vetrox

Ok so I have started testing. Im trying to do it as thorough as possible. However each test is taking roughly 30mins each. Thats 19hours i have to get through! I will do as many as i can in the alloted time. My test involves taking off, orbit, ransfer, land and take off (if applicable) but i wont do the return. I will do a quick test of any reurn gear to make sure chutes deploy etc but i cba with the extra 5 mins of take off and return. If i havent completed everyonees and the deadline is near. I will post my reports and place voted about 3 or 4 hours before end of voting.

Use it. If you get bored or dont like it. Stop using it. I found it really usefull for preventing jet flameout. I really wish i still had it just for that reason!

Right. I've been hard at work testing my attemp. See end of post for a details regarding the various design decisions and explenations for various things. I present "The Ambitious". Function over form. I was tempted to make something more inspiring but thought i would keep it simple as we are aming these at new players Plenty of fuel left over, even with sloppy ascent profiles. Enough fuel to get to both mun and minmus and with super duper carefull launch window planning it may even reach and return from duna. No landing legs on this one its purely for visiting and creating debris (I like rings of debris in ksp) Craft file here Purchased at a used rocket dealership. We were assured by a salesman that "The ambitious" is able to visit the two nearest celestial bodies and come home. Our engineers aren't quite sure whats under the protective shroud at the top of the rocket but Kerbanaughts enter through a secret hatch under the parachute. There was a hastily scrawled note from the previous owner "I didnt purchase the optional "landing" pack. Land at your own risk" Halfway through that album i made a quick update. Moved solar panels and put the engineer on the final stage for the photo flight. Dont worry the craft file is all stock. I also made a quick change since that album. The orientation of the outer tanks was changed slightly so the craft is more stable during the final asparagus stage (with 2 outer tanks remaining) She went through alot of testing. Initial craft were all mainsails. This proved succesfull however when launching straight up the high g forces at full throttle would tear the ship to pieces. All skipper engines would get her to orbit but it was a bit more difficult so i opted for a central mainsail, with the droptanks using skippers. This provides an excellent TWR all the way up. Now I probably wont win this due to lack of landing gear. However i really wanted the whole space module to be covered by a shroud. I made a few designs to incorperate landing legs withing a shroud but the part counts were getting a bit too high so i had to decide between functionality or looks. I went for looks as it wouldnt take much for a new player to take the shroud off and slap some legs on it plus it will inspire them to shroud or get one of the mods that has them. Early tests I tried to put one of the big reaction wheels (these were the "all mainsail" tests) and those things are weak. With a TWR on the ground of 3.1 the reation wheel would fall off the bottom, taking the central engine with it. Or if it was further up, the kraken would come out and devour the ship! It does have plenty of dv to land and take off from the mun however on its test flight i was reminded how weak the thin stack seperators are (the hastily scribbled note does state about landing at your own risk. However my shroud is seup just as i like it (with the parachute poking through the top) I will test everyones craft when the first round of voting starts.

Direct ascent refers to the landing craft. Not the initial launch to orbit. It was one of the proposed layouts for the apollo program. Basically a direct ascent module is one that achieves munar orbit, lands, takes off and returns to earth (or kerbin) in one go without needing to dock or undock from a csm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Choosing_a_mission_mode Scroll down to the "choosing mission mode" part When in the VAB or SPH in the top left there are three buttons. Parts, crew and action groups. If you open up the action groups tab you can assign certain objects there own action groups. The custom action groups refer to the numerical keys. So customaction1 (or whatever its called) would be selected by the "1" key. So when in action group tab. You click the custom group you want the part to be activated with, you then select the part that is on your craft and you specify what you want to happen when you press the corresponding key. So you would open the tab, select customgroup1, click on your solar panels, then click use activate/deactivate panels (i think) then save the craft

Just spoke to a friend who is a chemist to see if he knew about it...apparently some chemicals are not as difficult as you think to get hold of I read all of architeuthis's story. Its interesting and i would hate to pass it off as complete conspirecy babble. But the idea of trying to get soviets to kill themselves is quite funny (horrific but they way its worded is quite funny)

Whoever broguth this thread back. Thanks! I bet theres some limbless terrorists that have tried though

EDIT: Most players* The game doesnt have to be super realistic (and its not) so why make the rings boring and empty. Especially when you consider how scaled down the ksp universe is.

50% of players want missions 50% dont. (percentages just randomly made up btw) Neither side is going to convince the other. Even with some of the cool suggestions I've seen and had. I'm sure squad will work it out. From the AMA it looks like they already have a concept in place. We need it released so we can stop this part of bickering and move onto the next part (which will be almost identical to the science points bickering that happened when .22 was released)

If we have planets with rings in ksp (i know theres a mod that already has one and tbh i dont like the look of the rings around that planet) players are going to fly through them. Realistic or not the best way for it to be implemented in game is to just have a texture overlay the current skybox and just diplay a dust cloud. (or some similar form of magic) Or If anyone has played freelancer. When you get close enough to the ring you get a randomly generated debris cloud. Its hard to explain but if you played freelancer and flew into any of the asteroid fields or debris fields you will know. Remember that this is still a game. Realism isnt the be all and end all of ksp. If flying through the rings isnt realistic but does adhere to most peoples general perception of what it would be like then all is good. Ie one lump of rock in every 2km or so (like in saturns rings...i think) would be quite boring. But a dense field of 'roids wopuld be quite cool and interesting.

OOO! im looking forward to this one! I got a long evening ahead of me so I've got plenty of time to design and test one.

Car (yes im one of "those" people)

It makes for good/fun/enjoyable gameplay. If my ships toppled over everytime i landed i would get annoyed very quickly.

i have an i7 with a 1.7ghz clock. (bottom of the sandy bridge range) and i can run 300 parts with very minor lag EDIT:I honestly have no idea why i said that. I dont think its helpfull. I guess there could be something wrong or incompatible with your rig setup. You got all the latest drivers and bios updates? what motherboard do you have? (not that it should be a massive bottleneck)

But even battlefield 4 didnt even need to be released. From what i've played bf3 is basically the same but bf4 has some features from past battlefield games that wernt in bf3. Its all to make money

Alienware Laptop (cos i thought a laptop would be usefull) Some garbage quad i7 with 1.7ghz clock Nvidia 460m 1.5gb (overclocked to 800mhz gpu and 1400mhz memory. It came out of the box seriously slow) 4gb of (probably) terribad ram. The slowest hard drive availiable to mankind 3 years old now £1200 when new Cooling:The best part about the whole laptop. ITs still aircooled but even with the overclocked gpu its pretty cool in there.

In my mind they are not for taking out space vehicles. They are for engaging ground targets. And i say power just because a magnetic accelerator requires alot of power to charge the magnets to launch the projectile. Small weapons such as your examples will probably be next to useless at destroying ground bases

But! Modern prototypes are to be fired from the surface (as i understand at the moment) If you fire a current prototype from space how far would it get befor re-entry and terminal velocity starts to have an effect? I reckon they would be heavy ass things that are next to useless other than releasing some sort of biotoxin into the atmosphere. Dont forget the immense power requirements. Solar panels aint gonna cut it (unless that 20 tons includes the power source) Edit: I just remembered you could add an explosive payload to a slug, duuhh. I still think they would be difficult to use in space. As you mention the kessler syndrome i came up with a theory earlier too. Lets say a hostile alien race invades. A simple defense would be to deliberatley make a kessler syndrome. send a bunch of fragmentation rockets into the sky and creat a layer of untraversable death debris. Alien invaders will have to wait for a few centuries This is assuming aliens dont have any sci fi tech and still adhere to what we know about physics. They would primarily be full of ground forces and orbit to atmosphere craft maybe?

You cant transfer them. So when i did an apollo(ish) style mission i had to leave the lander can attached to the CSM on the way back to kerbin

-snip- Never mind

Sounds like alot of effort to put a big ol' mac cannon into orbit along with several thousand metric tons of ammunition. I will let my enemies build those whilst i have swarms of smaller, lighter, easier to move vessels that are to small for that giant mac to do anything against. The only usefull thing you could have above a planet is some sort of orbit to surface weapon to take out strategic targets on the ground. Now if we use an orbital missile platform then you have pretty much wasted a bunch of money as its nothing a surface deployed missile cannot do. If you have an orbital kinectic style weapon (such as the halo mass accelerators) then its gonna be huge, need alot of power and be easy to throw surface-orbit missiles at. I Still hold there will be no actual ship-ship combat. Ship-ship combat is something for a seafaring navy. There is nothing worth fighting over in space so nations will have no need for weaponised vessels up there

I was having a think. And maybe not a mission system in the normal sense. But there will need to be some sort of objective based gameplay. Maybe for the less creative amongst us. I still feel some sort of mission system is a good thing but maybe not "go here and do x" maybe something else. Maybe a list of bonus objectives for each body. So you can do whatever you want but when you get there you can actually have a reason to be there. So going to the MUN or Minmus is pretty simple. However maybe you should get bonus credits for bringing back 2kg of surface soil or for scanning a crater or something. I Really feel there will have to be something to give you direction, from the start at least. Straight out "Orbit MUN, land on Mun, Orbit minmus etc" isnt really what im looking for but something along the lines of "explore kerbins SOI and bring back info. Each piece of data gives you science and credits? I dunno, im still trying to work something out but i'm hopefull squad has an idea. I think releasing career mode this early might have been a bit of a mistake and should have got the currency system implemented at the same time. Just having science in the career has caused so much negativity on this forum. If i was a dev reading the forum i would have cried at my hard work being shot down by the majority of the forum. EDIT: Maybe a list of all the orbiting bodies with varying objectives that you can do at your own lesure? Preferably with some whacky objectives like crashing a ship into gilly to try and attemp to alter its orbit. Whacky kerbal objectives are the way to go.

But..Im confused. Even with some guy giving you a mission to goto x and do y for a reward of z. You still make the craft, and go there so you still have to do things yourself. Surley the whole point of a career mode is to earn stuff and make bigger and better ships over time? If not then thats what sandbox is for? You saying that things like pre generated missions to go do stuff will completley ruin the game and make people leave. But having a goal and a set of missions to achieve a goal is the basis of almost all video games. With sandbox mode, the only difference is you give yourself your own missions and have unlimited parts at your disposal. I really do struggle with understanding your point of view on career mode sometimes. You want a career mode where you have to do stuff to get further...yet you hate the idea of a career mode where you have to do stuff to get further? I'm confused as to what you want from it!

I thought they did have point defense systems? They were just...you know...completley useless in every single way.

My personal view is, if there were to be space battles by whatever against whatever else. I doubt the battles would take place in orbit or in space. I mean, with what we know about physics and the technology we currently posses. What would be the point in fighting in space? The strategic target you want to capture is likely on earth (or whatever planetary body u see fit) The only use an orbital ship has is to carry ground troops and to launch space to surface weapons. A big hulking ship such as this is probably easy to spt or detect from the ground. As there isnt really anything in space worth fighting over, it makes sense that you wouldnt bother putting all that debris out there. I just dont feel like space combat is really ever going to happen. At least humans wont be the ones doing it. All that money to put a ship into space...and then load it full of weapons and troops etc...sounds like alot of effort. When watching sci-fi films i just assume there is (As someone said in an earlier post) that there is some sort of majical propulsion system that allows ships to keep stationary whilst in a gravity well with some sort of crazy inertia destabilser-mo-bob so they can do all dem acrobatics. This game has ruined all my favourite sci fi games and movies. I have to make up crazy magical things to make them believable!

Can you remember much of his answer? I'd be interested to know an astronaughts thoughts on this