Superfluous J

I'm somewhere between 2 and 3 on your list. I use far more mods than "a few" but I can count on one finger the number of times I've run out of memory specifically due to the amount of mods I had installed. Most of the mods I use are to give more information and to add gameplay. For me, the "added gameplay" of trial-and-erroring your way to Jool with no indication of whether or not what you're doing is correct is not exciting. Nor is the "added gameplay" of calculating a bunch of stuff on my own or maintaining spreadsheets of values. For me, I want the game to provide the information I need to do what I want, and then provide me with things to want to do. Sadly, the current game does neither of these things very well. So I mod.

I'm pretty sure my ship was doing exactly what I (forgot I) told it to do. And while that engine was too much for what was on the ship at the time, it was fine for the whole trip and throwing it away meant losing the fuel it was (supposed to be restricted to) using.

You can also go into another save and get a few names of scientists from there. Hire a Kerbal, and then before using him/her for anything edit your Persistent.sfs file and change his/her name to the Scientists's name. Bam. You now have a scientist. The "do it before doing anything else" isn't mandatory, but you can get some weirdness when a Kerbal does something first and then you change their name.

Of those already mentioned: Rendezvous with Rama - A classic. If you can stomach the "people suck" vibe the other 3 books in the series are quite a ride. I'm man enough to admit I got quite emotional at the end of the last one. The Hitchiker's giude to the Galaxy - A wholly remarkable book. The entire misnamed trilogy is great. Some of the best writing on the planet. The Martian - Too new to justify putting in in "favorites" but man, that was a good book. Jurassic Park - I agree that the first book was excellent. I remember that I read the 2nd book but don't remember much about it other than I liked it better than the movie. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - YES. In particular Guards Guards! The Foundation series - It lost me a bit when Asimov tried to tie it in with the previous stuff, but still even through Foundation And Earth it was great. The one where Seldon and Olivaw spent the whole book walking around Trantor was a slog, though, and should be skipped IMO. ASOIAF series - I'm reading Game of Thrones right now after seeing the show, and wow the show pales compared to it. Which is crazy considering how good the show is. One thing: I appreciate being able to put faces with the names because holy cow there are a lot of names in this book. The Lord of the Rings - The whole trilogy, and the Hobbit before it, is great. I will admit I skip all the songs. Ringworld - I could never get through Ringworld Throne but the first ... two? ... were great. Ender's Game - This and Ender's Shadow make a great set of books. Never read the rest. Wow you guys have good taste Let me add a couple: The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, a great pair of books set in a unique star system. Lucifer's Hammer - AKA Armageddon without the saving the world part (or any of the cheese) Footfall - AKA Independence Day where we actually really get beaten down, and winning isn't as easy as infecting the mothership with a virus. Hunger Games - I've only read the first book so far but look forward to the other 2. Going to try to get through them before the 4th movie comes out.

I'm similar to you except I plan the mission out roughly with maneuver nodes when the dV charts can't help. I send nothing anywhere without at least being moderately confident that - barring myself screwing something up - they can get home. For me the fun is in not screwing anything up. Which I almost invariably do anyway

And you don't have to buy ice from a cartel.

Also, 2 years ago it was changed from "Petty" to "Unworthy." I wonder if that was an upgrade in status or a downgrade.

I'm not surprised. It's one of the more cunningly hidden things in what they call a user interface. I don't think it needs a screenshot though. Click your vessel in the tracking station, either the ship or its name in the list on the left. Click the "i" button on the right. Click the name of the vessel in orange on the top. This will bring up the standard naming window, where you can click "debris" and rename if you'd like.

Actually, the longest I-beam (200) is a bit longer than and weighs less than the longest girder segment (XL), and while the shorter I-beam (Pocket Edition) weighs more than the shorter girder segment (Modular), it is about as long as the extra weight implies it should be. And the odd-shaped I-Beam (650) is actually quite a bit lighter than the Modular Girder Segment but is almost the same length (Like, 19/20ths or something, just eyeballing it). And it may even have less drag due to being skinnier. Though the 650 radially attaches weird, that's no big deal now that we can easily gizmo translate stuff around. Oh, and they're generally cheaper. They do have smaller attach nodes but who doesn't strut the .... out of anything they're sticking onto these things anyway?

I use Skippers all the time. Frequently I use 2 instead of 1 Mainsail, as I frequently need more than a Skipper but less than a Mainsail to get to orbit. Sure they weigh a bit more for the thrust*, but they're enough cheaper that they offset the cost of fuel. Since the rebalancing I don't think there's any "bad" or "great" engine, just a bunch of options that work better or worse than others depending on the situation. As it should be. *actually I guess technically they thrust a bit less for the weight. Same diff, really. They do the job.

So the answer to "how many wings do you need?" is none. You need none wings.

In general, I think Mun's my favorite, simply due to it having the smallest level of detail thanks to the procedural crater generation (that I hope they will do elsewhere as well. Not necessarily craters, but procedural). As far as favorite actual spot, I'm a big fan of anywhere on Mun that multiple craters overlap, preferably inside another crater. The terrain can get crazy slanted in those areas and just look awesome. Also, the terrain right around the easy-to-find Mun arch, right on the big cater wall with a smaller crater just north of it, and this nicely flat ground right there, is great to land on so long as you can nail it.

Also, the Transfer Window Calculator mod works with custom planets, so that would get you the dV to transfer burn from Kerbin (or any other planet) to there. - - - Updated - - - I believe all charts that give dV for atmo ascents use actual testing. And IMO actual testing for the other values is a good idea too. Doesn't matter if the math says you can do it in 1300m/s if it always takes your 1400. You'd better bring 1400. Plus some spare.

I think so long as your vessel is either on the runway, or perhaps even just anywhere within the "KSC" biome, you can <simple input here> and fill the tanks for the cost. I have no problem abstracting away the busy work of taxiing up to a refueller. We don't simulate the crawlway or taxiing the plane initially.

You can mark them as debris in the tracking station. You can also terminate them. I personally prefer to claw or bump them into a decaying orbit first.

\ .-\__.~ _||_||_ (Yeah that horrible ascii art is supposed to be an origami unicorn. The younger Old Man was obviously better at it than I)

Will do. It's not tied to a part. I just successfully generated each part. It's not the spawning under terrain thing, I've already had that problem and fixed it , and it doesn't happen every time. Maybe 1 out 10 or so. I've got the log file, there is a null ref in there: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at ContractConfigurator.Behaviour.SpawnVessel.CreateVessels () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 Here's my current full contract pack that has both issues, so you don't have to set anything up. All you need to do is accept and then alt-f12 to complete the grabby car, and the other contracts will start showing up. To get the Kylab contract (which has the hidden/hidechildren stuff) you must also accept and complete the Old Lander contract. [defunct site link removed by moderator]

Okay I've got 2 questions for you, and no log file yet but I'll try to get one asap. hidden and hideChildren don't seem to be working, or at least don't do what I expect. Given this code: PARAMETER { type = VesselParameterGroup title = Get the ENTIRE station on the ground. If a couple parts burn off or explode it shouldn't be a big deal, but we need at least ONE of every part the station started with. hideChildren = true PARAMETER { type = ReturnHome hidden = true } PARAMETER { type = PartValidation part = batteryBank hidden = true } PARAMETER { type = PartValidation part = advSasModule hidden = true } ... (and about 20 more) } Whether I have that hideChildren in there OR the hidden, the parameters show up in the contracts and look all ugly I'm trying to make it just have what I wrote, which is Human for all the stuff that shows up below. Second one, I'm spawning parts at random around KSC for a contract, and sometimes the part just doesn't show up. In the debug I'm not seeing anything related to making that part show up. I'm going through right now generating parts to get an example to upload a log, but KSP's fighting me at the moment.

Really? I thought for sure it was RoverDude. Maybe it's that he has "Rover" in his name.

WR() Don't ask

I got nothing but: sorry to see you go, welcome back when you come back, and keep on keeping on. You got Metal Gear and in a few months Fallout, and not long after that Just Cause so it's not like you'll be hunting for games to play. I'm not a Metal Gear guy but I know a lot of my Fall and Winter will be devoted to not-KSP type games.

Yeah look into the problems RoverDude had back when he was doing a contracts mod. What we have now for Surveys used to be 'rover contracts' and he did about a billion (plus or minus about a billion) iterations to try to both force rover use and allow all rover use. Every iteration, someone figured out how to get around it. I myself for one of the missions had a lander with 4 wheels on it that completed the contract without ever turning the brakes off. Just to see if I could Eventually he realized that forcing that was not the way to go, and we have the surveys that we have today.

I'll admit to reverting a lot but that's during testing. If the actual launch fails, I do one of 2 things: 1) Calmly throttle down, separate the return stage from the rest of the rocket, burn it clear, and hit the chutes. 2) Freak out, mash spacebar like I'm keeping time for a dubstep track, and hope everybody's okay when the smoke clears.

[noparse] [/noparse]does this: And to get the above code to show up in the forum, you do: [noparse][noparse] [/noparse][/noparse]And finally, you can tell how anybody does anything in their posts by clicking the "quote" button and looking at the code. /notamod

Yeah if you started with a fuel cell and didn't see Solar for another tier or even two, then I'd use them. But really their main purpose it seems is as an ISRU electricity source. Use some of the fuel you're pulling out of the ground to keep your drills running all night.