Kerbal2023

So I can use the vaccum numbers for the upper stages?

This is pretty standard for me. A large booster at the bottom, and two liquid stages. The top liquid stage usually has a Terrier, the lower one something heftier like a Swivel. At sea level the game predicts 3200 Δv, but if I check the liquid stages in vacuum it's a lot more.

I tested it in-game. It seems the connection gets better from having more 16S'es, so that must mean the exponent is not 0. I downloaded like 4 of your mods!

KSP2 is back on my "to be gotten" list. But I'll give it a year or two to mature.

I must have looked wrong and thought they were the same size.

I managed to balance a challenging early gameplay for a science campaign. I thought I'd share it for anyone interested. You will have to think about what tech to buy, or you will regret it. I find this makes the game much more meaningful. And once you get to the mun, it will feel like a big deal. This is a submod for Probes Before Crew. Each tech level is balanced to be challenging to get to with the tech you have at that time. For instance, in the beginning you have to transfer science back in flight without a surface antenna. You need the science points for recovering a vessel after flight, so reduce thrust and scale the booster to not destroy it. By the time you get to the third level in the tech tree, everything should be pretty much as normal PBC. Here is the setup: I play with the following mods: Add this at the end of the Zs_ProbesBeforeCrew.cfg file in ProbesBeforeCrew _Core folder. It will move some of the parts around in the tech tree so you always have a challenge and a reason to buy the next node. But it will be somewhat difficult to actually get to the next node with this setup. Then remove the "free" science around KEI as I described here, so you can only get science from real missions. No more measuring the temperature on the launch pad! Start a Science type game. Difficulty settings: Set Science rewards to 70%. Enable the three options in Science Param Modifiers difficulty settings before you start the game! I have reduced antenna range to 0.71 too.

I thought I did. They were all the same size, no matter what I do to the part in VAB. Might have overlooked that they are not. If the parachutes themselves scale, that's really awesome!

Do parachute stats in any way scale with part size, or is it just cheating when I make them more compact?

So the combinability exponent will be 0.75 for all combinable antennas? (Although the Communotron 16 doesn't.) If I changed the 16S to combinable, I don't have to set the combinability exponent manually?

Here is another solution: unlock all KEI science in a new game (cheat all technology), go to the save file, find these segments, and copy them into a file so you can put them into your new games. You should hopefully know where to put it. If not, do get some science in the game, find it in the save file and put it after that. It belongs after where you get the start tech. Copy all of it, with the braces, as it is here. You get the experiments crossed off without your science counter going up. I use a mod that changes science rewards (Probes Before Crew), so these values probably won't work for you, unless you use the same game setup as me. But you can do this yourself.

I seem to forget that!

I noticed wild fluctuations in how much Δv i need to get to orbit. Sometimes 2900 will do it and sometimes 3800 won't. The rockets are all similarly aerodynamic and I fly pretty well now. The difference seems to be engine Isp at different heights. So I guess what I'm asking how to predict this. Should I take the atmospheic Δv summary from the base game. It seems to assume all engine work at sea lebel, and hence underpredict higher liquid fuel stages. So then should I sum up the values of lower stages at atmosphere and higher stages at vacuum to get an estimate? Tjese values are very high (4000+) and I still run out of fuel when circularizing.

What do I do with these coordinates? How do I find these places? Somebody said use Kerbnet, but that can as far as I can tell just tell you the coordinates of where you're flying over.

Thanks, this is really great! Would be cool if there was a button to remove those science points again. I just don't want to start my campaign with 1000 points, just remove those microbiomes from the list. You might have selected light mode. Then no toolbar is supposed to show up.

KEI can only do unlocked experiments though, so you have to redo that procedure after unlocking each scientific equipment.

So I built a little probe head on top of a booster, that was supposed to decouple and continue upwards from the momentum of the booster after the rocket was spent, without being dragged down by the weight of the rocket. But when I decoupled I noticed that the burned out booster shot ahead over the probe head. It seems that the momentum did not transfer to the part that got deoupled. Is that the case? I figured the whole vessel has upwards momentum and if I decouple the heavy part the head will fly ahead. Reference: We found out in a previous experiment that a smaller rocket can reach a higher altitude than a big one, because its heavier weight pulls it down far longer than it has extra thrust. This would imply that one wants to get rid of the spent rocket as soon as possible.

Don't get me wrong. I was asking for technical advice, not critisizing the mod. It works very well now and makes the game much better. I just had to adjust a few details to my particular neurotic sensibilities.

Kerbals are subterranean, like moles. That's why you don't see cities. They only recently came to the surface to start a space program. That's when the game starts. Being out of the ground is unnatural to them, which is why they are so clumsy. But they feel quite at home in a pod in space, it's dark and cramped like in a tunnel under the earth. And they don't mind being up there. In fact, it's nicer than being on land. That's what draws them into space. They have not conquered their entire planet like humans, but are a local species, like many animals on earth. Hence there are no kerbals in other places on Kerbin, except a few recent launch sites. They evolved and only live in that spot around KSC. That's why you get science points for exploring Kerbin. They don't had not explored it yet.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I have mod manager and I always start new games. I even delete the mod manager config files. Nothing changes where parts are in the tech tree. It's really weird. I changed every file that has information about positions in the tech tree, including my mod, but still everything is as it used to be. Edit: It seems the game files contain several versions of the same parts with different names, and I was just not adding the ones that show up in the game. I wish there was a way to find the right names.

So does the same ratio of 11 apply to an Oberth (lowering the periapssi to raise the apoapsis) as to a bi-elliptic transfer (going to higher apoapsis to raise the periapsis)?

I tried this in all sorts of ways, and nothing takes effect in game. I changed the tech rquirement in the Squad part cfg's, in the mod and made a separate mod for mod manager. But the parts are always teh same place no matter what I do.

I noticed the guide in the OP says that Celestial Body Science Multipliers on Kerbin are 1.5 for landed and 0.8 for all else. But in the file it appears to be the opposite.

I think it is different experiments over time.

I tried liking this tech tree, but it's kind of annoying. Why do I get the Swivel before more crude liquid fuel rockets? It literally says in the description that it is an improvement of other types. So why do we get it first? Also better probe cores come way too soon. I can basically do a few experiments on the launch pad, and there is no reason to use the Stayputnik in any real way to get the science to get better cores. In what file is this stuff?

I suppose an Oberth maneuver is like a gravity assist where I burn at the periapsis. Sometimes it pays to use fuel to get to a place where you can do that.