jimmymcgoochie

Finalised my newest probe design- three kilo tons of rocket to send just three quarter-tons of probe to Pluto, very very quickly- potentially within 5 years instead of the 50+ years of the “proper” Hohmann transfer trajectory. I’m thinking my next design needs to be a resupply mission for my Moon base, which has about 2 months’ supplies at best with its current crew of four. I reckon a rover design will be best, with the mini-klaw to grab the base and magically transfer resources to it; I’ll just pretend that the crew are unloading boxes and containers, it’s about as good as it gets in KSP.

I tend to use decoupler crossfeed for things like SRBs with fuel tanks on top as there’s nothing using the fuel on the SRB side to confuse the system; for all-LF boosters it’s still easier to use fuel ducts as the delta-V readouts and fuel levels on the stage list are accurate and the ducts prevent fuel going the “wrong” way.

Try it and see? I see no reason why it would ‘t work, though you might need to turn some graphics features down/off due to the lack of a dedicated GPU.

The common denominator here isn’t a specific mod, it’s that you’ve all put mods in the Steam controlled copy of KSP, then updated the game. It seems to me that every other thread in “tech support- modded” has trouble with their game not loading, again after putting mods in the Steam controlled copy of KSP, then in many cases updating the game. See the pattern here? Don’t put mods in the Steam controlled copy of KSP! Instead, leave the Steam copy of KSP completely unmodded to get game updates, then when you want to put mods into KSP, copy and paste KSP out of the Steam folders and put mods in the new copy- Steam can’t touch it so it can’t auto-update or ‘help’ by trying to cloud save and end up mangling mods. You can have as many copies of KSP as you like, on different game versions and with different mods- CKAN is designed specifically for this, I have ten different copies of KSP across six different versions, from 1.7.3 all the way to 1.12 and all with different sets of mods- but my Steam copy of KSP sits there with no mods at all, dutifully accumulating game updates as and when they appear without breaking anything. Try this to solve your “KSP won’t load” woes: Copy your save games and store them safely out of Steam’s reach e.g. desktop; Remove all mods, leaving only the Squad (and SquadExpansion if you have either/both DLCs) folders inside KSP/GameData; Disable Steam cloud syncing for KSP; Optional- change game version if you want a specific version of KSP e.g. 1.11.2; Verify the KSP local files; Load the stock game to ensure it works; Copy KSP entirely and paste it somewhere out of Steam’s folders, add mods and save games and fire that up to make sure it works; Never put mods in the Steam copy of KSP again! Use it as a blank slate and any time you want to create a new modded copy of KSP, copy it then add mods to the new copy instead.

Try using ZeroMiniAVC which, as the name suggests, gets rid of all copies of MiniAVC inside other mods. MiniAVC had (has?) some major issues that can cause game crashes like this, so using ZeroMiniAVC lets you use those mods without the crashes.

That looks like a pretty serious issue, but we’ll need the full logs to try and diagnose the cause. Here’s how you find them: Did you by any chance download KSP through Steam, and then install mods into that Steam-controlled copy of KSP?

In the VAB, open each craft in the list one by one. Anything that doesn’t load due to missing parts, delete it. Profit?

We’re going to need to see the logs to get to the bottom of this, but at a guess I’d say you’ve got a corrupted installation. Try verifying the game files (if on Steam) or uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Here’s how you get the log files and what to do with them:

We’re going to need some more information- version of KSP, mods installed and the full log files. Read this guide to find out how to get that information: Try verifying the game files in Steam if that’s where you got KSP from, Steam has a habit of breaking mods when it updates the game but verifying the files should fix it. If that doesn’t work: Back up your saves (copy KSP/saves/your-save-name-here and paste it somewhere else e.g. desktop); Uninstall KSP completely; Reinstall KSP and then verify the game files; Check KSP works without mods; If it does, add your mods and your save game back in and check if the problem is resolved.

It’s impossible to tell with the graphics settings you’re using, the arrows are too blurred to make out which direction they’re pointing. The best way to fix this is to open up the resource panel (the fuel icon in the top right), then select liquid fuel and oxidiser on the list to show all parts containing those resources, then click the In/Out buttons to pump the fuel into the core tank. Then dump the boosters- barring a really bad design, a Terrier with a FL-T800 is more than enough to return from the Mun’s surface to Kerbin for re-entry and there’s no point dragging those boosters along when they’re stealing fuel from the core. I’d send a Kerbal out on EVA to take the data out of that science jr and store it in the command pod though, because that’s going to explode on re-entry even with the heat shield on the bottom. Materials bays have low heat tolerance and are much lighter than command pods, so trying to re-enter with one attached to your pod is a bad idea- not only is it very difficult to get a materials bay to survive the heat of re-entry, it also destabilises the craft which will want to go heavy (pod) end first, potentially cooking your parachutes. They’re expensive (in career mode anyway), but you’re better off using an EVA Kerbal or an experiment storage unit to remove their science samples before discarding them.

That build segment was a bit too long for a pretty straight forward rocket. You could have flown closer to the Mun with a free return trajectory if you went a little bit faster (20m/s or so on the transfer burn) to get space low and space high science from it.

What's the orbital period of Nara? KER gives a slightly nonsensical value of 308 years 99475 days.

Have it for free

The first of the new Blue Backgammon imaging satellites was plagued with issues, requiring at least two rollbacks to fix critical issues discovered on the launchpad, and a third rollback for the second identical craft when I got this one into its final orbit only to discover that the solar panels weren't set to track the Sun: It can operate with just one panel, but that's a blunder I could have done without. Subsequent models have been fixed and should be able to launch without any further fixes. Now for some prototyping- at some point I put in an alarm for a fast transfer to Pluto, taking under a decade but requiring a lot of delta-V just to get a flyby of that no-longer-a-real-planet. Initially I tried to get away with using a 700 ton Blue Chess-class rocket, but the delta-V was inadequate and I realised that the probe could probably be made substantially lighter by using older, lower value science experiments that complete their experiments faster and are also lighter. There were also some control issues with the 700 ton rocket... Putting the probe on top of a White Nimbus rocket with the tanks stretched as far as tooling (and having a reasonable TWR at launch) would allow, then using the most efficient chemical rocket available (the Advanced OTV engine from CH4 with a whopping 492s ISP) and cramming a faintly ridiculous amount of fuel onto it boosted the range to over 30km/s vacuum delta-V on the pad. 3 kilotons of rocket, just 713kg of probe. The new probe, named White Tombaugh after the discoverer of Pluto, has been added to the build queue, with a launch window in about 4 months' time. The second launch of the Orange Arrow "sounding rocket" to rake in data units for the NK-15-VM engine went awry- first it flipped out while still fairly low over Cape Canaveral, then one engine failed to light twice, but I eventually recovered control and sent it straight up to an altitude of over 1000km; that was probably too high as the engines burnt off during re-entry and then the fins angled the wrong way so instead of cancelling the roll they made it worse and worse until the whole rocket broke apart. Bad for throwing debris across the middle of Florida, and for reusing that rocket again and again to really boost the engines' reliability, but two successful flights got a good chunk of data units and it was pretty cheap anyway. Final scores: Full album: https://imgur.com/a/q4xcApE Coming up next time: Launching that second reusable Moon lander, and I should probably build a resupply mission to take food etc. to the Moon base and station- the station should be fine for a while, but the base will only last a couple of months with four crew aboard.

Look around Dres, asteroids tend to congregate there. Any parts dropped by EVA construction also appear as ? type, but they’re type = DroppedPart and there’s no specific symbol for those so ? it is.

@Ben J. Kerman You are aware of the “invert steering” option? Toggle that on the wheels that turn the “wrong” way and you’ll get crab steering without any need for mods; maybe even bind it to an action group?

I meant running Task Manager before starting up KSP, so it's running and can log the performance as KSP loads. I don't expect you'll use up 32GB with stock KSP, however I've seen 32GB of RAM being completely used up during the loading process and sometimes that caused my PC to crash, requiring a hard reboot; it's not impossible, but requires some serious modding.

They’re probably using slightly different algorithms to calculate their “ideal” transfer window.

Ways to make the game load faster: Use fewer mods, these directly increase loading times especially mods with a lot of parts or complex models/interiors, or mods that patch a lot of other mods/parts; Turn off frame rate caps and V-syncing, this makes the game load faster for some reason; Install the Hyperspace mod which might help your load times (https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/172841-14-18-hyperspace-load-ksp-faster-on-hdd-or-not/&tab=comments#comment-3331451); Move your KSP to a faster storage device- an SSD is much faster than an HDD so if you have one, use it.

It sometimes takes a while for the game to load a save, especially if there are a lot of active crafts in it. The game might seem to freeze and stop responding, but it will probably recover if you leave it alone; being impatient and poking at it makes it more likely to crash. It regularly takes 15+ minutes for my very heavily modded RP-1 game to load and several minutes to load a save, enter or leave the editors or launch a craft, because the save files are large and there’s a lot for the game to load. It’s possible that your PC is running out of RAM, in which case there will probably be an error in the logs; try running Task Manager (or activity monitor on Mac) and then load the save again while watching your RAM use- if it goes up to 100% then that’s your issue and you’ll need to drop some mods (if you have any) or cut down on RAM use by other programs (Chrome uses a lot of RAM, for example) to save more for KSP.

Put them back a few at a time and see if it breaks, then narrow it down that way.

I would be much more concerned if they didn’t unlock when you actually found them. Try disabling the launch sites labels in map view and then looking for them, if you really want to do it “properly”; or save yourself some effort and enjoy the freebies

Put in a save then fast forward; does the asteroid enter Kerbin’s SOI or not? Check your patched conics settings and see if anything is different between 1.11.2 and 1.12?

Which mod and how did you fix it? Share the solution if you have one so that others who have commented, or who might have the same problem in future, can fix it too.

There are some mods that allow you to level up crews using the lab module, either by paying with science or just leaving them there for a while, but the best way to do it is to have them plant a flag on the Mun and Minmus then send them just outside Kerbin’s SOI, which will level them up to level 3 even if they’re brand new with no experience beforehand. Or you could stop killing all your Kerbals