Death Engineering

I only built basic stock planes while testing the challenge, but your plane doesn't look overly massive. How many points did you put into the SPH build thread? My initial launch which included a SCIENCE LAB, two crew and their Duna lander was 220 days to build. I had two VAB build threads weighted to 0.5 and 0.2. But as @Jasonden notes, 10 days is still in the transfer window, especially if you're already almost outside of Kerbin's SOI at Minmus.

1. Actually I'm not sure how KCT determines its Build Points. Will look into it. 2. Yeah a lot of LS/electrical in mods is on the honour system. I'm OK with that. 3. It makes sense. But, here is where my quandary lives in how I designed the challenge.... When I designed this challenge, I really wanted to incorporate cost as part of the scoring by taking advantage of the elegance KCT and SR handle the costs of building/recovering rockets. My hope was that the cost of LS and points for landings would balance and encourage large missions with many kerbals landing on Duna. But this way, pretty much all LS entries have to be scored with like-mod entries so that is a factor. I thought of putting in a rule to "Use just this LS mod and nothing else" but eventually went with 'any LS mod'. I think I'll keep the challenge as 'any LS' but entries will be scored with like LS entries, making competition between non-similar LS mods not really feasible. Please post any changes you make to TAC or Soylent so others can use them. You can allocate the KCT points to multiple threads in both the VAB and SPH. I didn't get many points, so splitting between more than two is going to make building very slow. I recommend a major and a minor VAB thread or one VAB and one SPH thread....but other ways could work out better.

I just happened to be starting a new career and was hoping this was ready.. installed it actually a few hours ago. Looking really good!!! 'grats!!

I've managed to kluge together something also with KSPRC and bits from SVE, but I can't seem to re-create it on another save! (help)

Look forward to it. I will have a look at the mod. If the changes you are proposing are balanced, shouldn't be a problem. It would also be great to post what you did/how you did it to change the mod so others considering this LS can also use your updates. Yep. edit: @sdj64 my total mass and cost for LS (including the Nom-O-Matic 5000 recyclers): Cost: 276400 Mass: 35.4 edit to the edit: Looking back at what's at Duna, I left A LOT of supplies up there!

Awesome! Finding the monoliths from 10km might be a little harder..

On the same cant, I think, it would be nice if LS supplies remaining reflected using the greenhouse bits when they are operational. Predictions wouldn't have to necessarily reflect forward-looking source materials supply (ie mulch), it could be a momentary thing showing 'at present rate..'. Keep up the great work, RD!

Your SHUTTLE can be also a KERBAL HAB but it will only get credit for its first landing/Biome. To get points for all five possible KERBAL HAB Biomes will take five KERBAL HABs (per body.. so 10 total to get Ike as well). To get SHUTTLE points for Ike and Duna will also take two SHUTTLEs. On a side note, how are the build times with TAC-LS equipped missions?

Oh yeah.. there are definitely mass savings to be had by running on the fat sides of the pork chop, but the cost of the fuel and the lifter to get it into LKO will factor in as well. There is also the extra mass for heat shielding or propulsive orbital insertion when at Duna. Using reasonably close Hohmann transfers I did not need to worry about shielding for my aerobraking at Duna.. but things definitely got toasty. Any faster would not have been possible without proper heat shielding. Good luck and lmk if you have any questions.

Most boring ever: "22t", "45t", "85t". (mass to LKO)

My cousin who worked on Sojourner developed the vision system in C.

Thanks! I really enjoyed the drive, too. The rover wasn't a loopy as it looked as there were two RTG's clipped into the Rovermate to keep the CoM low. Thinking I might try an Elcano attempt (with LS of course) around Duna's poles. Been cooking up a route past the anomalies - should take awhile. Looking forward to seeing what you have in mind for your next run! These are the lifters up-close:

A direct aero-capture around Jool into a perfect orbit around Laythe (tiny <50m/s burn to circularize). Apparently I was excited and am not allowed to make that much racket at night anymore.

Some directors add it in post-production.. http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4788758/j-j-abrams-apologizes-for-his-overusing-lens-flares

Ten launches. Ten Kerbals into Duna orbit This entry was played with KCT setup with two VAB build threads (80/20), with the "primary" build thread working on the complex and diverse payloads and the "secondary" thread adding on the lifter to the completed payload. The lifters were built on a 3.75m stage powered by the Mammoth 4-engine cluster, which is the common primary stage for all lifters. Two variants of the lifter were used, one which added 4 chute-recovered SRBs to the main core booster and another which strapped on two of the primary liquid boosters (each powered instead by a single Rhino engine and recovered propulsively). By the end of the challenge, adding the booster to the payload was only 131 days for the smallest lifter and 165 days for the largest booster capable of lifting 85t to LKO. First Landing Having an insight to how the first part of challenge can be played, I tried to fly an initial landing mission profile that was different than ones I had done in developing the challenge. It was a risky mission, launching a single monolithic Duna landing rocket without a way for the crew to safely get back to Kerbin already in place. However, we got the point for getting a Duna STATION into orbit before the 'Prestige' deadline. The crew return vehicle was sent later, on a separate mission. DERP - Launches Two KERBAL HABS were landed on both Duna and Ike. The design of the HABs were nearly identical, with the only difference being chutes on the Duna lander. Both included basic nuke-powered rovers which took the crew to the SHUTTLEs. Duna Landings The 'Prestige' point for placing a flag on Duna >7000m was well-earned in that the terrain prevented the SHUTTLE from landing close to the HAB. This required the crew to drive almost 20km over intense terrain to circumnavigate a deep ravine with steep drops to get to the SHUTTLE. Earning the Ike point for high-point flag planting presented spectacular views, thanks largely to the KSPRC mod. Ike Landings It would have been easy to use the last launch window to maximize the challenge points, but I'll take what I got. Missed out on getting 3 Duna surface samples, but managed to get it with Ike. Should have had an atmosphere scooper on the Duna SHUTTLE, too. In total, earned 70 points, detailed here: Total cost of the space program was 2206688.13 funds. Using the calculation this renders 5424.7 points. Scoring less than @Jasonden but pretty sure that if I'd used the third launch window to maximize all points I could have closed in on 2000 points. Life support mod used: USI-LS 0.3.4 (the one just before Kerbs take massively more supplies, has the better UI/performance but with the bizarre inability to disable LS supply tanks). Good luck to anyone else who attempts this challenge!

Drat. Sorry you missed that change. I was hoping I got it in there before anyone started rolling. I'll try and think of a way to balance your scoring, but you can add them mid-game and try to catch up. Ironically, I only added the extra 2 points to encourage splitting between VAB and SPH build threads; the challenge is actually balanced for 8. Happy launching! edit: There won't be any further challenge rule changes unless there is a mod/balance problem. edit 2: Got the leaderboard up.

Awesome - thanks. That's what it looked like (pre 0.3.5.0) with the "Kerbals now consume (by default) 16.5kg of supplies per day" change. Will update the OP very soon with a leaderboard and pre/post USI 0.3.5.0 category and ones for the other LS mods (as they will all be different specs for mass, cost, etc.). I'll even submit my own entry soon, doing one that varies from my tests so I'm not getting too much of an OP advantage. I'm also working on testing with the new heavy-consumption USI-LS with and without 'Kolonization' so see if a viable mission can be assembled with enough LS to make the trip before the launch window. On my first attempt, a basic mission was completed in KCT 10 days *after* the Duna window. I may have to specify or highly recommend using USI-LS version prior to 0.3.5.0. Has anyone else attempted to build a mission with KCT using the latest USI-LS?

I have no issue with the militarization, but KSP is not exactly optimized for it. Isn't there more better-suited games for that with better graphics/framerates?

You could study the relief maps on Kerbal Maps. From experience, Moho, Dres and the Mun's south pole are the best places to visit gnarly terrain.

KAS and KIS are definitely allowed. Only mod not permitted is KyperEDIT, but if something comes up that is just way out of balance might need a look. Good luck!

Fantastic! WHP indeed! I was wondering if the challenge had appealed to anyone else, so thanks for the great submission. Enjoyed the mission report and seeing how you did your landing. The second launch's Δv was about where my test playthrough's were. Kudos! The challenge is designed/balanced to have those first few launches getting only a few of the possible goals, with the various ways to approach it being the early challenge. I'm glad you were successful in one of the mission profiles I did not play test! Just so I can document things, which USI LS mod version was used? Thanks for playing! edit: I think you can use the KCT 'Recover Active Vessel' and then load it into the VAB. It should load as-is and display its cost/value.

Good enough for me. Thanks for the explanation.

I see where you're thinking, but lets look forward until we can once again turn on/off resources: would it not make more sense to consume the supplies KSC told you to use *first* then crack open the backups if needed? Did Apollo consume food from the LM? No.

@RoverDude I hate to be that broken-record guy.. is there or is there not a way for me to turn off the mechanic where I cannot manage my own resources (ie disable them at my choice)? Or, do you or someone else have a better way to manage resources for cases like preserving lander-supplies until the landing? It just seems like a pointless mechanic. Maybe if I understood the why, I'd be able to wrap my head around it.

I like the sound of that.. I can live with the massive changes in consumption but is there a way I can control my own resource management? I'd like to be able to tell my kerb's which supplies to draw from.