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Lord Aurelius

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  1. Lord Aurelius
    I would land on atmospheric bodies using a an aeroshell to protect the lander (whether it's using a command pod or lander can) on its way down through the atmosphere, although for ascent you would likely want something at least moderately aerodynamic which would favor the command pods. Spaceplanes are another option. I just want the lander cans to be light enough relative to the pods that an Apollo style mission actually makes sense, if the lander cans are too heavy relative to the command pods, then why not just use the pod as your lander and save yourself the extra hassle?
  2. Lord Aurelius
    As far as reducing the pod weights, I think that's a good idea, I don't really play with other part mods not on the supported list so I can't comment on the balance, but I know that the stock pods in KSP were already quite heavy for their size so I would consider the stock weights to be the upper limit for the pods in general, especially with DRE. Your logic for choosing the masses makes sense, although I'm a bit puzzled at the masses of the lander cans compared to the pods, do the lander can weights include extra life support/monoprop that the pods don't have, and are the ablative shield weights included in the weights on this table? In my mind, the lander cans (and the hitchhiker) should all be quite a bit lighter per Kerbal than the cockpits/capsules, but with very low impact resistance and temperature tolerance so you wouldn't want them exposed to any kind of atmospheric reentry or hard landing. Without DRE, the current balance makes more sense since you don't have the reentry mechanic to help differentiate the pods from the cans except for the impact at the final touchdown. Glad to hear that the next update is almost ready. Keep up the good work.
  3. Lord Aurelius
    Another interesting looking mod: Rejector [link] It automatically rejects contracts based on customizable filters so you don't end up with a bunch of terrible contracts cluttering up your list of available contracts.
  4. Lord Aurelius
    You're welcome, I figured it was only fair given that you've done so much to help implement and promote my HRB idea. That, and this mod is fast approaching my ideal for stock that I had been planning in my head endlessly but never got around to doing. Only change that you aren't already planning that I might make for personal taste is to eventually see if I can get it working on a larger scale solar system with additional planets, something along the lines of the 3.2 Jumbo rescale with Outer Planets. That, and full visual overhauls once I get around to setting up a proper Linux dual boot on my machine (or Unity gets their act together with 64 bit on Windows).
  5. Lord Aurelius
    That makes sense, I only just got past the initial remotetech contract in my career and hadn't seen the next one surface yet. I like the idea that the later contracts are more generic and let us plan out how to do it ourselves.
  6. Lord Aurelius
    @nightingale Sounds good, looking forward to trying out the new contracts when they're ready. For the Munar portion of the contract, maybe it could be one or two Molniya orbits over the poles since Kerbin is already covered so we just need to boost the range out to the Mun.
  7. Lord Aurelius
    Thanks for clarifying your thought process when designing the contract, based on that it also makes sense to me to require dishes for the initial comm network, it saves the frustration of having to revamp the entire network just after you got it set up. SETI might need to be tweaked a little though to balance the various dishes. The main issue I've been having with the initial comm network contract is how hard it is to get low eccentricity orbits that early in the game without decent orbital maneuvering engines (and mechjeb, I'm a terrible pilot...) so I end up postponing the network until I've at least unlocked the LVT-909. The next SETI update should help a lot with this since we'll now have throttleable HRB's early on to use for upper stages. Another thought, maybe have a contract with Molniya orbits? I was experimenting with those yesterday and they're much easier to set up and take less dV (just launch straight up to a high apoapsis and tweak the periapsis once you're at apoapsis a bit so you pass around just outside the atmosphere) and have the advantage of not drifting out of sync a few years down the road. There's a great threads on that here and here. Also, part of this may be my rudimentary understanding of remotetech (I'm still learning all its intricacies), or failing to properly read the contract, but it seemed like I needed 3 dishes on my comsats for the contract, one to connect to each of the other two satellites and one to connect to the active vessel. I might have just misunderstood the contract and only one dish is needed for the active vessel. Still, great job on setting up the contracts, it's nice to get paid to do something you have to do anyways. Edit: @SVM420 AIES is a great recommendation, they also have some really nice probe cores.
  8. Lord Aurelius
    Having the early dish reach out to Minmus is a good distance, although with the recommended tweaks to remotetech (in the remotetech xf thread) it ends up being functional quite a bit farther out than that. In my mind a fancy folding dish like the DTS-M1 should be higher tech than a fixed dish, but currently the fixed dishes are unlocked later in the tech tree. Maybe things could be balanced where the fixed dishes are heavier but quite a bit cheaper and more efficient (right now there's really no reason to use the fixed dishes) and in the early game (until the EC use gets rebalanced) power is at a premium and a heavier dish isn't as much as an issue since we're not trying to go very far yet. Since fairings are being moved earlier, it wouldn't be a big deal to launch a satellite/probe with a fixed dish for the early comm network.
  9. Lord Aurelius
    Depends what difficulty setting and what point I'm at in the game. In general, the early game feels overly grindy since you don't have a lot of parts to gather science with and you need science to unlock the parts, and some of the building upgrades are quite expensive so you have to do a bunch of annoying contracts to get money to upgrade to get EVA reports, surface samples and to remove the stupidly low part limits. Later in the game you can get free money from satellites/probes parked in orbit around various bodies and there is a tremendous amount of science to gather once you're able to do manned landings (Mun and Minmus have enough over their biomes to unlock the entire tech tree), not to mention all the biomes they added to the other planets. Not very well balanced either way, early game is tedious and later game is basically sandbox with very little sweet spot in between.
  10. Lord Aurelius
    Glad to see this getting some more attention (thanks Yemo for your excellent procedural parts config). @GregoxMun Did you actually get around to making any textures for your idea of the hybrid booster? I was thinking of doing the same thing (welding an oxidizer tank to a SRB) so there could be a completely stockalike version for those who don't want to use procedural parts, but my modelling/texturing skills are nonexistent.
  11. Lord Aurelius
    I agree with SwGustav, the DTS-M1 is overkill for early comm networks, but the remotetech contracts require a dish and that's the earliest one we can get. Maybe repurpose one of the .625m fixed dishes and move it earlier in the tech tree?
  12. Lord Aurelius
    Glad to see that HRBs are going to be in the next update (and featured on the jets no less).
  13. Lord Aurelius
    That makes sense, I forgot that the Mk1-2 didn't include a heat shield, when I add one it brings the weight up to 4.5 tons. Glad to hear that stock revamp is still in the works, looking forward to using those parts.
  14. Lord Aurelius
    @Yemo I noticed that the QBE was radially attachable, I stuck it in my science plane as a makeshift avionics module so Bob could fly it more easily (SAS) while Jeb was setting a manned orbit record. I like the idea of a KAS probe core, maybe something like that could be put into the later unmanned tech nodes. Another probe mod that could help fill the later nodes is NanoKube [link]. Although I still like my top nodes (I like giant dishes on my satellites), those tweaks should help differentiate the Stayputnik as more of a pure satellite core instead of a satellite/lander hybrid. Maybe that could be another subcategory as well, have very lightweight but fragile satellite cores and heavier, tougher and more expensive cores that can be used on landers/rovers. Looking forward to seeing how you implement this and the EC rebalancing in a later update and I totally understand wanting to get new parts in before trying to balance everything. For the hybrid booster script, I think it would make sense to have it as a separate microMod. There's nothing SETI specific about it and it would allow more people to be able to use it with whatever combination of mods they prefer. I'm still surprised that nobody else has done much with hybrid boosters up to this point (aside from the even more niche aluminum rocket in KSPI). I'll put the code in a file and give it a try, thanks for combining it with procedural parts (I thought about doing this myself but had trouble figuring out the procedural parts format). Now to see how long it takes someone to build a WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo replica (I would try but I haven't figured out how to control two aircraft at the same time...). Bonus points for a working feathering mechanism. Edit: Just loaded up the booster script and did a quick test, they function as expected and are actually decently balanced for the time being. In general they come out cheaper (don't have to pay for an additional engine) with lower dV, but in a few test craft they actually had the same dV for a lower price due to not needing a separate engine. I do think that fuel and engine costs need to be rebalanced, engines should be one of the most expensive components and fuel should be significantly cheaper than it is which would highlight the HRB and SRB as a low cost alternatives since right now a large fuel tank is significantly more expensive than the engine needed to lift it. To further balance the HRB, the base cost could be increased a bit due to the oxidizer plumbing and throttle control, but should still be much cheaper than a LF engine. Once the microMod version is ready, I'll update the OP in my thread with a link to the download.
  15. Lord Aurelius
    Once again, thanks for producing such an excellent mod and for the continued active development and for considering our suggestions and feedback. I've been playing through my career today and had a few ideas on probe core differentiation: In my mind, I've always thought that there should be two categories of probe cores: small, lightweight power sipping cores for actual satellites/probes, and large power-hungry control systems (like the Saturn V Instrument Unit) for upper rocket stages. The earliest probe core in my mind should be the rocket control type, i.e. it has a fairly high power draw and won't last more than an hour or so on its internal batteries and is inefficient for longer missions compared to an actual satellite/probe core. A few pages back you mentioned about repurposing the oscar fuel tank into a round core, I like that idea since the HECS core looks a little strange on my rockets and real rockets almost always had cylindrical control units. In the second tier of probe cores (the OKTO2 and QBE) both are completely identical in terms of specs. It seems to me that the QBE should have larger internal batteries and possibly tiny reaction wheels so it's basically a self-contained box satellite (just slap solar panels on the outside) with a higher weight to reflect more internals. I also seem to remember seeing a mod that added a variant of the stayputnik that basically made the ball a detachable probe core and the supporting structure a decoupler. I'm blanking on the name of the mod, but I always thought that the stayputnik was basically useless compared to the other probe cores since it didn't have a top attach node. Making it into an early satellite core (even before the OKTO2 and QBE) with decent sized internal batteries would give it some use for the early orbit contract. Earlier fairings would also be nice, Sputnik used detachable fairings so having them available for early satellite contracts wouldn't be immersion breaking and would make for nicer looking early rockets. Also, what do you think of moving the 1.25m and 2.5m probe cores earlier in the tech tree? In my mind, these cores were primarily designed for rocket control, and by the time you get them you've had the rocket sizes they would be useful on for ages already. To balance the relative inefficiency of the rocket control cores, they could be cheaper (less miniaturization) and have good sized reaction wheels built in to save parts early in the game. This would also mean that dedicated reaction wheels could come a bit later when the other probe cores (like the OKTO2) are introduced. I also think that science data transmission EC requirements need to be rebalanced, it should not take an entire z-100 battery pack to transmit the temperature or pressure. This would also help with the low part limit early on by reducing the absurd numbers of batteries needed. Sputnik managed to transmit constantly for 3 weeks, even if we scaled things down a basic satellite probe should be able to stay powered and in communication for at least a few days on its internal batteries. Edit: The new 2-man pod also seems a bit heavy for what it is, it weighs 3 tons and the 3 man pod is 3.7 and the 1 man is 1.1 so there's not a compelling reason to use it over the existing pods other than the fact that it looks a lot nicer.
  16. Lord Aurelius
    Is it possible to make separators using the procedural decouplers? I've been putting 2 back to back to achieve the same effect since I didn't see any options to enable separator behavior.
  17. Lord Aurelius
    I've noticed a relationship between booster heat capacity and diameter, i.e. larger diameter boosters can support a higher thrust output without overheating. You could also try using the stand-off radial decouplers to ensure there's plenty of space between the engines, and attaching fins to the boosters; there's some weird behavior in stock regarding heat transfer, by adding more parts near where the heat is produced you can pull some of it away. One trick that I've frequently used is to put a skinny fuel tank just above a mainsail instead of connecting it directly to the main tank to prevent overheating since apparently the COM of a large tank is too far away from the engine for the game to consider it to be close enough for heat transfer so it just builds up in the engine.
  18. Lord Aurelius
    Another mod suggestion: WernherChecker [link] Works somewhat Squad's proposed engineering report for 1.0, lets you know of possible issues before launch. Checks to see if you have solar panels/comms/etc and alerts you before launch if you're missing anything.
  19. Lord Aurelius
    I'm not familiar with the mods in question, but in general the way SETI is designed it works pretty well with any mod balanced against stock, so as long as you have the minimal SETI install you'll have all the parts you need and the parts from the mods in question will appear in their normal places in the tech tree.
  20. Lord Aurelius
    Just saw this on the mod of the day and after some of my failed experiments with jump jets I figured it could be quite useful: Throttle Controlled Avionics [link] It looks like it dynamically adjusts the thrust on all vtol engines to keep your craft stable so you don't have to worry about lining up the center of thrust exactly with the center of mass.
  21. Lord Aurelius
    I'm aware that I can just ignore/decline them, I was just curious if these particular contracts are configurable, but if they're using FinePrint then I assume that they are. I just would like to see a little more progression in terms of the contracts, i.e. the early satellite contracts should be for basic LKO satellites in simple orbits (available right after you complete the exploration contract to put something in orbit) and then move up from there instead of having the satellite contracts start out asking for orbits that have a good chance of colliding with the Mun when you haven't even made it near the Mun yet (who would want put a satellite in that kind of orbit anyways?). That reminds me of another nitpick: the speed requirements on the test parts at a given altitude contracts are often annoyingly slow so I basically have to build a rocket to stall just above the contract altitude instead of being able to complete them realistically with aircraft or as part of a normal launch. The payouts on these contracts are usually pitiful as well (I've had some with an advance of less than 200, and a payout less than 100). I know declining them is an option (which I frequently take advantage of) but the fact that they're there cluttering up the screen still bugs me. A lot of times the actual good contracts are hidden behind poor contracts so I frequently have to decline a bunch of junk contracts to get the next exploration/anomaly/remotetech contract to show up. (sorry for the partial rant, the broken stock contracts have annoyed me since I first played a game with them) That said, I really like the new exploration contracts that SETI adds, it provides a nice progression from early sounding rockets to reaching orbit and then the Mun, and the available contract packs also work well.
  22. Lord Aurelius
    I'm also annoyed by the ridiculous orbit parameters required for the random satellite contracts. It makes them basically not worth doing for the most part. Is it possible to tweak the parameters for the random satellite contracts? Does contract configurator support randomized contracts?
  23. Lord Aurelius
    Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a Kerbonaut (in game at least) not wearing a spacesuit... Either it's some crazy compression material, or just lined with lead and the Kerbals themselves aren't really that heavy, or the Kerbals are subject to the same mysterious forces that produce earth-like gravity on a body 1/10th the size.
  24. Lord Aurelius
    Someone's been eating too many snacks...
  25. Lord Aurelius
    It's really easy to add SAS to a probe if you want to go ahead and do it yourself like I did, just open up the SETI MM file for stock probes (GameData\SETI\MM-PartModding\SETI-PartMod-SQUAD-ComConElectrics.cfg) in your favorite text editor and find the section beginning with //Probodobodyne HECS @PART[probeCoreHex]:FOR[sETI] Scroll down to the end of the section and add this module right before the closing brace MODULE { name = ModuleSAS SASServiceLevel = 0 } Save the file and the starting probe will now have basic SAS the next time you start up the game.
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