M4ck

I'd like to add a bit of my work here, a multi-size docking port. The facing on each dock is at the same height, you won't bump into anything strange when using them. It works like it is supposed to, I've already tested it in orbit with different test probes attached to it, detached and replaced by probes with other dock sizes. The only issue is that when selecting "Set as target" or "Control from here" on the Omni dock, you have three buttons instead of one - but it does not matter which one you click, they all work fine. PART { name = OmniDockingPort module = Part author = NovaSilisko MODEL { model=Squad/Parts/Utility/dockingPortLarge/model position = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 rotation = 0, 0, 0 } MODEL { model=Squad/Parts/Utility/dockingPort2/model position = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 rotation = 0, 0, 0 } MODEL { model=Squad/Parts/Utility/dockingPort3/model position = 0.0, 0.145, 0.0 scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 rotation = 0, 0, 0 } rescaleFactor = 1 node_stack_top0 = 0.0, 0.2828832, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_top1 = 0.0, 0.2828832, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_top2 = 0.0, 0.2828832, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 cost = 2200 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Clamp-O-Tron Omni Docking Port description = Invented after a less-than-peaceful protest against the lack of spacecraft attachment systems that could make buiding multi-purpose symmetrical bases possible, the Clamp-O-Tron Omni Docking Port allows for the firm attachment of two separate vessels regardless of the other dock's type. After docking, vessels can be just as easily undocked. attachRules = 1,0,1,0,0 mass = 0.25 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.25 minimum_drag = 0.25 angularDrag = 0.5 crashTolerance = 15 maxTemp = 3400 MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top0 nodeType = size0 } MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top1 nodeType = size1 } MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top2 nodeType = size2 } }

It will be on Laythe, no doubt about it. I already have the necessary infrastructure in orbit, a base nearby with a vehicle capable of placing the new(I mean, the underwater ones, not the hovering ones) modules precisely where I want them, and the moon has the gravity a bit weaker than Kerbin, which will make the assembly even easier, actually. The connections between parts won't be stressed that much while held above the surface. And I really like this moon The last "garden-themed" base I have in mind so far will be placed either on Kerbin or Pol. Pol, as it resembles a pollen which is something like the beginning of life(and the fact that it has almost no gravity is really unimportant, obviously), or Kerbin, being the only planet in the game with plant life(if that green "thing" on the surface is grass, that is). The two places will require a pretty large modification of the concept, but is too undetailed to even test anything at the moment. It will have something to do with the tree of life motif.

For the Eve base, I have planned a smaller outpost on the land nearby in case something goes wrong with the floating base. Some solar panels, several habitation parts, one or two rovers. It will also have a fuel storage and refinery for some heavier things(if any of them dares to come here, that is). About the solar panels working underwater - me neither. But I wanted to place a separate "ship" made of a landing pad, some lights, ladders, and a lot of solar panels above the main base - probably anchored to the seabed, but not directly connected to the underwater base not to wreck the camera too much. The underwater base will be most likely powered by a nuclear reactor of some kind. By the way, the underwater base will probably be located somewhere in the bay you can see in the picture with w single Bubble docked to the platform. And the sea sickness cure - thanks for the info. I have already installed and tested it, I place the ladders in some places because my kerbals really don't want to stand up on the girders, everything else is fine. Don't ask me why. And I am definitely going to use this mod for the floating base.

This will be the last permanent airborne module added to the base(unless I come up with something new that could still be placed there): the docking platform for the Bubbles(the miniature airships), and maybe something else from time to time. This was definitely the most frustrating object I've ever made in terms of how to put it where I want it to be put. First, everything wobbled like crazy during the deorbit burn. Later, I've discovered that the large solar panels broke off while I was away(I mean, they were already gone after getting close to the base). And finally, it was as easy to maneuver precisely like a drunk elephant. But after finally docking it successfully(more info under the pictures) there was much rejoicing. This was the most annoying thing to move, but also the one that made me the most happy to have it installed properly. The Bubbles work great in the Laythe atmosphere. I think the heavier, faster ship for long distance trips will also be something using a balloon, not wings. The base required a lot of fine-tuning between the balloons and anchors, but it was nice to see it much more stable and less stressed than before. It also almost doesn't spin at all on its own. Before that, it used to move around slowly like if there actually was some wind on Laythe. The next episode will probably be about the small refinery placed under the main base and the plane/blimp crossover. I'd also like to have a look around the island, to find the best place for a future underwater base, if I ever get to making it. The last one will be about the "extra" module, not to permanently stay at the base, and it will also include the first Laythe test of a buggy and a walk around the completed base with one of its inhabitants, including a Bubble ride around it as well.

Several mod parts can do this to you. I don't know for sure why some parts do this and others don't, but for me, for example, the Fustek station parts cause massive lag when they are visible in the parts tab or are "grabbed" - but no lag if they are simply placed somewhere on the ship.

It is constant regardless what you try to get there. It is a measure of how much do you need to "speed up" your ship in order to get somewhere else. Think of it like of throwing a ball and a stone. If you want them to land in a particular spot, you would have to throw each of them with the same speed(well, the air resistance would be a bit different, but it can be omitted here). This is the dV from a stationary ball/rock to one that has just left your hand. Of course, as the rock is heavier, it would be harder to throw it at the same speed as the lighter ball; you would need to apply more force to it. Just like a heavier ship needs to burn more fuel(as the engines need to apply more force to the vessel) to gain the same amount of speed as a lighter one. But after both of them are traveling at the same speed, they will continue on the same trajectory, no matter if it is a tiny probe or a huge mothership. I hope it helps

Based on a description of a rather interesting part: name = kethane_kerbalBlender title = KE-WAITNONOSTOP-01 Kerbal Unreconstitutionator description = In an effort to "go green", OKEP engineers devised a method to extract Kethane from a readily available and fully renewable resource. While low in mass, these (sometimes) brave Kerbonauts have a high energy density, yielding a not insignificant quantity of Kethane. Warranty void if used on Jebediah. Kethane, I think. They are green after all, aren't they? (just joking, I have no idea what chemical components are they based on. Something completely different from us, as even the water on Kerbin is WAY more dense than H2O)

Even if you did it perfectly, something might get a bit twisted(most probably by errors/rounding in saving stressed parts to persistence) which would make your ship rotate while firing engines or uneven drag. this happened to me once after attaching two similar engine modules to the mothership(each was connected via a bicoupler with twin docking ports). One module was obviously misaligned with the rest of the ship, even though all the docks were connected and the ship constructed as exactly symmetrical. It just happens.

I am almost sure it's the vertical fins on the tail, modded ones sometimes end up generating lift to the same side(eg. both to the right, instead of one to the right, one to the left) even with symmetry on. It has happened to me a few times. Especially the ones with fixed "wing" and a smaller moving control surface.

This time, two new things got added to the base. We are slowly nearing its completion. The first one was an improved construction yard. It can also double as a refueling station, as it stores a huge amount of LFO and kethane. It can also dock ships of various port sizes(I'm not sure about jr. ports, though...). It has only one downside: it explodes violently often in some really weird circumstances. More info here. Luckily it doesn't happen always, and it could not stop me from using it to construct another module for the surface base, the sensor/communication tower. The tower was sent down as usual, landed using the balloon as well as the engines and later moved to the main base. After docking, the SAS and RCS modules were detached. The tower's base has another regular docking port, so it may work as an extension in case anything is going to be added - but I honestly don't have many ideas left for this base other than the next four last things to be added soon... The next module will be a platform for docking the tiny airships to. It will have four ports on the up side, to be able to accommodate all of them, and a single port pointed away from the platform, in case something larger comes to visit. After that, a ground refinery, a blimp and jet powered craft capable of flying all the way around Laythe, and finally something quite interesting(I hope you won't be disappointed) and to be used for assembling the underwater base nearby after the floating one is placed on Eve(or Laythe as well, I really like it here).

Well, you could paint it green after changing the parts' textures, if that is what you want... It would require launching it, finding it in the quicksave/persistence, creating a copy of each part it uses(like if it uses dockingPort2, make another part and name it for example dockingPort2_2), changing the name of every single part it is made of in the persistence/quicksave to the name of your copied parts, and then, finally, editing the textures used by copies to make them green. Maybe there is some other easier way, but this is the only one that comes to my mind. By the way, cool thing

I am most definitely not playing a stock only game, but maybe someone will have an idea what is wrong/how can I stop this. I have three ships orbiting a moon close to each other, separated by around 900m. One is a heavy, spread-out(is that the word?) space station, one is a tiny probe and one is a ship I try to deorbit. Each time I load the game and go to the ship I want to deorbit, a minute or so after doing the burn, the station rips itself to small pieces, one part(I have no idea which) even gets thrown at over 5km/s relative to everything else. I know, this can be caused by some parts clipping, etc. The problem here is, this happens when both other ships are about 13km away from the active vessel. I haven't ever used the Lazor mod(I've heard it can be used to mess with the draw/physics range). Crafts in my game load properly at 2.1km distance, there usually is a long pause before they are loaded, there is another tiny pause at 200m(and things like struts appear then, I have no idea what exactly happens then. but SOMETHING does). If the crafts are way over 2km away from my active ship, shouldn't they be put back "on rails"? One second I see two regular markers for vessels nearby, but out of draw distance, the next - a huge field of debris. By the way, one time some part from the ripped station actually hit the probe, obliterating it as well(the probe was manned, the pilot got killed - everything was in the flight log). How can this happen out of physics range?! Edit: somehow, I still don't know how, the problem fixed itself this time... But I would still like to know how to do this. The probe is marked as a Base(I think; it shows that fancy light blue marker), and the obliterated station, a ship(regular grey marker). So far, they were both visible all the time, but the distance to the station disappeared after a while, while the probe("Base") was still shown until it got about 35km away, at this point only the markers were visible. The one time things didn't go kaboom, both distances were visible until 35km or so. I honestly have no idea what happened here and how to use it again if it is ever needed...

It looks great especially these orbital crafts. The whole base will be something nice to look at if it is built in this style. By the way - are these four parts placed around the base's core something from B9? I cannot remember what are they...

When you open your album page, the address has an album id in it, like 3hgR7b. Copy the id and paste it into [imgUR ]Id[ /IMGUR] tag, remove the spaces in brackets as well.

About which mods are used here: I've tried a LOT of mods and had to select only specific parts I needed, as the game seems to love saying "screw you" to proper texturing when too many parts/models/textures are loaded. For the same reason I tend to optimize parts, like all the spherical tanks(other than kethane) of the same shape use the same texture and model file, they are just different entries in the config files. Other than that, I've recoded some existing parts if I couldn't find something needed at the moment. Right now I have these in my KSP version used to build these bases: Part packs Squad parts, with almost all plane parts moved to an "Unused" zip archive Hooligan Labs, airships and, in the future, submarines KAS, used to do anything with cables, hooks, anchors Orbital Construction, for constructing things in orbit(or rather teleport them from the launchpad) using parts or resources brought to an orbital construction yard Kethane mod, for refining fuel, tweaked a bit to also work with resources used by Orbital Construction as well, to limit the part count Spherical Fuel Tanks, with added versions to support Kethane and Orbital Construction Firespitter, all those electric engines/propellers B9 Aerospace, for several types of large wings, adapters, structural panels, ladders and railings BoatPartsR3, for smaller size boat pieces, not used much right now Tri-hexagonal strut pack, large structural girders, heatshields and nuclear engines KW Rocketry, for prettier and larger tanks/engines and fairings(either this or the B9, I can't really remember) Deep Space Mission pack, almost everything gets used from time to time, but not too much(other than the reactor, it is used quite often) Other smaller but important mods Editor Extensions, extremely useful for everything in VAB/SPH MechJeb, for autopilot sometimes and useful readouts Actions on the fly, useful for managing action groups outside VAB, although unfortunately currently the interface is annoying as hell Docking struts, for reinforcing connections of different docked parts Select root, lets me change which part is supposed to be the root one, makes some elaborate constructions much easier to handle, very useful Subassembly manager, for saving groups of parts for later use in different crafts Universe replacer, for new ground and sky textures, can't seem to get it working with kerbal textures, for some reason Chatterer, for various transmissions during flights I've almost definitely forgotten something, in that case ask about specific parts or pictures if you want. But it is a pretty much complete list of my mods now.

Floating platforms are quite easy, almost anything floats nicely. But boats... That's something different. The water is extremely thick, so they usually fall apart. I've read somewhere that one of the functions of "submarines to other planets"(if I remember correctly) by Hooligan Labs is changing the behavior of the water to let boats move as intended. By the way, the Firespitter pack has a small part that makes your ship spawn in the water nearby, not on the launch pad.

I mean, that engine looks like a stock jet engine. They need oxygen to work, so they are only usable on Kerbin and Laythe.(if I am wrong about that engine, let's just assume I was a bit blind, shall we?... ) Anyways, the plane looks good, definitely much better that the ones I make. I really suck at designing them...

You do remember Eve's atmosphere has no oxygen in it, right?

Actually, the terrain detail also changes the surfaces used by the physics engine. After changing it to low to check something, I've noticed my Mun base(previously hanging from a crater wall) lying on almost flat ground, kerbals could walk around like it was regular flat terrain - the crater simply wasn't there anymore. After changing the terrain detail to normal it was fine again. So I think this actually doesn't have much to do with terrain quality setting - the ground will be where it appears to be anyways. It almost certainly is just the high gravity on Eve.

You have 3x "rocket" symmetry. it is by default set to the root part(in this case, probably the pod). Its symmetry "line"(I've forgotten the proper word, it seems...) is vertical, so the panels are placed symmetrical around a vertical line of symmetry. You can either pick up the girder, place it on top of your craft so it is in line with the pod, place panels on it and move the girder back, or use a SelectRoot addon(very useful when used with subassembly manager) to make the girder the core part, place panels and select the pod to be the core part again Edit: I am too late... Again. By the way, the bug Vanamonde mentioned can happen with any symmetry greater than two. You can identify it quite easily as the "clipped" side with ghosts parts looks like it was covered in some moving textures, changing rapidly to brighter and darker shades.

Could you post some pics of it? I also use Editor Extensions heavily and don't really understand what you mean here...

Yes, electricity. Check if they definitely touch the ground, not hover a bit above the ground. And for "storing" kerbals, anything with "crew capacity"(or something like that) will work. Stock this would be pods and something called "hitchhiker's storage" found in utility tab. Each has room for 4 kerbals. Rovers can be moved docked to a rocket/plane, some mods also allow you to build things directly in orbit or on other planets.

I really hope it won't. The Mun base faced crashes, explosions and such a few times, but this one has been intact all the time, not a single F9 had to be used during its construction But, what about the tower? The last picture. Really not too large?

About the heatshields: they turned out to be an epic fail. I had no idea the engines worked that way: they not only push the craft they are part of, but also push against anything they are pointed at, seemingly with great range. Therefore, even at full throttle, the deorbit modules remained stationary unless the heatshield was removed. After docking the first rover, the assembly turned into more or less a slideshow. 5 FPS most. Here's an almost complete documentation of the Bubbleblower's assembly, slicing into separate modules and deorbiting. Including tiny airships, temporary orbital yards, rover, explosions and other things. Very long. In about ten last pictures you can see everything that is currently landed near the base, and the base itself against the night sky and Jool. I really love the last picture, by the way. Like some good old airship from Final Fantasy IX, all "dreamy" and such. Now, a preview and a question(the last picture) about the next module for the main base. This will be a communication/sensor tower, supporting the habitat on the other end, with a possibility of extending the base further. Next to do: the tower has to be taken to Laythe(constructed in orbit once the proper yard is built and refilled with spares), then the blimp station + base/ground elevator will be designed and installed. After that, only the plane and refinery are left.

A movable one - I don't think so. But you can either make a static ramp which you will simply drive down, or use a decoupler/separator to shoot out one side of a transport "box". For movable ones you need something like some Robotics mod.