luchelibre

I wanted to add my voice to the ether and say that I use the plugin and find it really helps game playability. I hope many more mod-makers integrate into the toolbar.

Since you're just repeating yourself. I'm moving on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Don't_Know_What_I'm_Talking_About You're right, no where on that page does it say that's a fallacy. My bad. All admitted and consented to when I bought the game. As the last few posts have shown, these people are either willfully ignorant or lied to Squad when they said they consented to their conditions. It makes me sad that Squad banning these people is considered wrong or unjust. It's a good thing we're not in that situation then. I think I'm done. I'm getting smart-assy in response to your nonsense and it's making the XKCD comic not look so funny anymore.

Indeed, I'm glad he's not lame enough to simply say "Squad is lazy." Still, you need to comprehend. I'd say it's quite evident I'm not beating on a strawman. Yes, I paid money. I'm also an adult who paid attention to what Squad told me in the first place about themselves and the game. It makes my defense rational and contexually-aware and your whining...not. It also means Squad is much more likely to listen to me if I did make a suggestion. And there's the fallacy. The two are not incompatible with each other (and generally don't have much to do with each other). 'When it's done' is not laziness. Valve gave themselves an extensive deadline for something they already had the base for. Why? So when it was done it was 'done.' A little puzzle game they could be proud of. And even if that were not true, Valve's track record shows that if Portal was not up to their snuff by the deadline, they would take some more time on it. And their buyers will give them consideration because they've shown that quality is worth waiting for. If I'd ordered sides, yes. But I didn't, I ordered 0.13 and Squad's determination. Don't pretend you ordered anything more than that. Besides all of this, I will make a concession. There is one particular group of people for which deadlines are particularly necessary, regardless of the final quality. 3D modelers and animators. Why? Because they are most assuredly NOT lazy. They will work on and rebuild and work on the same scene or model forever and never think it's done. They're like an OCD trying to trim his sideburns evenly. Eventually, you need to stop him from shaving sidewalks into his temples.

So anyway... [citation needed] You're equating 'when it's done' with laziness. I'm sure that it exists in some fraction in the professional world. But as it turns out, the examples you give show your error when it comes to 'srs biznis'. Yes you do. Those are the 89% of US bridges that are not in need of major repair. The other 11% that do (many after short service) were 'released' 'when it was not done'. 100% were built on a deadline. 'When it's done' does not equal laziness. Yes you do. The 737 took two and half years to design and prototype during which big customers were staring at them with papers that said they could not cancel the project. Yet, they built and wind-tunnel tested many designs for the engine strut. They wanted to reuse wing designs from older planes. Again, they redesigned (with all the overhead that word implies) the wing to get the drag lower. 'When it's done' does not equal laziness. I fully expect the chef at my favorite steakhouse to not take that steak off the grill until it is as close to medium-rare as he can get it. Please share the webcam stream you have of Squad's cubicles. Furthermore, please provide access to your physic link with their employees. A) Given that Valve games are held up as beacons of quality, I'd say that your absolutist opinion on deadlines needs revision. If Valve was the only (or one of a very few) game-dev, then yes that would be a problem. But they're not, and I would prefer that the industry move more toward Valve, and not the other way around. Portal took two and half years with 10 guys with Valve money and the concept and physics of the game already written beforehand. Shut it. If Yahtzee from the Escapist, cynical nutjob that he is, can say it's a perfect game, then I can say with conviction that 'when it's done' does not equal laziness. It's a good thing they didn't release Portal as an alpha then. To start with Narbacular Drop and slog through two and a half years to get to Portal, which involved mostly lots of graphics updates and integration with Half-life lore, and all for a puzzle game with little change in the mechanics: My God your whining would have been legendary. 10 guys on forums != Playerbase Except Half-Life 2. And except the laziness. ;-) Of course they don't, because they have little to do with each other. Duke Nukem worked with deadlines for 10 years before 'When it's done'. What's more, it wasn't caused by laziness. 'When it's done' does not equal laziness. Your premises are flawed, your understanding of human motivation is flawed, your entitlement is repellent, and your desire to take out your impotent irritation on a company of not-wealthy ex-salesman bootstrapping a rocket game is just plain awful.

[citation needed]

I'm not really aware of any circumstances where a partially filled tank is more useful than a fully filled one, unless you were dealing with some razor-thin TWR margins off the pad. I'm sure Squad has plans for the tweakables system beyond what we see now, but a simple full/empty toggle would be very beneficial.

Wow, you guys are trying way to hard. Don't forget that getting a perfectly circular orbit for your probe is not what you're going for. You want an orbital period of 6 hours on the dot. Use KER to get that information. For the mothership, get it's apoapsis up to 2868. Once your ship gets there, adjust the periapsis until your orbital period is either 4 hours for a three-sat setup, or 4.5 hours for a four-sat setup. Again, use KER. Release a sat a few minutes before you get back to your apoapsis and have it do its circ burn when it gets there. Repeat for the next two or three revolutions. It helps a lot to release them either normal or anti-normal.

Crest of the Stars Also happens to be THE instructive show on how to write and shoot a space battle.

You're going to to feel so smug when FAR is made stock, aren't you? So many threads of, "[bUG] Can't gravity turn. Plzfix..."

Okay, three days of trying to figure out rocket-building while moving and planning for a week-long trip has been fun. That said, THANK YOU THANK YOU! I finally really understand what I'm doing! So, if you're feeling adventurous, hows 'bout we figure out the non-feed stage/booster thrust and deltav ratios for onion rockets? Addition: I'm now working out if the mass ratios between stages (S1:13%, S2:22.3%, S3:47.8%) hold up under different payloads. If it does, then I could figure out what to build only with two numbers: payload mass and payload fraction (16.8%).

Capi and Sean, thank you very much for laying this out for me. I haven't completely assimilated it into my head yet, but I just got back to the computer and wanted to put up a quick post to thank you. Nitro........

Thank you very much for the information. I'm surprised you use such a low payload fraction and TWR. I might be missing something when I calculate my fraction, though. I divide the payload total mass by the rocket's total mass. That does seem too simplistic though. So I actually have this backwards then. I was figuring only 30% of total dV for the upper stage in order to keep TWR up with smaller engines. I'll turn it around and see what I come up with. What principle or math did you use to come to your conclusion? Also, what payload fraction do you use for the upper stage?

While I don't claim to know what I'm talking about, the most basic necessity is to angle the shuttle engines so they thrust through the center of mass. Also be sure and do your roll early so what lift the wings generate pulls you backward in the direction you want to do your gravity turn.

Soo.... how can I modify what you've learned to serial and non-feed onion staging?

As a practical question, do you actually land like that normally, Nitro? If you do, the fuel waste just from gravity losses far out-paces the difference from surface velocity and makes this whole conversation moot. Also, again as a practical matter, you don't get to complain about where surface velocity matters when you've been using a great deal of your time saying it mathematically doesn't matter. Now I'm beginning to get suspicious that you're being deliberately obtuse. The fact that such an object can't exist IRL is entirely irrelevant. The mod-planet doesn't create what we're talking about here. Rather it amplifies it to a level that can be easily discerned by people possibly being deliberately obtuse.

What's the math you used and how can it be adapted to serial and non-feed onion staging?

Note: In the spreadsheet pics, the bolded numbers are arbitrary constants, which the others are calculated from them. So this is what I have so far for non-feed onion staging(40 ton payload as example): Which leads to this (will orbit with power to spare): And here for serial staging (20 ton): Note that the S1 mass is derived from totalmass-payload-S2. But S1 thrust is (payload+S2)/.25 The .25 part is one I'd like to get somebody with experience on what the optimal number is. I'd also like some help on efficient upper/lower stage dV ratios. This comes out as: But I'd appreciate some help with refining my numbers. Or even some pointers on how I can make this easier. I can only trial-and-error my way through the constants so much before my eyes start to bleed.

This is a good starting point, but it leads to overbuilt rockets with excess dead weight. That's the great thing about Temstar's post. Given a reasonable payload ratio, the tank/engine ratio for a stack/booster rocket is already (mostly) done. It's figuring out how much stays on the center stack after staging that is confusing. Boosters that can't lift themselves are not technically a problem if the center engine (cluster) is powerful. The reason not to do it is the jump in TWR after staging.

Temstar has an excellent post here that makes asparagus design crazy-simple for work out, especially thanks to his hard-won contribution of the stack/booster power ratio. I understand that, because there is no dead engine weight and almost no dead tank weight, calculating the design can be much more straightforward. However, is there a method posted for serial staging and/or non-feed onion staging that comes close to the sort of simplicity that Temstar's post does? Here's what I've got so far (2-stage serial lifter to 75km with FAR): If I'm lifting 5 tons at 12% with 1.7 TWR, math says I need 696kN off the pad. Now, my upper circ-stage gives me 17% (what percentage should this be?) of total dV at .75 TWR and increases the weight to 6.9 tons. Is there Temstar-easy logic and math that I can do to figure out the lower stage? Do I do the above again at 12% or drop it down by some calculated ratio, perhaps by 17%? Now on to onion (2-stage with two boosters): Same as before, 696kN off the pad. What's the recommended stack/booster power ratio and burn-time ratio? With asparagus, the stack is more powerful. But with non-feed onion, the stack would be weaker. My brain starts to get fuzzled by this point trying to figure out how to spread the fuel and engines around. If anything, I'd appreciate a pointer to a relevant thread. My search-fu has been sorely lacking in trying to find simple principles to serial- and onion-staging.

.08 Because that's when we could play it.

SRV Ron, I would certainly be interested to see your testing data to see how it matches up with a standard delta-v map.

Would he have become such a legend if he used it to do his flying? Furthermore, how can there be legends in a single-player game?

I always enjoy releases because it's: Week before release: Whining at Squad for all the game's ills. Week of release: Falling down at Squad's feet, proclaiming their brilliance, requesting to have Harvester's man-babies, etc.... Second week of release: Whining at Squad for all the game's ills and demanding more. I have so much sympathy for the devs. Thank you Squad for your hard work! Is there a donut delivery service in Mexico?

I wonder if Scott Manley would have become such a legend if he let MJ do his flying.....

Pfft... You are all godless heathens. Leaving behind the serif had led you all down the broad path to destruction. Times New Roman and a three-piece tuxedo are for the enlightened man.