jimmymcgoochie

A single HG-5 has a relay rating of 5M with the default 100% antenna range modifier in your difficulty settings, however if you want that relay to actually be any use as a relay then bigger and more powerful relay dishes are recommended- if anywhere outside Kerbin’s SOI then an RA-2 is the minimum and preferably an RA-15 or RA-100. All antennae have diminishing returns; while some mods can change this, they’ll probably say so in the part descriptions so unless you see anything there assume it’s the default 75%. Each additional relay adds (0.75^n) additional range where n is the number of extra antennae after the first (it’s a zero index as anything^0 = 1). With two identical dishes that have 32M range, you’ll get 32 + (32^0.75) = 32 + 24 = 56M total range; add a third and that one gets ((32^0.75)^0.75) = 24^0.75 = 18M additional range, and so on. You’ll quickly run into some pretty steep reductions with more dishes- the second dish adds barely half the original range, the fourth is about 0.3 times- and it quickly becomes cheaper, lighter and more efficient to add one better dish e.g. an RA-2 with a rating of 2G than stacking a load of smaller ones. If you have antennae with different ratings, I believe it starts from the most powerful before working down to the weakest. There are a few mods out there that can help you with antenna ranges and planning, though Antenna Helper is the only one I can remember the name of right now.

Again, too much dithering around with the intercept node and the docking. I’d much rather have those cut out or skimmed over- give us the game highlights, not a play-by-play commentary.

@boolybooly use the landing legs to “bounce” the top of the rocket towards vertical, then gun the engines and hope you get it pointed up in time to not crash into the ground. Take the legs off and stick them right at the top of the crew cabin so that they’ll deploy down into the ground; set SAS to surface radial out (aka UP), deploy legs then give it full throttle as soon as it bounces the nose up. It’s a risky strategy so worth a few dry runs without the engine first to see how high you can get the nose to go. Alternatively, you could try using the legs one or two at a time to gradually ratchet the craft upwards towards vertical- attach at the end of the crew cabin, deploy, add ore legs further along, deploy those and repeat until you have a much higher nose-up attitude, then try the bounce and go technique above. You also have that rover to brace the rocket against… I really hope you’re not planning to re-enter that thing though, it looks like a deathtrap- materials bays are very easily destroyed by re-entry heating and if that happens your crew cabin will fly off and probably explode too.

Gene: SECURITY! Wernher: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, LINUS!? Cliff: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-! Walt: This is madness, I tell you! MADNESS! Sanlan: WHY IS EVERYBODY SHOUTING? Kraken: SILENCE. *all the lights and screens go dark* *meanwhile, on Bop...* Val: *wince* Wow, they're really not taking this well. Kraken: TREMBLE BEFORE ME, MORTAL! Val: *completely unfazed* Rude. And frankly ungrateful. Kraken: And why should I feel gratitude to you, impudent little morsel? Val: Now just you hold up there, squid-brain. It took a lot of time and effort to track you down out here, sneak this probe up to you without anyone noticing and run it for literally years to beam enough power into you to wake you up. If you don't start behaving yourself- Kraken: *sniffle* Val: Are you... are you crying? Kraken: No..? *sniff* Yes... Val: OK, what's going on with you? Kraken: I didn't mean for any of this to happen! *sob* I just wanted to communicate with you little green people, but every time I went near your spacecraft they'd either start breaking or running- sometimes they'd even burn me with their rocket exhausts, and that hurt! It took a long time before I realised I was overloading your electronics, but by then it was too late: you blamed every failure on 'evil space Kraken' and reacted to anything I did with hostility. Val: OK, just to be clear- what you're talking about happened decades ago, none of us were even born then! As a matter of fact, we have almost no information about what happened back then; most of it was lost during The Anomaly. Kraken: "The Anomaly". Interesting way of saying "we tried to make a singularity inside a matrix of negative anti-gravioli particles to create a perpetual energy device". Val: That sounds dodgy. Kraken: It was madness! You were meddling with forces beyond your capacity to understand, let alone control! You had an incomplete picture of what I was capable of and thought you could reproduce it for your own purposes. As soon as I saw what you were doing I tried to stop it, but I was too late. Val: What happened? Kraken: The anti-gravioli field began resonating; in nanoseconds it failed completely and the singularity exploded, unleashing a gravitational anomaly across the entire solar system, from the outside in. It was all I could do to save the planets and moons from smashing each other to pieces. First the ice planet fell into the green gas planet's gravity and I caught it into a resonance with the second moon; then the green planet fell sunwards and displaced the grey sub-planet towards your homeworld while its two outer moons fell towards the red planet, where I caught them in a complex resonance even as the original moon flew inwards; the grey sub-planet nearly destroyed your home planet but I was able to stop it by transferring its second moon so that the grey sub-planet ended up as a pseudosatellite instead of turning your planet inside out; your planet's primary moon nearly hit your planet too, but I diverted its course to make its orbit inclined and eccentric instead; the red planet's moon ended up at the purple planet, while the purple planet's sub-moon ended up at the brown planet which fell even closer to the sun. For a moment it seemed that the sun itself would detonate but I was able to prevent it; it almost killed me and I barely made it back to this small moon before crashing onto its surface. Val: ...wow. That's some story. But why here of all places? Kraken: This moon's peculiar composition produces a powerful particle belt that sustained me, and its orbit allowed easy access to the vast energies of the green gas planet's magnetic fields. *ominous shadow* Val: what the- Giant Kraken: DO NOT FEAR, NATIVE OF KERBOL-III. I MEAN YOU NO HARM. Kraken: Great. It's you. I was hoping for someone else. Anyone else, in fact. Giant Kraken: I WILL LEAVE YOU HERE, LITTLE BROTHER, DON'T THINK I WON'T. Kraken: *hastily* I didn't say that! Val: That sounds familiar. So I guess you're leaving, then? Kraken: That is correct. Your device has proven most useful in my restoration, and for that I am thankful, but if I never have to spend another second in this cursed system again, it'll be too soon. Farewell. *Kraken blinks out of existence* Val: ...bye then? Giant Kraken: YOUR ACTIONS TO RESTORE MY BROTHER ARE NOTED. I WOULD LIKE TO REPAY THEM IN KIND. Val: Well, I suppose you could fix our solar system? Put it back where it was before The Anomaly happened? Giant Kraken: THIS IS ACCEPTABLE. BUT FIRST YOU MUST VISIT EACH OF THE CELESTIAL BODIES IN THE SYSTEM, RETRIEVE A SAMPLE OF ITS SURFACE AND RETURN IT TO YOUR HOME PLANET. ONLY THEN WILL I RESTORE THE SYSTEM TO ITS FORMER STATE. Val: Wait, what? That seems arbitrary and unfair! Giant Kraken: DO YOU WANT ME TO FIX YOUR BROKEN SOLAR SYSTEM OR NOT? Val: *hastily* Yes, yes I do! Giant Kraken: THEN THOSE ARE MY TERMS. VISIT EVERY BODY IN YOUR SYSTEM, LAND ON ITS SURFACE AND RETURN A PIECE OF THAT SURFACE TO YOUR HOME WORLD. Val: What about Jool? Gas giants don't have a surface, and then there's the whole Giant Ring of Agonising Death around it... Giant Kraken: VERY WELL. THE GAS GIANT IS EXCLUDED. AS IS THE STAR, BEFORE YOU ASK. BUT TO COMPENSATE FOR THIS YOU MUST ALSO RETRIEVE A SAMPLE FROM AN ASTEROID AND A SAMPLE FROM A COMET. Val: OK, that seems fair. How do I contact you when we're done? Giant Kraken: YOU DO NOT. I WILL BE WATCHING AND WILL RETURN WHEN THE TASK IS COMPLETE. *Giant Kraken blinks out of existence* Val: *blinks* Well, that just happened... Bill: Did anyone else see that? Bob: Was that... a KRAKEN!? It was HUGE! Valmal: Huh? What? Did I miss something? Val: Hey guys, you're not going to believe what just happened...

If you use the “insert image from URL” button at the bottom right of the text box, you can paste those links into it and it will embed the image like this: Just looking at the image of your GameData I see a few things that look wrong- first of all, there’s a GameData folder inside your GameData folder which is never right- take the contents of that second GameData and put it in the first, then delete the duplicate. The “Extras” folder is a bit odd too, I suspect that one needs to have its contents moved to the GameData folder too. I don’t see Module Manager on the list, but that could just be because it hasn’t scrolled down far enough? And I have no idea what ModuleManagerWatchDog is, where did you get that? I think this issue is arising because Parallax is interfering with the city textures in AVP- either remove Parallax or delete the city/city-lights co figs from AVP and it *should* fix this issue?

Booted up this save again after some mod updates (I'm really not missing those 30 minute load times! ) and managed to launch a boring old Orange Cliff into a Molniya orbit. Good to see that everything still works, I'll be back fairly soon to concentrate on this full time once my "Into the Snarkiverse" series is done.

If you got KSP through Steam and want to try a different version, and assuming you didn't put mods into the Steam copy of KSP (which is a bad idea due to Steam corrupting things when mods are installed), try this: In Steam library, right click KSP then click Properties; Click Betas, then use the drop down list to select your game version e.g. 1.10.1; Steam will download and install that version of the game, once it completes click Local files and verify the game files just to make sure it's installed right; Copy KSP out of Steam/steamapps/common, paste it away from Steam's folders and give it a new name e.g. 1.10.1, renaming it makes it much easier to keep track if you have several different copies of KSP with different mods in each; Add this new copy to CKAN and install mods as normal.

On one hand, I agree, but on the other hand, does it really need it? I started without them due to dead GPU and adding them in half way through would just look too out of place, plus I doubt there'd be much difference on Duna with something like AVP or Spectra added.

This might not necessarily fix the problem you're having, but it's a good idea nonetheless: don't put mods into the Steam controlled copy of KSP, it breaks stuff a lot; instead, make a copy of KSP and put your mods into the copy. Make a copy of your save game(s) (inside Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program/saves) and put them on your desktop. If you're using CKAN, and I suspect you might be or that mod list would have taken a long time to make, export the modpack (File > export modpack) and save that on your desktop too, this will allow you to easily reinstall all your mods later. Delete all mods from the Steam copy of KSP so that only Squad (and SquadExpansion if you have either/both DLCs) are left in GameData. Uninstall and reinstall KSP through Steam. Verify the game files through Steam (right click KSP in Steam library > Properties > Local files > Verify integrity of game files), this will make sure that nothing has been corrupted in your KSP install. Copy the entirety of KSP (Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program) and paste it somewhere outside of Steam's folder tree (e.g. desktop); this is a brand new copy of KSP that Steam can't touch and which you can now install your mods in. Add this new copy of KSP to CKAN and reinstall your mods using the modpack from step 2, then grab your saves from step 1 and put them back into KSP/saves. If the issue persists in the new copy, try asking in the KSPIE support thread, you'll get the attention of those in the know about KSPIE over there (I don't use that mod myself and know very little about it):

Val: Brace for acceleration! Val: Bye Pol, and hello Bop! Val: OK, I'm heading down now. Bill, you're in charge until I get back. Bill: Val: Aaaaand- touchdown! Easy peasy, and right where I was aiming too. Val: Roll montage! Gene: Not again! *hides* Val: EVA phase 1 complete, proceeding with phase 2. Gene: Say what now? Val: Target acquired. Wernher: That's Dunashot 1A! I thought that died from radiation damage? Linus: Well, not exactly. Wernher: What do you mean? Linus: I slightly doctored its last image to make it look like it was completely fried, but in reality only the avionics were damaged; the solar panels and transmitter still worked and ever since it landed we've been using it for a special purpose. Gene: What is going on here!? Linus: You know how in that ancient mythological tale, Bop was the home of the Kraken? Well... Val: Turns out, they were right. Everyone:

Now that's what I call a view!

Val: How to get from polar Duna orbit to equatorial Pol orbit in 3 easy steps: 1) Kick apoapsis really high near ascending/descending node... 2) Match planes with Pol at high altitude and- BOB GET BACK IN HERE! 3) Capture into Pol orbit. Valmal: Why are we orbiting retrograde? Val: Does it matter? Orbital velocity here is so low that it makes no difference either way. Bill: Lander away! Bill: And a nice easy touchdown. Time to do that science thing, I guess. Bill: Wow. That view... Bob: Data suggests you can find some lowlands to the north, midlands to the south and a yellow stone to the west. Bill: OK, OK, I know what I'm doing. Bill: Samples all gathered, stone picked up (looks more orange than yellow to me but whatever) now back to the lander- Bill: How did that happen? Mission Control: *mild panic* Bill: Good thing the gravity is so weak, it's pretty easy to get it pointing the right way up again. Mission Control: *phew!* Bill: Deployed gubbins deployed, next stop- north pole! Bill: Forget the last one- THIS is a view! Val: Enough sightseeing. Rendezvous will be a pain from that high latitude but with orbital velocity this low it's not like it'll cost us a load of fuel. Bill: Automated docking system activated. Bob, Valmal, I have some nice samples for you! Bob, Valmal: *happy scientist noises* Val: Mission update- we have plenty of liquid fuel left to get back to Kerbin, but we've used up most of the oxidiser and what's left has been transferred to the lander to make the descent to Bop and back. Supplies are OK for now, though the water recycler doesn't seem to be doing as well as we expected so water could be an issue in the future; battery capacity is really limited so we can't run all the experiments at the same time or it'll just run out in about 5 minutes flat. Still, not a bad view from the "office" window...

Is this still going? I was enjoying it!

It’s usually best to deploy the central station first, after that doesn’t matter. You can see how much power you’re generating and using if you right-click the central station, if your generation isn’t keeping up then deploy more power generators or switch off some consumers via their own right click menus.

Then deploy some solar panels/RTGs to power them; remember solar panels don’t work when it’s dark… There’s also a mod called Deployable Batteries which, surprise, adds deployable batteries that can power stuff at night when your solar panels are off, though you’d need even more solar panels to recharge the batteries during the day.

@Turbofreak you don't have to post everything you're doing, just when you actually complete the objectives. It would also help if you could use the Historian mod which adds some useful context to your screenshots.

You’re doing it incorrectly- deployable science parts need to be deployed, not simply dropped. Move the deployed science part into the Kerbal’s personal inventory. Right click the Kerbal, find the part in their inventory and click the little down-arrow-with-circle icon in the bottom right of that item to deploy it. Place the deployed science part with space bar. When deploying deployed science experiments, get a scientist to do it as this greatly increases the speed at which they generate their data; likewise, get engineers to deploy deployed power systems (solar panels and RTGs) as they will generate more power that way; in both cases higher level Kerbals boost the bonuses.

A few things about that one- Too much fluff, not enough action for a 50 minute video. I don’t think protracted shots of delicately fiddling with nodes to rendezvous or tiptoeing up to a station to dock are particularly interesting, either show it in speedy-uppy mode or cut to the end goal and leave the rest out. That rover bit on Minmus was also largely superfluous, consisting mostly of slithering around on a hill. FRICTION CONTROL: OVERRIDE. If you’re going to try and drive on a low-gravity ice moon, you need all the grip you can get; traction control reduces wheel torque to prevent wheel spin, which you’re getting a lot of due to the low grip, so turn that down/off. Set your wheel controls to arrow keys, not WASD, then you can drive and use attitude controls separately without having to mess around with reaction wheel settings. Right click and drag to rotate a jet packing Kerbal on EVA, they only rotate in the yaw axis otherwise. I’d also like to see a bit less pottering around in Kerbin’s SOI and a bit more interplanetary action.

@Turbofreak Are you using Probes Before Crew? It doesn't look like it.

Welcome back to Bob's Duna Adventure! What has Bob been up to since we last saw him? A pre-Anomaly rover on Duna? What a fascinating find! No doubt the data he and Bill found on the Mun led him to this little guy, though sadly decades of exposure to the harsh Dunan environment have rendered it completely non-functional. Bob left a flag beside it so a future mission could find it more easily and potentially study it in more detail, then left to head back to his lander and then back to orbit. He was so excited about flying back into space, he nearly forgot to deploy the deployed science gear! Once he made it to space, a few hours of waiting were needed before linking back up with Interplanetary Ship 1- hours during which his orbit crossed Pol's, but fortunately the little moon didn't interfere. We go live now to the final approach of the lander to dock to its mothership once more... Bob: Attitude control locked, nullifying relative velocity in x and y axes, 3 metres to dock, two, one... *clunk* Uh oh. Bill: Not registering docking on this end, Bob, try again? Bob: Back away a little bit, forwards again and *clunk* not good. Val: Lemme try something... F5 F9 *clang! click clack clunk kshhhh* Bob: And we're docked! Bill: What did you just do? Val: Eh, sometimes things glitch out like that, just need to reload it and it usually works second time around. Bill: Right Val: OK, Bob, we need you to stick your head out the hatch for a minute to fix the cupola's busted reaction wheel, then Bill can head out to remove those old parachutes and transfer over the next set of deployed science gear into the lander too. And fuel it up, and top off the life support too. And move the samples over to the ship. Valmal: Uh, we don't actually have any sample storage space on the ship. Bill: Whoops. Val: What!? Did they learn nothing after that asteroid sampling escapade? *** Gene: And speaking of samples- the Eve sample mission has just arrived over Kerbin. Wernher: All samples accounted for in the return pod, standing by for braking burn then spin stabilisation and release of the re-entry capsule. Bobak: LOS from re-entry plasma. That thing's going a lot faster than anything we've tried to re-enter before, are you sure it can take the heat? Wernher: The return capsule is very heat-resistant on its own, plus it has a heatshield under it. It's going to be fine, as long as it lands somewhere flat. Bobak: Signal restored, looks like it's heading for some mountains. Wernher: Typical... Deploy the chute early, maybe we can slow its horizontal speed down a bit so it drops short. Wernher: Success! Linus: Can't wait to get my hands on those interplanetary samples *drool* Mortimer: Now that's what I'm talking about! Over a million funds from contract payouts for that single mission! Even if half of it is going to Walt's dumb PR campaign- Walt: Hey! Mortimer: -the leftovers are enough to pay for that *cough*ridiculously expensive*cough* Gilly mining thingy. Val: OK, science peoples, those samples aren't going to analyse themselves! Valmal: What does #autoLOC_2722860 mean? Val: Bah, stupid updates! Something always goes wrong.

I assume you mean Emiko Station? Also, no- Magic Boulders existed long before then and 1.12 even added one as an Easter egg on [REDACTED]as it used to exist in very old versions of the game; I’ll no doubt feature it once I get there.

The last time I used OPM was back in 1.7.3, but I believe it worked fine back then. It tends to produce silly or no results if you try to force a transfer outside of a conventional transfer window.

MechJeb > maneuver planner > advanced transfer mode, only works for in-flight vessels but does so fairly well, with an occasional nonsensical node (like going from Kerbin to Eve by going solar retrograde) if you try to force a transfer outside the normal parameters.

Put the finishing touches on my Gilly mining rovers- making fuel with Kerbalism’s ISRU chains is much harder than the stock ore->fuel system and takes a whole lot longer too. Due to resource distribution two miners are required: the first one will dig up what little water can be found on Gilly and turn it into hydrogen, then liquefy it for ease of storage; the second will dig up ore, extract carbon from it (at a really terrible rate, I might add) then combine that with the hydrogen to make fuel, with some oxygen also available to make oxidiser. Two miners needed because there’s zero overlap between water and ore locations, water is only found in the highlands but ore only in the midlands. Now the trick is getting them all the way down to Gilly, which currently orbits Moho, which currently orbits much closer to the sun than in the stock arrangement.

Welcome back to Bob's Duna Adventure! Today Bob spotted something odd on the horizon and decided to take a closer look... Up close, it turned out to be a strangely familiar looking rock formation. The rock was very unusual- nay, unnatural- as at times it looked to Bob like he was sinking into the surface yet at others he seemed to be floating some distance above it, all while standing on something solid. How odd. He tried planting a flag in the rock, which worked exactly as it was supposed to. Linus: WOAH! Bob found a Phantom Boulder! Wernher: A what now? Linus: You know how occasionally we see a rock or something that levitates above the ground? Wernher: No!? Linus: Really? You've never noticed that? I see them all the time on the rover cameras. Anyway, those are Phantom Rocks and their apparent dimensions don't quite match their real ones- sometimes you can collide with it even though it looks like you didn't, and sometimes it looks like you did but you didn't. Jeb: That sounds like that asteroid I went chasing after, the entire Klaw seemed to sink through the surface before the grapples engaged. I'm pretty sure Val said something similar happened to her. Linus: Yeah, that's a Phantom Boulder alright- they're much bigger than the Phantom Rocks, but exactly what causes this phenomenon is still a mystery. Cliff: Quantum physics shenanigans. It's always quantum physics shenanigans. Linus: ...anyway, they can occasionally be dangerous and cause strange things to happen if you stay around one for too long. I think some of the problems we had with the first few generations of rovers were caused by them interacting badly with Phantom Rocks and Boulders and I've been noticing some of the same symptoms in the data coming back from the rover on Duna too. Wernher: Sounds like we should tell Bob to leave it alone before anything happens to him or the rover. Linus: Agreed. Gene: I thought they were Magic Boulders? Wernher: No, that's something completely different. *** Mortimer: Ah, Wernher. Do come in. Wernher: I do have to warn you- what I'm about to propose will be rather expensive. Mortimer: Oh boy... Wernher: The simple fact is, we can just about get to Moho with a small-ish payload and a fairly large transfer stage with a nuclear engine; we could probably get there with a bigger payload if we used a huge transfer stage with more and/or bigger nuclear engines, a bit like the one that's currently being used by the Duna mission; but there's simply no way that we can get back from Moho without managing to conjure up a huge amount of extra delta-V from somewhere. Mortimer: You're not seriously thinking about sending a crew to Moho, are you? Wernher: Well, yes. But before we do that, we need to be able to get them back. After reviewing the data we've gathered from Moho it's clear that there's absolutely no water to be found, which is a problem because we need water to get hydrogen to make fuel. However, the data coming back from Gilly suggests that there is some water present in certain areas. Unfortunately, those areas don't coincide with areas where carbonaceous minerals can be found, which is a problem because we need carbon to make fuel too. Mortimer: Let me guess, you want to send a mining machine to Gilly to make fuel. Wernher: Not exactly- I want to send two mining machines to Gilly to make fuel. One can specialise in producing hydrogen in regions where there's water while the other can specialise in producing carbon and turning it into fuel. Then all we need is a fuel tanker of some kind to haul the produced fuel up to the waiting ships in orbit and we have a means of getting back from Moho. Wernher: This is the water miner- the tanks on the sides will store liquid hydrogen because it's much denser and easier to store it as a liquid than a gas. Wernher: And this is the carbon miner. It can make fuel and also oxidiser, which will mostly be needed for the RCS on the tanker as trying to make hydrazine for monopropellant RCS thrusters is a much more complex production chain. Wernher: And this is the tanker. That entire tank at the bottom will carry the fuel up to ships in orbit, the other tanks are just for fuel for the tanker itself to use to get around. Mortimer: OK, just give it to me straight- how much will all this cost? Wernher: If we send both miners on the same transfer stage down to Moho, then send the tanker separately, about... 600,000 funds. More or less. Mortimer: Six hundred thousand!? Wernher: Oh, wait, I forgot launch costs- these things will be pretty heavy so we'll need that big SSTO rocket Bill and Bob made to haul them into space, then a few flights of the Kronus to fill up the tanks because they're too heavy to launch with full tanks. Factor all that in and I'd say it'll take about a million funds in total. Mortimer: You do realise, don't you, that we don't have a million funds? Wernher: Really? I thought we had loads of funds? Mortimer: Had. Past tense. Until somebody decided they had to buy the toolings and integration systems for EVERY. SINGLE. ROCKET. PART. IN. EXISTENCE. AT. THE. SAME. TIME! Bob: Hey, everyone? I just drove up to this really weird looking pyramid-shaped mountain and suddenly my radio seems to be broken. It's playing this really annoying beeping sound on a loop, like I've got a phone call incoming or something. Linus: I think I know what that sound is. *keyboard mashing* Wernher: What is it? Linus: Decoding, one second... Bobak: ...I don't get it? Wernher: So we have four figures standing next to a pyramid firing a beam of some sort out of its peak, then three white blobs above an orange one, and something that looks like a weird hybrid of F, T and P with another blob in the other corner? Cliff: Fascinating... But also utterly meaningless. Linus: The orange blob could be the sun, or Duna itself, or even another star- Bob: That's great and all, but have you recorded this yet so I can leave? It's really getting on my nerves.