capi3101

My Pathfinder base-building antics continued yesterday, but I also took some time to get a couple of other things done. The Spamcan 7 lander assigned to space station Minmusport was dispatched to go pick up engineer Nadard Kerman from a high and inclined retrograde orbit over Minmus; the retrieval was successful, and afterwards with all indications pointing to the need for additional help at the Deepwater Horizon outpost, I landed the Spamcan there and Nadard joined the crew for the time being. Her presence increased the base's productivity (as did the addition of a Habitat module to go ahead and record the crew's experience). The Deepwater Horizon base was expanded significantly yesterday, especially once the fission reactor was brought on-line and the base was no longer limited by Minmus's diurnal cycle. At this point the remaining intended structures have all been printed up and it's just a matter of awaiting the production of all the necessary Equipment before everything can be deployed. I'll build a custom craft to launch from DH and return Nadard to Kerbin once I reach that point. The Piper Alpha outpost on Mun had a confirmed lackluster productivity rating (in the range of -2.7), which was having all kinds of utterly wonderful effects. The biggest thing that was happening was that I couldn't get the Rangeland unit to print up any new craft - and I really needed it to do that. In an effort to increase productivity, I designed the Space Oddity 7, a one-way 3-Kerbal Mun lander. Pilot Gregald Kerman, scientist Tefrod Kerman and engineer Ceri Kerman were selected as the victims a secondary crew to send to Piper Alpha, and were sent that way. The lander wasn't quite good enough for the job - it ran out of fuel and lithobraked. Miraculously, Gregald was able to hold the craft together; after tumbling and rolling about, the craft came to a stop eight kilometers from PA, having only a fuel tank and a lander leg and with the bottom half noticeably askew. Ceri and Tefrod both jetpacked over to the base, where it was discovered that their presence didn't make a lick of difference to the base's productivity value. I think it was a bug that allowed me to finally print up the Wisent 7a utility rover at Piper Alpha... That Buffalo rover shouldn't be there. But I ain't going to knock it... Somehow (and I don't know how), I got the Rangeland to thinking it was tearing down a Wisent rover, but since the productivity value was negative, it started building one up. I simply mashed go when it got above a 100% completion rating. I immediately put the ill-gotten Wisent to work, stopping at Space Oddity long enough to pick up Gregald, then beginning a 25 kilometer rove to go pick up engineer Sulan Kerman (a second attempt to do so - the first attempt, which used the original TBD 7a rover, crashed out a mere three klicks away...). Bloody hitchhikers...you know, they make horror movies that start out this way. Of course, they also make pornos that start out this way, but I'm pretty sure none of them are set out on Mun... Your glamour shot for today. Wisent 7 coming up on Piper Alpha at Kerbinset on Mun. Sulan's retrieval was a success, and like Nadard, a craft will be printed up to send her back to Kerbin. If I can figure out how to get the Rangeland working again, of course. Meantime, I've got other jobs for the Wisent to do. Finished the day with the installation of Piper Alpha's Pipeline mass driver unit. Got big plans for this base. Probably need to get more experienced personnel there, though. I also "finished" a pair of ore-drilling contracts at both Mun and Minmus using the two outposts. Today I'll probably be continuing the expansion of Deepwater Horizon; at this point Piper Alpha is going to take a lot of konkrete, of which I haven't produced enough just yet. I can also look forward to a lot of Mun roving. Hoping to get more interesting contracts in the near future; I'm not particularly low on funds at the moment, but I'm going to need a lot more if I intend to go to Minmus any time soon...

OPAL is one of the Pondarosa/Casa templates. Main use I've found for it is Oxygen storage for uraninite processing when you want to put in a NukeWorks. That's assuming you don't use life support mods; I don't use them myself, so I don't know if either of the greenhouse modules also do Oxygen storage (though I'd be surprised it they didn't). The Claimjumper makes Slag as a byproduct of its Prospector unit; same goes for the Prospector unit of the Pondarosa/Casa Geology Lab, though I think there might be an efficiency difference. Your base's productivity rating makes a difference here...which I'm just now remembering my own self. It's probably why my current set of bases also haven't been making slag - with only three kerbals at each of them and none of them higher than a one-star rating, the productivity rating is very low (-2.7 at Piper Alpha right now, which would explain a great many things). Don't know how that's calculated exactly, unfortunately. In any case, a Slag Chuckwagon is going to necessary before you can make Slag, I'll tell you that much. Can't make something if you don't have anywhere to put it, and none of the other templates have Slag storage IIRC.

A Doc configured as a Watney - Watney's not a template for a Casa. In my experience, you'll need upChuckwagons for Minerals and Slag as well. But other than that you're pretty much right. Note that you can also get Minerals through a Claimjumper, and the OPAL unit generates slag though at an atrociously slow rate. Here's the specific formula from the CRP Brewworks configuration file:

I spent my day yesterday continuing to expand the nascent Piper Alpha Pathfinder outpost on Mun and the Deepwater Horizon Pathfinder outpost on Minmus. I was able to complete the remaining facilities print jobs at Piper Alpha and I was able to get all of the structures in place with the exception of the Pipeline mass driver and three Castillo units I intend to build there eventually. I did have a few issues getting the Rangeland unit in place, but I got them sorted out; at this point, I'm in a position to launch Mun missions directly from Piper Alpha. Next up there is getting the Pipeline installed, and once that's done I can launch a receiving end mass driver to space station Munport. I am a little concerned that I don't have enough personnel operating the base right now. Should that prove to be the case, I'll be sending some more kerbals that way before too long. Deepwater Horizon is coming along fairly nicely. At this point the base has got several resource warehouses, two Claimjumper stripmining units and a pair of Ironworks foundrys, and I'm beginning the process of putting the base onto nuclear power; that's been slow going on account of the relatively fast rotational cycle on Minmus - the base currently uses solar. The plan there is to use Pathfinder's distributed base system to set up a small nuclear power station a few hundred meters to the west - the outpost itself is on the Greater Flats but it's close to the boundary of the Lowlands, which have a much higher content of uranium ore. The initial attempt to build structures there failed; both the Saddle base unit and the Pondarosa habitat I printed up to start the new outpost spontaneously combusted - what I get for not grabbing the KAS screwdriver first. I'll have to reprint those structures and try again later. A mission to retrieve the remains of the transfer stage that delivered Deepwater Horizon to Minmus also took place; that mission had some limited success. Plan for now is to continue to expand the outposts. Mun's just about ready. Minmus still has a bit of a ways to go.

Just fired up the game again after KMLing the base full of Slag; looks like whatever was going on isn't going on now. For the record, the only converters I had running were the Opal, the LF converter on the Brew Works, the Uraninite processor on the Nuke Works, and the Nuke Works's reactor. Can't replicate my own bug so I'm going to chalk it up to a fluke. I guess I'll keep my eye on it and see if it happens again.

I know. So why am I losing Slag?

Another piece of weirdness going on at the moment - I'm wanting to start up Konkrete production at my base on Mun. I wasn't getting any Slag from the Prospectors of any of the five Claimjumpers there, and I've been KMLing myself full of ExoticMinerals anyway so I figured I'd just KML myself a 'wagon full of Slag. Noticed this was going on: Now, unless I'm very much mistaken, the only process that's supposed to consume Slag is making Konkrete via a Brew Works (of which I've got just the one). As you can see from the screenie, that particular process isn't taking place (on account of I'm not yet gotten a Watney up and running just yet). So, what's going on with the Slag in this picture? Am I missing something?

Ah, okay. I've got another base under construction right now; I'll try that and see if that helps matters. That one's been jumping off the surface on Minmus; all I can say there is that I should've bolted the thing to a Saddle. I thought I could get away with just putting the Pondy right on the ground because flat. Hopefully it'll knock that off eventually.

I didn't play too much yesterday on account of taking the time to try and catch up on sleep, but I still accomplished a few things. I spent a fair amount of time designing a variant of my Wisent 7 utility rover to handle a specific set of missions I've got at Mun right now; the idea is to get a remote launch pad up and running at the Piper Alpha refinery outpost on Mun and deploy one there, with the hopes of clearing up three close-by survey missions. Some of those involve low flight, so this variant has been given side thrusters - just enough to get it off the ground. Should be interesting to see if it works as intended. The Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier probe reached its final position in a 60,540.3 kilometer equatorial orbit around Kerbin (it has an orbital period of exactly 74 days, which is why it's at that specific orbit) and released its side probes, earning the designation of Kerbincomm Golf at that point. The burns to position Kerbincomm Hotel and Kerbincomm India took place at that point; Kerbincomm Hotel will make its burn for final positioning in 49 days and 2 hours, while Kerbincomm India won't reach its final position for 98 days and 4 hours. When India reaches its final position, the Kerbin SOI communications satellite constellation will be complete and I can start looking into putting some stuff over Kerbol. Probably will wind up doing that ahead of time; a Kerbol constellation is liable to take quite a bit to get going... I had launched a Hellhound 7 rover yesterday on a mission to scan the region near the Armstrong Memorial on Mun to see if the area would be suitable for a Pathfinder base. The rover made it to Mun and affected a landing 1.4 kilometers from the Memorial site. The investigation proved that the area isn't suitable, so I'll be doing some more regional roving, it looks like. (Realized that particular screenie had the coordinates of the Armstrong Memorial in plain sight; some of you might still want to try and find it on your own, hence the spoiler shield). Finally, the TBD 7a mission to Minmus was given the go-ahead to land at their intended destination in Minmus's Lowlands. To make the job of landing easier, a site for landing was selected six kilometers away in the Greater Flats, with the rover making an easy landing there. It was quickly discovered that the landing site on the Greater Flats was suitable while the originally surveyed site was not, so the crew turned around and went back to where they landed. Engineer Janbles Kerman began the process of unpacking the base from the rover; operations at the new site of the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus commenced approximately half an hour after landing. A very nascent new design for Deepwater Horizon. Janbles is out there double-checking to make sure the initial setup is complete. I'll be working to get some more facilities up at Deepwater Horizon in the near future; I've already been able to offload all the equipment from the rover and detach it from the base for independent operations. Shouldn't be too terribly long before I have a working refinery there. Piper Alpha has finally crossed that critical point where its starting to thrive, and I've only got a few more facilities to put in place there before I can look into adding a Pipeline mass driver for sustained operations. Really looking forward to finishing getting all this infrastructure set up so I can get on with making money...

This is what I was kind of what I was talking about yesterday. Used to be that when you hit the H key to go and attach these modules, they'd line up nice and pretty with the doors; they're not doing that for me now. Is anybody else seeing that?

I'm doing pretty well in CRP mode without omni-anything my own self. Even came up with a novel solution for that 'floating base' problem I'm still experiencing... I've heard that the anecdote about the Russians just using a pencil is a myth. Maybe, but the lesson about using the simplest approach to solve a problem inherent in it is still quite valid. The one thing that is getting me though is the lack of connection nodes corresponding to the exterior doors on the Pondarosa, Casa, Hacidena, Doc and Chuckwagon; those were all there in 1.4.5 but they've disappeared with 1.5.1 (CRP mode in both cases). I think that might be a contributing factor to my floating bases; anybody else seeing the same thing? I suppose that could be more related to the changes to KAS/KIS. Also noticed that the labels on this same set of structures are toggled to off by default. That one's more of an annoyance than anything; still thought I'd mention it. Using Pathfinder 1.31.1.0 in CRP mode with KSP 1.5.1.

Last of the overnight shifts for this semester was last night; going to see if my coffee will be sufficient as is or if it will need to go recursive (you know, one of those days where your coffee needs coffee). Finished up construction work on the Swamp Castle experimental Pathfinder outpost on Kerbin in the last 24 hours. The Pipepline mass driver was installed, and when it drained the outpost's batteries during initial testing, Bill and pilot Geofbles Kerman were sent out to the base from KSC aboard a Wisent 7 utility rover to install a trio of SAFER nuclear reactors. Delivery and installation was a success and the two kerbals returned to KSC - a grand total of six kilometers roved. In the meantime, a quick redesign of the Glass Cannon 7 orbital mass driver module took place, this one replacing the Gigantor solar panels with a quad of SAFERs (again with keeping the Pipeline supplied with sufficient power). The redesigned module was sent up to space station Kerbinport and affected a successful docking at its permanent position on Pier 5 and the Pipeline was brought on-line. Shortly thereafter the first successful shot between Swamp Castle and Kerbinport took place, a delivery of about 130 units of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer and 800 units of Monoprop. Swamp Castle is now recharging its available supply of each of these resources. An important piece of my infrastructure is therefore complete, I'm happy to report this morning. The now-finished Swamp Castle outpost at sunrise. Some of my infrastructure also reached Minmus yesterday, including space station Minmusport, a Spamcan 7 two-passenger monoprop lander, and yet another TBD 7a Pathfinder base-seeding rover, the last of which was put into a low polar orbit. Minmusport came in heavily inclined and it took most of the station's fuel reserve to finally get it into an equatorial 15 kilometer orbit. The Spamcan was able to affect a rendezvous and docking with the station earlier this morning, and afterwards the two craft separated long enough for station scientist Rodemone Kerman to EVA over, fulfilling a pair of Minmus Exploration contracts; Rodemone returned to the station and the Spamcan docked up once more, ready to conduct landing operations. The first of the Duna Exploration contracts, to conduct a flyby of the red planet, is now available. After roving a total of eighty kilometers after three kerbolar days and with an ExoticMinerals gauge that refused to budge off the zero mark despite passing through three different biomes, and rather fed up with the whole business, I found a nice ore-rich spot on the Munar midlands for the TBD crew on Mun to start setting up the Piper Alpha refinery, making the decision to bite the bullet and mash go on Pathfinder's cheat button so that they could get on with their business. I'm not necessarily happy with this decision, but at least it means that the mission won't go completely to waste. I kept outpost engineer Gemlorf Kerman fairly busy with installing new modules as I printed them up and with the partial dismantling of the TBD rover (removing the two wheels that had broken off at landing, saddle tanks and cargo pallet after unloading all usable equipment). Piper Alpha's coming along at this point; I've just installed a nuke reactor unit there and I'll probably start uranium enrichment as soon as I can replace the existing fab lab with a bigger one and add an OPAL unit for oxygen storage). It'll probably still be a while before the base can begin its primary function as a surface refinery. Hoping I won't have to cheat too many more times before I get there. With the equipment unloaded off the rover, I decided to attempt to go pick up engineer Sulan Kerman and bring her back to Piper Alpha, her wreck being just thirty kilometers off. The TBD rover departed Piper Alpha and started heading that way. Alas, the attempt failed - the rover flipped out of control with a mere three kilometers to go and crashed, ripping off the cab and cargo modules in the process and leaving nothing but the chassis and wheels. I still intend to install the necessary facilities at Piper Alpha to launch new craft from that point, so I will probably be making another roving attempt as soon as I am able to. Hopefully sooner rather than later. With a mission to establish another outpost on Mun and in the hopes that I won't have to cheat next time, I ended my morning this morning with the launch of a Hellhound rover to Mun. It will arrive in a little over three hours. My intention is to land it in the region near the Armstrong Memorial. I'm hopeful that the mission to establish a base on Minmus will also prove to be more of a success than the one on Mun has been to date.

Spent a fair amount of time working with the Swamp Castle experimental Pathfinder outpost near KSC over the past 24 hours. Came up with a pretty novel solution for the ongoing problem of the base floating several meters off the ground. That'll teach whatever forces are defying gravity. No way this will ever come back to haunt me, right? The base was expanded with five Chuckwagon storage units, a BrewWorks refinery and another Claimjumper strip-mining unit. I also added three Doc science labs, one of each of flavor. Finally, I got a Pipeline mass driver printed up and ready to go. I wanted to go ahead and add a Solar Flare fusion generator but the fact that my tech tree wasn't fully unlocked prevented that, so it was time to send somebody to Mun for more science farming. The job fell to scientist Tefrod Kerman, who was loaded aboard a Fireball 7b lander and sent that way. Tefrod affected landings in the East Farside Crater, Cayons and Farside Basin before returning to Kerbin, having collected a little over 1900 science for her efforts. The science was enough to unlock all but Ion Propulsion (a tech I hardly use as anything other than a tick-mark anyway). Swamp Castle now has a functioning fusion generator and at this point I'm heading towards final construction of that Pipeline. Once that's done the base should be able to perform refueling shots to space station Kerbinport in orbit, which is the main goal behind the whole project. Swamp Castle pretty much as it sits right now; one final Chuckwagon was added to the west end of the base shortly after this screenie was taken. Meanwhile, ScanSat Minmus arrived over the minty moon and an orbital survey was conducted. Two potential sites have been evaluated for the landing of the upcoming TBD mission heading that direction right now; i know which of the two spots I'm favoring for the construction of a permanent base at Minmus but it's all going to depend on what resources are available where. Hoping for better luck at Minmus than I've had so far with Mun. The Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier craft bound for Minmus also arrived and the commsat constellation established. Jeb and Val flew up to Kerbinport along with tourists Sarah, Rado, Anger and Phobrett aboard a Minnow 7 craft; the Minnow was selected mainly to conduct a docking-related experiment. The tourists are headed towards both of Kerbin's moons and they'll have to await the arrival of a craft capable of docking at space stations Munport and Minmusport before they can depart Kerbinport (either that or I need to figure out how I'm going to install a smaller docking port aboard those two stations with them already in flight). Finally, I went ahead and added the spaceplane docking pier module to Kerbinport. I still need to get the receiving end mass driver up there, but that's coming up on my to-do list pretty quick.

Which version of Pathfinder are you using and what's the mode in which you're playing?

K thanks.

K. So right now what's limiting the base is the fact that it has a single, one-star engineer and I've done none of the Geology Lab experiments, is that pretty much it? Would adding a second one-star engineer have an effect? Sounds like it's time for me to start printing up some Research Kits...

Where they are doing tournament D&D, no doubt... Hey quick question - what determines the efficacy rates of my structures? For example, right now I've got Swamp Castle working on Kerbin printing up equipment at 45%; what determines that percentage? If that determination is a big secret, I can live with that, but I would like someone saying "it's a secret to everybody" (and then hand me ten rupees). And if it's in plain sight somewhere, I sure would appreciate a link.

A day without screenies today, so naturally I expect all of you to like and subscribe to this post in particular... Not much done after my ramblings yesterday. Pilot Patrod Kerman, scientist Dilbur Kerman and engineer Gemlorf Kerbin aboard the TBD 7a base-seeding rover at Mun finished up their harrowing 50 kilometer drive from the Munar midlands through the lowlands and into the Twin Craters this morning (and by harrowing, I mean 'stopping for quicksaving every five kilometers and having to revert more often than not because the damn thing lost control and blew up with the loss of all hands') only to find that the intended site for their base was unsuitable for the task. At this point, the trio of Kerbals and their rover are moving on to go pick up engineer Sulan Kerman, a drive of a further sixty kilometers to the east. When they get there, they're going to have to set up a Pathfinder base whether its suitable or not (which in this case means 'has all the prerequisite materials to make Equipment the easy way'; lack of Exotic Minerals has been the sticking point up until now). A failure there would bring much of my ongoing efforts on Mun into question, not the least of which is the viability of establishing a refinery on the surface using Pathfinder parts. Not looking forward to having to do things the old-fashioned way again... Can't trust those orbital scans, y'all... Work is ongoing at the Swamp Castle base on Kerbin, with Pilot Alder Kerman, scientist Frovan Kerman and engineer Beamon Kermon continuing to expand the base's capabilities. Today a third strip-mining unit was added to the base and the addition of an OPAL unit gave the base some storage capability for Oxygen, which brought the uranium enrichment unit on line and in turn put the base on nuclear power. A new print shop also came on line, allowing the older, smaller unit to be retired. Finally, a new storage unit allowed the printing of RocketParts to take place, which will be made available for space station Kerbinport once it has received its receiving-end mass driver and orbital drydock unit. There aren't too many more units I intend to add to the base - a refinery unit will have to be added at some point, some additional electrical production and storage is in the works, maybe a few more drilling units, and then I'll look into adding the ground-based mass driver. At that point the base will really be in business. Other things that happened today included the launch of my Minmus-based infrastructure. Scientist Rodemone Kerman was loaded aboard a Munport Core 7 craft intended to become space station Minmusport once it reaches its station and shot that way, followed closely by a Spamcan 7 monoprop 2-passenger lander and another TBD 7a rover, this one with pilot Suly Kerman, scientist Lenbal Kerman and engineer Janbles Kerman aboard. I also finished putting a probe into a high, inclined orbit over Mun for contract.

Been up since 12:30 AM local working an end-of-semester overnight shift. If this is in any way incoherent, y'all know why. Log goes back to last Thursday, when I put the Kerbincomm Foxtrot communications probe into position in polar orbit over Kerbin, rounding out the initial Kerbin commnet constellation. Scanning satellites were launched for Mun and Minmus, and a Pink Noise 7 satellite carrier reached Mun's SOI. The three Muncomm satellites were put into their final positions during the day on Friday, completing all the work I intend to do on the commnet over Mun. ScanSat Mun also reached polar orbit over Mun and I selected an initial area to survey in order to find a spot to plop down the planned Piper Alpha refinery outpost. ScanSat Minmus wound up doing a Mun flyby on its way out to Minmus as well. Having reassessed the required minimum structures to set up a successful Pathfinder base, tweaks were made to the TBD 7a base-seed rover design and yet another attempt was made to set up the South Base Area with the changes in place. Pilot Alder Kerman, engineer Beamon Kerman and scientist Frovan Kerman drove 3.5 kilometers south of the KSC 09 inner marker to the base site and began setting up the Swamp Castle experimental outpost (it's the fourth attempt at setting up the South Base Area; it stayed up). I've spent a fair amount of time over the weekend continuing to expand the capability of the outpost and trying to fight an odd bug that has crept up with it... Beamon standing underneath Swamp Castle. Fusion power I could live with, but this anti-gravity business is for the birds, man... The changes to the onboard structures worked, so the same tweaks were made to the TBD 7a launch vehicle. Pilot Patrod Kerman, scientist Dilbur Kerman and engineer Gemlorf Kerbin were launched aboard the TBD 7a and sent to Mun, ultimately landing a good fifty klicks away from their landing zone. At night, of course... Last thing that happened Saturday was the launch of space station Kerbinport. Spent thirty minutes working on tweaks of the station design before deciding to leave it exactly as it is... Yesterday, aside from working with Swamp Castle, I launched a probe towards a high, retrograde and inclined orbit over Kerbin. That contract is still ongoing as of this writing; its up to the proper apoapsis/periapsis altitudes but it's a good thirty degrees off axis and it'll be another four days before I reach the proper node to try and correct it for contract. I also picked up scientist Kathald Kerman from LKO for contract using an Auk I rescue plane. Kathald jetpacking to the Auk. The rescue went well, all told. Only lost one wing on landing... So this morning's been pretty busy in terms of gameplay (overnight shifts don't involve a lot; just checking to make sure people who come in are supposed to be there). I launched four satellites for various contracts, finishing up two of those contracts. Space station Munport was launched and arrived in a 15x15 orbit over Mun, with practically no inclination to its orbit (and fulfilling a station contract in the process, incidentally). The team aboard the DOH-2 space station completed their space adaptation survey and so the station was de-orbited, the crew returning safely to Kerbin. Work also continued on Swamp Castle. Did run into a slight problem with operations at Swamp Castle as the day went on. Next priority - remove the base's dependence on solar power. Finally, the sun rose on the TBD 7a rover I'd landed at Mun, and so the process of roving over to the target zone commenced. So far the team has gone thirty klicks looking for the crucial materials needed to set up a Pathfinder base with no luck. The terrain hasn't been the most forgiving either, and with the target zone in the Twin Craters, I probably haven't seen the worst of it just yet. Certainly hope that when I get where I'm going it'll all have been worth it...

Timewarp set the base parallel to the ground; it was still levitating, though. When I came out of timewarp, it proceeded to tilt to one side like it had been before. So, no effect. I'll try the landing leg thing next.

Okay, changing the alt parameter had no effect. Upon reload, the base returned to the same altitude that it was indicating prior to changing the quicksave file. What else can I try? I did try changing the sit parameter to SUB_ORBITAL and the landed parameter to False; that gave me a base that sank into the ground, then exploded. I'd backed up the persistent save file beforehand, so no damage done, but still...

That's still more information than I had; thanks. I was going all the way back to the space center to get rid of the thing. Alright, I'll try adjusting that and see what happens.

Ugh. I was a afraid it was going to take something like that. K. I use KML. The base currently contains eighteen parts; which values am I looking to adjust? Yes, the base is called Swamp Castle. It's the fourth one; it stayed up... Is it just this main rotation parameter, or something else? Also noticed that none of the interior parts have "rigidAttachment" listed as True; any idea if that would make any kind of difference? Maybe it should be that hgt parameter instead...I wish I knew what all this stuff meant. Time to RTFM, I guess.

Fusion power, check. Alcubierre warp drive, check. Anti-gravity...aw crap, not again!!! Anybody ever see anything like this? This keeps on happening to my Pathfinder bases (or something like it anyway - they either wind up floating or half-buried). Any of y'all know what I might be able to try to correct this phenomenon? On Mun and Minmus, it's mildly annoying. On Kerbin, it's getting to the point where my engineer can't jump up high enough to get to the hatches... As far as this screenie goes, the airpark is set to landed on the Saddle and on the Buffalo rover nearby. The uninflated Hacienda in the backdrop has been reset twice already but keeps sliding down to the ground. It is attached; I've checked. Since I'm at it, I've also noted that the Blacksmith/Clockworks interface for the workshop and recycler doesn't have the little x you check in the corner whenever you want to close the window unless the workshop/recycler is in use. Just curious if anybody else has seen that. Still can't reconfigure my base modules without inflating them first, and I've noted that labels seem to be toggled off by default; curious if this is intended behavior for the mod or not. The deal with labels is annoying but tolerable; not being able to reconfigure before inflation is wasting a hell of a lot of my Equipment. Using Pathfinder 1.31.1.0 with KSP 1.5.1.

Once again I've let time get away from me; been about a week since the last time I reported on this thread. In fairness, RL hasn't been particularly cooperative for gameplay the last 2-3 days, so there's a little less to report for a weekly glob than normal. My log dates back to last Friday, when I had finished upgrading all the structures at KSC and was beginning to focus in on clearing the tech tree. Having already made one trip out to Mun for science, I figured there would be no harm in sending Bob back out there to farm a little more, so he was shot that way aboard a Fireball 7 science lander: Take off fairing, design still works. Who would've guessed? Bob's Fireball was modified to carry an accelerometer and seismometer, and it had a couple of science containers to help really clean the biomes out. Bob arrived at Mun safely, and after hitting the Highlands, Midlands, Polar Crater and Poles, he returned to Kerbin with 1,906 science. The science was used to unlock the gravioli detector, RAPIER engines, and not much else. The gravioli detector gave me the full instrument suite though, so after making some tweaks to the extant Fireball 7a design to make sure every available science instrument was aboard and working, I shot Bob to LKO and began the wait for the clearance to put a craft into Minmus's orbit. Sunday began with the rescue of scientist Tefrod Kerman from LKO and the safe return of the Bloop-Bloop 7 probe from its Minmus flyby. The probe's return unlocked an exploration contract to dock two craft in orbit of Mun; having anticipated this contract, I'd left Jeb and Val in Munar orbit a few days earlier aboard a pair of Minnow 7 touring craft, each Kerbal with five tourists also aboard at the time (they'd paid for flybys but I went ahead and comped them all up to extended orbits). Jeb conducted the rendezvous maneuver with Val a short time later. Rendezvous and docking was a success. The next exploration contract involved a crew exchange. With both craft full up, it was necessary for Val to go on EVA to make room. Jeb, on the other hand, could've just transferred between pods using the docking port. Personally, I think he was just trying to look at Val's butt, which is hard to do in a space suit. Perv. With the crew transfer successfully completed, the next exploration contract was to put a craft into Minmus's orbit...and then return it from orbit. With their jobs finished, the two Minnows burned for Kerbin. Jeb wanted to get out of there before Val realized he'd been looking at her butt again...luckily the return transfer window occurred right as the craft undocked from one another. Bob was then sent on to Minmus. Because of the need to return the orbiting craft, I went ahead and launched another Bloop-Bloop 7 probe. The transfer of this probe wound up such that it got a gravity boost off of Mun, and so it wound up arriving at Minmus in a mere three days; Bob wouldn't arrive for 5.5 days. The Minnows returned safely to Kerbin on Monday, clearing five tourist contracts in the process. An LMO rescue contract saw Jeb loaded aboard a new Minnow 7 with tourists Harbas, Negar, Johndred and Gustop; the craft successfully picked up Wilrey Kerman from over Mun and then returned safely, clearing four contracts in the process. A Boop-Boop 7 probe was also launched to LKO for contract. The Bloop-Bloop probe then arrived at Minmus, where it was put into a specific orbit to clear a Minmus probe contract; this wound up using most of the probe's fuel, but it had just enough left after clearing the contract to make a return burn to Kerbin - none was left for it to slow down at re-entry, though, and most of the transfer stage disintegrated. Fortunately, I had put the core, chutes and batteries behind a heat shield and they all survived all the way to splashdown. Meanwhile, Bob arrived over Minmus and began taking orbital science readings. Fireball 7a over the Great Flats of Minmus. The little bottleneck there that the craft is centered over has played host to the Deepwater Horizon refinery for the last couple of versions; I kinda think of the place as home and hope to go back there again soon. With the probe's return to Kerbin, Bob was given the go to begin landings. He completed gathering the orbital science and then hit all nine of the moon's biomes before returning to Kerbin safely after 25 days in space. It's pretty awesome when you can get the whole thing all at once... The amount of scientific data gathered, while impressive, was still not enough to unlock my entire tech tree - I'm still 2,650 science short - but it was enough to unlock most of it. At this point, I have access to my entire catalog of craft except for the Auk VII and the Auk XIV (respectively my 16-passenger and 32-passenger spaceplanes), and I'll probably send Bob back to Mun to go get the rest of it at some point in the near future. Rest of the week's been pretty cut and dry. Pilot Suly Kerman and scientist Lenbal Kerman were launched aboard the DOH-2 station to conduct an orbiting space habitation study for contract; that's still ongoing as of this morning. Launch of scanning satellites commenced with ScanSat Kerbin to a low polar orbit; similar launches to Mun and Minmus are scheduled. Four launches of Pink Noise 7 communication satellite carriers took place yesterday, beginning the process of establishing a commnet constellation in Kerbin's SOI - one of these went to high equatorial Kerbin orbit, one has been sent towards Mun, one towards Minmus, and one to high polar Kerbin orbit. A fair number of the Kerbincomm satellites are in their final positions as of this morning, with Kerbincomm Charlie slightly out of position owing to bad planning on my part and Kerbincomm Foxtrot still heading towards its final position. The final Pink Noise probe was launched this morning, which will set up the three satellites just within Kerbin's SOI (i.e. carry out the long-haul mission). Last thing I've been trying to do is to establish a TBD base in the vicinity of KSC. Scientist Frovan Kerman and Engineer Beamon Kerman were put aboard a TBD rover and sent out to establish the South Base 3.5 kilometers to the south of KSC, far enough south that it's out of physics range of craft launching/landing at the space center but not so far away as to be inconvenient to get to. The goal of the base is to establish a Pathfinder Pipeline mass driver in order to keep orbital space stations supplied. So far I've been having to deal with The Kraken a lot; Kraken ate the base and Frovan along with it on the first try and it was only via KML necromancy that I got Frovan back. The second attempt saw the base half-buried at shaking itself pretty wildly; I recovered it before The Kraken could really do a number on it. The third attempt is now underway, with pilot Alder Kerman joining the other two and the attempt being made with a more advanced TBD 7a rover. I remembered to set the airpark on the Saddle this time, so I'm hopeful that this base will actually work out. If have to do it again, the fourth iteration is going to have to be called Swamp Castle...