Broco

Those "rescue XY from low Kerbin orbit" actually made me construct a lot of more and more efficient SSTOs. I know have a wide variety to choose from

There is something even better: CKAN But I agree, who needs achievements in KSP. If you need achievement to keep the game exciting for you you didn't get the idea of what the game is about.

You know that you can drag a rocket into the ground of the VAB? Just build your rocket from bottom to top. Take a remote guidance unit, build your segment, then add a new segment on top with a new guidance unit, reset root and remove the lower guidance unit. Rinse and repeat. OR: Build more efficient rockets :-)

I'm sorry if I got some things wrong here I'm not that deep into Unity, I just tried to find a general explanation. Just to make sure that I understand it correctly (correct me if I'm wrong): The Garbage Collector is automatically called when a certain amount of memory is used. SQUAD has no influence over this because it is called by the engine. If you reduce the allocation rate, the peak is reached much slower so the GC runs less often. A friend of mine who is using Unity a lot for some of his projects told me that one of the biggest causes for these rapid GC calls is when you instantiate and destroy a lot of objects because this causes a lot of garbage to be created. He said it makes more sense to instantiate most objects at the start of your game and enable/disable them. Only destroy them when the Game is closed. Also string concatenating seems to be a big issue. God I really wish KSP was Open Source (and no, this means not for free). I would love to try things out.

I don't really think this only effects a few people, I think most people got used to it and/or think it's caused by their hardware.

Pretty much this. I also made a short video to showcase this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq0Z2Up1_Uw Oh and thanks to @Padishar to filling me in to this problem.

Well I guess using some gravity assists to lift your orbit helps to save a bit of fuel. Yet again the timing window of the mission was pretty slim (~20 years) which seems like a lot but again, the orbit is very high and timing a gravity assist AND reach the ships orbit for the retrograde burn is very difficult: I basically just built a very big rocket No fancy science, just more explosives. This is the Kerbal way. I dont' need to mention that this mission is absolutely not cost efficient, you have to invest WAY more than you get out of it but on the other hand you get a Kerbal and hiring these little buggers gets more expensive with every Kerbal you get.

There are some types of contracts that are just horrible I had the mission "Recover Rosta Kerman from orbit of the sun". I thought "pfff easy peasy" and accepted. Then I checked her orbit and realized it was clockwise. 180° "inclination" Around the sun. This is a 1-star mission and it was one of the first 20 missions I accepted. It's 5 years later now and I'm about to reach her in 145 days. Took me 15.000 m/s ΔV so far.

Nuclear Engines are very bad for the orbit burn. They have a great specific impulse but very low thrust and a very high weight. As others said before, go with the Rapier engine for beginning, or a combination of Whiplash + Aerospike (2 each). You can build an SSTO purely with 1 Rapier engine, just dont add too much weight (aka fuel + passenger cabins...). A FL-T800 and a Mk1 Liquid fuel fuselage + a Rapier engine should do the trick. Don't forget wings and Intakes It takes a while till you figure it out but at some point you'll get bigger and bigger and then your framerate drops to 2 with stuff like this: Yes, this thing made it into orbit and it just took 1 hour This was 1.05 though.

I'm wondering why this thread is dead since January, since KSP 1.1 has been released. This means Unity 5 and this also means that you guys hoped in vain. The fun part is I didn't have this issue before 1.1 (or less frequent) and surprise surprise, I'm now in the club and since I didn't know better I posted my on thread on this issue: In the original thread @SessoSaidSo made I tried to explain a bit about the issue because I feel that most players think it has something to do with framerate or "how good your computer is". In fact it is sloppy programming. Yes I said it. I've been with KSP since the very early stages of the game. And I'm not bragging or exaggerating here, I just happened to search for a space sim shortly after Squad came up with their homepage and I was immediately drawn in and joined the forum in July 2011. I've played KSP every now and then with some bigger pauses in between. I was never much of a community person, I posted a few vessels and read some threads but generally I get put off by forums since nowadays most people tend to ignore most of written texts and respond only to parts of them, as seen when this issue comes into discussion, people who have NO idea about how programs work or what Garbage Collection is post things like "just buy a new graphics card" or "You're complaining about a truck stopping in the VAB? That's an animation.". By the way, he didn't mean the stop and go animation of the truck, he meant the small stutter after the truck starts. However, KSP was always buggy. Basically that was part of the fun of it in the beginning. The Kraken which meanwhile has its own whole family became an actual equally hated and beloved member of the KSP community, its even an easteregg now. That being said, these times are over now and KSP grew into a really beautiful game with countless possibilities. And countless loose ends that need to be fixed now. Yes, wheels have issues now and you're working on it but you can work around that by setting the friction to manual and 0. However, we cannot get rid of the stuttering or things like multi-part-bases getting ripped apart because the distance from the ground is measured by the root part and not by the part being closest to the ground. I tried to build a multipart mining station on Minmus and eventually gave up on it because I got too annoyed by having to edit my savegames. And it's pretty frustrating to lose hours upon hours of gameplay to a bug: Looks pretty decent? Well, If I press F5 and F9 it will explode because the big tanks are 5 centimetres lower than the lander capsule. KSP is no small community project anymore, it is a full priced AAA title now. Please dont make it a full priced EA-title. No new features until there are no more bugs. And stuttering every 5-10 seconds is a bug caused by sloppy programming and creating too much garbage, nothing else. This is not acceptable: Oh and no, this has nothing to do with the mods I use, this also happens in a blank install. I really love KSP, but I think I'm close to making a big break because in the current state it's no fun to play. Simple rule of programming: stability and performance > features.

I think I have to clarify what exactly is happening here again: The stuttering described by OP has NOTHING to do with the power of his hardware. I never had an issue with this since KSP moved to Unity 5 (1.1 that is) now I experience it, too. It's not the framerate, it was fine before 1.1 and is even BETTER now. The problem is the garbage collection (GC). Garbage collection is basically an automated function of the engine which searches your memory for data that is not used any more and deletes it. For example in games this means different models, variables, textures, etc. Usually a GC runs in the background and goes active in a specified interval or when a specific memory threshold is reached. The program itself doesn't call the GC in this case. However, you can also let the program call the GC. This makes sense in games like Skyrim, when you leave a cave fore example, then you don't need the textures of the cave in your memory anymore. Since leaving/entering a level requires a loading screen anyways the user/player won't notice anything anyways. However, in games like KSP where you have an entire planet to be rendered on the fly you have to constantly load and unload data. If I'm not wrong I think KSP calls the GC if you leave the proximity of a vessel for example (2.6km I think). There is no need to keep the models for all parts + textures + other stuff for that vessel in your memory because you're not close to it anyways. When you leave the proximity of a vessel you will experience a short stutter that is either the GC or the program itself unloading it from your memory to make space for new stuff. There is a mod for KSP (GCMonitor that shows you exactly when the GC becomes active: These ups and downs represent the used memory, these straight drops are when the GC cleans up and the stutters (it's like a hold for 0.2 seconds) occur at THIS EXACT moment. The thing is, OP isn't the only one to have pointed this out and when I stumbled upon this problem myself I did a search just to find out that this problem has been around for ages and affects thousands of players. To be honest, in this case I have to share OPs opinion that this is not a debateable problem, this really needs to be fixed asap and it's a shame that it has been around for so long. Oh and before you start talking about mods used, this also occurs in vanilla KSP for me, installing mods doesnt make the problem better or worse. I really love KSP and i've been playing it since 2011 but I'm also a programmer and there is one key rule of programming: Stability comes before features. Since KSP is now unity 5 and that means no major updates are coming, things like this or the wheels must be adressed. I wouldn't add any new feature before the basics are working. Oh and before you ask about my poor framerate: I had Dota running, too when I made this screenshot, my hardware is fine, thanks. Another thing to add: a GC is not a bad thing. It's needed to make sure unneeded data gets unloaded from your memory. A GC normally runs in the background and "parallel" to the software, which means it doesnt hold your regular program. In KSP however it seams that the GC pauses the game, collects the garbage and then resumes the game. This is no good behaviour, and I would really like to know what causes this since I didnt have the problem in 1.05 but others had. I didn't change my hardware in between btw.

I really dont see the correlation between too much garbage created by the game and the active contracts. I just leave it as it is, maybe it gets fixed, maybe not but I won't fiddle around with my saves for now.

Yeeee... not gonna happen I have around 50 active flights and some awesome missions and I wont sacrifice all of that just because of a little bit annoyance. I'll just deal with it and wait for a patch to fix it.

Pff easy answer. Run a 1000 part vessel with 120 fps.

Yep, definitely blind. I went to "edit profile" which doesnt have to much with the forum. Thanks though

Dammit, guess I just have to live with it. On the bright side, installing mods doesn't make it worse, it just stays the same. Though it's really funny because everyone else struggled with this in pre 1.1 where I had no problem at all (even with a ton of mods installed).

This may be a really dumb question and maybe i'm just blind, but where and how do I change my forum signature? The link in there doesn't work since about 2 years

Yep you're right, I just did as you said and got exactly the results you predicted. Is there any way to fix this? Again: It's not gamebreaking but it's damn annoying.

Just wanted to say thank you for this awesome mod. Keep up the great work. I feel so nerdy right now because of falling in love with the looks of a computer game.

I was really wondering that there is no mod for this. There are some mods that offer some kind of sorting but they are not very comfortable...

Hello, I would really, really love a feature to sort flights/vessels in the tracking station. In the VAB/SPH you have loads of groups and even a customizable folder (favourits) to drop your parts in. For the Tracking station a simple Folder system would be awesome, even just one hierarchy would be awesome. At least the ability to sort flights by name. I'm aware of the fact that you can hide or show vessels by type (lander, base, station etc.) but I'm now approaching 50 active missions and I find myself wasting a lot of time searching for specific flights or the most recent one that is about to enter a sphere of influence etc. I tried my best to make an example picture of what I mean plz don't laugh at my awful GIMP-Skills: What do you guys think? Little explanation: I didnt' add a button to toggle the folder view or a button to add new folders but I hope you still get the idea. Could be a rightclick menu also. Below the dotted line would be the missions that are not assigned to any group/folder (whatever you wanna call it). Have a nice day everyone!

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it's not gamebreaking or too bad, it's just irritating and a little bit annoying to be honest. I was just wondering because it wasn't the case before 1.1.

Hey everybody. Since 1.1 I have a weird issue that causes the game to "stutter" every 5 seconds or so. I searched on reddit and the forums and the only answers I found were mod-related. So I went and put my game back into vanilla state, just to be sure (only used EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements anyways) but the stuttering still occurs. Well it's not really stuttering, it feels like the game pauses for 1-2 frames every 5 seconds. It doesn't matter how big the vessel is, tried it with a small plane as well as with a 400 part behemoth, no difference, the stuttering occures regardless of the craft, position (I tested landed at runway, in flight at Kerbin and low Kerbin orbit and the Mun). Has anybody experienced the same issue and is there a known solution? Thanks in advance Broco

Ye you're right, I will just replace the tank section... The facility is on flat ground, I dont think another position would be suitable. It's kinda sad but thank you nevertheless .

Hey, thanks for your reply, though it takes a lot of hope away from me. I designed the whole base in a way that my big tanker (who has 4 big Kerbodyne tanks on him) can land on the platform - you see it in the background on the second picture - and refuel my orbital station so i have huge amounts of fuel always ready for my vessels at all times. Do you know how I have to edit the safe file in order to move the port? That would be my go-to solution for this since I really dont want to waste more time getting something to work that already worked. Else I will just dump the whole thing and build a new one without docking ports. I didnt build landing legs to save parts but I guess you're right about the fuel tanks and the IRSUs though I would like to have at least 2. Oh regarding the safegame file: I attached the part for the vessel in my post and I found out how to move docking ports but the problem is, if i move them it doesnt move the whole tank-section relative to the port it just moves the docking port so the other end is just connected to "nothing". How can I level out the whole tank section?