chainedlupine

I always roll my eyes at these situations. People complain that game dev companies are too tight-lipped and incognito about what they are working on. But yet when a company decides to be more transparent and reveal information, particularly about what features will be in the next release or even when said release will do done, then people will give them no end of grief if they happen to miss deadlines or have to cut/modify features. It happens. Software development is a fluid, complex thing. I wish people would just cut Squad some slack. They have just recovered from a fairly major blow to their public-facing community systems, so I am sure there has been a lot of fire-fighting/re-org related to that.

You can remap the keys. Some people do, using the IJKL keys that are used for RCS translation mode. A simpler solution is to just enable LIN docking mode. As long as you have no RCS (or keep RCS turned off if you have it), then this a "dead" control mode that does nothing -- but will still drive your rover because the wheels respond to the WASD keys by default.

I have a feeling that any NASA employee would immediately turn green as a Kerbal if they saw a typical KSP space plan... Nonetheless, kudos that Squad's game gets mentioned by NASA.

Nice! I've considered something like that, because I have a very active Mun station (with Kethane refinery for refueling). However, I've yet to build a spaceplane that has enough dV left to get to the Mun. I usually have just enough dV left over to return to Kerbin.

Even with multiple ASAS modules, I don't have that problem. (Multiple ships docked, if I hit T and it will stabilize.) Do you have RCS enabled? I could see that causing a station to rip apart if ASAS was turned on while RCS thrusters were enabled. This is why when I am docking, I make sure my RCS is disabled 1-2 meters before contact.

I had that happen once to a Duna launch. I had two Gigantor solar panels. Both were extended. But I hadn't noticed the orientation of the ship before engaging time acceleration, and when I arrived I was surprised to find out I had no power (and therefore, a derelict craft). The craft had rotated during my ejection burn from Kerbin. One was in the shadow of the craft, and the other was facing the Sun, but edge-on and not receiving power. Argh! An easy way to fix this is to put a few extra OX-STAT panels here and there, along different axis of your craft, so at least ONE should get solar energy at all times. Or just use PB-NUKs, which is what I mostly do now.

The physics comment is just flat out wrong. KSP does indeed use the PhysX physics engine, because that is what Unity utilizes at its core. In fact, the problems with rockets going all wobbly without tons of struts is a direct symptom how PhysX works -- And not just PhysX, but almost all contemporary physics engines.

I'm in the same boat as Tw1. I have a satellite orbiting most planets and moons, and my pretend justification for sending it (aside from just getting something there in the first place) was to expand my deep space communications network. Though in reality, we can do that fairly well from Earth alone without the need for relays. Early probes were planned around planet/moon radio-shadows. They were able to do their jobs, usually by executing via simple pre-programmed steps (in the era before computers!) and by storing all telemetry data for later play back when the satellite/probe was within LoS of Earth again. However, in a modern space age, I would expect at least a few relay satellites just for safety sake and allowing the crew to keep in touch with their comrades. For modern semi-autonomous systems, a relay is required.

No mention of Independence War 1 and 2? Those games were great. Tough-as-nails (particularly the first one), but Newtonian physics and semi-realistic space ships and setting. I say semi-realistic because they had FTL drive. But it was executed reasonably (with limitations), and the linear-displacement drive was just so dang cool -- I loved engaging it in the solar system and watching Saturn and Jupiter rush at me and swing past.

Aha. So that's why the 3-man capsule has that bizarre name of "mk1-2pod". I wondered why it wasn't just called the "mk2pod."

I hope not. I sure would miss launching giant bricks into space.

Here's the lifter I use for a similar sort of rover: As Qumefox said, wider is better than taller in KSP, due to how its physics works. Tall rockets are inherently unstable, unless you strut the hell out of them.

Heck, I find a lot of the time that I over-estimate. I can make a stack that has exactly 4500 m/s dV (atmo) to get into orbit, but of course that value changes as I get higher up or depending on what sort of cluster stack I use. So I end up with booster stage in orbit that still has, say, 900-ish dV still kicking around. It's like Christmas. Woo, free dV to apply towards my ejection burn! But still, means I am not very good at estimating my dV requirements. But that's just it. I'm estimating, based on what Kerbal Engineer Redux tells me. What I get for not mathing it.

It's not a problem that most physics engines for video games are meant to resolve. Pretty much the only hack-y fix that exists has already been given to us -- creating our own cross-bracing joints via struts. Unfortuantely, as most of us have found out, more parts means more struts, and this greatly increases the complexity of the physics simulation and frame rates spiral out of control.

40 tons LV-N to get close to the sun? Heh. I like that. And ROFL, it's more than a "bit." You're moving very fast. I don't have numbers handy but I am sure it's well over 15,000 m/s for a circularized orbit around the sun. Update: Durp, Cerate mentioned the number in their post. 30,000 m/s dV.

I am assuming that is what is happening to you is that your ship is skewing as you apply translation thrust. In other words, there is an imbalanced load and applying translation thrust causes your ship to start to rotate. Possibly even skew rather violently (if the imbalance is great). Four 4-way thruster blocks placed at the dead center of mass will always work for small ships, because their CoM doesn't shift much. For large ships, your CoM shifting due to fuel burning will make such a simple arrangement stop working. The lever-arm approach works, which is what has already been suggested to you -- Two sets of four 4-way thrusters, equidistant from your CoM. However, even this system will start to fail if your CoM shifts a lot. One method that works really well (from what I hear, haven't tested myself) is to use radial thrusters only. Instead of placing four 4-way blocks, you place two linear thrusts along the exact long axis of your ship. Repeat this for the two major axis of your ship. This is supposed to make it easier for you to correct against CoM shifting, particularly if you place multiple sets of linear thrusters and then activate/deactivate them as your CoM changes. ie: Change the length of the "lever" you are using.

I doubt Unity will ever get replaced. Using a different engine, plus some kind of custom physics engine designed to handle the sort of requirements KSP needs would be a major undertaking. Maybe for KSP2 once Squad has made their millions and can afford to hire a lot more people.... And I'm just going to echo what everybody else said. This isn't an issue with the parts stress limits per say, but the fact that attachments in Unity are done as single-point constraint joints, which is a limitation of the PhysX engine that Unity utilizes. Basically what struts give us is the ability to place our own sets of two-point distance-limited joints. They are literally struts -- A duct-tape solution to get around how PhysX behaves.

Here's my mod design idea that I've had for a month or so: Flight telemetry This mod is a radial part that you install upon the upper-most stage of your rocket. As long as this part is present on your active ship, it will record telemetry data to a unique file in the PluginData folder. Only the last flight is kept, all subsequent flights overwrite the data. Telemetry data is per-ship. Multiple telemetry parts will be ignored. Only the ship containing the initial name (reference id?) of the same ship it was placed upon will be recorded. (In other words, if your ship splits apart or combines due to docking, separation, etc then only one tracking stream is recorded.) Part uses a small amount of power. If power is lost, telemetry recording terminates. Accessing telemetry A new button is added to the space center screen. When clicked, it brings up a list of all telemetry data recorded, based on ship and sorted from newest to oldest. There is a PLAY button and a DELETE button which only work when a telemetry record is selected. Upon selecting a record and hitting play, the Telemetry screen comes up. (New Unity scene started.) Telemetry screen This window is a simple 3d wireframe model of your rocket. When your mouse is over the window, you can use the same VAB controls to move around your wireframe model. There are also several readouts. One is a MET counter, and another is a rewind-to-start button, a pause/play button, and a fastforward-to-event button. During play mode, as stages are engaged and decouplers are activated, this is reflected on the telemetry window (parts of the model will disappear if they are decoupled). The MET counter increases and you will see the model change as time goes on. If there is a problem with any part (either due to explosion, overheating, over-stressed, etc) then that part will blink red on the telemetry window, and give a small iconic indicator showing what happened. The Telemetry window can be re-wound and replayed at any time. Rewind-to-start button: Rewinds the replay back to the beginning. Play/Pause: Toggles depending on what mode you are in. MET changes from red to green when moving from pause to play. Fastforward-to-event: Skips ahead on MET/playback until you hit the first catastrophic event. (Event being overstress, etc.) Always pauses playback, so you can "jump" to each event as it happens. If the root part is destroyed and/or power is lost, "TELEMETRY SIGNAL LOST" is displayed when final MET is reached and playback stops. Would be nice if the telemetry also displayed other data, such as thrust levels for engines, biprop levels for tanks, SAS force, altitude, battery levels, and possibly G-stress. Design Problems 1. Extracting the mesh data from all parts of a vessel. Unsure if this is easily available, or even possible while in the space center scene. 2. How easy is to to pull all of this data while flying? Not too hard, I imagine. 3. Not sure about starting a new scene for the telemetry screen. While this would simplify things, I am not sure if the KSP game would be able to work with it.

I've found the relative position/velocity readouts in MechJeb 2.x are invaluable. In fact, I rely less upon the docking cam now that I have that simple readout -- I can usually line up the docking ports well enough just by eye-sight alone. I've not tried the MJ2 auto-dock. It uses up too much RCS for my liking, I can hand-dock with less than 10 units of RCS most of the time. However, I hear it's been tweaked for less RCS usage in the latest version, so I might try it again.

Nice work! I sure wish KSP had circular parts so you could make a more authentic Soyuz-alike. I've been tempted to re-create an early Vostok flight. But I am not sure if I am skilled enough at Kerbal aerobatics in order to drop Jeb on his head so he survives minus a parachute.

Yeah. Back when I was a kid, this was the only sort of "space simulation" kind of games we had: You really had to use your imagination back then!

A friend of mine got me into KSP. We both watched Thor's Insane Rockets Division on YouTube and that inspired me to buy the game. I built some rockets and sent screenshots to my friend. He was further excited about KSP and so he purchased the game. But our skill level quickly diverged. While he was struggling to get a rocket into orbit, I had quickly graduated from LKO to the Mun/Minmus, and then to the other planets. I was building space stations and exploratory landing vehicles, and he was barely able to land an unmanned tiny probe on the Mun. I stopped sending him pictures of my accomplishments when I could tell he was getting frustrated at his own failures. The difference between us? I played a lot of Orbiter simulator and so I am familiar with basic orbital mechanics. My friend was not, and he balked at learning. I tried to teach him, but he had the view that KSP was more of a game, and therefore it should perform these functions such as orbital circularizing or insertions for you. (I showed him MechJeb, and he was happy for a while, but MJ2 completely ruined it for him. He never learned how to use the maneuver node system properly, and since MJ2 uses it nearly exclusively, he did not like it and felt it was too complicated.) Today? KSP isn't exactly a verboten topic, but I usually don't bring it up unless my friend mentions it first.

You can shed them on the way. That's what I do. I stick a probe bodies (and SAS modules) on practically every part my rocket which is discarded on its way to the LKO. That way I don't have to bother with finicky aerodynamic surfaces that might slam into each other when separated... Only down-side is that the probe bodies sometimes cause boosters to glitch and not be automatically deleted when they fall below 25km. At least, I believe that is what I am seeing at times. (I've had discarded boosters stuck in orbits inside of Kerbin.) There's a mod part someone made which is a modified probe body that is a radial attachment, and has insane rotpower. Something like 40 or 50. I used to use those, but I found they were a lot of trouble later on. Too much rotational control and you spin out of control...

I do most of my lifting in the 40-60 ton range. Generally, a rocket that can handle more than just stresses out my PC too much. My turn-key design ends up a lot like a scaled down version of Temstar's SHLLV's design. Sometimes I use a clustered central stage, other times I use just a single mainsail -- just depends on what I need to actually get the thing into orbit. (KSPX's mini-mainsail plus a few clustered LV-30Ts are perfect most of the time.) This guy was my heavy Duna lander, IIRC around 40-ish tons payload: Rockets like this are pushing the limits of my system. Any more parts, and it becomes a slide show.

Doesn't the game auto-delete debris that goes below 25km altitude on Kerbin? Not sure about the other planets/moons. I doubt it does this for planets with no atmosphere. Update: Sometimes it doesn't seem to work properly. Such as...