Libra00

I have, for years, excessively modded KSP. I've seen very very long load times due to massive numbers of mods. This is different; it's one mod that takes more time to load than all the other mods I have installed combined, and it appears to be new to the latest version of KF since I have about the same mod setup now as I had before and it wasn't this way. So you can see why I might think something weird is going on.

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but searching didn't find any mention of it. I just installed KF for a new 1.04 install and it seems to take longer to load than all my other mods combined. Especially diffusemap2048 at the beginning, but generally everything under the KerbalFoundries/assets folder just seems to take noticeably longer to load than other mods. Not sure if it's just big textures, something weird with my install, or perfectly normal, it was just a big sudden change. Anyway, love the mod, I'll keep it either way, just making sure I didn't break anything.

Wow, someone is resurrecting HL's mod.. fantastic! This has always been in the top 3 of my favorite mods in KSP, and I'm so glad to see it get renewed attention. This mod literally buoyed my dream of building a crazy massive airship-based kethane miner/refinery. My only request is, if it's at all possible, to add some kind of auto-balancing system. Multi-envelope crafts have always been super unstable. :/ Anyway, looking forward to what comes out of this.

As a general rule, it's a good idea to take Scott Manley at his word when he talks about orbital mechanics. I seem to recall he even has a video explaining why the Oberth Effect works, so that might be worth looking up because he's pretty good at explaining things.

Infernal Robotics can do a lot of the folding/hydraulics you mention, but that doesn't really help if you want to play mod-free. As for getting large/stable rovers to the target, it's generally a case of brute force. One thing to remember though is that with enough struts your rocket doesn't have to look anything like an actual rocket. I've seen (and launched) some truly massive rovers atop some seriously beefy rockets. In fact if you're looking for inspiration, search up the 'post your rover' thread, a lot of people especially with bigger rovers tend to post pictures on the launchpad/runway. The most common way to launch a big rover seems to be to put it flat across the top of the rocket so it's symmetrical-ish, rather than having the wheels stick out to one particular side. This is how I've done my very massive kethane mining rovers in the past before I realized that it makes way more sense to be able to fly between kethane patches than to drive.

I've been playing since around 0.13 and never switched to Steam, so I don't have any actual data to back this up, but.. at LEAST in the neighborhood of 1000 hours.

A couple words of advice on rovers, especially on low-gravity bodies. 1) The longer and wider your wheelbase the better. The lower the body's gravity, the more unstable your rover will be, so putting the wheels further out from the center of mass it will have less of an inclination to roll in any particular direction. 2) The heavier your rover the more traction you will have and unless you have some kind of RCS/rocket assist you will need the traction to get up those hills and turn without just ice-skating, especially on the likes of Minmus. Likewise, you can add artificial weight to your rover by, say, putting an ion thruster on your center of mass firing upward depending upon your energy budget. 3) Switch to docking mode so you don't induce roll while just trying to steer. Just have your mouse near the button in case you flip so you can reorient yourself wheels-down before you land. 4) Disable braking on the front wheels, so braking isn't as likely to cause you to flip. 5) Disable steering on the rear wheels. 4+-wheel steering seems neat, but it actually leads to more instability in low gravity as your center of mass sways out of line with its rest position in the middle of all your wheels. That about covers it for stock rovers. Modded rovers can go in quite a diverse array of directions for increased control and traction. I think my favorite system I've devised is to use Kerbal Attachment System winches with a grappling hook (front) and anchor (back) set to different action groups. Not enough traction to climb that crater rim? Fire the forward grapple and reel yourself in. It's a bit slow going, but it's pretty cheap energy-wise. Likewise if you're trying to drive down a steep hill and can't control your descent, drop the anchor (or more than one on bigger rovers) to slow yourself down and keep you pointed down-slope instead of rolling. As for trying to use a science lab on a rover, that's for people far more patient than me. I just built a heavy lander with a bunch of experiments and lab and hopped from biome to biome, came back from the Mun in less than a day with almost 2k science without all the wait and drive and struggle. I think next time (because that lab is so damned heavy) I'm going to orbit the lab and drop micro-landers.

I build anything bigger than an interplanetary lander via orbital construction, modular and docked together. As such they return to LKO and can be either gassed up for a new mission, or if necessary, the fuel tanks and engine cluster can be swapped out for special-purpose stuff. For example, my Jool probe-carrier was retrofitted into a kethane refinery and orbital fuel depot which currently (in my 0.21 save) sits in orbit of Minmus where its' numerous docking ports can host a heavy tanker, several light mining landers, RCS tugs, and the other machinery necessary to be the primary fuel depot for anything headed out of Kerbin's gravity well. Once I'm done with the science tree in 0.23 I plan to rebuild it with even more docking ports where, thanks to tweakables, it's really easy to haul up tons of 'disposable' empty orange tanks to keep outbound ships from having to wait around for refining. I build anything bigger than a one-target IP lander via orbital construction, modular and docked together. As such I return them to LKO, swap tank and engine clusters as needed, add new probes and landers, and send them back out on new missions. For example, in my 0.21 save I had a heavy carrier that came back from its trip to Jool I refitted virtually everything but the docking frame to act as the primary kethane refinery inside of Kerbin's SoI. New (much smaller) engine cluster, different tanks, huge on-demand refinery stack, tanker, mining landers, etc.

Hey, just ran into an interesting bug, not sure if anyone else has seen this yet. I'm using the previous (0.22) version in 0.23 so I'm not expecting any sort of fix, just thought it might be illuminating. So, I'm building a heavy lander in career mode on top of a 2.5m asparagus lifter but when I launch the main engines (skippers) don't work. If I take the asparagus portion off the final stage engine (atlas) works, but what fixes the stage 1 engines is, oddly, removing the MT4 RCS tank, but placing an MT4 anywhere on the rocket causes them to stop working again. I can't imagine what kind of code on RCS tanks might interfere with LFO motors, but.. *shrug* Just thought I'd toss it out there as a curiosity.

Jeb has just returned from his 3rd mission this in-game month, twice to the Mun (different craters), another time to Minmus. He's currently standing in the VAB disturbing the poor engineers by looking between the current 1.25m asparagus lifter and the pile of boosters while grinning in a most disconcerting manner. Bill and Bob are starting to feel like the astronaut complex is home, as they haven't been on a single mission yet. I have a feeling Jeb is waiting for them to get good and settled in before 'requesting their presence' on some crazy interplanetary suicide run. Just so he can be amused on those long transfers.

I would like (at some point) a proper aerodynamics model but only, as many others have said, if it doesn't significantly impact performance. And I say at some point because I don't even play with FAR right now, just haven't gotten around to checking it out, so aerodynamics are obviously not of paramount importance for me.

I've made a bunch of hydrofoils in previous versions and it's not hard to get them up to ~180m/s speed. The key is to use vertical foils to reduce drag (I use straight wing pieces) and add horizontal winglets (not the control surface kind) at the bottom to provide additional bouyancy. Think: Inverted T. The hard part is keeping the nose out of the water at low speeds, and keeping the whole thing in the water at high speeds. As speed increases and fuel burns they develop an increasing tendency to get serious air and there's no surviving that.

Yes, definitely thank you Squad for the attention to performance. I've gotten a noticeable FPS increase on large vehicles and loading times are a good bit shorter. Thanks! Edit: i5 quad 3.3GHz / 8GB RAM.

There are pretty much 2 reasons I set up a mining base: 1) Refueling rovers for long-term-ish missions 2) Orbital refueling stations for interplanetary transfers In the case of #1, I put drills and tanks on one machine and just leave it where it sits. I've only done a couple of these and not for terribly long-term missions, so maybe for a long term rover mission you'd want it to be mobile. Kethane generators are way better than fragile solar panels for long-haul roving/flying, though I tend to do a bit of both. In the case of #2, it seems to me to make the most sense to have drills and kethane tanks on a heavy duty lander that can go where the green stuff is and the orbital station is both refinery and storage. I tend to offload kethane and keep it in that state until I have a specific need, rather than trying to keep tanks full of mono/LFO hanging around. I sadly don't have any pictures anymore, but I used to have a fuel depot in orbit of Minmus using the spherical tanks (which hold something like 40-50k kethane each). I used kethane generators to power the stacks of refiners so an interplanetary ship fueling up for a transit wouldn't have to sit around forever waiting on the refining process and potentially miss its window. I'm currently working on a design using Hooligan Labs' airship parts (on .21) and KAS that can cruise around at high speed (using firespitter's electric props I can get up to ~200m/s on Kerbin) going where the kethane is. Once it finds a patch it uses KAS winches to anchor and lower drill pods. Only part I haven't worked out yet is how to land something on a moving airship to take the kethane back to orbit. I'm certainly not going to attempt mid-air fueling, and even more certainly not in the kind of volume I'd want to make it worth the effort.

I'm not sure if this is still up and working or not, but.. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/21641-Community-Voice-Server-In-space-WE-can-hear-you-scream!

All this talk of learning curves and no one has yet posted this? Seriously though, I don't find Dwarf Fortress to be that complicated. It's all menus, the only difficulty is finding things. And as someone who used to use Lotus 1-2-3 remembering menu hotkey strings is cake, and they're not nearly as long in DF as they were in Lotus. The only part of DF that I would consider truly complicated is the military orders/scheduling thing, I have yet to sit down and figure it out.

I love seeing threads like this on the forums. Great work you guys! I've been an avid boat builder in KSP for quite a while, though I've never done any sort of endurance trip like this, I usually build toward the speed challenges. On the subject of taking the metaphorical slow boat, though, I've been thinking about doing a circumnavigation by airship (thanks to Hooligan Labs' mod). Though it's probably going to be on hold for a while since 0.22 is imminent and it requires quite a few mods (airship, kerbal attachment system, firespitter for electric propellers, etc). As a result of all the mods you'd need it also probably wouldn't work as a challenge, but it sounds like a heck of a good time.

After some initial testing and tinkering yesterday I finally got to serious work with the Interstellar mod's research system. I've had a station in orbit for a while that's little more than a pod and a crew tank for lack of inspiration with what to do with it. Now it has a purpose, renamed from KSS Icarus to Thomas Dolby Science Station (because, SCIENCE!), it will serve as the jumping off point for everything to do with the mod. Today I sent up the first (expandable) research module with 3 Science Labs with space and power generation for 6 more once upgraded. It's kind of a beast, because with the way research works in the mod Kerbal-manned labs will eventually be deprecated so it had to be designed to be jettisoned and returned (safely) to Kerbin. Perhaps today or tomorrow I'll send up 2 more just like it. The next project will be to add an orbital tug capable of moving the whole thing to the appropriate orbit for antimatter collection.

Oh, it sounds like the reactor itself doesn't generate waste heat but that it's generated by things which ask for ThermalPower and then inefficiently convert it into thrust, electricity, or whatever? That makes sense.

I've always loved the look of those spherical tanks but I can never seem to find the right application for them. Looks good!

Quick question: In determining what kind of heat radiation I need (for an orbital station), it's the Thermal Power output of the reactor, minus whatever is being used, yes? In which case with an unupgraded 3.75m reactor I would need 3 huge radiators to keep up with its waste heat production assuming it's on but nothing is using it? Or have I misunderstood and it's something else entirely? I realize consequences of waste heat are not yet implemented, but i'd rather have it dealt with before-hand.

Ah, I had never noticed it in stock probably just by chance. I still tend to forget about crew until I'm ready to mash the GO button, just happened to have made a change after I thought I was ready this time.

Hm, I may have noticed a small bug. It seems like whenever you change anything about a vehicle with a science lab, it removes the crew of the lab. I have no other crew on the ship which may be affecting it, I haven't had a chance to try that yet. Also the only probe core I'm using is the un-upgraded Computer Core from the mod.

Thanks everyone for the info. Good info all around. Regarding specific points, I didn't realize MJ updated on the launchpad or while working, I had just noticed that vessel info displayed thermal rocket thrust once and then never again for any part. For power requirements, I think I may just go with the very Kerbal axiom that bigger is better and strap more orange tanks to the side. Regarding modularity: I just recently started using the subassembly manager so I've had to do so anyway. I also haven't tried the newest KAS but the previous version works great for fuel transfers without blowing a ton of RCS trying to dock. I tend to install it on everything that might ever need more fuel ever again. Regarding scooping LF from Jool, I take it it works like IntakeAir in that the faster you're going the more you get? If that's the case the solution is probably to just use it while aerobraking/capturing as a top-off rather than a reliable fuel source. Although now that I think about it, you might be able to do build an effective Jool fueling station with Hooligan Labs' Airship mod and plasma thrusters. I'm just not sure I'd want to go that deep into the gravity well to refuel, you'd burn a lot of it getting back out. Final question for now: As for doing research I've seen mentions of possible locations that are good for it, but are there any pattern as to where to find better locations? Someone said orbit was the same as surface of a planet (though that will probably change), I assume the surface of Kerbin is a terrible place to do research? Are moons better/worse than planets? How 'bout Kerbol? Is it based on delta-v/difficulty getting there, or something else? Don't spoil it entirely for me, I'm just looking for guidelines. Also, on a related note, someone mentioned transferring science, how's that done?

Ah, then I transfer the commendation to ZZZ then, I love the look of the models and textures. I wish I had a tenth of your skill. Re:wiki - I found it and have read everything I've found there, thanks. I do have a few questions though. 1) Rampart mentioned something about power costs to research and indicated that it could be done with either the lab or the core? Does the core have to be updated for that to happen? 2) re:plasma engines, since I'm awful at math and can't do the ISP calculations myself I'm not sure how to evaluate the various fuels available for it, and Mechjeb doesn't seem to do delta-v for parts from this mod. Generally my question is: how much argon/xenon will I need to bring for a mission to, say, Jool or Moho (leaving from Kerbin orbit), just as general guidelines? Also, is there any functional difference between the 1.25m and 2.5m versions? I can't see a difference in the parts list, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes. 3) Of the things which require reactor power, is there a way to find out how much they require so as to figure out how big a reactor I need? So far it tends to determine the diameter of parts I use so it means rebuilding the whole thing if I guess wrong. I think that covers it for now, thanks.