dpraptor

Thanks for the effort! Your images are not available. I was wondering how do you tell on these sheets when you have done certain tests. There are at least 9 tests for each biome.. Crew Reprt, EVA, Surface Sample(ground), Sci Pod, Temp, Barom, Grav & Seismic. Dont see how I can verify any one of these per biome, so I can go back when I have the tech to do what I still need. Nice & compact is good, but seems incomplete. The sheet I use enables me to verify all science done per biome, I am curious how you can tell which science you do in each biome. Many times I do another run which I get one or 2 things done, but I cant seem to be able to find how to do that here.

Hi KSP Community! I could really use a hand with building a craft that will allow me to fly around Kerbin as high as 20,000. I am trying to complete the surveys, but every craft that I have designed (and a few I even downloaded) just wont make it. I have completed the 1st 3 tiers of research, and 3 of the 4th tier (the tier that requires 45 Sci Points each). I can get into space and orbit no problem, but I just can't build anything with what I have to fly over kerbin, the rockets keep spinning and are insane to try to maneuver in the direction I need to go, no matter what combinations I try. I also tried the VAB and built some basic planes, but that was a joke.....haha..(I think Jeb's still mad at me for dying so many times!) I downloaded the excellent Hummingbird Surveyor from KerbalX, but that is for low flights only, and I had issues keeping it up (More practice I know..) I need a ship that can get to 18,000+ accross a decent distance for the surveys. I haven't played KSP for almost a year, but when I did I had flown to MUN, Minmus and Duna, so I know the game well. Seems the physics changes have really thrown me off. Appreciate any help in either design, or a ship I can download that will do the job, given the limited parts I have in early career mode.

Its 666 666 - HAHAAH!! Its the end of the Kerbin world!! Armageddon is coming to Kerbin in the form of the Kraken!!!! RUN!!!

Yea, the Devs did an awesome job with the new update, adding a lot more fun and challenge to the game. I just wish they would work on getting the game to run more smoothly when you have a lot of parts. That is the biggest problem I am having, like building a moonbase and expanding. It would be nice to use more processing cores and memory!!! But a great job so far! I dont really have any complaints!!

I'd like to understand this: total mass divided by dry mass, but what is dry mass? Total mass must be the total weight? By adding everything up? Dry mass is after the fuel burns? I think might give me some understanding if I understand that, if it is explainable in terms I can get. Thanks for any help you can give!!

Hmm... I was going to like a dozen separate quotes with comments and additional questions...... hahah - Naaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!! I have an elementary understanding about mass ratio and delta V - not enough to fully comprehend everything you said. And I imagine I have a lot of reading to do to fully catch up on this. But i can understand about the doubling of tanks per stage!!! For now I will look at the images people left here and reproduce them and see how they fly. If you have any good ships that can make to further planets and back, I would like to see them, and play around with the design. But thank you for your help in trying to get me to understand how it works!! I will keep trying to learn from what i see, and later get a better understanding of the physics. (been a while since college!)

Wow - awesome!! This has been the biggest problem with base building. I have always had just separate vehicles around the base, I could never attach things together without all kinds of problems. I will definitely give this a try. Thank you for your incredible work and clear insights on how to do this!!

I feel your pain... My career attempts just to get a landing on Mun still resulted in using 76,000 fuel on the 3rd stage alone!! I really need to learn about downsizing too.......

We are Legion!! And the game hasn't even been officially launched!

WOW! I have never seen anything like these! I hope you do this from home and not from an institution!!! Freaking amazing!!

** Note ** - I think this belongs in general discussion, can someone move it there?? I have to say that these designs are really great!! I started this thread because I have a lot of problems building smaller, more efficient vessels. I began with a few smaller vehicles which did their job well, but when it came to Mun, I found myself making these giant monstrosities just to get a landing and return. Here is a brief history of my ship development. I am hoping to see a lot of ships that I can try and experiment with to see how to maximize my efficiency with minimal design. I have been playing this since around April 2013, and built hundreds of crafts, but always keep moving to larger sizes, while I see others getting there with much smaller craft. I still have not yet been past Mimus, and was hoping to see how you all do it without gigantic craft. As you will see in the last pics, my attempts to get a lander on mun and back went to extreme sizes!! My 1st attempt with a smaller craft led to the lander not having enough fuel to return, so it is now stranded on Mun. Here is the 1st two crafts, which did all the Kerbin biomes. My Mun Orbiter did well, but I am sure I still made too large a craft: This is the Mun lander that got stuck there, I am sure that I could have done this so much better and made an easy return, but earlier and smaller ship attempts I did only got into Mun orbit with not enough fuel to land. So poor Jeremiah is going to be there for a while!! Hope he brought some playing cards!! This is the ship (Discovery!) that managed to land on Mun and return. I wanted a lot of science equipment, and I wanted to return them to Kerbal rather than transmit the data to get the full science. I did a lot of tests and had to keep making it larger as i saw that I needed more and more fuel with each test. This craft finally did the job, but used an enormous amount of fuel: The 3rd stage alone had 853 Tons and 76,080 fuel!! (Please don't laugh too hard!!!) I had 5 science units and 6 goo canisters. It was fun to build and fly, but I want to see how minimal I can be with this!! Here it is getting into orbit and landing on Mun, which went well, though it was tricky to rotate until I ditched the 3rd stage. But it flew into orbit quite well. Here is the Mun lander, 9 rockets! 5 of them had the Science pods. The only thing I did wrong was not attach parachutes to the ones I jettisoned!! One of them survived the fall so I did recover it, but I will add parachutes so i can drop them close to the surface and recover all of them. I think with further planets I will use the transmit. So I will look at all the other ships here and experiment a bit to see how you get to other planets/moons with smaller ships. Thank you all for posting, I hope to learn a lot about better efficiency. Can you post some pics of ships going to further planets? If I made a ship this big just to get to Mun, I can't begin to imagine what I will build to get to Jool!! (Double Face Palm!) And Rune, thanks for the link to your craft files, I really appreciate that, as I will test your vehicles and see what I have been doing so wrong!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice ships! My ships seem to be a bit heavy and rather large, I am trying to get a smaller lighter one to use. I am going to post them later. The grey techs are ones that require 2 prerequisites, one of which has not yet been researched. Once you research it, the grey-out one will be available.

I would love to see some of the ingenious ways you all came up with getting the most out of your limited supplies to do the impossible!! I would really love to see the mum landers and any simple rovers that were made. I am just sending my 1st ship to mum, and wonder if this tin-can of a bucket is ever going to make touchdown!! I will post pics once I get there, as well as some of the earlier ships I used. I think this would prove quite interesting to see!!

Ahh - I see - the diminished returns for transmitting are 40 or 50%, so I may only be selective about doing that. I guess more for the further plants than the closer ones. I just read where a guy used the grav box thing all over a planet and did like 20,000 science just from that. But I will have to wait until I get the solar panels, which is my next research to go!

I was doing some reading on the forums and it seems you can reuse the equipment - Goo Capsule, SC-9000 Pod, and the other measuring devices (Grav/Thermometer, etc)? I was taking reading with them once and returning back. I know it says to reset, but i thought that meant it lost the original data. I am now thinking I can reset them and keep doing scans over and over and collecting lots of data before i recover?? I am ready to head over to Mun for a landing, so I would love to know if i can reuse the instruments to get many readings before I return home. Does that also include soil samples?? I also found out there were 9 biomes on Kerben, I think I got most of them, I went to the north pole, is the South pole counted too? Thanks for any help