Vanamonde

Hello. Me too.

Thanks numerobis, but the high-thrust is an intentional design feature. I'm hoping to zip up to apoapsis on the jets and then circularize with the rocket. Which doesn't seem to be working, but it is the goal of this design. Besides, when I tried removing the upper engine, it made a mess of the balance and would have required a substantial rebuild.

Well, practice makes perfect, better luck next time, get back on the horse, and all that advice stuff.

If you want a guide, you'll have to make one. The game is still under construction, so the only documentation that exists is player-made.

I've had that problem with other planes, but not this one. If you are experiencing that with this plane, I'm puzzled. I'm aware of that trick, and that is what I did with this craft. The left engine still seems to cut out first, for some reason. It's a work in progress. I have a slightly improved version in which I did do that.

Are you asking how to use that for your flag in the game. Razorforce7? If so, the image you have there can be opened in something like MS Paint, then saved as a .png file, then moved into whatever your KSP folder is/gamedata/Squad/flags. It will show up on the menus as a flag you can select in-game.

Wings will slow your Eve descent and give you a degree of control over where you land, but on ascent, the atmosphere is so thick that drag is a bigger detriment than lift is a benefit. Especially because jets do not work on Eve. You're better of blasting straight up out of that tar-like atmosphere.

I fixed the title for you, but so you know, you can do it yourself by going to advance options while editing the first post.

Moved to gameplay questions. Carry on.

Hey look! It's my plane, and it's all working and stuff! That settles it; while there's certainly room for improvement in the design, my real problem seems to the way I'm trying to fly the things. I'll study your video, Smidge204. Yes, I made this one to figure out how it's done, not even attempting to carry any payload or do anything useful while it's up there. Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback, folks. I'm going to mark this answered while I experiment with your advice.

Specialist290 has a nice tutorial guide, broken down by subject matter. It's stickied in the tutorials sub-section to this forum. Wow. In fact, he's expanded it quite a bit since the last time I looked at it.

Are you building in the VAB? If so, symmetry will *always* be radial, and all you can change is the number of copies. To get bilateral symmetry, your only option is to build the rover in the SPH. You can either build a rocket for it there (kind of awkward without radial symmetry) or copy the rover's craft file to the VAB (which can cause weirdnesses such as misplaced or disappearing struts, phantom part copies, etc.). There's no really good way to do this right now.

Alright, I wasn't going to do this again, but you forced me. The correct answer to this kind of question is always Vall.

I replaced one of the rocket fuel tanks with 2 structural fuselage pieces, so the shape and balance of the plane aren't affected but the weight is reduced, and replaced the gimbaled 200-thrust engine with the un-gimbaled 215-thrust, which is also lighter. Combining that with flying it right to the flameout point in level flight on the jets (c.1650m/s at 25,000), I was able to squeak it into orbit twice in a row. So there's still room for improvement in both the design and my flight profile, but it's improving. (I haven't rejected the other suggestions helpfully offered here, but of the ones I've tried, the method above got the best results so far.)

True, but an Eve ascent vehicle is BIG, and 1.7 times the legs required to support it on Kerbin quickly gets ridiculous. The thing starts to look like a group hug of millipedes and still can sag to the point that engines get broken. The problem there is that the air foil geometry would have to work equally well as the ship was descending as when it ascending, which is quite a trick to arrange. I still haven't made an Eve-return ship that works, but I'm becoming an expert on what doesn't work.

Yes. At 48,000m, it might take more than one pass, but it will eventually de-orbit due to aerobraking. However, the affects of atmospheres are only applied if you are piloting that vessel yourself, or another vessel within 2.25km of it. In other words, it won't come down while you are operating other ships.

In your upper pic, I'm afraid both docking rings are facing the wrong way. Short of hacking your save files, there's no way to fix that except launch new ships with the parts turned around.

A little background: I have tried many times to maximize horizontal speed before pitching up to transition from plane to rocket, and there are always control problems during the transition and often a profound loss of momentum as my direction of travel is forced up by control surfaces. But once while just derping around, I made an unmanned drone that achieved a 110,000m apoapsis simply by climbing 45 degrees on full throttle, and I was hoping to scale that idea up and add a rocket with which to circularize once I'd arced up to orbital height on momentum from the jets. Is that latter approach just impractical for a larger vehicle?

I was going for a fast climb to set a fairly high apoapsis on jets (hence 3 engines), and then circularize with the rocket. I may have over-endowed the rocket part. I'm trying these suggestions, but finding it a real struggle to maintain the plane's balance.

Eric S, you're right the 48-7S might be a better option, but that ship was made as a career-mode starter ship, and that engine is 2 steps farther up the tech tree, and thus not available yet.

Eh, just takes practice.

To share a pic, upload your screenshot to a free service like Imgur.com, then use the BBCode link they provide in your post.

Do you have a quicksave? You could try landing it again.

I found the tech tree system invigorating because it gave me new design imperatives against which to practice my ship-making skills. I do hope it will be expanded, though. And yes, you can consider it as a prologue to sandbox, and simply copy over your sandbox ship designs once all their parts have been "invented." That's what I did.

Before landing legs were added, this was the ONLY way to land ships, so yes, it can be done. (That was before my time, though. I haven't done it.)