SirJodelstein

Well, this one got to space. Mission Ikarus even got very close to the sun during its multi-year trip, with an apoapsis still out at Jool, which provided the most substantial gravity slingshot to this flight. Return to Kerbin was obviously a little bit fast. I hit the atmosphere at 11km/s, and even a heatshield could not stop Deadly Reentry from killing the probe within seconds

With the help of the LKO pusher, the mission to Dres was successful! Had a little trouble landing and broke off two almost-empty tanks and tipping over, but had barely enough fuel for a return with 50m/s spare.

Excellent plugin. Just head a heatshield-protected probe burn up on reentry because it was a little bit too fast (11km/s Kerbin reentry).

thanks a lot!

Hi, i am flying a mission to explore the sun in close-up detail. I want to put my Periapsis low enough to get the "Near the sun" science results from the experiments and sensors. Could anyone tell me how close i need to get for this task? Is there maybe a community-maintained thread that lists the science locations for near/high above for all celestials?

After a servere miscalculation of my career mission to Dres, a quick dV-check in LKO showed that the craft was about 400m/s short on dV, and the design had already strained my heavy lifter design. No docking ports available yet (and no RCS). Crafty engineers developed "RoLoP" - the robotic Low orbit pusher: Approached using radial ant engines instead of RCS, secured the heatshield with beams and landing legs, and created a stable connection. Fired the pusher engines for a 600m/s boost!

Jup, even more combo-box entries and categories. Sorry bout that ;-) You have already earned a huge number of brownie points for all your work!

I am quite sure there is a high/low space for each celestial, the devs just did not include individual messages for them for most experiments, and combined them in the more general "InSpace" situation. However, if someone wants to do different messages for high and low space, it should be on the list. Also, the general "CelestialBodyName" Location without situation filters is used in some experiments in the original file, so this should be included as well to allow a message pool that is used anywhere in the bodies SOI if no more specific entries are found. Here you go, these are the missing entries Mun MunInSpace MunInSpaceHigh MunInSpaceLow Minmus MinmusInSpaceHigh MinmusInSpaceLow Moho MohoInSpaceHigh MohoInSpaceLow Eve EveFlyingHigh EveInSpaceHigh EveInSpaceLow Gilly GillyInSpaceHigh GillyInSpaceLow Duna DunaInSpaceHigh DunaInSpaceLow Ike IkeInSpaceHigh IkeInSpaceLow Dres DresInSpaceHigh DresInSpaceLow Jool JoolInSpaceHigh JoolInSpaceLow Laythe LaytheFlyingHigh LaytheInSpaceHigh LaytheInSpaceLow Vall VallInSpaceHigh VAllInSpaceLow Tylo TyloInSpaceHigh TyloInSpaceLow Bop BopInSpaceHigh BopInSpaceLow Pol PolInSpaceHigh PolInSpaceLow Eeloo EelooInSpaceHigh EelooInSpaceLow

Ok i think i know what was happening. I still had the old ScienceDefs config file in the folder, just renamed to "ScienceDefs - Copy.cfg". I think the game was still pulling all the info from that one. After deleting that file, i now have all the community goodness in there! MoffKalast, you might have the same problem there. Try if it works out by deleting your old original backup file of the ScienceDef.cfg, or move it somewhere outside of your KSP install.

Great work so far! Note: the submission form misses quite some mask entries (ex. EveInSpaceHigh + Low, general "InSpace" etc). Instead of listing them all, how about creating three separate dropdowns that create the location string by concatenation: first: CelestialBody, Second: Biome (empty for most bodies, could be integrated into the first dropdown), third: Situation (empty/Landed/Splashed/FlyingLow/FlyingHigh/InSpaceLow/InSpaceHigh) also, found an issue with the mobile materials lab section: I was in high Sun orbit and high / low Eve orbit, and repeated materials experiments always got the "would be fun to paint rockets with this" message, regardless of how often i repeated it. Maybe there is a syntax error in that section?

Kvick, what are you trying to accomplish with this post other than derailing from the actual plugin discussion? Afaik there is no rule that says you may not post in threads that had 5 weeks silence (end of september to now). Actually, especially in the fast-moving addon forums I would be happy if someone dug out an old(ish) but still fully functional mod i somehow missed. In contrast to the big mods, threads of niche plugins like this one will always have longer phases of inactivity. If i think about it: no, please don't answer here in this thread, it had enough derailment already. And: Thanks everyone else for posting, actually seeing people use this plugin is what makes plugin development worthwhile after all.

Recommendation (has been said before i think) : we should really put this on a version control thing, so that we can a) see what changes a new edit actually did and easily revert individual commits without losing other edits

I have added some more images to the OP. Here are some more things i have not yet attempted, but totally possible: - drawing giant paintings on the surface with rovers - skypainting! Still waiting for someone to create the KSP logo or other stuff with planes - Markers for challenges (landing areas, race track borders, giant dart boards, etc)

@Sirine, pretty clever, especially for #2 and #3. Thought the round cap at the bottom of #3 would prevent something like that, but yeah, totally valid solution. Can someone come up with even more part-efficient builds? Thinking about a fourth puzzle atm.

Ummm.. this mod has just set Jeb on fire. On the surface of Kerbin while standing still. Whats happening? Debug log shows nothing special...

I made a separate thread for it. Here you go. As for a "map preview", i think thats very hard to do without a huge image. I made an overview image for my tree (click for full resolution) which only mentions node costs + 1 or 2 parts from most nodes which i think are the most important ones, and ended up with a fairly large image (2500x200px). Shrinking it down to half-size is possible, but thats still quite large:

I didn't participate, but i did test some planes. So many cool-looking planes, but not enough time to try them all. Did not vote because of this, but here is some test flight feedback anyway, in order of tests. Please take note that i am rubbish at flying and landing planes, so i might be the perfect test candidate In my interpretation, a BSC Albatross has huge wingspan and glides well. Unpowered hands-free landing should be possible, in-air control may be a little bit sluggish in exchange for stability. Lets see what we got here: BlazeFallow: Nice design, flies great, easy liftoff, but is somewhat difficult to land. Crashed 4 out of 5 landing attempts at about 60m/s. EkkuZakku: Sold! Easy liftoff+landing, in-air control and range. gm537: Nice. Flies great, but has a tendency to do turns during braking after landing (and on the runway). Also, danger of tailstrike on liftoff. Ojimak: Amazing plane, lots of fun to fly (needs SAS though). But i think it does not capture what i would expect from a plane called Albatross (i know something like your plane was in the OP, that's just my personal opinion). Also, its an infiniglider, so maybe a little too advanced for beginner crafts. Sirine: Once again, you submit an outstanding piece of art and engineering rafinesse. Takes a little to learn in-flight controls. Lands like a feather. Illuminated flapping wings make a great albatross imitation. Romphobia: Great beginners plane, flies and lands perfectly. Looks like an actual plane, too :-) Whew, good thing that i do not have to vote, way too many great options.

Well, if it is unacceptable for you to attach things in unusual combinations like "small SRB + cupola" or "Rockomax Stack decoupler" + 1.25m tanks, then you probably won't get far with this tree. Its not called "TinkerTech" for nothing, and the early to mid-stage designs will look like backyard assemblies. If you don't like that, you might want to look for a different tree. I think it's fun to build such things. This is why i encourage you to embrace the theme and just try to make stuff work with the parts you have at hand. If you can reach the highlands, you probably can also reach the shores, water, grassland and maybe mountains. Getting "Basic Flight" for the intake will allow you to use the jet engines to extend your reach (mountains + deserts); try to get a Kerbal to different biomes for EVA reports and surface samples. If you have some science available, think about which tech node will allow you to reach further and/or generate more science. Maybe you can also use a combination of jet engines + Sepratrons/Ant engines to put a probe into the upper atmosphere, space or even orbit for more science. I got the SRB fairly late (after a visit to tundra+north pole), but getting it earlier by skipping some of the 50-science nodes might be a good alternative. Once you get them, the door to space is wide open (even without decouplers - you can use several sepratrons pointing at a single piece as a makeshift stage decoupler). Here is an album of some creations from my test-run (first one is obviously not very useful, its just included as a spoiler-blocker). Especially the cupola-hovercraft turned out to be an incredibly useful thing that went through quite a few missions, as it made the "EVA while flying over biome" possible.

Yes! Perfect way to get more variety into the results. Already at 25% more content in just a couple of hours. Keep going! exactly. Random selection. Also, each experiment can have one or more "default" texts that will be selected if no Situation-specific text could be found.

Great! Just tested it and must say that i am very happy to have a ISA Mapsat replacement that works better as the original. Multiple scanners simulatneos is incredibly useful, and the markers/orbital info pieces are a nice addon. Thanks a lot for making this! I have one little suggestion for the magnified zoom window on the big map: The "click again to zoom in even more" feature works, but is somewhat painful to use if you want to go from 10x zoom (initial) to a much higher zoom like 50x or 100x, as i have to step through all of the small intermediate steps (12, 15, 19 and whatnot) . I don't know how the "next zoom step size" is calculated (guessing its something like "increase zoom by a factor of 1.25"), but i think such fine stepping is not really required. My suggestion would be to simplify this to a fixed stepping like 10x, 20x, 50x, 100x or to increase this factor to 2 or something like that. Also, it would be nice to let the user resize the zoom window or make its size somehow configurable. As you can see, these are very minor issues, probably something to add to the bottom of the issue list. This is already a must-have in it's current form.

After all this serious science business, it was about time for some good old crazyness. Finished an old prototype and took it on a short trip. Behold, a rodent is roaming through interplanetary space! Yes, it actually flies quite well. I'm going to take this squirrel on a journey through the solar system :-) More animals + craft files here

I have created a tech tree overview map Tech Tree with node costs and (important) contents (click for full resolution)

Well, i admit that balancing it these numbers and trying to foresee possible designs is really hard, and if you took a different road (please pm me your node progression + missions done progress) than me you might have a really hard time. Sorry for that then, and thanks a lot for this feedback. But in my initial playthrough, i didnt need a 30km rover drive, since once you get jets you can flying things to reach the deserts and the mountain biomes fast (kinda tough to land without chutes, but great&fast explorers). At my current stage in the tree, i did three Mun missions (unmanned, unmanned with hop, 4 kerbals with hop) and two Minmus missions, all with minor node unlocks + improvements to launch vehicle and lander craft inbetween, and it feels really rewarding to me. Obviously, finding the perfect spot between "too easy" and "too grindy" is very hard in a sandbox game where some people can pull of tier 0 interplanetary stock career missions on the one hand, and others are having difficulties reaching orbit with such things. I was hoping that others might enjoy these challenges aswell, thats why i published this tree. Anyway, i appreciate any feedback, be it negative or positve, so keep it coming. Thanks a lot for trying this out, hope you stay with it for a little longer.

Did you by chance look for my ASTRO (Add Stuff To Reach Orbit) challenge? It still has two unsolved hard problems waiting for creative engineers. Objective is to add a minimum number of parts to a given craft to make it go to orbit.

I know, but it looks much more awesome if the interplanetary drive stage's volume consists of 90% batteries :-)