Vanamonde

Needs fuel. The decoupler won\'t relay fuel, so put a tank between the decoupler and the engine. And I just tried it to double-check, and I\'m pretty sure there\'s no way to make a fuel conduit stick to a bare engine.

YAY! I finally made one that works, too! Mine is like the real shuttle: just delivers payloads to orbit, then lands. In the picture, it has just landed safely after orbiting during its first non-test flight.

Nothing about the game is 'broken,' because everything about the game is incomplete. Say you\'ve taken your car apart so that you can make improvements and put it back together as a better car. It may not run at that point, but that doesn\'t mean that it\'s broken or that somebody is screwing up. And while you\'re doing that, say that you give your car better tires. Would it then make sense to make the car backwards compatible so that you can swich back and forth between tire sets while driving? Sure, it could be done, but it would take an awful lot of work, just to retain acccess to the inferior old tires. Why not just use the new ones instead? This game is still in alpha-state development, and things like this will continue to happen, which is why they only charged you $15 (or whatever it was) instead of full game price. It\'s not a full game yet, and it doesn\'t have all the features and polish a completed game should have. It will eventually, but the meantime, you get early access for a reduced price. ;D

No, that was Captain Kirk.

You mean like this? I stick a smiley on anything I think might sound harsh. It might look dorky, but there\'s less chance of offending anybody. No, I wasn\'t calling you a dork. :-[ Okay, maybe I was! > I regret that outburst. :\'( Nah, I\'m just yanking your chain. :stirpot: See? Now everybody knows not to take this post seriously. :w00t: So. How about them arches?

No! He\'s been replaced by The Thing!

There have been a lot of questions about how to aim for the moons. The thing is, the exact method can vary depending on how you fly and the characteristics of your ships, so there isn\'t one correct answer. I\'m not an expert, but this is how I figured it out. It works for me, and I hope it will help others. First, make sure you are orbiting Kerbin on the same plane as the moons, heading east. (That\'s flying compass heading 90 all the way from liftoff to orbit.) Save the game and, from wherever you happen to be at the time, accelerate your rocket toward the navball eastern horizon (its an easy landmark for consistency of result). Switch to map view and shut the engine down when your apoapsis markers reaches the orbital height of the desired moon. The apoapsis marker then tells you your own personal transit time, to that moon, based on how you fly and how fast your current rocket accelerates (see attached screenshot Time benchmark). You can then do some simple arithmetic to figure out how far the moon will have moved in its orbit by the time you get there: orbital period (from the wiki if you don\'t want to figure it out) divided by your transit time equals the fraction of a circle to aim ahead of the moon\'s current position. Multiply that by 360 to get easier-to-visualize degrees. For Mun the leading angle is : 138,983/(your transit IN SECONDS)*360degrees. For Minmus the leading angle is: 1,077,379/(your transit IN SECONDS)*360degrees. Okay, so how to aim for that angle? First, load your save so that you haven\'t wasted all that rocket fuel and are still in Kerbin orbit. Hit the tab key to make Kerbin the center of your camera view, then zoom way out looking straight down on the plane of the moon\'s orbit (from north) then rotate until the moon is straight above the planet (Polar view). That is where you would fly to hit the moon if it was not moving, but of course it is. So then rotate the view again until the moon has moved to the right to the desired intercept angle (Corrected aim angle). 'Up' on your computer screen is now the proper direction to fly to intercept the moon. Zoom back in on Kerbin and bring the camera angle back down level to the plane of the orbits (Back to the plane), but keeping that 'up' at the top of the screen. You should now be looking straight at the desired interception point, through the planet (Lined up stars). Wait until your orbiting ship is in the middle of the screen at that burn point, right on that line of ship/Kerbin/intercept point, and hit the throttle. Switch to map view and watch your orbital path climb (Climbing apo), shutting down the engines when the apoapsis marker reaches the orbital height of the target moon. If you\'re aiming for Mun, this should do the trick and the conics intersection symbols will replace the apoapsis marker as it gets close (Bingo!). Minmus is trickier, because its orbit can swing above and below the usual plane. You could be lined up properly in the east/west direction and still not see the conics intersection symbols because you\'re too far north/south. The easiest way to fix that is to wait until you\'re partway to Minmus, then look and see if it\'s above or below your path. If it\'s above (Drat! Missed), turn your ship to straight Kerbin-north (on the navball, that\'s where the horizon meets the gold north line at compass heading 360 (Navball north)), turn the engine on low (so you don\'t over-do it), and watch on the map view until the conics intercept symbols appear, then shut down the engine (Sloppy, but adequate). Or if Minmus is below your path, point straight south and do the same thing. I know there are more elegant ways to do this (especially Minmus with its inclined orbit), but I think this is pretty simple conceptually and can be done from numbers and viewing angles within the game. Anyway, this is how I do it. Comments? Questions? Vituperation?

What does your ship look like? (A picture might help.) It sounds like it might not have enough control devices, and/or are you remembering to turn SAS off while manuevering?

Did you have problems with the first 3 of my planes? Sorry, I forgot to note that they were made in 15.2 and might have problems now. But the other pair were made in .16 and should be good. Are you talking about yaw or roll? Both will cause a plane to turn in atmo, so are you sure you inverted they the one you meant to?

As good a reason as any. Some WW2-era planes had radio antennas strung between parts of the plane. You could pretend that\'s what it is.

Nice first post. But what does the strut from the wing to the tail do for you?

Right now I have Kerbals named Elrie, Patly, and Rosy, among others. One could just as easily imagine those names to be female as male, and I like that the game doesn\'t specify. When appearences can vary in later versions, I hope that same philosophy applies: a given feature is not tied to one gender or the other. Leave the presence, absence, or type of gender up to the player\'s imagination. As for myself, I like to believe that some of my little green dudes are little green dudettes.

My attempt to make a B-58. It didn\'t fly very well, but it\'s kinda pretty and got up there pretty high.

In the real world, the advantage to mining asteroids and small bodies would be that you don\'t have the expense of hauling the goodies out of a gravity well before you can use them. To me, that is a factor which would add interest to a space-simulator; I have to figure out how to travel in space, survive in space, and possibly find and exploit resources in space. I suspect we all enjoy putting our own rockets together or we wouldn\'t be playing KSP, so wouldn\'t it add to the fun to also make the pieces before you put them together? I think so. But then, when it comes to games, I\'m kind of a managment freak. I don\'t want to just command the battle; I want to decide how many arrows my archers carry in their quivers, etc.

You\'ve obviously never played Creative Arts or Bethesda games.

At the risk of being self-serving, check out my Yeahletstrythatdyne thread in the spacecraft exchange. I like making planes that are easy to fly, and if you would like to try somebpdy else\'s designs as examples, I just added 2 new ones for .16. Also, there are some really good tips, including some from HarvesteR, in this thread.

Yeahletstrythatdyne is back, with more of the finest in mediocre aircraft! Updating my previous designs for .16 are: The T-4 Mentor Trainer: Newbies can take a nice relaxing orientation flight while the avionics ASAS keeps the plane from flipping around wildly. Taking off is as simple as turning the avionics on and cranking up the throttle, and the plane will get itself airborne by the second set of runway stripes with no intervention required from the pilot. Practice yaw, pitch, and roll in a plane that won\'t rocket into the ground before you can correct, or go into a spin. Once you feel more comfortable, turn the avionics off and it\'s still pretty stable and flyable, but more manueverable. The F5b Dart is meant to be fun at low altitude (replacling the Pilum). With avionics on it responds in a controlled way that will help you avoid flying into the ground while buzzing the tower, but map the F key (suspend SAS) to your trigger, and you can cut into sharp turns in the midst of more deliberate flight. Apply rudder gently in non-SAS mode, but otherwise the craft responds well in all 3 planes in assisted or unassisted flight. Both planes are easy to land on unprepared ground, so it doesn\'t matter if you miss the runway. To park (so that it doesn\'t roll away during EVA), retract the landing wheels; this won\'t damage the plane. Pilots may egress and ingress using the ladders. (Remember to extend wheels before attempting takeoff again!)

What kind of 'movement in space' trouble are you having? Figuring out where to go? Or making your ship go where you want? It might help if you posted a screenshot of your orbital trajectory from the map screen. A suggestion: If you\'ve burned through 2 stages and you\'re only at 30,000m/600m/s, you\'re climbing too slowly. Instead of 3 stacks of 4tanks-1engine in that third stage, maybe split that stage laterally and try 6 stacks of 2tanks-1engine. Almost the same benefit for fuel used, a bit more weight, but you\'d be converting the weight into speed faster and not lugging it along with you for as long.

Which of my movie posters do you like best? I\'d like to think of a better title. The third one is supposed to resemble the actual movie poster, but there\'s no better door for my guys to come out of.

Event_Horizon5, you could show that in theaters and charge ticket money for it. Just as a suggestion, how about after he lands, he looks back at Kerbin and is excited he made it up there at last? Give it an emotional payoff and a happy ending?

Saw it again. The thing that bounces by the Mun guy is a helmet. You rotten kids and your synthesized music! > In my day we had real music! (Is that plagiarism or what?)

When your little guy is climbing ladders, he looks up or down (as appropriate) to see where he\'s going. Also, in EVA backpack mode, he\'s actually got little joysticks in each hand, with little red actuator buttons on top. On the title screen where the Kerbal is standing on the Mun, Kerbin in the background is rotating. You\'ve probably noticed that occasionally a meteorite (?) zips by and bounces across the surface, but just now, I think I saw a Kerbal in a space suit tumbling by instead.

No gamer resorts to the manual except as an absolute last resort when you\'re completely stuck. They\'re mostly useless anyway. You want to know 'How do I get the merchant to sell me things?' but the manual is just full of stuff like, 'To save the game, click on the save game button.' Besides, what kind of manual could this game have at this point? Chapter 1: Space travel - subject to revision Chapter 2: EVA - not finalized Chapter 3: Moon colonization - to be determined Chapter 4: Interplanetary travel - not implemented yet Etc.

Other people have done it before. Everything has been done before. It\'s still fun when you\'re the one doing it for the first time.

The guys are so cute that I regret it when bad things happen to them, but I decided to sacrifice brave Jedwin Kerman in the name of science, and sent him on his own little reentry odyssey, to see what would happen. He survived. He hit the ground at around 340m/s, bounced once, tumbled to a stop, and then stood up again, fresh as a daisy.