Kerba Fett

I've played a lot of KSP on the PC, but not much on the PS4 which I generally prefer for gaming. I downloaded the new version for my PS4 and have been having fun with it except that I can't seem to find any way to activate precision controls for flying. This would be the caplock on a PC, but I don't see any mention of it on the console version. Is that feature missing, undocumented, or am I just too blind to see it? I'm really enjoying flying with the controller compared to KB, but find it a little twitchy for some stuff.

I found that line in the latest Dev Blog to be pretty interesting. Last april when they made a big fuss out of leaving early access I assumed there wasn't a lot of work to do. Now it's 8 months later, they're still adding features and they've gone back to admitting that the game is nowhere near finished. So when will it be finished? Later this year? 2017? Is there even an estimate? I for one would be happy enough with a nice stable 64 bit version so I could choose my own mods without running out of memory rather than waiting for Squad to build all their favorite mods into the stock game. They've already spent plenty of time to make stock versions of Kethane, FAR, and Deadly Reentry. Version 1.1 is supposed to have the stock version of Remote Tech. Instead of spending time to duplicate what someone else has already done, why not work on stuff that modders can't do? More interactive IVA's that we can move around in would be a great start. Perhaps working on the performance of ships ships with high part counts would be possible. Maybe they could do some official modding tutorials rather than the random patchwork of info that's out there now. I'm sure there's a huge list of things that only squad can do if they weren't distracted by trying to add new content that modders have already done.

Apparently too many new players were surviving suborbital flights in previous versions of the game. The 1.05 version of the game increased the heating and thinned out the lower atmosphere to address that. Later in the tech tree you'll get drogue parachutes and seperatrons that you can use to slow your craft. While you're waiting for those, it's easier to just stick with orbital flights with a shallow reentry.

[quote name='KerBlammo']I put off learning docking too. It's intimidating for good reason, its one of the hardest things to do in the game IMO, but of course that makes it all the more satisfying when you do learn how to do it. For me its still more a feeling of relief when its over than one of enjoyment! My favorite thing to is still landing on the Mun, even though its become almost routine to do now. I play sandbox, and must have orbited the Mun 10 different times before finally screwing up the courage to try and actually land.[/QUOTE] Docking isn't one of the most difficult things to do in KSP, it's just difficult for most people to figure out for themselves. Orbital rendezvous has a couple of things that are somewhat counter intuitive and most people have trouble with the actual docking process the first time because they don't really understand what the navball is telling them. With a good tutorial that explains the principles as well as how to execute them even a noob can dock with 1 try. I've talked a few people through it using the broadcast feature on steam and they're always surprised how easy it is. The problem is that most people don't have it explained to them very well before they try.

Still don't see how that cost you a kerbal. Even if you were in a full stall when you tried your abort button, your parachutes were still in your staging menu. Why didn't you just tap space till they deployed? Or, you could have just reverted to launch unless you wanted the challenge of playing with reverts turned off. If you selected that option when you started, then it sounds like you're to blame for the death of your kerbal, not Microsoft.

Don't know if it works in EVA mode, but your middle mouse button will allow you to rotate the camera for framing screenshots. Perhaps you've just done that accidently at some point and it's remembering the rotation when you switch views like it does on the external view for ships.

Was this the mod you were thinking of? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/129771-1-0-4-Talisar-Parts-v1-0-0?highlight=talisar

One other thing you can do with small rovers to give them stability is to mount an RCS quad thruster on top. When the system is on the jets will fire automaticly to prevent wheelies when accelerating and the one on the outside of the corner will fire to prevent it from rolling. When braking use reverse as well as the brakes to make the front facing jet fire and prevent the nose from diving. Of course you'll also need a monopropellant tank.

Why would you ever want to bring it home? Keep it in orbit of Minmus and send a lander to work with it. the lander refuels at the station tanks then goes to the surface, does EVA reports, takes surface samples, runs goo and science jr experiments then heads back to the station. You then transfer all data to the station, refuel the lander, clean the experiment bays, and do another landing in a different biome and repeat the entire process. You transmit any data that's worth100% and keep the rest on the station. When there's enough to make it worthwhile, you send a small courier ship to the station and collect the data for return to Kerbin. The station never leaves orbit till all the science is collected and the lander can be small since it only has to travel between the station and the surface. Once all science is harvested, you move the entire operation to the Mun and repeat there. You should rotate your crew back to Kerbin after they each plant a flag on the surface so they can level up, but you can do that one at a time on your data courier.

It's not actually limited to having just 2 tanks selected. I do multi-tank transfers all the time. Select a bunch of tanks then press the in or out button on one of them. If you're transferring into that tank it will draw from all the other ones selected. If you're transferring from that tank it will split it among the other selected tanks.

I was recently reminded of the importance of frequent quicksaves when my cat was feeling ignored and walked across they keyboard during the munar insertion burn on my first trip there of this campaign. Of course she managed to step on the spacebar and seperate the capsule from the rest of the rocket. Reverted to launch and screwed up the next 2 tries myself, but at least I was remembering to quicksave as I went.

I've noticed that my ship often tumbles when I EVA, but just assumed it was because the SAS shuts off when the pilot leaves the ship and figured it was the blast from the EVA pack causing the ship to rotate. I've never seen the ship actually move under it's own power once I was out of it. To confirm that there's actual control inputs in the ship while you're outside of it, try adding RCS jets to the ship and leave them active when you EVA. Since the jets are easily visible it should be easy to tell if the ship is receiving control inputs. If it's a bug, it's one I haven't encountered yet. Have you tried going back to the space center then back to the ship through the tracking center? I'm wondering if the bug is persistant through a reload of the ship.

I'm pretty new to windows 8.1, but I'm able to ALT TAb back to the desktop and still see the icon on the taskbar. I run all games in full screen mode and haven't found any that I can't ALT-TAB out of then return to. I don't normally use the tiled view for anything except shutting the machine off. If the icon vanishes for some reason, can you use the task manager (CTRL-ALT-Delete) to switch back to it?

I wouldn't use a probe for collecting science on Minmus. By not doing EVA reports or surface samples you lose out on a lot of science points. Much more than you get from experiment bays. One thing that does work well on Minmus is ion powered ships. The low gravity really helps and you can run 4 ions off a pair of the large solar panels or, if you use Universal Storage, a single fuel cell. Ion ships will sort of work on the Mun, but your TWR makes them better suited to short range hovercraft rather than orbital shuttles. Getting to or from orbit in an ion ship takes thousands of ms dV since you need to run at full throttle for most of the trip.

I played with a variation of Steve's craft. I used Kerbal Engineer to tweak the TWR to 2.0. For this particular craft that's 79% on the engine thrust limiter for those of you not running mods. I removed the oxidizer from the fuel tank but all the other tanks are full. With a 2.0 TWR you get hover thrust with 50% throttle. To take off you can use 50% throttle and just use the H key to fire the downward facing RCS jets or just throttle up to 55 to 60% then throttle back to 50 once you're in the air. To land start with 40 to 45% throttle then go back to 50% once you start to descend to maintain your descent rate. To slow your descent use short bursts of RCS and use X to cut your throttle when you touch down to keep from bouncing back up in the air. You could also use upward facing RCS to help manage your vertical speed but you'll use your monoprop quicker. Also keep in mind that using precision mode reduces the thrust of the RCS jets. I used that landing gear since it's what I had unlocked in career, but it also has the advantage that you can spin on your axis while landed. By mounting a ladder right under the hatch, it defaults to an angle that gets over the RCS thruster and lets the pilot get in and out for surface samples. It's a good short range craft that's fun to fly.