Whirligig Girl

Update to KSP 1.4.x Fixed Kopernicus compatibility for the latest versions of it, and KSP 1.4.x. You no longer need the VertexPlanet patch config. Removed Kerbin's City Lights configuration for now. Fixed Eve's PQS Material being so bright it almost ruined a cinematic. https://github.com/GregroxMun/Alternis-Kerbol-Rekerjiggered/releases/tag/2.3.1

You may not.

You should create your own thread, with a link on both threads to each other.

I can garuantee you that an ingame editor would not be significantly easier than writing Kopernicus configs. You're right that if every star in the skybox were visitable, it would need a lot of processing power. But that's only with the system KSP uses now. Ideally there would be a dynamic loading/unloading of bodies to fix this. And remember, most of it is procedural, all you need to store is the Right Ascension, Declination, Distance, and perhaps also the relative velocity vector for accuracy. You obviously wouldn't display the star as a full sun most of the time, just when you get close. Squad could totally screw it up though. Also the brightest stars tend to be distant ones just based upon probability. So if you were to limit the visitable stars to the brightest ones, you end up with distant, rare systems. Most known exoplanetary systems are around invisible stars.

Kerbal Space Program: Making Starships Features A full galaxy filled with stars and other deep sky objects including Neutron Stars, Black Holes, Nebulae, Globular and Open Clusters, and detectable but not reachable other galaxies. Astronomy with telescopes, on the ground and in space, can help the Space Program detect planets around other stars by the radial velocity method or transit method, or detect asteroids and distant planets and dwarf planets in the solar system. Every star in the "skybox" can be visited. Procedural star systems and planets, as well as a few hand-made stars and planets. New solar system objects, including asteroids, dwarf planets, and comets. A handful of hand-made ones, most are discoverable and procedural. A few more timewarp scales, and on-rails thrust (allows for brachistochrone trajectories and long-range ion missions to be flyable in real time) A variety of high energy interstellar propulsion methods at the endgame. Laser sails, requiring expensive laser projectors on KSC or in space. Solar sails Nuclear Pulse Rockets Fusion Rockets Ramjet Propulsion, utilizing space-breathing engine technology (actually takes in interstellar hydrogen from ramscoops) Wormholes, can be opened in space from prexisting microsopic wormholes and allowing for instant, orbitally linked teleportation to the destination. And finally the warp drive, the epitome of starship technology. A few handmade solar systems, including some classics from science fiction. Rocheworld, a very compact double planet. Mesklin, a rapidly spinning planet of 0.16 Jupiter masses. (16 in real scale) More systems, some of them with playable habitable planets. Games can be started on procedurally generated systems as well. Simulation of General and/or Special Relativity and Lightspeed delay for probe control and science transmission. Kerbal Space Program: Making Homes Orbital construction Colonization of other planetary bodies, at first with habitats, eventually building up to self-sustaining cities based upon PQSCity (built-in to the planet, not just surface ships) Emotional stability/sanity of Kerbals. Kerbals have different compatibilities with each other based upon their Stupidity, Courage, and Charisma values. Kerbals (other than BadS = true) will go insane without other Kerbals for too long. Few Kerbals left alone with each other for long enough may grow to dislike each other. Insane Kerbals are incapable of flying ships. Very insane Kerbals may do dangerous things, like staging or thrusting or spinning the ship. Kerbals sleep for 2 hours out of a 6 hour day when in timewarp. (They're always alert outside of timewarp) Health of Kerbals. Starving, suffocating, prolonged exposure to very low gravity or to very high gravity, and physical injury from crashes may damage kerbals, reducing their Health Points. They can heal with time in nominal conditions, or by eating more food. Below a certain percent of hp, based upon their Constitution value, they will pass out. If they reach zero they die. Passed out Kerbals can in some cases regain consciousness, but if they don't have a doctor onboard to revive them they may die. Kerbals make noise and language--mouse over their portraits to hear them. They chat with each other, mission control, Kerbals with physical distinctions, like hair color, height, body proportions, and skin tone. These are controlled with genetics. Kerbal reproduction and genetics model, for population growth. (Or eugenics, if you want... ) Endgame: construction of launch sites on other planets. Construction time mechanics for Space Center buildings and alternate space center sites. Procedural cities around Kerbin, populated with cars and Kerbals--it would be odd to have cities on other planets before cities on Kerbin! Destroy buildings there for a massive reputation hit and huge fines, possibly leading to the cancellation of the space program. Planets have many different resources to be utilized in different ways, including water and mulch (mulch is a reference to USI Life Support, and represents waste products that are also full of bottleneck elements like nitrogen and phosphorus, without which you can not grow food. Agriculure, aeroponics, and hydroponics simulation. yes this is perhaps overdone, and honestly in Squad's current state I don't trust Squad not to royally screw these ideas up if they were made. Here's a more down to earth suggestion: Kerbal Space Program: Making Probes (small enough to just be an update) Speed of Light delay for science transmissions and communications. Probe control tech tree: Begins with the stayputnik, which can only receive live control signals and have a delay. No flight computer, no SAS. Then you get the basic flight controller, including the orbit vectors. Then you get programmable computers with a scratch-like programming system with a similar UI as the Mission Builder. Then at the endgame you get computers that have kerbal-like intelligence, and function as pilots in their own right. Packets of control input are displayed as dots travelling along comm paths, and clicking on them will display a log of the inputs. They can't be removed once sent, obviously. Speed of light is changeable in the game settings.

MESBIN COUNCIL OF ASTRONOMY Press Release, Ninth of Tar, Two Hundred and Eighteen Mandrake Rutherford System Beagrid, the second of the barycentric moons. Full Album (More moon pictures) Full Album (Mandrake and Rutherford pictures) You might recognize this setup. Yes, what I have done here, I have taken Pluto and its moons and scaled them up such that Pluto's mass was just shy of Saturn (and of course, scaled them to fit Kerbal scale of 1/10th radius and 1/100th mass). I can't include Sigma Binary compatibility for this system, unfortunately, as you can not have barycentric satellites with Sigma Binary. Instead of Pluto, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, we now have Mandrake, Rutherford, Lozon, Beagrid, Jancy, and Tatian. Just as with their analogues, Lozon, Beagrid, and Tatian are in an 11:9:6 orbital resonance. Beagrid and Tatian are in a 2:3 resonance, and Lozon and Beagrid are in an 11:9 resonance. Jancy is left out in the resonance. The moons do not have chaotic rotation because we don't have that in KSP yet! But they do have the non-locked approximate average rotational periods of their analogues, scaled up to the ratio of Charon's orbital period to Rutherford's orbital period. As for Gememma's new planet, you'll just have to wait a little longer before I am ready to show it off. But I will give you a hint as to what it looks like! Lowel is named after Percival Lowell.

I'm not actually sure we can't do Kerbin with displayName, but I'm too lazy to test at this time. I'd like to keep it either Kerbin or Bin.

Whirligig World 0.3 has been released. Github broke so I don't have a nice and complete changelog. But we do now have clouds and new planets and a lot of work and time.

Telescopic image of the giant planet Tyepolbynar. Historical records show that water and oxygen was detected during at least one transit by Kerbin telescopes (thought to be from one of its moons), but it was abandoned as a destination because it was so hot! Tyepolbynar has four known satellites. Jifgif is just a small chunk in a low orbit, Aerious seems to be a captured asteroid. But between the two are some rounded bodies. Imterril is pale blue in color, while Tannor is a bright white. Calculations of its temperature based upon its reflectivity suggest that, despite the Tyepolbynar system being significantly closer to the Sun than Mesbin, Tannor could be made up of white ice. This is one of the best pictures the Mesbin Space Program has of Tannor. There doesn't seem to be a significant atmosphere. Imterril, meanwhile, is covered in clouds. The blue we see could be water ocean like what we see on Kerbmun, but it could be the blue Rayleigh scattering from a thick atmosphere. Telescopic pictures of Jifgif and Aerious are limited to pixelated blobs.

That's great and fine and all but you still didn't fix the swapped Wolfhound and Skiff stats.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/87dtij/mod_idea_reversed_kerbol_system/ /u/darwinpatrick inspirede me to make a mod that reverses the solar system... but I think I'll let him finish it.

Here's one of the new worlds coming in 0.3. Its name is Oshan It is based upon Chris Wayan's Oisin alongside its parent body which we will be seeing more of in the future. (Valyr) Oshan orbits between the minor moons Plaph and Fophie, at around 4 times the Kerbin-Mun distance. It is a body which is very much a hybrid of Duna and Europa. Europa's ocean is there, frozen under a much thinner crust. It has four times the atmosphere of Mars, and much of it is nitrogen, but there is some oxygen in there too. But slowly the ice and water of Oshan has been dwindling away under the harsh UV rays of Kaywell's star. As a result, the continents of red-brown have slowly been emerging. They're proper continents too--there's enough tidal interaction going on here for not just cryotectonics, but real tectonics to crack the ice. Though most of the ice cracking is from the slow flowing of the ice. Mesbin Space Program's finest telescopic images of Oshan.

Coming soon: A pretty big update. I will be showing more later. For now, here are the minor bodies of Whirligig World. You may see a couple of new planets in the background of these images. More on these later.

There is one part of Eve that may be of some interest.

Kopernicus's last major update broke Minmus. (And everything with VertexPlanet). To fix, create a .cfg file in KSP/GameData called "VertexPlanetFix.cfg," open it with a text editor such as notepad, and copy the following into it: @Kopernicus:FINAL { @Body,* { @PQS { @Mods { @VertexPlanet,* { @SharpnessNoise { @Noise { |Noise = Noise:RidgedMultifractal octaves = #$octaveCount$ } } } } } } } Or download the config here. (Clicking this link leads to a direct download) This config was written by @Thomas P. as a temporary fix. Any planet modders out there probably shouldn't use this as a permanent fix. I will have a proper fix ready for the next update of AKR. Note, it still won't work in 1.4.1 until Kopernicus updates.

Change 280 to 200. Also remember that TWR diminishes with Isp. So if you have an engine that is 400s in space but 300 on the ground, that is not as good as an engine of the same thrust rating that has an Isp of 300 on the ground and 350 in space. So 280 under 400 would pretty much cripple the Skiff in the air, 200 would cripple it further and be accurate to its basis. So 200 seconds would be my revision. You can't have an extremely low surface Isp for a second stage engine because there's still some air when it starts and you don't want it to start with a horrible Isp and TWR even though you're 20 km up.

The skiff in my suggestion has pretty much same characteristics there as the Wolfhound does now. The Skiff shouldn't be a lifting engine. And neither should the Wolfhound. They are both based upon vacuum engines and the description of the Skiff refers to being used in vacuum--despite its Isp being mediocre for a vacuum engine. The wolfhound would still have a higher Isp, almost as good TWR as the Terrier, and you don't need a lot of thrust in space. Terrier has 0.5t and 60kN thrust. And the Wolfhound would still be good as a vacuum engine goes. But I would be willing to accept a higher TWR for the wolfhound. Not more than the Poodle though. Even just looking at the Wolfhound you can tell it should be a low thrust engine. Its bell is huge, sure, but the actual combustion chamber is pretty tiny. Engine Isp and masses in KSP is fine already as it is. But they are generally worse than real rocket engines which use fuel of about the same density. The problem is that with the Skiff (or as it is now, the Wolfhound), the Isp and fuel energy density is better than the real world, which you do not want. Rocket parts need to have worse performance than real engines because the delta-v needed to do anything is roughly 1/3rd as much as you need in the real world. I don't see how my point isn't getting across. Yes. The cosmetics change is neccesary because Making History's parts are based upon real engines and currently they are the wrong way around. Literally it seems that what happened is that they were already switched by accident in development. The bare minimum for me is that they simply unswitch them.

I have perhaps not made it obvious but my point is really a gameplay concern. 412s Isp with a dense fuel is wrong for realistic reasons, BUT those same reasons make it overpowered for gameplay reasons. In KSP we really need engines that are at least a little bit inferior to their real counterparts. This is because of the 1/10th scale stock system. This is done by using low efficiency engines of fairly high mass. With an engine using "realistic" hydrogen+oxygen specific impulse of over 400 seconds, such an engine performs incredibly better than real engines. This is not a realism problem. It is a gameplay problem. Engines should generally be worse than their real counterparts, or rockets either get short and stubby or far too powerful for their size. The engine not only performs better when attached to a rocket than it would in real life, it performs better than any other engine in the game. In real life, Hydrogen/Oxygen rockets have a tradeoff from Kerosene/Oxygen or Hydrazine/N2O4. The hydrogen is big and bulky and thus you can not fit nearly as much of its mass into the same space as you could Kerosene or Hydrazine. But of course LH2 and LOx are a tremendously efficient fuel to make up for it. And the lightness of the fuel does have an upside--the thrust to weight ratio for the same amount of delta-v is higher. I propose two options for the question depending upon whether you think my argument about Isp is valid or not. I have no strong opinion on their relative position in the tech tree, though the Skiff should be sure to join the F-1alike Mastodon. OPTION ONE: Balanced as it is now, but with the bug fixed Skiff: Mass: 2.5 tons. Vacuum thrust: 375 kN. Specific Impulse: 280-412s. Reasonably accurate to the J-2 Engine, but overpowered as LiquidFuel gains a huge amount of energy density. Wolfhound: Mass: 0.8 ton. Vacuum thrust: 90 kN. Specific Impulse: 90-365s. High Isp to reflect its nozzle size, but still clearly a hydrazine or kerosene engine. Lower thrust. Still more powerful in Kerbal-scale than its real world counterpart is in real scale. Somewhere between Poodle and Terrier. OPTION TWO: Rebalanced to account for KSP fuel density Skiff: Mass: 2.5 tons. Vacuum thrust: 460 kN. Specific Impulse: 280-373s. Still the highest specific impulse engine aside from the Nerv and Dawn, but with an Isp within the realm of plausibility for the fuel densities in the game and not too overpowered from a game balance standpoint. Wolfhound: Same as above. I want to make this absolutely clear. It is not a balance issue that the Skiff and the Wolfhound have been swapped. As far as I can tell even their masses should be swapped for one another. So if you ignore the historical background and appearance of their models entirely, this is not a game balance problem. However, the way they are implemented now, trying to build the Saturn V with Skiffs on the rocket and a Wolfhound on the CSM will result in a rocket that behaves differently than it should. I firmly believe that it was a simple mistake on the part of the developers, and that this was not intentional. And further, though I have lingered on the point about fuel density and specific impulse more, simply because I feel it deserves explanation, the fact that the stats of the Skiff and the Wolfhound are switched is of far greater importance. I believe it is reasonable to be of the opinion that 412s is not ridiculously overpowered. But to be of the opinion that the Skiff and the Wolfhound are both fine as they are seems to be pointless and unreasonable. I started this thread and its title before I discovered that Skiff and Wolfhound were swapped. After I submit this reply I will edit the post title from "Wolfhound is ridiculously overpowered and is swapped with the skiff" to "The Wolfhound and the Skiff's stats seem to be switched."

The facts: The actual Service Propulsion System of the Apollo C/SM was a small low-efficiency hypergolic engine with 91 kN thrust and a specific impulse of 319 seconds. The J-2 rocket engine on the Saturn V was a high efficiency rocket engine with 421 seconds Isp, and 486 kN of thrust. The Wolfhound is the in-game SPS analogue. It has an Isp of 412 seconds and a thrust of 375 kN. The Skiff is the in-game J-2 analogue. It has an Isp of 330 seconds and a thrust of 300 kN--barely better than the LV-T30 Reliant. The in-game description describes it as having "high vacuum efficiency" and as being "powerful." I do believe Squad have mixed up the stats for the Wolfhound and the Skiff. But there is a deeper issue which is less obvious. In KSP, the densities of the LiquidFuel we use are comparable to the densities of Kerosene or Hydrazine. These are medium-to-low efficiency fuels and the engines in-game are pretty much balanced around that sort of fuel. Fuel density plays a huge role in rocket design. Bigger tanks are needed to store Hydrogen and Oxygen than Hydrazine and N2O4 in real life. The argument for or against having swappable fuels is not one I want to have right now, but what is important is that 412 or 421 seconds of specific impulse with KSP fuel density is far outside the realm of realism and game balance. 412s Isp with a high thrust to weight ratio results in an engine which may rival the nuclear thermal rocket LV-N "Nerv." Higher thrust, twice the propellant density (LV-Ns can only use LiquidFuel--and actually unless the LV-N is secretly an open cycle gas core NTR running on hydrazine it is a bit overpowered too) At the very least a fix patch needs to swap the characteristics of the Skiff and the Wolfhound, that much is clear. But arguably even then the skiff should be buffed. EDIT: Also the "fixed" Wolfhound's TWR is far too high. The SPS is 91 kN for what should be a larger engine, versus 375 or 300 kN. TLDR: The bug is that the Skiff and the Wolfhound are very obviously swapped with their Masses, Thrusts, and Specific Impulses. The design flaw: The Wolfhound (which should be the Skiff) is super overpowered because it uses low-density high efficiency with high-density fuel--essentially packing more delta-v into a given space. From a realism and a gameplay standpoint both.

Yes and no. KSP doesn't support multi-body gravity so it can't do non-conic (circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola) orbits. But trojans are elliptical/circular orbits. They have the same semi-major-axis or orbital radius and a similar inclination, but they are 60 degrees ahead of or behind in the planet's orbit. (meanAnomalyAtEpochD, argumentOfPeriapsisD, and longitudeOfAscendingNode should sum to be 60 degrees less or more than the sum values from the parent body. I think. More reliably, if the Mean Anomaly, Argument of Periapsis, and Lognitude of Ascending Node are set to the same value for both bodies, changing only one of them by 60 degrees will result in a trojan or greek) KSP does support trojans. A trojan moon would not be a subsatellite, it would be another moon orbiting 60 degrees behind or ahead. It's very simple. Now in KSP, trojans aren't more stable than putting the other moon anywhere else along the same orbit, but for realism's sake L4 and L5 should be the only orbits used. Hildas are the rounded triangle. (Not sure if the actual orbit itself of these asteroids are rounded triangles (I seem to remember seeing an animation of them that shows they are), it may actually be an emergent property of a more complicated orbit) KSP can't do those without Principia.

Easily reproducable. Go to the Making History Discussion forums, click on a post, you should see it. Then log out, and go back. It should now be hidden--you don't have permission. I assume this is in error.

No I'm not because that's not what I'm saying. The Russians eventually switched over to the capsule shape too with Soyuz. It's not the American way, it's just the way that Americans tried first.

I absolutely love these parts.

Oh that is just completely and totally unacceptable. Absolutely this. This is a problem they also had with 1.4.0. Both 1.4.0 and Making History really needed to have a good long Quality Assurance pass. Lots of gameplay testing, ironing out bugs. 1.4.0 had a few pretty annoying issues at launch, though it looks like 1.4.1 has fixed some of them in the base game at least. And now Making History really feels like an internal beta, not a finished and well polished release.