Valley

I would suggest high orbit - allows the ships more room to adjust their orbit (to attack the enemy fleet) and would use up (I think) less fuel to do so if their targets are in a tighter, lower, orbit.

Should you be calling a ship a 'redshirt'?

Agreed. Future space industries will have to find something to DO with anything they mine and manufacture. Find a asteroid of diamonds? Get to back to Earth and you just made diamonds worthless and you are broke. They will need to find a service or product that either people will WANT or will help them develop their space programs. Gold? Well, good for circuits that could be produced in space to help make robotics and CPUs and equipment needed in space. Water at the southern polar regions of the Moon? Good for a science center and maybe test low-gravity farming. I think the big money maker will be tourism. Who will pay to get into space? Scientists, tourists, cults, explorers, get-rich-quick con artists - why not? That is how the New World was discovered (from the European point of view anyway). Businesses will have to generate a demand for going into space. Talk about asteroid mining is nice...but all on paper now. He3? Maybe in another century when we can produce enough on Earth to even test how fusion works on a grand scale. Solar power beamed from orbital stations? Decade old dreams. So let us focus on the services and those people who are willing to give money for a dream of going to the Moon or Mars. Okay, a reality television show seems weird but it is one way to help collect some of the money. SOME. Heavy industry and stuff like that will come later. I am not saying it will not happen. I am a fan of the movies 'Moon Zero Two' and 'Outland' - even have the novels that were based on the movies. But it will be a slow, century long process, in which our great grand-children may join in. But mostly likely they will just watch the ships take off over the...whatever they use as the internet-news channels in that time period....when not inputting the numbers at their work-pod during their half-hour break working for 'The Machine'.

RMB =Right Mouse Button. Just right-click and hold down the button.

But we are always working on plan B. We went from human power to animal power. Than animals, who powered our mills and pumps, were replaced by windmills and water wheels. Wood and bones were replaced by coal to heat homes and cook meat and boil water. Oil soon entered the world stage, creating fuels, building materials, and so on. Did we run out of trees before switching to coal? Did we run out of horses before we switched to cars and trucks? Our resources are not infinite - we just jump from one to another as our science allows us to advance from one technology to another. We face problems, we solve them, we create new ones, we solve them. Sooner or later we're hit a glass ceiling and die out. There are a hundred plan B's being created. The USA has their idea of the perfect plan B. So does NASA and the UN and so did the USSR and the Third Reich. How well we do in the future will depend on which plan B we end up with. I hope we have the good luck to pick a good one. I hope we get to the Moon - if nothing else but to learn from it and use the knowledge for Mars and the Belt and beyond. "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." Carl Sagan

Right, I am sure I can learn how to fly with the controls. In fact I am sure I could - as I have a joystick someplace. And have flown fighter games and sims before. Course, KSP is not as realistic as some would like... But I wanted to see if the MechJeb spaceplane control, that everybody says does not work for them...well, works. My mission to show that it could fly (or at least help you fly a plane). So I used it to take off from the KSC airfield, fly about and land again... Course, you have to control the throttle, landing gear, and brakes... For my first try I thought I was doing well...till I hit the brake button a tad too early... But anything you can walk away from is, to me, a landing. And the pilot seemed happy to be alive. Well, kind of. Not sure what that emotion is. "I need a drink" face?

Pirate!

I think tonnage decides order of battle - who goes first. How about number of crew acting as action points per turn? No Kerbals one target. One Kerbal two targets. And So on.

The little colored dots don't mean anything to me. I find MechJeb's actions make more sense to me and I am learning from it more. Even started to dock myself BECAUSE I figured out how to turn my knowledge of how space travel works into real actions from watching MechJeb.

I am watching HOCgaming's Kerbal Polar Express on You Tube - recording from his water charity live stream - and was wondering if anybody else had tried to drive to the North Pole? It seems like something I could do, seeing as I seem to make rovers and buggies that work. Sometimes.

The Chinese will very likely be the next to land on the Moon after, I believe, they plan on making a space station. It will be many years before a private company gets a manned lander onto the Moon and I doubt they will get anything out of it but 'Hey, we can do it!' PR. Profits from space industry, tourist, or resource collecting, will still, very likely, take a few more decades to show up.

Solar Farms would be functional which would be nice. But you would want to put a limit on the range also....

Saw the video - very detailed. Like how you bring up Babylon 5 - while I thought its plots reminded me of Lord of the Rings the space combat seemed realistic and many of the designs do make me think of some of the warships I see being developed in the Naval Battle thread and the Spirit/Hanland thread - maybe because they deal with the same physics - just on a smaller scale. I think carriers would be less endangered if there was some way to protect them - too bad there is no military network mod where ships could be programmed to defend each other. Scouts would be important in a turn based game IF ships were only be seen on the map by the enemy player if detected FIRST by some kind of sensor.

Where can we find this videos?

After some testing I got my first manned ramjet ship out into deep space. And from a distance you can see the ion field collecting material for the engine. The best part is the glow seems to also show up in the tiny avatars' of the crew. (Funny, never looked inside the cabin during the flight - that would have been a cool image). I assume spoiler code still does not work?

A one shot carrier drone with a VERY deadly shot. Very nice.

Good point. I don't make very good reusable shuttles or space planes (crash, death, Senate hearings) but I do plan for any ships that travel between Kerbin and the moons to be reused. Standardizing docking ports is a MUST for proper refueling! (Also don't forget your station should also have a small tank of mono for those ships that use RCS)

I have a fueling station (unmanned) around both Kerbin and the Mun. I placed them there for the Kerbin-Mun run for my ships but find, to my amusement, that after developing refueling rockets to refill them that I don't need them. The same rockets can easily refuel ships in orbit around Kerbin and the Mun. I assume, as I try to spread out farther, that they will become more useful but have noticed that most players, when dealing in interplanetary travel make massive ships which carry their own fuel or send a fleet of smaller specially designed ships (one of which is a tanker). In other words, how often do you place a station in orbit around a planet for the sole purpose of storing fuel for future missions? Outside of manned stations, that look cool, how many of you have stations whose sole reason is to be a orbiting 'pumping station'?

A manned station at 70 to 80 km, than a fueling station around 100 to 140 km. Ships that park in orbit for any period of time will orbit between those ranges.

I think of drones as small unmanned craft. Never thought of using the term droid for those unarmed ones that work at the stations and carriers. Also maybe we should make a 'Ram' Class for those ships designed for ramming and 'Monitor' Class for ships who are designed to fire from long ranger (which I am seeing a lot of) - kind of space going artillery in other words.

It looks good. I don't think it could get into space - space planes are a nasty mixture of problems from both sides of the coin. Combining the issues of flight and rocketry. But it could make it to the North Pole if you lightened it a tad. I think you will have to do some tests and see how far it gets - then drop some parts and try to add more fuel. I can't give more advice as I am better at making space ships than planes. Oh, if you are using rocket fuel you don't need air intakes. Unless you switch to jet fuel only. You may wish to check to see what tanks you are using.

Edit: Hmmm...those are guidelines, not rules. As they clearly stated at the start of the posting.

Make a tiny fighter and send in a dozen in the next battle.

I believe that the human mind can overcome any problems and decided to put out a challenge to see who will take it up. Or even try to make it into a YouTube series. I don't have the skill to try this challenge and I am sure I would score badly - I can just reach the moons. But I thought the idea interesting and there is no harm in tossing it out there. Background: The Kerbin governments have been alerted by the scientists that their devices that detected a flaw deep within the planet's core. It has been decided that a New Ice Age will be soon be triggered. Kerbalkind will die out unless they move as many of the populace as they can off planet. They have less than a Kerbal year before life on Kerbin slowly dies out. The world governments decide to try to save as many of the elite as they can in secret. Mods: Mods that need to be used: Kethane Mod and Extraplanetary Launchpad Mod. You can use other mods, such as MechJeb 2 or even mods that give you special engines or equipment. But please do not use God mods, like Hyper Edit. Goal : Colonize as many planets and moons as you can. Each 'Colony' must be independent - able to build, fuel, and launch their own ships and must have at least one Kerbal as colonist with a living area. Any extra Kerbals would also require living areas. A planet can only have one 'Colony' - put more than one Launchpad or mining center on a planet or moon and they all still only count as one 'Colony'. Score: Each 'Colony' is worth 50 points. Each Extra Kerbal in a 'Colony' is 5 points (after the first that is required). As survival is the point any Kerbals living in space stations or travelling in space at the end of the challenge also counts as 5 points. End Game: You have one year to make as many colonies as you can BUT the first signs of the Ice age will come on day 200 and will cause panic as the governments can't hide the truth for long. The spaceport on Kerbin will shut down as mobs attack it with pitchforks and torches - at that point you may no longer design or launch ships, aircraft, or anything else from Kerbin. All the equipment you make from that point on will be produced only by a 'Colony' along with any fuel. This means, of course, also trying to design anything you need before that time - to make sure it is available to you at the Launchpads. Of course new ships will end up getting crew but this just represents the growing populace of the Space colonies. At the end of the year you count up your points and also pat yourself on the back. First challenge - hope it makes sense. Challengers: Radiokopf - 585 points (Radiokopf was being modest)

Once again maybe a size limit? Drones can only control ships of such-and-such a mass. There would have to be a difference between drones and missile use also. And yes, I assume Macey isn't going to use half or a third of the ships and craft submitted on the thread because of mass, design style, and so on. I assume SpiritWolf and Hanland have different ideas of the merits and flaws of ship design.