Kerba Fett

Title says it all. Rendevious and docking is a huge milestone in a space program. You'd think you'd get some science for a crew report and perhaps returning the ship for the engineers to examine. Of course like orbital crew reports it should only earn science the first time and only apply if you docked 2 ships launched separately. If a suborbital hop is worth science, shouldn't a far more complex flight be worth some too?

I was hoping to find a diagram or interactive web site showing the stock tech tree and what parts are in each node. I've found a few diagrams for mods to show where they go, but nothing for stock parts. Since you can only see the parts that are next to unlock, I'm probably unlocking a lot of nodes I don't need to looking for the stuff I want to play with.

Right now the EVA pack works pretty well as a travel jetpack on low gravity worlds but it seems WAY to powerful for precisely controlled movement outside a station or ship in zero G. For me every EVA is a long series of over corrections and getting back in the hatch is more about spamming the f key as I drift past rather than stopping in front of the hatch. If it was made tweakable like engines you could set it for your particular situation. Turn it up on planets and down on zero G. Who wouldn't want more stuff tweakable right?

A few questions about some of the suggestions. Rocket Farmers idea about swinging around the Mun and back to Kerbin sounds interesting, but when I tried to set up the maneuver it doesn't look like its going to work without a burn at the Mun. If I set it up for a 10 to 15km PE then the projected course doesn't return to Kerbin. If I tweak it till I do return to Kerbin then my PE is in the 40 to 70 km range. I've tried tweaking prograde/retrograde, radial +-, and node position on my orbit path and still can't get a close approach and free return. I normally put the node for a Mun transfer where the Mun is just coming over the horizon then fine tune it as needed. Also, the idea of using the jet pack to get to the surface of minmus from orbit sounds interesting, but how do you rendezvous with your ship when you go back into orbit? With the navball and maneuver nodes it would be easy, but you don't have those on EVA.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I've been trying to stick with the career mode since the sandbox is sort of a dead end. There's no real purpose in going anywhere except to do science or just look around. I like the concept of the career mode, I just find it slow to get enough nodes unlocked to open up my build options. The order that some parts unlock also seems a bit puzzling. For example, by the time I could build airplanes to explore Kerbin I'd already done all the science I can in the atmosphere. It also seems odd that I can build and launch planes, but haven't unlocked landing gear yet. Wouldn't that usually be a critical part of a plane? As for your suggestions of making a trip to minmus a second or third flight, I can't imagine how you guys are managing that. That was prior to unlocking landing gear, batteries, or solar panels. How do you not fall over landing on the engine nozzle. How does 50 power get you to the Mun and back let alone Minmus? I've managed to unlock all the 90 science cost nodes except landing gear and heavy rockets and I still haven't managed to land on the Mun and come back. I've managed to land 4 times but each ship had too little fuel to even make orbit let alone the transfer burn back to Kerbin. Anyways, by trying to stay with small ships I've unlocked enough nodes that its starting to be fun again and if I can just manage another 20 science I can unlock docking ports which gives me orbital refueling and should make things easier.

I've been playing KSP for a long time. I've built large space stations and landed on other planets. I've built VTOL's, spaceplanes, and all sorts of space craft. A few months ago I decided to take some time away from the game to play other stuff. Had a great time with Assassins Creed 4, GTA 5, Splinter Cell blacklist, and the new Batman game. Now I'm trying to get back into KSP in the campaign mode and it's SOOO BORING....... I'm now at the point where it takes 90 science to unlock new nodes and I only gain about 10 per flight because I've already observed the goo and done EVA reports on the ground, in low altitude flight, in high altitude flight, in orbit, and after landing. All I see in the near future of the campaign is dozens of tiny boring flights trying to unlock the parts to make this game interesting again. This is worse than grinding for XP in an MMO. Is there ANY fun to be had for an experienced player in the campaign? Is there a way to generate massive ammounts of science quickly? Or has my time in the sandbox ruined the campaign for me?

If you really wanted to nitpick safety building a rocket in the middle of the VAB 20 m off the ground with absolutely no support is just asking for trouble. (launch clamps are the last thing I add to rockets)

You could just make your own by making a copy of the directory for the stock RCS and editing the part.cfg file. In addition to editing the thrust make sure to change the name, title, and description. The title and description are for you to tell the difference in game while the name is what the game uses internally to keep track of it. You can do that for pretty much any parts and you don't need to be looking for mod packs with the parts you want.

One thing I discovered a while back that's been a big help for screenshots is that the middle mouse button pivots the camera around it's own axis not the ships COM.

My advice would be to set it up as a static emissive texture first and make sure it's working then add the animation. That way you only need to play with settings on the shader and can see if it glows in unity. Once you get a non-animated glowey part working you can start trying to animate it. This separates the 2 problems and lets you deal with them separately rather than wondering wether the problem is with the shader or the animation.

Since you're into space games and just got a Rift, you might want to have a look at Lunar Flight on steam. It's got native support including head tracking. Just curious, how much are those things?

I've done a couple of rockets that land like that. A couple of issues to consider are that you'll need mechjeb to land it. They're also very tippy on any surface that's not perfectly flat because of the high center of gravity. This rocket is pretty stubby compared to the one in your link and it's still pretty top heavy. While they might look sort of cool, they're not very practical.

One thing I've noticed that often puts things just slightly off angle is that most modeling programs put an edge along the Z axis by default. If your collision mesh has an edge in line with the Z axis then when you use symmmetry you're trying to put your part on the joint between 2 polygons and KSP gets confused. It will pick one face or the other and base the angle of the part on that face. The fix is to rotate the collision mesh in the modeler so the Z axis lines up with a polygon normal rather than an edge.

Where did you hear about this part exporter? I don't use anything like that in my hierarchy. When I build something I select that part in the hierarchy and in the inspector window, choose add component and add KSP part tools just like I did for the mesh collider and mesh renderer. I set the object path and filename as well as image type. I don't have any of my parts in the hierarchy parented to game objects, but I've used game objects parented to parts for hatches. Sometimes I've also got multiple parts loaded and everything seems to work well enough. I can save each part to it's own location and they seem to work ok in KSP so I can't be doing too much wrong.

I see meteors every time I launch with SRB's since I installed FAR. At least that's what my rocket looks like. By the time I'm 1 or 2 km's up I'm so far past terminal velocity that my ship is surrounded by flames. It just gets worse and worse till the SRB's burn out. A pair of SRB's will give me enough boost to coast to a 70 km AP. I don't need to use liquid fuel till I'm trying to raise my PE. FAR may be great for planes but it breaks rocket flight like no cheater engine I've ever used. Now that I've tried it I think I'll go back to stock.

I've heard people talk about putting parts in a game object, but I've never done it and still gotten parts that worked in KSP. Including air locks, although those are a bit hit or miss. Part of the problem with trying to mod this game is that everybody seems willing to share an opinion about the correct method except squad. I'm not aware of any tutorials done by squad personel. MY hirarchy for a pod with an airlock (but no IVA) is the pod mesh with a game object inside of it for the airlock. That's it. Just 2 items in the list. It may not be right, but I get a pod that kerbals can exit then re enter so it's not wrong either. Of course just cause it works for me doesn't mean that it will work for anyone else.

Would it be possible to have an alternate increment ammount other than +1 or -1? What about highlighting one corner of each button? When you press the button most of it causes the value to increment by 1. If you take the time to click in the smaller sweet spot it increments by 10. Ideally the value would be set in the config file so players that wanted an alternate value of 50 or 100 could get that. Your example of going to a hover and letting the ship drop to find a new descent rate seems like it would use more fuel for slowing a descent. Why not just slow directly to your new rate in 10 m/sec increments? (or whatever the alternate value was set to)

Many parts have their textures in MBM format. It can't be read by most paint programs, but ther are conversion programs to change it to othe formats. Others use TGA or PNG that will load into any paint program for modification. It depends on what format the modded saved them from Unity. Once you find a texture that's readable (or convert an MBM to a more readable format) you just load it into a paint program like paint.net, GIMP, or Photoshop. Once you make the changes you want you resale the image with the same file name and restart KSP to see the model with your new texture.

I've been using MechJeb for quite a while so would give it my vote. One of the things I like about it is that you can make your own custom windows to display whatever you need. I made one for docking that shows closest approach distance and velocity, current distance and approach rate and RCS delta V. I also find the orbit info window to be more than I normally need so I made another with just AP, PE, and time till I reach each. You can even make a super window that has functions you use from other mechjeb windows. It's a bit limited in it's input options, but you can get a lot of needed info on just a couple of windows if you get rid of all the less used stuff.

Kill HS cancels your horizontal speed. You can still move with the flight controls, but as soon as you let go of the controls it will try and cancel your velocity. Keep orbit maintains your orbital velocity. Perhaps you dip a bit too deep into the atmosphere on a flyby. This will run the throttle just enough to keep you from areobraking. Keep surface maintains your surface speed. More useful for planes when climbing or descending. And as the other fellows have said, Keep Vert is for vertical speed control. Positive numbers are climb, 0 is hover, negative numbers are descent. According to the wiki for Mechjeb 1 the panic button kills throttle, seperates all but the last stage, then autolands. Touching any controls aborts the panic function. The execute button locks in the number in the field. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that you can enter a descent rate then click execute to make it active, THEN enter a new descent rate and click somewhere outside the window. You're still descending at the first rate as shown by the text just under the execute button. When you're ready for the new rate you just click the execute button to make it active. This is quite helpful since your flight controls are disabled when the window is active and by clicking execute then clicking outside the window, they're not disabled for long. Also, as of .21 you could use the translatron for takeoffs. I've managed to lift off with it set as low as .05 m/sec. It used to glitch and flip the lander if you tried to use it from the ground when I started playing with it back in .18. There's a stock VTOL you can play with this on in the spaceplane hanger. It's pretty fuel hungry so you may want to edit up an new copy of the engines with a higher isp if you want to play for a while. One big limitation of the Keep Vert function is that it doesn't work well with jet engines. It can't seem to deal with the spool up time of the engines so it works for small movements, but eventually the throttle lag causes mechjeb to over correct more and more till you crash. If you want to play with long running VTOL's you probably have to use edited rocket engines.

Wouldn't it look better to model a kerbal in it? It's not designed to go EVA from so there's no point in adding a hatch. That being the case, whenever you see this ship it should be occupied since they'd most likely insert the pilot in the assembly building then move it to the launch pad. Or would the pilots head and shoulders mess with your IVA view? Also, in your picures it looks like your mesh is turned 90' clockwise from what the navball thinks is the front. Does it fly normal? I've only just started making KSP models, but one of the first things I figured out is which way the objects should be facing in my modeler, in unity, and in KSP. For a lander type ship where you're looking out the side, you should be facing the open door in the VAB. Once you're moved to the launch pad you're rotated 90' CCW so you're facing north. In Unity the front of your ship should be pointing in the direction of the blue Z axis arrow. For a rocket type ship where you're looking upward, the belly of the ship should face the open door in the VAB and the Blue arrow in Unity. Not sure how much call there is for sub orbital flights in KSP, but it's a neat model you've got there.

I think you might be deploying the parachute too high. Try building a rocket with a command pod, parachute, solid booster, and antenna. This should get you up to about 20 km if you go straight up. When you drop you'll pick up speed, but slow down once you get back in the thicker atmosphere below 10km. Deploy your chute at about 5 km and it should provide some drag. When it fully deploys at 500m the shock will rip the spent booster off the pod and you'll float down nice and gentle. The reason for the antenna? At the top of you arc, transmit data and I think you get extra science points. After the landing go to the space center and recover the pod to complete the mission. Once you unlock the next tier of parts you can try multi staged liquid fueled rockets.

Like Neutrinovore I also like the 4 way iris from the star wars movie and I think it would look good on your ship. I don't agree with him about the retro engines though. I've flown VTOL's with and without them and the retro engines make things a lot simpler. Yours is a large ship and it would take time to rotate all that mass to use just the lift engines for braking. That's OK for your deorbit burn but when you're on final approach for landing it's nice to keep the ship mostly level and just use retro engines to brake. I would suggest a pair of smaller ones spaced out a bit though. The space where your single retro engine is mounted would be a great place for a lower cockpit viewport. Currently the ship appears to have great forward and upward visibility through the viewports but all visibility below is dependant on video cameras and ground scanning radar. This would complicate emergency landings in the event of a systems failure. If reentry heat was a concern perhaps a cover could slide over the lower viewport for that. (or even the upper for that stage of reentry) Anyways, it's a pretty cool ship so far. I can wait to see it finished. I recently started trying to make KSP objects so I'm starting to realize how much work goes into this stuff.

Talisar, if you're looking for more options for texturing have a look at MapZone. It's a program for combining procedural shaders to generate texture bitmaps. It's free and gives you plenty more options to add texture detail. You still need to combine it with a paint program to make the most of it, but it can easily do stuff that would be much more difficult in a paint program.

Thank you. That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. It seems like a very cool program.