Specialist290

Welcome to the forums! KSP is definitely a nice change of pace from all the shooters and wargames out there. If you ever get stuck with any aspect of the game, feel free to check out the Drawing Board (link in my sig) or ask questions in the How To section of the forums. There are lots of friendly and knowledgeable people who might have gotten themselves out of the same situation before. Happy landings!

I'd probably do the construction method tutorials first, since they're more applicable to a broader audience. Not everyone uses MechJeb, after all.

Very nice! I think I'll be grabbing that for the Drawing Board.

Don't forget to plaster the fuselage with the static ones, just in case.

For the most part, that should have done the trick, yes, but it's hard to keep a perfectly vertical trajectory down without help from an autopilot, so it will tend to drift a little bit as you descend if you don't account for that. Hence the tip about the extra probe body; when you change which pod you're controlling from, the navball will reorient so that "up" for the navball (i.e. which way the "wings" are facing) is the same direction as the top of the probe body itself. That will allow you to better correct for any drift you might experience.

Welcome to the forums! They don't strictly have to be right on the CoM as long as they're balanced around it, but yes, most likely your RCS thrusters are off-balance. If it's only a tiny amount or your ship is sufficiently small, though, you could probably get away with selectively turning your RCS on and off as needed and let the SAS adjust the heading on its own. Of course, we could probably diagnose it a little better if you could provide a screenshot of the craft in question.

It sounds like you're not completely cancelling out your horizontal velocity during your descent. The value on your navball indicator represents your total velocity, combined from both your horizontal and vertical vectors. One trick you might want to consider for a "belly-down" lander like you've described is to stick a second probe body onto where the "top" of the lander is going to be when you flip it horizontally, then control from that point during your descent so you have an accurate picture of what your velocity vectors look like on the navball.

Nicely done! I especially like the clever use of wings to get around the limitations for having landing legs on the same vehicle as LV-Ns.

Indeed. I've found this to be quite handy, myself

Nicely done! Makes me want to try something similar myself. But my computer is already shuddering at the thought of launching a 1200+ part rocket. It can barely handle 500 without wanting to break down...

I had a nice long post done in my typical style forming in my head, but as it basically repeats everything Shrike42 says, I'm only going to add: Seconded. Including the book recommendation.

Don't remember exactly, but I think it took me a few tries. I knew it took more than just "burning straight up," but it took me a while to figure out when and where were best to start turning for the horizon. It didn't help that my first few rockets were a bit underpowered, either.

Quite nicely done!

On topic: So, how goes progress?

I've heard the Railroad Tycoon games are good, though I haven't played them. Unfortunately I don't think any of them are (legally) available for free download, but I'd highly advise you check them out nonetheless. EDIT: And here's where I totally miss you already mentioned the Tycoon games... The Tropico series has the same sort of idea, too, although it's less "business" and more "banana republic." You could certainly pretend you owed your job to the United Fruit Company, though...

So on the subject of goddesses named Freya and horrible violence done to innocents, one of my favorite games (and the one I was most obsessed with before KSP) just released a long-awaited gameplay expansion: PILLAGE. LOOT. SACRIFICE. BEARD.

OK, I have to know where that GIF comes from.

Bah, you people and your mere "planetary" scales of destruction. Meanwhile, I'm taking a page from "Doc" Smith's Skylark series. Quoting here, under the Literature folder:

Under "Aeronautics": 11. Land an atmospheric craft on another body with an atmosphere. 12. Take off in an atmospheric craft from another body and safely return to Kerbin.

Definitely keep us in the loop on how progress goes. If it ends up working well, I might end up with a new resource for the Drawing Board!

Welcome to the forums! It truly is an amazing game, and I hope we see even more awesome features in the future. The ability to actually move around and interact in IVA would indeed be a great feature. Also, congratulations on learning to dock! It really is one of the hardest concepts to master in the game. Not even NASA got it right the first time, here in the real world -- that's how hard it is. If you ever get stuck on anything, feel free to ask in the How To section of the forums, or to take a look at some of the tutorials in the Drawing Board (link in my sig). We've also got the Mission Reports section, if you want to share any of your biggest accomplishments, as well as many other interesting discussions and challenges in various parts of the forums. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! We'll certainly being looking forward to seeing what you all accomplish. Since you're a veteran pilot yourself, you might want to think about answering some questions over in the How To section of the forums for the benefit of newer ones, or possibly even contributing a tutorial to the Drawing Board (link in my sig). We've also got a Mission Reports forum where you can share your most memorable and interesting missions, if you so choose. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! As others have already noted, if you're stuck somewhere in the game, feel free to ask in the How To section. I also maintain a small link library called the Drawing Board (link in my sig), which lists a number of tutorials and other resources. You can also share your accomplishments and videos in the Mission Reports and "Live from Mission Control" subsections as well, if you're into that sort of thing. Above all, just take a look around, and don't be afraid to just jump into any conversation that interests you.

As of yet, there's no way you can actually get crew to walk around inside the pod on IVA. However, you can transfer crew between command pods by EVAing them out of the one they're in and into a new one. People will typically put a station with an empty command pod in orbit, then send other ships to dock with it to have a crew manning it.

Shouldn't that be obvious? But anyway, on a more serious and on-topic note: I've been an off-and-on member of various Internet fan communities for at least ten years now, stretching all the way back into my high school years. In that time, I've observed that both "fanboyism" and "fan-hating" are pretty much going to be constant undercurrents in any community of significant size. I've also noticed it's usually the extremists on both sides of the issue that tend to label everyone on the opposite side of the line as one or the other. Often it's simply because they're "immature" -- not necessarily even in the negative, shallow sense of the word, but just in the sense that they don't have a sense of perspective to discern between objective and legitimate criticism on the one hand and emotionally-charged blustering on the other. They also tend to want to see themselves as part of a group of like-minded people, and thus take any sort of criticism of that group as a personal attack against themselves. I believe that that's at the root of the issue, right there. The long and short of it is, we're always going to have fanboys and fan-haters. However, even they might sometimes have something worthwhile to contribute; it's just a matter of accounting for the signal-to-noise ratios. (A lot of the above is based on my own experience, which has been at times both painful and embarrassing when I saw exactly that sort of thing happening to myself in hindsight. I don't know how well it matches up with others', but I thought it might be worth putting it out there.)