Vanamonde

Hello Flavia/toblerone19. Welcome to the forum.

KSP does not simulate gravity drag, solar wind, or anything else that might affect an object's orbit other than atmosphere. If your peripasis is below 69,100 (or so) meters, you are dipping into the upper atmosphere and being slowed by drag. Because of the nature of orbital motion, though, it would barely show at the periapsis, and the affect would be most noticeable at the other side of the orbit, the apoapsis. Another but less likely possibility is that the game does round off some of its calculations, which can cause very tiny variations in the exact numbers. Those can build up over time, but remain quite small. Anyway, welcome to the forum, and feel free to ask any additional or follow up questions you might have.

Don't bother. History tells us that they will mate with alien probes out there and return with amazing new powers, looking for their creators. Welcome to the game and the forum.

Either that was an autocorrect error, or a rather novel way to evaluate rockets.

This add-on question moved to the add-on questions sub-forum.

If the rocket is breaking apart and THAT hard to steer, it's probably just too big. Can you post a picture of it?

Stations don't really need SAS. Their mass resists disturbances, and unless you sit and watch it long enough for small disturbances to build up, any rotations will be canceled the next time you leave the station and come back again. Putting SAS on stations is a case of the solution being worse than the problem.

Hello PA Engineering. Welcome to the game, and the fourm. To include a picture in your post, upload it to a free service like Imgur.com, and then copy-paste the BBCode link they provide into your post.

The development plan can and does change, but here's an indication of what they're still intending to put in the game.

Can you post some pics, Thunder555? Shoppers like to see what they're buying. Upload some screenshots to a free service like Imgur.com, and then use the links they provide in your posts.

Did you know that if you go into warp for just a fraction of a second, all rotations are canceled? Or would you rather not know that now?

This thread about a game has been moved to the sub-forum for threads about games. All is right with the world.

Hello TheScareCake! There was already a thread quite similar to this one, so for the sake of keeping the forum tidy, yours was merged into it so that all these handy tips are in one, easy-to-shop location.

I have asked and been told that it's okey-dokey, as long as you're not selling them.

Okay, now I understand even less. If the increased kinetic energy isn't reflected by a speed boost, what benefit is there to it?

Thanks Lazro, but you are underestimating my incompetence with things like that. I once broke my PC while trying to install a super-easy-do-it-yourself soundcard. If it's not stock, I don't want to mess with it.

The issue is that the parts are not scaled to the celestial bodies. A real-world Lunar lander carrying enough fuel to return directly to earth would have been the size of a high school gymnasium.

I used to use SAS to smooth out the response to controls. It was like a fly-by-wire system that prevented jerkiness. However, since they revised SAS a few versions back, I can not abide the way SAS turns completely off every time you make the tiniest control input, causing the plane to lurch violently. I REALLY wish they would re-include the old avionics nosecone, which made planes a breeze to fly.

This thread of suggestions moved to the suggestions thread sub-forum.

I now feel less stupid for being unable to comprehend the Oberth effect, because it seems no one else does, either. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, please, but gravity has nothing to do with it. To make up completely silly numbers to make for a clear example, suppose one rocket is going 100m/s while another identical rocket is sitting still. Then they both burn the same amount of fuel through the same engines, and the formerly-stationary rocket is now going 10m/s. Wouldn't Oberth mean that the already-moving ship is now going something like 111m/s? Doesn't it somehow get more out of the same burn because it was already moving?

If you go anti-clockwise (prograde with respect to the planet's rotation), you'll be overtaking the moons from behind, with a bit of speed boost from the planet's rotation. If you go clockwise (retrograde), you'll be fighting the planet's rotation and scrambling to manage a head-on collision when you arrive at the moons. Therefore, it's easier to go prograde for the same reason that planes take off over the bow of a carrier and land on a carrier by approaching the ship from behind.

Closing this thread since the other came first.

Duna's atmo is so thin that it wouldn't provide you with much useful lift, so you can blast up through it so quickly that there's no advantage to lingering there and prolonging your exposure to drag. On landing, wings can help you pick your landing site, though landing speed is quite high and locations flat enough to be suitable can be hard to find. The bottom of the Mariner-trench-analog is quite smooth, though. On the whole, flight there is more of a technical feat than a useful method of travel, so try it if you feel like giving yourself a challenge.

A ship that can reach Mun can reach Minmus. Have you tried that yet? Also, if you have probe cores and solar panels, you can send one-way missions on fly-bys of the sun and other planets. And if you have parachutes and landing legs as well, you can send probes to land on the other planets.

The same things that cause lag on external view cause lag on IVA view. When you're looking at Kerbin's horizon, for example, you'll notice a big performance decrease, and if you're looking at a wall of your spaceship with Kerbin's horizon behind it, you'll notice the same thing. So before you go changing settings, test to see if this is still an issue in space away from the planet.