Exclipse

Well the devs said they want to steer in the direction of making the game feature complete, and not adding new content. So this means polishing what has been started. And well... they did add the career mode button, so I am hopefull.

Careermode.

Planetary Certifications! Once your craft has been proven on Kerbin you can request that it be certified for use on other planets. To do this you must submit it with a platform capable of taking it to said planets, return not required, only a bonus. Once your craft is proven on said planets it will recieve the badge for operation on said planets. Currently you can submit for Eve, Duna or Laythe.

SPACE PLANE CERTIFICATION AND PROVING GROUNDS Ever wanted a page where you could look up the best aircraft for eradicting rocks from the Duna surface. Ever felt like taking a Bomber up and just letting stuff go above KSC? Well here at the Spaceplane Certification and Prooving Grounds (SCPG) we aim to put together a listing of all the best aircraft, and not so great ones, test them out and give them ratings so you can find the craft that you want! So here is how this works, below is a listing of three aircraft types, each aircraft has certain grading points. Grades are out of a 10 point scale, and the leader of that grading point will set the bar for what a 10 is. So if Bill Kerman has a plane that can carry 100 Tons of bombs and KerbaClause gifts in his Snowsleigh craft and currently had a score of 10/10 and then Jeb comes and releases his Grinchhat bomber that carries 200 Tons of bombs and coal, then Bill's score will be reset to 5/10 and Jeb will lead with a score of 10/10. Easy enough right? Well there is a little more to it. Obviously there are several grading points so your ships overal score is made up out of all the points together. The top 5 of each class will get highlighted in this main post, and the top of each grading point will be highlighted next to the grading point. -RULES- 1. Only stock submissions! 2. Modifying stock parts is not allowed! 3. When submiting your craft you need to submit with: 1 or 2 sexy photos of it, 1 craft file, video optional. 4. Each craft will be heavily tested by myself and others, so if you cheated we will know 5. You can submit your craft for as many classes as you like, but being a jack of all trades does not get you extra points 6. Crafts can be submited for certificatioins on other planets shortly 7. Rules are subject to change. -Top 5 Bombers- unclaimed -Top 5 Interceptors- unclaimed -Top 5 Fighters- Narvi (55/60) - Exclipse Bomber: -Thust/Lift efficieny- Unclaimed (no score) -Payload- Unclaimed (no score) -Range- Unclaimed (no score) -Cool factor- Unclaimed (no score) Strike: -Time on Target- Unclaimed (no score) -Weight- Unclaimed (no score) -Payload- Unclaimed (no score) -Cool Factor- Unclaimed (no score) Fighter: -Manuverability- Narvi (Very High) -Payload- Narvi (2x2 Rockets (2.5T)) -Time to combative- Narvi (14 seconds) -Weight- Narvi (10T) -Accuracy- Narvi (Moderate 7/10) -Cool Factor- Narvi (8/10) -Definitions of grading points- -Thust/Lift efficieny- How efficient is your aircraft? Does it rely on it's wings to burn little fuel while traveling? -Payload- How much ordinance can your aircraft carry? Ordinance is detacheable bombs/rockets/missiles. Fuel tanks that are not full do not count, so if you have bombs built from fuel tanks, but your plane also burns the fuel from them they are disqualified, these are drop tanks. Post total weight as well as number of bombs/rockets/missiles. -Range- How far can your travel from your start point and still return? -Cool factor- Is your plane badass? Or does it look like Jeb was let lose in the hangar? -Time on Target- How quickly can your aircraft reach the target (currently Island east of KSC at an altitude of 1000M) -Weight- People like to be able to put these things into space and take them on vaction, keep the weight down so we don't spend a krillion on fuel going to Laythe! -Manuverability- Is your aircraft a wascally wabbit? Or more of an air walrus? -Time to combative- How quickly can your aircraft get into the air from a full stop on the runway and be fully manuverable at 500m or higher? -Accuracy- Do those rockets stapled to your aircraft hit you in the tail pipe or can you hit Jebs eye from orbit? -In Testing- Polar Express - Markus Reese Vindicator - Markus Reese vampire mk 3 - toxictalon74

It is Vall taken from Laythe's atmosphere obviously. Also people are being a bit silly. It was stated that everything you have come up with are graphical bugs, and if that is not enough from you... coming from a dev... the pyramids on north/south poles of planets and moons happens throughout the system. There is nothing special about them. My opinion? The "pyramid" if you want to call it that is a freaking space ship, it either came from kerbin and landed at Duna, or originated at Duna and is headed to Kerbin. And the 3 other circles represent the other planets in the system.

Jet engines (airbreathers) are a waste of weight on Eve. Use the small 50 thruster rocket engines.

Why bother with rendezvous... everyone knows this can be done easy enough. The challenge is one rocket, One.

Eve, is somewhat difficult. Duna is a piece of cake though. I have an spaceplane with outstanding performance on Duna that can land from orbit fly around, shoot some rockets and then go back up to orbit. Spaceplanes are the ideal way of lifting off of Eve as well/most efficient, however not time efficient. To go from surface to atmosphere fall off on eve took me hours with my spaceplane, and that was using some time compression. After reaching orbit I did have plenty of fuel to return to Kerbin though.

Jet engines "work" on any planet with atmosphere. From what I have found they only produce thrust on Kerbin though.

Would like to have the ability to turn off any engine, not just jet engines.

Easiest way it parachutes The fastest acceleration tool ever.

The devs did a great job actually. Gas giants are so large that their gravity turns gas into a solid, this means you will have a very smooth transition down to the "surface" but when you approach this point or reach it the pressure will be so great that everything would be crushed and compacted. While in realy life you would probably not have explosions because the pressure being so high, things would be completely destroyed.

The reaon I say it needs extra thrust is because I think currently it is over powered with how light it is. It should be harder to get into space but better once there. Right now it is to easy to use. Even with 40 extra thrust it is not even half the thrust of the other standard engines...

Here are my observations. Duna: -Powered landing is not actually required, you can glide in with the right wing set up. Parachutes can also be used. -Air-breathing jets, no. I tried them got a max of .5 efficiency, but even with that they did not seem to produce thrust. My glider did not even fidget with them at max throttle. -Nuclear engines work well on Duna, even at ground level you will be around 700 impulse. Eve: -Atmosphere starts at about 80km -Best to use a plane/glider with smaller wings here for getting to the ground. Use dihedral angled wings to keep your craft orientated properly. -I have not tried jet engines, I have found the small .5T 50 thrust Liquid engines work very well here. {Gilly: -Bugged surface. Jool: -Air-breathing jets work in Jool's atmosphere -When you "land" on Jool you are not actually on the "Surface" you have reached the point where the density is so high that the gases in the atmosphere become so thick that they are near solids, they game seems to freak out when calculating the density and this causes everything to break. {Laythe: -The gravity is similar to Kerbin's, maybe a little higher -The atmosphere is about half that of kerbin's, maybe a little less, so using aircraft is very difficult unless they have huge wingspans and very large control surfaces. -Air-breathing jets work

The engine is a great addition, if they tweak it I hope they keep it's efficiency the same. But give it 40 extra thrust and add 2T of weight.

Find out when I get off work I have a specially built spaceplane that I got into orbit around eve earlier. It was designed to be able to land on Eve(the easy part) explore a bit and then take off. I will post the results in 8 hours when I get back from work.

Who cares if everyone who ever played KSP does this. His post was funny.

Just because I can:

Hello all, Just a little showcase of the Pheos Enhanced Mobility Explorer Vehicle. (ALL STOCK) No mods, no mech jeb. Still flies like a peach. Capable of: -Advanced hover maneuvers and forward flight on Munar low gravity zero atmosphere environments. -Smooth flight on planetary bodies by swapping the rear thrust-er with an atmospheric jet. -Easily capable of "Brute Forcing" to the Mun and Minmus, with plenty of fuel to spare for return to Kerbin or follow on to other Munar bodies. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think. Have other vehicles I may show.

There is no point to this competition, rockets are even easier to SSTO to the Mun and back than space planes. He could move his file over to the VAB and launch it vertically if he wanted. BAM rocket.

Kinda on the same thought thread.... Anyone tried this setup before?

Depends, as Venus which Eve is modeled after does have an atmosphere the jet engines would work in. Only a portion of it though. I believe it is 50km to 70km above the surface that venus has an "earth breathable" atmosphere. Of course above that your engines won't get the oxygen they need and below that the air would be to hot/high pressure/wrong gases.

I don't think updates affect your current save game. However this one adding new planets might be different.

Have not downloaded it and I do not plan to. I have much more fun with the challenge of of doing everything manually.

Deployed GuardianSat Headed to the Mun with Pheona Planetary Explorer-1