Znath

Putting it plainly it's absolutely not. The vehicle is 10 times worse now. I can only hope it's a bug and they'll rebuff strengths of landing gear or something later..? Either that or it's quite possible my circumnavigation mission is killed by this update. I was cresting hills at like 45m/s before and landing hard. Now I can barely hit the incline of a hill at 20. With it as bad as it is right now, going the last 10% around the world may take as long as the first 90.

Yea... it's just a little irritating to have a single vehicle circle 90% of the globe including the north and south poles just to get the next update and it turned from a robust vehicle into a fragile glass unicorn.

My land train is vastly weaker now. If I hit any bump over 10 degrees at over 20m/s it's a 50 50 chance that it'll break. If I lower to the electric rover wheels... they instantly break. The vehicle turns like a cow on rollerskates too... I like the increased performance of the game. I'm running at insane frame rates on highest settings now. But.... the loss in my vehicle performance is miserable. I'll be limping back to KSC....

Progress update!! Crossed the south pole! This last run was kind of long and I do have pictures, but a lot are at night. At least the sun was eternally up in the southern ice caps. I'm on the last leg of the journey though. Just a quick run north to the island chains east of KSC and into "Big Korea" Entering the ice caps The precarious nature of the hills before the ice caps proved pretty scary time to time. This steep slope came out of nowhere. Reaching the south pole exactly. Finally escaping the ice sheet. It was kind of fun being able to reach 95m/s with full power blasting and my RCS system on nonstop to maintain control. I kind of wonder what the max speed is totally dry with just enough fuel. Not sure if I can peak 100m/s or not... but 95 is good. 80 was the usual cruising speed for the ice caps though as it was much safer. The journey is juuust about over. I think when I get back to KSC I want to take this thing back north and try to climb the highest mountain.... ... in the wooorld

Well, after several hours of grueling work and redesigning the launcher I've done something I've thought was impossible. I landed my 55+ ton land train on Kerbin's Mun full album http://imgur.com/a/gtqsW Some key images from the launch. Destroying tbe pad with the size of the rocket at 1's of frames per second. Stopped on Mun ready to drill some ore. There is.... ONE small problem. In my haste to get on with things. I forgot the other two crew. So.... Now I get to launch 2 crew maybe some ore probes to the Enerstar's location.

The net dry-weight is 44 tons Fully loaded with fuel and ore it balloons to 82.3 tons Average cruising speed is usually between 40-50m/s which is roughly 100mph. I don't like to go faster or it gets risky and re-loadish. It's designed to self-sustain on the road to where I 'could' mine my own ore the whole trip. But I usually load some ore-probes on a ICBM and space drop the ore for refueling. The Enerstar's still got a long way to go, but it's well over half over its journey. But... A teaser for things to come.

Been a while since I've updated. I keep traveling but the area I'm in is so boring. It's been days since their last sea crossing. Even only recently I've seen the ocean again. But here's the map anyway. Next stop will be the South Pole! It's not a typical "circumnavigation" I guess from that standpoint. But since I went to the North before, I figure I just should. Boring pictures for the most part, but... here's some decent ones. The badlands are bad. I've had to drop a lot of ore to get across this dumb place. Dumb lake west of the bads, no ore. This one was near -16 , 14 I think. Somewhere further west, no ore. Dang well the night time pictures turned out... really bad. I can't guarantee their quality! Anyway I'm at the end of the red line, of course. Nearing a little river on my way south toward some mountains. Should be fun, I'm gonna do at least one mountain pass to liven things up.

Progress so far. Nearing the badlands area. But in other news, I gave the Enerstar crew a pet! His name is Magellan Magellan's role is due to my addition of the clouds mod for a little more realism. The clouds make it a lot harder to find your way around if you try using the map or satellites. So Magellan is refueled by the Enerstar's rear port and flies around 5-10k to scout out paths through the badlands. I estimate that the full fuel load of 90 the scout probe can go roughly 200km

Progress so far. I'm now on the same continent as the badlands. Crossing to the closest point on the final water crossing. Finally reaching the shoreline I also started a project to have a fleet of ore scanners in orbit to help look for higher ore concentrations. I've got 4 right now, not exactly "complete coverage" but hopefully enough to be occasionally useful.

I'm not entirely sure what the Elcano is myself. This is just a project I started on my own. The land ship is rather complex. I don't know how many parts off-hand but the main components are the cupola, science module, 2 large fuel cells, 2 large ore cans, 2 large stabilization modules, 2 mining drills 6 radiators, an ore converter, fuel tank, 5 air intakes 4 airbrakes 3 jet engines 2 mini engines, 8 rover wheels for electric drive, a bunch of landind gear for the main suspension... The rest of the suspension is a system of girders I set up as cantilevered beams supported by a convoluted system of braces in order to take the abuse of stomping around at over 100mph. It usually can withstand most impact I've thrown at it as long as I don't use the physics warp. Then it can be nearly random what will cause a break. I have survived some close calls thanks to the monoprop system. But anyway Progress so far. My goal is to reach the next continent soon after my next water crossing During the crossing I had Marlyn inspect parts of the ship, everything seems to be ok. Finally out of the water. It took quite a while. Speed goes from a nice cruising speed of around 40-50m/s to a pathetic 11.5m/s with two main engines and the minipods at 100% throttle. The next crossing is 5x as long so I don't know how much fuel that's going to devour. I may need to be prepared to launch another supply missile to their location if I can't find more ores.

Been a while since I got going again. Covered some good ground Investigating the launch pad. Samples show signs of use. We may be alone in the Kerbin system, but what if we're not alone in Kerbin... We're headed to the Southwest point to attempt a water crossing. Hopefully it's not too expensive to do so.

After a lot of frustration with the current ore conversion of the compact ore converter, I've gone back to using the original model vehicle. This one's improved with some of the design aspects like the angled wheels for a wider wheel base. I also included two mini-pod engines which help with the water movement speed to some degree... so I might be able to go back to the water-crossing routes. Model Enerstar E6 Getting it over twice the distance was a real exciting turn for the worse. All my winged fliers became wierdly unstable after half way into the flight. I tried different ones over and over and over, it was a nightmare or lost ships and supplies. So obviously the plan called for something insane. Like bolting a heatshield onto its face and putting it on a icbm. Slow it down a bit with the rocket and it actually survives. Sadly this is only doable with virtually no fuel or ore... so I had to launch 2 more rockets to supply it. Believe it or not, I'm able to hit all 4 ore karts within 4km of a target 1/4 around the world with a ton of fuel to spare. With little to no modification, this should be able to hit almost anywhere on the globe. Upon slowing down, the karts deploy chutes and then split apart usually landing about 300-400m apart in a tidy little drop zone. The karts then can drive themselves to dock with the fueling port on the rear of Enerstar units E3,E4,E6. Each supply drop contains 1200 ore with this setup. UNFORTUNATELY, ... redesigning my entire supply program consumed a ton of my time. (That and Fallout4) So I made basically no progress... in fact. E6 landed 20km from E4! ... but E6 should close in on the Mk5 soon and give the crew a proper ship to travel in. Marlyn was complaining about leg-room anyway. The Mk5 will continue exploring the plains on its own. Goal right now is to go north to the base still, then instead of go north, go southwest and cross the series of straits which hopefully works to cross.

Exciting news! Thanks to new parts in the most recent update, the Enerstar Mk5 has finished prototyping and is ready to be shipped! Though the distance to the middle of the desert is a lot longer to fly, the Enerstar Mk5 is much much lighter. http://s9.postimg.org/48ew4eren/screenshot177.png Though the passengers have to enter through the main cockpit It's more stable and compact. The overall max speed is lower, but on the E4 I was never able to actually sustain those speed. Usually anything past 60m/s was a crapshoot..The Mk5 can sustain 80m/s over rough terrain. Some minor checks on action groups and I'll build a new carrier and have a pilot bring it on over. Progress to this point (with tentative flight path for the Mk5) The field testing of the mk5 has been less then spectacular as far as range goes.. They changed something with the ore mechanics I guess? I may work on modifying the E4 to produce a 6th version using some of the lessons learned by the Mk5. I like how ridiculously stable the Mk5 is, but I also like how the E4 can go insane distances without refueling. Then on top of all that, the junior drills are lackluster at best, as is the miniaturized ore converter which may be part of the inefficiency issues. I will at least use the Mk5 to get some pictures of the abandoned airbase north of the desert. From there i'll decide what to do about the Mk5.

Moving on! Think I'll post continuations in posts instead of editing the first. Though i may compile them all later. Entering the desert I took a stupid shortcut along mountain crests between lakes. Speeding along the coast Yea it can cross water, but.... barely. 5m/s after blasting around at over 100mph makes this feel like crawling. All three engines full blast to crawl over a lake. Spotted something on the long range scans had to investigate ICBM debris! Yay! Another mystery solved. Summary is basically... I crossed a lot of sandoland today. I'm half way between two landmarks, the pyramids and an abandoned base Progress

I remember seeing your land train project a while back which was a partial inspiration for the mission. I occasionally have to quicksave the game for when parts smash through the ground / go too fast and flip out / things break for no reason. The E3 is a bit beat up by the time the crew traded off to the E4. The funny thing I noticed was that the E3 performed rather well when the front emergency tanks broke off and lost a few landing gear. It bounced and charged over terrain, but stayed together. I later flew an engineer over to join Bill in the E3 so he could go on his own trip. The E4 is significantly heavier. It takes 30% more throttle to maintain speed, but it is also more durable and able to recover from a roll due to the enhanced RCS flip prevention system. It easily cruises at around 40-50m/s much beyond that and it likes to explode or flip. Even on the purely flat land of the poles it'll flip beyond 70m/s so there's probably some weird defect I can't see. It'll climb a 30 degree slope with all three jets at full throttle combined with the torque of the rover wheels when I lower the cruising-gear.

My Circumnavigation Mission Kerbin - Complete Minimus - Complete! Mun - COMPLETE!! Duna - just started :V [BACK ON new prototype reaches sustained speeds over 80m/s!] -------- This... is it. The Enerstar E3 landjet Propelled primarily by 2-3 jet engines with 8 electric drive wheels to assist in launch speed. It has two miners ore bins and an onboard fuel converter. Enough passenger space for two in addition to the driver. You can even get out of it. -------- Early on I decided to test the capabilities which was probably a mistake as it required a lot of saving and yelling. So we went up through the mountains northwest of KSC And they did survive apparently. Next stop! The north pole! The north pole! It was at this point I came to a realization. I can't always rely on ore deposits. Or that was the thought (turns out you can) I also realized the ship needed some extra capabilities, bracing, and safety features. But I can't ruin their glory by sending a 2nd team, and I don't wanna drive all that way a 2nd time. What to do? Obviously the most logical solution is to spend millions upon millions of dollars in failed projects to ship a NEW land-train to the next continent. I tried LOTS of methods, one including an ICBM to launch the train, but usually this resulted in the aeroshield being full of train-soup and spinning out of control. A small child picked up a model of the train and flew it around the office, after yelling a lot, we decided "no! this is actually the best idea, I'm going to take the idea and give the child no credit" Thus the Enerstar E4 Carrier was born This was totally necessary because the E4 model is much better braced and capable of making the rigorous journey intact thanks to its increased bracing, batteries, and safety* features. The 4th generation also has the ability to dock with supply drops in order to get it out of areas with little to no ores. So far we haven't really found any areas that you would get stranded in, but we did spend tons of money making sure we wouldn't get stuck in one. More to come later as Crew-E3 makes their way south toward Sandoland to meed up with Bill delivering the E4 Ore-pod drop Passing the river south toward Enerstar-E4 FINALLY Bill hands off the Enerstar-E4 to the world-trip crew So that's the progress thus far. The next plan is to visit the pyramids.

My jet powered land train ran into a snag... or rather.. Shortly after I reached the north pole I realized there may be areas with no ore! So I added new parts to the design like a dock in back, more batteries, bracing, airbrakes etc The problem is, the "Around the World" team can't simply abandon their quest, and it's not FAIR to have a new team start again. The most logical solution is to strap wings to the new train and fly it across the sea, have Bill get out, then have the old team simply take the new improved model over. Getting this carrier ship right was kinda tricky though. It did straighten out when the chutes deployed. It landed fine.. now i just have to mine more ore to refill or drop supply boxes.

More updates on my long range expedition It'll climb a little over a 30 degree slope using 3 jet engines and the rover wheels combined Crossing the mountains northwest of KSC And lastly taking some time off at the west coast beach. I shoulda mined more ores while it was at 6% concentration! Hopefully I can make it to Sandoland. I also became aware you can repair rover wheels AFTER wasting a lot of time reloading saves... I also became aware my vehicle is amphibious completely by accident. Had I know, I'd have skipped all this nonsense and gone straight to the Sandoland deserts.

Made a land train to see how far I can crawl along the ground. It does like to turn left for some reason... and it also has a tendency to roll when I'm barreling along at over 80m/s. I've been sticking to around 60 or so with a time warp instead to save energy and time. It has a lot of redundancies and such. There's an anti-roll system but it doesn't really work that well. My goal is to get to sandoland, mine up some ore and refuel there and keep goin. The rover wheels are mostly for narrow turns and help reduce the 0-20 time, then i switch to jets and the main 'landing gear' since they go faster and are more durable.

An old creation of mine slightly updated for the latest patch. I added some ore bins but then they obstructed the hatch for the driving compartments... but at least the science module guys can get out. Oh well, there's always the next version. The landing was a bit of a nightmare. I ran out of fuel about 1000m up, the transfer stage became a crumplezone. But the station actually landed 100% intact. This is Gigas III

When are altitude meshes coming in to play? I started flying over the US and of course Florida is flat, but so is everything else.

If I could choose one thing... I'd do like a space ring around Kerbin at around 200km It'd be one that could produce ships already in orbit ready to go wherever.

One of the funnest ships I've ever made also it can do loop-da-loops

Improved my stunt jet to Doge mkIV More compact, more agile, more stronger.

Also. Unity Engine. My brother's company uses it too. It makes porting things between platforms insanely easy. You tweak stuff and alter a few things, but it's much easier than redoing the program.