Linkageless

Hopefully Take Two can appreciate the ongoing value of keeping the forums running. It's good news that this appears to be the case so far. Aside from potentially attracting new players even now, they might consider the sheer quantity of inspirational knowledge, experience and ideas contained within the forums that might guide them in the creation of future games. Not to mention keeping thousands of existing KSP fans on-side. I'm still hopeful that something might be done to resurrect KSP2. Take Two, if you really see no future in this, turn it over to the community as I'm pretty sure there's enough collective skill and enthusiasm among us to get it over the line!

I'm likely not the first person to suggest this, even in connection to KSP2... Please can you build some versatility into the fuel tank designs. Instead of a limited selection of choices, I would rather see the tank shapes as standard structural elements that you can then outfit with the tank types/proportions/capacities of your choice. I would like to be able to say take a mk3 shell, and outfit it with tanks inside to contain say 300 units of methane, 200 units oxygen, and 100 hydrogen, and perhaps 50 units of empty unfitted space. This might then be saved as a custom part or assembly, for later use. It might even be possible to fit out internal tanks to be capable of storing more than one fuel at different times. Say you have a oxygen tank that is also fitted out for methane plumbing, when the oxygen is all used up or vented, you can then fill it with methane, then later empty it and fill it with oxygen again. I'm pretty sure there's mods along these lines in KSP1, but wouldn't it be nice if this were a stock feature now we have a more diverse set of fuel choices?

Thanks for the report. I would dearly love to play KSP2 on my os of preference, Linux, and am still hopeful it will be a standard option in due course. I did, however, come to the conclusion long ago that I needed to build my first personal windoze machine in about 25 years in order to make life easy for myself when KSP2 came out. I've built an awesome PC with a cheap but legit windows licence and I'm not regretting it.

Welcome, Razgriz78. I was also a long time 'guest' lurker, but it's great to put something back, isn't it?

Arrgh! I can't download it fast enough!! I may have built a new PC for this, and have whizzy fibre at home, but I'm still limited by the speed steam's servers can deliver!

I'm very excited by this and will be tinkering at the first opportunity. Let's not lose sight of the fact this is early access and our constructive feedback at this point (hopefully) will help direct the course of development. Opening things up to coded mods will be a key moment but I can understand that they want to get a number of things right before that.

If placing radially, you may be able to place these parts in a different position without getting hit by the unwanted symmetry, then offset them into place. You might also be able to temporarily offset the other symmetry parts, out of the way of what you are doing. I often do this using precise editor, but that's a learning curve of it's own. Another potential way around this is if you get 4x symmetry, and only wanted 2x, you can remove symmetry on the excess parts in turn, then just delete them. You can also apply this technique to do things like have 4x parts sitting in positions where 6x symmetry puts them, eg to avoid covering a pod window or hatch while still getting precise symmetrical placement.

"For Science!" is another handy little mod for this, automatically running and storing all resettable experiments in every biome you enter, so you don't have to go through the grind of running each of them. For me, nicely speeds up that science tour of KSC. You still have to go to the biomes with this, and won't be able to get any science you wouldn't have been able to gather manually, so I don't consider it cheating. I love this idea. Just imagine the state of Bob when he staggers back into the kerbonaut complex after a lengthy science gathering session!

Dockable RAPIER with Shielded Docking Port I found that a Shielded Docking Port can be nicely offset into a RAPIER to provide handy rear docking for small spaceplanes. It also (as I recall) provides a useful reduction in drag on the RAPIER, leaving the front of your stack clear for an inline intake or whatever else. When closed, the engine operates as usual. When open, the docking ring protrudes just a little bit further out of the back, allowing docking as normal. https://imgur.com/a/3TnmeWN I always bind an action group to toggle the docking port and disable (not toggle) the engine. Throttling up the engine while the port is open is a good method for emergency explosive separation! ... don't forget some RCS. Docking manoeuvres using this without RCS are possible, but inadvisable.

If you consider planetary systems, then Jool has plenty of biomes around on it's moons. It may take you more time, but it's a lot easier to return from and you don't have to do the toughest bits like Tylo landing & return. If you're content to just land unkerbaled on Eve and transmit your science for lower value, then a probe with heatshields and parachutes is easy enough. A final consideration is that a good rover/hopper setup with lab(s) on Minmus surface will provide you all the science you'll ever need to unlock the tree.configurable

Some science data, like a crew report, gets full credit for radio transmission back to kerbin. It's still only a 5th of the value you get out of processing it in the lab, but as @mikegarrison said, you can do both. Be aware that although you won't lose science on transmission, time to process is also a factor here and processing stops when it nears the lab limit of 500 science (tweakable in .cfg somewhere). What's more, the processing rate decreases unless you keep it topped up close to 750 data (again tweakable in .cfg).

You may see an inclination detailed in the [+] note section in the contract, or perhaps in the active contracts view of mission control. Compare that to the inclination you have (shown on the second tab on the left bottom display, just above where it says ORBIT). If you are indeed going the wrong direction, burning retrograde for (about) 822.4m/s can fix it. You have plenty of dv with which to achieve that. I have often wished they made it graphically more obvious which direction these contract orbits are, but then I suppose that's part of the 'charm' of the 'devil in the detail' of the contract system.

yep - that changed in 1.11. Even back before crewable parts were rebalanced the seats were excellent for ultra economy class tourist trips among other things. oh, and 8 years is quite some necro!

I think Reload Database from the meta-F12 cheats>Database menu would be the right thing to do. You'll need to do that from the Space Center view. Have a look in the Audio section below that - it appears to be a list of all the sounds defined. I recall having no success attempting to add stock sounds to otherwise silent parts using .cfg alone, but it seems quite reasonable to expect changes to existing part.cfg AUDIO to work. Try comparing with other engines. It seems the Mammoth in Size3EngineCluster/part.cfg like many others has more detailed EFFECTS config. For example you could try the "clip = sound_rocket_spurts" from the running_closed definition. I've successfully used the Mainsail's Squad/Sounds/sound_rocket_mini audio in place of the Mammoth's sound_rocket_spurts, also the sound_jet_deep worked well. I'd not tried, but I wonder if it would be possible to transplant other definitions like flameout and engage into the mainsail, or if those definitions are connected to config elsewhere that we're not seeing. In the end, it may be the Mainsail's age as a part that has meant it's configured in an older, less flexible manner.

Yes, returned from all individually, and some after local tours, but yet to do a grand tour. I'm proudest of taking an SSTO spaceplane, the Buzzard, to Eve and back with 3 kerbals. It flew under its own power to LKO. I sent its 3x relay/survey sat piggyback payload ahead to Eve, while waiting to be refuelled, then followed once topped up. On arrival at Eve orbit, the buzzard descended, gilding down to a suitable equatorial landing site to deploy the drill & ISRU, plus surface science payloads. Once refuelled, ducted fans powered by fuel cells took the buzzard out of the thickest atmosphere. Vectors and Nervs took it the rest of the way to orbit. From there it refuelled from the relays transfer stage and returned to Kerbin for a smooth glide landing.