HeadHunter67

A couple weeks ago, I did my first EVA over the Mün. It went badly at first as I fat-fingered myself about 300m away from the lander... but Jeb didn't mind! That's now my desktop wallpaper. (For the record, I did get him safely back to the lander. And then later, that same MMU got him killed on the Münar surface when I got going a little too fast on a long jump and plowed into the ground. He got better!)

Not only that, but the ISS is at a 325km altitude over a world with a diameter ten times that of Kerbin. You can't expect the same results from the same altitudes in the game.

If you're already at 500 m/s before you start your turn, you are inevitably facing one of two problems: Either you are going too fast at a low altitude and losing a significant portion of that thrust to increased atmospheric drag that you are creating, or you are high enough in the atmosphere that drag is not an issue, but you'll use a significant amount of that thrust to go from a vertical ascent to an orbital vector. If you are doing 200 m/s at 10k, you're actually doing it right. I highly recommend you look into the concept of "terminal velocity" and see why you've been wasting fuel and losing thrust with your current technique.

Indeed, the 120km+ altitude is a good idea if you're waiting for transfer windows. Basically it cuts your wait time by a factor of 10 (if I remember the time-warp multiplier correctly).

Yeah, they should really put the manual in the box, right? I understand your frustration. Essential parts of this game have a high learning curve. The good news is, others have already done the legwork for you and documented their discoveries via YouTube, the Wiki, and these forums. Yes, it takes a little effort to track down what you need, but knowing the best way to use the search engines will get you a gold mine of information. Blizzy78 did a great plugin docking tutorial that I highly recommend for you.

Every time I see something like that, I fear I will never be that good.

Caps Lock, in and of itself, is not a reliable indicator. If it's already on before the rocket was launched (for instance, after a previous mission), or certain glitches, can lead to Caps Lock being on but RCS in normal mode. As sgt_flyer said, there's just one real way to know.

Well, we've already got the main element - that being, rovers that flip or break unexpectedly and for no good reason.

When I launch to orbit, I tend to go for 75-80km, as Tw1 said that gives me some leeway for problems. When I'm making a permanent orbit (for example, a station), I go for a nice tidy 100km orbit instead.

Literally "lighting a fire under their butts"...

If you make it up to you, then you're basically saying you're fit to judge others. I'm saying, leave their lives up to them, worry about your own. I guess you don't understand my post, then. I'm saying, as soon as you stop worrying what others think about you, you stop giving them power over you. I don't care what anyone thinks about how I play the game, because I'm healthy enough to realize that strangers I've never met have no say in my life. If someone else can't or won't do that, that's a shame - but again, not my problem. I'm not saying they "have to", I'm saying it's up to them to decide how to live their own lives. Clear enough?

Chatterer is pretty small. I'm sure there are some parts you can cut out of parts packs, and the like, to leave room for this.

It had better! It's the best thing to happen to the game, appearance-wise.

...And my point is, your achievements are yours, regardless of another's "approach to gameplay". It can only bother you if you let it - and that's not anyone else's concern.

Looks interesting - I'll be installing it, and I look forward to your next version. One minor nit to pick: when the announcer says "liftoff will start in t-minus 10 seconds", the counter should be at "10" when he says "10 seconds", and then he goes right to "9...8..." As it stands, he's saying "10" at T-12s, then again at T-10s. Seems odd.

How can that be? What you achieve is not changed in the least by what others do, or how they do it. Again, the only people who feel they're being "undermined" are those with insecurity issues. A confident individual knows he needs no validation from others and that his deeds speak for themselves. And I agree that I'm seeing a lot of insecurity here - it's your game, play it your way, don't worry about what others are doing or how they are doing it.

I thought that might be all that I needed to do, but I wanted to be sure before messing something up. Thank you. Looking forward now to trying your texture with clouds, when it is ready.

Could you please elaborate on how that's done for those of us who don't know much about command line modifiers or how to do that?

I just downloaded the CSM-MEM pack the other day. It’s a beautiful lander, but has anyone realized that you can fly the MEM to the Mün all by itself and have enough Delta-V to return? You might need to slap a solar panel and a parachute on it to survive the trip, but seriously, you can put the MEM by itself on the KSC launch pad, lift off and fly to the Mün, land, take off (with the descent stage, no need to leave all that remaining fuel behind!) and have enough fuel to return to land on Kerbin. So maybe a bit unbalanced – but still beautiful and fun.

How about an example of it in use?

The OP is right. The only people who'd care about how others play a single-player sandbox are people who have no other means of self-validation. It's a sign of personal insecurity when someone feels a need to dictate what others "should" do like that.

It may be more "Kerbal-y", but it's hell on the computer and it gets... unsightly.

Indeed - docking within 100 meters isn't usually that hard, providing you can control both crafts (I tried an Apollo-style docking with an unmanned lander today, and that was significantly harder because I couldn't align it).

I'm getting lots of good inspiration for lander design. The Eagle has always been one of my favorite spacecraft and it's inspiring to me. So seeing all the ways people have approached it helps me to build one that's uniquely mine. Thanks!

That's a nifty little lander! Thanks for the craft file - it helped me to learn how to radially mount the fuel tanks onto the decoupler. I have heard of people using cubic struts for mounting but had never seen it for myself.