Azuratte

ERRRRMAGEERRRRD... It's not perfect by any means, but my mega horizontal 250 tonne lander is in orbit and awaiting my pusher-class spaceships!!! YOU WIN MR. R.FISH, you win.

STahp... Now I honestly didn't bother to read... most of everything. BUT, serious here. A fuel PER DAY FUND, would make sense in some way (AS A TOGGLE). But now listen, a planet can only supply a fuel at a certain rate. I would personally be willing to play this way as long as the player couldn't effect this on Kerbin. Sure you could farm on Gile, but who kares. For the hardcore maybe there would be a certain amount of fuel available ((((((((FOR THE HARDCORE, DURRRR))))))).... This seems to be a simple ticker, and I for one would play it. Az

I've tried time and time again, 1 or two may connect, but the rest just shoot off. Please, if you know the ways of fairing attachment... Please teach the unworthy.

NOW, 1.0.*, I love I love I love I love I love I love... *one hour later* ... I love I love I love I love I love 1.0.* ... I think that sums it up. I'm 800 hundred hours in to KSP, and I love it more than ever... no really, I honestly have 800 hours in a game I spent 20 bucks on... As far as money goes, this team is. I don't know the words. Awesome would be what the title page of the novel of awesome KSP has been to me, it's my game of games, all the games I've played do seriously not equal the amount of fun and physical time spent played. To the point, could we just assume that anything that was inside the fairings is securely mounted to the fairings, many times now I make a ship of awesome and am forced to shrink it down because I cant get it to sit still within the fairings. 800 hours, new stuff aside, I can't shinanigans this to work. If I could get struts to RELIABLY stick to the fairings that would be great as well. Thank you, Az

I'm quite fine with agreeing that if you took the original script and read it, that it would read "turbomiles". But as for someone remembering childhood watching the episode on an old school TV set you'd have to agree you'd hear it "Kerbalmiles".

yes I thought I was wrong when he said turbomiles. But I hear "ker".

Now, I was watching the Bugs Bunny movie, and Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 century came up and Daffy mentioned kerbal miles.... ... .. Is this the origin? The origin of Kerbal the name? 33600 kerbal miles due up! Az

HOLD ON!... k, cool... Since there's Kerbal stats and they may modify the craft some how. What about a sandwich container for a boost in Kerbal modifiers. You run out, oh well, just 5% less boost?

Just thought I'd update, as this has become my regular lift vehicle lately. Most things don't fit in the plane, so I've made do with some space-tape and strapped everything to the back. I can get 20 tonnes off the ground in to space with it. That's the max lift I've found, impressive since the plane alone is somewhere around 25 tonne with fuel. You'll notice the new engine between the tail wings, I got lazy and this was the fastest easiest way to balance the thrust at high altitudes. I keep it off on the return flight as the plane is once again balanced. A finding that I came across is, the single "balancing" engine on the back is great at higher altitudes. I can adjust the thrust limit and keep the plane well trimmed when things get a little twerky. It is also "one click" rotated on a downward angle. This is just a drone I send out on my attempts to suck less at getting to other planets. 460hours in this game and I still run out of gas... everywhere. Mechjeb lies!

Okay, so... the one is 25 tonnes, the other 30 tonnes... one can carry more than the other... that's about it. They use 5 engines. The two outboard engines actually have a fuel tank shoved inside all of that and is the standard Turbo Jet. There are two RAPIER engines in the back, just in case I feel like landing on a low gravity rock. These could easily be replaced by two Turbo Jets. Then there is the single nuke, it's for getting around in space. They lift 5 and 10 tonnes accordingly. Both those values are nearing the max. If you wanted to lift more, you'd have to strap it to the roof and add more belly fuel. I managed to get 15 tonnes up but certainly burnt a lot of my traveling fuel. You'll notice the small one in the hanger has two belly cans on it. These are jettisoned when you are in high Kerbin orbit. So, it's still an SSTO. In the end it has around 3700-4200 DV after you achieve orbit, using the nuke only; checked with mechjeb. If you build one, take notice the large 45 degree wing that's doubled up on top the main wing assembly. It doesn't have to be there but you can land at 40m/s dropping under 5m/s with them on it, either version. Also take note the two outboard TurboJets are tilted "one click" downward, the climb rate is much better and there's no noticeable change in flight characteristics. To take off, it's simple, turn on the 4 engines, climb at 35-40 degrees to 10k, change to 20 degrees until 15, change to 15 degrees till 20k, change to 10 degrees until you run out of air. Shut down aft RAPIER engines at this point you should be doing at least 1700 m/s. Try to keep climb rate at 80-100 m/s, no more than that. Cruise as far as you can until engine sputter and cut outboard engines to 3/4 throttle. Get some tea and ride it out at 3/4 throttle to 2100-2180 m/s. If luck is with you you should be able to get 80-100 miles out one side of your orbit. At any rate, turn off engines, enable nuke and putter about until you get your orbit you're happy with. If you want it reloadable, I would suggest making the drop tanks connected with a port instead, and simple have a drone connect new ones in space or on the ground. When I built this thing, I got in to space so easy I was confused. Mostly since every other ship has been a bull ride all the way to the top with tanks dry. Thanks for reading. If you want me to post the ship I will. Az P.S. Giant note for all people trying to build SSTO's and not having it happen... 10 Shock Cones per Turbo Jet or if you must, RAPIER. Now, I'm not shooting down everyone else, but, easy-mode is 10 Shock Cones, or ten of the old stand-bys. You can totally do with less. Oh and beware that those pretty long air intakes, they're drag/air-intake ratio is not good for using with SSTO's... Try it yourself, load all of the intakes on one plane and take it up.

Yes, I may have actually arrived in orbit and achieved near escape velocity with the main lift stage at 10% fuel. I still had 2 stages to go. 80% of it was wasted in the end because of alignment burns I realized I didn't need also I ran out of RCS and blew around 500DV bouncing around going way to fast for approaches.

I'll see your powered landing and raise you a flown powered landing on KSP runway.

Well, I've only caught a B and a C. This is B, that I've landed as a test to see if the system would allow chutes to deploy on the asteroid. Cool thing is, as soon as you attach anything with the claws it's just one big ship, so all the power/solar panels/computers/RCS worked as one ship. This probably should get changed in the future, but I'm happy to exploit it for now. C-class isn't much bigger, I'm afraid the C class seemed to be twice this size, maybe a bit more. I'd show pictures but I hit it at mach 10 and blew up. There is tool tips in game to give you a better idea, maybe someone will have the game on and be able to copy them. I'm hoping to get an E-class on radar soon, I heard they come in at 2500 ton or so. That'll have to be a multi mission parachute drop. This was the ship that flew up to the B class. Final stage had 1 orange can and 6 Nukes and was just barely enough for the particular orbit and crappy piloting. Yep, that's pretty much a x-mas tree of rocket engines on the bottom, no idea why I left the 1st stages so high up.

I will agree it's got a bit too "pre-made" to the engines, I do like the design they went with but then again, it doesn't fit very well with the podgyness I love that has been with us thus far. As for stabilizing the joints making it to dang easy, I really love that they found the magic spot in Unity to fix this but I think they did go to far. I can balance way to much on way to little now, I kinda miss the ultra rockets collapsing under their own weight during acceleration. Cutting the parts needed for a rocket; I think the only thing they cut down in this update was the plain silly amount of struts required, the game is much more playable and enjoyable because of it. Although building epic rockets with no struts at all doesn't feel Kerbalish. The new engines do seem a bit overpowered compared to the older engines, BUT, the older engines were underpowered vastly compared to real life counterparts power/weight ratio (Remember reading this somewhere, no scientific facts available). But even the new engines couldn't lift my nonsense so I have to do this still.

I will soon create my KSP rock garden!

Well I finally Did it... So, it makes it in to space with something like 999dv. More than enough to putter around and find a fuel station and keep on trucking or simply come back down where ever the hell it pleases. WITH NO fuel balancing, it's idjet resistant. But then beer and rum happened and I made this... I called it "Buck Rodgers Special", it seemed to fit, although doesn't really look anything like anything from Buck Rodgers. It's the best easiest to fly and build, it's cheap, has crazy low parts. Lands on mun fine and, well, I have a 6000DV model getting final tweaks as of right now... Yep, 6000 bloody DV from standing on the Kerbin to being in space, and it's an SSTO still. Also it has enough SAS additions that a burnout at it's cruising alt of 32 km ish doesn't flip it in to a death spiral, it simply makes it pull hard and you sweat a bit, but it's totally recoverable. If you totally botched the flight and are diving to much to pull the nose up, simple trick is to put two engines to the ground and one to the sky, then; turn off the engine to the sky for a second while the nose pulls up and re ignite the engine. It seems sketchy but the nose is so heavy nothing happens fast enough for you to mess it up. To any adventurers that want to know, 14-16 intakes per engine and space is a mechjeb click away. Also, as someone posted before 1.5 TWR is enough and nearly to much for a plane SSTO, but as for vertical takeoff, hover around 2.5 thrust. I was successful in getting 2.25 thrust in to space but it ate to much in to the rocket fuel. 2.5 thrust on the pad should just eat your jet fuel and you should be on to rockets by then or you messed up somewhere. My take on SSTO's as being a good one is, I should be buzzed, alt-tabbed and watching TV and still have a successful flight. This was a good one. The 6000DV one is a bit ornery atm and I dont' want to show it, so far I managed only 5800DV and it was a wild ride. http://www./view/jv20bukakq5wjdg/Buck_Rodgers_Special.craft Hope the Craft file worked, YOU NEED MECHJEB, simply because I'm just that lazy to not take it off, other than that it should be stock .21. OOOOK, so I may have botched the craft file and you might have something that doesn't work, just delete the extra engines and fuel tanks that may be on it to match the BRS, in the photo and you'll be good to go. You may have the stepping stone to the 6000dv model which didn't work. Sry.

So this is, well, all the mods. It's a mobile Kethane refinery for wherever, I'm happy with the design, but not with the wheels. They explode on impact of the vehicle load. Okay, duh, look at their stats, they'd never handle this mass. What I'm looking for is some stronger wheels and I seem to not be searching the right names so far in the spaceport. In the mean time I am looking at lightening the vehicle but, /cry. Thanks for any info.

Good news! You guys jogged my brain, meet Drone Frigate Lite. With Kerbals on board so they can pop down immediately once the drones find something interesting, like, a shinny rock. Due to problems in the VAB I was unable to do stages in pairs and had to do them in sets of four, it's really lame but the game just bugged out when I did things in pairs as far as the boosters were concerned. Oh well, other parts could be paired without issue so it's not the end of the world. The ship was sliiiiightly over powered and I now have 3 orange cans full of fuel to take me to the outter reaches. After leaving Kerbin orbit I had around 2 3/4 full of fuel. The original plan was to have one orange and see where it got me but, the lack of maths in the VAB and the fact Bob got a sweet deal on orange pain meant I have lots of extra fuel now. I'll still probably run out and get no where near my target but oh well. As far as the ship goes, there is a probe on top so I can have a marker for the first plane and know what the atmosphere is like before I drop a plane. The two planes are the same as above and have worked well on Kerbin so they should maybe not smack the ground on Duna, which is the first stop. Then once the probe rovers find the shinny rock or better yet, a large shinny rock; the crew pod will follow and land nearby where they crew will have to walk since I forgot to attach the manned rovers to this launch. The manned pod might be capable of taking off from Duna, it's powered by a Poodle and 4 orange things, if it manages to orbit then it will dock with a return ship in orbit of Duna. The return ship will head out once Bob cleans up the spill of orange paint he left in the VAB. Yes I realize I"m still dragging a Mainsail but like I mentioned I wasn't expecting to be hauling 2 full cans of fuel either. MechJeb says I was hauling 14,000 m/s of Delta-V or something like an hour burn time before leaving Kerbin, I hope its enough with my driving skills. On a side note, Bobwise forgot to pack the Mayo for the sandwiches, the rest of the crew is not impressed and Bobwise will likely be taking the rest of the trip on the ladder outside. Also someone forgot to install the long range antenna making ordering take-out no longer an option. As far as engine gimbals above center mass, yea, they're nearly non responsive and wander around a bit but since the nukes have no balls it's a manageable crazy. The lack of cones on top the cans is simply because the game started tweaking out when I tried anything but the design you see. She's a stable build but I cant' get any cleaner than this without risk of loss of file like the other builds I've tried, this is build 9 of the same basic design but the files just corrupt. When I'm less frustrated I'll probably try putting the cones in again and see if I get more fuel efficiency.

Oh yes, my bad the large orange tank is not part of the plane, nor is the giant cpu or the truss just behind it. The large cpu is there so I could attach a central rocket and have the plane as a child, as for some reason the cpu is pointing backwards if the plane is attached to further parts. If I use the one on the plane or the rover unit they are both backwards until they are undocked for their parent parts. It was all very annoying but I managed to get through it and the SAS now works with all 3 stages as they are. Hmm As for uploading the craft file I'd be happy to, is there a way to upload to this site or is a separate file server required? I do have this launch platform for my sketchy tall overpowered Mun lander, I can't land this thing with its return stage below it on my own. Something like this but just strap two to the central tower if it were just a bunch of structure? http://i1288.photobucket.com/albums/b489/Azuratte/ScreenShot2013-06-27at80211PM_zps8a2a575b.png

WTB delete this.

Alrighty, so I made up a 6.8 ton drone plane to hit up atmosphere planets and fly around for however long and then chute down and release a drone rover to find a suitable landing spot for the "mothership" The overall rocket was originally 2500 ton at launch pad and was roughly 200 ton at kerbal orbit. It was a massive drone carrier, 3 drone planes, 10 stationary landers and 1 kerbal pod full of sandwiches. It was capable of getting in to orbit with plenty of fuel to get anywhere in the system and back again and back out to Mun for lunch. But after a couple bad clicks I lost a bunch of connecting rods randomly and then engines started to vanish, then clicking the menu system was so laggy that I'd click a part and mouse over to the ship only to find the mouse click was lagged and it had selected the ship but no menu item, ARGH. Needless to say she was chunky and in a fit of rage and .2 FPS I deleted the mother ship. But I do have the drone plane but no idea how to launch 7ish tons with this particular shape and the fact it's pointing backwards. It's Alpha, I can't complain, I still giggle and laugh and have way to much fun with this game and I've only gotten to Mun... Well I've gotten to it 7 times now and after 5 attempts at rescue I managed to send a 150 ton lander to go pick up the crash landed souls on Mun. It was 150 ton mostly because the landing struts were roughly 90 meter wide steel I-beams. ( I have trouble landing) I run that mecjeb thing now, much nicer while I work on design. A poke in the right direction is all I'm looking for. Thanks a bunch.