georgTF

Well... everything shown so far is either heavy or very heavy rover territory. Medium (imo) would be a single crew rover with a reasonable amount of fuel, power, parts, science, etc. Small is anything that is either unmanned and lightweight or bare-bones 1 crew stuff. In a way, if it requires finnicky building and landing assistance, it's pretty much certainly heavy/large

Wow, those pop up/down menu bugs are vicious. That's for the "are the devs playing their own game" category. My peeves are the same as the ones previously mentioned (read the whole thread). The VAB/SPH quirks elevate beyond peeves into nervous breakdown territory. But the most persistant, annoying and debilitating annoyance hasn't been mentioned directly. Planes arbitrarily deciding to veer off to the left, other times to the right, then being possesed. I avoid clipping and feeding them after midnight but still they do this. No idea which side the next one will want to veer off to... EDIT - Still love and play the game, just seriously rage at times. Mostly when building. Better visuals and more career options can go to hell, i'd much rather have building tools that work, map/nodes that are polished and planes that fly straight. The game can be in wireframe for all i care...

For large rovers i like to build a (disposable) lander engine into it and attach ballast to fix the CoM position. Smaller rovers get a skycrane.

1 intake per engine +1 extra in case there's room at the tip of the plane. That isn't airhogging, it also isn't going to acomplish much. I normaly add several radial intakes because they make high athmospheric flight easier (or possible), and save rocket fuel. I am not bothered by this airhogging too much, though it also depends on what type of craft i'm building. I do not use LKO, and don't really have much patience for athmospheric flight. My planes are either suborbital hoppers, or spaceplanes servicing a space station in a 500k orbit. If a spaceplane is built for LKO it shouldn't need to airhog, but if you expect to ferry 3+ kerbals to a 500k rendezvous, then you will need some, and should not feel too bad about it, since the target is much higher than normal LKO orbits. Correction... i thought airhogging was neccesary but it turns out it's not. This heavy SSTO shocked me when it went there during a quick test flight expected to be reverted shortly after a fireworks display on the runway... I've lucked into a very nice design. All stock, no airhogging whatsoever, and the only thing clipped is the cockpit inside the nose cone. It's actually attached to a radial attachment node and the game is cool with it without debugging. In case you're wondering, it was done to move the CoM forward without reworking the plane too much, since CoL cannot move further back. Sorry, for the longwinded post.

Hello everyone. I've been streaming for a little over a month now and it's something i enjoy quite a lot. Kerbal isn't the only game i stream but it's one of the usual suspects along with Faster Than Light. You can read about my streaming interests on the channel page if you're interested. I don't have a set schedule, because i'm not sure i could stick to one. Usually i go live around 21:00 CET (UTC+1) but other times are also possible. Maybe in the future i actually settle on a fixed schedule, but for now it's not really possible. Back to KSP. I'm not the greatest player/builder, or even a very good one. I suck hillariously with anything that has wings. But i try to have a good time doing silly things or just basic Kerbal stuff. Drop by, say hi, ask questions or facepalm as i do what i do. I typically stick to Kerbin and it's moons because it takes too long to fail somewhere else. And i guess i wouldn't know how to begin. And because i <3 Minmus. The space program is entirely stock (nothing wrong with mods) except Subassembly, and i don't clip or airhog. Because "easy" although sometimes clever. Also, all missions are manned missions except rescue craft for obvious reasons. Kerbals want to see stars and besides, it's called Kerbal Space Program not AI Probe Core Space Program. So that's that. Come visit, and if you like what you see, come visit some more. http://www.twitch.tv/frumple1 NOTE - Due to my limited upstream internet speed, the visual quality is generally below Twitch average. Nothing i can do about that as i alreadt hit approx. 111% of the national average. Maybe with time upstream imporves, maybe. I leave you with a screenshot of my latest, greatest, heaviest and most pointless contraption ever. The Mainsnail Mountain, the core of which is currently orbiting Kerbin in a swank 100k orbit. Hail to the Mainsail! It's pretty big, so worth some props at least. Construction, testing(fireworks), and final lift are available in the Highlights/Past Broadcasts section of the profile. http://www.twitch.tv/frumple1/profile Hope you have a good time and thanks for visiting. -frumple

What about Power Management? Are you set in some power saving mode? Or maybe some performance options are limited. That would keep apps from taxing the CPU to the limit.

The highest part count i launched was around 1100 parts, but it was nearly unplayable. Below 300 is smooth sailing while above depends. Droping stages during ascent helps obviously. The IGP isn't alone in crunching numbers, size and speed of memory, HDD fragmentation, other apps and processes runinng can hurt performance. I have 8 Gb of decent-at-best RAM but also the i5 3570k CPU which according to this comparison is slightly faster (since KSP does not use more than one core, the core differences are moot) and KSP likes raw power. Also note tha base frequency disparity between the two HD4000 series chips. I do not alter the clock, there's no need.

Brilliant! Love the video, excellent craft. Great stuff!

I use the HD4000 and i have no complaints. I'm not a heavy gamer so using this saves me the trouble of coughing up for a dedicated gfx card. It gets a bit noisy at times, and a dedicated gfx card would improve most games but it would have to be a >100 euro purchase to make a noticeable difference. As far as KSP goes, it runs nicely and all other (few) games i play look beautifull and run smooth. The weaker HD IGPs are not such a great choice but HD4000 is ok. It's an underrated chip.

Call it a feature. The wheels will behave according to their placement at least as far as steering goes. You'll have to place them correctly to get them to work. If you want extra stability widen and lengthen the vehicle (using structural pieces for example), then the CoM can be slightly higher without causing ill effects. PS - I'd rotate the OCTO core to point forward, so that you have more use of the navball.

You really want to have as few parts as possible. The station looks good though.

Hmm, it probably is related to parts tugging against each other, even without deliberate part clipping. All of my problematic craft either had things crammed inside other parts (usually i'd hide the probe core or battery ring) or lazily connected struts. "Clean" designs never experienced such problems. I also managed to bork a docking port by stashing junk inside it. Not only was there phantom spin, i also couldn't get the undock/decouple node options to show up.

Sadly i have suffered my fuel depot picking up rotation very quickly and becoming insanely difficult to dock with. Even when i kill rotation by quickly engaging/disengaging time warp, my depot starts spinning again. Far too much to be a side effect of orbiting... In fact, after killing rotation with timewarping, i notice "gravity" slightly tugging the craft and spinning it up. It then continues until i can't chase the docking port anymore. It may be a consequence of unintentional clipping. One depot certainly did have a probe core attached inside a large ASAS so that may be the problem. One other thing i've noticed is the altitude. Orbiting the Mun at 15km was much worse than 45km. Any idea why? It may be gravity or orbit, but really that sort of thing should not happen at all. It's really miserable to have to lug a huge pile of space crap into a proper orbit, only to find that it's nigh on impossible to dock with it.

If you can't adjust the orbit of one ship, split the difference and have both adjust their orbit. Have them both head west for example. It should be cheaper to burn normal/anti-normal if you are further away from the body you are orbiting, unless i got that wrong.

Hmm, i'm not sure this will anwser your question. Try attaching a radial attachment part (the one that looks like a broken docking port and is described as such) to a girder first. Then you can attach stuff to it easily, esp ram intakes.

In my opinion: Stick a fuel depot in a 250-400km orbit around Kerbin. It's high enough so it's easy to intercept by going over or under, and you're not limited when timewarping. It also doesn't take too much fuel to reach and refuel the depot. As someone who has a fuel depot orbiting Minmus i can tell you that it does help escape Kerbin SOI with almost full tanks, BUT that is only ever usefull if you're sending a fuel tanker to another planet. Reaching Minmus requires ~1000 dV and that goes for every ship delivering fuel there as well (unless you mine Kethane). For most interplanetary travel it would be simpler to embark from a Kerbin station rather than a Minmus one.

Actually there is another downside besides high fuel use. The thrust is actually high enough to be a problem. Your rocket will have to be sturdy to withstand such punishing acceleration. Of course .20 intorduces the Skipper which is neatly between the Mainsail and Poodle, so that may actually be the best choice.

Why no love for the Mainsail? Sure it's less efficient, but as was mentioned, going to Mun or Minmus doesn't really require that much delicacy or precision. A heavy load greatly benefits from that huge thrust. I have allways used a single Mainsail to ascend to Minmus. After delivering payload, the lifter descends back to Kerbin and burns up in re-entry. The only exception was a heavy fuel depot that used a nuke cluster. With some fiddleing it's possible to position 4 nukes around a centrally mounted one without clipping. 5 nukes are almost bearable during burns, but i wouldn't bother unless it's a fuel ship.

I use sets of cubic struts and link them together. Typically 4 or 6 cubes on a large tank. It's important to link fuel tanks if Mainsails are going to be pushing because their thrust is intense. Wobbly rockets also waste fuel correcting so it's allways a good idea to secure things. In the screenshot below, the sets of two orange tanks are well connected as is the large RCS tank because it would be the weak link. The outer droptanks are also secured with several connections as radial decouplers are fairly weak. If you're not sure what or where to strut, launch and examine the rocket. Once you see what lacks stability end flight and go back to VAB. If you add rigidity by strutting things near the bottom section of a rocket, usually the parts higher up will begin to wobble. Ideally you strut the whole thing together nicely bottom to top. Part count is fairly meaningless if you'll be dropping tanks as you ascend. The payloads come in all shapes and sizes and since undocking or otherwise separating breaks links, you can go nuts. You want minimum flex and no breakage. If you achieve that further strutting is pointless. So it's less of an art of strutting, and more of an art of studying and testing the rocket as it ascends. That is not to say that moar struts is a fallacy... oh no. Segue into a fairly ridiculous screenshot of a messy payload being launched: Because i need that many satellites. Yes, need... Actually i can't remeber what it was for, it's just a weird looking payload i apparently launched.

It looks pretty awesome. But how well will it do on airless worlds? Any tests?

As others have mentioned. You cannot overestimate the benefit of wide track, wide base and low CoG. Even then the most dangerous situation is one where you bounce off the ground at an angle. That will lead to landing on one wheel at high speed and you can kiss it good bye then. You can still steer the rover as if it were a plane/heli, this way you can sometimes recover and land on all wheels. If you feel adventurous you could add 4 orange radial engines (and balance them) so if you get badly airborne, burn for altitude, level the rover, kill horizontal velocity and descend. Like i said, adventurous. But great for skipping around Minmus. Most of my rovers were crap, only two are used regularly and one is a heavy tanker. Here's the other one. It does well enough. Yea, it looks like junk i know, i'm not competent enough to build them both pretty and usefull. I also like to drive over the launchpad and runway at speed just to see what kind of impact it can take. Better to know ahead of time. Good luck.

You can allways reduce engine thrust once you're almost done with the burn. Do the last 10-20 m/s with minimal thrust if you have a powerfull engine. It will take a few extra seconds, but you will still nail it. Getting the correct amount of delta v is all that matters. At worst you will waste a little fuel, but with minimal thrust that's not really going to be an issue.

1. I think if you punch it for a really high Ap, you'll have less gravity to deal with when raising Pe. That said, the orbit would have to be really high, i don't think it's any good for a station. 2. It should be more efficient to do a direct ascent, but if you miss you'll waste more fuel correcting. Using maneuver nodes is also easier if you already have an established orbit. But if you know the angle then go direct and complete the rendezvous normally once you close in. 3. Hmm, tough. Usually it depends on the weight and thrust of the thing. Slow rockets are better off doing it after 10km as the air thins considerably and velocity picks up more easily. You really don't need to lose fuel to gravity. Another factor is staging. It may be better to delay the turn if you'll be dropping tanks very soon. Generally grabbing horizontal velocity between 5-10km is not worth it as the gain is too small.

Someone posted a rover that was really a probe core, NUK generator and tall structural piece and a spotlight. Wheels as well obviously. The purpose was to move it away from the launchpad area then park it so it illuminates the launchpad at night. It can also be used to timewarp as fast as you like in case some other vessel is limited by altitude. I can't find it in the spacecraft exchange so i can't credit this person. I liked the idea very much. Also having a few of these spotlight rovers lined up near the runway makes it easier to approach at night as they show when you fly in closer than 30km. Since the part count is low it doesn't affect fps.

Hmm quicksaving is not a bad idea at all, esp if you still have <10 landings... It only gets better with practise but screwups happen. Nasa never lost a mission because some stupid app stole focus or their AV software interrupted. Or a phonce call. Or nature call... Anyway cograts on landing. While you're in orbit do a few practise landings using F5/F9. Try the difference between going down from 50km and going down from a 10km orbit. Eventually it becomes routine. But the fuel cheat is a bit of a cheat on you really, as you will never learn to judge how much fuel you need for a landing/return. Good luck.