katateochi

"Best" is ofcourse highly subjective. I've recently had a lot of fun building a base in a "realistic" construction style; almost everything was brought out in large KAS containers and assembled piece by piece on site with KAS/KIS (apart from a few modules that needed neat symmetry and a bit of clipping). This required building a large crane on site first to lift heavy parts and a rover with an IR arm and magnet to move smaller parts around. Also, like @Tonka Crash I used flexible docking ports (from Pathfinder, I think) to join foundation parts together. But you could also use KAS/KIS connectors. I like this style of building, but it's pretty slow going. The main point is it's fun, and the place looks like a construction site while you're building. But with KAS/KIS and some lifting gear you don't have to worry about designing things to line up and then finding that under different gravity or slight terrain humps that things are not quite in place. and you get some cool screenshots;

Thanks @RYU AZUKU99!

I'm afraid I took the boring option and terminated it from the tracking station. I really hate having things in LKO that aren't serving a purpose and I was worried that it might end up glitching my career save.

how far away is the vessel you're trying to switch to?

yeah, it won't let you QS while moving across terrain. You could prob do a QS while going over a jump though. So that makes a whole load of sense!

That would work, so long as in the process of getting to the start line you don't have to switch to any other craft outside of the physics range. Another solution is to use the flight events and have an event (stage) which you trigger before the start of the race, like this: I think given KSP's sometimes unpredictable nature, having an overly strict rule about quicksaving is just asking for people to circumvent it. On a long race, quicksaving at checkpoints seems reasonable to me. To have to redo an entire challenge just because KSP tweaked out, the power cutout, or your cat decided that NOW was the time to leap on the keyboard does make it seem unnecessarily restrictive. I'm totally behind the notion that quicksaving between checkpoints is cheating in the context of these challenges. But if you've got to redo a hour+ of an entire race, instead of being able to redo the last 10 minute sprint, then....tbh with RL time constraints some of us just wouldn't have the time.

Count me in! Why....I just loving driving fast! and these challenges take you to places on Kerbin that otherwise you might never see. (My only problem is that I keep getting the music from the need for speed games stuck in my head!) As @purpleivan said, short sprints would be better to fit around RL constraints. I think some rough terrain races would be good, but as it's a series of races, a mixture of terrain types would be more enjoyable; some v flat for insane speeds, some rough for careful navigation. I've got a couple suggestions; Set the races as just between two points, and we can get the rover to the start point however we like and have a save at the start. We can try the race multiple times and submit our best time. But time submissions should be closed; ie we PM them to you rather than publicly posting them so we can't see how fast others are going. Then after the submission period you post all the times and declare the winner for that race. The rover should have a part that can be decoupled, and it is decoupled before starting the race. Drivers have to take a screenshot showing the flight progress window (F3) at the start of the race and at the end of the race. Both screenshots should show the stage being separated and that will prove there was no quicksave/reload during the race. I think we need clear rules about jet boosters (especially with the BFC mod out of commision).

("I agree" - according to this website) Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but to me the main point of emoji's is to clarify the tone of a sentence ie if something is meant in a joky tone. And I think the current forum emojis serve that purpose well enough. Sometimes is seems like we're stepping back to a pictorial form of communication, which is why I love this forum so much, people here actually talk!

As other have said, KerbalX doesn't host images, so you first need to upload them to an image hosting site like imgur Then on the edit page for your craft there are two ways to add an image; Along the top of the page is a toolbar: drag the "image" box onto your page and a dialog will appear: Then paste in the url to your image and click insert. The other way to add an image is to add a "text container" and put the markup for the image in yourself. Click on a container to edit it and add the url to your image like this [img:https://i.imgur.com/KosNoYx.png]

This is a crazy idea, crazy-awesome, but still crazy! Have you got a mod that draws the path you've taken....or have you just drawn those on by hand?

I.....I'm not sure I'm crazy enough. A couple weeks ago I drove about 150km on Mun and that was the longest in-one-sitting drive I've ever done. Never really been tempted by the idea of a long haul......that being said, the one thing I've not tested on ExplorerX is how far it can go on 1 tank of gas. This might be the opportunity to test that! I see you're driving a solar powered rover, if we used an LF/O-fuelcell powered rover could we airdrop fuel when needed or setup gas stations along the way?

I can appreciate that! And thanks for running these race challenges, The Dakar and this have been really fun.

@Wrench Head props for driving the course at night! I think that should be a bonus category. I'd not seen that when I pm'd him. noted.

I believe so. In the Dakar rally I couldn't use BFC because my design was weird, so I just set the flaps (or in my case service bay) to toggle on the brake action group and then made sure to hit the brakes as I was leaving the ground and released as I landed. BFC just made that so much more convenient and ensured you never miss the timing. I'd also pm'd him as we were mid conversation about something else, but he's just vanished. yeah, I've got the latest release. The BFC thread says it's licence is GPLv3, and my understanding of that is that it permits others to distribute the work. I don't have the source code, just the compiled end product. I'd be happy to share the latest release version with my fellow racers, do you think it would be OK for me to do that? (I'd like a nod from someone who knows, before I put my foot in it!). I wouldn't setup a thread to post it, just respond with a link to anyone who PMs me.

Ok! I'm entering two rovers; ExplorerX-S (left)- 100% stock, wheel and jet powered ExplorerX (right) - 100% stock, wheel powered with an RCS booster More details on them if you're interested: ExplorerX-S Flight Start: 00:00:00 Full stop by flag: 00:09:18 Race Start: 00:02:00 Full stop by flag: 08:15 (race time -> 06:15) This uses boost flaps and the (now discontinued) boost flap controller mod, so the rover never gains speed while airborne. I added a boost flap indicator light which you can only see when the flaps are shut to make it easy to see. I will post a vid of flight+race but I have the worst internet ever, so it will literally take me several days to upload it! The judges may want to add 12 seconds to the flight time. I landed and came to a complete stop near the flag at 09:18 (top right pic), but then felt I needed to move forward a bit onto the level ground and closer to the flag to unload. I came to a second complete stop at 09:30 (see this pic) Flight time: 09:18 | Race Time: 06:15 | Total: 15:33 (damage sustained by rover: none) ExplorerX Flight Start: 00:00:00 Full stop by flag: 00:09:29 Race Start: 00:02:00 Full stop by flag: 12:39 (race time -> 10:39) This landing was a little too close to the flag! So after coming to a complete stop at 09:29 I rolled back a little and stopped at the unloading position at 09:39 - see this pic Flight time: 09:29 | Race Time: 10:39 | Total: 20:08 (damage sustained by rover: none) Extra stuff that has nothing to do with the challenge, but was fun to do anyway: Post processed pic, just because:

nice run @purpleivan and v impressive flight time! I like the way you just punted the flag at the start.

@Val run!! There's a hit out on you!

omg I'm such a dunderhead!! I hadn't realised you could assign an action group to the controller part, in game...like normal. So my attempts to change the action group in the cfg file was pointless. Anyway, it's working perfectly now; automatic deploy of flaps whenever off the ground, and manual override with the brake key. Controlling the flaps manually I was probably shutting the flaps correctly around 80-90% of the time, but I knew there were some points where I wasn't quick enough and they'd stay open longer than they should. So its nice to be 100% sure I'm not gaining speed whilst airborne. Also means I'm not having to brake so much; just did another test drive of the rally and shaved 15 seconds of my best time so far.

BRO!!

I may not get the fastest time, but I'm aiming to be as fast as I possibly can! So if we're driving competitively, it's got to be from take off to finish flag without reloads? That's fine, but I have to do a quickload/reload once I've unloaded the rover or it's just a flickering mess.

The fix seems to be working! Nice one. My only issue is that if I use another action group (ie brakes) to also shut the boot flaps, then BFC stops working. I've not tried this yet, but if I change the `defaultActionGroup` in the `ModuleBFCAG` module in BoostFlapController.cfg to 'BRAKES' would that enable me to have automatic boost flaps but also have manual control over them when pressing brake?

I had the feeling that it was a core issue and mods accentuated it. I get it crazy bad around KSC, but after getting a certain distance away it suddenly stops (which makes sense with what you said). And then when approaching another craft it starts up again, but gets fixed with a quicksave/reload.....so does that mean that extra textures are being left as active, thus overloading the system, but a quicksave/reload clears them out? Just wild guessing. Anyway, sorry, this is off topic. Nice. I think from a "having fun" point of view that's better. Plus it's quite hard to prove/disprove that someone quicksaved/loaded so it makes it easier for you if it's allowed. So....the starting point...I'm curious why you didn't go for starting actually at the runway, or at least in the flat land around it? Was that just to add a challenge to landing stupidly fast cargo planes? (if so...you monster!). Or was it because those without the DLC don't get the flat area?

I think taking a save at the start of the driving part of the race is ok. KSP isn't exactly a contest grade bit of software; several times on trial runs I've had that GC stutter issue happen right at the wrong moment, resulting in death. That's not driver error, it's game glitchiness and I think reverting back to the start flag because of that is ok. I've also got an issue with (i think) Scatterer/EVE which results in horrible z-fighting with textures and it happens when approaching something that was previously outside of physics range. So when I land near the flag, texture issues start happening. The only cure is to do a quicksave/reload.

I think i'm having the same issue as @purpleivan; I've got the BFC controller attached, set to enabled and my two boost flaps have the boost flap option checked. I've tried messing with the toggle option (via menu and hitting R). Initially I also had my flaps bound to the brake action group, in that case if I applied the brakes and the flaps closed the hitting R would override the brake action and open the flaps again. But that was the only thing I could make happen. I thought maybe having another action group controlling the flaps was conflicting (or inverting a state) so I removed the brake action group control from the flaps, but still not getting any automatic flap control.

I was also going to say fuel cell. But there is something that a fuel cell lacks when it comes to petrol-head simulation; belching noxious fumes. I know this is a mod thing but; way back when Kethane was the only ISRU option it had a power generator that turned kethane into electricity and it did it with style (or at least clouds of smoke). And even better, the amount of smoke was dependent on the power output, so your rover sitting there idling just let out a little smoke, but when you moved off it would kick out a larger cloud of smoke. oh and it had a little fan that spun around. It made me happy. I'd really like to see a "petrol" engine in KSP that behaved like that.