Scarecrow71

Probably. It is what it is at this point. I think maybe I'm just that one weirdo the devs didn't plan on having and I'm coming up with the ideas that break their stuff.

So after spending weeks and weeks to get to Tylo...I was able to get to Eeloo's SOI and back in one go. It's a side mission to get into Eeloo's SOI, but this was far easier than getting to the surface of Tylo. I collected some Science along the way, and I transmitted back what I could. But the samples have to be returned to the KSC, so I tried to get this thing home. And failed. I underestimated how much dV I'd need to get back to Kerbin by about 1000 or so, so I attempted the all-too-common direct descent. That shot shows me using all of my available fuel, but I actually stopped burning just as soon as the red indicator for a collision came up. Which left me with about 1500 or so m/s of fuel, which I started burning as soon as I hit the upper atmosphere. I was able to slow down enough to pop the parachutes at about 6500 meters, which is far better than I thought I'd get. Unfortunately, I brought along the wrong chutes, so I only got down to 25 or so m/s of speed. Crashed upon impact. Oh well, at least I got some science out of this, plus the 8k for getting into Eeloo's SOI. For what it's worth, I think the mission to Tylo comes way too soon. "Orbit Kerbin. Now go to the Mun. Now Minmus. Now Duna. Now shoot for the edge of the solar system and land on one of the densest rocks out there." Way too soon. That mission shouldn't come up until we've at least gotten large hydrogen engines. Which begs the question: If contracts in KSP1 can be available based upon what you've already accomplished and parts you already have, why can't KSP2?

If I have a docking port at the top of the rocket, for docking with something already up there, I put a nose cone right on the port and undock it when I git space. Works in KSP1.

Time dilation is cheating.

Band.

So i launched my transfer stages this morning without nose cones...and they worked as expected. My flying was bad, but thats a different story. How is it possible that we have effectively one-time-use docking ports? And why isn't this a higher priority?

It does...with side missions.

And I have completed my Tylo mission. I was able to get into Tylo's SOI like I predicted/hoped for - using Jool as a gravity well, and then getting a "free" encounter with Tylo. The odd thing is that I ended with a Joolian Ap of 5+ million km, which took over a year to get to after entering Jool's SOI. And then another year to get the Tylo encounter. So 2+ years just to get to Tylo. Which I did: So, you'll notice that Stage 1 has 950 m/s of dV remaining, while the lander stage - Stage 2 - has 0. Which is why I brought up the Resource panel, so you can see that the tanks on Stage 2 actually do have fuel in them. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is. Is this due to the engines on Stage 2 not being activated? Or is it because of the docking port separating Stages 1 and 2? Either way, unsure. Anyhow, I was able to put the lander on the ground on Tylo: All that building, and the lander stage exploded upon impact. The rover inside survived, which is good. But the lander stage apparently had design issues. When I pointed this thing Retrograde (using the probe core on the rover as the control point) and then fired the engines, the thing spun wildly end-over-end. I think that's due to it being unbalanced inside; the rover sat near the back of the cargo bay, making that end heavier than the front. I like the rover design, but the lander needs work. Anyhow, driving off to the monument. I really REALLY REALLY like the rover design. It's simple, effective, and is responsive to commands. Unfortunately, brakes don't work unless you hold the B key, so unless you are on a perfectly flat piece of terrain, this thing rolls. Might need langing legs attached to keep it from rolling around. Anyhow... So the LKSA (Las Kerbas Space Agency) has touched down on Tylo. Where to next? I'm not sure, but I need a break after the multiple weeks I spent on this one mission alone.

Well, I finally got the entirety of my Tylo mission docked and put together in LKO. If you'll take a look at that last image, you'll see something that's missing. Namely, a labradoodle engine on the central column. I am not sure how that happened, but I think that explains why I had that odd cloud the other day. But, I finally have this put together and I'm ready to try taking this thing to Tylo. My concern here is that the dV calculated in LKO right now shows 6,000 (ish; I'm rounding up a bit here), but the VAB showed I'd have like 8000ish. I cannot stress to the developers enough that the dV calculations need to be fixed. Pronto. We cannot keep putting missions together and assuming we have enough based on the bad math in the core loop. Anyhow, I'm going to try sending this thing off later today. We shall see what happens.

No, you are correct. I was inferring manned missions, which was wrong.

Come on shake your body baby do that Conga No you can't forget about it any longer Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger Come on shake your body baby do that Conga My hill now that you are all dancing away to Gloria Estefan.

Mankind has been to the moon. Once. We don't have any real life experience in this area.

Yeah, I had already upvoted this one. Docking is one of the 5 basic elements in this game (build, launch, fly, dock, land). Why it never got the appropriate attention by the devs is beyond me. I'm with you on this. It seems that the devs simply don't take our concerns into account when deciding what issues to fix. Although, we can't confirm this as we don't get updates any longer, and the updates we got had things they were working on removed, so we never knew what was happening. Some EA.

No...but one of them was covered by a nose cone. I will take the nose cone off, eschew aerodynamics, and see if that helps. I'll let you know what I find.

I'm using the medium sized docking ports (Clamp-O-Tron Sr.) to connect engine configurations for my Tylo lander mission. I've got them pointing the correct directions so that when they get close enough to each other in space, the ships - the lander and the transfer stage - dock/connect and the ship becomes one. This is how it is supposed to work, and I've done this a bajillion times in KSP1. But... Am I missing something in KSP2? I line up the ships using the Lazy Docking Method (rendezvous, point the docking ports at one another, slowly move in), and I'm traveling at like 0.8 m/s. When I get close enough, I expect the docking ports to, well, dock. But they don't. The ships bounce off one another, and I have to go through hohmann transfer, match planes, match speed again, wasting days and fuel. Then I go slower, like < 0.5 m/s, and same thing. So I go through everything again, and when I get close, I go faster. And boing! Bounce-ness all over the cosmos. It doesn't matter how fast or how slow I'm going - boing! Before anyone asks "Are you sure you have the docking ports aligned the correct direction", I'll point you to my last post in the "What Did I Do In KSP2 Today" thread: I used the medium docking ports on the central column for the transfer stage and the lander, and I've got docking ports on the outer arms. When I do the next launch, I use a copy of the transfer stage, sans the outer arms; I want the second (and, eventually, third) launch to connect to the outer arm on the initial central column launch. I know the docking ports are facing the correct way on the outer arms, as well as on the top of the transfer stage. Not my first rodeo with docking ports here. So what am I doing wrong? Is this a known issue where the medium docking port simply doesn't want to work? Am I going too fast? Too slow? Do I need to change Acquire Docking Force percentage? What is happening here, and why is docking only taking place < 25% of the time? In the event anyone wants them for testing, I can provide both the lander and transfer stage craft files so you can launch them and see this for yourself.

Kangaroo Forest

Probably more looking at a mod for this than stock. I agree that it would be nice to have different options for wheels/mobility for rovers other than wheels.

Continuing on with my mission to Tylo. I have been experimenting with different engine configurations for the transfer stage, flopping between nuclear and deep space and conventional methalox engines...and none of them give me both the dV and TWR I am looking for. It's no secret that I don't like the DSM's due to their really low TWR (and yes, I am aware that everyone thinks that TWR in deep space doesn't mean anything). Not sorry, but I don't want to do 10 minute burns to slow down when going interplanetary. Once we get to interstellar, that's a whole different ball of wax. But interplanetary? I don't want to do it. I shouldn't have to be forced into doing that simply to get the dV I want/need. I think it's a poor design choice to say "Hey, you spent all those science points on these engines...but they are heavy and you corner like a dead whale on roller skates". That's a development thing, not an engineering one. But I digress. I settled on conventional methalox, with a design that requires multiple launches and docking to do what I need to do. Which is, of course, transfer from LKO to Jool, then from Jool to Tylo. I don't necessarily need to orbit Jool, and I don't necessarily need to orbit Tylo. I'd prefer to use Jool as a gravity well for the turn, and I really want to orbit Tylo as I can then plan a better landing. But, that's for later. Here we have the transfer stage sitting on the launch pad waiting to go up into the cosmos. If you can see the image clearly, you'll know that I have 24 Clydesdales there for the first stage, followed by 10 Mammoth's for the second. And that's just the launcher; the actual transfer stage has 7 Labradoodles on it. And see where the antenna are? On the bottom of those arms, directly opposite the antenna, are medium docking ports; I am planning on launching this thing 3 total times, docking the central column here to the lander, and then a pair of the labradoodle transfer stages, one to either side. Should give me enough dV and TWR to do what I want. So here we are with the beginning of the transfer stage docked with the lander: With a Munar photo-bomb, no less. I tried to get this lined up so it looked like a perfect X when looking at it, but I accidentally hit the W key as I was docking, and we are off-center a bit. Doesn't matter in the long run; lining it up perfectly was only for aesthetic purposes anyhow. But I at least have one of 3 transfer stages docked with the lander. Just one question: Can someone tell me what the frak this cloud is: I noticed this at launch, and thought "It's just a low-lying cloud". But then it behaves like it's engine exhaust, and moves away from the craft until it disappears. Comes back every 2-3 minutes in a repeating pattern: spawn near the ship, flutter about, move away as if engine exhaust, disappear, rinse, repeat. Not sure what this is, other than a bug that I may have to report. But has anyone else seen this? For what it's worth, I'll try to do that other 2 launches tomorrow; I spent nearly 4 hours on the transfer stage today alone, and then fought with the kraken over whether or not strut physics should actually apply when you have them connected in a non-clipping fashion. I think they should, but the kraken thinks otherwise. And while I won the battle today, it wasn't without losing a whole bunch of troops to that things' appetite.

Let's not forget that it's been more than a year since initial launch, and we still have bugs present today that were present at launch.

I think the question should be "How much of the gameplay loop do you want fixed before they start work on additional features". Which then leads into the next question, which is "What exactly defines the core gameplay loop". Some people would argue that the core gameplay loop should include anything that was stock in KSP1, which includes commnet. I get that a lot of people, myself included, don't simply want a hack of KSP1 with better graphics and a label slapped on saying "KSP2! New and Improved! Get it now while the getting is good!" But what we do want is, at a minimum, the same stock features KSP1 includes, with the additional features of colonies, resources, and interstellar.

You mean, the bi-weekly cadence we were promised but has not been delivered on. Sorry, Dakota, I'm not meaning to sound harsh. But the largest complaint this community has is the lack of communication, and every time we get promised more you (as in the organization, not you personally) delivers less. My guess is April 12. Last one was March 11, and if they are going monthly now, that would put the next one on April 11. The 12th is a Friday, so I'd guess then.