Wolfos31

I'll see if I can sit in on this. I think it'd be pretty awesome.

I laughed a lot harder at that image than I should have while browsing the forums at work...

So happy to have a new Brotoro mission report to read! Welcome back! Got a good laugh out of the flight crew's reactions to the new physics.

Have a rocket with a TWR of over 1, Go suborbital and roughly get your landing trajectory to pass through the area you want to land. As drag draws your trajectory down, counter it with blips of the throttle. Once you're close to your destination use your rocket to fine tune your trajectory. Reentry heating shouldn't be a big issue as you really won't ever get above say 1600 m/s and any drops you do should be shallow.

Well they're central time aren't they? So I think we could be waiting another 4-6 hours depending on what their typical office day looks like.

Despite playing KSP since .18 I have only just started to make use of SSTOs. And even then it's only in sandbox because I need every advantage I can get to make the darn things work. Part of my problem is definitely the ascent profile, I don't pay close attention to the steps as I've seen some people do. I don't note pitch angles or speed really. I just sort of point up and go until my jets flame out and then I switch over. My other problem is payload fraction/delta-v on orbit. Typically I can just barely manage a low orbit and that's not even very useful as everything I launch with a rocket typically ends up in 100km or higher orbit. My latest success is a Mk3 spaceplane that can carry a modest 9 tons to orbit and land safely. But the plane itself I believe weighs over 40 tons, I'd have to double check.

I like that it exists simply because it looks different and is an obvious tribute to the first satellite in space. No, I don't very often use it either, it has been on my early career probes a number of times and occasionally I'll use it for aesthetic purposes but otherwise it's just another part in the list.

@Evanitis It took longer than I'd like to admit looking at the second set of photos to realize the rapiers weren't mounted at a 45* angle backwards on the wing, that WAS the malfunction. I somehow missed the first photo in the sequence. "Why the devil does this guy build a plane that way? What does he need THAT much atmospheric braking for?" *looks at the next slide* "Oh bloody hell those broke loose!" *facepalm* You've gotta admit you timed that screenshot perfectly haha. No LES on most craft I fly. If it's crewed it MUST have a parachute per my career guidelines, but often the abort sequence is "decouple and pray nothing hits you"

You're right of course, but I play a lot of career, and especially with the earlier pad limitations sometimes I can *just* barely get my payload to a low orbit for one of my tugs to swing down and pick it up. I also only just recently started playing with mods, so now I know my crafts DV (KER) but before I'd guess and I often guessed too low. *shrugs*

I've actually had debris hit one of my ships. I think this is because of my bad habit to circularize in low orbit then ditch my orbital insertion stage and move my payload up to a higher orbit. 70-100 km is a crowded place in my saves. It happend so fast too that I didn't realize what had happened at first until I checked the tracking station and saw a piece of debris with a different name than my station component. Had to do another launch, I didn't change my behavior though because this has only happened once. Flyby's within physics range is actually relatively common though.

I was under the impression that the right side menu change was for the PS4 only. Did I miss something? I don't really care either way as long as it works well. I've always thought it would be nice to a modular interface anyway. I could get rid of the pilot portraits (or limit it to just one) and put the navbal in the right hand corner so I can see more of my ship.

@KerrMü Amazing spaceplanes, it's not a talent I have (mine barely make orbit carrying just the pilot) and meanwhile yours look realistic enough to be models for something humans might actually build as well as being able to carry cargo. Are these completely stock? I'd love to try out a craft file if you don't mind sharing. @GDJ What mod are you using to receive anomaly contracts?

I really, really like this idea. I've heard it expressed in other ways before by others on here but I hope it's something that makes it into stock eventually. Maybe have building requirements like lvl 3 tracking station, R & D, and Astronaut complex to ensure the player earns the benefits of that optimization. This is why I don't begrudge people who play with MechJeb. I don't personally, but after launching my seventh station refueling rocket in one play session I really start to wonder... At OP... I'd like the game you are describing a lot, but I don't think I'd like it as much as what KSP is now. If Squad ever does a sequel or expansion pack to the original game I think that is where this game mode belongs.

@FungusForge Yeah, I agree they'd have their uses. I think small scale battlesuits like human power armor or even just humanoid robots will play a role in war and industry twenty years from now. And the eventual uses of Boston Dynamic's dog robot thing would be pretty awesome. I know right now one of the big problems with the thing is it's loud as hell, as in chainsaw running next to your ear loud. I feel like mechs would be more commonly used for industry in real world applications if they become a reality on the scale battletech describes. I just struggle to imagine a battlezone where their cost could be justified by the advantages they provide. Actually, provided humans ever get off world they would probably be fantastic on airless bodies. Flight would be pretty ineffient as you'd have to use VTOL of some sort so the battlemech's biggest threat would be gone or regulated to short hops from a central hub. Terrain is likely to be unimproved and treacherous and a bipedal design is better than just about anything at traversing that. And since they're powered by a nuclear reactor they could be out about as long as the life support systems on board can care for the pilot.

I'm a huge fan of the Battletech video games (read: Mechwarrior) but I always found it amusing that the pinnacle of human warfare tech in this canon were hugely impractical, slow, expensive machines with offensive capabilities barely beyond that of a real world heavy battle tank. A couple of modern day ground attack aircraft would absolutely decimate a lance of mechs. A fun universe for reading and playing in though. And the myomer (spelling? it's been a while) muscle technology was interesting and not entirely implausible.

I like the idea of motherships, but every time I try to execute them they typically come out as less than impressive and often less efficient than other designs. I haven't tried since ISRU became a thing and I think that will go a long way toward making motherships viable. It helps to define what a mother ship is as well. Based on your description of multiple uses and different cargoes I think of interplanetary nuclear tugs instead of motherships. For me tugs are low part count high efficiency nuclear designs. Typically large or medium docking port, probe core, generous RCS supply for docking, powerful reaction wheel for directional control, a few solar panels (or 1-2 RTGs), and then as much liquid fuel as I can squeeze into the design all routed to 1, 2, or 4 nuclear engines depending on the weight rating of the tug. Once I build a tug it never comes back down unless I've unlocked significantly improved tech later along in the tech tree. Motherships to me mean crew quarters, a lab, comms, etc. Almost a space station that is mobile and compactly designed with enough DV to push along a significant load. And usually I decide that I could just as easily or more efficiently make the trip with 2 tugs. One for payload and the other for crew.

As usual an awesome video Cupcake. I'm always envious of all the little jumpships you make.

If you look at the staging they did have some chutes, not sure where they were placed. They even activated them but they were still going too fast because the engines didn't fire and so the chutes were ripped off. The vehicle could have touched down successfully if not for the activate while stowed bug.

It looks like either they had already burned the fuel in the landing tank (forgot to turn off crossfeed) or they were getting the cannot activate engine while stowed. Which has happened to me before. It looked like a decent lander, I also really liked the airbrake/sepatron/fairing system. Pretty nifty. However I didn't see many chutes on the pod and it was going pretty darn fast pretty low down. If I were them I may have come in shallower and tried to bleed off more speed. But looking again it was the engine cannot be deployed while stowed and so there was little they could have done, that bug happens when the game thinks an engine is still covered by a fairing/payload bay. This is why doing a pad test of all your landers is a must.

I use sub-assemblies for lifters but it took me a while to take to the system. I used to design each rocket from the nose down even after the released sub-assemblies but is my current career save I've found it's generally cheaper to strip a lifter down to it's barest essentials over a couple of iterations and then save it as a sub with payload to LKO rating. I currently have 5 ton, 15 ton, and 30 ton lifters. I'll probably need to push up to a 45 ton lifter soon as I'm starting to get higher up in the tech tree. I also use sub-assemblies for my tugs that maneuver every spacecraft to their destinations. The tugs generally fall into four categories: Station Keeper, Kerbin SOI, Light Nuclear, and Heavy Nuclear. The station keeper is RCS only and generally has several docking ports of various sizes on it. I use these to build Space Stations or move Stations into different orbits. I try to keep my stations very clean and not have RCS or reaction wheels on them to minimize part count. Every station I have has at least one station keeper tug either docked to it or in a complimentary orbit where it can reach the station within a few orbits. The Kerbin SOI tug is generally LFO powered and does what it says on the tin. This one is nice because it's cheap and recoverable so it performs the job of deorbiting old stations or spacecraft with restricted materials on them. (I have a personal rule that any nuke part must be soft landed on Kerbin for disposal) Finally my light and heavy nuke tugs will push payloads out to just about any interplanetary destination. Extremely high DV transfers may result in me stacking tugs or developing a one off endurance spacecraft. I'm a fan of reusing spacecraft and building on existing infrastructure. Figuring out how an old rover on Minmus can assist my newly researched mining endeavors adds a lot to the game for me. This means that all I have to design for about 90% of the contracts I accept or missions I make for myself is the payload. But sometimes I'll still design the entire thing from the nose down simply because I want to.

@LordFerret What version is that screenshot from? I forget when but I want to say when 1.0 was released they changed parachutes so that they stay open until your velocity is down to less than 1 m/s. So I would have expected that to land and then slide down the slope with the parachutes keeping it's velocity below crash tolerance until you reached the river.

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']I have a standard plane and rocket that I use in every version, they're my "control" to see changes in the aero model.[/QUOTE] This is a really brilliant idea and I'm a bit disappointed I've never thought of it. Have either of those designs ever been affected by part changes? For example when they made the incline reaction wheel smaller. Myself I try to standardize but I'm not often very good at it. There are a few exceptions, I have a little one seater VTOL plane I call the WASP that I recreate each new version. The different versions have minor changes but for the most part it's the same as it's always been. This career save I've been better than usual about using sub-assemblies, I have a 15 ton launcher to LKO that is an orange tank, a skipper, and a couple of SRBs that I've used a few dozen times. I definitely appreciate saving a bit of time in the VAB when I can. Landers, rovers, and stations I almost always custom design though. I feel like they can always use a bit of improvement.

This is one of the reasons I wish KSP had stock hinges and other basic mechanical pieces. The Apollo program folded the rover due to space constraints (and it being a bit of an afterthought) we should be able to do the same. That said, KSP rovers will almost never reflect a realistic design because our rovers have different considerations than real life rovers need to worry about. In real life rovers go slowly because speed isn't a priority, but our rovers go up to 10 - 20 m/s on the level which is an astounding 45 mph! That's why players tend to make wide, low chassis to prevent tipping while making turns or going over hills. The problem with this comes in the fact that we have very limited options when it comes to what we can deploy once a craft has left the VAB. Rovers need to be sturdy and strong so without mods your only options are struts and a wide, over-engineered chassis. So you go to launch this and it's a pancake. I usually don't bother with fairings when my payload is that bulky and irregularly shaped. I just take the DV hit and use a larger rocket.

[quote name='More Boosters']Yeah about that, I could never get Physics time warp to happen in space. Someone said > < but those really just throttle whatever timewarp you currently have as default.[/QUOTE] To use Physics warp instead of time warp in space hold the Alt key while pressing < or >. I don't know what keybinding you'd have to use if you're on a Mac.

It's a neat idea but I don't ever bother. It would be neat if there were a stock part that was a laser altimeter and you could trigger action groups when the altimeter reads certain altitudes. So set up a bunch of Sepatrons on a heavy return vehicle to fire when the altimeter reads 10 m say.