Superfluous J

Yeah my mothership has a centrally-located (and very sturdy) probe core for control of the main ship. The smaller ships aren't big enough to have the problem, and I won't be time warping under acceleration with them anyway.

I'm doing essentially this, only with a lander can. The core of my mission is this lander can with Jr. docking ports top and bottom, and 4 OX-STAT solar panels for safety. It was really fun designing my 4 different landers (Eve dedicated, Laythe plane*, ISRU Anywhere**, and Land Anywhere***) to each work with the core lander can. Especially the plane * Not strictly needed, but you (or at least I) can't go to Laythe and NOT bring a plane. ** "Anywhere" here is defined as "Can land on Moho empty, and can lift 3 orange tanks of fuel from Moho to Orbit." Anywhere else it'll land and need to get back up with fuel is smaller than Moho. *** "Anywhere" here is defined as "Can SSTO anywhere it needs to but Tylo (Vall, specifically), and with drop tanks can land and return from Tylo". I'll be using it on Tylo last

Back before I could land within a few meters of where I wanted, I used to solve this problem with lots of pylons and fuel pipes. I'd land, and then use the pylons and fuel pipes to connect my ship. Then - and this is the important part - I'd leave them there. The next time I landed, I'd run more pylons and fuel pipes, and continue this until I had a spiderweb of fuel lines from my base outward. Then, wherever I landed I'd be able to refuel. And I used to wonder why I had so many problems with the game crashing

While I agree, I just assume the claw is dual-purpose. It would be pretty easy (read: I've never modded and have no idea how easy it'd be) to reskin the Claw part into a "Connection hose" that works in exactly the same way as the current Claw, but doesn't look quite so destructive. That said, not at LEAST having some sort of fuel pipe system (even a hand-wavey one where you can - say - transfer fuel between ships that are landed within 50m of each other) to go along with the ISRU bases boggles my mind.

Regarding Minmus landers, you don't need landing gear or a squat lander. Just land on your side and use torque to get back upright before takeoff. You can even "jump" off the surface, saving a couple m/s of dV. Also, learn your biomes, and you can find 3 places that each have 3 biomes very close to each other. Then you can land at one of those places, hop between the 3 biomes, then suborbital hop to the 2nd place and take care of those 3 biomes, and finally hop to the third and do that one. Even with just a scientist and no pilot or probe core it's not TOO bad (and if you can do it you'll feel like a baws) so a ship that could - say - take off and land on Minmus twice should have plenty of dV for it. And then you're not only essentially DONE with Minmus, but also have a whole lot of thousands of science points.

Wait, your post was NOT satire?

I joined in July 2013, less than a month after getting the game, and just a couple months after the "great forum wipe" that I'm not at all sad I missed

If you really want to do a thing, nothing can stop you. If you really DON'T want to do that thing, anything can stop you. If you're constantly getting stopped from playing KSP, you don't really want to. As many others have said, go play something else for a while and don't come back to KSP until you have something you WANT to do in it, other than "play KSP." In no way is any of this bad. It's natural, normal, and expected.

An option that already works is to use Body Fixed mode. It won't put the marker there, but you can be (more) confident that the line going down to the surface will intersect where you're actually going to land.

You don't actually need TreeToppler anymore. In the debug screen there's an option to just unlock the whole tech tree. I used it to make my "Ultimate Challenge" savefile. Though I don't think the debug screen has the option to only partially topple the tree.

It depends on how "stock" my idea is. If it's very stock, it's generally one mission per save. If it's fully modded up, it's a long campaign of missions in a program. Partly because if I'm going to go to all the work of collecting together a concoction of mods, I'm going to want to play with them for a while. Partly because if the game is too stock, anything beyond going to Mun or Minmus is unnecessarily arduous.

What does Squad think this is, a GAME!?

Agreed. Remove all planets and moons except Kerbin and Mun, and possibly Minmus. Give access to the 45-cost tier of the tech tree, and only let people upgrade buildings once. Allow access to Science and Sandbox mode, but still with only those parts available. That's enough to whet your appetite while allowing you to see what the game has to offer, while not replacing the paid-for version.

You have a far better memory than I. You can remember where you put all your Kerbals in a ground station you've not visited in (real-life) months? I usually can't remember where people are on the LAUNCH PAD.

This is kinda genius and I'm going to do it from now on.

In short, yes. The further forward your COM, the more stable your vessel in that direction. If your COM is in the back, you're going to flip around. If it's in the middle, you're going to need to hold your direction with fins or reaction wheels and power. If it's in the front, it's going down nose first. For 2 ships of a given shape, it's pretty much directly related to COM placement. I am wary to say "if the COM is 75% of the way forward, you're 75% stable forward" because I don't even know what that means, but it's essentially true. The further to one end the COM, the more the ship will want that end to point forward, and at some point that desire will override everything else.

@Dafni's got it. Take the best model airplane you can find and duct tape a brick to the tail, and drop it off a building. It's gonna fall brick-first, even though it's been built to fly forward. Then run, because the plane's owner is going to be very mad at you.

That happens to me too. So long I don't even think of it as a bug anymore, just this thing that happens.

They haven't actually gotten around to suing anybody yet. I hear they're looking into it. ...soon. YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Actually only if those asteroids were Class E (you could also have some class D ones too) would they outmass Dres. Dres is 3.2x1020 kg, so the asteroids would need to average about 820 tons each to equal Dres' mass. Class E asteroids mass more than that, and Class D's top out at about 850 tons, but if you took a random assortment of asteroids no, Dres would mass more. Math proves I love Dres more.

If they were magnetically attracted and just wobbling around, that's quite normal. Turn off SAS and just wait a while. Sometimes they resonate for quite some time. If the docking port is the target, you can also (again with SAS off) use your WASD keys to arrest the motion, kind of like how you'd push on someone a little bit several times to slow them down as they're swinging on a swing.

I recently went to Mun and back using only the parts in the demo. I suggest you peruse the "Demo Mun Challenge" thread for ideas on how to succeed here:

I wonder if this was something that was (relatively) easy to do in U5 and they had all the assets (interiors) already so they just said, "Why not?" I think it's cool though and can't wait to see it in-game.

I should be able to "like" your post twice because I agree with both parts.

That's fine. I do it too. But then you copy your save folder from the old game to the new one.