Skorpychan

Spoken like a man who's never fiddled with landing gear and reaction wheels to right something. Or tried to do that, given up halfway, and just decided to roll it around, point it downhill, and take off actually pointing DOWNWARDS before thrust-vectoring back upright and taking off properly. On-topic? Yes. I've even designed ships around possibly needing to, with arrangements of fuel tanks to keep the kerbal in place. I've also had to weight down the W key and go do something else while Jeb waddles back to the ship after running out of jetpack fuel, smashed landers while trying to move them, dropped rovers from high altitude by accident, and chosen parts for impact resistance rather than mass efficiency, thus leading to NEEDING the impact resistance.

Saw it pop up on my Steam alerts when people played it, and was curious enough to look it up. Then realised it was the game I wanted Orbiter to be, played the demo, then bought the game.

Right now, it's 'Mun Lander', because that's a standard lander that I stick launchers under and bolt to cruise stages to go interplanetary. It's got enough fuel to insert into Munar orbit, land, take off inefficiently, and get back to kerbin inefficiently before using the last of the fuel to brake. So, it can also land on Duna and take off again and get into orbit. Just. It gets used a lot while I fiddle with the design to squeeze more DeltaV out of it without adding a lot more weight.

Yes. I can do the game myself, but having mechjeb do the orbital rendezvouses for things is SO much easier than fiddling with nodes and orbits myself. My reasoning is that it's a game. It's meant to be enjoyable. If I can automate the fiddly boring bit, why shouldn't I? It's too much like work otherwise, and I get too much of that at work. KER is just a building and calculation tool to save me estimating things and using trial and error all the time. Again, automating boring fiddly bits that give me a headache. It's much like playing science mode instead of career; way less grinding. Collecting science just gives me motivation to go out and do stuff, and a reason to be there. Sandbox mode just lacked that motivation.

Aha. This should come in handy for all those nuclear-propelled missions.

My main problem with staging rockets is that big boosters don't sod off Kerbinwards quickly enough. Sepratrons are too big to brake boosters the size of medium rockets, and the smallest SRBs just break them and the core stage, and blast their aero caps into the payload. I could use fairings, but they'd basically be shrapnel. And they separate too high for chutes.

I'm planning to intentionally strand a bunch of kerbals on Eve, but I think I'm going to try giving them an amphibious rover to be stranded in and call it a research base.

Duna, because I'm bad at interplanetary flights. They didn't have enough fuel to get home. I figured they wouldn't, so I included an ice miner to help out. It doesn't have the DeltaV to make it off Ike laden with fuel. The rescue mission is in the 'I'm bloody sick of this game' stages due to creative burnout. I'll get back to it sometime, or Squad will release a save-breaking update and invalidate the whole thing.

It's what happens when 'little green men' meets 'bug-eyed monster'.

The landing didn't work so good. It fell over and I couldn't rotate it upright again. I ended up just saying 'screw it' and blasting off horizontally before banking upwards.

I thought this was discussion of playing the game, not more poodleing about it? (Oh, hello there word filters.)

Honestly, 80% of non-Kerbin landings involve a crash landing, often multiple times. Quicksave/quickload covers a lot of sins, as does a nice thick atmosphere to use as a brake. Suicide burns are often homicide burns when trying to eyeball it.

Green, because they're little green men. And now little green women as well, for the sake of equality.

No. What's the point of doing it if I cheated to accomplish it? It's a single-player game, I'd be cheating myself. We do not play KSP because it is easy. We play it because it is hard!

The rule is 'no games for an hour before bedtime'. So, no.

No issues because I'm not running 50000 mods on a toaster.

Being accused of taking it seriously while mucking about in KSP with friends, while slightly drunk. They were seeing how far up they could get. I threw together a Mun landing from memory and winged the whole mission. No quicksaves, no reverts, no mishaps other than not quite nailing the landing and tipping over. Had to take off sideways. And, of course, the flag exploded twice. Once trying to right the craft and clipping it, the second time I think I caught it with the rocket exhaust on takeoff and didn't have time or fuel to put another one down.

And yet, I'm looking at my Steam list and see Kerbal Space Program [prerelease].

KSP's latest version is in public beta. That is why it has the [prerelease] tag on it, is it not?

I don't get why you people don't understand the word 'BETA'. It's still in testing. This is the testing stage.

No; you can just roll it back on Steam if you really want to. Don't have it on Steam? Too bad you didn't think about the update system before buying. Stability issues? Stop running it on a toaster with hundreds of mods.

Nailing a tricky landing, or just plain landing somewhere you haven't. There's a lot to be said for the 'WOOHOO' feeling of finally getting an upright landing on the mun, for example. Or JUST getting a Duna landing right. There's also the feeling of elation when you turn a screwup into a salvageable mission. Especially when it's through something you never thought you'd need to use, or through having an overbuilt craft. Such as finally saying 'frak it' on trying to tip a Mun lander fully upright, and just getting it 'far enough' and lighting the engine up full throttle to curve skywards. Especially when you realise you didn't quicksave beforehand.

Launchpad, because that's where rockets explode if they're going to.

My Duna mission is turning out like that. I've got the original cruise stage and ISRU lander, and I'm having to send a new one of both out to correct my screwups with the first one being subpar. And maybe a fuel truck as well, to ferry between the ISRU lander and the Duna lander and the huge cruise stage.

I name them according to what they do, so I can find them easily. So, Jeb and Bill are stuck on Duna in the good ship Duna Lander 1, while Nuclear Cruise Stage 2 awaits them in orbit with no fuel, because Ike Miner 1 was badly designed. (Sorry guys)