Starwaster

I have to concede the point that there is a problem here. I'm not sure I agree on where it is but it's definitely there, and I'm sorry I said that you hadn't tested or that you were doing it wrong. I've spent the better part of the morning (too long in fact, have to get busy) going over your past posts and the extent to which you've tried to solve this is pretty damned obvious. I'm not clear why the KW parts would have a higher mass ratio since their mass is calculated the same as everything else's, based on their volume, but I'll take your word for it. I think where I went wrong is that I didn't go far enough in testing, and the problem manifests itself worse and worse as you go on. I guess the denser fuels either aren't hitting that problem or aren't hitting it until much farther down the line, farther than any any rocket that anyone would practically try to build. So, what I think is that the NERVA should have some of its stats bumped up. The stock version basically represents an actual prototype dating back to early 70s, I'm sure a production model would have performed better (not trying to tell you something I'm sure that you already know). ISP of 1000 would be attainable by a NERVA type rocket. Some of them also had thrust levels of 333 kN or higher. The other thing that I noticed that you (and others) have focused on in trying to solve this is tank mass and the first thing I see looking at tank masses that I don't see actually talked about in this thread is the fact that tank base masses are based on volume. This is wrong. Tank mass should be based on surface area and surface area to volume ratio drops as volume goes up. LH2 tanks wouldn't be penalized nearly as badly as they are now where tank mass increases linearly with volume. I'm not sure though how you would calculate something like surface area on volume alone though.

uhm HOW??? And what is that railing looking thing in the first few pictures? Attached near the top?

Hey, if you did this and someone comes along and makes you feel put upon, I can understand, I mean it would be as if I'm trying to get ready for my launch window to Duna in 176 days and someone says, "Hey! Your propulsion system is broken! BROKEN!!!" (ok, a little humor...) Unfortunately I have quite a few more mods installed. Most of them shouldn't affect this at all. I'm using MechJeb to get my mass, TWR and deltas I am using Arcturus' thrust corrector which changes the stock thrust output in atmo. I don't think it should affect this though, it only affects thrust and fuel consumption when in an atmosphere. (stock behavior is that engines are at full thrust output all the time regardless of isp. In atmo they pump fuel faster to compensate for the loss of thrust they should suffer) other mods are ioncross life support, kerbal alarm clock, RCS balancer tool, KW Rocketry with regards to config, I did this with the stock real fuel config (my own config tweak was removed for this) but I don't know that it's the same one as what you have. If you want I'll re-do this after duplicating the conditions you tested under with regards to mods. Right now I'm looking at: LV909 LF/OX wet mass 61.6 dry mass 9.3 TWR 0.08 DV: 6819 1h:03m:11s 1 KW Rocketry SB-4 LFT (3072 LF, 4608 OX) Same ship, LVN + 6 fuel tanks LH2 wet mass 60.5 dry mass 22.19 TWR 0.10 DV: 8377 1h:28m:19s 7 KW Rocketry SB-4 LFT (7488 LH2) 6 KW Rocketry SB-2 LFT (3744 LH2) 6 KW Rocketry SB-1 LFT (1872 LH2) Edit: I can't duplicate your 5 tn launcher. What are you using for command? I don't recognize that green thing, I assume that's the core

As far as the configs go, both engines in question were unmodified during my testing. I made sure of that before testing and posting. Both LH2 and LO2 are using the following values. Original values for comparison. Difference is that H2 was rounded up and O2 rounded down. @RESOURCE_DEFINITION[LiquidH2] { @density = 0.0004428125 } @RESOURCE_DEFINITION[LiquidOxygen] { @density = 0.00713125 } Originals name = LiquidH2 density = 0.00045 // LH2 is super-light RESOURCE_DEFINITION density = 0.007 // Liquid Oxygen is lighter than H2O2, but tends to give higher Isp flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH As far as your referenced post and proofs, look, I like picking at the math of it too but at some point you have to get in there and and try the parts out and compare them in the game. It seems like you're trying to find a one size fits all formula for finding the best engine/best fuel configuration and it doesn't work that way. Some engine / fuel configurations work best at certain size levels of ships. I don't think that's accurately reflected. Also I think it depends on if you're prioritizing thrust over deltaV. In small ships I've made, performance was (in order of higher DV to lower) LF/LO2, LH2/LO2. While last, LH2/LO2 had much higher thrust probably because of its TWR. With regards to the LVN, I thought I had covered all three fuel types but I'm not sure I looked at LF/OX so I'll have to go do that now.

The only way water is going to have performance 'about the same' as LO2/LH2 is if you break it up into and then liquefy it as LO2 and LH2. You've just made rocket fuel! That's not the same thing as saying that you are using water as a propellant. But you *CAN* use water as a propellant directly in a nuclear drive; it would have an ISP of approximately 412. Compare that to 850-1000 isp for H2. I'm not sure I would call that promising. But doable certainly. Well then you're doing it wrong. No offense, I have no idea how you conducted your testing; either you didn't test a wide enough range of applications or you didn't make sure that your LV909 was actually receiving a mass of propellants that was even in the same ballpark as the LVN. I just conducted VERY exhaustive research with a keen eye to the possibility I was mistaken but that's not the case. Given an identical mass, the LV909 had a deltaV about 40% of the LVN. And that's with an engine whose stats are effectively that of a prototype. The only time the LV909 even came CLOSE to the LVN was when I tested with very small tanks, probably because the pure H2 engine was receiving an overhead penalty Sorry but you did not test 'mass for mass' Edit: FYI, I used the stock LVN, not the modified one that I distributed here. However the fuels were tweaked to make them more accurate as they had all had their densities rounded because we can afford it in 'a game about little green men'. (I didn't agree so both LH2 and LO2 were brought to accurate densities)

As I've said before, carry more H2 tanks. Bigger H2 tanks. lots and lots of H2 tanks! "My god, it's full of H2 tanks!" Look it's simple math. Your maximum delta-V is dependent on the mass of propellant that you're throwing out and the speed with which it is being thrown out. The heavier the mass that you're ejecting, the more delta-V you have. And H2 is the lightest of the elements. So yeah that means your delta-V suffered for the same volume of propellant. But it's so light that you can carry quite a bit of it around now. Here's a moduleManager config file I made that adds some more nuclear fuels. It adds: H2 Slush which allows for denser fuel storage than liquid H2 and liquid ammonia. The ammonia is about 9x denser than liquid H2 but has about 60% of the isp. The net gain is that you have longer burn times and more deltaV. The downside is that the increased weight means that if you wanted to carry a lot of it then you better have a robust lift solution ready. (the amount of ammonia where you'd run into problems would probably be that Duna mission you always wanted to do). You could also launch with empty ammonia tanks and then fuel it in orbit with tankers. There's also the addition of solid ammonia with increased tank overhead to account for thawing equipment. For some reason though the solid ammonia is giving me problems, at least in the big nuclear rocket and I'm not sure where I messed it up. starwaster_fuels.cfg // starwaster_fuels.cfg // Starwaster's patch file for adding additional fuel types for the Real Fuels version of Modular Fuel Tanks. // These are primarily for nuclear engines though they are all possible fuel sources for other engines including standard chemical. @RESOURCE_DEFINITION[LiquidH2] { @density = 0.0004428125 } @RESOURCE_DEFINITION[LiquidOxygen] { @density = 0.00713125 } RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = LiquidH2O // Primarily as a test article. Potential nuclear fuel but has poor performance characteristics density = 0.00625 } RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = TestResource density = 1.0 } RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = SlushH2 density = 0.00053125 // 85 kg/m³ - Slush H2 is denser 0.00053125 flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH transfer = PUMP } RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = LiquidAmmonia density = 0.004261875 // 681.9 kg/m3 - 9.62x denser than LH2 flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH transfer = PUMP } RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = SolidAmmonia density = 0.00510625 flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH transfer = PUMP // done realistically this should not be pumpable, rather it should be converted by another module, probably moduleGenerator, into LiquidAmmonia } @TANK_DEFINITION[Default] { @TANK[LiquidH2] { @utilization = 0.99 } TANK { name = Oxygen utilization = 1.0 mass = 0.0 loss_rate = 0.0 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 } TANK { name = LiquidH2O utilization = 1.0 mass = 0.0 loss_rate = 0.0 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 } TANK { name = SlushH2 utilization = 0.975 mass = 0.00005 temperature = -259 loss_rate = 0.0000000005 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = LiquidAmmonia utilization = 0.995 mass = 0.00005 amount = 0.0 temperature = -33.3 loss_rate = 0.00000000005 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } // Re: Utilization. This is just a totally wild guess. Using a base value of 0.995 based on the value for oxygen; it should be no harder to store than that. // Then assessing a further 10% penalty based on the fact that some system would have to be in place that warms up, liquifies then pumps the ammonia. // Note that (to my knowledge) no space agency has considered or published any information on using solid ammonia on a flight. // It should still be technically possible as long as you can liquify it. TANK { name = SolidAmmonia utilization = 0.895 // Utilization much lower, to simulate the amount of equipment needed to retrieve and thaw solid ammonia chunks mass = 0.00005 amount = 0.0 temperature = -80 loss_rate = 0.0000000000 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } } @TANK_DEFINITION[Fuselage] { // Changes to LH2 tanks! Reduced mass of tank , increased utilization // LV909 // LF/OX // wet mass 61.6 // dry mass 9.3 // TWR 0.08 // DV: 6819 1h:03m:11s // // // Same ship, LVN + 6 fuel tanks // LH2 // wet mass 60.5 // dry mass 22.19 // TWR 0.10 // DV: 8292 1h:28m:19s @TANK[LiquidH2] { @utilization = 0.99 @mass = 0.0000 } TANK { name = Oxygen utilization = 1.0 mass = 0.0 loss_rate = 0.0 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 } TANK { name = SlushH2 utilization = 0.975 mass = 0.00005 temperature = -259 loss_rate = 0.0000000005 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = LiquidAmmonia utilization = 0.995 mass = 0.00005 amount = 0.0 temperature = -33.3 loss_rate = 0.00000000005 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = SolidAmmonia utilization = 0.895 // Much harder to simulate the amount of equipment needed to retrieve and thaw solid ammonia chunks mass = 1.0 // Mass of equipment referenced above amount = 0.0 temperature = -80 loss_rate = 0.0000000000 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } } @TANK_DEFINITION[Jet] { TANK { name = Oxygen utilization = 1.0 mass = 0.0 loss_rate = 0.0 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 } TANK { name = SlushH2 utilization = 0.975 mass = 0.00005 temperature = -259 loss_rate = 0.0000000005 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } } @TANK_DEFINITION[Structural] { TANK { name = Oxygen utilization = 1.0 mass = 0.0 loss_rate = 0.0 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 } TANK { name = SlushH2 utilization = 0.975 mass = 0.00005 temperature = -259 loss_rate = 0.0000000005 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = LiquidAmmonia utilization = 0.995 mass = 0.00005 amount = 0.0 temperature = -33.3 loss_rate = 0.00000000005 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = SolidAmmonia utilization = 0.895 // Much harder to simulate the amount of equipment needed to retrieve and thaw solid ammonia chunks mass = 1.0 // Mass of equipment referenced above amount = 0.0 temperature = -80 loss_rate = 0.0000000000 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } } @TANK_DEFINITION[Cryogenic] { @TANK[LiquidH2] { @utilization = 0.99 @mass = 0.0000 } TANK { name = SlushH2 utilization = 0.975 mass = 0.00005 temperature = -259 loss_rate = 0.0000000005 amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = LiquidAmmonia utilization = 0.995 mass = 0.00005 amount = 0.0 temperature = -33.3 loss_rate = 0.00000000005 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } TANK { name = SolidAmmonia utilization = 0.895 // Much harder to simulate the amount of equipment needed to retrieve and thaw solid ammonia chunks mass = 1.0 // Mass of equipment referenced above amount = 0.0 temperature = -80 loss_rate = 0.0000000000 maxAmount = 0.0 note = (requires insulation) } } // cl_large_nuclearEngine // Using :Final tag to prevent the addition of ModuleHybridEngines @PART[cl_large_nuclearEngine]:Final { // Seems to be some issues when I add the new fuels to it so removing the hybrid part !MODULE[ModuleHybridEngines]{} MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 600 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidH2 ratio = 0.99999999999 } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key - 0 1100 key = 1 494 } } RESOURCE { name = nuclearFuel amount = 8 maxAmount = 8 } RESOURCE { name = nuclearWaste amount = 0 maxAmount = 8 } MODULE { name = ModuleEngineConfigs configuration = LiquidHydrogen modded = false CONFIG { name = LiquidHydrogen thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 600 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidH2 ratio = 0.99999999999 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1100 key = 1 543 } } CONFIG { name = SlushHydrogen thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 600 PROPELLANT { name = SlushH2 ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1100 key = 1 543 } } CONFIG { name = LiquidAmmonia thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 600 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidAmmonia ratio = 0.99999999999 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 630 key = 1 312 } } CONFIG { name = SolidAmmonia thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 600 PROPELLANT { name = SolidAmmonia ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 630 key = 1 312 } } } } @PART[nuclearEngine] { @MODULE[ModuleEngines] { @maxThrust = 333.6 !PROPELLANT[LiquidFuel] !PROPELLANT[Oxidizer] PROPELLANT { name = LiquidH2 ratio = 0.99999999998 } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } //@atmosphereCurve //{ // @key,0 = 0 1000 // @key,1 = 1 494 //} } RESOURCE { name = nuclearWaste amount = 0 maxAmount = 4 } MODULE { name = ModuleEngineConfigs configuration = LiquidHydrogen modded = false CONFIG { name = LiquidHydrogen thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 60 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidH2 ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 850 key = 1 420 } } CONFIG { name = SlushHydrogen thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 333.6 PROPELLANT { name = SlushH2 ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1000 key = 1 420 } } CONFIG { name = LiquidAmmonia thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 333.6 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidAmmonia ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 630 key = 1 307 } } CONFIG { name = SolidAmmonia thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 333.6 PROPELLANT { name = SolidAmmonia ratio = 0.99999999998 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = nuclearFuel ratio = 0.00000000001 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 630 key = 1 307 } } } }

O2 and CO2 are resources. They have mass and one is subtracted as the other is added. And when you are in warp, unless you specified physical warp then you're non phy until you warp back in. It's up to KSP whether or not permadeath is enabled. I don't think that stock KSP exposes any configurable settings for that but the persistent save file does have an entry that controls permadeath. It can be edited using the Crew Manifest mod. (which is still a must even with the astronaut center addition in .21 if you want to transfer kerbals to other ship parts) Edit: In the save file there's the following: DIFFICULTY { MissingCrewsRespawn = True }

There's only two answers. One, manually adjust the nodes. That's not hard. Answer 2, try scaling with two scale calls. The first one would be scale 1.15 (<--- This goes OUTSIDE the MODEL node in the config file that should scale the node)(again going by the example cited previously) Not sure what the second would be.... try scale 2, 1, 2 or scale 2.3, 1, 2.3 Too late for me to try it myself now, going back to bed

You mean, carry water with you and then split the water for the oxygen? No, bad move. Water does not compress very well... I did the math once. Both H2 and O2 condense very well when liquefied, but once they combine into water, the required storage volume goes up significantly. I forget by how much but it was something like a few hundred kiloliters (m3) of storage that you lose. It's better to keep them separate as cryogenic gasses. That and you can use the gasses in fuel cells and drink the 'exhaust'. If you have a recycler don't turn scrubbers on at all. Also, get the TAC fuel balancer. You can set it to automatically suck CO2 out of every part of the ship and deposit it in the recycler. I'm not sure we get warnings or not... I would swear I saw one once but I might have imagined it. Also, if the ship/station is NOT active and you're far away from it then the lifesupport mod stops processing O2 consumption and CO2 generation.The guy who's working on it said that he'd like to change that and that you'd get warning if a ship that's not in focus needed attention. Also, you can put an air intake (look in Utilities) on the ship and it will suck in O2 or CO2 depending on the planet. Eve is CO2 I think. The intake works best if the ship is moving fast through atmo so re-entry is a good time to turn it on.

It's a KSP bug not an Ioncross bug. Adding or moving resources around can cause the ship to shift. It should NOT be doing that since no mass actually left the ship so it couldn't accrue any deltaV. Unless maybe the surviving Kerbals had to open the hatch to give the departed a burial at space...... both the air being vented and the dead body would have caused a change in deltaV. (ok, obviously that last is a bit facetious, it's just the KSP bug I mentioned before. If you use enough mods that shift resources around such as TAC fuel balancer (to name another mod), you'll see this happen occasionally) (in fact it can happen in stock too. Move fuel from one tank to another and you can move your ship)

Each part is defined by a *.cfg file. Usually it's named part.cfg but it can be called anything. Go into your KSP_win\GameData\Keramzit\ProceduralFairings\ directory Look for a section in each *.cfg like rkman quoted above (if you just want to do the rings they are all named things like baseRing1_25.cfg (the 1.25m base ring is what that file name is saying) In the case he quoted it USED to be scale = 2.3, 2.3, 2.3 but he commented that out by putting // in front of it and replaced it with a line that says scale = 2.3, 1.15, 2.3 Which means that he changed the Y scale (because Y is up in this game) from 2.3 to 1.15 so he basically just cut it in half. Which, I did not realize scale accepted XYZ values... and I looked in those files but I wasn't looking for THAT so I didn't see it. Hmmmmm. Gonna try that now. btw if you have module manager you don't HAVE to edit anything. Instead of editing the file you can make a cfg file that applies a patch during loading without altering any original files. Looks like he changed the 2.5 meter ring SO if you have modulemanager you can do THIS instead: @PART[KzProcFairingBaseRing2_5] { @MODEL { @scale = 2.3, 1.15, 2.3 } } Which would achieve the same thing without actually changing any files so if you screw something up it's as easy as deleting the cfg file that you made to patch. (cfg files can usually be anywhere in the GameData folder and they'll get executed by KSP when it loads)

Didn't see that; I had just got up and had just received coffee-in-hand so I wasn't fully up to snuff. Looks like what happened to me the other night where I was trying to land at KSC and it put me right SMACK over the pad and then went to hover mode. I got out of it by clicking abort and then 'land anywhere' which of course the easiest solution was for the autopilot to take her straight down and land right on the pad. RIGHT SMACK in the middle of 6 gantry tower thingies. Would have been impressive if it hadn't first burned a quarter of a tank hovering

Have you tried Procedural Fairings? One of the fairing types makes a good fuselage as it has no decouplers. It can make tails and nosecones just fine. You can resize them in the VAB/SPH and mount things to the inside or outside.

I find SMA generally just needs a bit of tweaking as by the time everyone is in their orbit their SMA is only off by a few decimal places. I go into MJ2's Utilities and limit the thrust to 2%. (can't go lower than that because it'll flame out at 1%). I already premade a MJ window that shows me my SMA and my target's SMA so I get that open and target the sat in front of me. Depending on if their SMA is less or greater than mine I do small prograde or retrograde burn. Once I match to their SMA then I switch to the sat behind the one I'm controlling and repeat with them. USUALLY works well but a few days ago I noticed one of my sats has been drifting so obviously it wasn't QUITE matched up. I still have to get it fixed.

Try Sarbian's MJ2 dll release. Both the Smart A.S.S. and the Autodock have an option to force roll alignment.

Psssh, I've done much worse. I once accidentally turned a probe core upside down and then built an airship probe (using Hooligan's airship mod) and then I custom built a lifter to take it into orbit and thence to Eve. I could not figure out why the damned thing would not fly properly. I tried it on manual and I tried giving the job to MechJeb. MechJeb took the rocket a few hundred meters into the air and then promptly turned it around and tried to fly it into the ground. First I was sure that my lifter was flawed because I had wobble so I strutted it and strutted it and rebuilt parts of it. OVER AND OVER again for (I kid you not) TWO REAL LIFE DAYS. Finally I was convinced that the problem must be the airship mod. I mean, it was obviously exerting some weird torque on my ship right??? RIGHT??? Then I tried mechjeb again but this time I watched the inputs and I realized that it was flying into the ground because MechJeb was DECIDING to fly the ship into the ground. I tore the damn ship apart piece by piece until I got to the probe core. Sure enough, the sucker was upside down.

Ok. I don't get it. What exactly is depicted in the picture? Because it's not speaking 1000 words to me. I see that you have designated a landing site and that's all I see happening there....

There are several mods with bigger / more powerful ion drives. DSM has one that fits on a 2.5m mount and comes with a giant nuclear reactor to power it. KSPX has one that looks very similar to the stock drive except that it's 1.25m and the exhaust grid is split by a + shaped... thing.... There's another mod that also has some ion drives and I forget what it's named.

Except realizing that you were sitting there the whole time, mesmerized....

Yes. Oh, sorry that's less than 10 characters. Yes, it does work with Kerbal Space Program version 0.21.1 Happy now, Kerbal Space Program forum software?

Well, to be fair (I hate being fair, especially when the Daleks are firing me at a planet...) the ion drive, as I mentioned above and has been mentioned elsewhere has a lot higher thrust than its real life counterpart so we can have burn times that are a half hour instead of a week long. I have no doubt that this has increased its power consumption as well as its fuel consumption. The problem with the RTG can be helped by increasing the rate that it produces power at. As you said though, balance. How much does it need to be bumped up by? I think I gave mine a value of 48 and that DOES feel overpowered to me. But there's no real baseline to lock onto to calibrate thing. Though some of the numbers for the ion drive seem familiar, as though someone looked at the specs for the NEXT drive and said, "ok that's how much electricity the PB-ION should use. Except that it consumes that every time the drive consumes fuel instead of... hmmm can't think right now, my cat Melificent is crying at me right when I'm trying to wrap my head around numbers. And lying on my iPad so I can't do calculations on it... sigh.

You missed a step. You placed your bases properly as far as I can tell but you didn't attach any fairing PIECES. There are three different kinds. Grab one and attach it to one of the attachment nodes on the fairing base. It will automagically shape itself to the payload. Be sure to activate symmetry to close the fairing. The differences between pieces are: Conical has sharp angles. 'egg shaped' is more rounded. Fuselage is like egg shaped but it has NO decouplers and it cannot be jettisoned from your craft. Like the name says it makes a fuselage and you can put stuff inside it or attach things on the outside. (see my picture I posted above. That giant thing between the rockets used the fuselage fairing. It has RCS and solar panels attached directly to the outside. Can you mount things on the inside? I'm not sure... have to try that. I think you can... Also press 'R' when on top of the fairing base and drag the mouse to resize it. You can get different shapes by resizing the top or the bottom and attaching the fairing piece to the ring you resized on. (works best if the fairing is on so you can see the changes in real time) If the fairing base is between an engine and a fuel tank be sure to put the mouse over the base and press 'G' to allow fuel to pass through the fairing base. Otherwise you will have an ignition failure event during launch. And you will not go to space.

You mean as long as we assume that everything is the same voltage. Ok. :SHRUG: RTGs in this game aren't capable of sustaining the levels of activity that IRL they should be. IRL All of Curiosity's power needs are met by one RTG. One RTG can handle the sustained power requirements of a real life ion drive indefinitely. Even for days and days of continuous operation. Granted the ion drive in the game is a bit overpowered so we don't all die of boredom while it finishes one burn and maybe that's why it sucks so much electricity, but the RTG should at least be able to handle that. Even if I have to use several of them. Well, when I first started, I DID use several of them. I had a very nice ion driven probe that I built and I sent it out to explore the Kerbol system. I knew from trying the stock ion probe that it was very power hungry and I stuck 3 ion drives on my probe. I gave it lots of batteries so that I thought would be enough to last through a typical burn and it still wasn't enough. I stuck a bunch of RTGs on it and it STILL couldn't get through one burn. (literally, I had the KAS system installed so I went out into space to the already launched probe and started pasting batteries all over the place). The way an RTG in this game works is nothing like the way they work IRL. The game pulse's its output... I forget the rate, I think it's less than one unit every second. Or maybe it was one unit over a period of several seconds. I ended up patching my RTG. Maybe NOW it's overpowered, on my end, because I wasn't sure what a good value to put was. But it's better than what I was experiencing with the stock part

When SAS is on and in locking mode it all inputs are ignored. Only when it is in damping mode will it allow inputs. That's a KSP thing not a MJ thing. What MJ should be doing is turning SAS off and it seems like it is not. That's probably an MJ thing. What you can do is *NOT* put your craft on SAS manually. Instead, enable Auto SAS in MechJeb. That might not be in the official release though. Get Sarbian's fixes, he's starting his own thread for a temporary MJ2 branch until he hears from the MJ2 dev who seems to be incommunicado at the moment. Now, the blue marker wandering is a KSP thing, not an MJ thing. It probably has to do with math errors and my personal observation is that it is MORE likely to happen the closer your orbit is to circular. (hey, guess what kinds of orbits we like to make?). Ok, so looking at the rest of your procedure, I'm not sure why you're running into problems. Flight Computer is a little flaky to use but I do find that it works. Mostly. And I have mine open all the time when I'm setting up my maneuver. It's like this, I have it open. I *might* pre-align with something in the general direction of my anticipated node. I use MJ to set up my maneuver node. I click Maneuver on the flight computer Setup DV Setup Delay Now, this last.... what delay to use?? The most use I've had out of the Flight Computer is when setting up my relay network. I haven't needed it much otherwise. And my sats are using ion drive. All of them. So I start my delay early. This holds try for any low powered thruster. I set my delay so that it's performing anywhere from 66%-100% of the burn before it ever gets to the maneuver node. If you're using ion drive, set your delay to start the burn early. That might well make the difference. Edit: Realized I missed the duration of the burn you're trying to do. Definitely still do an early burn but not to the extent that I suggested. If it's a low powered thruster maybe 40%-50% early

They're on their way as we speak with: MODULE { name = riotArmor } MODULE { name = baton } MODULE { name = lotsAndLotsOfTearGas }