Vanamonde

Have you tried some fins near the bottom?

Pipcard, why are you sending leeks into space?

This is not anomalous behavior for something called an "anomaly." And not all of the monoliths are solid. If I recall correctly, Nova said they meant to make them ALL solid a few updates ago but overlooked some.

The maneuver node system does not perform the maneuver for you. It only provides a method of planning the maneuver you want to make. Set the marker, then grab and tug the little handles around to see what the result will be. Once you've got it set the way you want, point your nose at the blue navball marker, and when the time comes, burn the engine as long as the timer says to. When done, you should be pretty close to the path you planned.

Project Name: Self-Explanatory. (Good as any.) Estimated Cost: Nothing. (Everything is free.) Target: Pol. Goal: It's pretty and we haven't been there in ages. Why should we spend billions of Kerbits and possibly lose expensive equipment or even lives to do this?: We are Kerbals.

Oh man, remember that bug where you'd arrive at Mun and come out of warp, only to find that your side-mounted Poodle engines had jumped ship en route and were now well on their way to interstellar space? Ah, the memories. Of rage and helpless frustration.

My reaction to the thread title was to microwave some popcorn and settle in to watch another mods vs. vanilla brawl. Such a letdown.

Please have exact fare ready when boarding.

GROAN! I am a dolt! I kept wondering why the fritz my guys' lights were going on and off! It never occurred to me that I had set L for lights and L for left at the same time.

As for larger ships being less stable, it's also worth pointing out that so far the development of the game has a followed a cycle. We get a set of parts that are adequate for the destinations in the game, and then they add a new set of farther destinations that require larger rockets, and then those existing parts are kind of small for the new jobs we ask of them. So then we get some larger parts, and the cycle begins again. That means that often, we are pushing the limits of what the available parts can do, which can make them seem fragile.

Well, I'm not up to 42 yet.

I wasn't quoting anybody. Just suggesting a pretend goal we can set for ourselves.

Among other reasons: You can a sell a game with a picture of its whiz-bang graphics, but a description of its formidable AI isn't going to make people flock to your game. Also, a lot of games seem to be disposable nowdays; you play it for a month, then move on to the next one. Selling to that market, companies don't want to spend a lot of time and money making the AI smart. But mostly, I suspect, it's just plain difficult. But I'll tell you the one thing that always drives me into a rage, and that's when the AI factions all set aside their grievances to gang up on the player. The ONLY reason they do that is to try to make the game harder, since they defeat themselves by making idiotic strategic decisions. Civilization and Total War games are especially bad about that. You'll be playing as the Roman Empire in 200BC, and then find China has sent one ship halfway around the flipping planet to start a war with you, even though they have no chance of profiting from it and Japan is kicking their heinies back on their side of the world while they're wasting resources on you. Holy expletive, am I sick of that!

Don't forget to also re-do your settings, though, since that file doesn't come over with your saved games.

Unless the ship is big, the landing legs are probably strong enough to stand the thing up when you extend them.

Small KSP ships are quite strong and easy to build, but yes, the bigger a vehicle gets, the more engineering you're going to have to do to make sure it holds together and works properly. That's quite reasonable and part of the challenge of the game, and it's proportional to the size of the ship and the complexity of its mission. This isn't meant to be a SimCity-kind of a game where you just plop down a residential block and the housing plots, buildings, sewer pipes, and power connections fill themselves in. This is rocket science, where the government is putting up the resources and collecting the smartest people to achieve new technical feats, and YOU as director of the space program, have to figure out how to get it done.

Why put a base on the Mun? To research mysteries of the cosmos like this one:

You can stretch your RCS fuel supply by getting the little guy going pretty quickly, then allow him to descend gently to the surface. As long as he doesn't hit the ground overly hard at that first contact, he will slide and bounce for many, many meters.

Begin your turn at around 10,000m and incline perhaps 30 degrees, then 60 degrees at 25,000, then 90 around 45,000. Those are just rough numbers, and other players will recommend different ones.

Here you go: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies

A base is a landed ship that has no engines. All it requires is a control piece and a power source. Really, that's it. In fact, you can change anything with a capsule or probe module to the base designation through the right-click menu on the control piece itself.

You still might be able to land safely if you don't mind reducing the ship's weight by burning off most of the fuel, but I have to tell you that you're in a bad way anyhow. Not only may this not leave you with enough to get back, Vall's gravity is strong enough that the rover is going to take damage when you try to drop it to the surface. Also, Vall is quite hilly and lumpy, and it would be extremely difficult to find a spot flat enough to land on those engines without tipping over. If you had RCS, I would advise you to let the ship gently crash, accepting that this means no return, slowly let it fall to the side, and then drop the rover from that reduced height, but even then, the rover likely to land upside down and you probably wouldn't be able to turn it over again. It looks like your choices are a) attempting to accomplish the mission even though it means marooning the crew, or bringing the boys home while abandoning the mission objectives.

Thank you for pointing out that I neglected to address the throttle and G meter, gentlemen. I have fixed that now, and updated the guide to include the new anti-maneuver marker.

Are you sure your navball markers are ORBIT prograde and retrograde and not one of the other settings? Is it possible you have "control from here" set to some part that is mounted backwards with respect to the engines?

Can't help you with 1 because I don't use mods, but for 2, the default rover controls are also the default attitude control keys, so a probe core will attempt to move forward AND pitch-up (or whatever the defaults are) on the same keystroke. Go to your settings and change the rover sub-section keystrokes to something else, and you'll stop those unwanted rotations.