giltirn

Anyone know if this great mod works for 1.05? Or has it been supplanted by another mod?

I always named autosave on the launchpad before any complex mission; if you mess up just reload the launchpad save and you can recover it for 100% return if you need to modify the craft.

I'd also rather get more science from contracts. Please add this option to the poll for a fair result.

Yeah, this is one of the toughest challenges in the early game. I'm not sure why 1.0 rockets wobble around like wet noodles again, but its very annoying. I'm now back to covering even my basic rockets with struts just to hold them together.

I like the new aero, but Squad really need to work on the SAS and the jerkiness of the controls; getting to orbit seems like a constant fight against the controls.

I would also like to add my voice to a humble request that this great mod be updated.

I think the problem is that you don't necessarily need those parts to do the contract. Its easy enough to do surveys with surborbital rockets; you can land on the moon without legs or a ladder (use the truss pieces for legs and your jetpack to reach the hatch).

I hate the stock maneuver node system. Making small adjustments to setup an encounter is extremely difficult. With PreciseNode you can easily fine tune your orbits with nice, clear numbers rather than non-linear mouse movements. Edit: Also, I agree that Engineer is a must have. I hate trial and error, Engineer actually lets you understand what you are doing!

I think it's fine as it is currently.

One issue I find is that the gimbal controls are very jerky, and if you overturn it can be impossible to stop the rocket from falling over unless you have huge amounts of control authority (which exacerbates the jerkiness). This is made worse if you don't strut your craft to the gills to prevent it flopping around. I think the only real solution is to improve SAS to make it smoother; currently it is pretty much useless as you always seem to end up fighting it, and it always seems to overcorrect.

If it falls over still, try adding more winglets to the base in order to move the center of lift further below the center of mass. As I understand it, the further the CoL from the CoM, the more stable your rocket is, i.e. the stronger the force keeping the rocket aligned with the prograde (direction of motion) vector, but the more difficult it is to turn. With lots of fins you should gravity turn early otherwise the lift/drag forces will prevent you from turning at all.

Just a quick comment; you could use a regular fuel tank and remove the oxidizer. I expect the plane fuel tanks are lighter, but basic tanks should do the job.

We already have procedural fairings in KSP 1.0, so Squad have already broken your rule. Personally I don't think having to fit together 100 fiddly wing pieces to be a lot of fun, and that *stifles* my creativity. Quite often when iterating a spaceplane design you need to modify the wing in some way, which under the current system is a nightmare.

I agree. This is made especially frustrating as struts are locked away behind a 45-science node and you start with small tanks. I find it somewhat ridiculous that you need to stack 6 tier-2 fuel tanks (not the tiny ones but the next upgrade) in a big wobbly spaghetti rocket just to get the TWR of the most basic engine below 2! Without struts those things are almost impossible to control, especially if you use gimballed engines which cause the rocket to bend around the COM.

As a 300 hour vet I am also finding the early game very frustrating in 1.0. The big difficulty I'm having is the lack of structural reinforcement until you unlock struts. You need to build tall in the new aero, but without long tanks or struts you get rockets that flop around like wet noodles. You can also try building outwards as well to compromise between noodliness and aerodynamic profile, but then you are stuck with the crappy radial decouplers that always result in the attached stages bending inwards while under thrust and that are loose enough to allow the external stages to wobble around (especially when the engines are gimballed), making it *very* hard to control the rocket. I would say that struts should be unlocked from the beginning.