capi3101

Excellent.

Well okay...let's try it then. My rover, the Burning Hearse 7. Begins on the launchpad. Seats eight. The side Il2 on the driver's side breaks off every time it starts moving (USA reckoning on what constitutes "the driver's side"). Ten wheels of utter madness...in the high-speed rollover tests around the KSC campus, both front driver-side wheels broke off and the center back wheel went flat; it could still keep going at 18 m/s though the handling started to suck. Includes SAS and there's nine RTGs under the hood (so it's a bit underpowered - I included a battery bank so she'd still have plenty of juice). Pulls to the right a bit but that may be associated with the aforementioned light breaking off for no apparent reason. One of the strut connectors in the back also needs fixing. My base camp, the Kamp KIA 7. Begins on the runway. Seats eight. Mission profile called for the Hearse to drive to the end of the runway, everybody then piles out of the Kamp KIA and gets into the Hearse, and off it goes. The Hearse has a ladder on the back so the first two Kerbals can climb aboard and get close enough to the front seats for boarding (they do have to walk down the "aisle" a bit. Second two seats can be occupied from the top of the ladder; back four seats can be boarded from the ground. Lemme know if those links work for y'all; if they do then I might start putting up craft files for folks once again.

Giving up on this challenge. Not particularly difficult, but my computer insists on spontaneously shutting down when I'm driving the rover (like I've overloaded the processor). I would like to make my rover craft file available in case anybody else would like to try it out. Can anybody recommend a good file sharing site? I use imgur for pics; I would use Dropbox for this but my understanding is that there's a few issues with it.

Interesting looking satellite. It looks unbalanced...how hard was it it to get it into orbit? Built a rocket for this challenge last night; test flights were going poorly until I checked the fuel lines; then I was able to get it into orbit. I'll be making my attempt to deal with the Kermunists this evening (knock on wood).

Tried to build a rocket for the Small Fuel to Orbit Challenge. Didn't go so well but I think I know what I did wrong. I'll try again tonight. Built another rocket for the Spy Satellite Intercept Challenge. Was thinking I'd have to abandon that one too until I checked my fuel lines again - a single wonky fuel line rots asparagus. Fixed it. Now I just need to see if it will work as intended... Tried one last time to begin the Rover Ascent Challenge; once again my computer spontaneously shut itself off. Maybe I could use the design for The How Does Your Kerbal Drive To Work Challenge instead. ...I may post the craft files for that one so that someone else can have a go with it. Finished KCP. Now to see if I can get people to test it out...

I was talking about Subassembly Manager (I replaced Loader with Manager in 0.20); I was wondering if Manager had gotten an update with 0.21. Probably not.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Hit F3. That'll bring up your flight log at any point during the mission. You can just look at it prior to recovery. Ninja'd.

Since you're ahead of the target, you'll need to go higher. That's the general tip. Just putting this down here before I get ninja'd. Alright - so rendezvousing. First thing's first - target the craft you want to rendezvous with. You're going to want to make sure the two craft are in the same orbital plane first, and that means reducing the ascending and descending node to zero. You do this by making a normal/anti-normal burn (depending on the node) at the node. What do I mean? Assuming you're in an eastward-travelling orbit, you want to burn southward at the ascending node or northward at the descending node until you're zeroed out. That's the first step. Go slow - the first tick mark on the throttle is usually plenty; you don't want to overshoot and have to correct. Next is to get higher. If you can get your craft's periapsis to be about the same altitude as the craft you're wanting to intercept, raise the apoapsis above that of that craft. Usually 5000 meters or so will do the trick. A better way to handle this: your orbit should have two hash marks that indicate the distance the two craft will be apart from one another at an "intercept point" (when the other craft crosses the plane of the first craft). Set up a maneuver at the periapsis - just do either a prograde or retrograde burn and see what it does to the intercept distance. Decreases = good, increases = bad (do the opposite). Do the same at apopasis once that maneuver is complete, but expect reduced results. Circle around Kerbin until the indicated intercept gets fairly low...fifty kilometers or so is usually about where you want to start trying to adjust things. At that point, you might try maneuver planning in between the apses. Above all, take things slow; the only real limitation you probably have on making a rendezvous is fuel, and if you've got RCS you can still maneuver to intercept once your main tanks are dry. Of course, in your case your RCS reserve is low; I'd recommend deorbiting your ship on RCS if you run out of the main tank (anything below a 70k periapsis will eventually result in a de-orbit; below 30,000 for a definite decay).

Alright, the page is up!

Occured to me reading this morning's posts that y'all might've never heard about VASSAL before. Here's an overview of the engine from their site. The mod I created runs in the VASSAL engine. You'll need to have the VASSAL engine installed to play the game. VASSAL is dependent on Java, so you'll need a Java Runtime Environment installed on your box as well. They have versions of the engine for Mac and Linux as well as Windows (they also have "other", which I'm not quite sure what that is, and the source code up for those who want to build it their own selves). Bear in mind that there have been issues reported with VASSAL on machines where Java 1.6 and 1.7 are both installed; you'll need to uninstall 1.6 if that's the case. The mod itself should be playable as long as you've got a working engine. Possibly - PBEM and PBF is something that VASSAL mods are capable of doing; you just pass the save game around with a log file that records what happened during each turn. The rules for rocket building might need to be altered a bit to accommodate that sort of change, though (less opportunity to hit the WHACK button...). Like I said, totally playable on any platform as long as the engine is installed, and there are versions for Mac and Linux. Now, I did package the mod itself as a Windows executable for distribution last night, so I'll have to work up something for non-Windows users. Shouldn't be too big of a problem. I'll go ahead and distribute the mod on VASSAL's wiki; I'll post the link to this thread when it's ready to go. I did include a user agreement with the mod that basically says that I didn't obtain Squad's permission to use anything and if they say so, you've got to delete the mod from your system (the VASSAL folks will delete the page upon request). I'm hoping that doesn't happen but it's in the realm of possibilities; if it does, I'll put up official notice in this thread to y'all. Most of the mods on the VASSAL engines are from games where the big box publishers have given the mods their blessings; to date, the only company that's been a royal turd about people making mods out of their games has been Games Workshop...which I firmly believe has been to their detriment.

Built a new heavy rover for a challenge - an eight passenger, ten-wheeled joy bus. Damn thing made my computer spotaneously shut down twice... Still in preparation to try out the Duna Apollo-style challenge. Going to try to see what I can fix from the Castle Romeo mission and apply to that one. Finished KCP, now to unleash it upon an unwitting public......

Started this challenge; my box is spontaneously shutting down though...last time it happened, it put me back at KSC. Annoyed; will try again tomorrow night.

Alright, the first draft rules are finished. I just need to tweak the mod at this point. Also need to figure out where I'm going to distribute this from...

Noticed it, just trying to come up with an asparagus solution. Somebody was going to and I figured it should be me... I like Johnno's design; can't really beat serial staging when it comes to simplicity.

I built a heavy lifter for a challenge; the payload was something like 190 tonnes and the part count was over 800 when it was all said and done (and I didn't think the hamster-powered Byzantine-era difference engine upon which I play KSP could handle it, so I never actually launched the thing). Setting it up asparagus wouldn't be terribly difficult - you'd need somewhere between 20,928-22,236 kN total thrust on launch, with 4,604-4,891 of that in the central stack (three mainsails and an LV-T30 should do the trick) and 2,040-2,168 kN per outboard booster (a mainsail and six Mk-55s would do the trick on those; be sure to lock gimballing on the 55s), assuming eight outboard boosters. Getting three mainsails in the central stack might be a little tricky...so I'd suggest a mainsail, plus a ring of eight LV-T45s and eight LV-T30s attached radially on top of an FL-T100/Bi-Adapter combo. Might have to use a girder to fit them all in without clipping. 4820 kN.

Got some screenshots of the finished mod this morning -- Main Board This is the main board with a game in progress. You can see I've changed things ever so slightly and added the WHACK button, which is meant to be used whenever somebody notices a rules violation (somebody building rockets when it's their turn, attempting to launch without all the proper prerequisites, etc.). The notion is that it would work like a game of Hands Down - the mod will register whoever hits the button first and then that person bears the responsibility for proving the rules violation. There will be some kind of penalty for whichever player is in the wrong, which I have yet to decide upon. -- VAB with Hand Here we've got the completed VAB with the player's hand area in view. The VAB's are public, so people can see what you're creating; this originally wasn't going to be the case but I figured that it'd save time if other players could be witnesses to a player's launch. Cooperative players may point out when a player's launch is wrong; competitive players...... The hands are private. Red player can't look in the other player's hands, hence the reason why they're grayed out in the display. -- VAB in use The VAB in use. The right two rockets are actually complete and ready for launch in this shot...had Mertney in the center rocket; he just did the Kerbin mission and the rocket was so stable that success was assured. Bob rode the crazy chair towards Duna, and missed the roll by one lousy point... I do know through testing that I need to add some additional zoom levels to the VABs. Right now at maximum programmed zoom it's difficult to read the Delta-V charts on the fuel cards; VASSAL does let you zoom in closer but it's still something I should probably address sooner rather than later. I need to finish the rules and I'm seriously thinking about adding more decouplers to the Parts Deck; it's looking like as things are written they're going to be utterly crucial (otherwise the game's going to be pretty boring). I'm also reconsidering my original rules for putting parts into rockets - right now, you're only allowed to play parts to rockets from your hand, and the only way to get cards in your hand is to sell items from your junkyard; you get a number of cards equal to the value of cards that you sell...and most of the cards have a value of zero......

1) Take the bits off your probe core. Do not ditch the parts, just separate them. 2) Rotate the probe core 90 degrees. 3) Reattach. 4) ??? 5) PROFIT.

I'd say RCS and probe torque to try and upright it if you want to keep it; widen and shorten the stack if you want to try again.

Johnno beat me in recommending the wiki tutorials. I will say start with Basic Rocket Design, then go to Intermediate Rocket Design and then skip ahead to Sputnik. The historical tutorials teach a lot (aside from ISS; it's not complete).

SRV Ron is right...the screen altimeter measures "sea level" (or a reference altitude on worlds without oceans). If you're playing stock, you want to go EVA occasionally and look for a gauge that looks like this one: Even at low res, you can read it. I know; I play KSP on a below-spec box and low res is necessary just so the game will run at a descent speed. Yours will be in meters, of course; when the gauge is at the six o'clock position, you're 500 meters above the deck and when it hits the twelve o'clock position, you'd better be below 12 m/s...

Alright, the mod's ready. Now I need to finish typing up the rules. Something tells me I'm going to wind up having to put more radial decouplers into the game.

Couple of flights in Wing Commander replicas today. Rapier-II/G went okay; tore up half of the bird on landing but Jeb still lived. The Ferret...well, I don't like the Ferret much. Good in space shooting the Cats, explodes a bit much when you hit the tarmac too hard. Also typed up the mission log for the Castle Romeo mission and posted it to the Apollo-style Mun Challenge thread. Getting ready to move on at this point. Occurs to me I need to test the Kerbal space taxi lander design in 0.21 (worked okay in 0.20, but not everything transferred over well).

After months of planning, here's my entry, the Castle Romeo 7. Why Castle Romeo? Well, I usually give my rockets optimistic names that have to do with fire, or pain, or death, or combinations thereof. Nuclear weapons tests were a natural extension of this trend and I already had a Castle Bravo and a Castle Yankee rocket (the Castle Yankee was my Saturn V replica, but it didn't include a dual stage lander or a rover). Imgur album of my attempt: I claim 188 points. Not sure I shouldn't claim 198 since I deployed two Munar sub-satellites, but nothing else is cumulative, so I won't. No way I was going to get that rover behind a fairing...believe me, I tried. Missed out on all 15 points for accuracy, only deployed two probes and forgot to drive ten-kilometers. The log should explain further.

Finally sent Castle Romeo 7 to the Mun. Hell of a lot of work for what turned out to be a pretty damn lousy performance on the Apollo-style Mun challenge. I'll have my writeup there later today; don't have time right now. Finished the KCP VASSAL mod. Will have pics there later today too. Still need to finish typing up the rules. Flew and successfully landed an Arrow V on the runway. Flew a Morningstar; clipped one of the engines on the runway during the landing but from what I understand it's pretty easy to do with that particular bird (clipped the engines six times on the takeoff before I was finally able to get it up; Jeb didn't walk away from all of those either - thanks for adding "revert", Squad!!). My ILS works. Hallelujah.