Death Engineering

Additional 'Scoring' metric added to challenge: "Duna Domination" - Now that you're on Duna, why not stay awhile? : This separate score rewards not just 'getting there', but also time spent on Duna's surface. Time on Ike is not considered. Rounding down, simply add up how many days each kerbal is on Duna's surface. To include 'Duna Domination' scoring with your entry, keep track of how many Kerbal-days you have crews on Duna. eg: 3 kerbals on Duna for 100 days each = 300 kerbal days. 100 Duna Domination Score = Final Score * Kerbal Days on Duna Important: This new scoring metric does not change existing scores and including it with new or existing challenge attempts is optional.

Eeloo geysers and a space program extension It was a 9 year trip out to Eeloo and back, but spent less than 12 hours actually in Eeloo orbit! By timing the Eeloo arrival to a Kerbin deparure window, life support was maximized by spending only the minimum time at Eeloo to complete a landing and return. The geysers on Eeloo's crackly surface were a sight to behold! Another tribute to the amazing KSPRC. In fact, because stock KSP is so wrong after KSPRC, I won't be bothering with KSP 1.1 until KSPRC catches up (which I hear is coming SoonTM!). I kind have wished I could have afforded to make a few landings at varied altitudes on Eeloo to do some real sightseeing, but that was not to be. After the single landing at a near-equatorial geyser site, the single crew of Valentina Kerman, already a 'Five Star' pilot, headed back home. With two mid-course corrections, the Kerbin encounter was timed with only 3 days of life support left! Re-entry was a nice show watching the main craft overheat and explode having entered the atmosphere at almost 4800 m/s. The craft was a massive thing in Kerbin orbit before departure (over 300t) and returned with only a Mk 1 Command Pod, making this a very expensive launch/recovery mission. However, the mission netted 1943 science which isn't bad for a single landing without a scientist on board. Unfortunately, the space program is still a few points short of unlocking the tech tree! This mission completed the strategy "The Eeloo Program" and the 'Explore Eeloo' contract, which leaves the space program over 18 million funds, and that was after upgrading all the buildings in the Space Center.. there is clearly no cash flow problem! Since we're close to unlocking the science tree, but still have more Strategia it makes sense to wrap up the Gene Kerman 'Crewed' Missions in the mod. This means we will be accepting 'The Jool Program', 'The Dres Program' and (shudder...) 'The Moho Program'. We'll wrap up this career and this thread on the next post after completing these seven landings. Since we've fully upgraded the Tracking Station, the Dres-teroids are now visible so perhaps refueling there on the way to the Joolian landings will be the plan. What is odd, though, is that there still aren't any of the advanced 'Station Science' contracts or any new 'Bases and Stations' contracts. In fact, no 'Bases' contracts ever came up - only a few 'Launch the xxx Space Station' (Mun, Minmus and Duna). Not sure if there is a mod conflict somewhere or there are just too many contracts in the pool and the good ones haven't floated up yet. It has been a long time since I've attempted a Tylo landing, and never have tried with life-support running. Should be interesting!

Those are encouraging images.. I'd like to see a video of that flying. <hint hint..>

Narrow escapes, high-speed flybys and a few spoilers After the least efficient and possibly longest Eve mission I've completed and a near perfect Joolian exploration of all five moons the space program's goals are nearly complete. While at Jool, two landings were completed at anomalous sites on Vall and Bop. "Wish you were here" pics in the spoilers of the landings. Flyby's around the other 3 moons completed the 'Space Tourism - Jool Grand Tour' contract, which paid over 5 million funds on a 415k funds launch. Cha-Ching! What should have been a straightforward mission to Explore Gilly and Explore Eve, fuel supplies around Gilly left the crew stranded in orbit. Although the Explore Eve went well with the accompanying mini-probe that landed on the surface, the lander for Gilly was more of an expensive fuel tank as the delta v to enter Gilly orbit was higher than the CM alone could afford. Using 'extreme EVA' techniques completed the Gilly landing but the crew had to wait for a rescue ship, which also wasn't enough to get them home. After a second rescue ship and a 7500 m/s burn to get there in time, the crew eventually (after 6 years..) made it back. Even though the Jool craft had a heat shield, it was never used. Instead, the first Tourism flyby was past Laythe for a gravity brake into Jool orbit. Using Tylo/Laythe to enter Jool's orbit was always the plan, but brought the heat shield just in case a good gravity assist couldn't be found. Leaving Laythe after passing at 128km altitude then a high-altitude pass near Tylo produced a nearly circular orbit to intersect Bop where the crew landed near space seafood. With only a small push to Pol then again past Tylo to lower the orbit and intersect with Vall. Vall has something a little special on its southern hemisphere. And with the amazing terrains from KSPRC, Vall is quite beautiful in its stark cold blue and crinkle top mountains. Getting back to orbit from the landing site was very close, having only 4.62 units of fuel left (but still 10 units RCS). No longer needed, the lander was abandoned in Vall orbit before the final burn to leave Jool. Vall and Bop secrets below.. Using Tylo again for gravity assist, this time close enough to achieve the 'Flyby' objective, pushed the Jool orbit high enough to require only a 1583 m/s burn to get back to Kerbin. Brought too many supplies, in case things went as sideways as they did with the Eve mission, and wound up carrying almost half the supplies back home only to be toasted during re-entry. The tech tree is not unlocked yet and the final goal of landing on Eeloo has yet to be launched. It is Year 15, Day 92 and it is less than 100 days to the Eeloo window. There are no interesting missions which would require a return to Jool, which is unexpected. I would have been up to a Jool science expedition if it came up, but it has not. The 'Contract Slot Machine III' is no longer active, so we'll take what we can get, currently only Explore Eeloo, which will be done with a crew of one scientist. The strategies currently active are 'The Eeloo Program', 'Massive Scale Launches III' and 'Scientist Focus III'. There is nearly 19 million funds in the bank, so pushing for more funds isn't exactly needed but the scientist focus should help get the tech tree unlocked on this next mission. Life Support recycling might be needed on such a long mission (haven't begun the planning stages yet), but it was not needed on a three crew flight to Jool and back. The required LS mass was almost equal with the mass of the recyclers, making it cheaper, easier and fewer parts to just bring all the needed supplies. imgur album contains spoilers..

This mod OP needs a <Donate> button..

I'm glad I'm not the only person who saw this.

Used the stock Rover + Skycrane somewhere on Duna.

To my knowledge there isn't another active Gemini challenge. Your entry is welcome.

I'm hoping that one minor bug from the 0.2x days is finally gone: Occasionally, usually after changing SOI or after launching, a maneuver node cannot be placed. This is an old, old, OLD bug and needs to be squashed. (can you tell I just experienced it 2 mins ago and an "AYFKM!" moment?)

Cruizin' on Duna, Madness on Moho and Deep Valleys on Dres At this point in a career, where multiple landings on Duna have been completed and other planetary bodies start showing up in contracts, I'm usually tempted to fly down to my arch-nemesis Moho. And I usually wind up either doing a flyby instead of a landing due to the massive Δv it takes to slow down once there. Sure, I could use engineering mods and know exactly how much Δv I have, but that's just not Kerbal enough for me. This time, however, I was sure to over build the Moho lander in order to satisfy Strategia's demands with 'Moho Probes' to land on not one, but three biomes. It was also nice to get down to Moho and complete that strategy because it is a short trip and we still had 'To Boldly Go III' active making it a very quick and lucrative mission. We also accepted 'Dres Probes' and used an almost identical craft (adding only more solar panels) to get that Strategy completed. Back at Duna, the original landing crew (a pilot and a scientist to clean out the experiments) remained in orbit instead of returning to Kerbin on the next transfer window as their return-craft did not have enough ablator to safely re-enter Kerbin from a Duna trajectory. So they chilled with their snaks and a long game of Risk and awaited the Duna Lab and another crew member (an engineer to repack chutes). The engineer went out on an uprated command pod (more life support and more ablator) with enough room to bring everyone back home. Getting the science lab upgrade out to Duna was part of a two-contract mission: 'Launch the Duna Space Station' and 'Complete Plant Growth around Duna'. Once those were completed, the command module with insufficient ablator to safely return home was used as a kicker to ferry the lab into Ike orbit. We'd also accepted the 'Complete Plant Growth around Ike' contract but may not get back out to Duna SOI anytime soon to complete it (if ever). Instead, the crew all clambered aboard the ablator-safe command module and headed home. Landing on Duna and all the science from Duna and Ike resulted in 44 returned experiments and a whopping 3219 science points! These points will be used to purchase the next upgrades required to get crews out to Jool. We'll probably start looking into recyclers, some in-situ fuel mining and might even drag the massive 30t D-ZZY Cyclotron out to Jool if the appropriate contracts come up. What I enjoy about Strategia is that it not only removes a lot of the grind, its focused and purpose-driven missions make a career more enjoyable. I'm getting enough funds and science points in only a few missions which would normally take many more (remember I'm playing this on 'Hard' setting with reduced funds/science payouts). Normally, I'd have to do more Mun/Minmus and Duna/Ike missions to scoop enough science and funds to start heading to Jool, which is fun but I like the Joolian system and all the whacky gravity assists it takes to get around there efficiently. At this point the Launch Pad, Mission Control, R&D Facility and Administration Buildings are all fully upgraded. There is no point in upgrading the rest of the buildings, but may do so if funds permit. I am a little disappointed what there were no Duna/Ike 'Tourism' contracts, especially since I sent a reusable lander with room for 5 kerbs out there for that purpose. To try and ramp up the contract fun, we've just signed on to Strategia's 'Contract Slot Machine III'. We've also signed up for 'Engineer Focus III' to ensure we can repair broken wheels and repack chutes. Now that our Duna crew is back it is time to focus on Jool. We've picked up a Jool Grand Tour 'Tourism' contract to complete low altitude fly-bys of all Jool's moons. We also still have the Ike plant growth contract which may or may not get completed. Hopefully some more interesting contracts will come up for Dres or Jool soon. KCT upgrades so far: VAB Rate 1: 1.75 SPH Rate 1: 0.15 Research: 2 sci/86400 Development: 2048 sci/day Active Strategies: 'To Boldly Go III' 'Contract Slot Machine III' 'Engineer Focus III'

A Space Hotel, a Duna Landing and one EXTREMELY close call! Carrying the space program's exploration to Duna was the primary goal of this update, but to get there we'd have to get some more funds and a little more science. In the last set of missions, the Mun and Kerbin space stations were launched but the "plant growth" contracts didn't come up.. until, of course, we'd already completed a plant growth mission without a contract! Whatever! That contract is so lucrative, it was still well worth building and launching another mission to the KSS-1 space station. Luckily, the Mun's plant growth contract came up before we'd launched the mission. While we were at the Mun growing whatever keeps Kerbals up at night at the space station, Val retrieved her abandoned fuel-less lander that was left in Mun orbit and completed a Munar surface science contract. Next, attention was focused on the Space Tourism contract, selected to be the hotel because it didn't require any asteroids which the casino would have asked for. Since asteroids are turned off in this save, the hotel made the most sense. I also know the electrical needs of the casino are massive and the big battery isn't unlocked yet, so it didn't make sense to build the casino. The hotel, dubbed 'Death Never Sleeps' was constructed in five launches: one hub and four identical spokes. By the fourth and final spoke, the build time for the rocket was barely 4 days! The hotel was constructed in low orbit and then pushed to its final orbit of 365000 km once completed. It was a little disappointing how little funds were being offered to take tourists, there, however! Only one crewed mission was launched to the hotel, to complete a 'there's no one here' type contract, and has been abandoned ever since. Before building the Duna missions, the KCT points were redistributed to balance build times against tech tree unlocks, as the tech tree unlocks were taking too long. With sufficient funds and science, the parts needed to complete Strategia's 'The Duna Program' were unlocked and four missions built and launched to the Red Planet. Three of the missions were uncrewed: a reusable shuttle, a three-crew Duna rover and a basic Duna outpost with extra supplies, fuel and habitation space. The crewed mission, capable of completing a Duna and an Ike landing without relying on any other mission, was the most important launch. If all went well, the crew would be able to build the Duna outpost and carry out multiple landings but if the other three missions didn't pan out, the crew would be able to complete its bare requirements and return home safely. With a bit of luck, everything went perfectly with the landing and Val returned safely to the CM where Bill restored the science parts on the lander. There was one incredibly close call moment, however, when one of the Duna outpost missions while approaching aerocapture, came within only a few hundred meters of the orbiting crew! I'm pretty sure my heart stopped briefly when I saw the gap close in under 2km and the game paused to load the physics for the orbiting crew. It was a tense moment but passed quicky.. at almost 800m/s, in fact. We've completed 'The Duna Program' but still have more Duna contracts and 'Explore Ike' to work on, so we're leaving the strategies alone for now other than upgrading to level 3 of Strategia's 'To Boldly Go'. We'll probably move towards Dres or Jool next, but for now the crew is orbiting Duna while Mission Control recovers from the stress of the Duna accomplishments. KCT upgrades so far: VAB Rate 1: 1.75 SPH Rate 1: 0.15 Research: 2 sci/86400 Development: 1024 sci/day Active Strategies: 'To Boldly Go III'

I've not come across that LS mod.. how does it compare with others (if you've used them)? This looks like an ambitious mission! Good luck! Sorry you are having problems.. try posting any issues/questions in the mod(s)' thread and see what happens?

In case there was another concern regarding reuse/recovery I wanted to clarify how the cost of recovered parts factors in: Only parts which are going to be reused to build another craft, or craft which are going to be relaunched, can be counted as credits towards your score. IOW, after the space program is over, leftover parts and recovered parts that are not reused do not count as funds credits. (without this clarification, the score could technically be reduced to 0 or NAN). I've used the history of Canada's 'Avro Arrow' as the analog to this rule: "Let's throw a ton of money into building all this lovely hardware. Oh wait, this just in.. okay, we're not going to use them. Should we sell them? Nah.. chop them up and off to the landfill they go!"

Hi @NeilC. I can't stand this forum's reply/quote mechanism so here goes my kludge: "- There are prestige points for orbiting SCIENCE LABs around Duna & Ike. Must these be separate LABs, or can I re-use the same LAB hardware?" To score for both LABs, you must have separate craft. They can be identical, but there must be two of them (one for each body) "-Similarly, there are points for orbiting SHUTTLEs around Duna/Ike. Can I meet both requirements with 1 shuttle? What if I take 3 shuttles - do I get 3x the points, one for each shuttle?" Same deal, I'm afraid.. to score for Duna and Ike SHUTTLEs, there needs to be one around each body. There is no scoring benefit to have more than one around each body. "- There are prestige points for HAB landings in all 5 biomes. Must these be separate HABs, or can I liftoff/rove and re-use the same HAB to capture all 5 (or 10) biomes?" Scoring of the 'prestige' points for HABs on Duna and Ike is separate from the 'science/biome' points - HAB points need one separate HAB for each biome, but you can get the 'science/biome' points with a single (or multiple) landers and rove. Hope that helps

Hi NeilC.. I totally get that. Having done the DPOMAC three times I agree that this kind of long-term mission is where I enjoy KSP the most. Following your DPOMAC entry was great. Welcome to the challenge! MKS/OKS with USI-LS is not cheaty as the life-support requirements have ramped up from the 1.08/kerbal day consumption to, what is it.. 16 something? Also I suspect habitation will factor in, at least in regards to the trip there and back. I did not realize that the MK-V lab could also clean experiments, which the description does not mention (as much as I appreciate RD's mods, the lack of documentation often leaves me scratching my head..). That said, I did just roll a test bed out to the launch pad with the MK-V lab and was able to clean experiments with no scientists on board so it fits the requirements of a lab, and supporting less than 6 kerbs on descent does not break the KERBAL HAB definition - carry on! For comparison, using the stock MPL, my Duna hab was 18.8t at a cost of 60564. It was not by any means optimized for mass or cost but could support 6 kerbs on the surface for several hundred days. Using the stock MPL and a "skinny" design, a KERBAL HAB could be built for around 17800 funds and 7.5t. One of the things I struggled with when designing the challenge was whether or not to include a scoring factor for 'kerbal days' on Duna/Ike. In the end as you know, there is none. The reason I did not elect for including a score based on time spent on the surface was that in the original DPOMAC, my kerbs plunked down on the surface for the duration of their life support then came home - no real exploration/science was done. In order to try and encourage staying on the surface for some kind of duration, the multiple biome goals were left open to interpretation - multiple landings or a surface roving adventure or a combination. Perhaps I should have weighted things differently, but as this point I'm not about to make any changes like that. As you've already noted, the inclusion of Kolonization parts puts your entry into its own class, which is totally fine. I hope your entry continues to come together and encourages others to use MKS/OKS as that is really the most effective way to accomplish the KERBAL HAB goals. Looking forward to more!

Unbelievable! Barely 800k in orbit with 65 part craft with KSPRC textures.. and beautiful..! Thanks @blackrack

Is 50 kerbals the "bubble" where score and costs meet? Can this be done cheaper or with more kerbals to max the score? Can another mod, maybe utilizing an airship to hit the 5 biomes on Duna, make the trip more cost-effective? Or maybe is there a way to go nuts and forego the early landing Prestige points and focus on building a massive effort in LKO biding your time until the second or even third Duna window? Just musing.. Really enjoyed reading the mission reports so far.

Hehe Totally enjoying the mod though. Thanks! Nah we're in it now and the only missions to come up before Duna/Ike aspirations will be related to the Casino. Hopefully, when I re-enable asteroid spawning some come back.

"To Boldly Go entry Five" or, "Read Strategia's fine print!!!" The Death Engineering space program wraps up missions to Mun and Minmus and starts scribbling designs on napkins aspiring to reach Duna. This time most of the contracts were related to using the newly-unlocked Gravioli collector and launching two space stations: Kerbin Space Station I and Mun Space Station I. Even though the Station Science contracts appear to be loading correctly, none of the contracts to use the Station Science parts came up (specifically, nothing for 'Plant Growth') which was a bit disappointing. However, we were able to get some decent funds by bringing tourists to KSS and MSS and included a power generation and docking port upgrade to the Mun Space Station hoping to eventually get some Station Science contracts. There was also a very lucrative mission to Minmus using the last Minmus lander off the assembly line: it combined a surface-rescue, Gravioli scans and an orbital rescue. Fuel was VERY tight on this mission but everyone made it home safely with nearly 200,000 funds profit on the mission! Another mission, using the re-usable Mun lander, was also very profitable but could have been better if the lander could have returned to the Mun Space Station. Instead, Valentina had to 'extreme' EVA from a low Mun orbit to the MSS. The lander, still a viable for future missions, will remain in Munar orbit awaiting a return to glory.. should the need arise. Perhaps due to an overzealous, even fanatical, attraction to Duna (okay, yes, a Mars surrogate) we accepted Strategia's "The Duna Program" at the end of the last update. At that time, we were thrilled that the huge influx of funds provided the resources to upgrade the Research and Development complex.. but maybe some attention to the fine print of the strategy would have been prudent as the -80% funds gained for milestones to other bodies was a bit of a surprise! At that point, I really appreciated the balance of Strategia as it felt that I was running a real space program with focused goals and directed objectives. I've always played career on 'hard' mode to keep things challenging but the grind to get out of Kerbin's SOI has always been a bit of a 'yawner' once the primary goals of reaching orbit and the first Mun landing is completed. But having accepted 'The Duna Program', there was enough funds to move forward with KSC upgrades and the grind really didn't exist anymore. In a sense, the strategy was telling me to 'get on with it!' to Duna and enough with the Mun and Minmus attempts. So, after only a handful of Mun and Minmus landings, we are ready to move on to Duna! Regarding KCT, enough points have been put towards upgrades that the time to unlock nodes has almost become irrelevant. Build times for new rockets are about 15 days and upgrading nodes is about 2 days. That seems highly unbalanced and perhaps I need to think about a 'hard mode' equivalent preset to KCT that makes upgrading nodes and build times for new rockets a bit more realistic/challenging. Until then, I'll consider re-distributing the points to focus on rocket build times and increasing science with every build. It is Year 2, Day 143 and we are about to evaluate the next moves. We are still 1 year and 165 days away from the Duna window and had I been playing in stock KSP, without Strategia and without Kerbin Construction Time, I know from experience that I could easily have made the first Duna transfer window. However, now I am able to move on to another goal: the orbiting Hotel or the orbiting Casino while the Duna window approaches.. I guess I need to re-enable asteroids. KCT upgrades so far: VAB Rate 1: 1.15 SPH Rate 1: 0.15 Research: 7 sci/86400 Development: 128 sci/day Active Strategies: 'To Boldly Go II' 'The Duna Program'

Yep it's there alright. Thanks for the help!

Ahh... so that I don't see 'Station Science' in contract configurator (only Field Research, Bases and Stations, Tourism and Strategia) is the problem?

Hiya... Is there a way to check if a mod-added science part ("Plant Growth" from 'Station Science' add-on) is eligible to get contracts? The TH-NKR lab part seemed to satisfy the 'Launch the xxx Space Station' contract, but having some experience with the Station Science mod I would have expected to see a contract come up to perform some science on the station.

Fantastic. Another excellent mission! Both of you scored far better than my tests or final 'OP' submission.. very humbling! Thanks for trying out the challenge.

Drove by the Honda Jet plant today on my Honda Sabre.. Anyone up to designing a KSP repro of my bike?

Exactly! The maybe sad part is that I have time to do things like that. I work at home and can frequently spare my left hand to fly or build or dock something. I bet I have well over 10k hours on KSP but much of it in real time.