Kerba Fett

Something else I've had good luck with is to put an RCS quad block fairly high on the rover and drive it in docking mode set for linear translation. If its being controlled by a command seat or a capsule that's oriented horizontally rather than verticaly, and you use the reverse key to brake it will fire the forward facing RCS thruster slowing you while resisting pitching forward. Turning in either direction fires the RCS on the opposite side providing roll resistance. You should still use the other tricks mentioned here, but this system helps a lot.

The long thin tank stack by the OP was pretty cool I'd always wondered if it would be possible to build something like that verticaly on Minmus. You'd have to put on each new segment mostly empty then fill them once stacked.

If you were going to do a non gun version, how about making a set of closable claws in the same basic shape of the guns. It would be like the pod in 2001. I was also going to ask, is there going to be landing gear of some sort. In the movie the only time you saw one sitting still was crashed or in the maintanance cradle. The landing gear would be easy since all you need is 4 sticks extending from the bottom to sit on, but what to do with it in orbit becomes more complex. A standard docking port would mess up your clean design. You could make a specific docking port shaped like it's maintenance cradle, but that might be a lot of work. What about a socket for a KAS winch? It would certainly be small and not so noticable, but of course not everybody could use them. Also you'd need a kerbal to go EVA to plug it into the droid.

The problem with having talent is that there are just so many suggestions on what to use it for. lol. Those guns are looking pretty cool. Are the orange things the targeting lasers you were refering to previously? Could they be made to track the ships movement vector? Short term the guns aim at where the drone is flying. Longer term they could be used as a guidence marker for precision landing. Anyways, can't wait to see how the drone turns out. :^)

Hey Devo, me again, You've done a lot of cool models, so I thought I might suggest another one to you. Luke's landspeeder from the original Star Wars. A couple of things might provide a technical challenge since you'd want to to be able to travel smoothly and fast over the surface. I was thinking if it were configured as a motorcycle with a long front and rear swingarm this would give it good pitch stability while holding the craft suspended. These would of course have to be invisible to the player. When stopped or at very low speeds the front and rear wheels would be able to turn 90' so it could spin on it's axis. It would use invisible outrigger tires on each side to keep from falling over. As the speed increases the steering range decreases to give good straight line stability. As it starts to move the outriggers retract and it relies on a very powerful reaction wheel to give it stability. (and side mounted RCS) RCS would also be the booster jets and provide braking. If the suspension could lift as speed increases it would reduce bottoming out on hills and dips. In the game you'd see the speeder parked. It's hovering about 10 cm from the surface and emits a slight glow from beneath. A kerbal exit's the base headquarters for another day of science gathering. He walks over to the hovering speeder and gets in the command seat. The glow from beneath brightens and it rises to about .25m. It slowly moves clear of the buildings then rushes off to the horizen rising to about 1.25m above the surface and raising a plume of charged dust behind it. Invisible wheels and suspension parts are possible as seen in Bahamoto's critter crawler mod and your hover wheels. The kethane mod does a pretty good dust plume so that part is probably possible. The one thing I'm not sure about is if it's possible to have invisible parts that only collide with the ground and not other objects or ships. That would be a key requirement. Now just so you don't think that this has nothing to do with your Oblivion collection, ;^) A good test of the concept could be the motorbike from the movie. Normally ground vehicles that small and fast are pretty unstable in KSP and they break apart. If you build it as an all in one model and give it high crash values it can't come apart. Does this sound like something you want to add to your "wonder if it's possible..." list?

You're running into the same problem I run into with refueling stations. Your fuel is so heavy that you burn most of it getting to orbit. Try launching your interplanetary ship with just enough fuel to get to orbit. (large tanks tweaked to be only partly full) Then refuel it in orbit. Your tankers are just lifting fuel and not your landers and other stuff. As for nukes, I don't use them. The poodle is normally my benchmark for moving large ships. It takes about 4 nukes for a bit more thrust, but they're a lot heavier. If I make up that extra weight in fuel I usually end up with more dV.

Hi Devo, Great model as usual. I've come across an pretty cool way to fly this thing using mechjeb. I put a small docking port on top of the cockpit and told it to control from there. Next I set MJ's smartASS to hold radial +. This keeps the top of the cockpit pointed straight up. When I take off I use the translatron keep vert to hold altitude. When you rotate the engines forward/back the ship stays level and accellerates or slows down. When you move the neck joint the cockpit stays level and rolls the ship. It makes it pretty easy to fly. It's a shame you can't map the engine controls and neck rotator to wasd for just this ship. If only we had a tiny probe core that matched the look of the ship to use. Also, while you're still basking in the sucess of this project I'd like to request another part. Could we get a second fusalage with the tail rotor rotated horizontal and mirrored at that point so we could have a 4 engine version. While not accurate to the movie it would give it similar functioning to your old 1999 space eagle. That thing used to be great for delivering rovers since you could just hang them under the spine then drop them once you land. It was also easy to balance since you could put your attach point anywhere along the spine. Between the Critter Crawler and this thing I've got lots of new KSP toys this week. :^)

That was a great idea about using the radial + I've been using it for the flight mode and it makes a lander pretty stable to control when coupled with a vertical rate controller. I've been able to do landings of -10m/s vertical with 10m/s of forward velocity and it's a smooth transition from flying to running. I can't believe I never tried that before for landers.

Hey BahamutoD, Thanks for the prompt reply. Upon doing more investigating, it turned out that my control reversal in rocket mode was being caused by a smaller mechjeb case I was using. For some reason it's mounting orientation was overriding the probecore unless I specificly selected the probe core for control. An easy fix now that I know what was causing it, but it's odd it didn't happen with the manned pods. Now that I've got the flight control worked out I've been conducting drop tests. That thing can take quite a hit. :^) Great job on this thing.

The not so cool thing about imgur is that those albums are not very tablet friendly. You need to wait for the entire message with all of the full size images to load before you can read anything.

So I've been playing with the crawler base a bit and have built a number of rovers. One thing I've been seeing is that when you're in rocket mode probe core based machines invert the pitch and roll while manned capsules don't. It doesn't seem to matter if the legs are deployed and when driving with the legs everything works fine on either manned or probe cores. Anyone else seeing this? Here's a few of the idea's I've been playing with.

While I was off doing other things my dayside Mun operations became my nightside operations. This is sort of a problem for my solar powered lander as well as my solar powered kethane miner. So how long do I need to wait for the sun to come up?

Congratulations on your Mun landing. It sounds like you're in the early stages of your career so for your next trip you may want to head to Minmus. Although its farther, it only takes a bit more fuel to get there and you save way more fuel getting to the surface and back to Kerbin because of its much lower gravity. There are large totally flat areas to land on and you EVA pack can easily take you on 10km excursions from your lander to get samples from nearby biomes. You also get more science points for EVA's, surface samples and any other science you do there.

I'd also thought of trying that, but you lose one of its biggest advantages. If your walker falls over you can just retract the legs, roll upright onto the lower half and redeploy the legs. It's got enough torque to get up with a mk1 lander pod on it.

That crawler base is amazing. The other stuff in the pack might also be pretty good, but to be honest the crawler is so cool I haven't even looked at the other stuff. One thing though is that it's really crying out for a matching probe core to go on top. There's 2 things that would make a matching probe really cool. One would be a red scanning cylon type eye. (are animated textures even possible?) The other would be if the upper dome could rise a bit. When it's all buttoned up you have a sphere. When you deploy the top it rises on a pedestal about the height of a small probe core exposing any instruments you mounted under the top. And of course I'd also like a 2.5m version for larger rovers. Anyways, great job. I think you've made wheeled rovers obsolete in my game.

I've found decouplers work well for giving me a wider base for landing. The the nice thing about them is that you can mount stuff inside of them. I use 3 way symmetry on the legs but only 2 way symmetry on the goo pods. This is usually my first lander on Minmus when I have to restart my career. For the second trip I usually send an extended expedition. The lander gets even wider and I add science JR's. The large ship is for refueling and resetting experiment bays when I pull the data packs. The smallest ship docked above the lander is to ferry that data back to kerbin after a bunch of landings.

In addition to Scansat, the Kethane mod also has parts to scan a planet from orbit. While this doesn't generate any science points, mining Kethane is a good source of fuel in career mode. Also, for screenshots if you're using the steam version of KSP you can use F12 to take them. Your screenshot library is visible from your game page in your library. From there you can upload them to the steam servers. Then you can look at your online screenshots. Click on one to make it full screen and right click and choose copy link address. In the KSP forum use the Insert Image button in the editor and paste in the address. To preview the message and make sure the screenshot is in it, use the go advanced button in the editor.

Actual rockets are far more complex than KSP rockets. What happens if the engine wont restart AND there's a problem with the "Revert To Launch" button?

Toadicus, I really like the extra features your plugin provides. Back when I first started using it I asked if it would be possible to have the power of the EVA pack tweakable. You were going to look into it, and I was wondering if anything ever came of it. Even after 1000 hrs in the game I still find the EVA pack too powerful and still smash solar panels on stations when I get out of control.

It takes about 225m/s of dV to match inclination with Minmus, so before you do try just making a maneuver node and see if you can get close. If your intercept is near where Minmus' orbit crosses the plane of kerbins orbit you may be able to just use the normal +- (purple) controls to adjust the node. As long as you can get an encounter it doesn't matter what your PE is. You can adjust it on the way. If Minmus is at the high or low point of its orbit then it's easier to match inclination first. When you get back, try to land on one of the planes near the edge. They're easy to land on and you can use your EVA pack to travel about 10km to visit nearby biomes without moving the lander. When you return to Kerbin, remove the data from any experiment bays and store it in the pod and try to get your Kerbin PE down to about 35km to areobrake for landing without needing fuel to deorbit.

In addition to installing them backwards, a lot of people put them upside down. The grab handles on the rim should be at 2:00, 6:00, 10:00 I've always interpreted the small grey rectangle on every docking port as a window that should be on the top and visible when it's mounted correctly.

The first thing you should have done was to transmit all of your EVA and crew reports. If you can handle the power drain you get science instantly and if the ship doesn't make it back you lose less. Also, transmit your surface samples then go back outside and get another one to return. You gain about 12 points compared to just returning one sample. Quick saving after each landing is a good idea in case you later run into a problem. For your next trip try to land near the edge of one of the flats. You should be able to use your EVA pack to jet over to the next biome for another EVA report and surface sample. Most of the flats are surrounded by slopes and midlands and most of the flats are separate biomes. (great flats,greater flats, flats, lesser flats and one other flat that I don't recall right now)

My closest call was a few days ago. Ran out of fuel 25m above the surface of the Mun and the lander survived the fall intact. (mostly) I blew 2 of the landing legs but was able to repair them on EVA and the lander didn't fall over when they extended. Then I brought a methane miner down from orbit to refuel it. Had 25m/s of dV left after landing. I guess that would be my second closest call.

On Minmus and to a lesser degree the Mun you can do a sub orbital rendezvous. You time your launch so that your path crosses your target's path close enough for an intercept. This usually happens near your AP. Then you put a maneuver node at the intercept point and adjust it to match orbits. Once you do your burn you should be moving in the same orbit as your target and close enough to approach on RCS. While you can do this anywhere, it's much easier on low gravity worlds since theres a smaller speed difference between the suborbital arc and an orbital path.

I'm trying to design a vehical for Mun operations. I found the gravity hack in the debug menu, but it turns the gravity down too far. Is there any way to set the spaceport gravity to the same as the Mun for testing purposes?