ASnogarD

I finally landed my very impractical munar mining rover / truck... Thing is 22 tonnes, has a crane, a kethane drill set up on a tilter and slide bar (can pack the lot on the truck and adjust height of the drill easily), has a box with 4 KAS horizontal cable stacks, has all the KAS bits, has its own landing engines (could potentially hop around the mun but I aint letting that thing go airborne ever again)... it has virtually everything I could think of for a mobile mining platform...just the capacity is ... a tad... small. Learnt a lot from this flight... Never going to try landing 20+ tonnes on a single LVN... I got to the Mun with 22 min of burn time on the sucker, I ran out of fuel the TWR was so small (0.13), the engines on the truck had a better TWR but not enough fuel for a full landing. Never going to mount a LVN stacked, always 2 or 3 radially...the length of the engine makes the whole lifter a wobbly mess even with struts. Never going to not check a probes orientation... flying a awkward wobbly lifter with the probe upside down is a sod. Never going to try land a large rover without a skycrane or sky hook affair... the complexity of switching from a vertical rocket to a horizontal truck with rockets under the chassis while dropping at 15 m/s and trying to fight the new orientation suddenly before the truck smacks the surface. Never going to use stabilising landing gears to land on with a truck with wheels, damn things nearly destroyed my truck as the thing had a bit of horizontal speed (something like 0.5 m/s) and the legs jammed into the surface and catapulted my truck nearly to orbit... had to unpack the things and settle on the wheels. ... none the less I got my truck there, pity it landed nowhere near any Kethane deposits but considering the length of the landing... any munar ground was good enough, the thing has wheels and Bill hasnt got a return craft so nothing better to do than set up a Kethane mining camp and wait for the rest of the crew to arrive. It is funny how a simple and silly thing can cause so much intensity, rage and despair and finally satisfaction. Will get to posting pics when I have rested, got to a Kethane deposit and can show off in style... for now I leave Bill in his truck far away from any route or highway grill.

In Windows you can use the Task Manager (press ALT + CTRL + ESC) and find KSP.exe under details tab, then right-click Set Affinity , uncheck ALL CPU's, and check a CPU you want to use (dont use 0 that is the most used, I would use the highest number ...in my case 5). Dont expect too much though... doesnt really do all that much in my case.

Probably more to do with the height of the drill... too high and it doesnt reach the Kethane, too low and it bypasses the Kethane... the clue is if there is sparks coming off the drill or not (and then smoke if the kethane is coming). If you see sparks as it deploys and then the sparks stop...probably the drill is too low.

Game is stable on my machine, albeit a tad slow loading up, slow getting to the space centre, slow from the VAB to the pad...generally slow transitions. Game plays fine at the current part count I am using (about 200 - 300 max) at the moment. I am using the Steam version but launch the KSP.exe directly and dont have Steam running. Win 8 pro on a AMD Phenom II x 6 1090T CPU (3.2 ghz), 8 gigs RAM and 580 GTX. I have a fair amount of mods : MechJeb2, Chatterer, Universe Replacer + Raredens 4k texture pack, KAS, Lazor Mod, Damned Robotics parts and Infernal Robotics Fork plugin with Magic Smoke Industries Slider, Aviation Lights and Kethane mod. Hasnt crashed to desktop ever, touch wood.

I messed around with the debugger and managed to test this mess ... ... and, yes indeed I had my converter piping wrong, fixed that up and the rover was able to mine, make fuel, power the generator and make mono prop. It is still not a practical machine (could of ditched the whole drill arm by slapping the drill onto the side of a tank) but its fun to play with all the moving parts, and it look so very much like a Kerbal made machine... dangerous, full of moving parts and not well designed but has plenty of buttons. (Of course the moving parts are from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37707-0-21-Magic-Smoke-Industries-Parts-Infernal-Robotics (and R4mon and DYM's DR mod) Took me practically a day to make that, my fussiness over detail will not let me be... :/

I was wondering if it wouldnt be too hard to auto generate Kethane under the KSP so a player could test out the complex and complicated and pure mess of a totally over engineered munar rover that weighs too much and probably never touch a moon rock unless someone fetched it... ... be a bit sad to get it there and find you put the pipes on arse backwards :shock: It wouldnt really make things too easy as fuel is currently rather easy and cheap on Kerbin, there wouldnt be much benefit from having a local Kethane source methinks. Thanks for the work on the mod though, I havent mined a single atom of Kethane but already had hours of fun with the toys in the mod (my Munar Kethane Mining Rover with DR/IR and Sircuts Slider mod took me over a day to make... before realising it was too off centre, too complex and had a tiny output potential for 18 tonnes of mining equipment in space).

I struggle with 130 tonne lifters but here are a few ideas you could consider... 1 - Typically I build my lifters a standard centre stack with a ring of stacks as boosters (stack = fuel tanks + engines), I make the centre stack short and feed it fuel from the outer ring which allows me to put my payload lower into the lifter instead of perching right at the top. 2 - Consider draining the fuel out of the payload to lighten the load (there are a few complicated ways to do this, but you could just allow the docking ports to cross feed and burn off the fuel with the main engines while it sits on the pad held in place with launch clamps... or even design the lifter to use the fuel in the payload and put less fuel tanks in the lifter), it may sound silly as you want the fuel for re-fuelling craft at the station but that design is eye candy then you can build a ugly but practical fuel delivery craft to fill it up. Nice looking station and full of fuel. Good luck.

I noticed a definite performance hit with the new update, but mostly in the transitions from VAB -> Launchpad (also noted that SPH moused movement is so much smoother and faster than VAB but as I very rarely look at the SPH I didnt notice how it was like before), the transition is slow even with something silly like a lander can on some structural plates like I use to test out Kerbal assisted maneuvers (boarding a command seat vehicle, or testing KAS). Its not mods as I noted this slow transition BEFORE I added any mods after a new download of KSP from Steam. It is getting a bit tiresome when you just want to test out something like landing leg range, and it takes something like 10 - 30 sec to get onto the pad with a tiny lander and some legs. I cant say for sure but I think the transition times gets longer the longer you are in game, memory leak maybe, just seems that way when I go on a mad craft design spree.

They have a move to original position but no way a user can set that position from the VAB, like for example the large hinge starts facing up so if you were going to make something that raises up from a horizontal position it would always start raised unless you added bits and pieces to make the hinge attach sideways... the suggestion would be to be able to say set the hinge already moved to the lowered position and make that the new original position for that craft.

I hope the authors of Damned Robotics (now Infernal Robotics ?) will continue their good work, and of course sirkut as well. This stuff adds too much fun and opens up so many avenues, I mean that slider alone opens up so many possibilities... like this rough idea I am working on... Its not an original idea, I got the notion from Armageddon , that Armadillo rover they took to mine into the asteroid. Thanks for the hard work. Some suggestions if I may... 1) Set starting positions of each component 2) Set a max and minimal position for each component (as needs dictate rather than the widest possible movement range) 3) Adjust movement speeds 4) Audio would be nice Just some ideas for you to think about, not demands.

Silly little thing where you kicked sticks of dynamite out of a square field while picking up coins, have a youtube vid of a RC of the title... it wasnt a great game but for my first and only title (so far) I didnt think it was too bad... (All GFX was drawn by me, and the code was mostly mine with some tutorial code from sites I used to learn from) ... but that off topic.

Another trick I use ... and it seems to work is to start your burn at t = 0 minus est. time but half the thrust ... for example, you have a 90 sec burn , so 90 sec before the node burn at HALF thrust (obviously this is for small burn times, those under 5 min), the result is the same as if you went full throttle at the half est. time but you have more control and you also incidentally get some scope to cope with bad estimated times (basically if it said you had a 60 sec burn but change to 1 min... you can adapt by going full throttle instead of half).

This is nearly what I was after... as you can see the flag is not really in a ideal location but it seems the routine is locked to a east west line, notice the shadows and the line the flag is pointing in... ... also do note the italic message at the bottom of my original post, I was annoyed but rather than swear and jump up and down I decided to make it a bit funny instead as well as a hint to Harvester. I am fully aware of the WIP nature of the title, yet even complaints are better than no feedback at all... I know from experience, I coded a game and posted it up and waited for the feedback... 6 months of coding and drawing art assets, not including the time it took to self learn C++ and SDL as well as getting to grips with sprite art... ended up with nearly no replies or views, let alone downloads.

I just use the information parts of the mod, the Vessel information in the VAB and the Delta V status, the orbit information when I am launching (being able to see Apo and Peri without going to the map screen is handy), I have not messed around with the rest of the windows but even Scott Manley uses the information sections as they are useful (those or Engineer Redux). As far as I am concerned if you are against MechJeb and consider it cheating, then you must also disregard every other mod out there, even just the cosmetic ones as they aint vanilla which would be stupid ... just slap on the mod YOU want and enjoy the game, who cares if you cheat or not as it is just a single player game.

The point flew over this ones head faster than a kerbil strapped to a command seat on a cluster of mailsails heading towards a celestial body. Allow me to illuminate my point slightly... I attempted a small 1 Kerbil lander , nothing big... a 909 engine, 2 FT100 fuel tanks with the 1 man can, some RCS and bits and bobs including a bright spotlight and a ring of single plate solar panels. I got the Kerbil to the Mun but messed up the fuel requirements for the mission, and just as the Lander was about to land...*pop* no gas man, and the lander landed heavily losing legs and engine leaning at a dramatic angle on its base with the single spot light shining on a flat piece of ground in front of the craft... ideal spot for a ironic first landing flag, next to the ruins of the lander illuminated by the one spotlight powered by the solar panels... ... except Bill will not plant the flag facing the light, no matter what I tried... I even noted he plants it in 2 directions but when I move him so one of those directions will be in the light, he does a 180 and plants it the opposite way... out of the light.

Why did you code in that troll flag planting routine ? It had to be deliberate , how else can it deliberately make the Kerbil turn around at random and plant the flag in the wrong place / facing each time ? I wanted to plant a flag in the light of my crashed Mun lander, intending to leave the lot there as a monument to this first landing on this build, but I'll be buggered if I can get Bill the plant the sodding flag so it faces the light... he plants it in EVERY way except facing the light, he turns just enough each time to avoid the light. I have spent 20 minutes turning this Kerbil around, trying different spots just so the stupid thing can plant the flag so the picture side is in the light... I even change my camera angles, types. I studied how Bill turns so as when he turns it will be in the right spot... then he doesnt turn, so I turn him...then he turns, so I turn him more, then he turns the opposite way, then I compensate for that and he counter compensates... ... that is why I call it a troll routine, it can only be deliberate. Hardest thing in the game, getting a Kerbil to plant the flag in the right place facing the right way (Note: Despite the rage / ranty nature of this post, it is actually intended to be humorous and a slight dig at Harvester.)

I just tested your bi-coupler statement and it fails as expected... I put a probe on top of a bi coupler, added 2 FT800 tanks and then another bi-coupler (which now makes a loop) and a engine at the bottom... added some launch clamps, put thrust to 100% and fired the engine and *puff* no thrust, engine has no fuel despite being attached to fuel tanks and everything. +<=>{ Its because the 2 bi couplers in this case form a loop, a parent child back to parent loop which messes up in KSP, a major failing of the current system. In this particular case it is easy to by pass with fuel lines but in the OP's case the better solution would be to either mount the LVN's radially or add some form of center modular structure to connect the stages rather than through the engines + de-coupler -> adapter. Its a relatively well known KSP issue, not a guess on my part.

Cant say for sure here but the atmosphere in KSP has varied density that is measured as you climb through the various atmospheric strata so I would think its say to assume the efficiency is calculated based on the current level your craft is in, in other words a transition at various atmospheric density. I would say its a transition rather than a binary thing but probably not so gradual and more a staged affair but that is a guess.

It could also be an issue with the way parts connect in KSP, you cannot use parts to connect in a manner that forms a loop... in your case 1 - 4 adapter - 4 engines - 4 - 1 adapter, it may look like everything is connected but usually its not properly connected.

I thought of that before, but the loss of Gimbals if you go LT30's or loss of thrust if you go LT45's makes it less ideal. You could go for a 4 LT45 core and 6 LT30 ring for a core but that just gets a bit messy in the staging bar ... 10 engines + the outer ring of stacks engines...14 engines each with a fuel bar...

Try that same design with a heavy payload, the mainsail is much more efficient when lifting heavy loads ... at light loads most of its thrust is wasted fighting the atmosphere when you go too fast to be efficient. If I recall from memory (which is bad for me ) the LT30's have a thrust of 215 each equaling 860 and a mainsail has a thrust of 1500 nearly twice the thrust of your 4 LT30's. This thrust is wasted when you have much more thrust than the payload requires so its inefficient but when dealing with heavier payloads the extra thrust is needed to get off the ground.

I used this... ... to get a 40 tonne payload easily to a rendezvous with a station at 250 km orbit with plenty of fuel to de-orbit the 2nd stage and leave no debris floating in orbit. It doesnt use asparagus (it could I suppose but didnt need it), the main trick of this design is how it keeps the payload low inside the lifter by making the center stack short and feeding that stack with fuel on the outer stacks. I used 4 x LT30 for each outer stack and a mainsail on the center stack and 4 large radially mounted engines on the 2nd stage (technically 3rd as the lifter drops the 4 outer stacks when the fuel is out). It flies relatively stable, just some minor fighting with the SAS during the gravity turn but nothing crazy. It is made of stock parts but the payload has Aviation Lights Mod lights and Mechjeb, I also use Chatterer but since that mod has gone part-less I dont need to attach any part to use Chatterer .

Besides all that , the mod showcase showcases mods in the 'Add-on Releases and Projects Showcase' section as far as I know , not the 'Add-on Development' which has a fair number of interesting projects (personally I am looking at the Lightswitch mod with keen interest).

Rather unusual complaint, why would a modder on these forums be so averse to providing the source of their work ? Its not like you can take your mod and charge separately for it, or somehow gain financially from it as that would infringe on Squads rights, so why the concern to protect your work ? If someone copies your source and claims it for themselves others can study that source and see its a copy... for example, if I was to create a Methane mod by copying the Kethane mod, my mod would drown in a sea of complaints by the fans of the Kethane mod. It also allows for a very popular mod to be picked up by others should the original author tire of KSP or move to another game / project, it would be a shame to lose some of the more popular and used mods simply because the author lost interest. If you really do not wish to share the code, then you will simply not be able to share your mod.

1 min in, with fine control I can see the roll... look how stiff and jerky it is, you rolled a bit then again each time it jerked to its new position... ... bloody hell is the simulation off, some of the times you were flying backwards. Squad, 10 lashes for your physics programmer O.O (joke, kidding, dont report this post as evil intent, do not set the anti terrorist group against me, do not get the lawyers out)