Murchadh

May I just say.... I am a BIG fan of designing "elegant" rockets that are still practical and I am having a greaaaat time with these tanks. Not only do they look very cool (and I am not just referring to the brilliant textures) but because of the design I can make pretty huge rockets without bumping into the "too tall" problem. (Working on a +20,000 dV one and all signs point to success!) Thus ... Thanks for the mod. I appreciate it a lot.

I chose the discovery option but it hardly matters since any improvement to this already awesome game is good for me. Just a note on aerodynamics. With the physics as it currently stands it is VERY difficult building 'proper' rockets, i.e. Tall, multi-staged ones ala Saturn V, so unless some changes are made to the attachment physics, aerodynamics is a no go for me since right now asparagus rockets are the only viable way to create very large rockets.

I reckon I spend +95% of my time with KSP planning and testing, rather than playing out actual missions. Even building the most basic of probes can take me hours because I could consider multiple things at length. I "test" designs by actually sending them on "test missions" on a special save I use for this purpose. When I am 99% satisfied things will go according to plan, I load up the "mission" save and execute the mission proper, by which time I have actually completed the mission in parts several times whilst testing. But hey, I like playing this way. This is part of the beauty of KSP. You can do almost anything you like and play it almost any way you like.

... it allows me to give free reign to my creativity and dream up ever more elaborate contraptions.

As a general rule, I am a bit of a knowledge sponge and whilst I have always liked space ("Cosmology" was my major at Uni after all), I never knew a bunch of stuff about rockets and the like. If I could pick one little thing that "blew my mind", it is the idea that in order to increase orbit you have to go faster and in order to de-orbit you have to go slower. I mean, in hindsight it is so self-evident, but when I first got to learn about this I was like ... "huh?" Hands up who pointed straight at Kerbin after wanting to get back to the surface at first? OK so ... how has it changed my life? I would not quite say it has taken over my life, BUT I have gotten into some very new habits as a result of KSP. I am way more active in the Steam community for starters. Oh and ... met some new friends as a result. Best of all, it is the first game ever that I actively promote and feel proud to do so. (<---read that as: I have become a "fanboi"!)

@BananaDealer: Not sure if this is your problem but did you enable "part clipping" in the debug menu? I once had the same problem and it was because one of the docking ports was clipping into something and as a result did not want to detach.

Ditto. I use the CBS for everything I build now ... in fact I hardly ever use decouplers for upper stages, replacing them instead with CBS ports. Used correctly it does the same job, only in a more flexible way. For example, in my current moon lander setup I attach the lander with a CBS port (to the orbital module), that is in turn attached to a very large skycrane by way of a similar port. On landing the lander gets rid of the skycrane and is then good to dock back with the orbital module using the now open port on top of the lander. Thanks again Fusty!

Just to see if I could I tackled your problem and lo and behold, I solved it ... only, how do you actually attach those big rover wheels to the "axles"? I can attach the wheels to the sides of the girders, but they won't attach to the little structural blocks!

Thanks everyone. Lander Can it will be!

Tack! Jag låtsas varje dag att prata med mig svenska ... bedrövlig!

So I completed mapping Mun with Mapsat and now it is time to explore anomalies and possible locations for future bases. With that in mind I spent last night designing a self-landing rover (Using "Quantum Struts" as "laser alignment" for placing the parts in VAB...nifty!!! haha). It is probe driven, but I'd like to build a "modular" version that is able to seat a couple a couple of Kerbals. What do you guys/girls use for "seats" in rovers? Is there any "go to" 'pod' solution being used for rovers?

@Trux: Thanks. That is helpful. Sort of. @KasperVld: That is disappointing. *shrug* I'll just make a full backup prior to launching the game every time. Problem solved. @LameLefty: That does not work for Windows. Steam games have to run through Steam. (Unless of course there is some command line that I am unaware of for the KSP exe) @Everyone else: Disabling "auto-update" on Steam does not work. It never has. At least not for any game I have on Steam. Unless of course it actually works for KSP, which no-one can be sure of until the first update arrives.

No, this is not what you think! Around here the thinking seems to be that 0.20 is going to be available 'soon' but could I maybe suggest that we be given some sort of short warning when you are ready to release instead of announce/release at the same time? I ask specifically for those of us on Steam. As you know Steam auto-updates and there is no way currently NOT to update*, and since future updates may or may not break saves and/or mods, a short delay between announce and release (even one day will be ok I guess) will allow those of us on steam to 'prepare' our games so as to not have things break around us. Or at the very least, allow us to minimize the damage on long term saves. PS. I was not around prior to 0.19 and Steam so have no idea how things were done it the past. Apologies if I am going down the wrong path here. * Strictly speaking threre is a way, but that would mean having knowledge of an update ready to update (as it were), NOT being logged in to Steam currently and one's internet being "unplugged".

Jag är inte från sverige, men jag lär mig svenska. Långsamt. Gör det mig halv svensk? heheh

Good story that made me chuckle and brought back a memory of my own. It's not about KSP but . . . When Fallout 3 was released I got the collector's edition with the bobblehead that had "Vault-Tec" written on the base. He identified the game through the bobblehead (didn't even know it was called Fallout) and used to come up to me, place the bobblehead in front me and ask,"Daddy let's play Vault-Tec . . . but you play the night". Guess the dark scared him. I am happy to report that he has since moved on to KSP.

@magnemoe: That is exactly what I am doing. Each probe has its own ion engine but the whole lot is carried by a "mothership" with a big fuel tank, sporting nuclear engines.

@ComradeGoat (apt name in this instance) ... Too right! Why, just last night I had another catastrophic failure on the launchpad exactly 0.01 seconds after takeoff. 700 tons of rocket fuel makes for a nice fireworks show. They tell me it will take all of (...checking how long it takes to add 8 new struts and click "launch"...) 1 minute and 17 seconds to fill in the crater. Who needs to watch videos of NASA's early days when you've got KSP, eh?

I was building a sat/probe/launcher for Duna and then noticed that Jool is coming up slightly before Duna and had the "bright" idea to double the mission to both. The sat/probe has ~10k dV (ion) attached to a nuclear inserter (~6k dV). I actually redesigned the inserter to give it more oomph specifically for Jool but now you guys are giving me second thoughts. I totally like the idea of multiple cores for Jool and already have a design in my head for how I can further adapt the inserter to have a bunch of probe/sats peel off from side mounts. My probe/sat design weighs ~0.9t currently and I thought I seemed fine but maybe I should add moar solar panels (serves me right for testing the thing around Kerbin and not further away from the sun *facepalm*) ... but that would propabbly mean redesigning the probe/sat completely to be able to fit extra panels ... or I could just like go with a bunch of totally "expendable" probes. Like a MIRV, only less dangerous (or more... depending on which Kerbal you talk to). I think I can fit 12 onto my inserter, shoot them off into multiple trajectories once I get to Jool and go for the fire, forget, hope and pray approach... I mean since I have never been to Jool, might as well see what happens and let it be a surprise. Anyway thanks for the ideas and tips. PS> I totally love Kaku. He reminds me of my university Philosophy prof, he always looks like he knows something that no-one else does... (which he does) ... and enjoys the fact that he does.

I have run into a bug that I am 99% sure is caused by some mod or conflict between mods but am unable to figure out which one. Currently if I am sitting on the launchpad I can click the resource panel and it works fine, but as soon as I have launched (assuming I DID NOT open the resource panel before launch) the resource panel button becomes unclickable and appears to be slightly "warped" (the word "Resource" looks ever so slightly "italic"). As a secondary consequence, I then also am unable to transfer fuel from one tank to another in that "Alt-click" does nothing. It's not a game breaker since I just have to remember to click it before launch but I was just wondering if anyone else ran into this as well?

Precisely. I think there is a bug with the engine shrouds in some way. There is some sort of very weak connection between two-stage tanks and the engine shroud between them. These shrouds are supposed to add stability between the two stages (apart from looking good) but don't. If you strut the shrouds it hardly makes any difference, because I think what is happeneing is the actual load is carried by the engine mount and not the shrouds, but since it is incredibly hard strutting the engine... problems.

I have watched that video +20 times now. It is such an emotional ride!!

I think there is a fairly "simple" (note the inverted commas) fix that will allow much better performance at no expense to the game's integrity. At the moment the game tries to physically model everything. What if one allows parts to be "locked" once connected to certain things. Example: if one connects "a" to "b" it becomes variable "c" and no longer two separate parts. I am no programmer and thus have no idea how easy (or not) that is to do for this game, but I do know that whilst I can understand that the physics is part of what makes the game great, one has to balance the fun/frustration factor. Sure, it can be fun having glorious spacecraft meltdowns, but too often the "strut more" thing is just pure frustration. (note: I am not complaining. I love the game) EDIT: Having just thought about it some more: IRL most rockets are long, thin multi-stage things with or without some SRBs. The problem I usually experience when trying to construct that sort of thing is that breakages occur between upper stage engines and decouplers and/or engines and the tanks. Thus, if the engine attachments are made "unbreakable" (between what connects to the top and bottom of an engine) it would solve tons of problems. Strutting in this case is finicky at best since it is very difficult lining up struts from a bottom stage to connect to the actual engine, since with the engine shrouds only a TINY portion of the engine is actually visible (the top rim). On my bigger rockets I have to sometimes plop 12 or more struts just to have some sort of stability between one stage and the next (which doesn't always work even), and since part count is what kills performance, I have had to totally rethink the way I design rockets in the first place. For example, my current rocket (an interplanatery satellite delivery rocket) has only 165 parts, but a whopping 59 of those are struts!!

I would just like to chime in quick....this mod is simply incredulous in both its quality and usefullness. I loaded it up and after 10 minutes of playing around I have decided to completely ditch four days' work on a craft I was building and restart with parts from this pack. I have a 101 new design ideas floating around in my head now. Honestly, the quality is astonishing (I totally love the "concept art" look, which totally fits into the kind of thing I want to build)!! So, thanks! I really hope you continue your work with this one.

@Spanier: Yip, the ascent values occurred to me just minutes ago. I suddenly realized that I have too much to do when getting to AP using the standard trajectory. <---making me feel pretty dumb for not noticing this earlier. Testing different values now.

Thanks for all the replies. Yes, why would I like to send 100t into orbit? Lol, as Simon said, why not? There are several reasons, two which are notable. ONE: I am building a very large interplanetary craft that cannot make it into orbit by itself. Hence I built it in three sections, to be assembled in space (docked). The forward module and the engine module is no problem, but I have had big problems getting the fuel module in orbit. The launcher I previously used just did not have enough oomph and when I reconfigured it by adding more boosters I got severely degraded performance due to the part count. Hence I figured I'd build a bigger rocket that could lift the same mass but with fewer parts. TWO: I reconfigured the fuel module for that ship into a self-propelled probe/satellite that has just under 10000 dV. It weighs well over 100t initially but sheds fuel tanks radially during flight. I tried several things. More SAS, more RCS, gimballing on/off ... (I manually controlled all these during several stages of flight). I tried the new Mechjeb as well. I even changed the rocket somewhat by shortening the last stage to see if length was the issue. I also tried adding small puller engines forward of the CoM. I am thinking at this point Mechjeb just cannot handle very large rockets... ...because I CAN do the launch reasonably well myself. I get a smallish error sometimes myself (something like AP=80 and PE=70) which I correct after the initial burn. Like I said, I can do launches pretty well without MJ ... ...OR (and this might be a distinct possibility) it is not currently possible to move that much mass using a "simple" single stage because the thrust/mass does not "compute" with the current crop of engines. On my previous launcher, instead of using the most powerful single engine, I used a whole heap of 1.25m engines placed radially. That worked marvellously (and COULD lift the exact same 100t payload with MJ totally fine), but the part count!!! Actually this gave me an idea... maybe I just need more thrust, i.e. more boosters during the launch phase so that some of the boosters make it to AP. @Hoy, Alignment isn't the problem ... the last iteration of the craft has 3000 units of RCS and 20 RCS Thrusters ... it gets aligned before warp and stays aligned all the way until AP. Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean with "alignment". Again, thanks for the advice. EDIT: Rosenkranz mentioned something ... off to go check if that is my problem (I WAS sure it wasn't but now I am having second thoughts).