DMagic

Are you talking about the "do not suggest" list? That's where the robotics/mechanics feature is listed. Anything on the "already suggested" list has a link to the original (or one of several original) thread, so you can go there and talk about it. I agree about that specific suggestion though, there should probably be a thread about that somewhere that can be added to the "already suggested list" so that we can discuss it further.

Maybe they'll stream the NASA launch during the KSP stream. Or maybe they'll recreate the LADEE craft in KSP and launch it at the same time, while streaming the real launch. Wouldn't that be awesome. Or maybe they'll get NASA to stream the KSP stream, during the LADEE stream... far out.

Thanks for downloading my rocket. As the others said, the workload is spread across all cores. Even if you really were just running one thread, you wouldn't see one core at max with all of the others at or near zero. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for this, spreading the workload to ensure an even temperature is one, but it doesn't mean that anything is wrong, or that KSP isn't using as much of your CPU as possible (aside from the all of the Unity and PhysX limitations).

I've noticed quite a few threads about performance lately. I really want to get another 10 or 15 sets of results for this database. More data sets would help to smooth out some differences due to graphics settings. They would also help provide a better reference for those who think they might have CPU performance issues. Anyone who thinks their framerate might be low for what CPU they have could run my test and get a better idea how their performance compares to others' with similar CPUs.

You don't necessarily need fuel lines, connect the convertor directly to a fuel tank. Go here for more: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35664-Kethane-Usage-and-Proper-Fuel-Routing

Go here if you want to know the specifics about the different SAS/Reaction Wheel parts, the wiki could be out of date: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41941-New-SAS-functionality-and-You%21 My thinking, is that we only have all of these redundant parts to provide backwards compatibility. I imagine, also, that the odd mass values are just a temporary thing and they will get fixed in the next update. And since the cost is meaningless right now I wouldn't worry about that aspect.

You guys should go to my CPU performance thread and try my rocket. If you really are getting performance improvements from using a physX card then it should be easy to measure in comparison to similar CPU's. And if anyone is getting only 1 FPS with only 200 parts then something is wrong. Even the lowliest mobile CPU's can do better than that. Do you have the physics slider pushed all the way to the right? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42877-CPU-Performance-Database

The grey parts and trusses are from Kosmos, the orange parts are from the THSS pack; http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24849-WIP-THSS-Tri-Hexagonal-Structural-Strut

Thanks. The ground base was more an exercise in frustration than anything else. There were so many docking bugs and spontaneous disassembles that I was just glad to be done with it. The stations were awesome though. Except for one stuck docking port everything worked great. And because the Kosmos panels are so slow I was able to get a good look at the solar station deploying.

Thanks. I haven't gotten a chance to look back at this thread for a while. I believe the adaptor is from the Multiwheels mod found in this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29661-TouhouTorpedo-s-Mod-Releases-Thread-%28ROVER-ASAS-released%21%29?highlight=modular+multiwheels. If it's not in that you might have to look in older versions of the mod that can be found on the same page. It's really useful for these kinds of things and I'm surprised that it's not a more commonly used part. As far as a I know that's the only part I used from that mod pack, that's probably why I didn't list it in the first post.

You install mods on windows 8 the same way you do on 7 or vista, or any other platform. Just put them in the right folders.

One word: landers. There are actually quite a few places where you can land a stock ion-engine craft. Here's a few. Pol and Minmus were pretty easy. Ike is a bit tougher. I have a thread full of these: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30329-Ion-Engines-Everywhere-My-Attempt-to-Land-As-Many-Places-As-Possible

You can go to my CPU performance thread and try out my rocket. You should be able to get an idea from that about how your CPU compares to similar ones. If you are getting much worse performance than others then you'll know that something might be wrong. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42877-CPU-Performance-Database Your CPU doesn't look too powerful, but it shouldn't have problems with relatively small crafts. So it's worth comparing your results to others to see if something else may be wrong. And your GTX 660 should be able to handle most settings at max; terrain settings may cause issues during launch, but otherwise I wouldn't expect you to be GPU limited.

I finally got around to checking how different part types affect performance. I made several crafts with around 300 parts. One was a cut down version of my CPU test rocket, and the rest were variations on a simple design with around 250 batteries, solar panels, parachutes, etc... I turned down the graphics settings a bit, launched, and watched my framerate while looking up towards the sky. You can see that, for the most part, the framerate was pretty consistent at around 40 FPS. There are a few notable exceptions, the cubic octagonal struts are ignored by the physics calculations and that shows, it stayed at 60 FPS. OX-STAT panels kill performance, dropping it down to 20 FPS. What I noticed is that parts that don't add any extra calculations don't have much of an effect; winglets, engines, and parachutes all give about the same performance as batteries. But if those parts require something beyond the basic physics calculations they can significantly affect performance. I assume that each accelerometer is making its own calculations, each engine has its own effects, and each solar panel has to decide how much sunlight is falling on it. Something like parachutes on the other hand just seem to add drag to the craft as a whole, and alter its center of drag (performance does drop a bit while they are deploying though). This also gave me a chance to make some interesting looking crafts. From the boring solar panel tester on the left to The Blender, The Hellraiser, The Floater (which safely landed with five full fuel tanks), and The Flamer (which made it into a Kerbin escape trajectory by launching straight up).

That's some pretty gratuitous overuse of winglets and clustered mainsails. Why do you have so many of both? I don't see any reason why the rocket would be uncontrollable with just a single set of winglets instead of seven. I like the design of your lander and the way that you can hold payload in the center. That's a good way of doing it. But seeing so many unnecessary parts kind of makes me a little sad inside;.;

That's true, but there are dedicated sliders for both of those settings. If players raise them too high they have only themselves to blame. Whereas with terrain, many people could run the game at default or high terrain settings if it weren't for the graphical overhead of rendering two planets when an ocean is in view. And the suggestion given over and over again, by players, moderators, and devs, is to dig into the settings.cfg file and change the ocean terrain values. A simple drop down box in the settings menu seems to be a far more intuitive solution, and one less likely to screw up game files (never underestimate people's ability to not follow simple instructions).

RCS doesn't do much in a dense atmosphere with a large craft, so you would be better off just getting rid of them. You probably don't even need them for the probe on the upper stage either. Multiple reaction wheels don't counteract each other, they just add to the total amount of torque available. You can always add more, but keep in mind that doing so just adds mass and size to your craft. You can also try to add fins. The AV-R8's work well for me, just put a set of four near the bottom. Is this happening while you are trying to fly straight up? Is your craft properly balanced? I noticed the odd engine arrangements in your stage list too. I can't see where the two shut down engines are, but if you have unbalanced thrust, or fuel, it will throw off your craft. And about SAS, it won't lock onto your orientation if you are constantly touching the controls. Any manual input keeps SAS in damping mode, and it will never switch to locking mode if you don't let it stop for a few seconds.

It is well known that KSP's method for rendering the ocean on Kerbin, Eve, and Laythe can have a significant impact on performance when using relatively low-end GPUs (anything above an AMD 7870 or GTX 660 seems to be able to handle max graphics at around 1080p without issues). There is a well known fix for this, but asking people to muck around in the settings.cfg file seems like it may not be the best way of addressing the issue. The simplest solution that I can think of is just to put a dedicated terrain quality option in the settings menu. That way people could leave the regular terrain setting on high (and avoid some of the issues that occur when lowering this) and put the ocean terrain setting on low. I know this issue has been brought up many times before, but I have yet to see this as an actual suggestion. It isn't in the list of things already suggested either. It seems like something that would be relatively simple to change and it would greatly improve the experience for a large segment of KSP's users.

This thread is just chock full of people who should be dying to check out my CPU performance database thread. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42877-CPU-Performance-Database Head over and try out my rocket, make sure to scroll down and read about graphics limitations if you have weak GPU. It won't solve anyone's problems about slow performance. But at least we can have a more objective grounds for comparison when trying to figure out each computer's limits in KSP, just like Harry Callahan said.

Go to my CPU performance thread and try out my rocket if you want to see where your computer stacks up against others. The part count for different stages of the rocket is in the 4th or 5th post, so you can see how many parts you can handle at a decent framerate. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42877-CPU-Performance-Database

There is no more ASAS as a function, but there is still an ASAS module, the 2.5m grey wheel, which adds torque. It would be nice if they would change the name of that. I don't think there is any limit to how much torque you can add, but each reaction wheel adds mass and size to your craft. Eventually I think it would just get too big to handle. That, or you would have so much torque that the whole thing would shake, try turning on SAS with just a 1 man command pod to see what I mean.

It's those little parts that really add up in my experience. Things like lights, extra solar panels and RCS thrusters look nice and can be useful, but it's best to avoid using them. To deal with RCS thrusters you can use a tug to dock things, or you can create some kind of detachable docking system, so that you don't need to keep all of the RCS parts after everything is docked. For terrain rendering you can just get above 160km and you should avoid any slow down related to that. Or better yet, use the ocean terrain settings tweak to increase performance: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/43253-Default-Terrain-Quality-Without-most-of-The-Lag%21, though that's really only an issue with relatively weak GPUs. And if you want to compare your performance to check if something is wrong with your setup in particular go to my CPU performance thread and test my rocket. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42877-CPU-Performance-Database. You can compare your performance to others with a similar CPU to see if you are getting results at least somewhat similar to theirs.

The Toshiba definitely has better components. That newer CPU will definitely help out for KSP. The resolution is low, but screen sizes are different too. I would say that both laptops have low resolutions for their size.

I agree that aiming for Moho's periapsis is best. But more important, I think, is making sure that you actually get a good encounter. These huge insertion burns, 5000 or 8000m/s are not due to differences in encountering Moho at its periapsis vs. at its apoapsis. They are due to getting non-ideal intercepts. The ideal intercept is one where you encounter Moho at your periapsis (or perihelion to be precise, the closest approach to the sun). Having been to Moho more than any other planet I have found that the easiest way (though not the most fuel efficient) is to treat a Moho encounter like docking. Bring your periapsis down until it just meets Moho's periapsis (it's best to do this at the ascending node between Moho and Kerbin, which should get you close to Moho's periapsis). Then use smaller retrograde burns at the point where you cross Moho's orbit to setup a near ideal intercept. This might take several orbits around the sun, but I've always found this easier than trying to get the perfect intercept from Kerbin. You lose some efficiency due to making burns far away from Moho, but it's not very much. Doing this I can almost always get from LKO to a 100km, polar, Moho orbit in under 5000 m/s, and I never have to worry about finding the perfect time to leave Kerbin or getting to Moho and finding that I need to a make a 5k m/s burn.

There is one. You just have to go into the actual settings.cfg file to change it. But I agree, if they can't do something about the way oceans are rendered, they could at least add a separate setting control for it. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/43253-Default-Terrain-Quality-Without-most-of-The-Lag%21