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KSP2 Release Notes
Everything posted by jimmymcgoochie
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Q: Why does my plane veer violently off the runway? Supplemental answer: Wheel friction can cause this. Enable advanced tweakables in the main menu settings, then select the front landing gear, set “friction control” to “override” and reduce friction to <1, preferably <0.5, which will make the front wheel less likely to ‘dig in’ and cause the plane to pivot around it. It’s also a good idea to use a lower brake force setting on the front wheels and a higher one on the rear wheels for the same reason. Q: Why doesn’t my plane lift off the runway? Supplemental answer: KSP wings produce lift based on angle of attack alone, there’s no aerofoil-based lift involved. If you put your wings onto the plane pointing straight into the airflow (zero angle of attack), they produce zero lift; if you attach your wings and then rotate them a few degrees so the leading (front) edge is above the trailing (rear) edge, they’ll have a positive angle of attack and will produce lift even when the node of your plane is level with the ground on the runway. Increasing the angle of attack too far can cause excessive drag at higher speeds though, so it’s a good idea to combine this technique with a landing gear setup that has the nose raised slightly when landed to increase your angle of attack even more on the runway. Q: Do I have to bring those experiments back? Supplemental answer: Most experiments will give you some of their data if you transmit it back, but in many cases this is less than 100% of the available science for that experiment. Experiments that produce (theoretically) physical samples such as materials bays and mystery goos will give much less science for transmitting than for returning the data to Kerbin inside a craft, and many experiments require multiple runs of the same experiment in the same situation to give full data; again, materials bays and mystery goos are notable examples. However, you don’t need to bring the science instruments themselves back to Kerbin- just the data. You can transfer data into an Experiment Return Unit and send that back, have a Kerbal get out of the craft, take the data from each instrument and store it in a pod (or ERU) and in the case of Scientists, reset materials bays and mystery goos so they can be used again. In addition, you can store more than one copy of each experiment’s data on a craft as long as they’re in different parts- it’s usually impossible to store duplicate data on a single part, but if you have a pod with an ERU on it you can store e.g. a mystery goo sample from Kerbin space low in both the pod and the ERU and get the science points from both when you return the craft to Kerbin. Some experiments e.g. materials bays are not particularly sturdy and often won’t survive re-entry so transferring the data into something more resilient is a good idea.
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Why do old threads call it Mun or Mün?
jimmymcgoochie replied to Wizard Kerbal's topic in Kerbal Network
At some point the forum software got updated and broke some special characters. The Mun was sometimes called Mün and the ü got mangled. -
Val: It's time. Bob: Wait, wait, I'm not ready! Val: Too bad, you actually need to go right now or you'll miss the landing zone near to the rover that's already on the surface. Get in that lander already! Bob: Science! Val: Get. In. The. Lander. Gene: Val's right, Bob- go now or you'll have to wait for another Dunan day to try again. Bob: *nervous* OK, OK, I'm going. Bob: Drogue chutes deployed, that's a lot of Gs! Val: Only five, you're just used to the 0.3g in the centrifuge. Bill: True, but that means you're acclimated to Duna gravity. Val: Just needs a little dab of throttle, and- done! Bob: Mission Control, this is Duna Lander, landed on Duna. * riotous celebrations!!!!! * Bob: Proceeding with post-landing activities now. Bob: Not sure about the six-iron though, could have done with a bit less loft in this lower gravity. Maybe a two or three next time? Gene: Sorry to interrupt, but- Bob, can you look straight at the camera for a minute, then turn around and face directly away from it? Bob: Sure... Bobak: Is that helmet painted backwards? Gene: It looks like it. How did that happen? Bob: Huh. I thought it looked a bit weird... Linus: Taxi for Robert! And so begins tonight's special programme, Bob's Duna Adventure! Bob set off in his trusty rover, ready to find ALL THE SCIENCE! across Duna's surface. He ventured north towards the polar ice caps, where he found a strange rock: Alas, the rock was too big for him to pick up and too metallic for his little pickaxe to break a chunk off. Instead, he wandered over to a strange rock formation nearby and chiselled some "blueberries" off from the cluster. Next, Bob headed south, catching some great views of Duna and its two moons as he wandered from place to place to get those precious science reports and samples. He tried to drive west as much as possible by day to prolong the daylight, but couldn't quite outrun the sun so had to slow down drastically by night to preserve power. His quest for science is nearly complete- only a few biomes are left on his checklist and will soon be ticked off. Linus: Don't worry, my children on Moho and Eve, I haven't forgotten about you! Wernher: That rover really doesn't like going uphill. Linus: It's the gravity that's the issue, although those wheels have pretty puny motors in them which doesn't help too much. Wernher: And what about the Moho rover? Linus: Heading for a strange sensor reading near Moho's south pole, although that reading wasn't always showing up in the scan data so it might not actually be there at all. Cliff (Wernher's new intern): Boss! Boss! There's a serious problem over in Research and Development! Wernher: What is it? Cliff: Well, there's no other way to say it- they've run out of things to research! Wernher:
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When you watch someone else playing KSP and think "Move over, amateur, this is how you do it!" Or when they finally realise, half an hour into the video, the mistake that I spotted after about 30 seconds and have been yelling at the screen about since.
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If you have scatterer installed, it might be that water bug in scatterer, if you have water collision effects on then it can act like a magic trampoline and bounce stuff until it gets smashed to bits.
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“Clipping the solar panel through the ground broke it, repairing it broke it again, but maybe if I repair it again it will magically not break?” Just take it off and reattach at a different angle! Also you completely failed to get Theooly to set up those deployed experiments so they’ll be incredibly slow at generating data, except the weather analyser which doesn’t work in vacuum, and you completely missed the deployed antenna part too.
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So I decided to try updating this save from 1.12.1 to 1.12.2 to a) get ground anchors, b) get some bug fixes and c) because I wanted to. My last attempt at doing this ended horribly with many errors, but this time I decided to just make a copy of the 1.12.1 version I've been using so far, then just copy+paste 1.12.2 on top of it, replacing all duplicate files with the 1.12.2 versions. Amazingly, this seems to have worked- the game loads, the save loads and nothing has thrown a million exceptions in the logs or exploded yet. I'll need to try it out a bit more to see if it's stable, but early signs are definitely positive. And knowing my luck, by the end of this week 1.12.3 will appear
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Orbits are not showing anywhere
jimmymcgoochie replied to petrisha's topic in KSP1 Technical Support (PC, modded installs)
More information please- screenshots(!), KSP version, mod list and game logs if you can, here's how to get them: Without knowing what mods you're using it's nearly impossible to guess what's going on. -
The Gaelan Space Race (we have a winner!)
jimmymcgoochie replied to jimmymcgoochie's topic in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas
Go to KSP/saves/(your save name)/backups, copy those backup save files and paste them in the folder up then try loading them in game and see if any of them don't have the problem? (Also the text in your post isn't wrapping across lines for some reason, that's a bit weird...) -
Linus: The probe now departing from platform 2 is the Eve Sampler service non-stop to Kerbin. Gene: Can you just... not? If you think you're being quirky, you're not- you're just being annoying and I'm getting tired of it. Linus: Bobak: Joolshot 2 has arrived at Jool, on course for Tylo gravity assist to capture. Gene: See, that's how to give a mission update! Linus: *sniffling* The Eve Rover is approaching Eve, ready for EDL procedure. Gene: See? That wasn't too difficult, was *KLAXON!* what was that!? Linus: Two... Two hundred Gs!?!? *faints* Bobak: How did that thing even survive those sorts of forces? Wernher: Eve Rover touchdown confirmed, all equipment is deployed. We'll give it a shakedown to see if anything was damaged during that, uh, aggressive aerobraking, but so far it all seems OK. Bobak: That image seems really dark, maybe the camera is damaged? Or maybe that ambient light booster thingy is switched off? Wernher: No, the camera is fine and the booster is on; Eve is just really dark at night. Bobak: Oh. Wernher: But there's a suspiciously light blob over there that looks like a prime candidate to test the scanning arm on. Linus: Owww, my head. What happened? Wernher: You fainted. But here's something to perk you up again: the Eve Rover is down safely and fully operational, plus we're about to get the last seismic data from the Mun rover- Wernher: Ah. That's unfortunate. Linus: *faints* Val (from Interplanetary Ship 1): Hey Kerbin, how's our Duna rover doing? Is it there yet? Gene: Status update on the Duna rover? Bobak: It's, uh... *frantic typing* Bobak: Flying past the moons, with a nice view to boot. Plenty of fuel left to brake before landing as long as we set the parachutes to deploy at minimum pressure. Bobak: And... Bobak: Touchdown! All systems check out nominally, including that self-righting motor on the roof. Val: Hey Bob, come check out your new ride! Bob: Cool, is that the- wait, why is it my new ride? Val: Because you're going down to Duna, obviously. Bill can do Pol and I'll go to Bop. Valmal: What about me? Val: You can do that science thing in the lab with the samples and stuff. That's basically the only reason they sent you along with us. Valmal: That's not true! Gene: It, kind of, is... Val: Prepare for deceleration! Val: ...is that it? Wow, those NERVs are wimpy. Bill: We used up nearly all the oxidiser for the Wolfhound doing the transfer burn from Kerbin and what little we had left just got used now. Bob: The burn calculator was apparently including the thrust from the Wolfhound when it timed the start of the capture burn, so now we're well behind and the orbit won't be what we planned. Gene: Great... Bob: But the silver lining is we can get a better orbit, one that has its periapsis on the opposite side to Pol and so will never get caught by its gravity. Wernher: Nice work. One problem though- you appear to be in a near-polar orbit, which is great for not getting caught by the moons, but also bad for actually going to the moons when we want to and also not as good for landing and returning. Bob: Yeah, and we'll be in perpetual sunlight which is good for power and for the greenhouse, but bad for that lab experiment that requires darkness. Val: Why are you debating the merits of our orbit when you should be celebrating the fact that WE ARE IN ORBIT OF DUNA!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! That night, the KSC had a party the likes of which they hadn't seen since the earliest days of the Space Program- those first tentative steps into the unknown, launching probes and Kerbals alike into the sky in the hope that they'd stay there for a while (and then come back, in the case of the Kerbals!). Valmal produced a small bottle of SpaceKaleTM vodka that she'd brewed along the way, which was tasted and by mutual agreement dumped out the nearest airlock. Such was the magnitude of the party that nobody had time to do the usual Probe Time! update; not that there were any probes to update about at that point, although the Super Relays that had previously ended up bunched in a line in solar orbit were all on the move via some weird resonant orbits and would be reassessed in a few years' time.
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1.12 ISS mod
jimmymcgoochie replied to chazbanx's topic in KSP1 Technical Support (PC, modded installs)
Can you be more specific? Screenshots would really help here. -
Linus: MONTAGE! Gene: Wait wha- Linus: Laythe Quartet 2 is down! Linus: That's number three down... Linus: And four. And all landed on actual land! But we're not done yet! Gene: *hides under desk* Linus: Whoops, that was close- just 3m/s left in the tanks there! Linus: Hey, how come this thing thinks the "highlands" are below the "midlands"? Wernher: *terrified sobbing* Bobak: Why is that one so much darker than the rest? Linus: Forgot to turn the ambient light booster on, just a sec... Linus: There we go! Just one probe left, nice and easy- not that way mountain MOUNTAIN!- Linus: Sheesh, they should really warn you about things like that. Lost a solar panel on landing, though considering it ran out of fuel and hit at nearly 30m/s that's pretty good going. Now all we need to do is wait for the data to come oozing back at 0.1B/s or for all the parts to die from radiation damage. Nice work, team, everybody take five! Wernher: *still sobbing* Five isn't going to do it... *plane noises* Gene: What the-? Mortimer: Who did that? Sanlan: What? You said the signal back from Jool was terrible, so I made a relay to fix it. It has science-y stuff too and it'll last a really long time because it won't ever go down into the radiation belts. Think of it as a long-term investment in future Jool operations. *** Great. Someone totally stole our thunder by covering all those probe landings on Laythe and Vall. Ah well, looks like it's going to be a very short instalment of Probe Time! Gilly Scanner: 8/10. Started braking burn too late so flew right past Gilly at over 2km/s, eventually braked into orbit of Moho and managed to fly back to Gilly to capture into orbit. Gilly's SOI seems to be too small to support scanning operations even using parts with the lowest minimum altitudes possible. Insert outro link here. *In the KSC canteen* Gene: It's OK, Wernher, just breathe. Wernher: *breathing into paper bag* Linus: *sheepish* Hi, guys, sorry about earlier. I got a bit carried away. Gene: A bit? Linus: OK, a lot. But I do have some good news- I've fixed the Gilly scanner! Gene: How? Linus: Well, it was pretty simple really- I tweaked the config to increase Gilly's SOI by 5km so a probe can orbit above 20km to use the scanners found a resonant orbit around Gilly that uses the gravity of Moho to keep the probe from leaving Gilly's gravity. So far everything looks like it's working, though it might take a while to cover the whole surface because the probe's orbital period is almost the same as Gilly's rotation speed. Sanlan: Did he just talk in strikethrough text?
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Unmanned Rover Won't Move
jimmymcgoochie replied to FinnBot5000's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
If you don’t have a signal then you can’t drive the rover. Check the keybinds in the main menu settings and change the keys for wheel co trolls from the default WASD to the arrow keys instead- this will make them separate to the attitude controls which makes driving a rover so much easier. Once you get a signal, make sure your brakes are off, motors enabled and you’re controlling from a forwards-facing control point; if you have advanced tweakables enabled (and it’s worth doing so) you can play around with friction and traction control settings to try and find the best combination to make that rover, er, rove. -
Three landings on Laythe- all on actual land!- plus four on Vall to conclude the primary goals of the Laythe and Vall Quartet missions; science transmission rates are extremely slow and radiation levels are stupidly high (though Laythe's atmosphere takes ~95% of that off at sea level) plus some of those experiments are long duration so there might be some science that just can't be gathered or transmitted before the probes inevitably fail. If you've never played KSP with Kerbalism, just imagine a giant doughnut surrounding Jool, extending out as far as Tylo's orbit on the sunward side and even further than that on the outward side, where radiation levels can range from "what's that burning smell?" to "why do I have extra fingers?" on Tylo and then rise to "my eyes are bleeding!" on Vall and "my insides are melting!" in orbit of Laythe; Laythe's atmosphere absorbs most of it so the surface is relatively(!) safe, but still not a good idea to stay for too long, but Vall lacks such protection and is by some margin the deadliest place to land in the whole Kerbol system. Oh, and as if that wasn't enough, there's a second smaller ring just inside Laythe's orbit that's ten times worse and will kill anything and anyone that dares to enter it, shielding or no shielding.
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[1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (September 6)
jimmymcgoochie replied to Nertea's topic in KSP1 Mod Releases
Has anyone made a patch that adds LqdMethane options to NFX fuel tanks when CryoTanks/CryoEngines is installed? -
Coilgun Propulsion.... Realistic and Unrealistic
jimmymcgoochie replied to Spacescifi's topic in Science & Spaceflight
Is anyone going to talk about the very obvious hazards of propelling your spacecraft with a relativistic projectile gun? -
Landed on Laythe. No, really, landed on Laythe, which considering the fact that the entry capsule wanted to go pointy end (with parachute) first instead of blunt end (with heat shield) first, and there was limited fuel to try and pick a landing spot, and the general lack of land on Laythe generally, is saying something. I also managed a water landing with another probe but then the game did that weird can’t-save-can’t-leave-can’t-quit thing and I had to alt+F4 it so that lander is back in orbit again.
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When driving a rover on Minmus you want: Minimal traction control (<0.5) so you can actually get the wheel torque down, otherwise it will stop the wheels from spinning and you’ll never get anywhere; Maximum friction control so the wheels can grip the surface, which also helps keep the traction control at bay; Maximum spring and damper strength so it can absorb the bumps; Front wheel steering only to avoid the risk of turning too fast and rolling; Brake strength much higher at the rear to stop it going head first onto its back if you brake; And have the wheel controls separate to your attitude controls- I set my wheels to work with the arrow keys rather than WASD. Try sending the station over towards that lander, then EVA the engineer (with some repair kits in their inventory) and fly over to the lander, bring it down beside the rover and fix up that antenna, grab the stray part on the surface and take that back up to orbit on the lander. It’s entirely possible to attach a probe core to a craft via EVA construction, it doesn’t even need to be the right way round as you can still control it from the lander can’s co tool point.
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Mortimer: Oh goody, what crazy contraptions have you decided to spend my- er, our, money on today? Wernher: Well, firstly there's this rover for Duna. It'll give whichever of the crew lands on Duna something to do for a while and gather some more science in the process. Linus: You had me at "rover", then lost me at "crew". Mortimer: Very well, that one can go. Wernher: Then there's this other rover for Eve, based on the same design we used on Kerbin and Moho. There are a few contracts for science data from Eve's surface, plus we've gone there a total of once with a really rudimentary lander so there's a lot still to learn about it. Linus: *barely contained excitement* Mortimer: All right then, go. Wernher: Ah, great, the engine failed. Stupid Skiff and its stupid two rated ignitions, we can barely do any course corrections with it; still, that's what we put the RCS system on it for. Val: Interplanetary Ship 1 to Mission Control, we're about to head off to Duna. Commencing burn countdown. Bobak: Are you sure you have your EVA jetpacks with you? I thought I saw a box marked "EVA packs for Duna" lying around in the VAB. Val: Wait one... *nervous silence* Val: Yeah, we totally have the jetpacks, they were here all along. Don't scare us like that, dude, not cool. Val: Periapsis kick burn complete, one more orbit and we'll get all the way off to Duna. Linus: Can someone stick their head out and check that Wolfhound engine? I just have a bad feeling about it... Val: Uh, sure. Hey not-Val, go check the engines! Valmal: *indistinct grumbling* Valmal: Well, would you look at that. The Wolfhound's mounting screws have come loose; if we'd have fired that up it could have shaken itself to pieces. Just need to tighten these up a bit and we'll be good to go. Also, my geiger counter is clicking at me? Bill: Don't worry, that's just because you're floating right beside four barely shielded nuclear reactors while we're flying through Kerbin's inner belt. Valmal: Then why didn't we wait until after we were through the belt!? Val: Enough chatter, Mal. Get in here and let's get this show on the road- to Duna! Looks like the transfer burn will be completed in the dark, as is right and proper. Mortimer: At last! Now that Bill and Bob are gone I can finally relax, no harebrained schemes or expensive prototypes to worry about- just nice, simple contracts. Space station on a solar orbit? No problem! Mortimer: It's almost too easy sometimes... Bobak: Sentinel 2's circularisation burn is coming up. Once it's in position we'll have better coverage of space around Kerbin and Dres as well as a nice relay between Kerbin and Eve. Wernher: We need to do something about Joolshot 1. Gene: What about it? Wernher: We're getting a lot of failure reports through the telemetry system, most likely because it keeps getting irradiated every time Eeloo dips into Jool's outer belt. Wernher: If we move it to a high Jool orbit, outside the belts, it might last long enough to transmit its data back home before everything else on it fails too. Gene: Worth a shot. Wernher: Well, it's in the right place, but we just lost another solar panel. It might be too little too late, but we'll have to wait and see. *** Welcome to another episode of Probe Time! Vall Quartet: 9/10. Had to deploy solar panels on the probes to prevent loss of fuel as the core stage's solar panels were totally inadequate to maintain active cooling of the hydrogen tanks. Performed Tylo gravity assist and subsequent Vall intercept burn as expected, due to arrive at Vall in one orbit. Laythe Quartet: 7/10. Also had power issues but couldn't deploy solar panels so had to disable cooling systems and lost fuel as a result. Still able to capture into polar Laythe orbit as intended and lander deployment could begin. Laythe Quartet 1: 13/10. Survived unpredictable atmospheric entry and landed on the targeted island, deployed antennae and solar panels and began science gathering. Separation from parachute/aeroshell stage performed using Spin Really FastTM technique to allow full deployment. Data rates to KSC extremely low but data storage is large. Possible cryovolcanic or geyser activity detected in vicinity of landing. And that's all from- wait a minute... Who's been messing with the fonts? This isn't right at all! And that's all from Probe Time! We'll be back again, same time, same place. *** Bobak: We've lost contact with Laythe Quartet 2 just as it started its descent towards Laythe's south pole. The last image we got from it was pretty nice though. Mortimer: Another for the collection, and while I'm at it I might as well include this one too. Gene: Morty, I've been meaning to ask... Mortimer: Yes? Gene: I went down to the gift shop and I didn't see a single postcard, magnet, T-shirt, mug or anything at all with any of those pictures you've been collecting on them. What exactly are you doing with them? Mortimer: Have you looked at the walls in the staff canteen lately? How about the rooms in the Astronaut Complex and the Administration Building? The screensavers on these monitors? It turns out people would much rather get a postcard or T-shirt with some little cartoon rocket or our official logo on it, so I've been using them to decorate the walls of the KSC instead. Gene: That's... actually a pretty good idea.
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It’s worth mentioning Project Eeloo from Kerbal Atomics which uses the local atmosphere (oxygenated or not!) in “jet” mode and then liquid hydrogen in space (a patch can swap it to use liquid fuel as KA will swap most nuclear engines to run on liquid hydrogen, which can break existing crafts); it’s big, heavy, expensive and has poor ISP compared to something like the NERV, but it delivers plenty of thrust and works in any atmosphere- including on Eve!
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Troubleshooting my own install
jimmymcgoochie replied to Fihnakis's topic in KSP1 Technical Support (PC, modded installs)
If the game isn’t loading properly, the first thing you’d want to look for is an exception or error message in the logs- these usually include information on what’s going wrong and can point the finger at a specific mod, part or patch that’s causing the problem. If the game stops loading then it’s probably because an exception has occurred that the game can’t deal with, so check the very end of the log files and work backwards; a good text editor like VSCode makes this vastly easier than using the default Notepad as it has many more search options. Can you post the logs you’ve got?