Mister Dilsby

Next post will complete Chapter One. Am wondering, should this really be here in "Mission Reports" or would the group consider this "Writing"? Either way, I'm having a blast--it makes the missions even more fun, thinking ahead to how the story is going to play out when something unexpected happens (like forgetting the antenna, or running out of fuel on Mun descent, or not bothering to calculate how long mining really takes....)

Really great, entertaining adaptation and well-staged images. You cannot get enough rep for this, keep it up!

You may find some good ideas over here.

Next few pages up, was on a roll and couldn't wait...

Funny, I arrived at exactly the same decision given two badS pilots in the roster. Jeb is the cocky fighter jock who drives atmospheric craft to an inch of their limits, Val the coolly confidant interplanetary savante.

Hey all, having a great time with this mission and would like to share. Hope you like the format. This is a Career save in V1.0.2, all stock except for Kerbal Engineer, visual mods, and alarm clock. Here are the first three pages, will post additional pages as missions complete. At this writing I have not yet launched for Duna, so you know as much as I do about how the story will turn out. Enjoy! ETA 28 Sept 2015: I added links to the Eve, Order Zero chapters in chronological order. If you are reading the comic for the first time, go in this order Read DOB Chapter 1 here Read DOB Chapter 2 here Read DOB Interlude One here Read DOB Chapter 3 here Read DOB Chapter 4 here Read DOB Interlude 2 here Read Eve: Order Zero Chapter 1 and Interlude Here Read DOB Chapter 5 here Read Eve: Order Zero Chapter 2 Here Read Eve: Order Zero Chapter 3 Here Read DOB Interlude 3 here Read DOB Chapter 6 (and end of that book) here Read Eve: Order Zero Chapter 4 Here ...from this point follow Kerbfleet's progress on the Eve: Order Zero main thread.

Love the layout and presentation style. Have rep!

Very good lesson here: Kerbin is small enough and rockets are powerful enough to push almost anything through to orbit, provided the forces are balanced. The challenge for new players is to understand all those forces and make use of them. - - - Updated - - - Quite different profile from some other big fairing designs. Maybe the length of fairing relative to rocket spreads out your drag forces in the vertical direction, whereas ones like Capt. Sierra's and mine are all at the front? (requiring an ascent with late gravity turn to avoid flip)

oO wow! I actually have not unlocked the big tanks yet in career, but that looks like a great way to use them!

Rather than reply to every "Help! My rocket won't stop flipping!" or "KSP is impossible now!", I thought I'd put up a few Crazy Things I've Gotten to Orbit with some comments on how I did it. I bet the rest of the community has ships bigger, uglier, prettier and crazier than mine. 1) "Ore Piggy" Delivery vehicle This one carried a pair of ore transporters to my Minmus mining operation. Problems: Large mass, uneven internal payload Solution: Thrust vectoring of the LFBs helped a lot. Aero shape and minimal fins were enough for the core stage. 2) Payload in a big fairing I've used a design like this to deliver several space stations and surface labs. Problems: Large mass. Wide front means lots of front-end drag even with fairings Solution: No fin was big enough. I put four delta wings with elevons on the end of the core stage. You can see them sticking out between the strap-on boosters. 3) Big-S Space Station This is my main fueling station around Minmus. The 'ore piggies' from craft #1 cycle to it from the surface. Problems: Huge mass, not streamlined. Docking ports and fuel pods everywhere. Solution: Forget about efficient ascent. Fins and SAS to hold course straight up to 30km, then turn east. Lots of struts connecting stages--typically running between two sets of four radially placed cubic octagonal anchor points (one set on each of the two mating stages). 4) Not-SSTO Interplanetary Explorer This is my Duna ship: VTOL capable with full surface mining/processing facilities. I did not want to carry the mass of jets to Duna, so this is a rocket plane only. Problems: At first I tried carrying jet pods on the wings and ejecting them at altitude, but the highly variable thrust of V1.0.2 turboramjets made that impractical--center of thrust moved faster than I could react, flipping me out. Solution: Drag can lift as well as balance--horizontal launch with "White Knight" style expendable first stage rocket plane. There is a Skipper engine mounted dorsally to the LFB (and behind the orbital vehicle, not connected to it) to bring the center of thrust closer to center of mass. Constant adjustment of LFB thrust required to keep thrust offset angle near zero. Everything can still be done, you might just have to do it a different way. Possibly by taking a solution from real life, possibly by doing something #lolsokerbal, but there is ALWAYS a way.

HelmutK, it is my pleasure to inform you that you have qualified for Level 3 of the Eve Rocks challenge with a near sea-level launch! Your video was a treat to watch with some very nice style touches, like having your pilot get to the capsule in a monopropellant-fueled hover seat. I simply LOVED the spiral ladders to get from capsule to surface and back. Also a bonus for completing all the requirements of Level 2 by retrieving a sample of explodium. Having tested your craft I can really appreciate the complexity of the ship you made--over 1100 parts, it nearly broke my computer when I loaded it into the VAB! Truly a marvel of Kerbal engineering and a job well done. Wear your badge with pride!

I like it a lot, will do something similar once I unlock the Sr. docking port! (um, but don't you have a new 'launchpad' as of V1.0? )

It occurs to me we could save a lot of trouble by aiming the separatron exhaust at the part we want separated... just clip it inside the nosecone for a convenient self-destruct!

Just what I'm thinking; use low gravity moons like Gilly & Bop for a quick top-up of the ore bunkers, and of course then there's the convenient scattering of minable rocks around Dres.

So much for my dreams of ion-gliding from Eve sea level to orbit

Got my first mining operation going and am starting to think interplanetary. Am thinking that for a very big ship it might not be the dumbest thing in the world to load up big tanks of ore and convert on the ship into comparatively small tanks of LF, O2 and mono. Consider: Obviously this is not the whole ship, just enough to demonstrate the point. This 25.4 ton assembly can put 3000 units of LF through the engine. A more classical arrangement of, say, an orange Rockomax tank (without O2) and an LV-N would mass 21.4 tons and carry 2880 units of LF. You'd get a better ratio using LF-only Mk2 or Mk3 spaceplane parts, of course. With a single engine the 'solid fuel' option loses due to the big mass of the converter... but imagine a capital ship with a whole battery of LV-Ns, monopropellant thrusters, and a complement of boats for planetary/moon landings. If you could run the whole thing off one or two converters, you would break even on mass or even do better than LF/LFO the mass penalty would be much reduced... AND the 'solid fuel' system is a lot more compact. Such a ship could even have a mining boat that brings in ore along the way. I think I'm on to something... and imagining a fleet of "coal-powered" cruisers! ETA: Looking further, the ore can never truly win... --Five big ore tanks weigh 10t empty and carry ore that can convert to 15,000 units of LF. --Three standard Mk3 LF tanks weigh 9t empty and carry 15,000 untis of LF ...but I still may do something like this for convenience, compactness and coolness if I am running a big ship that needs lots of different fuel types. At least that way I won't carry more monopropellant or oxidant than I truly need.

Thanks, I will hyperedit your ship to near your landing site and give it a flight test later on. Looking forward to it

You're right, I was going from the Wiki parts list (did not have the game open at the time) which lists the Mk2 LF/O bicoupler at 135+165. Will correct my post.

I'm with you--if you carried the Mk2 logic down to Mk1, then there should be an LF-only equivalent of the FL-T200 that carries 200 units LF and weighs .125 empty. Such a part would obsolete the poor LF fuselage which weighs more and carries less. I don't think Squad thought that through when designing the parts...anyone can run their game how they wish, of course, but in my game I'll follow Squad's lead and stay consistent within part families: that is, I'll mod as I described above within the Mk2 family, but if I make any longer 1.25m (Mk1) cylindrical tanks I'll keep the same ratio as the Mk1 fuselage.

Editing save files, yes. Modding parts fairly, no. Consider the Mk2 LFO and LF fuel tanks. Both mass 0.5t empty. The LFO tank holds 360 units of LF and 440 units of oxidizer. The LF-only version holds 800 units of LF. Note that 360+440=800 -- clearly, Squad intended for units of O and units of LF to be volumetrically interchangable in the Mk2 series. Based on that equivalency, I would consider it fair to mod any MK2 LFO part to LF by replacing units of O with units of LF on a 1:1 basis. Thus a properly modded LF-only MK2 bicoupler should be exactly like the LFO version, except it carries 400 units of LF instead of 180 units LF and 220 units O. ETA: OK, I think I see what Renegrade's on about now. There is no such equivalency in the Mk1 parts. The LF fuselage is .15 empty and carries only 150 units LF. The closest size LFO tank, the FL-T200, is .125 empty and carries 90 units LF + 110 units O2 = 200 units! Somehow LF must not fit well into cylindrical spaces. In any case I think my reasoning stands w.r.t. the Mk2 parts.

Yes, thanks Red you're right of course. I suppose I just like leaving the stock Squad folders as they are, I'm afraid to muck around too much in there

Seconded, my turbonuke SSTO works just great thank you. I find a 28t ship with 2 nukes and 3 jets works perfectly. I have gotten it into orbit with 1900 m/s dV remaining. @Sean Mirrsen, I have edited my own Mk2 parts to have no oxidizer. It's not hard to do. Just make a new subfolder under GameData (mine is called 'LiqFuelParts') and copy over the relevant files from the Squad parts folder. For example to make a liq fuel only Mk2 bicoupler you need bicoupler.cfg. bicoupler.mu and mk2adapters1m.dds. Then edit the .cfg file as follows, deleting the Oxidant section and adding units of liquid fuel to compensate. My edits in red. ...and save. Note that the filenames stay the same, the part will be a unique part because it is in a different folder from the Squad parts folder. When you load the game next, the new part will look exactly like the LFO bicoupler but the name and descriptions will change. Do this for any other parts you like.

HelmutK, if you're out there I sent a PM a couple of days ago--the video is beautiful but I can't see your resource window! Please make your Eve lander .craft file available if you would like me to review your Challenge entry.

I used LV-N in previous versions because I could refuel in LKO and go anywhere. I like them even more now, as the turboramjet+nuclear combo uses only liquid fuel so no need to carry oxidant.

One quick method in the early game is to put a crewed ship in a somewhat inclined orbit low over the Mun, Minmus or Kerbin. Grab all the experimental science you can, and as you pass over each biome leave the ship and do an EVA report. You can get full science from each one and transmit them home with no losses. This should give you enough to unlock mobile labs, which will generate all the science you need to get through the 300 and into the 550 science level. At that point you will be sending your first crewed missions to Duna or Eve orbit, where EVA reports and mobile labs should be enough to finish the tree.