Domfluff

It won't help troubleshooting that Nertea's current releases aren't final, but I'll try to replicate from scratch and let you know how that goes.

Yup. I've been battling with the configs trying to get the Coloured Fuel Cans and Fuel Tanks Plus to offer both fuel switching via B9partswitcher and texture changing. No joy so far. This isn't necessarily your problem of course, since your mod seems to be working fine by itself. It used to function with a previous version by removing IFS and the fuelswitch configs, but no longer. I haven't yet dug into B9Partswitcher to see if it's possible to define the texture switching from there, but I suspect that may be the solution.

I've recently become partial to chucking the things out of moving rockets, covered in airbags, and driving out in a Karibou to unpack them/drag them to where they need to be. The crash tolerance is pretty handy

Roverdude's said that the Minisub should end up as part of the Exploration pack.

What I really like about KSP, as opposed to Orbiter, Microsoft Space Simulator or whatever, is that there's a wonderful mix of hardcore simulation and accessibility. The scaled-down solar system and the amazing way that Harvester managed to translate pages of orbital information into the navball+node system is nothing short of brilliant. So... I tend to make things as difficult as possible for myself (e.g., life support mods, using the patches from Near Future Technology to make nukes use Hydrogen Fuel and downgrade the ion engines, etc.) but everything is a lot closer (and generally easier to get to) than it would be in RSS. What I'm after in KSP is the chance to solve the same kind problems as in the real world in the general sense, rather than trying to get to the very specifics of the thing. For a manned Duna mission, you should still have to weigh the various options for getting there (Chemical/Nuclear/Electric engines), and the different types of mission architecture (Mars Direct-style ISRU and surface rendezvous, or an "all-up" approach with a larger spacecraft, for example). For example, at the moment, I've been diving into Nuclear engines, and what purposes they are actually useful for, given the vast volume of hydrogen tanks. At present, I find that the equivalent of a "nuclear third stage" for a Saturn-V class super heavy lift vehicle isn't all it's cracked up to be - there is a payload increase, but it's fairly marginal, and it's debatable whether it's worth the effort. Nukes make a lot more sense on a large scale, and especially when you start talking about gas core or LOX-augmented designs. Likewise, playing around with electric engines has made me realise quite how important T:W ratio actually is for electric engines, since charge depletion is relative to burn time, engines can quickly outgrow the power of solar panels or reactors to (sensibly) support them, so using ion engines and the like for large-mass craft quickly becomes difficult to justify. That kind of design/research/re-design cycle, and the associated reading it provokes is a large chunk of what I get out of KSP - it's problem solving on a large scale, when the problems are mostly of your own devising. I recently dropped non-essential supplies to a Mun base with airbags, just to see if that was a good idea, and how best to do that. They bounced for several kilometres, and ended up rolling around the rim of a crater, so a couple of Kerbals left the base in a Karibou rover to drive over and load them up. That whole expedition, including the problem of navigating across the surface, and driving into and out of steep crater walls, was entirely caused by my choices, actions and design - that's not something the game had set up for me in some kind of scripted sequence, and it was genuinely difficult and dramatic, in and of itself.

The hacked .dll seems to fix the reactors for NFE compatibility, but a separate download is probably the sensible way to do it - there's no reason why you should be supporting someone else's mod.

I'm really looking forward to the whole Home/Rest mechanics - that seems like it's a major missing piece right now, and gives meaning to part packs like Porkjet's inflatable hab modules, which otherwise are just crew cabins. I really like "Homesickness" as a term - it's descriptive and whimsical, in the same way that Mulch is, and more importantly it's meaning is strongly intuitive - you cure homesickness by going home. I'm not sure if "Rest" is equally intuitive though? Since this apparently resets on EVA, would something like "Boredom" be a little clearer? "Fatigue" would imply to me that *not* using the Kerbal would be the way to restore fatigue, but "Boredom" would imply that this Kerbal needs to get up and do something. (This is mostly assuming I've got a decent handle on how this is intended to work).

Yup, clean install is fine, so it's going to be a mod incompatibility somewhere else, I'll see if I can ferret it out. Would it help to post my mod list? It's obviously nothing you can fix, but if other people are complaining about the same issue? - - - Updated - - - ... seems to be Near Future Electrical causing the issue. I suppose that's logical. Obviously that's not updated to 1.0.5, so it's not fair to bug Nertea about it, but if anyone else is having the issue, that seems to be it.

I've been having the same problems with reactors - you can activate them with previously bound action groups, but that's currently the only way to turn them on. Haven't had a chance to test this on a clean install yet, but I'll give that a go later on.

Aw Exploding is the best part. I do agree that the "lite" version of OKS is basically the greenhouse parts, but I think you could include something like the habitation wheel, just to give the crew slots and visual effect?

The question of where in the CTT to place it is an interesting one. The cost of investment is a major one I think, so that's a large factor in balance, but since funds are the easiest resource to grind, that's probably not enough by itself. CTT has Nuclear Propulsion, Improved Nuclear Propulsion and High Efficiency Nuclear Propulsion. Since the Orion has three variants, it might make sense for these to be in all three tiers? Medusa should be more efficient ("High Efficiency") than the pusher plate version, and the mini-mag should probably nestle in the middle, as a smaller and more manageable (but higher tech, so "Improved") version, I would assume. Porkjet has his LANTERN under Improved, and closed cycle lightbulb under high efficiency, as a point of reference.

Thank you for this, this is amazing. In common with your other mods, this is clearly the "Design for Effect" version of Orion - and that's not a bad thing. Comparing with Nyarth's, it's significantly easier to use - the expelled energy is far more granular, so it's possible to land this on the Mun, if it weren't for the protruding tube. The downsides are similar though - vast expense, massive, so it's difficult to manoeuvre, and difficult to refuel (possibly impossible with ISRU? Should be fairly high up the MKS tree anyway), so it's something of a dead end in terms of development. I've yet to build one which doesn't tear itself apart at more than 50% thrust or so, but that's not too much of a problem - but I wonder if it's too easy to fine tune it's thrust? Part of the appeal of Nyarth's effort was that it showed how brutal and ugly the concept is - massively powerful, and it will get you there easily enough, but even with multiple bomb options it was awkward to do anything precisely with it. Very excited about the Medusa and Mini-mag models, and any other atomic rockets you end up including here - clearly this meshes nicely with Near Future Propulsion's electric engines.

For the same reason 3D printers are going to be hugely important for future spaceflight- you don't know in advance what you'll need. For example, if you managed to drop your last spanner from KIS, currently you'd have to launch a whole new rocket to replace it. With a workshop, you can print one on-site. If you found that you needed more solar panels, or another docking port, then you could have the same deal. Wheels for a rover, or a whole replacement Eva pod, etc. You could even construct a satellite or interplanetary probe in orbit and by hand. It's like a smaller, more limited (and much earlier tech) version of an extraplanetary launch pad, and that's mostly the niche it fills.

Thank you for the mod, this is great - it's the 3D printer my station has been needing I imagine this may well be to do with having Community Tech Tree installed (I'm guessing it's referencing nodes that would be unlocked at this stage in the career), but I can build items from the workshop that I haven't researched yet in my current career save. It's not game breaking, since I don't have to exploit it, but it's still a thing.

I'm actually really enjoying the career mode at the moment... on Normal. The changes that have been made to the early game and contract system seem to have been pretty well balanced at this level, and the progression feels great (five missions in, have achieved Mun orbit - I could manage a landing on mission six, but I'd have to do it without legs - that and Minmus should take me up to the stage where I need to upgrade R&D and start thinking about interplanetary missions). I started on Hard, but with the building upgrades that's hugely grindy and un-fun. I could see playing on Normal with the "hard" options (no reverts/quicksaves), or possibly just even on Hard with the Funds penalty set to 100%. Having said that, career mode does seem to have some game design issues - I don't think it's clear what it intends to be. Is it a tutorial? Is it a sim? It doesn't work particularly well at either right now. The main reason to play career is the restrictions funds gives you - having to build rockets under (yet more) restrictions, and the benefits of re-usability and economic design. I've never been a huge fan of the seemingly arbitrary restrictions that the building upgrades give you, and the tech tree will suffer from this apparent lack of focus as to the fundamental purpose of the mode.

I got put off career mode by 0.90, and so tried Hard mode again on 1.0 ...and still hated it. Grinding is not fun, and doesn't equate to "harder" in my opinion. I was playing around with the penalties slider at different levels to see what were decent building costs (since that's the bottleneck really, and the cause of the grind - contracts themselves aren't bad, it's just the requirement to perform repetitive operations that makes it so. Then I had a re-think, and just started a career on Normal. ...and it's great! I am self-enforcing the lack of quicksaves/reverts (but those could easily be turned on), and I could see the argument for putting part costs back in, or decreasing rewards, but so far the new career is actually a lot more entertaining. Total missions so far have been five - a basic suborbital lob, Jeb into orbit, Munar fly-by (only just), Two-ship rendezvous and Munar orbit. I've unlocked half of the 45 science tier, and solar panels - I could land on the Mun right now, but I might wait for landing legs to be unlocked. This is KSP career as I feel it should be - you can push for bold leaps before you're entirely ready, and make large-scale plans. On hard, I was hitting a brick wall at unlocking the second tier VAB. Whether there will be similar vertical bottlenecks later in Normal remains to be seen, but this feels like this has been balanced pretty well so far.

It's not implemented yet, but it's still supposed to be in the game sometime in the future. As an aside, one thing I am expecting at some point is a stock method for interplanetary trajectories - at the moment, you either need to do the maths yourself, look up the phase angle/etc. or install a mod - I can easily imagine this being part of the game, and possibly a Scientist or Engineer ability.

I'm playing around with the Fund Penalties slider at the moment (which also set the building costs), to see if having a half-decent career mode is as simple as that. There are more fundamental problems here that can't be so easily fixed, but the changes to Career mode meant that I basically gave up on KSP 0.90, and I don't want to do that again. I think the first VAB upgrade is 450,000 on Hard career (200%), so the slider minimum would be 22,500 (10%). It seems to make sense for the upgrade costs to be roughly in line with a rocket launch of similar level - so that's about 100,000 for a Mun trip, or 50% on the slider. I could see the argument with having a Hard career with 100% funds penalty as well, or even 10% and basically removing the upgrade mechanic altogether (except where money is especially tight - as with buying parts) - I'm testing this extreme now. This will also make the Funds penalty for abandoning missions easier, but that's a relatively minor thing, and you still take the 200% Reputation hit for vaporising a bus-load of tourists. You can argue that "Hard is supposed to be Hard", but it seems like the building upgrade costs are what creates the grind (since you need to create an arbitrary amount of money to progress), and grinding is not what Space programs are about, at least in the romantic ideal. Progress in space seems to have a narrative that's full of Hail Mary passes and last-minute saves, triumph and disaster - Werner Von Braun's plans for spreading into the solar system, Apollo 8, 2001: A Space Odyssey... these aren't repetitive actions with incremental achievement, these are the brave and the bold throwing caution to the wind to conquer the unknown.

Orbital OTRAG-ish rocket: That will launch the pictured minimalist satellite into well beyond Kerbostationary orbit - so there's a fair amount of capacity there. Needs a fairing, but this is just using stock parts and Sounding Rockets. Total cost is 7,530 funds (you can do this with stock parts for just over 5,000 or so, since there's no economy of scale in KSP)

Awesome stuff. Quick OTRAG-like testing: Just over 3000 funds, and 2,500 ms dV - so this is suborbital, but it wouldn't take much to push this into a super-cheap microsat launcher. (Struts were an attempt to keep the first stage together, but shrug).

Can I make a request? If the sounding rockets were capable of radial attachment, then (perhaps with the AES radial decoupler) this would make for easier "missiles" and the like. A more compelling thought: it would also allow for something very much like OTRAG...

Ah, cheers. How odd. I mean, that's fine, if that was intentional - "Reach an altitude record of 5,000m with a manned vessel" would be fine, but it does create this kind of conflict, doing it this way around.

My results (i.e., nosecone exploding every time it lands, at 15 m/s, and no contract hits other than "launch new rocket") were from a fresh install of stock, with nothing except this mod. And yep, this was the basic rocket - one nosecone, one science package, one upper stage, one lower stage.

Excellent mod concept, and something that's really needed. So far I've been finding that the rockets don't trigger the "reach an altitude record of 5,000m" contract, nor do the parachutes slow you down enough for the nosecone to survive (impact at 15m/s or so) - although the science packages do. Are these intended behaviours? The science could be retrieved by hand, but given how long it takes Kerbals to invent cars, that's going to limit them to straight up and down flight. Idle curiosity - I do like the idea of having reasons to take these on trips with me. Do you think there's scope here for these parts to allow for cheap mini-satellites from low-gravity moons, or exploring Duna's atmosphere?

I think the problem with attached extractors reading "Not directly attached to asteroid" might be to do with Ferram's Joint Reinforcement mod, and the way it loads in the vessel physics. I was getting the same message, and if I docked with the claw, then released, it would refuse to dock again.