Rylant

So I am really starting to do end game stuff. Still horrible with delta v waste. The only place I have not sent manned missions and returned from are Moho, Laythe, Tylo and obviously Eve and Jool. My designed lander for Moho works in sandbox, so I am in the process of sending it to Moho in my career mode. I have maxed science and have about 18 million in funds. Today, I just designed a lander with lots of TTW and has about 5.4K delta v when starting in low Kerbin orbit. It also has mining and converting capability so I should be able to get to and from just about anywhere. I have been to and from Eeloo with it. I will probably have a tough time with Moho as I said I am not good with delta v management. It is huge though; like 370 tons or something, so getting it into orbit is silly, but I do have a launcher that works. It is expensive, like 1.7 million or something. At first I was thinking I still won’t be able to land it on Tylo or Laythe because I won’t have the delta v to get there and then do a fueled decent and it’s probably too big for parachutes? But then I realized I can send it to Jool, refuel at Bop or Pol, and then should be fine to land on Laythe and Tylo, so I should be able to do the Jool Moon tour in one visit. Pretty excited to try it. Jeb Bob and Bill are on their way. This should also level them all to 5 as well! I have lots of level 4s who have been to the Mun and Minmus (all of my Kerbals have) but then I send 3 to Eve, and 3 to Duna, and 3 to Dres, etc. So lots of them have been outside to other CBs, but none of my Kerbals have been to more than 1 other, hence everyone is level 4. Today I had 3 return from Dres with it and 3 return from Eeloo with it. After I do the Jool Moon Tour and return from Moho, I guess it’s time to get better at SSTOs? Also at some point I would like to take a stab at an Eve return. I will fail miserably lol. Rylant

thanks guys. Super helpful. Wanted to ask, what's the minimum amount of Thrust to Weight for the planet that you would want to land with? Obviously, it's gotta be over 1. But 1.4.? Is that still too low? Rylant

Hey thanks for this suggestion. So I am brutal at gravity assists. So much so that my feeble attempt usually makes it much worse lol. Definitely something I need to work on. I have heard people suggest the Eve gravity assist to Moho as well, but also lots of suggestions to not bother because it can take game years lining them up for a good assist. Of course I have never actually tried it. Rylant

Hey all. So I am getting closer to the end game. Been to and from Eeloo and most Jool moons. Still struggling a bit with Moho return. I developed a high delta v lander with refueling capabilities. It does have several nuclear engines as much as I dislike them lol. The problem I realize, was the thrust to weight makes it really hard to land on Moho. I could make a lander which rendezvous with the mother ship, of course then the mother ship can’t refuel. So I need enough delta v to get to Moho, slow down (the tough part), and return. I am trying to nail down the Moho transfer. I know it’s probably the toughest transfer because of the inclination and the fast travel around the Sun. You can get to Moho straight from Kerbin with one burn, but slowing down is tight. I know you can literally spend thousands more delta v doing it this way. How are other people doing it? I am more wasteful with delta v than I would like. Could somebody explain the most efficient burn to Moho? I know it involves a correction burn but I can’t quite figure that out. I think it involves the correction burn at ascending node or descending node? Rylant

So good. That looks amazing. I would love to be able to do this. I am decent at docking, my problem is that I am just not creative. I can’t come up with designs like this. I may steal some of your ideas and get something like this going. Let me ask, you move the ore on Minmus and then transport it to the station to refine? It looks truly awesome. Rylant

Hey thanks for the reply. For things like Moho or Laythe, from the surface of Kerbin, land there, and return, you are looking at even more than 15 k, even is you are efficient, no? Rylant

Hey all. So I am looking for a large Delta-V ship used for returning at least 3 Kerbals to Kerbin from long distance planets after landing on them. My problem is, that I am able to get to these distant planets, but I am notoriously wasteful with my Delta-V. I also REALLY dislike the horrible Thrust of the Nuclear engine. I have gotten probes to Eeloo, Moho and Jool, but not Kerbals. Are there viable 15k Delta-V designs out there that don’t use Nuclear? Or do I have to either, suck it up with nuclear, or figure out how to be more efficient with my burns? Rylant

Hey all. So I have been progressing through my career mode and I have hit some of the mid To end parts? I have been to and back from Duna and Ike, Eve and Gilly (obviously didn’t land on Eve and return), to Dres and to Jool but haven’t returned yet. I am thinking about setting up some orbital fuel stations not only to help with interstellar travel, but to take on a big project which might be fun. So obviously a Kerbin orbital fuel station would be a good idea. For then, would you mine the Mun or Minmus to restock or? Or would you just tanker more fuel up from Kerbin? Also, is an orbital Duna station helpful? Or Eve? Or Jool? I was thinking it might be fun to set up stations throughout the system. Duna mining probably takes a lot? Might be better just to mine Ike to restock? Or else you might have to leave a team there to keep resupply going including an engineer to repack chutes? A station in the Eve system might be goofy. Obviously you can’t mine Eve well. Mining Gilly would be doable but the lol gravity… And what about in the Jool system? Which moon would be the best to moons there? Overall I am looking for something that is seriously helpful for travel, but also something really big that would be fun to undertake. Rylant

Is this calculating correctly? I am noticing several of my windows are off quite significantly. It is quite possible I am missing something is the settings however. Rylant

Interesting. Thanks all. I have installed Alarm Clock as suggested. It is a great idea which definitely should be vanilla. Let me ask. I see it has built in transfer windows. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but the windows seem off a bit. I used the alarm clock for a Dres encounter from Kerbin, but found that when alarm clock told me to go, the suggested time was off by like 35 days. I am sure I am just missing something here. Rylant

Hey do you guys send huge ships with lots of Kerbals to plant flags on planets for xp? I have a couple good Minmus/Mun vessels with a capacity of 7, so I can take 7 At a time to get xp from then. Whenever I land on Minmus, I always escape Kerbin space to get the orbit the Sun xp before returning. My Gilly and Duna ships only holds 3 Kerbals, so I either have to design and build bigger ships to send maybe 7 at a time to get the xp, or send lots of separate missions. Duna and Gilly missions can take game years. And my design skills aren’t great and bigger means less delta-v or bigger rockets, which tends to be more difficult to fly. Also me doing a Gilly or Duna run probably takes an hour or two as I am not perfect at this game yet lol. I know some people use SSTOs for lots of Kerbals but I suck at landing lol. The hangar is one of the dusty buildings in my playthrough. Rylant

Hey everyone. So my career play through is going well. For the first time ever, I am starting to hit some of the tougher encounters. I have entered the Jool system but have yet to land on any moons. Landed and returned from the Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Ike and Duna. Landed a probe on Eve. So one thing I am noticing is that if I plan a Duna mission, for example, I spent like a game year or even more not doing anything but that mission. I speed to the next maneuver or window. As you all know, this can be fast forwarding through months at a time. This means I am at like year 12 or something like that. I assume the Kerbals don’t age, so that’s not a huge issue. Do you guys do this too? Do you fast forward through your hundred days to you mid course correction to Duna, or do you send your mission on its way and then do other things while you are waiting for your ship to get there? Rylant

Looks flat to me... Rylant

So in my latest career, I have nearly maxed out the science tree and have been to Eve / Gilly and Duna / Ike. One of the last contracts I took was establishing a surface base on Duna. It was your typical “Capacity for 9 Kerbals, Stable for 10 seconds, etc”. There was a couple of other criteria. I have a similar base on Minmus and the Mun, but obviously the distance to, and landing on Duna makes it significantly more difficult. So I modify my current surface station and booster and take a couple hours planning and executing the mission. Everything worked pretty well with only a few fairly minor hiccups. So, I land on Duna. Everything looks great. And I see the contract doesn’t complete for some reason. I look a little closer and realize that I don’t have the right docking port on the station. I have a few docking ports on the station, just not the right one as part of the contract criteria. I consider getting an engineer to just mount the correct docking port, but I realize one of the other criteria for the contract is that the station be complete on launch, which I assume will prevent that? Well that sucks lol. I imagine I am far from the only one who has done this though? Rylant

I don’t use the mod KSP windows planner, but this site in conjunction with the interactive planetary guide really helped me too. You enter the current game date and where you are going to and from, and it tells you the date the next ideal window will be. https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ Rylant

Hey all, So when visiting the various moons of the solar system, is there anything special to get an encounter with them? I am looking at heading to Ike. So is it just a normal visit to Duna, and from Duna’s orbit, burn to encounter Ike, hang out there until I am done. Then return to Duna orbit and go back to Kerbin? I assume you don’t look for an Ike encounter right from the orbit of Kerbin? I also know that Jool has many moons. I am not ready yet to reach them but was wondering if it is the same for them. Jool orbit, and then off to Vall or Tylo? Thanks Rylant

Thank you both. Super helpful. Rylant

Hey everyone, So I am progressing well through my career mode and have done an Eve visit and Gilly landing and am heading to Duna now. I was considering a Apollo type Duna landing in which I have a crew of 1 stay in orbit in the return vessel while a crew of 2 visit the surface for science and planting a flag. Then return to the mother ship and return to Kerbin. I assume the Kerbal in the orbiting ship will not get credit for the flag planting? This probably makes sense, but i just wanted to double check. Thanks, Rylant

Thanks FG. And thanks everyone. I will say that I have Mechjeb installed but I try to not use it. I read on how I need to burn and try to come up with the maneuver myself. If I can’t figure it out, I ask Mechjeb and see how it figured it. I know it’s cheaty, but I can live with it. Rylant

Hey all. So in order to be efficient, you have to use the ideal transfer Windows to move to the different planets and then back to Kerbin. It can be hundreds of days or even years between your windows to get out to the different planets and then back again. So in career mode, do you wait for potentially years to go to the planets you are visiting and then wait again for potentially more years until you get a good window back? Seems like a lot of wasted time fast forwarding between windows. Rylant

Hey All, So I am progressing along fairly well in my second attempt at a career play through. My first attempt I gave up after Duna as I found it really hard. I have enjoyed the second play through and I have been to Duna and back and just going to go to Eve and hopefully land on Gilly. I have found a few sites to be instrumental in planning Delta V and Launch windows. So my question is. I am able to play around and get an encounter with Eve. I notoriously waste a ton of Delta V in going places in that I am just not good at being perfect with these things, but can usually make it work if I pack a few extra Delta V. My latest return attempt to Eve / Gilly will be in a rocket with just over 8500 Delta V. In my firsts attempt to get an encounter with Eve, I just happened to come in well where the correction for inclination with Gilly was pretty minor. I then noticed that I happened to bring along a Pilot and 2 Engineers, instead of a Pilot, Engineer and a Scientist... So, that was kind of stupid of me LOL. So I reverted the launch and Loaded up Jeb, Bob and Bill and launched again... I was able to get an encounter with Eve, but this one took a little longer and I had to fight with my Maneuver node a bit. However, I am coming in at a really goofy inclination to Gilly which is going to be nasty to correct if I wait until I reach Eve. I have looked and most say to do a correction burn about halfway to the destination playing with the Normal / Anti Normal nodes to do a slight correction burn and it usually takes a relatively small amount of Delta V to correct this way. My encounter with Eve is in around 80 days, so I wait until day 40 or so and try to play with the Nodes, but I can't seem to correct the inclination. I can change it a couple of degrees, but nothing crazy. I can also get my Apoapsis much closer to Eve, but can't seem to correct the inclination well. I have looked online and have seen a few things, but nothing really specific. If anybody has anything they could offer, I would love to hear your suggestions. I am sure I am just doing something silly. Thanks, Rylant

Hey all. So I will admit I played the game years ago for a bit. I played in career mode and got to Duna, landed, and returned. I stopped playing them as I found it really difficult from there. A couple of things. I found docking really hard. I ended up using a docking indicator mod? Which I found made it easier. I could never seem to be efficient with delta v and there always seemed to be lots of waste, which of course stranded me several times. I finished the tech tree just by getting to Duna. I never really used SSTOs as I found landing tough. I never used engineers really, just pilots and scientists. I never used satellites or probes as I never saw much of a use for them? I never made a space station or station on a moon or planet. So I know there is a ton is good info out there. The problem is, there is a ton of info out there... Is there a good progression for career checklist or there? Like, 1 - launch ship. 2-sub orbit. 3-orbit Kerbin... 16-send probe to Ike... 23-set up Munar base... 38-Go to Jool... Also, any must material to read or YouTube to watch to give me an idea of where I should be heading? Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rylant

Thank you so much. I think the problem might have been that I didn’t have partless enabled. Of course nobody has an engineer on the early flights so maybe that is why the hud was disabled. Now that I have enabled that function, it seems to be working. I feel like that should be vanilla and not need a mod. Thanks, Rylant

Hey all. Is there a current mod that will allow you to see flight data, particularly apoapsis and periapsis on the main screen? I don’t like fumbling back and forth between the main screen and the map screen as I try to achieve orbit. I tried to get Kerbal Engineer Redux to work as I understand that mod has that feature, but I couldn’t get it to work. Is that because the mod hasn’t been updated for the most recent version? Thanks, Rylant

Hey all. I am playing the latest release on PC through steam. I just started career mode. I was trying to achieve my first orbit of Kerbin and was using that Delta-V sheet that most tends to use. It looks like it says 3400 DV to achieve orbit and I was having a hard time putting together a decent ship under 30 parts with 3400. I finally tried to launch with the ship I built which was 3100 or so. I was easily able to achieve orbit with that vessel and had several hundred DV to spare. So am I reading that chart wrong? Or reading the DV on my ship wrong (I just look at the total DV under the staging on the HUD)? Or some other issue? I am a total noob here, so just trying to figure out how to read these things. I imagine fully understanding planning and DV will be huge when it comes to going to the different celestial bodies here. Thanks, Rylant