jimmymcgoochie

You’ve put mods into the Steam copy of KSP, haven’t you… Don’t do that. Steam breaks stuff with modded KSP all the time. To fix this problem in the long run: Copy your saves (right click KSP in Steam library > browse local files, your saves are in the saves folder) and paste to desktop. If you use CKAN, create a modpack from what you have installed (File > export modpack). Disable Steam cloud syncing for KSP (right click KSP in Steam library > properties). Completely uninstall KSP through Steam. Reinstall KSP through Steam, pick the version you want (e.g. 1.11.2) and verify game files once it’s done. Copy the entirety of KSP out of Steam/steamapps/common and paste it somewhere else e.g. desktop, then rename it to something you’ll remember. Install mods into this copy (manually or via the CKAN modpack you made earlier) and copy your saves over to this new copy. That’s it- you should now be able to play KSP without any further weirdness in stock systems, though if you add/remove/change/update mods things may still go wrong; that’s just mods for you.

There have been some changes recently, but setting a fixed coast length of 0 is the same as the old “omit coast”.

@CoolRanchAJ Can you confirm if the giveaway is US only? Also I don't have twitter...

You’ve put the EVA repair kits into your Kerbal’s KIS inventory- this is not the same as the stock inventory added in 1.11 and to my knowledge stock inventory items don’t work from KIS inventory slots and vice versa. You need to put the repair kits into the engineer’s stock inventory slots, which will currently be occupied by a jetpack and parachute (remove the parachute, obviously!) and then he’ll be able to use them.

Why? Making them stop rotating makes them worse, sun-tracking improved power generation especially when you’re not facing directly towards the sun (which is most of the time).

Why bother with the crazy spinny thing when you could just use a linear accelerator using magnets? Aside from accidentally frying your electronics, why wouldn’t a big railgun be a better option?

You don’t necessarily have to use a mod for this- with some careful design work and some fiddling with your suspension settings you can align docking ports on the ground, or just stick a Klaw on the fuel tanker and transfer fuel that way. Of all the mods you could use for it, though, I’d say Simple Logistics is the easiest to use as it doesn’t require a Kerbal to be present or for any awkward attaching of crafts that can sometimes end in Kraken attacks; just park within physics range (2.3km or so) and use the SL interface to move resources around. There’s also another way to think about moving the fuel from the surface to orbit- make your fuel tanker with wheels so even if you land a bit off-course you can still drive over to the mining base and pick up more fuel. This also works well if you have other bases needing fuel, plus you only need two vessels on the surface- the miner and the tanker- instead of a separate transfer tanker. I recommend Minmus for fuel mining purposes, the much lower gravity compared to the Mun makes hauling all that fuel up into orbit a lot cheaper, and getting all that heavy mining gear down in the first place is easier too.

The Advanced OTV Engine, from CH-4. 498s ISP, no rated burn time or failure chance (though that’s not a massive consideration- honest!) and decent thrust too. I looked at a nuclear engine but it would have needed a huge fuel tank, didn’t really improve the delta-V and it wouldn’t have been ready in time either.

About to launch my big Titan cluster mission when I realised that the numbers for the transfer don’t stack up with what’s on the mission- in a “going to run out of fuel, no way to even reach Titan” kind of way. Fortunately the optimal launch time is 6 days away, just enough time to roll the rocket back from the pad (2 days), do a hasty refit to swap its engines for the bestest hydrolox money can buy (a slightly ridiculous 500s ISP) and cramming a bigger fuel tank into it for maximal delta-V (about a day) then rolling it back out to launch on schedule. Now, instead of arriving at Saturn with 2km/s of fuel it should arrive with about 4km/s instead, the difference between capturing into a useless orbit of Saturn and capturing into a useful orbit of Titan to deploy all the landers and orbiter/relay probes. And knowing how things have been going in this safe lately, it’ll arrive with all the hydrogen mysteriously boiled off despite maximum passive insulation and a bunch of radiators to keep it cold. Also spent some time prototyping a lander for the moons of Jupiter- initial test flight suggests oodles of excess delta-V so I may try to move the sciencey bits onto a river and use the rockety bits to land it, then launch four on a single rocket to land on all four Galilean moons; though how I’ll manage 12 or so tons to Jupiter orbit remains to be seen.

As it turns out, the water supplies stolen from the Moon rover aren't enough for a year on the base- in fact they're good for about two months. Blue Counter 2 was dispatched to resolve that situation and landed a few days later, but a bit off course. It'll spend some time driving over to the base, during which the liquid hydrogen will mysteriously boil off in its entirety (again! what's with that?). Next up, a post-sunset launch of the Mars ship's main section containing the crew quarters, life support and supplies and the Earth return stage. The rocket got a second sunset during the descent, which was very picturesque; however fairing separation turned into a nightmare... Let's just say that it took repeated attempts to launch this rocket, with frequent explosions and game crashes, before it eventually made it to orbit intact. Smash cut to White Tombaugh for a course correction that will send it hurtling past Pluto at a distance of under 150km, with a relative speed of 30km/s, in about 4 years. There's room to fiddle with it further, possibly even to graze its atmosphere and/or get a flyby of Charon that would last about two seconds, but zero chance of capturing into orbit. Back to the Moon and the Blue Counter 2 arrived at the Moon base, topped up the food, water and lox tanks (no liquid hydrogen left at this point or it would have topped that up too), put the rest of the supplies into the crew rover and then made a rather misguided attempt to pick up the crew's lander and move it closer to the base, which failed miserably. With that done, the rover was driven away a bit and range safety was fired to destroy it. Still on the topic of rovers, look who's finally arrived! Many thousands of kilometres later (at a blistering 80cm/s cruise speed) the Orange Island rover found the Blue Pawn sample return craft and transferred its collection of samples over. Or at least, it tried to. As it turned out, it was simply impossible to get all the samples over to the two avionics units in the ascent craft and instead they'd just move four over to one of them, then move those four between the two avionics while leaving two samples on the rover. It took a lot of save file digging before I finally found where the sample storage stuff is hidden, then applied a bit of hacking to make one avionics on the Blue Pawn have enough storage space for all the samples. With its primary objective complete, the Orange Island drove off towards the Mariner Valley to continue its secondary science mission. It's still collecting samples and might end up taking them to the crewed lander if it's close enough. The next major launch is possibly the heaviest payload I've ever launched, with the possible exception of the Black Galileo mission to Mercury- the Mars ship's core booster. 650 tons in total, its purpose is to capture into Mars orbit and adjust the orbit as necessary after that- maybe swing by Phobos at some point to do a landing there. This is the first real launch of the Black Empress launch rocket, with the two boosters for the Mars ship due to launch on the same design- I may make some further tweaks to those based on what happened to this one. A slightly unusual combination of 2x F-1A and 1x E-1A(KS) on each booster and 7x M-1U on the core, the boosters also have large hydrolox tanks that feed into the core while the boosters are attached; the fuel for the booster engines runs out a bit earlier than the fuel for the core engines so there's a short stretch where the boosters are still attached but not burning, something that I may address by shutting down the E-1s earlier or via design tweaks. The White Hubble space tug prepared to rendezvous, but during the wait for its first burn another mission needed attention: Blue Bishop Ceres arrived at the asteroid belt's largest dwarf planet, once again with the magic disappearing hydrogen that seems to be plaguing this install lately- at this point I have no qualms about save file hacking to put it back because I know it's a bug and shouldn't be happening. Orbital insertion was completed without incident and the probe settled into an orbit that hits space low and high to rake in the science. There's plenty of fuel left for a landing attempt, but after the instability issues with the identical Blue Bishop Vesta that's an objective that will only be attempted once all the orbital science is done. Still on the topic of Ceres- the transfer window is currently open, though it's a pretty terrible one (either that or a MechJeb update has made it spit out some really weird transfers). It's so bad that if I wait a year for the next window it's 4km/s cheaper and will still arrive at the same time. Of course I still launched stuff at Ceres though, it's still worth a try even if they might not succeed, right? First up was the White Ptolemy scanning probe: Followed within an hour by the Blue Draughtsman orbital science probe: Will either of them have enough fuel to capture into Ceres orbit? I honestly don't know, but right now it doesn't look particularly good. On the flip side, I just noticed that I accidentally put two radar scanners and no SAR scanners on there so I can correct that for the Vesta mission and send a corrected version out to Ceres next year in the cheap window. A few more minor events: Orange Hill 2 arrived at the Moon base, transferred samples from crew rover to base. That's all this rover is for, but since it can't be done any other way and I plan to do more Moon exploration with the crew rover it's worth having. Course corrections for the two Blue Bungalow Mk2 orbiter/rover missions to Venus- one's staying in the ecliptic plane while the other goes polar. And after all that, it was finally time for the White Hubble to grab the Mars ship core booster to tow it over to the Mars ship main hull. Things didn't go entirely to plan at first: Even KJR can't hold this thing straight! Let's try again, but grabbing the booster right in the middle instead of by one engine. That looks more stable, at least. I haven't fired the nuclear engines up yet as the game crashed just after this; if it turns out the klaw simply isn't up to the task I'll need to add avionics and proper RCS to the two side boosters so they can all fly their own rendezvous and docking instead of using the NST for that. No final scores this time due to game crash, but things are ticking along nicely- KCT points keep coming in all over the place, the remaining parts of the Mars mission are being built and White Huygens is on the launchpad waiting for the perfect time to launch to Saturn. Coming up next time: Is the Space Tug a viable option for orbital assembly?

@Scarecrow71 I'll try to keep things simple and show you how to get maximum reusability, which means you need to take less stuff to Jool. Less stuff = less weight = less boosters required to get to space in the first place. A pretty boring looking lander, you might think, but this thing is a Jool V powerhouse- it can fly up from the surface of Tylo into orbit as well as land and return from Vall, Bop and Pol too (with refuelling in between landings). Low part count, lightweight, low tech, but it'll do the job nicely. Root part is the lander can mk1, then FL-T400 tank and LV-909 Terrier engine. Add some mini RCS thrusters and a junior-sized docking port so it can dock to other vessels, add a battery and (if you really want to) a reaction wheel, and a couple of solar panels to recharge it as the Terrier doesn't generate power when it's running. That's it- 16 parts, 3.5 tons and you're set for three out of five moons already. Add two more FL-T400 tanks on the main ship to refuel, job done. Getting this thing down to Tylo in the first place takes a bit more oomph- it's possible to do with 1.875m parts from the Making History DLC, but I'll show you how to do it with plain stock 2.5m parts instead. Pretty simple really- 1.25m decoupler, 1.25 to 2.5m C7 fuel tank adapter, X200-16 fuel tank, RE-L10 Poodle engine (two nozzle configuration!) and four large landing legs. Total delta-V on that stage is well over 3km/s, more than enough to land on Tylo, and the TWR at Tylo starts at 1.65 fully loaded. I looked at using a smaller X200-8 fuel tank, but the delta-V margins for that were a bit too close for comfort; an overbuilt descent stage just means you'll save some fuel on the ascent stage. For Laythe, I still recommend a single-seater SSTO, the smaller the better. I can share a craft file of something I've used in the past that works really well, but it uses the Making History inflatable airlock so I might have to tweak it if you don't have that DLC, as well as a couple of RTGs for power which can be swapped to solar panels if necessary. Moving between the moons of Jool is pretty easy as they're all fairly close together. Capturing into orbit of Jool can be done without any fuel at all if you get an intercept of Tylo at the right time for a gravity assist; it's technically possible to do the same in reverse on your way back, but that's a lot more difficult. Demo flights of the Tylo descent and ascent stages: https://imgur.com/a/xEQN5CU

Tried to launch Mars ship, ascent failure, horizontal by 30km, then the game crashed. Tried to launch Mars ship, fairing separation failure, second stage destroyed, then the game crashed. Tried to launch Mars ship, booster separation failure, torpedoed second stage with SRBs, then the game crashed. Tried to launch Mars ship, quicksaved just before MECO, then the game crashed. Reloaded quick save, first stage engines are now off, ascent guidance fails, manual orbital insertion successful, fairing separated, solar panels and antennae deployed, quicksaved, then the game crashed. Every game crash requires a ~25 minute reload with a small chance of a total PC crash. It’s almost like KSP doesn’t want me to go to Mars or something…

I try to actively avoid any and all autostruts on vessels that aren’t in atmospheric flight, with the sole exceptions of autostrutting engines to the root part during burns to improve stability at higher physics warps. Autostruts seem to be a recipe for immediate craft mangling anywhere else, so much so that I’ll regularly edit my save files to remove them. Especially “force heaviest” and “force grandparent”, those are the worst as they can’t be turned off in game. @Starslinger999 I believe there’s an option to add the fish experiment to a lab when Kerbalism and SSPX are installed together, it works like CHILLED in that it needs a fish tank module on the ship to run. It might also be possible to adapt the code for the greenhouse to make growing fish for food possible, but what would you feed the fish?

Don’t assume that once you’re done with the stock system, it has nothing more to give. There are ways of sprucing it up: Outer Planets Mod (adds Kerbalism Saturn/Uranus/Neptune/Pluto to make it more like the real Sol system); Minor Planets Expansion (adds dwarf planet analogs, plays well with OPM); Kerbol Origins (adds in versions of planned planets that were never added to stock KSP, seems to be no longer developed but should still work); Snarkiverse (rearranges the stock planets without adding anything new, pretty memory-light but adds plenty of new challenges, works with Kerbol Origins and OPM I believe; I recently did a playthrough and it’s well worth a look) If you want a stock-scale alternative, there are plenty to choose from: Galileo’s Planet Pack (can also be used as a second solar system with the stock system); Beyond Home (features it’s own version of the stock system as a second star, not compatible with most other planet packs but still worth a look); Grannus Expansion Pack (designed to extend either GPP or stock system (or both!) by adding an extra star system, but can also be used on its own); Kerbal-scale Real Solar System (you guessed it, it’s the real Sol system but at the scale of the stock system (about 1/10th real size), there is also a 2.5x stock scale config for it). And if you want something a bit bigger and more challenging: JNSQ (2.7x scale reimagining of the stock system- the stock planets are redesigned and new planets have been added, also has support for a similarly scaled version of Grannus Expansion as a second star); Rescale an existing system using Sigma Dimensions and an appropriate config- use Rescale! for the stock system and pick anything from 2.5x up to 10.625x (making Kerbin the size of Earth), or find a config for another planet pack (GEP has one pre-made as does KSRSS, there’s also one for Beyond Home somewhere). It’s generally agreed that stock parts, and most mods balanced against stock, work best in 2.5x scale systems (and are overpowered in stock scale), but if you want a bigger scale system there’s a mod called SMURFF that can rebalance parts to suit e.g. a 6.4x or even 10x scale Real Solar System. If you want to go big, this is about as big as it gets. Realism Overhaul (RO) and Realistic Progression (RP-1) go hand in hand with RSS, though you can also use SMURFF instead if you’re not into historical re-enactment. Experienced players only! But don’t give up on the stock system just yet! There are plenty of challenges you can still conquer- do an Elcano (rover circumnavigation), or a Jool V, or a Grand Tour, or try something else in the “challenges and mission ideas” section (Kerpollo, no-contracts career, caveman challenge etc.). Try adding some mods to make things more difficult- life support, part failures and so on- or that add new resources and new ways of getting them (exospheric harvesting, more complex mining systems, offworld craft construction etc.). The great thing about KSP is that you never have to play the game the same way twice. Don’t be afraid of trying something new, but likewise don’t assume that once you’ve done something once that it’s time to move on.

Those rear-facing thrusters came in handy during one sim when I started the final braking burn a little bit too late. I’m also not a fan of engines pointing backwards as a rule. But I painted it a different colour so obviously it’s completely unrelated in any way…

Welcome back to another episode of "What's that little grey lump?" So, is today's celestial speck a) Vesta, b) Ceres, c) Amalthea, or d) Dione? The answer is- A, Vesta. The Blue Bishop Vesta has finally made it to its destination after seven real life months (though quite a lot of that was when I was doing Into the Snarkiverse due to a dead GPU) and a little over two in-game years ago. Either this probe wasn't balanced properly when it was built or something has changed the mass of a part(s), because it's unstable using its own thruster and takes a lot of RCS effort to keep it pointing straight. Odds of a landing are greatly diminished, though I might try it once all the orbital science is done as a 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' final goal of the mission. And now for something completely different: I call this the White Hubble NST- for Nuclear Space Tug, not Space Telescope- and it'll be an important part of assembling the Mars ship in orbit. For some reason, most likely related to having two separate versions of this craft with different names, it has zero reaction wheels in it, which is a bit problematic as it'll probably burn through its RCS propellant far too fast. Stealing any excess from launch stages will only go so far, but without the ability to do EVA construction (without everything exploding, at least) there's not much I can do about that. A quick look over to the Moon where the first Blue Counter resupply rover temporarily leaves the base, grabs the crew rover and steals all its water, then grabs the base again. Incredibly, this gave the base an entire year of water supplies! I spent a lot of time simulating the crewed Mars lander- the idea of converting the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat didn't pan out (or is that 'pain' out? ) so in the end I resorted to doing what I've done in the past- blatant plagiarism. The good news is, using someone else's design that I know will work means it did in fact work; the bad news is I then realised that the top part had zero life support supplies and had to re-jig all the resources for a while. But in the end, it can meet the mission goal of getting from orbit to the surface of Mars, and then getting back into orbit again. I also revisited the crewed Mars rover design that will look familiar in earlier in this report, because it's very similar to the crewed rover currently on the Moon; of course it is, the Moon rover is effectively a prototype of the Mars one! Despite hammering into the atmosphere at close to escape velocity there were no heating problems, the parachutes opened safely (carbon fabric chutes can take A LOT of heat and force, it turns out) and landed safely on the surface. Final scores for this report: Coming up next time: A few launch windows with launches for them, plus the Mars ship to assemble and another Blue Bishop that should be arriving at Ceres soon. Contracts for crew in LEO and to the Moon station also await completion, but odds are whatever crew do those won't be available for the Mars mission so I'll need to choose carefully.

I can’t remember what tutorial 3 is right now. If that’s the one where the Swivel engine is missing, click the arrow in the top left of the editor screen then click a tab on the left to sort by manufacturer (Jeb’s Junkyard), size (1.25m) or module (ModuleEngines) and you should find the old Swivel; the new model came with 1.12.2 and the old one was hidden, but the tutorials weren’t updated to match. You might learn more by starting a science mode game on easy settings and playing through the game for a while.

I should probably learn to edit videos at some point, screenshots are OK but they don’t really capture actions or things that happen fast- when I remember to hit F1 in the first place. Also @CoolRanchAJ is the twitter giveaway thing US only?

Screenshots or a video would really help- especially showing the engineer’s inventory and the PAW of the broken antenna. (And if all else fails, hit alt+F12 > cheats > fix repairable parts, then contracts > active > complete the contract. If you’ve made every effort to fulfil it, it’s fair to use the cheats and force the game to complete it.)

I second verifying the files through Steam- it’s very unusual to get a crash like this with stock KSP unless something has been corrupted in some way, which verifying the files should fix. To verify the files: right click KSP in Steam > Properties > local files > verify integrity of game files. It might say some files need to be redownloaded so let it do that and see if the game loads properly after that. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling and reinstalling KSP completely, just remember to copy your save files (right click KSP in Steam > browse local files > go to saves folder > copy the folder with the name of any save(s) you want to keep > paste to desktop) before uninstalling and then put them back after reinstalling.

The tutorials are old and outdated; the game has been updated several times since then and the rocket in the first launch tutorial is now an absolute deathtrap as the parachutes will never open in time before you crash into the ground. Try reducing the amount of solid fuel in the booster?

There’s a version of Kopernicus that works right up to the current version of KSP (1.12.2). I know this because I’v used it in 1.12.2.

Having done a couple of Grand Tours (landing on every solid body in the system) I can safely say that Tylo is second only to Eve in terms of delta-V requirements, and is the highest in terms of landing delta-V because it's nearly the size of Kerbin, has a bit less gravity and no atmosphere to aerobrake in like Eve, Kerbin and even Laythe. First focus on getting back into orbit from the surface, then build your descent stage to get that ascent stage down to the surface intact and without using its own fuel. Laythe is the only place other than Kerbin where air-breathing engines work. Air-breathers are an order of magnitude more efficient than rockets plus planes can fly to a nearby island in a way rockets cannot so of course you're going to use a plane on Laythe. Designed right, you might not even need oxidiser at all- a good jet engine plus a NERV can get you to orbit. A simple lander can - FL-T400 - Terrier lander can land and return from Vall, so will be enough for Bop and Pol too. With a bit of tweaking, that same design could also serve as your Tylo ascent stage which means you only need to take one lander, one Laythe plane and one Tylo descent stage with you instead of five different landers, cutting weight, cost and part count in one fell swoop.

Logs please: But more importantly- ModuleManager 3.0.6 and 4.1.4 are both in your GameData folder, which suggests a) you've installed something wrong and b) you're using a really out of date mod(s). You should never have more than one ModuleManager.dll, deletel 3.0.6 and see how you get on. A proper mod list would also help, I don't know what "Distribution" and "ImprovedSystem" are from. Make sure you're using compatible versions of everything for your version of KSP. Also, any particular reason why you're using 1.8.1?

Helium-2: exists Logic: That’ll just fall apart into two hydrogen atoms due to repulsion- Helium-2: Surprise antimatter! I is deuterium now lol This is why I’m not a particle physicist…