Deadweasel

And in both cases, you've made the same mistake I did. Read his sig.

Good writing takes time. I guarantee Nova read and re-read everything he's put down on this story multiple times before he hit the post button. Shoot, probably previewed more than once as well to make sure the image size and placement looked right. I, for one, embrace our new developer/writer/builder overlord. (oh, and subbed!)

*reads signature* Oh yeah? Well my tomorrow has bacon! And cake! ...okay, I lied about the cake

Oh man... that cat again!! Love one of the versions of the source I saw online quite some time ago!

Started a new fiction series! Kerbal Khronicles - 01 - Newcomers

I've gotten in touch with the original designer of the ship used in the first image of the chapter (NGTOne), so hopefully my computer will tolerate my attempts to beat it into oblivion long enough to produce some more pics for that, and future chapters.

If it weren't for the shadow giving perspective, I would've been making some calls to the KSP with allegations of steroid abuse.

Wow... Thanks so much! To address your points: 1. Bear in mind that I wrote this as an introduction and a means to ease into things I've already written as "dressing" for image sequences I was posting already, but there are more definitely more details coming for the ships in the next chapter. 2. I'm already working on the aspects of the story that go into more detail, such as how there could be a Bob, Bill, Nelnie, Mac and Jeb "a thousand cycles (Kerbin years) ago", and how five little Kerbals could possibly wind up creating the KSP as we know it today. So to sum up: "It's coming, it's coming. Keep your pantyhose on!

[UPDATE]: The chapters are back online! My mistake for relying on them to be hosted with the forums' blog feature, which was wiped out with the upgrade. Thank Jeb there's the Internet Archive, and that I had the foresight to host the images myself, so nothing is lost. Hi folks! I've been cruising these forums for some time, but had been focusing largely on conversations surrounding specific events, procedures or other aspects of the game. Recently though, I realized that I was getting more into putting stories together for some of the in-game images I was sharing with the community. That's when I suddenly remembered that the forums had an entire section devoted to just that very thing, and so now here I am to present the start of what I would like to become a solid series. Okay, sure it's a bit niche but what better place to find a receptive audience than on a forum where others are already hard at work doing the same thing, right? So allow me to present the Kerbal Khronicles, and hey, don't forget to let me know what you think of it! 01 - Newcomers 02 - Broken 03 - Ghosts, Part 1 04 - Ghosts, Part 2 05 - Slaves to the Kraath, Part 1 06 - Slaves to the Kraath, Part 2 07 - Slaves to the Kraath, Part 3 08 - Waypoint 09 - Black Shoal 10 - The Breaker's Bounty, Part 1 Credits (image and .craft sources) Some of the images used in the chapters are -or are based on- others' works. NGTOne: Image, Chapter 1, "Far Horizon" Massonius: Image, Chapter 1, "Kimcha's Death" Artush: Image, Chapter 1, "Space Explosion" Macey Dean: Craft, Chapter 3, "Far Horizon dock" All other images by Deadweasel, using visual assets from Kerbal Space Program

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA *gaaaaaaaaassssp* AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Ahh, geek humor... /wipes eyes

Today, IPEV Tailwind took to the pad to rendezvous in low orbit with her sister Excursion, just returned from the Mün with news of disaster. Tailwind brought many design improvements to the IPEV hull design, including greater RCS fuel capacity, and carrying the recently-upgraded Kea Civik rover. A Mosquito dropship arrived on orbit soon after, and met with Excursion to egress the crew after shutdown procedures were completed (Excursion had suffered some damage during her voyage, and Kontrol ordered her parked for a follow-up assessment). Johnoly, the Mosquito pilot, ferried Jeb and Bill back to Tailwind one by one, where they would take up their duty quarters in the flank pods in preparation for the upcoming münar rescue mission. "Those lucky jerks," Jeb commented almost bitterly on the first run back, "I can't believe one of them almost got taken out by a one-in-a-million debris strike!" Johnoly frowned and looked upward as if to will his disapproving glance through the hull at Jeb in the topside seat. "You call that lucky? He could have been killed." "If it had been me down there, it would have been a sure bet. In fact I could have FINALLY collected on the pool back home if it had been me!" "You'd have been dead, Jeb." "Pff... Mere detail. I'm working on fixing that one, too." Johnoly was still shaking his head in disbelief as he came back to pick up Bill. "Your kab's here," he called, "Time to get your krap and get the heck out!" "Yeah yeah," came the dismissive response. "Just finishing up." The distinct sound of chewing followed intermittently over the comms, and Bill appeared minutes later at the airlock. "Bring any snacks for me?" Johnoly asked jokingly. Bill responded by waving a Kit Kat bar across the canopy as he proceeded to the topseat. The final trip back to Tailwind was uneventful while the pair reflected on the critical task ahead: the rescue and safe return of Jenlas and Hanry, currently stranded on the Mün. On final approach, it never occurred to Johnoly to ask Bill to hop off and head for his quarters before docking; Tailwind's new docking guidance system made the process almost completely effortless. After the docking clamps had thudded firmly in place, Johnoly signaled all-clear and began switching the Mosquito's systems over to the support umbilicals. "Thanks for the smooth ride, see you on the flip-side," Bill called as he disconnected his harness. "With any luck the rest of this mission will go just as smoo-"*WHAM* Bill's comm was abruptly cut off by a massive thud, followed by alarms all across the Mosquito's status boards. The lighting in Tailwind's Mosquito bay instantly flipped to an angry red, and Johnoly knew something "Very Bad" had just taken place. "Bill?" he called, hoping beyond hope his crewmate was okay. Panicked breathing answered. "I don't know what happened! I just took off my harness and BAM, I was crashing through the hull!" Johnoly craned around to peer through the canopy, looking for signs of damage. In the distance, he caught a pair of light reflections, one of which looked disturbingly like a broken solar panel. A fine mist of atomized fuel began to spread in the bay, prompting Bill to switch to the ship's primary comm channel to warn the bridge. He needn't have bothered. "Mosquito bay, bridge!" came mission commander Shepdo's urgent voice, "What's going on back there? We've got proximity and collision alarms going off all over the place!" "It's Bill," Johnoly called back, already reversing his ship's standby status, "he dismounted and something shoved him through the hull!" After a moment's pause came worriedly "So, all these debris pings are... Bill?" "No, Bill's okay, but he just went through the aft hull of the Mosquito bay! Apparently he quite literally cannonballed through it!" "Well whatever it was just dealt us a death blow. We just lost most our maneuvering capability, and two of the main engines aren't responding. Kontrol is ordering us to ditch!" "But we're in a parking orbit!" Johnoly objected. "We can just scrub and wait for the repair shu-" "They're demanding de-orbit in thirty minutes; this boat's maiden flight will be her last. You are to capture the rover, retrieve the crew and make landing at soonest opportunity, understand? Prepare for emergency separation." Johnoly's blood ran cold. They'd practiced this maneuver many times, but only in simulators. Shepdo had to repeat the order twice more before the Mosquito pilot realized he'd only been nodding while he numbly ran through the emergency startup checklist. Some detached part of him listened as Shepdo contacted Bill and made sure he was okay, then worked with second officer Dongard to initiate emergency ejection of Tailwind's payload. "Black Shoal protocol is active," Shepdo uttered the dreaded words with a strained voice. "Initiate in...3...2...1..." Johnoly gripped onto the handles on his canopy as the Mosquito lurched violently upward out of the bay and into open space. Directly ahead, he watched the automated rover rise with him and immediately stabilize, prompting him to follow suit. "Mosquito clear," he called, "rover is clear and stable. Standing off 300 meters." He guided his ship away to the predetermined docking rally point, and watched his displays to be sure the rover was following as well. Shepdo came back on the comm. "Copy clear. Bill you get yourself back to the Mosquito and settle in once he's got the rover tucked in. We'll be joining you in ten minutes.... mark." With that, Tailwind's comm channel fell silent for the last time. Johnoly looked back just in time to see her "boo" lights flicker and die, a tell-tale of just how badly her power systems had been damaged. "So much for those damned things scaring off the Kraken," he thought to himself sadly. Bill was making his way back to the Mosquito as ordered, offering a debris tally as he went. "So far I've got eyes on at least six components in the local area, many more moving away at high velocity. Tailwind's legacy is going to be a constellation of junk." "You sure you didn't bump your MMU controls when you dismounted?" Johnoly asked calmly, still trying to wrap his head around how quickly things had gone so wrong. "Right," Bill returned hotly, "because these things routinely do 20 g's, is that it? Let's ask Jeb what kind of chicanery he's been pulling with them, why don't we?!" "Hey," came Jeb's voice, obvious from the tone that he was already back in his suit, "I had nothing to do with this! Plus, they won't give me the green light on it anyway." Bill was stunned. "You mean you're already working on th-" "HEY!" Johnoly cut across the retort. "Act now, talk later. Get your butts on-board ASAP, I've got the rover locked. "On my way," Bill sighed. As Bill finally got back in-range, he spotted a suit already on the Mosquito's topseat. He could just make out Jeb's face behind the faceplate as he turned to grin at him. "Dibs on the top bunk!" Jeb sang happily. "Masochist," Bill muttered too low for the comm to pick up, and moved to take one of the rover's seats. A few minutes later, Dongard arrived and strapped himself in next to Bill in the last open seat. Bill asked the question that had been bothering him since the commander had first called Black Shoal. "Where's commander Shepdo going to ride?" Dongard quietly avoided Bill's gaze and became interested in watching a far-flung bit of Tailwind as it drifted by instead. "Bill," Johnoly said on the private channel, "Dongard was supposed to assume command. Skip's been with the IPEV project since day-one, so he was making the launch of Tailwind his final mission before retirement. He was going to catch a shuttle back to Exterra station before we left." "We can't just leave him-" "Tailwind's dying, Bill. Kontrol has ordered us to scuttle her before she blows apart in orbit and creates a hazard to the space program. Somebody's got to fly her in." "So? He can set the autopilot to fire and bail before it does! I've done that before! YOU'VE done it!" Bill struggled to keep the anguish out of his voice. "Not with something as big as she is," Johnoly answered matter-of-factly, "somebody has to stay aboard and make sure she goes in over water or wilderness instead of drifting over populated areas. Black Shoal means 'ship down, crew lost'. You know this." "But...!" "Let it go. It's already done." Before Bill could make another plea, Johnoly pulled the flight stick and brought the Mosquito about in preparation for emergency landing. The survivors contemplated their fate in silence from there. Landing site chosen and marked, Johnoly keyed up the command channel. "Mission Kontrol, this is Rescue One. Transmitting intended landing coordinates now. Be advised commander Shepdo has departed with Tailwind on final run. Repeat: Shepdo is with Tailwind on final run." "Rescue One, Kontrol. Fortune favors the brave, and Shepdo will be remembered as one of Kerbin's most fortunate children. We'll be monitoring your beacon, see you on the... of... ckou..." The signal was lost to a storm of static as the dropship entered the blackout zone with its precious cargo. The descent was violent and terrifying, much worse than any among the survivors had ever experienced during practice drops. Must be from the passengers on the rover, a distant corner of Johnoly's mind mused. The violent orange glow of ionized air was whipping by his canopy; he could only guess at what the rest of his crew were experiencing of it. His eyes flickered to the rover status panel, where he could verify his passengers below were still okay. Terrified and white-knuckled on the braces for sure, but still okay nonetheless. He didn't need to bother with doing the same for the topseat. Jeb was issuing his own audible lifesigns. "WOOOHOOO!" he bellowed over the comms, "Why the heck didn't I save the marshmallows?! I could've had S'MORES!!" "Can have my Kit Kats when we land," Bill groaned, "I'm gonna be too sick to eat anything for days." "Gimme a break, gimme a break!" Jeb sang the commercial tune, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were all in. Minutes later, the dropship's velocity began to fall dramatically, helped along by Johnoly's expert guidance. Slowly and carefully he leveled the craft, gradually bleeding off lateral speed and curving into a vertical descent, the Mosquito's engines rumbling confidently. Johnoly heard Dongard issue a quiet sigh of relief, certain the worst was behind them. On the monitors, Bill's heartbeat slowed and his breathing relaxed, though he'd otherwise fallen silent. Jeb was busy being Jeb, to everyone else's annoyance. "Hey guys! I can see my house from here!" The ground approached. Johnoly bled off speed. Jeb spotted a lark in the grass, and Johnoly bled off speed. Dongard leaned over and aimed a hand-held ground radar gun to calibrate altitude readings, and Johnoly bled off speed. At 30 meters, the Mosquito was drifting lazily down like a dried leaf. They were going to make it! Suddenly, the Mosquito's engines coughed and sputtered. The fuel tanks were dry! "Hold on!" Johnoly called as he cut the throttle as much as he dared, but the engines only gasped and cut out again. The Mosquito dropped sharply, and the rover rammed into the ground. Through his frantic attempts to recover, Johnoly heard one of the laser struts overload and explode, and the suspension underneath groan in protest. Through the chaos, Dongard issued a short yell and fell silent. The engines sputtered and the Mosquito began to lift again. Johnoly slammed the rover deploy button, cutting the rover loose from the ship. The Mosquito lurched and angled backward sharply, taking the rover out of view just as it appeared to be toppling. The engines sputtered one last time, seemingly bent on the ship's destruction, pushing the Mosquito further backward until it was now pointing back toward the sky. Finally the tanks ran dry, and the engines died out completely. The sudden silence was immediately broken by Jeb's angry voice. "Who the hell was drunk enough to give you a pilot's license dude?!" Less than a second later, the ship toppled over and slammed into the ground, upside-down. Johnoly was slammed violently into his seat amidst the deafening thunder of Armageddon. Blackness enveloped all. Johnoly awoke to a throbbing pain in his head, and silence. Though his vision was blurred, he struggled and finally found the canopy manual release. Climbing and coughing, he made his painful way out of the cockpit. When he stood, what greeted him stunned him cold. Very little remained of his ship but his cockpit module and the broken, battered remnants of the aft fuel and power core. The mid-section, the section to which the topseat had been mounted, was gone. An angry scorched patch of ground marked where it must have landed. Jebediah Kerman was no more. Beside himself with anguish and pain, Johnoly looked around for any signs of life. Nothing moved. He wasn't sure how long he'd been out, but the wreckage wasn't even smoking anymore. It could have been days. A gentle wind moaned across the plains. In the distance, Johnoly spotted the rover. Though it was definitely toppled, it was, for the most part, intact! His heart soared. He'd been in countless simulated wrecks with that rover! After all, it was designed to protect the drivers if it ever went over! Running toward the rover as fast as his suit would allow, Johnoly called out breathlessly to Bill and Dongard. When no response came, he told himself that his suit comms must have been damaged in the crash. As he drew near to the rover, he knew he'd been very wrong. In the field a short distance from the rover was a single command chair, twisted and bent. There was no body to be found. Still holding on to hope, he scrambled to the rover. By the angle at which it was laying, he knew what he'd find before he even came around destroyed wheel: the remaining rover seat, similarly deformed. Most of the rover's safety supports had been crushed, so violent had the landing been. Despondent and alone, Johnoly made his way back to what remained of his ship to try to bring the comm systems back to life. His grief was only mildly dampened by the fact that the radio was still intact and working. It crackled to life, screaming with static. A sharp, annoyed stab at one of the controls re-tuned the unit back to the command frequency. "-ue One this is Mission Kontrol, do you read!" Johnoly half-heartedly pressed the transmit button. "Mission Kontrol, Rescue One," he intoned. Taking a careful breath, he spoke the words he'd hoped to never hear once, let alone twice in one day. "Black Shoal."

"Cannot switch vessels before tea time on the second Tuesday of the month"

Wow. Very thorough and detailed explanations that make lots of sense! Thanks Lexif and Fel! Please don't misunderstand me, I'm well aware that there are Good Reasons for those limitations, I just wasn't aware of the specifics. My original post wasn't really intended to be an outright complaint, but as I get deeper into the game, I couldn't help but notice I was running into those notices more and more often, and some I was seeing for the first time. I had to laugh when the thought hit me that maybe Squad were having a joke and were using the same system for "witty hints" that is now currently used for the main game loader, and that's when I posted up about it all here. Though I hadn't really expected a detailed analysis or explanation of how it might work behind the scenes, those last posts were pretty enlightening and may have even inspired some design changes in my ships as well.

...do you perhaps mean the Mün? If not, well I won't say anything more. One may actually say "mum's the word". >_>

I just had a terrifying thought.I hope the people who make the big decisions in the media networks NEVER see this game.

I think it looks more like one of those mobility scooters that plague the sidewalks. In this case I think it's long overdue. Jeb has ​to have suffered some kind of handicap by now!

Oh no worries whatsoever. You'd know if you were dealing with a whining thread if it had been posted in the Bugs section instead. LOL Also, sweet to see a fellow desert rat on here as well! Funny how easy it gets to assume that you're the ONLY one in an area that is involved with some online event.

Not precisely as such... I was simply commenting on the myriad reasons the game has come up with why I can't do something specific, and maybe hoping to evoke some humor and intelligent conversation in the process. Seems to be working so far.

Crappy framerates?

You make a lot of sense here, except in one case to my mind: Today while moving a small dropship from point-to-point on the Mün, I was slowly gaining altitude and moving laterally about 25m/s. Then I noticed the rover at my destination had gone dark, so I tried to switch to it real quick to turn the lights on, and was presented with the "about to crash" message instead. Umm... I'm on the upward arc of the flight in an airless environment. Bear in mind that the throttle WAS on at the time, but I got "switch-blocked" because I was somehow 'about to crash' even though I was gaining altitude and nothing was in my lateral flight path. This was the event that got me thinking about other ways the game seems to be a bit irrational in how it decides YOU SHALL NOT PASS this time.

@Jack Wolfe: There goes my lemonade, and you owe me a new keyboard.

The Mosquito rover delivery system works very well, but since the Civik Type-K has two seats, and the Mosquito's cockpit only holds one, somebody's going to have to ride the roman candle outside. Better hope there's no atmosphere at the destination!

Yes, exactly! I was told today while driving a rover that I couldn't switch away because the throttle had been accidentally bumped up a hair, even though it couldn't have any influence on the rover anyway (the wheels were in rover mode, not throttle mode). In a way, it feels a bit like the cellphone-while-driving laws in the US: totally redundant. Can't switch vessels while moving over the surface GAH!! Sometimes it feels almost arbitrary as to why the game WON'T let you do something, like it's just spinning a roulette wheel behind the scenes and randomly deciding how it's going to annoy the crap out of you this time.

I'm used to it now, but has anybody else ever noticed how the game can sometimes be outright stubborn with you when you're trying to do something that's a normal feature of the game? Cannot switch vessels while in atmosphere Cannot switch vessels while about to crash Cannot warp while vessel is under acceleration Cannot switch vessels while current vessel is throttled-up Cannot warp while taking a dump Cannot switch vessels while vegetables remain un-eaten -wait, I made those last two up... At least "Hatch is obstructed, can't exit" makes sense!

That's actually pretty slick! I'm getting some inspiration from a lot of these teensy-weensy rovers! Why is it so easy to just get into the habit of building them huge and monstrous anyway?