capi3101

Myself, I follow Streetwind's advice for early sci here, then go into Geschosskopf's strategy here on the same thread. The advice is from 1.0.4 but it still applies in 1.1.3, and I know from experience that you can get the tech tree knocked out in rapid order if you follow it. But that was not the OP's question - yes, there are all of these buildings available to gather science from around KSC; I usually farm them when I'm a point or two short of unlocking a node after a mission. For many of the specific biomes listed in the list that @Alshain posted above (for example, the multiple entries under R&D, or the VAB pod memorial), you will need to have the building in question fully upgraded first.

Resumed the rescue mission I launched yesterday. Game crashed on me again switching the view between the booster and a fairing bit, so I'm guessing the underlying problem lies with ProceduralFairings somewhere. Fired up the game again and found myself right back where I was before the game crash, so I resumed the mission yet again - this time being careful to switch views between the booster and the paywad. After de-orbiting the booster, I successfully performed a fairly textbook orbital rendezvous around Kerbin, though I did sell myself a bit short on fuel; by the time I finally zeroed out the relative velocity five meters from the disabled craft, my rescue pod was down to two seconds of fuel (said KER). It was enough for the de-orbit, though, and Kathbertha (a pilot) was successfully gang-pressed into service rescued. Did have a pretty significant design flaw on the craft, which I realized as it was coming down; I had added a heat shield between the rescue capsule and the engine...but I hadn't added a decoupler. When I had tested the survivability stats with StageRecovery in the VAB, it wasn't with the engine and fuel tank attached, either. So, the craft came down engine attached, and when the main chute deployed it slowed to a hair-raising 13 m/s. After surviving the heat of re-entry, the engine and attached fuel tank blew on impact...luckily everything else above that survived. Also came down in the mountains, so there was the 45-degree grade on which the craft came down. Should add that too... Anyways, after that I made Kathbertha earn her pay by taking up a pair of tourists on an orbital hop. That was a pretty routine mission, though it gave me a chance to test out the latest updates to StageRecovery; I'm happy to say that it is working once again with my selection of mods. Picked up a contract to do some surface pressure readings in the vicinity of KSC - that one oughta be easy money. Bob's still on his way to Mun; he makes the Munar encounter in seven hours. I should probably stop farting around and have him get on with it already...

Installed the updated .dll and I'm recovering un-controlled boosters on chutes alone once again. Thanks. That's fairly probable - I don't use RealChutes, but I do use FAR.

So, hang on a second - I didn't quite catch the joke for the multitude of words; are you wanting to build a Soviet space station, or blow up the Soviets with a space station? If it's building a Soviet space station you want, try the Salyut programme tutorial on the wiki; can't get much more Soviet space station than that. It's a few versions old but you can probably figure out what adjustments you need to make it all work, and you can wind up with a reasonable Mir facsimile if you decide to take it that far. I've done that one my own self a couple of times. NavyFish's Docking Port Alignment Indicator mod is a godsend when doing space-station projects like this, or really any time you want to perform docking maneuvers. Just saying. Now, as to blowing up Soviets with a space station...you'll probably need mods. Possibly therapy. Maybe cake and grief counseling...

Ancient wisdom from long ago (0.18 - when Docking Ports were introduced) was to use the Tricoupler on both bits you wanted to join up, and to fit them out with Clamp-O-Trons. The final connection will be very strong, and using three ports makes getting a proper alignment a relatively easy chore. Despite the age of the advice, it still holds up well in the modern KSP world. Tri-Adapters also work well, and if part count is a concern, try the Clamp-O-Tron Sr. if you have access to it.

My kid wanted to watch me play Stardew Valley for the better part of the weekend but I found some time to sneak KSP in late last night. I really could stand to relocate my box to a locked room somewhere ten stories below ground... So not much done over the weekend. Bob's still on his way to Mun for contracts and sci. Launched a low-orbit rescue mission, the first in my current career save. Game crashed on me when I decoupled the rescue ship from the paywad; I figured it might have had something to do with the chute that was indicated for the next stage instead of the engine that was supposed to be there. Had some real VAB issues last night, which I thought I had taken care of but apparently hadn't. If I can avoid having to harvest parsnips tonight, I'll see where that mission is standing and determine if I need to re-launch or just adjust the staging.

I don't suppose you could put that back in at some point...knowing the exact distance between the CoM and DCoM was occasionally a really useful piece of data (particularly when designing VTOLs).

Did you find it necessary to install the recompiled DLL, or did SR work for you from the get-go? Again, I've slept since I read it, but I think the recompiled DLL was to correct for something FAR did with RealChutes or some such, something that conflicts with KIS in some way shape or form. I should go read through the last few pages of this thread again - it's what I get for being lazy... As far as FAR adding to the game, I like the analysis tools it provides; they come in real handy when I've got a plane that I think should behave and doesn't. In particular, it's good about showing me why it doesn't behave like I think it should. Doesn't add much to the rocket game; adds quite a bit to the spaceplane game, IMHO. I've thought about giving KCT a go one of these years; my box would probably (finally) be up for it.

Still doing early career stuff, mainly tourist contracts to Kerbin orbit for money. Got a contract for a series of temperature readings below 15,000 m in the vicinity of KSC, so I slapped a thermometer on the Bad Idea 2 (a vertical, Flea-launched Juno-powered near-lawn dart that lands with chutes and mini-lander legs), loaded Jeb in there and had him do the run. Despite the pitch issues with the plane, it did the job admirably. Retreiving Jeb was more interesting - I thought I'd use the opportunity to do a practice approach for the Runway. Couldn't keep the plane from wanting to nose down as time progressed and eventually had to blow the chutes about 30 kilometers short. I'd moved one of the chutes foward when I should've moved it back and as a result it came down tail first most of the way. Snapped off the front legs, but otherwise the plane was intact and I made a fair amount of money on the contract. Had another contract to take surface temperature readings, again in the vicinity of KSC. Slapped a thermometer aboard Bad Idea 3 - an OKTO probe core controlled robot drone that has never made it off the ground - and rovered its overpowered butt out there to pick those up. Brought that one back to KSC. Made a fair amount of money there. Earned enough money to get the Launchpad up to Level 3 and got the Mun exploration contract (having already got the Munar flyby contract), so Bob was loaded aboard the Munar Prospector 7, a 233 tonne asparagus Thud-cluster monster designed to deliver a science lander to either Mun or Minmus with nearly 5,000 m/s of delta-V when it lands. The idea there is to go biome hoping and haul back as much science as possible. Craft was designed for Minmus, though KER says it should be able to handle Mun as well. Craft is en-route to Mun as of this morning; going to see if I remember how to land on the Mun tonight as likely as not...

I will note that I'm using both FAR and KIS; I vaguely recall seeing something about the two of them not getting completely along a few pages back (something about the way the two mods handle chutes) and that being the root cause of SR's issues, and that it's something that needs to be fixed in KIS. I might try uninstalling KIS temporarily and seeing what that does. If it makes SR work, I might go pester them instead. @aluc24, what mods are you using; do you also use a combination of FAR and KIS?

You need to change the root part of your rocket to the bit that you intend to attach to the spaceplane. It's one of the options in the VAB; I forget which.

Sci-mobile used the bush-plane gear with a Juno engine for propulsion. You know, like a sucky plane, but without wings - which I guess makes it an even suckier plane... If you replicate this methodology, I suggest tweaking down the engine to about 25% and keeping it under 10 m/s. Might've just been the fact that Bob was at the helm but it was not easy to control even at low speed - probably could've stood to widen the axle track a bit up front. The thing with Bob is that he can get out and clean the experiments, so you don't need to bring along more than one of each sensor. I might wait to do another KSC sci run until after I've got a few more instruments unlocked and need to squeak out those extra points or two; that Minmus mission I'm planning is liable to load me up with more sci than I can work with if it goes according to plan (given Level 1 R&D - the mission may take long enough to complete that I can upgrade it a time or two in the interim).

Going to have to try that next time I try to fly...usually I just wind up fighting the damn plane the whole time I'm in the air. Haven't got anything to suggest unfortunately, @numerobis. I have seen mods before that would replace the stock SAS control, but I could never figure out how to use them properly and ultimately just went back to stock.

I am also having issues with StageRecovery in 1.1.3; I have FAR Lancaster installed and I've replaced the SR dll file with the recompiled one from a few posts up. Still have not successfully recovered a stage in 1.1.3, despite having multiple armed chutes on the boosters. Curious if a control point on the booster is now a requirement for successful SR operation - if so, that would explain a great many things. It would also suck a tad. What information would help the powers that be diagnose the underlying issue? I'm not the only person who has had problems with SR and 1.1.3, looks like.

Spent about ninety minutes in KSP last night, give or take. Sent Jeb and Bob up along with a tourist into a polar orbit to finishing cleaning up Kerbin's upper atmo of available science for my current tech level; cleared up two contracts in the process and netted a fair amount of coin. Afterwards I built a low-tech sci-mobile and sent Bob around KSC to collect Goo, Materials and Thermometer readings from the low-level local biomes, and also took crew and EVA reports. Gained enough science to unlock three 90-point tier nodes, gaining (among other things) barometers, fuel ducts and the OKTO probe core in the process. Plans are now in the works to shoot Bob off to Minmus. The lander for the job has something close to 5,000 m/s of delta-V by itself and the hope is to hop biomes, hitting every last one in a single mission. The transfer stage to get the lander there has also been designed, but in my extended sabbatical I forgot how exactly to build a booster capable of launching the mass involved with the low-tech level I got. Naturally I remembered what was involved after I'd shut the computer off and gone to bed (the fine art of building engine clusters), but I've done the calculations and will construct the booster this evening. Hopefully when everything's said and done I'll have sufficient funding to actually launch the thing... I also need to do a Munar flyby. Should be cake compared to what Bob's doing (though oftentimes the cake is a lie).

Going to post this link here. This is a spaceplane guide for an old - and I mean archaic at this point - version of KSP, but it does contain a section on how to build VTOLs and while many things have changed, the general principles still remain the same. In particular, I'd pay attention to how DocMoriarty suggests you go about testing the craft, especially before you try to do anything important with it.

The topic of how to start going about your early career has come up before, of course - and for my money, I recommend Streetwind's strategy here: ...and follow it up by going into Geschosskopf's strategy here. Between the two, cleaning out the tech tree can be done pretty quickly. Note that even though the advice is a few versions old, it still applies. Further, it applies whether you use mods or not. Overall a sound set of strategies, in my experience anyway.

Quick question - are you flying stock or FAR? My own self, I fly FAR, and when I go to design a spaceplane, I try to shoot for a wing loading of about half-a-tonne per square meter. The math there is simple - start with your desired take-off mass (in tonnes) and double it - that's your desired horizontal wing area (in square meters). About a quarter of that goes into the tailplane, and the rest goes into the main wing. I then go on to determine the wing semi-span based on the desired aspect ratio for my craft, and from there I can determine the length of the wing root and tips. It's a pretty complicated set of equations and to be wholly honest I haven't been playing the game for the last eight months, so I'm still trying to re-interpret all of my shorthand. Whether or not the same formulas will work in stock is another matter entirely, and I should mention that I do use Procedural Wings as well, so it's relatively easy for me to set wings up the way I want them. Other thing I typically shoot for with my spaceplanes is the cranked arrow design - which can be emulated with a connector, a strake forward and a wing-wing off the edge, and those are their own sets of formulas. Stock aero, I have no idea what to tell you. Conventional wisdom used to be 1 lift unit per 2 tonnes of plane, but that no doubt is information that's WAY out of date by now.

Still doing early career stuff. Parts testing for fast cash. Sent Jeb and Val up to orbit a few times each for some easy tourist gigs. Had a low crew report mission in flight near KSC; it was low-hanging fruit but my Runway is still level 1, so I built a plane designed to vertically launch from the Runway with a Flea booster before switching over to Junos for normal flight and then chutes for the retrieval. Worked - I wasn't sure if those mini lander legs would hold the craft but they did and Jeb was retrieved safely. I have the contract for a Munar flyby now, but I'm still thinking about doing a polar overflight to finish getting overhead sci from the vicinity of Kerbin. Trying to get at least up to fuel pumps and OX-STATS before I go for Mun; they're not strictly speaking necessary for the trip, but they do make things nicer. Found my old formulas for making FAR planes. I think I remember how to interpret them too...

Doing them with probe rovers lets you set it up at a lower tech level, and it gives the Stayputnik a bonafide purpose. I've also used flags in the past, but they'd have a tendency to spontaneously explode; never had that problem the other way. It's a tradeoff.

Usually the markers themselves are a Stayputnik with a battery, an FL-T200, as small of an engine as I can manage to give it a little push and three of the little bush-plane landing gears. You shoot it straight down the Runway at about 20 m/s and park it right off the green of the Runway. Ride the brake as you go; there's a pretty good drop off at the end and you don't want the go out of control. Set the brake, reclass as a base. Then put another one right off the other end of the runway; that one's more about getting turned around. Then put a third one a klick to the west of the one you parked on the landward side. You can add more if you want; I recommend intervals at 5k, 10k, 20k and 30k. Getting them to stay aligned with the runway can be tricky but if you're a little off it doesn't matter. KER helps here - just keep your latitude within whatever tolerance you're willing to accept. Aside from helping with horizontal alignment, you can use the system to mark the rough position of KSC and use it to help with your glide slope, assuming you're coming into KSC 09 from the west. Just rename the landward probes as their distance from the Runway when you go to set them up as bases. When you're coming in and overfly a probe, take its distance from the runway, multiply it by 100 and then add 100 more to the result (for example, when you overfly 10k, that's 10*100 = 1000 + 100 = 1100). That's your desired altimeter reading at that distance; if you're within 100 meters you're probably okay, if not you're either too high or too low. You can add in the distance to a particular marker when you do the multiplication part as well, that way you don't have to overfly a marker exactly. Why make them bases? Because they'll be visible from orbit if you do. Why add 100 to the formula? To account for the fact that the Runway is about 70 meters above sea level; adding 70 would be more precise but the math will be trickier (and it's a tricky enough thing to do that formula while you're trying to land the plane anyway...). This system will take a while to set up but from experience I can tell you it works pretty well. I used to have this written up somewhere else but I can't find it this morning. Figures. I'd ordinarily recommend NavUtilities as a modded ILS solution; doesn't seem to be working in 1.1.3. Or at least I haven't got it set up right. I usually use it in conjunction with the visual ILS.

Okay. Last few versions I've been using it as a command pod for a visual ILS for the Runway; looks like that's what I'll probably be continuing to do with it.

I was talking about terms of precise numbers. I don't know if it was a stock feature or not, but I used to be able to right-click on a part and it would show its current temperature. I was also sure KER had something like that at one time and it may just be that I don't have it turned on. Gone for eight months and all that. I am seeing the little progress bars; nothing has exploded yet, thank goodness... Yeah, it should be; account the fact that it hasn't been fixed to simple laziness on my part. It should just be a matter of calculating the desired height at a 4:3 aspect ratio. It pretty much went as I said in my earlier post; I was trying to swap out a Flea booster for a Hammer that had some Basic Fins and a decoupler on top. I trashed the Flea, then moved to attach the Hammer to the bottom of the paywad and the game crashed - Windows 7 said "KSP has stopped working, do you want to toss a discount brick through your someone else's computer" or some such. I closed the game and tried to re-start and it wouldn't go. I imagine the issue was with Windows 7 and not KSP, and the game worked just fine last night after the computer had been rebooted a couple of times, so I'm not too worried about it, Current (see above). Haven't tried my hand at planes just yet - I'm still getting started in the career game. Thanks for the heads up on the gear; has anybody offered any solutions mod-wise that anybody knows about? I'm guessing I probably had a mod crash on me - probably StageRecovery, were I to take a guess. I have noted that I have yet to successfully recover any stages, despite the ample parachutage added (largely Hammers with four Basic fins and a pair of radial chutes), though since I've been gone for eight months I have no idea if it's borked or the mod has been re-designed that way. Last night I picked up where I left off on the early sci stuff. Took me three attempts to remember how to launch something into orbit, but ultimately got Val up there with two sci cans, two goo cans and six thermometers (for launchpad, low flight, high flight, orbit, high orbit and landing biome). Took a crew report in orbit and a bunch of EVA reports from Kerbin orbit and successfully returned her pod to the Highlands, where I got another EVA report and sci can from the landing biome. Used the sci collected to good number of the early nodes and took on some part testing contracts, which are slated for this evening's activities. I need to send Val back up to go into higher orbit but at this point I should be capable of building a Munar lander, so that's not necessarily a top concern. One final question - is the Stayputnik still largely worthless (by which I mean no SAS)?

I'm using FAR; have been since 1.0 and decided to stick with it in 1.1.3. There's definitely some new thermal stuff to learn - for starters, where do I go to find part temperatures now? It was nice to have Jeb pull nine gees yesterday during launch and have nothing burn off his craft... So, yesterday I fired up 1.1.3 for the first time after getting all my ducks in a row. One thing I noticed right away is that the game seemed to be at least twice the size of the last version I played, which apparently was 1.0.5 (I think I said 1.0.4 earlier). Began Streetwind's early sci strategy for 1.0.x; was amazed at how well the game was working with the graphics turned up and liked a lot of the new interface controls. Still need to figure out which graphics settings to use so that the entire screen is used; my monitor (which is on the short list of things for me to upgrade next time I have more than $5 to work with) is one of the old CRT styles. Not much actually done; game crashed on me while I was trying to swap out a Flea booster for a Hammer on a two-stage high-atmo sub-orbital Derpstick science craft and couldn't get the game to re-start. I did unlock three nodes of the tech tree prior to that and got all the early contracts except "Orbit Kerbin" taken care of.

Been away for a while - eight months to be exact; last time I visited the forums the latest version was 1.0.4 and my box was getting increasingly unsuitable for playing KSP. Last weekend I finally ditched the onboard chip (10-year old tech as it turned out) for a dedicated video card (3-year old tech which was relatively new when I bought it; it took me that long to finally figure out why my system didn't want to work with it). KSP was one of the games I fired up to checkout my box's newfound glory... Anyways, HOWDY, Y'ALL. It's been a while (good Lord, that sounds a bit like a countrified Adele song). Anybody want to summarize what all I've missed these last eight months? I guess we're up to 1.1.2 or something?