Immashift

-the number of objects under the "debris" tab at the tracking station Always 0-10. I clean up after every mission. I do delete stuff I don't want to see that has no further use. Anything with a Kerbal(s) gets recovered. -the number of Kerbals assigned on missions at the astronaut complex Currently 143. Many stations at many different bodies. At least one station at each celestial, if not more, along with ground bases, a grand tour vessel with 32 Kerbals on board, and various craft in lots of places. -the number of screenshots in your folder (from all versions of the game or only the latest, your choice) From all versions - 5603. That covers the two years I've had the game. Since it's mapped to a button that's easy to access, I tend to hit it whenever I do or see something interesting.

Interplanetary stuff will come with patience and time. Here's how I personally learned: I started with Mechjeb. I let it plot my interplanetary burns and all related stuff, things like transfer orbits, how to dock, everything. Then I actually watched EXACTLY what it did. Like, I would watch how it waited days and months before a transfer, and figured out that it was a required phase angle for minimizing fuel needed. I watched a docking autopilot dock with my space station, and learned which markers to point at to do what. Then when I went for manual missions, I packed piles of fuel. I would Google estimated DV for something like a Duna mission, then double it, and that's what I would design for initially. This allowed me to make extremely sloppy missions early on. Missions where I end up hyperbolic and need buttloads of m/s to slow down to a usable level. After that, I refined things. I learned how to set up my destination periapsis from the moment I started my mission, rather than trying to as I scream past my target at some ridiculous speed. The hardest parts to grasp about interplanetary missions is the phase angles, the inclinations (start with something inclined close to Kerbin, don't start by trying to go to Moho), and maybe figuring out how much DV your craft has when fully packed together ready for a mission. Going from Kerbol orbit to a planet in the system is much like going from Kerbin to the Mun, only the distances are far greater, and the requirements of your craft are more grand. I initially started by slinging myself out into interplanetary space and then trying to get somewhere from there. I found that I could apply what I knew about meeting up with my space station to meeting up with another planet. If you really can't get an intercept with anything close, try Jool. It has a HUUUUUGE SOI, and is probably by far the easiest to get a capture at, if you're having difficulty. I first went to EVE, then Duna, then Moho, then the rest. The most amusing though was the first week I had the game, trying to dock stuff in orbit. I'd fumble around, and it'd look like some sort of weird mating ritual as my ships danced around each other, blowing through RCS fuel... of course, I had no concept of relative velocities at the time. I even managed to smash some ships into each other, because I thought burning directly at them would do, if I went fast enough. Eventually I figured it all out, and now things like interplanetary burns, or docking something huge and unwieldy on the night side of Kerbin are rather easy at this point, without any sort of aid. It all comes in time. Don't push yourself to get a Duna mission if you just can't swing it yet. Keep doing mun stuff, throw in minmus, transfer between them (very much like transferring interplanetary), and then try to apply what you learn from it to other missions.

I like this idea. I too would use ground crews and more ACTUALLY reusable (as opposed to recovering once landed and going "good enough") craft. The problem with me, like so many others, is the lag involved when doing such things. It's why I have around 10 small space stations up at various altitudes rather than one enormous one because of how bad lag gets for me when I have >300 parts or so. The idea of a hangar which would be more or less a box of crafts that don't actually get loaded unless specifically asked to, is really cool. Sort of like a garage you'd drive your fuel truck or whatever into, and then it is saved and unloaded. Select hangar empty-handed and you get a list of stuff you've parked there. Select something, and it spawns in the hangar under your control, exactly as it was left. While we're on that sort of idea, I'd love a way to refuel stuff WITHOUT spawning tanks with docking ports on runways. Sort of like a permanent fixture somewhere near the launchpad I could drive a truck up to, perhaps dock with a special part, and have it refuel all LFO tanks on the craft. Or perhaps integrate that into the UI of the hangar idea. This is just all conjecture of course, but I love the idea.

The fun part about my ginormous lander is it doesn't actually need a huge tug or transport AT ALL. It is its own transportation. The rig I screenshotted there is now orbiting minmus acting as a mass fuel depot. I equipped it with at least 2 of each docking port type so pretty much anything can draw fuel from it. It's powered by I believe 5 (been a while since I've flown it) of the NovaPunch nuclear engines, each provides 300kN of thrust (a ton for a nuclear engine). I've landed it on the Mun, Minmus, and Ike. I also use it as a sort of cargo ferry for stuff going interplanetary. It has about 10k ÃŽâ€v on its own engines, and it's towed many stations and things out to various planets/moons, but the lander itself is restricted to stuff with Mun gravity or less. It could probably do a bit heavier gravity, but it's sort of hard to land it on something big, simply because this thing has like a kiloton of mass when fully fueled. Landing it on Minmus/Mun is easy though. I made the landing base as wide as possible for that reason. Idea is to have it in orbit as a depot, run it down to bare minimum fuel to land, then refuel and take off to be a depot again. You spend a TINY amount of fuel getting off of minmus due to the low gravity, so that's why it's there right now. It could do with a little refining.. the fuel lines are messy and I could have made it look a bit more interesting, but it works fine for what I designed it for. I specifically designed it for minmus as a Kerbin-SOI fuel stop, as I'm really big on reusable craft. Why send up a new mission when that ship that just went to Duna can pick up some fuel and fly off to Jool? Speaking of reusables... here's my most recent grand tour design. Wasn't happy with how little fuel my last one had and how much the lander could store vs burned to ascend, so I redesigned the whole thing - (click for full size) I wanted something somewhat interesting to dock, cause I love IVA docking, so I recessed the port up quite a ways, and used the offset B9 port pair, so you have to kinda thread the needle Aerobraking from Moho -> EVE orbit. This thing had SO MUCH fuel left I could have brute force burned my way into orbit and had enough left for Duna, but I like aerobraking Bear in mind my readout doesn't factor in the lander's fuel supply, which it doesn't need 90% of, so the ÃŽâ€v is off on it. Landed the entire craft at Gilly - took like 20 min to actually get down to the surface @ x4 time accel...

Nice setup! I tried the separate vehicles for each purpose, then decided this was easier. Why do 3 different landers/parts with each doing one thing, when I can make a space tanker that can land and drill, as well as convert?

^. Designed grand tour ship... Took it to the Mun, landed Kethane lander.... on a deposit... extend drills.. no Kethane. Huh.. odd. Apparently the drills got their colliders or something changed since I started designing that craft and they no longer actually connected with the surface, contrary to the visual effect. So I got to redisign the whole lander to get them lower, drive it all the way to the mun, park it 30 feet from the other lander, and transfer crews, cause no way am I taking a grand tour WITHOUT Bill, Jeb and Bob. So now I'm wondering what the SMALLEST tylo capable kethane lander I can design is. Like I want a 1man kethane lander with ~2.5k ÃŽâ€v using no bigger than LVT-30s. I have a mainsail one that's a single stage to orbit on Kerbin that works fine for it, but I wanna go smaller

Far as I know the converter needs to be in the same stack as a tank to fill it. You can also use fuel lines routed FROM the tank TO the converter. Yes you read that right. The converter works by using negative fuel, so lines need to go TO it. Docking ports will allow fuel transfer from the converter. I doubt the KAS lines will do what you want though. I'd be safe and put a small tank on the converter anyway. Or you can separate the drill and Kethane storage by KAS lines, as like monoprop fuel, Kethane doesn't need to be routed. The way I did it was I stuck a tiny oscarb tank on the converter and used the TAC fuel balancer mod to constantly pump fuel around so it would fill all the tanks through the KAS lines. At this point I use TAC for ALL my fuel routing. I don't add lines to anything any more as it can give you spin or weird momentum when you don't want it (like transferring large amounts of fuel from one side of a giant station to another). TAC balances fuel at up to 10x normal piping speed, so unless you're running like a silly amount of mainsails in some extremely weird configuration TAC will balance as you fly.

Holy part count batman. Nice design. I've always loved super utility designs that can do tons of things depending what you attach. My only worry is that if used on a base or something that already has an iffy number of parts, this thing will destroy framerate. The rover itself seems relatively light on parts but some things like your kethane attachments seem to have obscene numbers of largely useless ports and KAS nodes, but perhaps it's just me.

*Me shakes his head in awe of someone who hasn't seen that movie. Go watch it. Right now. Not a bad VTOL... One of the problems I kept having with my own (which was an SSTO designed with a kethane mining rover inside) was that the rover inside the cargo bay had a hard time getting on and off the ramp of the plane. It was like the ramp was made of ice - rover kept slipping around coming off the ramp before I could get it up into the plane.

I would wish for more reason for me to build bases on other bodies. Kethane is a good example. The resource system planned would do this even better. Other than that? Interstellar voyages. Perhaps another star somewhere. Think of the possibilities that could be opened with an expanded universe. Especially now since the game can selectively load only what you're actually interacting with. Granted, we'll see a lot of stuff before that is even considered, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. If there were another star, I'd have to go to it. I like the IonCross life support mod as well. I can imagine trying to pack enough supplies for a voyage to another system... Fun Yes, I realize the decades/centuries the journey would take, and how many days of time acceleration it'd take as the game is now, but hey it's still a thought.

Sony Vegas is a good option. There's versions available for $45 all the way up to $900. Unfortunately for anything decent, you're looking at money. I will say that things like Movie Maker (lol) CAN do okay stuff, with good settings and source video. You need to set your recording and game resolution to the same thing, preferably something 16:9, so you don't get the bars on the sides, and possibly get a better mic. Built in mics don't have much space to work with, and so they tend to crack and sound tinny. I'm actually using Open Broadcaster to record my gameplay. Records in 1080p (or more), from virtually any source, and you can set all your recording options, including things like bitrate. It's also freeware. Only downside to it is you need a decent CPU to use it at any good framerate, so if your computer isn't all that, you may have issues. Also, welcome to the game If you need ideas for ships and missions, there's piles of stuff here on the forums.

Probably so he doesn't have to attach a line with an actual Kerbal. Stuff takes time when you have to do it a hundred times. I found that out with my robotic drill rig and cargo lander. Kerbal would have to walk between them each time and string the KAS line. Led to me condemning a poor Kerbal in a tiny lander to sit there forever and man the Kethane site.. A guy a few posts up has images that don't work (dropbox doesn't like hotlinking). I found quoting him shows the links, so I've put the images somewhere that works. I'm gonna fix it so the images show. That is the ONLY reason I'm quoting its entirety: Your ship looks quite like my grand tour vessel - this one unfortunately only had about 4k ÃŽâ€v: And its successor, with closer to 14k ÃŽâ€v when full, aerobraking to orbit around Eve. If I can't land on things, I shall at least have a stable orbit around everything I can't land on

Made this: Whether it shall fly or not... I have yet to test. I foresee a bunch of spinning directly after takeoff. EDIT: Huh... better than I thought. Confused this actually worked.

Aeris 3A stock SSTO Explanation and .craft available in my thread.

First off, @Rune - AWESOME! Much better than mine lol, I can tell just by looking at the images. You clearly spent more time on it than the ~20 min I did. My apologies, the m/s was my misunderstanding. I thought he meant it can hit 3800m/s in atmo flight. I was like *whut*. DV is much better. Just used to seeing people read out their planes' capabilities in atmo more than anything. My fault. I'm sure I missed one or two things. Told you mine was made in Japan lol. I compensated for that till I was satisfied though. Good to give people options though. Hell check both of our knock-offs out and see what you like better. @Rune - Gonna shamelessly self-promote my new thread. I love your SSTO designs, and I made an itty bitty one out of the Aeris: Forum Link You know what this entire design reminds me of? This:

So I set about creating an SSTO from the Aeris 3A - the plane nobody expects anything from, and the one only ever used to Buzz the various KSC buildings. I don't consider it too huge an achievement because of how well it turned out, but may I present this: All images clickable for fullsize I wanted to stay as true to the stock design as the original Aeris, but have it be a functional, viable SSTO. It retains all of the Aeris' maneuverability - still takes off WELL BEFORE the end of the runway: Can still do all the aerial acrobatics the stock aeris is known for too! Here's a picture of the underside: And here's the obligatory orbit shot: The vessel comes in at 6 tons and 35 parts (lolololol). Great for crappy computers. Also note it has RCS and a monoprop tank for docking with, as well as a Jr. port on the underside. Also, the landing gear lights can function as docking lights! Action Groups: 1: Turbos 2: LV-909s 3: Turbos/LVs/Intakes (all in one *I want to go to orbit now* button). 4: Just intakes Flight profile: 1: hit 1 for turbo activation, push full throttle, and pull off the runway as soon as you can. 2: Pitch to 45 degrees and lock it with SAS 3: Phyiscs warp (yup) as fast as you're comfortable with (craft can handle 4x) to 18km up (yes that far up). 4: pitch down to 15 degrees. 5: accelerate like nuts to about 1700m/s, pitch up as necessary so pro-grade vector doesn't go below horizon. 6: At roughly 1700m/s and as high as you can get it, hit 3 to convert from atmo flight to space flight mode, and immediately pitch to 45 degrees. 7: Hold 45 degree pitch till you reach desired apoapsis, then cut throttle and coast to apoapsis (touch it up as necessary till out of atmosphere - yeah it accelerates that fast). 8: circularize at apoapsis (durr).... You should have over 500m/s to mess around with once in orbit. .CRAFT FILE Note this does not come with MechJeb plugin or part, which was only used for precise testing purposes. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2gU8i82Ok0VZV9UMF9MZnhpTVE/edit?usp=sharing Enjoy.

I looked at the image, went "wut?", looked down, and lol'd. Hard. Personally I attempted to make a jumbo jet SSTO with the B9 pack... Yeah... didn't quite work so well.

First off, I care not if you use it or not. I do. I use it mainly for readouts. I like its display customization. After I've done a refueling trip to my station a few dozen times or my hundredth mun injection or Duna transfer, I don't care to do it again manually. I WILL use ascent autopilot for mundane things, I will use the maneuver planner for things I have done dozens of times to save myself the time of dragging on nodes till it's the way I want. If I'm doing something for the very first time, like my first few landings on each planet, I'll always do it manually. Afterwards, the thrill of accomplishment wears off and I just want to be on my way doing the next thing. I also find it good for having a reliable way to design a craft. It can cut down on a lot of the human errors when for example testing fuel limits on SSTOs. It can also be used as a teaching tool. I remember when I was new I used ORDA to dock cause I kept flying by what I was aiming for, not understanding the navball markers. Through using autopilots, and watching what they do when, I got a general sense of how to fly successfully, and refined the technique from there. I would caution against using it all the time for everything, as that can lead to complacency. I have a fully stock install, and a mod heavy install. I will 100% say trying to do things with a pure stock install after having done the same thing with my mod heavy install, is a lot harder. To me the game isn't a bloody competition. I am not necessarily better for using or not using it than the next guy. I really, really don't care one way or the other. My .02

Excellent quality tutorial. Did help with how my SSTOs have a runway wobble problem, although part of it sometimes is lack of struts which induces the wheels not being straight, especially once the lift starts pressing on the craft during takeoff. I tend to dislike the airhogging a lot of people do. I find about 3 rams / turbojet MUCH more than enough to take off of Kerbin and Laythe. My own favorite design uses 3 per engine, with a modular rocket engine design which uses docking ports to switch around engines after getting to orbit. Hell the stock Aeris 4a uses 1 ram intake per engine and a few radials and it still climbs to orbit relatively easily. Although if you're looking to save every drop of fuel, nukes and airhogging is the way to go, I just think it looks terrible. I was however impressed with how little you had to use your nuke. I'm used to switching to rocket around 34km up at maybe 1700-1900m/s. Seeing all that fuel left on yours was interesting.

You sneaky.... sneaky man. Here I thought you were using jets and extremely epic throttle control or something...

But no, nice design. I suppose you waste some thrust early on using the turbos aimed inward like that though. Your fuel values in the images... are they after orbit or after return?

Wat. Please, please share the craft for that. Also, reminded me of: Now all we need is a Jackie Kerman to waterskii behind it...

You're using mods here so I'll suggest a really useful one - TAC fuel balancer. It can, in real time on its own, balance all fuel tanks in your craft, as well as lock particular ones from draining, among other things. It's extremely useful when you have a finely balanced plane. Also note: Your Center of lift should be slighty behind the center of mass. Too far forward and it will flip out at the slightest touch of the controls, too far back, and your plane will either not want to respond to controls, or will nosedive constantly. I usually get the best results by having the center of lift indicator sort of half inside the upper rear of the center of mass indicator.

Part clipping trickery. It's 6 kerbals, to the original design's 4. Aim your camera to the nose of the craft so you're looking straight at the docking port. Like so: Now scroll your wheel up slowly. You should go through the nose of the craft and eventually see where I've hidden them. Here is another image with a better perspective of where the seats are located: You can do this in space to bring kerbals home with the right click -> Board option. I honestly only added them because the original had them sneakily placed. Apparently the inside of a fuel tank is a safe environment for kerbals. Honestly 3/4ths of this design is clipping into the other quarter. There are a number of lift surfaces for example that are inside other parts. Otherwise this design would never fly. Interestingly even though in reality no air would be hitting it, they still give lift in-game. I expect if the game's aerodynamics model is ever proper, this design would fly about as well as a brick. If you're feeling extra awesome, and Jeb is your pilot, add a seat here and fly it to orbit in IVA view

FIXED. Please redownload from link in my above post. It is an all-stock craft now. My apologies. That winglet looked so close to stock... I really shoulda done it with my stock install. Who bloody knew NovaPunch has plane parts...