Starwaster

answering in reverse order (or order of perceived importance) I currently have one of the universes loaded that was giving me the most trouble and it looks stable for now. What I did to get to this point was I removed the plugin. When I've finished cycling through each ship and station to verify that they'll load I will quit and restart with the plugin enabled. One thing that concerns me is that I am seeing A LOT of 'Activated (forced)' in the log and I've never seen that in my game before. Only in other people's who had bugged universe or ships that caused them trouble. maybe its coincidence and it doesnt really mean anything but it does worry me a bit seeing it OKAY! Re: water. volume units in KSP are definitely not liters, kiloliters / m3. the best value that anyone's come up with is that a volume unit is about 160th of a cubic meter or 0.00625. which, to keep things simple is also the value I used for water when creating it as a resource / fuel for Real Fuels nuclear drives.

where are you deriving the density for water from? It seems way too light. of greater concern though is exploding ships. it goes beyond incompatibility between versions, I'm losing ships that didn't even have ioncross support modules. it really concerns me. the inability to upgrade is one thing but this has me worried that anything I try to create with this installed is going to be at risk.

Wow, this is just... so SO wrong. (I'm downloading it!) (I don't see anything about lego kerbals to go with it. That would be kinda neat... but wrong!)

Try attaching to the upper node instead of the lower. that or use standard fairing rings but put a second fairing ring upside down where you want the fairing to end. (such as under the command pod maybe) Edit: Wait do you want the fairing to cover the entire command module? Do what I said on line 2 but don't do the second upside down ring. Just replace that interstage adapter that you have above with a fairing ring.

Modular Fuel System? Look inside the zip file. Copy the GameData folder to your KSP_Win folder, which is wherever you put it. If you are asked if you want to overwrite anything answer yes. A folder named ModularFuelTanks will be created in your GameData folder. You're finished at this point unless you want to install Real Fuels, in which case you open the ModularFuelTanks folder, find the realfuels.zip file and unzip the contents to ModularFuelTanks. (or if you can just open the zip file like a normal folder then do so and copy the contents to ModularFuelTanks)

You're welcome, but how do you do that? I thought that was a KSP limitation. How do you make properties not save on the part? Also, I'm getting game freezing errors during startup. [EXC 13:13:34.547] FormatException: Unknown char: w Traced it to ModuleManager_DeepSpaceMission.cfg @PART[DSM25mLongCommandPod] { MODULE { name = IonModuleCrewSupport } RESOURCE { name = Oxygen amount = 100w maxAmount = 100 } RESOURCE { name = CarbonDioxide amount = 0 maxAmount = 50 } } Though it's kind of odd that it DID start up successfully one single time with that same file in place... in fact it so confused me that I had to go doublecheck in the original archive because I thought maybe I had SOMEHOW accidentally opened... then pressed the w and then somehow accidentally saved it. (an unlikely sequence of events given that I hadn't even opened the folder after copying)

re: flag decals http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35225?p=443161&viewfull=1#post443161

Get Kerbal Alarm Clock. Missing nodes will be a thing of the past. I hesitated a while before downloading it. I hesitated even longer before actually installing it because ... actually I'm not even sure why. I think I thought that it seemed cool but that it wouldn't really work that great and I was reluctant to actually try it out. I can't imagine now that there was actually a time that I didn't have KAC and can't imagine playing without it. You won't miss a node ever again. You can be at full time acceleration and it will slow time down or if you choose it will even pause the game. (have to choose which when you set the alarm). And it steps it down gradually to ensure that you don't get hit by the physics bugs that we just talked about. In fact, you can even configure it to set certain alarms automagically, like SOI changes.

I just suddenly had a thought about this. It's probably a natural side effect of scaling them. Was the tank you tried to laser scaled very large? If so, KSP is probably scaling back the heat input to simulate the heat having to spread out over a larger mass. What made me think of this was when I was putting together the stretchy SRB files earlier. I pasted a portion of one of Squad's SRBs into an LV909 (to simulate a nozzle) and it exploded fairly quickly even though it was using the same heat production value as the SRB. The only difference was that the LV909 is a lot smaller. Not sure if mass has anything to do with it, just size.

Probably because of floating point errors carrying over when the ship has to physicalize. That's just speculation though. I don't know why it happens for sure

then we died

Bad things happen when time acceleration drops from high levels to 1x. Physics sort of things. Crossing the streams sort of things.

Yeah let it go. The reason it stopped is because it drifted away from the node so it stopped to reposition.

I like EA but those damn Flash ads kill my computer if I forget and leave any pages from that site up. especially in multiple tabs

This is the result of my experimenting with creating a Stretchy SRB using configuration files entirely. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b0rp1frpxg3l1m3/XtqgNy6Oxm It's a proof-of-concept for people to play with. Do whatever you want with it. It requires Modular Fuels and of course, Stretchy Fuel Tanks. How it works: Adds a new tank definition: SRB Adds a new resource: SolidFuel2 Configures the LV909 to be configurable to an SRB nozzle Instructions: Copy the folder StretchySRB to your GameData folder (optional: find the craft file in the StretchySRB folder and copy it to your VAB folder) Launch the game Put the Stretchy SRB onto your craft. Stretch it to desired size. Configure the Stretchy SRB with SolidFuel2 (the only one it accepts anyway) Put an LV909 on the bottom. Configure the LV909 for SRB_Standard Launch when ready. Known problems: Mass isn't likely to match up with a standard SRB of whatever size you configure this to, Center of mass could drift down a bit towards the engine as you start to run out of propellent but it shouldn't be a problem.... I hope. Rocket thrust is higher than it should be to compensate for lower mass ratio Because this isn't intended as any sort of release, the contents of the dropbox folder could change throughout the day as I adjust this.

I understand.

Because it calculates fuel capacity based on tank mass and the base tank mass varies according to fuel type. He's using different ratios for oxidizer compared with liquid fuel.

Oh crap I forgot to paste the URL. Deerrrrpppp http://www.braeunig.us/space/propel.htm Edit: btw, all my interest in doing the config to add new fuels was prompted by talk of the nuclear rocket being broken in Real Fuels. Or rather it prompted a lot of research in which I discovered that even in the aerospace industry, not everyone is enamored with nuclear rockets in general (or hydrogen as a propellent in nuclear rockets). Great Isp offset by a choice of having to accept either lower reaction mass or voluminous H2 fuel tanks to compensate. I've come to the conclusion that even once you fix the tank mass issues, nuclear works the way it probably would in reality. So maybe the problem is reality sucks.

Did you launch a new craft after making those changes? Because the old craft in orbit will still have the old values in its module. That's there for life. Unless you edit the save file and change it manually.

That looks great! I was actually wondering last night how that kind of texture would scale. I guess as long as there's no fine detail to get noticeably stretched then it'll come out ok.

Actually there's a good chance they'll impact the moon. Or, as you say, they might end up in interstellar space. Or at least Kerbol space. Every now and then I see debris outside of Kerbin's SOI and I haven't the foggiest notion how they got that far out no problem!

Check out this page if you haven't already. Towards the bottom. Yeah, action group definitely. Only I'd let it go to 100% maximum *IFF* there's also a minimum then you could do a range of 75%-100% Pretty sure you'd need a plugin to keep the engine from being re-ignited. There's a few really kludgey methods I can think of to do it with config only, like having an ignition 'resource' is renewed as long as the engine is operating (you'd do that with a generator linked to engine power). It could be initially filled via the pumps in the launch 'towers'. But that's really kludgey and not really the right way to do it. on the subject of fluorine, I saw an interesting quote (obviously sarcastic) saying something to the effect that at high temperatures, fluorine lost its 'gentle and loving' nature and started getting really nasty. Bah, I'm probably ruining it but it was funny at the time. Doing this set of configs I'm noticing an interesting bug here. Kethane tanks are NOT supposed to be fillable and in the VAB they appear not to be but I noticed that they're gaining mass nonetheless. Put one on the launch pad and sure enough the sucker is fully of kethane. Not supposed to be like that because you're supposed to have to mine that stuff Hopefully I just made a mistake somewhere but I think it's a MFS bug and there's no ialdoaboath to report it to Edit: Yup. If you use the auto-fill button where it looks at the attached engines and chooses which fuels in which ratios then it will ignore the fillable property. If you use the add/update buttons it does not do that. Edit#2: Ok yeah. I've seen the option for minThrust but I just sort of edit them out of my brain since I haven't used them at all. For the Griffon XX this would be 65%-100% (except of course that I'm not sure exactly where it starts to overheat) minThrust = 2470 maxThrust = 3800

Ah. Well, nuclear engines qualify then I'll take a look at it but I would probably do it as a separate config file. Uhm.... on which subject it should be possible to configure the engines via the same MFS engine configuration to not be throttleable but that's all kinds of dangerous. Unless there's a lower limit. I forget how that works cause I've never messed with it. Reason I say dangerous is that the freakin KW Griffon wants to go off like popcorn kernels in a microwave. More dangerous than the mainsail Regarding hypergols performance, I guess we better separate out whether we're talking Isp or thrust or both and which hypergolic mixtures we're talking about. Some are safer than others and probably lower perfomers while others are really dangerous or really corrosive (like fluorine & H2)

Something's been puzzling me, following the whole interstage issue. Just to be clear, you're trying to duplicate the way upperstage of a Saturn V was arranged, right? Upper stage with lander inside fairing and command module on top. If so, that should totally be working for you without having to do extra rings on top. I'm having some trouble making out from your pictures exactly where you're placing things with regards to attachment nodes but (and some of this you probably already know, sorry, but let's take it from the beginning) the interstage ring has two nodes (actually three but we're ignoring the one on the very bottom that your lower stage connects to). One on the top surface of the interstage ring base. The other floats above and you can raise the height of that upper node. Your payload needs to be on the lower of those two nodes, the fixed one on the interstage base. Attach it by your payload's bottom-most node (the engine) The bottom of the command craft (its engine node) needs to connect to the floating node (you can raise the floating node by pressing H) Now, with regards to decoupling. Only the floating node decouples. The fixed node on the base does not decouple at all so the only way your payload should even be able to decouple is if you attached a separate decoupler/separator ring to it. Below are some pictures of a simplified arrangement. This is how you want to do interstage. The payload is the one sitting on the base. It's not coming loose no matter how I stage it because it has no decoupler ring. For a real craft you want a decoupler under your payload. If you arrange the staging right then it won't come loose then, either unless it breaks loose. Sorry they're kind of spammy, I suck at resizing these things All attached top-most craft separated payload separated

I suppose.... but why? Their main characteristic is that they don't need an ignition source right? But that's not a concern in KSP anyway. And aren't they lower performance fuels? Where would you want to use them? Except maybe for OMS type engines? I guess in short, what sort of benefit that can actually translate to an in-game situation would make them desirable?