Superfluous J

I can't stop wanting this to be available all in text. I blame chess notation. Each line is a ship. :#: means that ship undocks. T=Takeoff | O=Orbit | A=Aerobrake | L=Land | D#=Docked to ship # | -=Transfer between bodies. 1: KeTO-LaF-:2:-TyO:3:4:5:6:-KeAL 2: -JoA-TyD1 3: -LaO:3a:-TyOD1 3a: LaALTOD3 4: -VaO:4a:-TyOD1 4a: VaLTOD4 5: TyLTOD1 6: -PoO:6a:-BoO:6b:-TyOD1 6a: PoLTOD6 6b: BoLTOD6 Whew. Now that I've written it all out, I no longer want that sort of notation.

To "fix" this problem all I do is "land" the ship 2-3 times at different altitudes. I use the landing tool to put my ship stationary outside the atmosphere, and then again inside the atmosphere a few hundred meters off the ground, and then finally 50 meters off the ground. Would it be possible to just have Hyperedit do that automatically? Possibly skipping the middle step? Just place the ship over the lat/long specified when you said to land, but at the current orbital altitude. Let physics realize what you did, and then set the altitude to what the player wants? #NotACoder

In my testing 1.1km/s was what I saved by going to orbit first. That's a big "only" though. You can do a lot with 1 km/s, and you can do a lot by not bringing 1 km/s worth of useless fuel with you.

Why, the method I champion, of course. Getting to orbit first and then transferring to Mun.

I agree that those proposed planets (while pretty) don't match the style of the rest of the chart structure. I really like the Duna one though as it's very simple and obvious what it is. If you could come up with the same for the rest that'd be cool. Though it is still possible to be confused about which one is what, unlike with the simple 2-letter codes.

For showing off the final product, sure. But I'd like at least the option to just use colored circles. I imagine planning the mission first with this tool, making the chart into a flag, and putting that on the ships. For that, juicing it up with fancy graphics could be really cool. For everyday working though I prefer the clean lines and arcs with nothing else distracting from the utility of the chart.

I've never actually done this in FAR. The upward-thrusting rocket would benefit from being able to pack on the TWR but the sideways-thrusting rocket would benefit from being able to turn quicker. Most of the 1100dV to LKO you save in FAR is due to not having to fight gravity as much. I did do this. That's why I'm so confident in the results. I did it well over a year ago, before I even recorded one KSP video. Dozens of fans, you'll have! Dozens I say!

Forget the maths, send me the craft files and tell me what mods you use and I'll fly them both using both methods (straight up vs orbit first). I'll post it on YouTube. All your friend needs to do to refute me is to get his craft to Mun via direct ascent and have more fuel in his tank than I do after getting to orbit first.

Space flight is all about trading fuel for other things. Frequently, we trade it for time but in this case, you are trading more for convenience. And it's a pretty lopsided trade. Perfect timing, flawless ascent, lack of maneuver node assistance, and annoying multi-minute retry loop (or if you're not the type to revert flights, danger of your Kerbals getting tossed into space) versus a very small amount of extra fuel. Yeah I'll use the fuel, if its all the same to you

Actually without knowing the colors (as I said I left them off due to laziness) you pretty much got it right. The thing that aerobroke at Jool did so to get "flying low over Jool" science, and each thing that went from Tylo to a different moon was actually separate craft. I actually forgot to draw the eventual "going from Tylo back to Kerbin" line *oops* Other than losing the order that the excursions from Tylo to the other moons happened, The "there and back" lines really clean it up. I can't even think of how to show all that in a clean way otherwise (though I'd be happy to see another's attempt)

I think it has potential. As a non-programmer I would have no trouble using this. I whipped this up in Dia, can people understand it? I would further submit a new notation, the double arrow for "went there and came back" I only used one color (because I'm lazy) but each line coming off an orbit is actually a separate craft. Also, my "aerobraking" isn't a line but a box (again, I was too lazy to find a line and just took the first thing I could find that was similar) but other than that and the double arrows I followed the notation pretty strictly.

I'm torn on this. The main reason to use a notation is to conserve space. Using one big image wastes space. Also, it does not account for missions that revisit a location. I'm trying to figure out how you'd notate (in either the proposed style or in your style, StormKat) a mission to Jool where you got into orbit around Tylo and then sent landers to each of the other moons from there.

I agree, but in 0.25 there is a great way to curb this. When you start a new game drag that science slider way down. 10% is pretty durn low but I've found 30% doable and challenging/rewarding.

Finally, I think 1-or-2-letter designations for planets (Like the elements are done) would be benficial. A blue circle is fine and all but does it mean Kerbin, Vall, or even Laythe? Really quick I suggest Mo, Ev, Gi, Ke, Mu, Mi, Du, Ik, Dr, Jo, La, Ty, Va, Po, Bo, and Ee. Each is just the first 2 letters of the name and they're unique. Then you could leave the colors off or at least they wouldn't be required to memorize.

I think I at least helped with this and for that I'm sorry As I said (but did not perhaps say strongly enough) was that my intention was to make the symbols "directon agnostic" meaning that they would work regardless of which direction you left and came back. In that same vein, I really like that flyby. You could come in from one direction and go around easily 90 degrees, 180, even 270 and then head off. You could also easily show a lander disconnecting from the flyby and landing. I also agree that landing and takeoff should be more obvious with some sort of indicator "on planet."

I went from "Terrible Idea" to loving this in about 3 minutes. One suggestion: everything is left-right (or at least unidirectional or direction agnostic) except flyby seems like it must be 90 degrees. I suggest flyby follow the same pattern of left-right by coming in on the left, going up and over (or down and under) and then continuing off to the right. The idea of programming this scares me. Good luck on that!

Amusingly, all the past few pages have given me is a desire for an in-game implementation of what you're all doing with spreadsheets. I suppose I can see a spreadsheet instantly telling you how much fuel you'd need or whatnot, but so does a few seconds of alt-clicking your fuel tanks. And I use KER to estimate entire complex missions all the time, by building each piece of the mission backwards in time from landing on Kerbin to launching from Kerbin, and making sure the dV is sufficient at each stage. I do agree that it all comes down to what you prefer. I have a friend who refused to use any info mods on his Eve lander and return. He also refused to use HyperEdit or any other way to test the ship other than launching each test from Kerbin. It took him months of fairly dedicated play. I have no clue how many hours but I'd not be surprised if it was triple digits. That is as distasteful to me as having so much information pre-flight that I may as well not even bother doing the mission. I like the middle ground where I can be pretty sure the ship CAN do it with the fuel it has, but all kinds of things along the way can cause all sorts of mayhem. And with that I'll bow out, as this thread from the get-go has been off topic as Xavven mentioned a few pages back.

Yeah this is a non-issue. If you truly care enough, mod it. If that sounds harsh I'm sorry but I've been modding in a dozen or more things into what I still consider my "stock" game for over a year now.

I do not see the functional difference between spending an hour flipping numbes around in a spreadsheet or spending an hour in the VAB moving tanks and engines and stages around. Other than that the spreadsheet sounds like a terrible bore and the VAB is fun and there are little guys driving around and great music.

It all depends on what the people ask. "How do I find the dV of my rocket" or (more common) "How can I tell how far my rocket will go?" is a very different question than "could someone detail out the rocket equation for me?" The former two questions want the number. They - like the vast majority of us, don't care how the numbers are derived so long as they're accurate. Pointing them at the rocket equation is doing them as much a disservice as would be telling the latter to "just use Kerbal Engineer."

Other than that he was the major proponent (other than Palpatine himself) of the motion that secured Palpatine's rise to power.

Am I the only one who - when the devnotes are this late with a pending launch imminent - starts to wonder if they're late for a very good and very exciting reason?

I never said it was hard, though doing natural logs by hand sounds more like punishment than math. I just don't want to do it. I play KSP to fly rockets, not solve math equations. Also, computers were originally designed to do exactly this kind of drudgery for us, so it seems weird to do the drudgery specifically to do something I wouldn't otherwise be able to do without the computer (Play KSP).

Haha no problem though I'll say here: I do prefer FAR. I only use stock aero so much in my videos because a) I think it's important that my ships fly similarly to the way they would if a new player saw my video and tried to make the ship, and stock aero just simply doesn't bug me.

Yes. You should probably get the Kerbal out first though...