Entelin

Is there a decent thrust balancer mod, or a mod to view the center of mass/lift/thrust in flight? Thanks

That would certainly be an improvement, however imagine you had a 4000 part asteroid base, the moment you applied forces to it (like docking), the whole game would basically just break as the whole thing wakes up. But yes, you are very much correct, the physics engine has features already to do all this stuff, it shouldn't be a mater of a huge amount of work. It does this already in fact when time warping.

Currently when something is docked it becomes part of the structure. This wouldn't change, but since what you are docking with would be physics-less, the rover would need to become (at least while its part of the structure) physics-less as well. But you could still right click the port, undock, and then your rover/ship would be back to normal. Theres no question that having something like this would loose some fidelity if used. However one would only use it when things got bad enough that it would just simply no longer be practical to use without it. I personally want to do some base building, it's just not doable with the way physics works right now.

Yeah, it would, but at least you could have a large functional space station that you could actually use and play with. You wouldn't be obligated to use it of course, it would be a switch that you could toggle. I would love to make an asteroid base for example, but after the first couple ships the whole thing would get laggy to the point that it just wouldn't be fun anymore, let alone visiting it with yet another ship.

I think we all would like better physics processing, building bigger and bigger things for me is a real draw, but one that inevitably succums to grinding the fps to a halt. Though I would certainly love multi core physics, for the most part, what we have is *enough* for most spacecraft. It is far, far from enough if you want to make bases anywhere. True for space stations as well. I propose that once a construction is sufficiently at rest, you be given the ability to disable physics on it. On such an object, it would be impossible to apply forces or damage of any kind. Any object that became attached to said object would inherit this property. This would allow the construction of large, functional, space stations and bases without a major impact on fps. You could of course switch this off should you wish to apply some forces, fire the engines, change the orientation, etc. In a perfect world, sure, everything would have physics all the time, and some of you may complain "but its unrealistic!", well, the kerbal space port has no physics as well and I see no complaints about that. Such an option opens up the ability to make a lot of things we simply cannot realistically make at present, or in the very least makes creating such things more enjoyable by virtue of them running at relatively normal speed.

This was my first attempt at this a number of months back. It was somewhat successful, it was able to get one full orange tank into orbit, but it was far too unstable. I have a new design that I am going to try when I get back home from the holidays. I am going to try the new rapier engine, build something that's more flat and smaller, using nuclear engines was a mistake. I had originally intended for this to be able to deliver a payload to laythe and return, which is why they were there. It should be easier to build one that is more reliant on rocket engines and has less endurance.

This challenge puts your SSTO skills into practice. I've seen many great SSTO's, but they have almost entirely been tailored for their "payload". The goal here is to create an SSTO capable of a general purpose payload that is reliable enough to actually use over and over again. Mods allowed: Kerbal Attachment System(required), Damned Robotics, Mechjeb, any purely informational mod such as enhanced navball or mechanic. Parts not allowed: Command chair, Ion engines, Jet engines (except on the SSTO itself) Part clipping and air-hogging is permitted, Cheat menu otherwise not allowed, etc 1. Create _one_ SSTO 2. Use this SSTO to build a spaceship which you will then use to travel to any moon of Jool, return to kerbal, and land safely with. 3. You are allowed to use only one instance of this SSTO, and it must not leave LKO 4. You may spawn as many ground vehicles as you like (refuelers, cranes, haulers, grabbers, etc) (use KAS to refuel the tanks of your SSTO). Ground haulers, etc, optional for assisting the loading of the ssto with the payload. 5. You may use KAS struts, your SSTO's payload may not assist in the SSTO's flight (fuel or engines). Your payload may contain wings / control surfaces, so long as they are not required for the SSTO to haul said payload. 6. A maximum of 1/2 final spaceship mass may be hauled at once. (No hauling up an entire viable ship, the point is that the ssto shouldn't be designed for a specific payload) 7. You may fly your SSTO as many times as you like, hauling up any parts that you wish other than the exceptions above, but you only get ONE, you may not respawn your SSTO or modify it in any way outside of EVA+KAS. You crash it, you must start (the construction project) over. 8. The SSTO may not be spawned initially with a payload. 9. Any technicality that is outside of the spirit of what I have described above but failed to anticipate is also not permitted. If in doubt, ask in the thread. 10. Vertically launched SSTO's are permitted as well, parachutes are fine. 11. EASY VERSION: Instead of a moon of Jool, go to Minmus or the Mun Scoring will be: # of kerbals which were landed at the destination and returned safely to Kerbin. The central point of this challenge is to build a reliable SSTO construction vehicle. Stable, flexible payload, actually reusable and practical. Then to see how large a ship you can build with it. Submissions should at least include screenshots of all relevant craft and a screenshot of each successful payload attachment. Normal difficulty completions: none yet Easy difficulty completions: none yet

KAS, Enhanced Navball KAS adds too much to the game to not play with imo.

Thats what I had thought initially, however I did it again and noticed that it had actually occurred before the aerocapture took place. I just didn't notice it until after the capture the first time because the amount of MJ required for the PE adjustment was less than what I had stocked up.

You don't really need any nuclear plants on the ship itself, and you don't need much AM either. Just bring some collectors and fly to jool as soon as you take off and top off your AM tanks. The thing I enjoy most about interstellar mod is that it allows you to make silly large ships that are actually practical. Here is a self sufficient vtol/ssto/rover I built, about 3.4 TWR, so it can land and take off from eve just fine.

My finally finished interstellar mod ship. 8 labs, 21 kerbals on board, 400tons, nuclear and fusion reactors, and 9 AM collectors. This was built over a number of launches, initially the ship was fitted with a 36 nuclear engine cluster which I used to fly to jool and finish the interstellar mod tech tree with various docked landers and of course the labs onboard. Once everything was researched I sent out a replacement engine cluster and this is the finished result. Quite happy with it.

I do not have any other tank. I also removed all the KAS and Mechjeb parts and had the same issue.

You can produce AM on the ground just fine, just don't use an AM reactor. Use the largest nuclear reactor and power gen, a little more than one per lab. Normally I will surround my ship with 8 labs/power, collect the AM before launch, seperate and recover them, then launch. You will never have a net gain using an AM reactor, it will always cost. It's a good idea to bring along a small nuclear reactor as well to at least keep your AM tanks powered in the event you run out, or encounter a bug like I did above.

It was built and launched from kerbal. I flew it to jool (because thats where the other half of the ship is), here is the craft file: http://focusedsupport.it/stuff/Engine%20cluster%20mkII.7z There is plenty of antimatter and other resources, the top section was there at launch. It works just fine for awhile, but I think right after I arrive at jool it no longer recharges, I've tried launching this 3 times. As I mentioned above, oddly, when I undock that top section and switch back over to the main body I can right click on the reactor and see that it has recharged megajoules and electricity, and the antimatter tank is again charging. The only mods I have installed are KAS, Mechjeb, and EnhancedNavBall. I can try removing mechjeb and kas quick and see if it fixes it...

I'm having some trouble.. I made a ship with the largest antimater reactor, the largest power generator, antimatter tank, fusion engines, warp drive. It works fine for awhile, I took off from earth flew to jool, the power usage is stable the whole time. Until the generator seems to just stop working for no apparent reason. Here is my ship: Megajoules and electric charge just stop recharging. I've tried disabling everything on the ship and it makes no difference. If I undock the top section, it starts working again, dock it, it stops. I tried disabling crossfeed which also made no difference. This is an engine section which is going to be attached to a large ship already in space. Anyone have any ideas? I am running the newest version of interstellar mod.

Some parts, after you are done with a previous stage leave part of themselves on your rocket. Things like struts, pipes, radial attachment points, etc. Is there a mod or program that can go through a launched ship and clean that stuff off? I'd like to do so for visual & performance reasons (keeping part count to a minimum). Thanks.

That would be logical, though the whole window doesn't come up and there is no error message, and I think I have all the parts needed unlocked.

When a craft file from an earlier version exists in the folder, in career mode, the load window will not open. Is there a workaround? Thanks.

That's correct, there was no sas on the lander at all. It keeps straight because the inner set of engines are not aerospikes. As for part count, it's really not that high only 500 or so all in all.

Oh wow those are nice graphs. I would agree with you though that they probably should re-balance that engine. You shouldn't be able to go super light and take off from eve like that imo, I think the whole point of eve is that its forcing you to land something ultra heavy on it if you want to take back off. Edit: I'm not trying to diminish Metaphor's work here btw, nice job! But really this engine is completely game changing, every lander, for any planet, will just use these and be very small, there's no reason not to. Metaphor's grand tour is a great demonstration of just how broken it is.

It's the new rockomax engine, it makes making ultra small landers like that possible .1 weight, 20 thrust and 350 isp in vac. It's vastly superior to the lv909 or the radial rockomax.

I wish I had more pics but these are the only ones I took, I would have to fly the mission again (which I might at some point), but like I mentioned I would want to adjust its design a bit to address some of the design flaws. Flown manually. I do use mechjeb's information windows, I hate having to switch to planetary view just to see your apoapsis for example. However I always fly everything I make manually, I have from time to time tried mechjebs autopilot stuff but for some reason my ships fall apart half the time under its control..... :/ Besides the flying part is half the fun More detail: It takes 11500dv to get into orbit from eve at sealevel. The lander has right around that, its very tight. It also jettisons all its parachutes before takeoff to shave off mass (you can see they are all on radial decouplers). Once in orbit, what remains of the lander returns to the interplanetary stage, fills back up on fuel, crossfeed is disabled, and the remainder of the fuel on the planetary stage is burned on the way back to kerbal (there wasn't much left), the lander then finishes the burn and lands under its own power on kerbal (parachutes are too expensive to take off with), I think I only had 130ish or so dv remaining when falling into kerbal's atmosphere, which fortunately is all you need, thanks to the drag (even without parachutes). Actually I can take some screenshots of the two parts in the hanger:

I had to swap the picture, the first one I posted was incorrect, you probably loaded the page while the link was pointing to a deleted image.

Here's one of mine. I was experimenting with heavy asparagus designs, and trying to get as much DV as I could. In this attempt I was trying to make it such that I could drop the tanks separate from the engines, therefore saving on mass by not having engines around that were not doing anything part of the time. This one did sometimes fly ok, but all the structural bits negated any gains that might have been gotten from the engines.

We probably have all made something that just didn't work out in the end, or didn't succeed in doing what we were designing it to do. Post those things here!