colmo

I have an aircraft carrier touring Kerbin precisely for this reason. The returns aren't that great, but the trick is to get a lot of aerial surveys to give you plenty of targets. Now, it's a whole other ball game if they were to start appearing on Laythe...

I also had the idea of, instead of making the landing gear 'sticky', making the hangar floor tiles (the square grey ones) 'sticky' instead. This means you don't uncouple two of the three gears one at a time, and have the plane flop through the deck while the last one is still attached. I suppose this is only a problem because we can't edit action groups on the fly - that would make the gear the better, more versatile, candidate. If we could link the gears on the same planes together so they all release or couple at the same time, that might be handy. I'm not sure if it's possible to make some parts exempt from the 'clipping allowed when part of the same craft' mechanic, which I recall was introduced around 0.15 - if so, that would mean only one gear needing to dock, and the others would not pass through the deck. Either way, we get rid of the docking slots, so it's all good. Is it possible to alter the strength of the bond? We don't want it to be that strong, just enough to hold on in x4 warp, but not enough to rip off the gear. Making it only possible to dock when not moving fast might be a good idea, to prevent cheaty (and very abrupt!) landings :-) There's a few parts were there's a few different sizes to choose from - engines and rudders. I recommend TweakScale to reduce part catalogue clutter.

Have you tried unlocking steering on the stock gear? You need to unlock them all, the nose wheel isn't enough. I've given up on the reversing engine and stock gear. Firespitter has landing gear that turns sharper and has a built in motor (turn off cockpit torque to avoid draining the electric charge). TweakScale can be used to increase it's size for better clearance and alignment front-to-rear.

In the interim, I've discovered Firespitter gear plus TweakScale produces a nice sized landing gear. If I use the FS tail gear (140% scale) or regular FS fighter gear on the wings, and stock gear on the nose, that should mean good braking without tipping, a landing light, and does away with the need for the reversing engine. One thing that would really help is some sort of glideslope indicator - it's hard to line up a landing until you can see the carrier properly, at which point it's too late to correct for that attempt. Lighting built into the deck part would help, though I'm not sure how much of a performance hit that would incur. I'd also like to decouple the arrestor hook from the airbrake on the landing system. I want to deploy the hook well in advance, but only use the airbrake at the last moment (the default drag value fairly drops it out of the sky, and weaker values are hard to get 'just right'). The airbrake deploys and retracts very slowly, which can mean disaster if you misjudge the landing, which is the majority of the time...using separate airbrakes in parallel would help, but we're all about keeping part count down on these beasts.

Odd bug with the Firespitter drop tank - the original appears with dry mass 0.75 (correct) but only 50 liquid fuel (should be 100), while the mirror has dry mass 0.05 and liquid fuel 50 with room for 50 more. This didn't happen before I installed TweakScale.

I hadn't used this mod much, but the first time I used it to make an aircraft, it was a revelation: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300087194 The only things not tweaked were wings, fuel tanks, control surfaces, tail fin (upright) and cockpit. The downsizing of larger pieces means the cost is a little higher than a similar stock craft, but it's not that bad when dealing with structural pieces. The ability to tweak lift and drag, and those excellent enlarged Firespitter gear, is a godsend for aircraft builders.

Staggering stuff. I think that's the engine for KSP 2 sorted. Looking forward to see what games use this engine. Considering how much landscape rendering packages cost, it seems unreal that this, which renders a whole universe, is free.

A few thoughts on KerbTown and KSP as a game. At the moment, it's very much a sandbox mod. You can plop structures anywhere you like, and for those with spawn points, launch from them. With First Contract, we now have finances. Thus, launching from different locations shouldn't cost the same, just as recovery doesn't return the same funds. This could take the form of a tax on the cost of a craft, or the mass. Taking this a step further, this can be applied to structures. Rather than being part of the scenery, they become objectives. "If I earn enough funds, I can build that facility at X location" (with costs being many times greater for sites on other bodies than Kerbin). This would give launch and recovery sites in other places, and reduce the drudgery of launching and returning to KSC each time. It's a luxury one must earn, though! Different facilities could give different benefits too. I realise KerbTown hasn't been developed much in a while, but I'm hopeful those interested and capable of the kind of ideas above will see this. Food for thought, if nothing else?

We have no idea if life arose multiple times. We do know that all life on Earth today arose from just one of those lineages, as the most intrinsic genetic machinery is common to them all. We share a genetic code. Scientists recently created a bacteria with an incompatible genetic code, so we know it's possible to have different ones. "Just a theory" - theories are better than laws, because they have explanatory power. Evolution is inevitable given a few premises: 1) Mutations arise in populations giving rise to variation 2) Not all variations have equal reproductive fitness 3) More effective variations will therefore increase in prevalence within the population. Even the creationists accept this stuff, but relabel it as 'adaptation' or 'micro-evolution', but lose the plot at the species boundary ('macro-evolution'), which is not nearly as clearcut as they'd like to believe.

In addition to the KSC2 and Island Runway spawn points, one for the helipad on the VAB would be appreciated.

Hurry up with that landing gear, motorised with good steering and drag brakes when motorised, please! I just landed on deck, then got in a tangle and dunked my plane trying to park it...but I'd quicksaved on landing; oops. Now I cannot load the plane or carrier without the carrier violently exploding - it is apparently splashing down hard on load. Trying to edit my way out of the mess, but even getting rid of the plane doesn't work. Sigh. Edit: It appears it is getting transported to the bottom of the ocean. Something to do with landed or splashed down status. Edit2: Yup, changing the carrier to sit = FLYING sorted it out. I sit = LANDED the plane at 17km altitude and recovered it (only for the pilot, I run Final Frontier). Let's just say he had a mishap with the plane and went home to recover...

It is possible to DIY other kinds of ship with these parts. Here's an ultra-simple utilitarian barge made from 16 parts (inc. 3 struts), which needs an engine of the class somewhere between the carrier and medium engines (as if a barge would ever be nuclear...), and 4 of the mid rudders because the carrier one made the draft too deep for getting close to land. Two engines (reverse or cut off one to steer) and no rudder would drop part count further and give it a very shallow draft. With a few KAS and Infernal Robotics parts, ideal for retrieving splashed down pods for hard -core RPers. It's even viable for short-landing aircraft using an arrestor cable. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=299669595 One last thing - as the Boat Parts have their own code, could boats lose velocity more realistically, rather than the current abrupt halt the moment the throttle is killed?

I think the problem was due to a joystick bug (#490) in Linux, and as my rover controls were bound to it, it affected this too. Not a Firespitter issue.

I'll investigate and give feedback.

Doh, of course. Thing is, when I turned on the motor, the plane would start accelerating quite quickly, with no input from me. This may be unique to use on top of other vehicles? Excellent!

I was using the fighter tail landing gear as a jet nose wheel for carrier landings. However, I found it too soft - could you make the suspension on gear tweakable, maybe with a few presets? Also, the motor in that gear doesn't respond to throttle, it just causes my jet to hare off towards the edge of the deck while I frantically scrabble for the brakes. This was in v7 pre2. Love the gear alignment tool, wish we could rotate by 1 degree increments. Suggestion: Add Klaw code to the helicopter landing skids, so that when it comes to rest on another vehicle, it can dock to it and thus not slide off. The bond doesn't have to be very strong, it should be the first thing to give in a collision. It would also mean we could do fun Hollywood style stunts with Kerbals hanging off the skids. This could work for regular landing gear, though you need to be able to disengage all at the same time to prevent clipping through the deck.

It sounds like acceptable margin of error to me?

The damage mesh bits persist after launch for me, not that it matters much. I spent a few hours trying to land planes on my now-4x warp proof carrier, in readiness for a voyage to collect Fine Print aerial surveys. No airbrakes or arrestor hook unlocked yet, so challenging! Edit: Have since unlocked the arrestor, and it really does stop planes dead. I had to rebuild planes with the internal strut trick to hold them together, nothing new in that. It does add to the part count, though, and I notice FPS does start to tank once you have a few planes on the carrier, so a few optimised or multipurpose parts may be in order. I've realised all landing gear is frankly rubbish - lack of variety to serve different roles, and lack of tweakable suspension. I might have a hack at Firespitter's. Not a complaint of the carrier, it's just a very demanding kind of landing. I've mentioned using Klaw code in landing gear to eliminate the docking slots, this is just a reminder. Edit: or alternatively...make a hangar floor tile with a Klaw-powered 'sticky' surface. Just park the plane, rover or whatever on it, right click and dock. Much simpler than doing it with landing gear, avoids potential clipping issues on release, but unsure if this effect can be applied to a large area? I noticed gear can fall between hangar deck tiles - I know the standard workaround, dropping and raising the gear, but might be an argument for fewer, larger pieces. I found myself wanting a few more pieces to change up possible ship format; the hull side pieces, if made a bit taller, would allow a straight-sided vessel, and the lift piece is fractionally too wide to place at the rear instead of the stern+ramp. In terms of structural integrity, instead of manually strutting everything (I think my carrier weighed in at 78 parts, still very good), could the carrier parts use an autostrut system, like Procedural Fairings does? If you get round to sorting out the fore and aft castle sections for crew, you may as well put KAS storage in them too - anything to reduce part count! BTW, what became of the naval aircraft parts you were doing? Did Skillful take precedence? While I appreciate your interest in warfare, your boat parts are also a great platform for exploration - with contract mods like Fine Print, and EPL, Kethane, Karbonite, KAS and that Hangar mod, a carrier really can become home from home. I think I'll have a stab at making a helipad piece the same width as the deck runway, for a shorter, wide research vessel. About time I DIY...

I haven't noticed any issues in Linux 64 bit but I haven't yet done much with KAS. What I'm chiefly missing is costs not being applied to storage boxes being equipped in VAB/SPH, and I suspect part recovery costs of packed boxes as well.

Check out the Distant Objects mod, it does exactly this.

I just saw this highlighted by Kottabos Space Program on YouTube, and immediately linked to it on the Boat Parts thread - this tech is perfect for the aircraft carrier. One thing I found immersion breaking was the vanishing vehicle. If it could discretely shut the door before this happens, and the hangars had large closed spaces where the vehicles plausibly get towed from the open part, that would help. This is more the case for the ground and space hangars than the inline ones. Whoever has the model for the Battlestar Galactica will be salivating at the thought of churning out Mk II vipers using this code.

Just spotted this on YouTube. Imagine installing a few habitable ground hangars inside the super carrier - a real practical solution to having serious carrying capacity without the part count. Kottabos Space Program - Hangar: http://youtu.be/eO4QOzUwpx4

Have exiting warp at nodes and stop Jeb from trying to sneak onto every mission (and don't fully man the vehicles unless you want to) as standard behaviour, and I'd do it too.

I'm pondering if mining a solid (as opposed to a gas) is viable? Could you, for instance, spawn actual parts on the surface of planets and moons, representing deposits of Karbonite, which can be mined by drill or even explosives into smaller, portable chunks? The deposits could be single parts which spawn rocks (very small asteroids, already in the game) as they receive damage, or drills can latch directly onto them and impart a 'damage' resource, or (probably less likely for performance reasons) multiple parts which can be broken apart. I'm sure more than one pyromaniac will come up with SRB mining...the idea of underestimating how much TNT you're using and destroying half your mining base sounds fun to me :-) This would tie in neatly with some custom contracts.

I know...it's a wonderfully Kerbal contract. I like the possibilities of your mod not being too constrained, as it may just entice some of us to take them on! We also don't have to take the contracts if we don't fancy them. We just have to be mad enough to think up new conditions. E.g. naval waypoints, all at sea, would test boat, sub or seaplane fans without being too mod-specific. Tests of extreme speed on land, sea or in atmosphere (below certain altitudes) would definitely have a following.