Vanamonde

That\'s exactly what I was hoping to get around. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' It\'s just as annoying when you\'re asking the game as when a kid is asking you. Unnecessary? Sure. Helpful? I still think so. I mean, strictly speaking map view isn\'t necessary, but it makes things a lot easier and more enjoyable. And I just think that it would be easier and more enjoyable if it was safe to go do something else fun while waiting for my flights to arrive, instead of sitting around watching time whiz by in warp, or anxiously checking back again and again.

I have an idea that isn\'t fleshed out enough to call a suggestion yet. A lot of players are calling for higher levels of time warp to make long trips feasible, but when I\'m running a mission that\'s going to take a while, I just leave it going and hop to a shorter mission to pass the time. The problem, of course, is that the unattended mission could run into trouble. So how about an alert system? A message pops up that says, 'Such-and-such has happened. Do you wish to switch to so-and-so ship to deal with it?' The part I haven\'t figured out yet is what would trigger an alert. The main issue would be getting close to a destination and needing to brake or land. But how would the software know what your destination was? Perhaps a certain proximity to any celestial body would trigger an alert? Or perhaps this won\'t be an issue? How autonomous will the crews be, once they\'re fully implemented? Will we be able to trust the guys to enter orbit on their own? Land?

The next time he crashes, grab a piece and count his growth rings.

I\'m an enthusiast for RCS during landings too, but I\'ve never needed more than 1 tank to get down, or 2 for a whole mission. Three legs are enough but 4 won\'t hurt anything. Unlike Mun, the landing impact is so light you don\'t need to worry about legs breaking off, and so don\'t need redundant spares. Handy tip: if you aim for one of the low 'seas,' for once your altimeter will actually tell you how high you are, because they are all at exactly 'sea level' elevation of zero. The perfect flatness there also means you don\'t have to worry about hitting bumps or falling down a slope.

Thanks to the suggestions you folks gave me yesterday, I just landed on the runway for the first time. In fact, it was easy. As for controls, how do you guys have yours configured? Since I\'m mostly interested in rockets, I use the stick for yaw and pitch but buttons for roll. I imagine the classic pitch/roll stick would be easier for spaceplanes, but I don\'t want to have to go the settings screen and screw around every time I go from rocket to plane. It would be nice if there was a mode switch.

My plane sucks, but can you believe how flipping pretty this game is? I\'ve been playing computer games for 21 years, and there have only been two that were visually rich enough that I would get distracted by the scenery and forget to pursue the goals of the game. Morrowind was the first one, and KSP is the second.

Don\'t feel bad. If you ask people here in America, most of them won\'t know where Finland is.

The current game conditions are in no way final or realistic in this regard. The whole point of a spaceplane in the real world, I believe, is to use an air-breathing engine to reach high speed and altitude without consuming as much oxidizer as a rocket. Once in the high reaches of the atmosphere, there\'s no distinction between the two anymore: they\'re both rockets. So the answer to your question is that in the real world a spaceplane would unquestionably be more efficient, whereas in the game world it\'s kind of random right now and will change soon anyway. Not that it isn\'t an interesting question. Oh, and a spaceplane would be reusable whereas rockets generally are not, making the spaceplane more economical, whereas in the game they both cease to exist as soon as you hit 'end flight,' so there\'s no savings on recycling.

A discarded booster exploded a few kilometers away, and the boom reached me at the same instant. It occured to me then that in the Kerbal universe, light and sound both travel instantaneously, with infinite speed. Mach 1 = c. What kind of physics do you suppose that would give rise to?

It sounded to me like you were shuffling Kerbals between the ships like peas under the shells in the old con game, so I was guessing where you\'d left the pea. You may all laugh uproariously now. I\'m just going to slink away and pretend somebody else posted that.

Potatum: And the pea is under the middle shell?

Perhaps so, but actually, that\'s one problem I haven\'t had with this one. I was trying to build something as stable as possible so it would stay in the air long enough for me to practice flying. It goes in a straight line like a dream. Get it in the air, leave the avionics SAS in charge, and mild corrections every few minutes will keep it flying until it runs out of fuel. Then once out of gas, it glides about 40% as far as it flew under power (is it even possible to stall under the current flight simulation?). Lands pretty well, too, if you don\'t care what piece of flat ground you come down on. Changing heading is the thing it struggles with. It wallows and balks and pitches a hissyfit then.

How is this thing like/unlike Universe Sandox, Celestia (I think it\'s called), etc.? Can you manipulate things, or only fly around them?

The 'loop' I was refering to was a nice, big aerobatic show loop, which I couldn\'t entirely stop even with full down-pitch. But I just put a little anhedral on that inner wing panel like you suggested. Holy. Freaking. Cow. The thing practically leaps off the runway now. I guess I just overdid it the other time I tried moving the engines down, when I had them on hardpoints under the wings, like a jetliner. Fantastic tip! Thank you. It\'s not as heavy as it looks, though. Only the 4 cylinders in the engines are 2.5 mass fuel tanks. The others are all the 0.4 mass 'structural fuselage' pieces. In fact, it\'s a little nose-light right now. The canards on the wings were because that big tail was, for some reason, giving me almost no rudder, and they were the only way I could get the thing to turn. I replaced that vertical stabilizer with 2 canted canards, and it seems to be working better. I couldn\'t figure out what everybody was talking about with the shift-placing 5 degree thing, because it never worked for me. Turns out that it no longer works if you map pitch/yaw functions to other keys. : I put it back and now I can tweak stuff. Cool. Thanks so much for your help! The thing can almost pass for a working airplane now!

Right, which is a bit of a problem when trying to get off the ground. Sorry I wasn\'t clear. I did, and then it was flying a permanent loop. Is it a matter of degree? Something like a Corsair, with the engines at the angle of the anhedral? I have, but it didn\'t seem to do anything. Is that a glitch? What kind of increments is it supposed to shift things? The problem is that when I tried to use tapering tail cones, the weight of the control surfaces tended to snap them off. So my plane is a cylinder all the way, with a big butt that\'s close to hitting the ground on takeoff and landing, to keep the stupid tail attached. I suppose I could prop it up even higher, but the landing gear already seems dangerously high and rickety. Side view: (Thanks so much for the advice, gentlemen and/or ladies!)

Once the game locked up as I was meters from landing on Mun. I restarted and resumed the autosaved flight from the tracking center, but by the time I got back to the ship, it had somehow passed through Mun\'s surface and was calmly descending through the hollow interior, still upright, with the engine running. I was too surprised to think to take any screenshots. After a few thousand meters, it collided with some invisible something and exploded.

Just out of curiosity, what made that crater more appealing than the others?

I was thinking it would be a good thing for something that\'s made to descend, like the spaceshuttle. For something that needs to bootstrap itself up there first? Not so much.

I do it as a failsafe rather than a descent plan. At 50km, if I get there and have fuel remaining I can do additional braking and land where I want, but if I run out of fuel or something else goes wrong, aerobraking will eventually bring the boys home anyway.

When I send my crew, they will all get to go out and frolic in the (lack of) grass. Yay! You know, I really don\'t sleep well in hot weather, and I should probably stop posting until I\'ve taken a nap. What do the yellow squares under my name over there <--<< mean?

You\'re going to fly one of them all the way to the moons and then make him stay in the ship? That\'s just mean.

Compass heading 270 will keep you in the same plane as Mun\'s orbit, but approaching it head-on at high speed, which velocity you\'ll have to burn off before landing, using a lot of fuel. It can be done, but compass heading 90 puts you and Mun heading the same way at a lower closing speed. Are the marea 50m elevation? I think it\'s closer to 600m, isn\'t it? Maybe I\'m mis-remembering, because the altimeter lies anyway, so what it says doesn\'t really matter. The chute should be enough to slow you down without rockets. How high were you when you opened it? It doesn\'t hurt anything to open it early, though you won\'t travel as far if you\'re trying to splashdown at a specific spot. But the crash might not be anything you did wrong. I also had a capsule come down nice and slow on flat ground, then blow up. I think it just happens sometimes. A little glitch of some sort. Not that this makes it any more fun when it happens. Maybe, but the chute automatically lands you at 12m/s second, right? So shouldn\'t 14 still be within the capsule\'s tolerance?

Despite the official weights listed for the parts, I find that the cockpit behaves as if it\'s quite a bit heavier than anything else. Put it at the nose, for example, and the whole plane seems to try to behave like a lawn dart, no matter how the rest of the weight and lift are distributed. So I try to put it at the middle and balance the engines around it. I\'m annoyed that I didn\'t think of that. Wheels far back would act as a fulcrum, with the whole weight of the plane acting over the lever of its length, mashing the nose down. But then how do you keep the tail from scraping when you translate for liftoff? That\'s why I put the wheels back there in the first place.

Definitely. Some starry-eyed young lad, as yet unaware of the greatness that fate will one day thrust upon him. It\'s only fitting. Was Armstrong born knowing he would be The One? By the way, when are they going to do something about the blatant nepotism and let someone outside the Kerman family join the program?