ATSinged

I've developed a few house rules, some make things harder, some make things easier or at least more sane to me. My current rules are: Unmanned (unkerbed) exploration first, satellites, unmanned landers, then Kerbals get involved. Stranded Kerbals must be rescued as soon as feasible. Maximum orbital mission duration within the Kerban SoI is 60 days, any longer than that, like on a station, I must institute crew rotations. Rockets must have some semblance of realism, I use FAR so this is kind of forced to some extent anyway. No deletion of space junk, all spent stages must de-orbit and be recoverable with the Stage Recovery mod. Satellites must carry enough dv to de-orbit upon completion of their mission, they can "burn up in atmosphere" or be used for "impact testing". If something is stuck in orbit then it's stuck up there until I can figure out how to bring it down through game play. I use Scansat and once I've mapped the biomes of a body, I'll let myself use the alt-f12 menu to make them visible when planning a landing. IMO, I've earned that information. I can use Mechjeb to automate common tasks like circulization burns and transfers within the Kerban SoI if I've done those maneuvers by hand a few times with that pilot So if I'm training up a new pilot, I do everything by hand for a while, it also helps keep my skills up. I can't get MJ to work on launches with FAR, but if I could, I'd probably have a rule about all craft must be hand flown a few times before I used launch assistance. Hyperedit can only be used in my career in cases of Kraken attack. I can use it to test all I want in sandbox, but I can't transfer the craft from save to save.

I really don't see how anyone can have any major complaints. I bought a pretty cool game that was in pre-beta, well informed that it was incomplete and had glitches needing to be ironed out quite some time back. I played the hell out of it, enjoyed it, eventually got a little bored and moved on to something else, as I do with games. More than a year later, I loaded it up again and there are new modes of play and a number of irritants fixed. A few days after I start back up, it moves to actual beta. I'm playing the hell out of it again enjoying it all over, while failing completely to see how anyone can be upset. My biggest complaint? Having to upgrade the VAB all the way unlock custom action groups.

I'll probably have a go at building a space plane in the future, that is something I never tried in last go around with KSP (long time ago).

Thanks folks, I think I've got things sorted out well enough, FAR is a different animal and I really like it. Cussed at it a few times when something got ripped off the side of my rocket on reentry, but still glad I installed it. Basically, I wound up with sort of a mishmash of the advice in this thread, adding a lower stage, more aggressive TRW in the second stage for a bit higher apoapsis, some minor redesign and deciding a couple things just wouldn't make it to orbit with the engines I had available at that tech level etc. Pretty much, within aerodynamic reason, if I want it in orbit, I'll get it to orbit at this point. I'm generally hitting 80ish x20ish pretty consistently and just doing a minor circularization burn.

I have some craft that do this, the Kerbal will hang on for a while and eventually drift away, and on some of my craft Jeb hangs on just fine. I can't figure our any rhyme or reason to it, I just learned to keep an eye out for it and got good with EVA thrusters. Back in the past, I sometimes had issues with Jeb taking off out of the hatch like a rocket, sometimes 150-200 meters away by the time I could turn on the rocket pack. Those times were usually because something was just barely clipping the hatch, or even just almost clipping it, usually a parachute. I learned to habitually design around it, I don't even know if it is still a glitch.

I'm just a little ahead of you in my current career, though I restarted with new mods, I've been playing a while. Here is how I proceeded through this hump. Right now, I'd be focused on getting batteries at tier 4, and you don't need much to accomplish that in fact the Science Jr. will really help this. Using it is easy, get it in to space, click on it and tell it to observe materials bay, it is a pretty good chunk of science if returned from orbit. It's fragile, use an extra chute or two to bring it down, I think 6m/s or lower to land it successfully. Suggestions: Have you done EVA reports from low space (less than 250km) over all of the biomes you know about? I can't remember if you can do the Science Jr over each biome or just once in low space like the goo, I usually get to the Mun and Minimus ASAP. Have you done a polar orbit to get the biomes that an equatorial orbit won't get you? There are at least 2 more if you haven't (avoiding spoilers in case you care). There are also a couple of biomes that are harder to get, I often wind up with Jeb riding the outside of the capsule a bit waiting to pass over something I don't have yet, for example you have to be pretty quick on the EVA report button to get Mountains. Crew, EVA and Mystery Goo from high space (more than 250km out)? That should get you most of, if not all of tech 4 and batteries, which are a game changer. After that, I'll load a capsule up with batteries, goo and a science jr. and start looking at a Free Return mission around the Mun, no orbit, just use the Mun to slingshot you back to Kerban. There are a couple great tutorials on how to do this, I don't do these pure, in the sense that I'll use correction burns to get the most out of them. aim for a low periapsis, say 15km to maximize my time in low space over the Mun. You can pick up a ton of science, I usually EVA over 3 or 4 Mun biomes and with 4 batteries loaded up you can transmit all of that. I won't go orbital until I have solar panels.

I did this for the first time in my last career play through. Stuck a station with a lab, a big fuel and RCS reserve in a 75 x 75 polar orbit over the Mun and used it mainly to service the landers. Setting up logistics to keep it fueled and figuring out solutions to things like "Jeb got drunk and took out my solar arrays" problems added a lot of fun to the game play. It eventually evolved in to that station, another one over Kerbin with a "pine cone" of 1 man capsules to drop Kerbals carrying science down cheaply, ferries and tankers running back and forth, etc. It was rather enjoyable doing this and trying to make it efficient, the big benefit was it seemed to drop my cost quite a bit because I wasn't doing as many heavy launches and when I did they had multiple missions. The only downside is if you are not any good at rendezvous and docking, you will have to get better at it. This play through is using Karbonite, I'm planning something similar but hopefully more self sufficient.

I'll see if I can get a couple of screenshots posted tonight. Promise not to laugh, I read forums but I play in a little bit of a vacuum as well. It is early career and I've only got 2 boosters I use at this point. I just monkey with the fuel load to get about the right delta v for the cargo. I'm mostly satellite launch contracts and scan-sat launches which are coming in around 1500-2500kg depending on what has to go up and where I need to send it. Using procedural fairings and I'm careful to allow sufficient space inside the fairing, nothing clips , usually the conic fairing, but I don't think conic vs egg shaped matters? I've got a 3 man capsule rig up that lands on Minimus, much heavier (25t?) which is 3 cans riding a skipper with a 6 dialed back SRBs giving it an early boost. No fairings at all, but I guess it's more aerodynamic to begin with, oddly it flies almost exactly the same, same flight path, same questions, maybe a few more presses on the A and D keys but it basically goes like the lighter one. Absolute truth is, I'm finding it a lot easier to get to orbit with FAR for more reasons than just the reduced delta v needed. If something is set up decently, it flies better than stock IMO. It's just harder for me to get to orbit efficiently, without a long coast period or having to nose up a lot at the end of the trajectory and I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Ideally, I'd love to click launch, tip a little, stage once and see 80x80 but I know I'll never get one set up quite THAT good, besides some taps on the A and D keys make me feel useful

What everyone is saying about your early thrust level and ascent profile is spot on. Less thrust and an earlier turn will get you far better results. As far as the Mun, a free return mission carrying a couple of goos and a materials lab can be a boatload of science, particularly if you add EVA and crew reports, it's great for kick starting a career. I never quite hit the pure free return trajectory but my last one required only 2 very short correction burns. If you go that route once or twice, you'll learn a lot about mission planning and the science to actually land and orbit will be yours in no time.

Are you allowed to say "LESS BOOSTERS" on this forum? I find the idea to be nearly sacrilegious. Advice noted and appreciated however!

Moar stages? I've been in a minimalistic phase lately, SRBs around a central stack of fuel tanks with enough dv to get the payload in to orbit, shooting for around 3800dv with FAR. The only staging has been ditching the SRBs, then ditching the main stack just barely suborbital (I don't like space debris). Dropping some weight from the bottom of the stack that is getting bottom heavy does make a lot of sense, so I'll play with that. This is career with FAR, Procedural Fairings, Karbonite and Stage Recovery BTW. I'm not sure what my speed is when they go bottom heavy, above mach 2, maybe mach 2.5ish, but I'll pay attention to it tonight and update the thread. I had pretty much already abandoned asparagus when I installed FAR, asparagus is just unbeatable for getting stuff to orbit efficiently, I've use it a lot, but I didn't like doing it for a pretty silly reason which basically goes "it doesn't look like a rocket to me". I was also working to reduce cost to orbit, part count and complexity, so it all kind of fell together in to working on more conventional (NASA like) boosters.

Not your normal FAR post really, because I can get payloads to space consistently without a lot of problems, but it could be much better I'm sure. My first week with FAR and I'm thrilled with it. I'd already been moving towards simple designs and away from asparagus staging, it's efficient but unrealistic I guess, I never cared for it. My current booster family worked OK for the most part with relatively minor tweaking to things like TRW, adding fins or nose cones and the odd mid stage set of reaction wheels. There were a few spontaneous unplanned disassembles and the odd case of lawn darting but I'd say it went well. I do have some questions for the FAR pros though. Questions: I can launch all of my designs, kick over 5-10 degrees at 65-75 m/s and they will pretty much follow the prograde, I can turn SAS off after the initial kick over and they still fly true, needing only an occasional tap on the D key in some cases. My heavier boosters all seem to become bottom heavy and want to nose up later in the ascent (say 35K - 55K) as the upper tanks drain, I've taken to turning off the top tank, perhaps the top 2 for most of the launch to get around this, which works like a charm (I don't have orange tanks / mainsails in this career yet). Is this common? Any suggestions for avoiding having to do this? How do you guys get those perfect ascent profiles and not fall so far behind apoapsis? On my best launches I usually wind up 5-7 minutes or more behind it and the problem seems to be in the upper part of my profile. It seems most of my launches would naturally circularize at around 60-65K, which is obviously a bit low, this is true for both my light designs and heavier ones. Moar boosters is obviously not the solution here Moar skill and better design likely is The needed tweaks are likely very minor, but I don't see them. A bit more thrust in the later phases? TRW at launch is usually about 1.35 or so, main stack engines are tweaked so max throttle gives me about 1.5 when I decouple the SRBs, maybe 7.5K meters, 40 degrees from vertical, obviously this goes up as fuel drains, what is a good TRW at say 65K, maybe that would help me set the throttle for a better late profile. Finally, maybe a mod question: Telemetry, I'd like to be able to record a few launch profiles, just the simplest data, time, distance downrange, altitude, angle, speed in an effort to improve my consistency and design, but all I can find are some highly complex, mission control type mods, nothing simple and easy. Any suggestions?

I've never made a big, pretty station but I've used smaller ones for various tasks and contracts. With career mode I'm using them more for logistical needs, mainly to cut down the number of launches I do. For instance a transfer and refueling station over Kerbin and a science station which acts more as a mother ship for landers over the Mun. Usually it will just be a stable core that is capable of going where I need it on it's own, basically just a ship with a lot of docking ports. After it is orbited, I have a couple of tugs / shuttles that stay permanently in orbit to service the stations and ferry Kerbals back and forth between the stations. When I want to make an addition or say launch a fresh fuel module to the station, I'll use the cheapest launcher I can devise that will get the part to 80x80 where it will meet a tug for eventual delivery. Jeb was drinking again and took out 3 solar panels on a missed docking run? I'll build a small part, like a modular girder with a docking port on either end and a couple of replacement solar panels, launch it on the cheap and use a tug to place it. True story BTW, except I was the one drinking and got distracted. Modules that go up are usually recoverable with chutes and somewhat autonomous. For example, a spent fuel module at the Munar station will be picked up by a tug, likely carrying a Kerbal with science as well just to minimize trips. Release the module on a suborbital trajectory to Kerbin, the tug then corrects, aerobrakes to lower the orbit and heads to rendezvous with the Kerbin station. The module has a probe core and chutes so I can get some of the hardware cost back at least. The transfer station over Kerbin has what I call a pine cone attached to it, a group of single Kerbal pods with just the bare necessities to safely de-orbit a Kerbal carrying recoverable science or bring one down for a promotion. I figure the station and tugs system has saved me a ton in expensive, heavy launches. It is a lot of docking, but docking gets easier with practice.

I find leaving no debris in orbit to be a fun challenge when I'm designing, my latest lifter does have one stage that would stay in orbit but I stuck a probe core and a battery on it. Once it is ejected and I've finished circularizing my orbit with the CM, I'll switch back to that cast off stage and use the remaining fuel to deorbit, there is usually just enough.

I'm not releasing the grip (intentionally at least). However the part too close to the door theory seems pretty sound, I had a hard time placing the radial parachutes and I may have overlapped the door just a pixel or two. I'll check it out when I get home and see if that is the problem. Thanks!