even with plain stock KSP. Looking down at terrain wrecked the frame rate most of all for some reason, something I’ve also seen when running KSP on an old potato desktop that was the cheapest in the shop a decade ago, so definitely aim the camera up as much as possible!I don’t recommend trying to use visual mods if you can barely run KSP without them. Turn the terrain details and textures down as low as you can, disable terrain scatters, turn off anti-aliasing, turn down part details and textures, turn off aero effects, reduce the number of patched conics to 3, reduce the max persistent debris to a very small number (but above zero, just in case), disable V-sync and turn off the frame rate limiter- this last one won’t do much when the game is running but can make a huge difference to load times as for some reason KSP loading is frame limited and I’ve seen three- or even four-figure FPS numbers loading off an SSD. Building vessels with more parts puts more pressure on the CPU and KSP is single threaded so modern multi-core, multi-thread processors can’t use their full potential.

I’ve had issues with this before, it went for nearly a year with the general discussion subforum returning a 500 response yet other pages were unaffected and I could access threads inside general discussion directly. It also affected other pages for a while and was inconsistent across different devices- PC, iPad and android phone and connecting via broadband or 4G. I think what fixed it for me was a total reinstallation of Windows in an attempt to fix what turned out to be a dead GPU, since I can access everything now (though I don’t recommend trying that just to fix one website!). I also cleared all cookies on my iPad and that works fine as well, so try removing all cookies and see if that helps you?

It’s a known issue with Parallax interfering with EVE city lights, check the Parallax mod thread and maybe there’s a solution there?

KSP 1.2??? That would explain it!

Launched a probe that was meant to go to lunar orbit, but two consecutive engine failures on the second and third stages torpedoed any chance of making it to Earth orbit, never mind the Moon.

A quick test flight of an orbital imaging satellite with a film return capsule. The science part worked fine, the return bit... not so much- the capsule overheated and exploded every single time in the simulations, when the re-entry profile should be survivable. Maybe it's a KSP 1.12 thing? This project will have to go on hold for a while until the return mechanism gets sorted out, either by an RO/RP-1 update or if I find an alternative part(s) to do the same job. The first real launch of this update is another Orange Cornet, completing a weather sat contract purely for profit. The next Orange Cornet had no contract to fulfil, but instead carried science experiments to a polar orbit to maximise the science yields. Once in orbit the avionics and engine of the second stage separated and deorbited, leaving the science core attached to the fuel tank and solar panels in orbit. There's no way to power a near-Earth avionics with these tech levels of avionics and solar panels so this is a necessary step to make the satellite function. Now for some simulations of a lunar orbiter/impactor mission. Newly unlocked Castor 1 solid boosters provide a useful kick off the launchpad, allowing a single RD-108 to push nearly 100 tons into the sky, while two RD-0105 upper stage engines will handle orbital insertion and trans-lunar injection. The Gamma-301 has served well so far with nearly double the thrust of the RD-0105 and a useful synergy with HTP powered RCS, but the longer burn time, superior ISP and lower oxidiser mass of kerolox mean that the RD-0105 is required for anything beyond LEO. Reliability on the RD-0105 isn't great though at 90% ignition success with no data units, so I'll probably swap some Orange Cornets on the build queue to use them instead of Gammas to improve the reliability on lower value launches. Despite PVG having some issues with the rocket, often cutting the main engine after about 5 seconds of flight or the upper stage tank's single MLI layer causing it to explode above 90km, in some simulations it got to orbit successfully and the second stage could deorbit itself with RCS while the third stage prepared for TLI. Fully guided TLI, then trajectory and attitude adjustment with the RCS followed by separation of the orbiter on top allows the third stage to move to a collision course with the Moon while the orbiter carries on to circularise at the Moon with four small solid motors. Whether the orbiter works well, barely or not at all will depend in no small part on the direction of the sun, since it has no attitude control of its own and must be properly aligned for the capture burn close to Earth. This sim was pretty marginal and the probe struggled a bit for power in lunar orbit, but the design is sound and two Orange Bugle rockets are now on the build queue. Now for a historic flight of the AR-3.1 as pilot Ilona Fischer becomes the first woman in space in February 1958, if only for about 30 seconds on a suborbital hop. I chose this pilot because her retirement date appeared to be the closest, however despite reaching space there was no bump to her retirement date and soon enough both she and fellow pilot Heidemarie Meyer left the space program. The other two pilots aren't due to leave for about a year, but I have well over a year's worth of research to do before getting basic orbital capsules even with the R&D upgrade I just did so it's incredibly unlikely that any of my starting four will be going to orbit. Another Orange Cornet contract sat launch went without incident and netted some more funds. Final scores after the R&D upgrade just finished and some KCT points were spent: Coming soon: Orbiting the Moon in 1958?

I think there's some kind of save file hack that can resolve faulty docking ports, but I don't know what it is. One way to find out would be to create a simple rover on the surface of Kerbin with a docking port on it, then dock two of those together and check the save file to see the docking ports' status, then overwrite every other docked docking port's status with that- a text editor such as VSCode or Notepad++ is recommended for this.

Update to the latest version of Scatterer and the problem should be solved.

I don't see it happening, even without current events. RosCosmos hasn't really done anything beyond low Earth orbit in its 31 years of existence, with two Mars-bound missions (Mars 96 and Fobos-Grunt) both failing in LEO and subsequently falling back to Earth; most of its efforts have gone into the ISS and joint projects with other agencies such as ESA and NASA. To put it bluntly, there's not much to add. Making History has a good selection of Soviet-era rocket parts- Vostok/Voskhod pods and airlock, engines and boosters to make a passable replica of the R-7 (and all the derivatives that use the same basic layout even now, 65 years after it first launched Sputnik 1 into orbit!)- plus the stock Stayputnik which is an obvious Sputnik 1 reference and even one of the four starter Kerbals, named after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

Each docking port size is only compatible with others of the same size. In stock KSP: In the 0.625m size category you get the Clamp-O-Tron Junior and the Making History inflatable airlock (yes, that's a docking port too, but only when inflated); For 1.25m, Clamp-O-Tron docking ports- normal, shielded and inline in 1.25m and Mk2 fuselage variants; For 2.5m, Clamp-O-Tron Senior. Plenty of mods add docking ports, from the tiny Pico Ports to the gigantic 5m (and 7.5m?) docking ports from Near Future Launch Vehicles, but they're all size-dependent and can only dock to something of the same size. Some mod docking ports (e.g. in Near Future Construction and Pico Port) also have orientation constraints and will only let you dock if you're at a specific angle e.g. 90 degree increments, which makes orbital construction a lot easier as you don't have to dock everything at precisely the right angle. Stock docking ports now have the ability to rotate up to 15 degrees each, which can help with aligning things to build larger structures- or just to make everything neat and symmetrical; or to put it another way, perfectly balanced as all things should be.

Gas giants are mostly hydrogen, with a little helium too; oxygen is much denser than those and would naturally sink through the atmosphere, so by the time you reached an altitude with enough oxygen to breathe, the pressure would most likely turn you inside out if you tried. There's also the whole issue of hydrogen plus oxygen plus sparks (from lightning) equals MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS!!!!1!, which on the scale of a gas giant would be unimaginably destructive.

As of KSP 1.11 there’s a stock part: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Lightstrip_Mk1

A mod that magically conjures fuel out of nowhere? HyperEdit is your best bet.

Screenshot of the problem? If you’re using KSPCommunityFixes then you may have to open the drop-downs in the part windows to see the fuel tank size options.

Orange Cornet 4 was a navigation satellite launch, worked entirely as expected, pay no attention to the weird pink square sticking out of the avionics because PlanetShine got a dodgy update... A few flights of the AR-3 rocketplane bagged a lot of hypersonic science and some other experiment data along the way, with the odd X-planes high contract thrown in for good measure. I decided to add some wing strakes to make it look cooler improve the aerodynamics (somehow), which didn't make it fly any worse than before so that's a win in my book! I also discovered that the reason most of the RCS thrusters weren't working was that the RCS propellant is in the cockpit, but the decoupler behind it wasn't set to crossfeed. One flight got a bit more interesting though- and by interesting I mean EXPLOSIONS! It wasn't as bad as it looked though, two of the solid rockets in the emergency cockpit ejection system got cooked by a steeper than normal re-entry and could be replaced very quickly once the plane landed safely on the ground. The wheels are actually deployed in the image below, it's just a graphical glitch with the runway. And now to the main event- Operation Poke The Moon In The Face With A Rocket is go for launch! First attempt at launching, PVG decided it would be a good idea to separate stage two and immediately ignite and then shutdown the engine, wasting its ignition. Game fault = free revert, so I launched again with the engine one stage higher than the decoupler and it worked fine. TLI burn proceeded... ...and I cut the engine marginally too early so the probe would miss the Moon by about 300km. Which I was prepared to accept, right up until I started time warping and the trajectory changed dramatically- it went from lunar periapsis of 300km to not even reaching the Moon's SOI at all! Come on, KSP, what's with that? Missing the Moon due to pilot error is fine, but missing the Moon entirely because of a stupid time warp glitch is definitely not. With no save between launching and the trajectory glitch, I had to fly it again from the launchpad; third time was the charm as on this attempt it reached Earth orbit with no trouble and the TLI burn resulted in a trajectory that would impact the Moon. Ignore the white line coming out of the avionics, that's PlanetShine with a second buggy update. Just getting to the Moon gave out a very large quantity of funds... But this probe's going to get even closer! Bonk! A second large contract payout, with bonus science! Nearly 400k funds from those two contracts was supplemented by some hefty advances for other contracts, so for the first time in this career I have more than half a million funds. I'll probably spend half of that on the first R&D upgrade, which is needed for crewed orbital capsules. My four pilots will probably retire before that stuff gets unlocked though, which is a shame, but maybe some suborbital flights in the AR-3 will push their retirement dates back a bit? Coming soon: The AR-3 is capable of reaching 140km, if only briefly, so I might try some suborbital hops to keep the pilots amused while building more contract Earth orbit satellites and a second lunar orbiter.