Chris_C

I set physics to false and it works a treat, thanks... I think KAS just became my number two favorite mod - just with how many possibilities it enables for eva missions is amazing, you could make some awesome missions with it by setting up situations where you need to "repair" sats in orbit etc...

So, my delivery rocket left the core of my station up there but I later realised I forgot to put a mech jeb on it... Now I could later dock something with MJ on it but I thought this would be good practice for integrating other items into the KAS container - the fact you can retro fit stuff to an already flying vehicle adds a whole new dimension... anyhoo I added to KAS's addModule.cfg the following stanza ///////// mechJeb /////// GRAB { stockPartName = mumech_MJ2_AR202 evaPartPos = (0.0, -0.05, -0.2) evaPartDir = (0,0,-1) physicJoint = true storable = true storedSize = 5 attachOnPart = True attachOnEva = True attachOnStatic = False attachSendMsgOnly = False } This works just great on my launchpad tests, however sadly in orbit as soon as a kerbal grabs a MJ part he starts continually firing his retro's and pirouettes off into the void, completely uncontrollable... anyone any idea what I might be doing wrong?

My intel i5 (hd4000 gfx) wont work any more in Linux, so I've had to revert to the previous version while I wait for another release (cross fingers) can anyone tell me what the last version of MJ was that will work properly with the previous version of KSP?

Has anyone made a tech-tree poster yet... I'd really like to know what to research to get to specific parts....

hmm my whole point is that the finessing process is what I'm completely lost with, I think I'll just stuck with my Hohmann transfer like method... its easy to get within 6Mkm but usually with too much dv to make it doable... "finessing " such a maneuver just ain't happening....

I think I get you this is what I stumbled onto with some experimenting... 1. make a maneuver so the apoapsis is just inside the orbit of your target (not too near or capture will take a long time, not too far or no capture...) 2. wait till apo and burn prograde until you have a circular orbit, you may have to adjust some other node axes to ensure all the orbit is inside the target orbit (if 50/50 out/inside you would be catching up / falling back all the time) 3. wait till the target planet captures you. 4. if path hits target burn prograde till you get a periapsis you are happy with 5. this will most likely sling shot you away from the target, wait till periapsis and burn retrograde till you have an orbit my only nagging doubt is this method hideously inefficient?

LOL - that guy just got an encounter by random chance - he said as much himself!

thanks for the help, but that's kinda what I'm attempting anyhow... afaict it seems if you set off on a course with say a 5Mkm closest encounter, there seem no way you could possibly have enough delta-v to get to Duna. I'm flying a probe with 3000+m/s/s spare dv, and a 5 * TtW ration rather than just stabbing round at it, I really want to understand why it is I'm going wrong, then I stand a chance at solving it...

sorry I don't do flikr or social media so have no where to post it, as explained I am using maneuver nodes, I'm waiting till duna is roughly 30-40 degrees ahead of kerbin, I've tried advancing the node any number of orbits round kerbin but it doesn't seem to improve stuff or make it worse???

I have no trouble plotting a course to the Mun or Minmus, and I can quite easily plot a course on the navball which will put me in the targets SoI. However when I try to plot a course to say Duna, I seem to find it very hard to even get a near encounter. At first I thought it was because the UI wouldn't allow me fine grained control, so I got a plugin that allows fine grained control either numerically or in steps of different orders of magnitude. I doesn't seem to matter what time the maneuver is set for or what setting I use for the 3 axes I just can't seem to get a decent plot that would at least get me inside the SoI. Obviously although for basic use I'm okay, I must be doing something wrong.... any ideas?

For years I've had the hairbrained idea that launching from a balloon would save a great deal of fuel... and with KSP I got chance to try! I've been experimenting with hooligan labs balloon plugin and I was plesantly suprised that it is indeed possible to launch from a balloon Initially I thought that releasing from the balloon would cause problems with getting fowled on the balloon or otherwise colliding with it... Turns out as soon as you release, the balloon freed of the enormous weight of even a small probe leaps up and well out of the way! Depending on set up you are only gaining 10,000m - 15,000m or so (this can vary a lot depending on size/number of envelopes and weight of vehicle) but the amount of fuel you save can be quite substantial. I'm interested to know if anyone else has tried similar experiments and what pro's or con's they have discovered...

So the ISS is actively rotated all the time then ?

Now I could be entirely wrong about this... I'd always thought that a vehicle should be rotated by tidal forces such that the same surface of the vehicle is facing the planet... so for instance if you have a cupola on the "bottom" of your vessel is should always have a view of the planet and the planet should not appear as if its rotating round the vessel (relative to the vessel) OR am I completely wrong and does the ISS use its gyros to spin the station at one revolution every 90ish mins?

I just checked by having *only* lower case folders does NOT work, you do need symlinks as far as I can tell... crewmanifest CrewManifest -> crewmanifest hrmhaystack HrmHaystack -> hrmhaystack mechjeb2 romfarer subassemblyloader subassemblyLoader -> subassemblyloader my example here is a little confusing as I was trying out lower case only folders normally you'd have crewmanifest -> CrewManifest a lower case symlink pointing to the upper case folder that came from the zip file... hope this helps someone!

Really? Jeeze I assumed now a days all file systems were case sensitive ... I'll pop over to the thread you mentioned but its not the only one! Interesting gotcha to remember! Edit - seems from that thread they already know about the bug

finally enjoying crew manifest! I noticed that some plugins are saving data to folders with lower case folders for example PluginData\crewmanifest instead of PluginData\CrewManifest (as in the zip structure) I added a symbolic link from crewmanifest to CrewManifest and it now works! should all plugin data folders in fact be lower case?

Is there any documentation for this - the wiki seems very outdated - better yet seen an example of this?

oh and as for how to get parts there I was assuming the use of that plugin that does cargo bays - I forget its name...

wasn't looking for "help" I was looking for ideas and suggestions so I could firm together my ideas, I wasn't envisioning "pulling together" ships - not sure where you got that from! but only dealing with ships that are docked together and so become one vessel... I can iterate over a parts list so could probably build a list of candidate parts ie a strut could go from a module to a fuel tank but you wouldnt really want to see an RCS thruster in the list of FROM and TO components... As for if there is a clear path between parts I'm less certain of a method for that, possibly rely on the good sense of the user :-o

Fuel was just a quick example, what if you want to add or remove a solar panel, add a mapping or other science module ?

ok lets take for example you want to do mapping with multiple vehicles - when the module is first loaded into memory - odds on there isn't a created list of all your flights (but I don't know for sure) If you're mapping it would be handy to have more information than just the vehicles position, ideally the specific instance of the plugin for that vehicle, so you could get that vehicles plugin's private variables... There could be other reasons for wanting access for each flights plugin instances, this is just an example off the top of my head...

Now I could be completely wrong but I'm assuming if you have a part module (plugin) that it's update method is only executed while a single vehicle is actually active (ie being flown) That being the case for some ideas if you wanted multiple flights to have their parts plugin executed some kind of work a round would be needed. ( for example mapping from multiple satellites simultaneously) I notice that with the GPS plugin although it probably doesn't execute anything in the GPS satellites it can at least iterate through each of the flights names and then get the position of each satellite with a name starting GPS... It then occurred to me that you could have a base station "vehicle" that in a similar way iterated though flights to build a list of all flights containing a specific part, the only problem is I assume you'd have to create a plugin instance (somehow) for each part and then execute their updates... Of course in an ideal world there would be some kind of flight centre plugin. Does anyone with more plugin writing experience than me (not difficult) have any thoughts on this?

@macintux alas f2 doesn't take video which that is a frame from, also print screen button works well for screenshots... @SocialKitty because I'm currently recording the height only for a 1 degree square at a time to get all the poles as well I need a 90 inclination, hence the 100's of orbits! If I can find some docs for the terrain system or use intelliguess on the terrain system a larger foot print will allow for better inclinations I have no idea how to zoom a texture on the GUI... Are you saying the ISA plugin doesnt cause error messages in the log and at least a 30 second freeze during the initial take off stage initialisation ? (It does for me) I really must look at the kethane mod - assuming its open source.... Good idea! Thx

so I found this mapping plugin which i thought was a great idea - alas it doesnt seem to work too well with the current version of KSP and I couldnt find any source to fix it so I thought it would make a good exercise for learning KSP plugin writing... After my first couple of hacking session I have an image like this (hundreds of orbits at 500x warp...) I aim to make the "footprint" of each scan much larger so that it won't need 100's or even 1000's of orbits to make a complete map... I need to figure out how to get anomaly position info resolve issues with startup status and find more upto date plugin method documentation... make like OnFlightStarted mentioned in the wiki don't seem to exist - oh for upto date docs! Determine if there is a way while not in flight mode to force reload a plugin to save restarting KSP all the time... determine when plugin being closed so maps can be made persistent I'd welcome any ideas people might have...

ya know I bet thats why Alt-f2 opens the run as dialog instead of the debug window...