capi3101

Yesterday's activities began with the landing of the revised SCSS 7a garbage-collection craft twenty meters from a target MOLE Mark One Habitat (previously reported as a MOLE lab, but honestly they look the same) on the surface of Minmus. Owing to the fact that it was nighttime, pilot Geofbles Kerman, scientist Kathald Kerman and engineer Sulan Kerman opted to wait until the following morning before attempting to load the hab onto the prow of their craft. When morning came, the trio got out of their craft and conducted the arduous process of rolling the hab up to their ship. Once there, Sulan proceeded to attach it to a series of cubic octagonal struts using a KAS screwdriver that had been brought along for the job. Job finished, the three loaded back aboard and returned to orbit over Minmus. Finally got this stupid hunk of loose garbage off the ground. Only took three tries... The craft then affected a rendezvous with the Non Mentha Yards in low equatorial orbit over Minmus. <Play_Flash_Gordon_theme /> ♫ duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh ♫ / ♫ NIGHT! ♫ / ♫ SCREEEENNNIIIEEEEE!!!!!! ♫ Gregbles had the toughest time on this mission - once the hab was cut loose he went spinning around...reminded me of Xactar's old "All Kerb'd Up" series on YouTube. Science in Progress!!! Once the habitat was released near the station, the SCSS proceeded to fifty meters off the station and the crew returned via jetpacks. Sulan suggests that I update the design of the SCSS to include a docking port next time. I told her it's good to get practice doing EVAs occasionally, as long as you remember to bring your helmet... The craft itself was then recycled in NMY's drydock, and printing of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe commenced; this probe will carry the habitat the rest of the way to Kerbin for contract. In other news, LSV House Harkonnen conducted a warp from equatorial orbit over Ike to polar orbit, where it continued the printing of a fourth and final Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier probe for the Duna/Ike SOI. The probe was completed by the end of the day, at which time Harkonnen began printing up a Booger Flinger 7 scanning satellite, which ultimately became ScanSat Ike upon launch. While the ScanSat was printing, pilot Billy-Bobcal Kerman did a quick EVA over Ike and transmitted a crew report, completing two of the requirements for the current Ike exploration contract. The three communications satellites - Ikecomms Delta, Echo and Foxtrot, also reached their target positions, finishing out the comm satellite constellation in Ike's SOI. Once ScanSat Ike was launched and out of physics range, Harkonnen warped directly back for Kerbin; the ship is currently conducting "yo-yoing" warps to bring her speed down enough to enter orbit. The McFeely Sr. 7 large speedy science delivery craft returned safely to orbit over Kerbin and made an attempt to rendezvous with space station Kerbinport in equatorial orbit. Unfortunately, the craft ran out of fuel during the rendezvous burn. An Exxon Valdez 7 emergency refueling craft was sent up to rendezvous with the McFeely, docking and refueling the craft successfully. McFeely Sr. 7 docking with an Exxon Valdez 7 craft. Shortly after this screenie was taken, the Valdez design was updated to include monoprop tanks and bleedin' solar panels - only been needing to do those changes since v. 1.0... A second attempt to rendezvous with Kerbinport also failed due to insufficient fuel, and in desperation on the second attempt, the probe's drive stage was cut loose (to no avail). A second Valdez rendezvous and docking flight was required to finally bring the McFeely to Kerbinport, where it finally docked and retrieved a LDEF Power Tools experiment from the station. The McFeely re-docked with the Valdez, at which point the Valdez de-orbited both craft and the McFeely was cut loose. Both craft were successfully retrieved. McFeely Sr. 7 at splashdown. The game didn't give me the credit for the gravioli wave and power tools contracts despite having finished all the requirements, so it was necessary to hack them complete. I hate it when I have to do that... Aside from all that, not much else has happened. Strange Cargo returned to Kerbin this morning and docked safely at Kerbinport, transferring all of her onboard tourists to a waiting Auk II 8-passenger spaceplane, which then departed the station to return to the surface. The plane hasn't conducted its de-orbit burn as of this posting, but it's next on my to-do list. Once that's done (barring any change in plan), a group of colonists will be heading up to Kerbinport and departing for the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun aboard Strange Cargo. Harkonnen is scheduled for resupply as soon as she attains orbit over Kerbin, and she's scheduled to begin printing up a TBD 7c base-seeding rover as soon as she has the necessary equipment aboard; this will begin the processing of setting up permanent outposts in the Duna/Ike SOI. Finally, it's nearly dawn at Mun Outpost 1 near Piper Alpha, so a scheduled mission to finish establishing the outpost can get back under way. All in all, things remain pretty busy for me and my space program as a whole. Fair enough. Which one you ultimately go with is a matter of personal preference anyway, and since your issues are mainly with landing, it probably doesn't matter too terribly much.

Can we see the plane you're using? Also, important question - stock air or FAR? Without looking at your plane, I'd say try turning up your dampers like I suggested earlier. You might also want to set up your gear such that you're nose-down 2-3 degrees while on the runway; planes like that tend not to bounce as badly, though that setup puts more stress on the gear at landing.

An ILS helps, whether a dedicated mod such as NavUtilities or with a stock setup. Have to skedaddle right now or I'd go through the process of setting up a stock one. Will edit this post later. EDIT: Wheel setup is important too - any issues you have with your wheels at takeoff are going to come back to bite you at landing for sure. For beginners, I'd recommend locking your steering on the all the wheels if you have the option, putting the brakes to 200 in the back and less up front, turning your traction to 5 in the back and 2.5 up front, and bumping up the damper on the front gear. This is assuming you've got something akin to a tricycle gear setup, which works for most planes. At touchdown, you want to try to not have a vertical speed much more than 10 m/s, preferably 5. And forget about using the crummy bushplane gear you get early on for anything other than ersatz rovers. By the same token, you should wait until the Runway is at least level 2 before trying to fly anything with intent of actually landing it back on the Runway. Preferably wait until the Runway is fully upgraded. Now for an ILS setup in stock - you'll use something to mark out positions. Flags would work if they didn't occasionally spontaneously combust, so in the past I generally used cheap little probe-rovers (the aforementioned bushplane gear with a Stayputnik core and maybe a Juno-based engine setup cobbled onto a piece of Structural Fuselage work well). Put one on each end of the Runway as close to the center of the strip as you can, and then drive a few out towards the west (towards the mountains). Plop one at 1 kilometer out, the next at 5 and then at 5 kilometer intervals for as far out as you feel like setting it up. Try to keep them aligned as best you can. If you have KER, you want to try to keep the latitude the same at each spot. Just target the last one you set out and go five klicks. Name each rover/flag/whatever as the distance to the runway that it corresponds to. If you re-name them as bases, you can see them from much further out; you should definitely do this with at least the one at the west end of the Runway and the one furthest west for sure. Now, when you're landing with that system, keep an eye on your altimeter as you approach. You can eyeball a reasonably good horizontal alignment with the flags/probes as you approach, and as you fly over them, you want your altimeter reading to be (in meters) whatever the distance to the Runway is in kilometers times ten, plus 100. For example, when you fly over the fifteen kilometer marker, you want your altimeter reading to be roughly 1600m. If it's higher, you're too high - increase your rate of descent a bit, and vice versa. This gives you roughly a 5-6 degree glide slope, a bit steeper than what your average commercial pilot goes for but it works and the math isn't as terrible. Watch your speed too - generally you want it more than 100 m/s but less than 150 if you're flying a decent-sized plane with stock air. One airbrake per engine helps tremendously with speed control. Best advice - when you're about fifteen to twenty klicks out, F5 to quicksave. Always. Get it the damn habit. If you botch the landing, F9 to quickload and try again. Practice, practice, practice... Best of luck to you. Planes are tricky when you're getting started with them - I remember several rage quits my own self.

K. Should definitely be seeing those options, then.

Seatbelts optional, obviously...

Fairly busy day yesterday getting back into the swing of things. Began the day by setting LSV House Harkonnen in polar orbit over Duna to printing a fourth Pink Noise 7 communications probe carrier, the last such probe scheduled for deployment in the Duna/Ike SOI. Once that was done, Harkonnen engaged her Alcubierre Drive and warped to an equatorial orbit over Ike; I still need to move the ship into a polar orbit over Ike, but I've been having some issues with KJR of late and as a result the ship is fairly wobbly at the moment. Once the ship was in orbit, I went ahead and set up a rendezvous between the General Electric 7 XM jump-starting probe and the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin as well as a rendezvous between the newly-printed McFeely Sr. 7 heavy speedy delivery laboratory-probe and the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun. Construction of a Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander commenced at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun, while a newly designed SCSS 7a garbage collection lander began construction at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus. I also continued an ongoing mission to gather surface data on Duna with the Gumdrop 7 scanner probe-lander, which Harkonnen left in polar orbit over Duna. The Polar Highlands on Duna were one of five biomes the Gumdrop identified as potential landing areas for a Pathfinder outpost on Duna. The Gumdrop performed its job admirably up to a certain point. Look carefully at the screenies and I'm sure you can ascertain the probe's final fate... I'll give y'all a hint. While I am annoyed at myself for forgetting to deploy the solar panels (ever) and allowing the probe to run out of power, I did get successful narrow-band readings from ten of Duna's fourteen biomes, and am quite confident at this point that the spot I'd originally surveyed for a surface outpost will prove to be suitable when I'm ready (since it turns out that spot is in the Midlands and the Midlands scanned as one of the suitable biomes). To that end, I spent part of my day designing the TBD 7c base-seeding rover, which was basically just a re-tooling of the 7b to ensure the craft could land safely on Duna. I added a Buffalo Bulldozer to the front end for good measure as well. With their delivery missions completed yesterday, the ferry ships Next Objective and Necessary Evil departed space station Minmusport to return to Kerbin. Owing to bad timing on the burn, Next Objective won't return to Kerbin for another ten days, while Necessary Evil's transit is scheduled to take a mere 4.5 days. Both ships will head back to their designated moorings at space station Kerbinport, where they'll refuel and await any upcoming tourist or colonization contracts. The McFeely Sr completed its rendezvous and docked with the Wonder, at which time a gravioli wave experiment was transferred over. The McFeely then departed and burned for Kerbin. McFeely Sr. 7 over Mun, having already broken orbit and looking kinda Mir-like, if you ask me... The McFeely has since returned to Kerbin orbit, where an attempt will be made to dock it to Kerbinport to retrieve a Power Tools experiment recently completed there. The big concern there is whether or not it'll have sufficient fuel to make the rendezvous; it should if I'm careful about it. Speaking of careful rendezvous, the General Electric 7 reached Dystopia Planitia and rendezvoused with a mere 3 m/s of fuel remaining in the tanks. The probe successfully docked at the station and after about five orbits, its capacitors reached full charge. The GE should be ready to provide the necessary amount of charge required to kick start the exotic matter generator of LSV House Atreides when its construction is completed a few days from now. The day ended with the completion of the Crater Maker and SCSS print jobs. The Crater Maker was delivered to space station Munport just this morning, while the crew at Non Mentha boarded the new SCSS. SCSS 7a launch from the Non Mentha Yards. The trio of kerbals will be retrieving a MOLE laboratory from the surface of Minmus, bringing it into a stable orbit before returning to Non Mentha; there the SCSS will be recycled and a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe will be printed to take the lab back to Kerbin for contract. Anticipating another busy day today, though current things are starting to wind down a little bit; I anticipate in a day or two the game will be a matter of waiting for things to get to where they're going.

Uh...in the past I've been able to have the drive running flat out (100% on the thrust limiter, full throttle) and get nowhere close to the failsafe altitude because of the amount of braking going on. Come to think of it, though, I did give KSP a hiatus for a good long while last year... <checking_archived_files /> Okay...I was using v0.7.0.0 with 1.3.1, v0.10.0.0 with 1.4.x, v0.10.1.0 with 1.5.x...and I've got v0.10.0.0 now with 1.6.x. Okay, IIRC 0.10.1.0 was the version with the really strong braking. I take it y'all decided not to go that route. 0.0001c? The floor I'm seeing in all five configuration files is 0.001c (assuming it's the line that reads "minMaxSpeed = 0.001"), a full order of magnitude faster. Should it be 0.0001?

Found it: It's those top two options, "Shares resources" and "Shares with vessel" - you want both of them set to "Yes". If you're not seeing them with your Buckboards, then there's another issue going on, which we can work through. First question there would be "what mode are you using?"

Okay...my physics tick is 0.04. I think the units are seconds per frame, IIRC. Did go ahead and carry out on my threat to do a YouTube video of what I'm seeing. Filmed a warp transit of LSV House Harkonnen going from a polar orbit over Duna to a retrograde equatorial one. Craft uses one of the standard 2.5 meter drives; it's also got Pathfinder/Buffalo parts including a drydock, mass driver and a quad of SAFER reactors (which are little more than buffed RTGs). I do apologize for the relatively poor quality - my laptop is setup for office applications more than gaming. The numbers are mostly readable, though, so it still should yield some usable data. I also apologize for the craft's shaky handling; KJR picked that particular moment to take a nap. Ship was absolutely fine after switching to a different craft and then returning to Harkonnen, but that all happened after I stopped recording.

I'll have to look again at Buckboards to be sure; maybe you can't share from them. I know the Buffalo Tundra parts let you share resources though. And any of the main set of inflatable parts can do it. I was thinking Chuckwagons mainly earlier since they're dedicated storage parts but Pondys, Casas, Haciendas, etc. can also all be set up to distribute resources. The cables should be considered a last resort, IMHO, especially with all the changes to KAS/KIS of late. You can make any craft turn into one big distributor through Pathfinder in flight - you have to pick the option to "Opt-In (Distributor)" or something like that. That will set up all parts on the craft that can distribute to distribute automatically, and then you can go in and turn them on and off individually if you so choose.

Are you saving the game/switching to other craft with the resource station's cable still attached? If you are, don't. Might make sure both of the "share" options on the Buckboard are selected. If they are, you should be able to use any resources inside them without the physical link. I'm not sure Buckboards are like that or not. Chuckwagons and Buffalo Tundra parts are (including the Wagon), and Buffalo Saddle tanks are most certainly not. I've seen the exploding saddle bit too...one time it took out the Pondy I'd attached to it in the process, which was annoying as hell (but not insurmountable, as at the time I was just trying to set up a distributed base in a very nearby adjacent biome - just had to take the time to print up a new set). In those cases you don't really have much of an option except to just drop the Saddle on the ground; don't attach it. You should still be able to select it to set the airpark once you've got the base itself up and running, though. And you can set the airpark with a Castillo once you're far enough along if you need to.

♫ Oh listen to my story about a kerbal named Jeb ♫ / ♫ A poor rocketeer who could barely keep his family fed ♫ / ♫ And when one day he was shooting towards the Mun ♫ / ♫ All the words from his mouth came a-bub-a-lin' crude... ♫ / 'Master Alarm', that is... and so forth. Spent much my extended weekend checking to ensure my mods were working satisfactorily. They are - 1.6.1 is a go for me. So yesterday saw the continuation of my 1.5.1 career save in 1.6.1. Having discovered something important about the Pathfinder mod during testing, I began the day with an adjustment to the TBD 7a base-seeding rover design, swapping the functions of the stowed Pondarosa and Casa modules and adding a Buffalo Bulldozer to the design. These changes didn't carry over to the rover I already had under construction at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun, unfortunately, but they'll be in place for any future outposts I may wish to print up in the future. Plans are now in the works for a TBD variant capable of landing on Duna, a design that I will need very, very soon. Having completed its scheduled tourist run on Friday, Strange Cargo departed Minmus's SOI and will return to Kerbin in 6 bols, 4 hours and change. The Non Caseus Yards over Mun finally completed the printing of the General Electric 7 XM jump-starting craft; the new probe was fueled but rather than send it on to the Dystopia Planitia shipyard over Kerbin as was planned, I decided to keep it in the drydock long enough to use NCY's Gigantor solar panels some time to give the GE's onboard capacitors a decent amount of charge (2000 megajoules, to be exact). A lot of things happened before the GE was finally released and burned for Kerbin, - which did happen. At this point I'm hoping it's got enough fuel on board to affect a final rendezvous with DP without the need for a refueling operation; something lied to me delta-v-wise somewhere along the line. Either that or I had a major brain fart the other day when I was designing the damn thing. Either is possible... Piper Alpha did complete the aforementioned TBD rover - Knowing what I know now, I realize the flaws in this design. The saddle tanks, though convenient, don't act as resource distributors - that's probably the biggest issue with it. Shouldn't have been afraid to use the Buffalo Wagon for the job. Pilot Patrod Kerman, scientist Dilbur Kerman and engineer Haydorf Kerman departed aboard the TBD, which was fueled from Piper Alpha's stores. The three kerbals drove the new rover to a relatively flat spot 3 kilometers to the west of PA, at which point Haydorf got out and set up the new outpost, which was designated Mun Outpost 1. The base is fulfilling a new Mun outpost contract and I don't really intend to do anything with it, so it'll be abandoned once its contract has been fulfilled. Unfortunately, to fulfill it I will need to add a lab module - those things take a long time to print up and they weigh 3.5 tonnes, so I don't have enough kerbals available for the final mounting right now. Fortunately, there is more staff available at Piper Alpha and it's only three klicks off, so I can go get them when the time comes and then start ferrying everybody back. Meanwhile, I'm prepping up the necessary Materials Kits to print the lab. I'm estimating three days there. The Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier probe being printed up aboard LSV House Harkonnen in polar orbit over Duna was completed and released; the new probe burned for an equatorial orbit over Ike using conventional drive and established itself in the proper target orbit. The two sub-satellites were released and after about two hours and 45 minutes of maneuvering were also put into their final positions. With the Ikecomm Alpha, Bravo and Charlie in place, Ike has an initial communications constellation over it; this also fulfilled an exploration contract to Orbit Ike - next up is to perform a spacewalk over Ike, get some science and then return a craft from Ike orbit; Harkonnen is scheduled to head that way today for fulfilling these objective and for putting one final Pink Noise in polar orbit over Ike. Meanwhile, a Gumdrop 7 surface scanner probe-lander was printed up aboard Harkonnen as well and began using a narrow-beam scanner to look for suitable locations for Pathfinder bases. Didn't even have to release the Gumdrop from the bay before it found a promising biome on the Dunan surface... The Gumdrop has been released from Harkonnen in preparation for the warp ship's departure. It's continuing gathering orbital data; so far, the red planet is looking very promising for the establishment of a Pathfinder outpost. Next Objective and Necessary Evil both arrived in Minmus's SOI, carrying fifteen colonists between them bound for the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. Next Objective lucked out with a rendezvous with space station Minmusport at orbital insertion, docking almost immediately upon arrival. Necessary Evil docked some time later, at which point the colonists departed for DH aboard a Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander in a pair of excursions. All fifteen colonists are now safely tucked away in one DH's three Castillo domes, where they'll remain for the next 48 days (after which I will be quite a good bit richer). Some of the new Pathfinder parts were also printed up at Deepwater Horizon. Sadly, I also had to retire the outpost's Rangeland launchpad, which had managed to bury itself below the minty surface. Final installation of the new structures (including a new launchpad) will take place as soon as possible, as will the departure of Next Objective and Necessary Evil now that they have accomplished their delivery missions. Other things that happened included the completion of a McFeely Sr. 7 speedy delivery module at Non Caseus and the completion of a Power Tools experiment at space station Kerbinport. The McFeely is heading towards the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun, where it is scheduled to pick up a gravioli wave experiment to return to Kerbin; the plan was originally to deliver this experiment back to Kerbin post-haste but at this point it may make a stop at Kerbinport to pick up the Power Tools experiment before proceeding to entry. The alternative is to print one up at Dystopia Planitia, which will be engaged with the construction of LSV House Atreides for at least the next six days. Lots of other little things going on right now; much of it is waiting for things to get done.

Yep. I've got Haciendas at South Base on Kerbin that don't look like they're physically connected to the base, they've gotten so janked up. You trying to use the new KIS resource transfer station at all? Pretty sure that's what's causing it; it is in my case. Other possibility is not having a part around where you can set an airpark - the Saddle is one such part; so is the Castillo.

Hmm...okay. You are getting a bubble, and you've got another craft that reported works, so at this point I'm inclined to think there might be a mod conflict. Which specific mods have parts represented on your ship? You've already mentioned a KSS fusion generator and of course the warp drive is there, plus I'm seeing a crew centrifuge unless I'm much mistaken; what else do you have there? I'd look at those mods first for potential conflicts.

To be honest, I don't know where I'd look to check that. Haven't fiddled with it anyway - I guess it's "default", for all the more good that says. I'll see if I can find it next time I fire up the game. The approach is not at full throttle through. Generally I crank the drive's thrust limiter to somewhere around 25% upon entering a planetary SOI; it was a habit I got into pre-brakes. It's proving difficult to type exactly what I'm doing/seeing, so I'll record/post a video next opportunity I get. Hopefully it will clarify things.

I made the switchover yesterday and am now running Pathfinder 1.32.1.0 on KSP 1.6.1. EPL hasn't yet been updated for KSP 1.6.x; KSP-AVC reports that the latest version of EPL (for 1.5.1) is incompatible with 1.6.1. That might be part of the issue. As far as I can tell, though, I still have working launchpads. I haven't tried to use any OmniConverters yet; will do that and see if see the same as the rest of y'all. Doing some sandbox testing on Kerbin this evening. Quick question: The box for the Castillo drilling rig appears to be a lot smaller than the other boxed parts. Is this intentional, or do I have an issue somewhere? Tried out the adapter; it promptly exploded on deployment, so I'm guessing I was trying to use it incorrectly. Couldn't get the drill rig to attach to the arc reactor either. Also noting that while I can get the Prospector on Casa Geology Lab to make Slag, I can't get a Pondrosa or Claimjumper Prospector to do it. I can live with this arrangement, but again I'd like to know if it's intentional behavior or not.

Wish I could take credits for the four names I generally use that have stuck - Strange Cargo, Next Objective, Necessary Evil and Laggin' Dragon. Those were originally all nicknames for four of the Silverplate B-29s of the 509th Composite Group, 393d Bomb Squadron during World War II. Over the years I've used some of the other names employed by the squadron - Some Punkins, Full House, Straight Flush, Jabit III, The Great Artiste, Bockscar, Enola Gay... Why those four in particular? I just like the sound of them. A bit morbid? Definitely. Same goes for naming my refinery outposts after the sites of major oilfield disasters. Others are meant as in-jokes. Non Caseus? Latin for "no cheese". Non Mentha? "No mint". Good names for outposts at Mun and Minmus respectively, IMHO. Anyway... (1.5.1) Yesterday afternoon's activities began with the design of the Gumdrop 7, a craft designed solely to land a surface scanner on Duna. Printing of a series of these craft is now scheduled to take place from LSV House Harkonnen over Duna after Harkonnen completes its latest Pink Noise 7 communications probe carrier, which is destined for Ike. The goal is to find a suitable site for the establishment of the Enchova Central refinery outpost somewhere on the Dunan surface. I have an initial survey point selected, but history has shown me that I really can't rely on orbital scans to get that job done... Strange Cargo entered low orbit over Minmus and affected a successful docking at space station Minmusport; en route to the station, the Dunacomm Foxtrot communications probe was set into its final position, and printing of the Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander completed at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus. The Crater Maker's rendezvous with Minmusport was set and it arrived about twenty minutes after Strange Cargo docked. Shortly after the Crater Maker arrived, the Dunacomm Echo probe reached its final position, finishing up the communications network over Duna. Once that was done, Jeb along with tourists Kelsey and Sanler Kerman embarked on the Crater Maker, which then made its way to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. Jeb went aboard just long enough to finish out an expansion contract at DH, after which he went back aboard the Crater Maker and the lander returned safely to Minmusport. Refueling shots took place, after which Strange Cargo departed Minmusport for Kerbin. Only a couple of other things happened. Scientist Ribsted Kerman and the South Base outpost near KSC completed a Soil Analysis for contract, and I checked in on the construction of the General Electric 7 XM jump-starting craft at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun. Owing to a delivery error the outpost didn't receive all the Rocket Parts it needed to complete the GE, and as a result the probe wasn't complete like I thought it would be. The necessary parts were shot up to Non Caseus from the Piper Alpha outpost on the Munar surface and construction resumed, putting things about two days behind schedule. The late afternoon and evening were spent with the transition from 1.5.1 to 1.6.1. A fair number of the makers of the mods I use could stand to update their online versioning information; KSC-AVC was so full on the initial load up that I couldn't close the window. The bulk of my mods are working in 1.6.1, though KSP-AVC is reporting that the version of Extraplanetary Launchpads I've got is incompatible with 1.6.1, something I've not yet had time to investigate yet let alone attempt to rectify. Initially I had issues with OSE Workshop as well, but it turned out I had downloaded a version of the mod from like KSP v1.2 or so; installation of a more up-to-date version took care of that on the quick-fast. AG Extended also wasn't working at first but it turned out I'd failed to download a dependency; once that was done it fired right up. I also may have uncovered an issue with the Pathfinder mod but I want to be sure that it's a bonafide bug before I go pester Angel about it. Mod testing will continue probably throughout the weekend as time allows, but I hope to get back to my career save as soon as I can tell whether all the crucial stuff is working or not.

You're not running the drive and the exotic matter generator at the same time, are you? That'll get you every time... Can we see a screenie of the craft you're using? Also, what mods are you using? I'm primarily interested in what you've got for power generation and storage. Still works just fine - this screenie is from two days ago: The braking as you approach failsafe isn't working quite right right now (at least not by my observations); other than that it's perfectly fine. Speaking of which, @helaeon and @RoverDude, I'm trying to get you guys some hard data on that. It's definitely jumping from E-7 or E-8C to 0.001 C somewhere along the line, at least it has been in my local save. The behavior's been consistent in all SOIs I've visited so far since v1.5.1; came damn close to hitting Minmus once, warp got me down to 23,000 m. I'll do some more tests.

(1.5.1; 1.6.x Launch Day) Yesterday afternoon and evening wasn't as eventful as I'd hoped it would be; my lack of activity can be attributed to television watching, which is not something I can honestly say for myself very often any more... First thing that happened after yesterday's report was Necessary Evil's delivery to space station Kerbinport. Necessary Evil's core booster discarded and ready to burn for re-entry, with Kerbinport in the background. Yes, of the screenies I took yesterday afternoon, this is the only one that was remotely interesting-looking... The ship affected a successful docking at the station, after which seven colonists bound for the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus boarded. Next Objective, which had departed the station immediately ahead of Necessary Evil's arrival with another eight Minmus-bound colonists aboard, conducted her burn to Minmus, with Necessary Evil departing Kerbinport and doing the same one orbit later. Both ships are due to arrive in Minmus's sphere of influence in 4.5 days. The SCSS 7a mission to retrieve a MOLE laboratory from the surface of Minmus was scrubbed on account of there being insufficient personnel available to lug the thing onto the craft. The craft made its way back to the Non Mentha Yards orbiting Minmus, where scientist Kathald Kerman and engineer Sulan Kerman bailed out and jet-packed their way back inside the station. The SCSS was then maneuvered back into Non Mentha's drydock, the recycler unit was activated and the craft was broken down. With colonists on the way to Minmus and an extant need for a high-capacity passenger lander in the area, a Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander was ordered up at Non Mentha; printing of this craft finished up this morning and the craft has already made a burn for its delivery to space station Minmusport. In related news regarding preparations for Minmus's colonization, a Mineshaft docking tube was ordered up at Deepwater Horizon and was attached to the outpost's exterior near its launch pad. The Mineshaft will hook up specifically to the Crater Maker to allow the tourists to offload to the outpost. Better that than piping them out or shooting them over via KAS winch cable... LSV House Harkonnen's mission over Duna continued with the completion of the printing of a second Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier. The Pink Noise was released from Harkonnen's drydock and burned to its target apoapsis. As of this morning, the craft is approaching apoapsis for circularization, at which point the sub-satellites will separate and be deployed to their target positions. The whole process should take no more than three hours, at which time Duna will have a completed communications network. Harkonnen is printing yet another Pink Noise probe at this point, which will set the initial comm satellite network over Ike. Printing of this probe will take two days to complete. I'm considering sending Harkonnen to Ike directly - the next exploration contract is to orbit Ike - but I'm hesitant to do so, since the Pink Noise can also handle the contract and I'm pretty sure the next exploration contract will involve landing on Duna... Not much else of note happened. Strange Cargo arrived in the Minmus sphere of influence yesterday; a plane change burn to align it with Minmusport took place this morning. A transfer stage for the nascent General Electric 7 XM jump-start craft was added and one of these craft was ordered up at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun, the SCSS 7a was redesigned to increase its crew complement from two to three kerbals, and a deliverable MOLE laboratory RTK craft dubbed the McFeely Sr. 7 was designed; one of these will be printed up at NCY once the General Electric is finished, with the task of delivering a gravioli wave experiment from the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun to the surface of Kerbin. The General Electric, when completed, will be heading over to the Dystopia Planitia shipyard over Kerbin when it's ready, where construction of LSV House Atreides is underway. If all goes according to plan, the GE should have sufficient megajoules available to pump-fill Atreides to 270 units of Exotic Matter before it leaves drydock, which would be enough to get the new ship close enough to Kerbol to finish filling its XM tank. Today is my scheduled launch day for 1.6.x - I suppose officially I can say "1.6.1", since that's where the game is at. I'll be going through my mods one by one as time allows today to check to see if they are working, and if so, I'll make the switch at some point. Normally I would start a new career save with a new version, but I feel that my 1.5.1 career save is just now getting good, so I'll break with tradition and continue my save in the new version. Y'all will have to let me know if the devs have done anything particularly cool or annoying with the early career game...

(1.5.1, T-1 day to 1.6.x) I began my afternoon yesterday with the completion of the printing of the SCSS 7a garbage collection craft at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus. The craft was fueled and scientist Kathald Kerman along with station engineer Sulan Kerman boarded it, subsequently landing near the target object, which turned out to be a MOLE laboratory. The area was very hilly and I landed at night, so I decided to wait until daylight to attempt retrieval. It turned out that I couldn't retrieve it anyway. I had misread the mission parameters - the target weighed 2.5 tonnes, not 1.5 tonnes like I'd thought - and wound up being short a kerbal at the site... The gravioli wave experiment ongoing at the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun was finally completed, and at this point all I need to do to finish out the corresponding contract is to send the results back to Kerbin. On a similar vein, a pair of ice cream experiments finished up on Kerbin, and in their wake I picked up another outpost mission for Mun and a contract to put fifteen colonists out at Deepwater Horizon on Minmus. The payout on the colonization mission was huge - nearly √90M on final completion - and I wasn't about to pass it up. An Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane was launched to space station Kerbinport carrying colonists Dunfred, Matpond, Mitlorf, Shepry, Gildock, Lekin, Gwenuki, Anemy, Carcas, Sigzer, Gemner, Isazor, Tanmon, Aldlorf, and Loble Kerman aboard, docking successfully at the station. One of these years I've got to get around to flipping the docking port around on the VII design. I'm just glad the mass driver's not longer than it is... Eight of the colonists boarded Next Objective docked at the station, while the other seven were offloaded to the station's hitchhiker modules. Tourist Chadsey Kerman and rescuee-pilot Janpont Kerman loaded aboard the Auk, which then returned safely to KSC 09. With Strange Cargo already on assignment and the Dystopia Planitia shipyards in LKO already in use, it was necessary for me to launch a new Superfortress 7 ferry ship - Necessary Evil - the old fashioned way. Pilot Adler Kerman and scientist Frovan Kerman, the two resurrectees from the demise of the Swamp Castle outpost near KSC, manned the craft as it made its way to Kerbinport. "Launch a rocket from the surface of Kerbin". What an utterly novel concept!! Once the rendezvous with the station was set, Next Objective departed Kerbinport and her transfer burn for Minmus was set up. Necessary Evil arrived and docked safely, and the remaining seven colonists were loaded aboard. The plan is for Next Objective to make her transfer burn to Minmus and then for Necessary Evil to depart the station and conduct her transfer burn on the next orbit. But by far the biggest news of the day is what was going on with LSV House Harkonnen's historic mission to Duna. Having reached the required position for ramp-down and final warp to Duna, Harkonnen proceeded to do so. LSV House Harkonnen en route to Duna, having just acheived light-speed. The craft arrived over Duna, inadvertently encountering Ike on her way in. A corrective warp was required upon arrival to slow down enough, but eventually the ship settled in to a stable 320 kilometer equatorial orbit. Hey great, we're here! Now, where's the urinal? Upon arrival, the first order of business was to deploy the Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier that the crew aboard Harkonnen had printed during the transit. Pink Noise 7 departing from LSV House Harkonnen's drydock. The probe went into a target orbit over Duna and then the two sub-satellites were deployed, taking 2 hours and 40 minutes to deploy into their final positions and setting up the planet's initial comms satellite constellation (Dunacomm Alpha, Dunacomm Bravo and Dunacomm Charlie) in the process. Meanwhile, the crew aboard Harkonnen began printing up the ScanSat Duna survey probe and the ship warped into a polar orbit. That probe was also completed and released, an an initial survey of Duna for colony sites took place. The ship's crew is now printing up another Pink Noise probe to finish up Duna's comm satellite constellation (Dunacomms Delta, Echo and Foxtrot), a process which is scheduled to take approximately two days to complete. At that point, what happens next will be largely dependent on the number of Rocket Parts the ship is still carrying at that point - if the craft has enough to print up a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane, it will do that. Otherwise, another Pink Noise will likely be printed up, this start setting up the Ikecomm network - I already have the exploration contract to orbit Ike, so that makes sense. With the need to construct additional craft over Duna apparent and with the ability to do so, construction of a new Muad'dib 7 Alcubierre Drive mothership began at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin. LSV House Atreides will be complete in approximately ten days. I've already come up with a plan to more easily fill up her exotic matter tanks; the design of a capacitor bank - dubbed General Electric 7 - took place this morning, though I still need to either design a booster or a transfer stage for the craft; haven't decided which just yet. Today I plan to get Next Objective and Necessary Evil on their way to Minmus. Strange Cargo is just about there with her tour group, so I may be working on those today as well, and Harkonnen will continue their initial conquest of Duna as well. Some other things have happened today, but I'll leave those to report with tomorrow's log.

(1.5.1; T-2 days to 1.6.x) No screenies today, y'all. Sorry. Yesterday began with the successful conclusion of the Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane flight carrying tourist Gilbree Kerman on a simple up-and-down. The plane landed safely at KSC 27, after which I received a pair of contracts to expand the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus (because obviously a base that can already hold over 150 kerbals that has only three kerbals manning it is lacking in space). The first was fulfilled relatively quickly but the second will have to await the arrival of Strange Cargo, which conducted a gravity assist burn of 62 m/s off of Kerbin coming back from Mun; the ship will arrive at Minmus in nine days time. Deepwater Horizon also assisted me in yet another successful ore-drilling con job. LSV House Harkonnen finished her ramp-up free fall to warp into a stable "low" orbit (1.6 Gm) over Kerbol; she'll reach position for ramp-down and final warp to Duna orbit in about 4.5 days give-or-take. I was happy to find that the math I used to determine how long it would take the ship to reach its intended ramp-up speed of 25 kps (8 hours and 32 minutes) wasn't that far off, with the discrepancies easily attributed to rounding errors. While that was ongoing, she completed her printing of a Pink Noise 7 triple communications satellite carrier; the satellites are ultimately intended to be deployed in equatorial orbit over Duna. In an attempt to determine why certain LDEF soil analyses were not working yesterday, I transferred the projects from Doc commercial labs over to dedicated Geology Labs at both South Base near KSC and Piper Alpha on Mun. This worked; the project at South Base is finally collecting data, while the one at Piper Alpha completed itself instantaneously. The Venkmann 7b probe I'd erroneously launched from the Dystopia Planitia shipyard over Kerbin a few days ago with an LDEF orbital tools experiment (which requires a crewman to do) returned to the shipyard and was successfully recycled, and to replace it in a manner in which the experiment could be done properly, I designed the Fred Savage 7 MOLE laboratory module and began printing it up at Dystopia Planitia; upon completion the module was transferred to space station Kerbinport. Owing to the fact that there were no scientists assigned to the station, it fell to rescuee pilot Janpont Kerman to begin the experiment. Finally, with another surface junk hauling mission in the pipe, I redesigned the SCSS 7 garbage hauling craft extensively. The SCSS 7a is a two-kerbal craft designed for single-use; upon successful completion of its mission, the crew is to bail out and the craft will be recycled. Printing of an SCSS 7a is in progress at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus and is nearing completion as of this post. At the moment, I have nothing really to do besides let things finish running and/or printing, so it's likely that House Harkonnen will make her final warp to Duna today. The plan is to put up a communications satellite constellation over Duna first, then drop in a surface scanner to find potential landing sites. After that, a Hellhound 7 rover will be dropped to the surface to verify a site, at which point Harkonnen will have to go back to Kerbin - she may be capable of printing up a TBD base-seeding rover, but the necessary resources to ensure a successful deployment of such a rover are back at home right now. I still haven't decided if I'll start afresh with 1.6.x as is tradition; I'm leaning on "not" for once, given the amount of time and resources I've put into my 1.5.1 save and the fact that I'm just now getting to Duna...

(1.5.1; T-3 days to 1.6.x) Had a fairly busy day overall yesterday. With the need to add an adapter to LSV House Harkonnen so that a Minnow 7 ferry craft could dock, I went ahead and designed one and printed it up at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards. The adapter was fueled and sent on to rendezvous with Harkonnen, arriving successfully. Sometimes the simple things are worth a screenie, I guess. Over Mun, I designed a variant of the Venkmann 7 science lander for the purpose of delivering Research Kits to the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory in orbit, printing up the new probe at the Non Caseus Yards. Upon completion and fueling, I realized I'd forgotten to include any sort of electrical system - no batteries, panels, nothing. Fortunately, I had a Spamcan 7a lander docked at NCY and dispatched it to dock with the probe and ferry it to the telescope; this plan was successful, with both craft docking safely, allowing the ongoing gravioli wave experiment at Wonder to continue. Shortly before the debacle with the Venkmann, a Minnow 7 craft departed space station Kerbinport with Val, Bill, pilot Billy-Bobcal, scientist Wenmy Kerman and engineers Gemlorf and Chadul Kerman aboard, heading for a rendezvous with House Harkonnen. The craft arrived and the new adapter performed as expected. Didn't I already do this screenie once already in this post? Unfortunately, upon arrival none of my kerbals could board House Harkonnen, despite the fact that the Mk1 Docking Port used in the Buffalo mod said it wouldn't be a problem. Several solutions were considered - in the end, it was decided to print up a Black and Decker 7 delivery probe lander at Dystopia Planitia, have station engineer Jergar Kerman grab the KAS screwdrivers out of the craft's default payload, load them into the station's mass driver and shoot them directly to Harkonnen. Note to self - replace the standard KAS container aboard the Black and Decker with a Pathfinder Buckboard. Jergar will thank you in the future. The plan actually worked as intended, but upon returning to Harkonnen, the crew was allowed to board without issues. I suppose all I really needed to do was re-load the craft. The upshot of this, I suppose, is that the crewmembers aboard Harkonnen are now well-endowed with KAS screwdrivers... After recycling the rest of the Black and Decker at Dystopia Planitia, House Harkonnen's own on-board dockyard was brought online and a second docking adapter was printed up for a personal warp drive experiment. Meanwhile, Strange Cargo arrived at space station Munport and refueling shots between the Piper Alpha outpost on the surface and the station took place. The station's Spamcan 7a lander was dispatched to Piper Alpha with Bob and tourists Rodlorf and Melfrey aboard, arriving safely at the outpost. Bob got out to assume his post at the outpost's science lab, beginning a couple of experiments upon his arrival. Trajectories told me I was going to hit the center of the landing pad dead on. Probably means it's time to update the waypoint for the center of the pad... Rodlorf and Melfrey then returned successfully to Munport, though they had skosh fuel upon rendezvous. A final set of refueling shots took place, after which Strange Cargo departed for Minmus, burning for Kerbin to pick up a gravity assist. Upon completion of the printing of the new adapter module aboard Harkonnen, the ship engaged its Alcubierre Drive and proceeded to warp to Minmus, finalizing its orbit on conventional thrust. A series of three refueling shots were required to fully equip Harkonnen for its historic journey to Duna; the warp from Kerbin to Minmus fulfilled the experiment I was running (mainly my own curiosity there), so it was released and allowed to dock to the ship. With that done, House Harkonnen again engaged her warp drive, this time heading over Kerbol to top off her exotic matter tanks once again. Ugh...the ship is backlit. Who put that star there, anyway? With that done, the ship warped to Duna, fulfilling the flyby exploration contract. New contract involved putting a craft in orbit and gaining science, so the craft warped back to Kerbol to pick up enough speed to enter Kerbolar orbit; the idea is to get into a proper position to then bleed off enough speed to directly warp into low Duna orbit. As of this morning, the ship's in free-fall over Kerbol. Did some calculations there; I might ask the KSP community to check my math to see if I did it right... That's pretty much been what's been going on so far. Some Pathfinder Gold Digger drills were printed up at Piper Alpha and the South Base outpost near KSC in an attempt to pick up some CoreSamples, and I began an Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane flight with tourist Gilbree Kerman aboard; she's just doing a simple up-and-down, and had completed the de-orbit burn when I had to shut the game off. Today I'll be finishing up that flight, and I'm hoping to get Harkonnen to Duna.

(1.5.1, T-4 days to 1.6.x) Not much accomplished over the past 39 hours; no screenies to show for it either. After pulling off yet another ore-drilling con job using the Deepwater Horizon outpost at Minmus and a Con Job 7 ore tank at KSC, Next Objective docked at space station Kerbinport and after refueling the craft, I went ahead and transferred Val, Bill, pilot Billy-Bobcal Kerman, scientist Wenmy Kerman, and engineers Gemlorf and Chadul Kerman to the Minnow 7 craft also docked at Kerbinport. I realized that the smaller Minnow would be perfect to use within the limited warp bubble of LSV House Harkonnen to get a crew to Duna, as opposed to the significantly larger Superfortress 7 design (of which Next Objective is one). Only issue is that the docking ports on Harkonnen weren't compatible with the Minnow, and to that end I designed an adapter and started printing one up at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard. Similarly, a kit was designed to deliver more research kits to the Stevie Wonder 7 kerbolar observatory over Mun and construction of the kit began at the Non Caseus Yards also over Mun. Finally, I decided I wanted to go ahead and build a Pathfinder Castillo module for the South Base outpost near KSC, with a goal of stabilizing the base's physics when it loads up. I designed a rover (later designated as It's Only A Model 7) to take it and the prerequisite materials to South Base for deployment. Owing to events in RL, I was only finally able to deploy the thing this morning. Took three tries; at least on the final attempt none of the rover wheels or the Castillo module itself spontaneously exploded... Goals for the near future remain the same as they were the other day - I want to crew Harkonnen and get her to Duna, reload Wonder with kits so an experiment there can finish itself up, and get Bob out to the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun. Running out of time to get these rather basic tasks accomplished...

(1.5.1, T-6 days to 1.6.x). I've had an interesting past couple of days. After fixing some issues with the remote pads at my bases and orbital shipyards, I launched a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe from the Non Caseus Yards over Mun. The probe intercepted Lerod's Debris, grabbing the craft and taking it safely to Kerbin for a successful junk-and-kerbal mission. The Venkmann 7a science probe over Kerbin completed a long-term cryogenics study in orbit and then de-orbited, reaching the surface safely. At that point, I checked in with the crew at the nascent Boot Hill outpost on Mun. It was quickly clear to me that something was slightly awry... I'm pretty sure the underlying issue was leaving that new KAS resource transfer station attached to the base while I went to do other things. It was obvious that Boot Hill was a write-off, and after piling the crew out, the base was scrapped and a Spamcan 7a lander was dispatched from space station Munport to pick them up. Owing to the timing at which the 'Can arrived, the crew headed on to Non Caseus, where the ferry ship Next Objective was still parked. A second Spamcan already at NCY departed for Munport (docking safely before the day was out) while the first docked and refueling mass driver shots from the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun took place. Once refueled, Next Objective departed for Kerbin. Pilot Gregald Kerman embarked aboard a Minnow 7 utility craft docked at space station Kerbinport and went to go pick up retreive pilot Janpont Kerman over Kerbin; a successful rendezvous and jetpack took place and the pair of pilots returned to Kerbinport. The South Base near KSC successfully brought its Pipeline mass driver online, bring the base one step closer to being able to commence operations. Last thing that happened on Thursday was an attempt to go ahead and get the Muad'dib 7-type Alcubierre Drive ship LSV House Harkonnen to a stable low orbit over Kerbol, despite not being fully fueled; I had spent the past few days pumping up her exotic matter tank when I had a spare moment, and decided to see if I'd done it enough to get her to a position where the onboard solar panels could finish the job on their own. Only 150 units of exotic matter were spent in the transit, as it turned out... On Friday, I decided to take the final steps to try and get South Base fully operational; thirteen Chuckwagon warehouses were hauled out to South Base from the KSC runway tucked in a Buckboard-600 loaded on a Wisent 7 utility rover. The plan was to attach the rover via KAS connector and then just transfer the warehouses over to the base from there. It was here that I figured out the KAS connectors were causing issues; the rover went airborne upon docking but held the connection, and after the warehouses were offloaded and the KAS pipe undocked, things went back to normal. Eight of the Chuckwagons were added to South Base, giving the base storage for fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant, rocket parts and equipment as well as extra power. I was able to undock the original TBD 7a rover that had set up the base and recover it, and once I'd installed three SAFER reactors for the base's mass driver, operations were able to commence, starting with an op to refuel Kerbinport. Kerbinport took three shots to refuel fully; it had been a tad neglected since the loss of Swamp Castle... Next, a new Venkmann 7a probe was printed up at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards for an experiment that, as it turns out, requires one crewmember; I have yet to do anything with the probe as of this post. House Harkonnen completed filling up her exotic matter tanks and warped back to a relatively low orbit over Kerbin. Next Objective safely returned from Mun and set up a rendezvous with Kerbinport. Meanwhile, an Auk-II 8-passenger plane was sent up to Kerbinport with pilots Wilfrey and Gwenlock Kerman aboard as well as tourists Kelsey, Shepus, Rodlorf, Melfrey and Siguki Kerman. The tourists boarded Strange Cargo docked at the station, which then departed for Mun, coming within three klicks of Dystopia Planitia during the transfer burn. Next up on my agenda is to get a crew aboard House Harkonnen. The craft still needs to get to Minmus, but with a full tank of XM now, it should be able to warp there directly if I'm careful about it. Push comes to shove I can get her close enough and going slow enough to be able to bring her into orbit on conventional drives. Once there she'll be filling up on Xenon stored at the Deepwater Horizon outpost, and from there it's on to Duna. I need to deliver more Research Kits to the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun so it can finish up an important experiment there. I also have a few experiments to on Mun, and with Boot Hill's cancellation, they'll have to be done at Piper Alpha. To that end, Bob's heading out that way now - he's the only scientist I've got with the prerequisite level of experience that isn't already deployed. In fact, at this point I've got everybody deployed - not a good state of affairs if something comes up back home...

Here's a question - I could use Pathfinder in Classic Stock Mode but still use the CRP mod if I wanted to, right? Are there any known issues in setting my game up like that? Just thinking ahead here.