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Everything posted by Vanamonde
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Interplanetary ship design problems.
Vanamonde replied to Vanamonde's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Well, I did say it was an irrational dislike of mods. But since it came up: 1) I don't want to become dependent on something that may be broken when the next update comes out. 2) Look around the forum and you can see that players are frequently posting things like, "HELP! Why does Mod X cause my Kerbals to spontaneously combust!" Who needs the headaches? and 3) I like the challenge of trying to get things done with stock parts, and when a feature is added to the game that allows me to do something I couldn't previously do, it's like opening a present on Christmas day. You wouldn't want to open your presents early, would you? I'm afraid I don't see what you're suggesting. In hopes of preventing loops that would confuse the fuel flow, I made the lowermost centerline tank a dead end that doesn't feed into the others, planning to manually pump its contents into the tanks above it when they ran low. So blocking it shouldn't change anything because it's not part of the fuel flow anyway. But yes, in the follow-up design I'm planning, the fuel will all flow in a linear fashion from front to back, and from centerline to sides at the rear. Basically, I'm going to rebuild this ship backwards, with the core integral to the drive and a separate piece at the nose. -
Jack Wolfe, have you read Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire/Killing of Worlds duology? There's a really nifty and exciting, mostly-Newtonian space battle. The ship maneuvers play out over the course of days, but there are intervals of action. It's one of my favorite science fiction battles, but it's only part of the story.
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Interplanetary ship design problems.
Vanamonde replied to Vanamonde's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
I have a irrational dislike of mods, so that's out. I understand that only one pair of docking rings on each assembly is the official, full-strength one, but shouldn't the seconday one still be strong enough to transmit fuel flow and keep the upper end of the tank from waggling around? The core and drive section have bi-couplers for that very reason. They can't NOT be precisely aligned, and even if the tanks were when I first placed them, exiting and returning to the flight should cause them to be re-generated as a precise alignment, right? And it's possible multiple re-dockings might fix it, but there's a good reason I can't. I tried it once already, and one of the frakking tanks considered itself ENTIRELY undocked and began to float away. One of trickier feats of piloting I've ever achieved was siddling the re-assembled ship back up to that stupid tank and getting it to nestle into the gap that was the precise length of the tank itself. So thanks for that suggestion, but I really don't want to risk undocking the segments again. They do give me the menu options, even though they clearly are not properly linked. It is most likely a hierarchy issue, which is annoying because I used a similar setup on my previous IP ship, and it worked fine. And actually, I don't see why this doesn't. Fuel should flow from the upper orange core to the lower orange core because they're directly connected, then through the fuel lines to the upper whites, then vertically through the docking links to the side oranges and side whites, and then straight into the engines. The middle white tank on the core doesn't directly feed to anything, but I was planning to right-click move its fuel to the central orange tanks as needed. So despite appearances, the fuel flow on this ship is actually quite linear. But I actually believe this design just won't work, and it was a forlorn hope that I was overlooking something simple. Thank you anyway, gentlemen and/or ladies. -
WTH! Game bug or Oporator error?
Vanamonde replied to Hillbilly's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Do you have a joystick installed? Its throttle setting may be over-riding your keyboard commands. -
In the VAB, you are by default working under the blue button at the top of the screen labeled "parts." Click on the other one labeled "action groups," then select one of the numerical tabs on panel that appears on the left. Click on some parts you want to control with that number key, and up will come some part-specific options such as toggle on/off or deploy.
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Congratulations on using a sanely small rocket, and not risking a crew. Most new players are much less patient than that, and you will experience less frustration if you continue to play methodically like this.
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I spent about 12 hours building this ship in the VAB, breaking it into launch segments, and assembling it in orbit. But unless somebody can come up with some insightful advice for me, it's looking like a total write off. The problem is that the game can't figure out what is supposed to be attached to what through the docking rings. I built it as a core, docked to a drive section, and the surrounding section is just 6 orange tanks with a docking ring at each end. But is it just impossible to get the game to consider those tanks linked fully at both front and back? At first, it claimed the engines had no fuel, because it couldn't seem to find a path from engines through docking rings to tanks. I fixed that by telling it to undock the front docking ring on each orange tank, which seemd to force the software to consider the lower docking ring the prime one, meaning the engines were able to trace a path to fuel through the orange tanks. And as I understand it, the next time the game loads that ship, it should consider docking rings that are touching to be liked, right? So I exited the game and started it up again. But the ship wobbles under thrust now because, as you can see in this pic, the front docks of the tanks are swinging freely, even though they indicate themselves as docked and show no gaps when not under stress, as you can see here. It also picks up a roll around the long axis, for some reason, and that tiny little strut with the antennas on it seems to give the ASAS fits, and it struggles to hold a heading even though that assembly only masses about 0.561 mass units on a ship that totals around 250 mass units. So is there a way to save this, or is this whole design concept unworkable?
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Rockets won't light in high altitdue
Vanamonde replied to backwardsx's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Are you running out of power? Engines generate electricity while they are running, but if you leave them turned off for a while, the charge on the other parts may drain to zero, leaving the craft uncontrollable. -
It's also the only way to control more than one engine type separately, such as shutting off jets while leaving the rocket engines running on a spaceplane.
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Many of us build them in the SPH with bilateral symmetry, then leave the game and copy the .craft file to the VAB folder, then return to the game and build a rocket under the rover in the VAB. However, this causes a couple of nasty headaches of its own. Moving the rover can cause some struts to disappear, and when you leave the flight, the game will try to default-return to the SPH instead of the VAB each time. There's a fix for the SPH return, which is to change line 3 of the .craft file from SPH to VAB, but that doesn't fix the strut problem, and may cause an even nastier glitch in which parts get stuck to the mouse pointer and you can't set them down. In short, it's a headache either way.
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The rocket in your picture has enough thrust to carry a greater weight of fuel, so adding more fuel will allow it to go farther. But resist the temptation to add more engines, because as backwards as it seems to newbies (including me when I was a newbie), engines can actually hold you back. You want just as much thrust as necessary to lift the fuel you're carrying at about 1.5Gs of acceleration, and no more. Practice playing with those factors, and you will learn to greatly extend the range of your rockets.
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Kerbals getting on a rover help
Vanamonde replied to Boris_T_Roach's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Place the ladder at an angle, so that when he falls off, he lands on the floor of the rover. Like this: -
Right now satellites only have a few uses in the stock game, such as carrying the 4 scientific instruments. Some mods give them other abilities, such as mapping and communications. The guys at Squad don't like the idea of adding aliens, but I don't know if they've ever said whether plants and animals might be found on other worlds.
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The names are generated by taking syllables from a list. I believe HarvesteR said there are around 5000 permutations.
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Outsourcing my troubleshooting
Vanamonde replied to Assault Bunny's topic in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange
Diverting on the runway usually results from landing gear not mounted vertically to the ground, or the weight of the plane causing flexion so that the landing gear is forced out of vertical. If it's the later, some struts might help with structural rigidity. Do you really need the second set of wheels? The big rover wheels? They require electricity for power, which is redundant if you're going to be using engine thrust. Also, since they're made for rovers, they have a maximum safe speed and will pop if you exceed that. It may be higher than your landing/takeoff speed. Either way, two sets of wheels adds weight. The ram intakes have a better air/drag ratio, so replacing the scoops with those will allow the plane to reach higher speeds. And that's important, because for spaceplanes, the trick is to build up as much speed as you can in atmo and only use the rockets to circularize the arc you achieve on jets. On that note, you're using LV-N nuclear engines for your rockets. They are fuel-efficient, but quite heavy and have a tiny thrust. That's not good for SSTOs, which need to build up speed quickly before gravity drags them down again. I'd suggest replacing those with the 50 thrust rockets, which are weaker but also MUCH lighter, or some of the stronger engine types that will convert fuel-weight to speed at a much more rapid rate. By the way, I see an RCS tank, but hardly any thrusters for it. And lastly, I think that much weight would benefit from substantially more lift. -
How to track flights
Vanamonde replied to tgtopsecret1's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
The "end flight" option, well, ends the flight. It's gone. If you choose return to "space center" instead, the flight you leave will continue without you, and you can see it on the tracking station display and resume controlling the flight from there. -
Yes, joysticks work, but building KSP airplanes is A LOT harder than flying them. Harder than building rockets. Much harder.
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When I get a new game I am excited about it and play only that game. Eventually, the appeal starts to fade and I alternate that game with another one, and eventually exhaust the game's potential and set it aside. For most games that initial honeymoon period can last from a few days to 3 months or so. My previous record holder was Morrowind, which I played just about every day for 10 months, without taking a break to play other games. But as of today, I have been playing KSP and only KSP for 11 months. So that should tell you how much I like KSP.
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We could all annoy each other, IN REAL TIME! Seriously though, I resort to computer games because it's something I have complete control over, and which I can do at my own pace. I can't see any appeal to multiplayer games at all.
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copy a set of items from VAB to SPH
Vanamonde replied to zapy97's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
However, changing that line doesn't eliminate all the problems. I kept running into this thing wherein, if I picked up parts that were close to and included the original probe/capsule, it would become stuck to the mouse cursor and I could never put it down again, and would have to entirely leave the VAB and lose all my progress to get the mouse working properly again. -
on the mun with a useless rover..
Vanamonde replied to Warscribe's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Yes, the stock rover wheels do not like to be at an angle to the ground. I tried a similar arrangement to the one you've used, and in testing at KSC, the wheels would not grip unless they were vertical, or close to it. -
What does an explosion in space look like? Back in the 60s, when we were crazy, the US set off a 1.4 megaton nuke at an altitude of 250 miles. Film: Story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime As high as that is, though, it's not actually in vacuum. The atmosphere does appear to decelerate the leading edge of the explosion, for one thing. I suspect that while the air is exceedingly thing at that height, the scale of a 1.4 megaton explosion is so large that the deceleration is taking place over many miles, so that the thin air exerts a cumulative effect. Also, the hottest gas in the center does appear to rise, which it would not do unless it was being buoyed by surrounding cooler, denser air. Okay, so this doesn't have a lot to do with how KSP ships should explode in space, but it's still pretty danged interesting.