M4ck

Wow... That spidermech something in the last picture looks beautiful... How many parts is it made of?

If you post it to some page like imgur(works well for me), "dig" into the picture's page there until the address is ending with .png, .jpg or something like that. Example: for mine http://imgur.com/BUYjgBK picture on imgur, that address would be http://i.imgur.com/BUYjgBK.jpg . You copy it and paste it in your new post instead of the "X" in tag(also remove the spaces inside brackets: [ IMG ]X[ /IMG ]. Example: [img ]http://i.imgur.com/BUYjgBK.jpg[ /IMG] without the spaces around the address gives

Well, I think he's just managed to save one of his kerbals from getting lost in the depths of space for the first time and is sharing that with all of us. That's all.

Nah, I want them only to look like they should be there. They will be for landing various parts on Laythe(one per module, they fit rather nicely), and since I wanted more than one of them, I had to fit them on the main ship somehow... They look good while aerobraking at Jool, though. If only the ship didn't fall apart then... To be honest it doesn't get ripped apart by the drag directly, but gets incredibly wobbly and kinda rips itself apart. Anyways, there was no aerobraking at Jool and Laythe for the whole ship after all, it had enough fuel left to simply slow down using engines. I am now in the process of dropping everything to the surface, testing the ore miner etc, maybe I'll post it all today if I have enough time.

Wow, sound great It could be fun if you set three/four planets in a way that you could constantly fly from one SoI to another. Or make each planet's SoI so small that the planets would be several km apart, but without any SoI messup, then you could fly a regular plane from Kerbin to Duna. Makes me wonder if it is somehow possible to copy a planet/moon... Give another Gilly a several hundred meters SoI, hang it just above the KSC... Could be fun.

In theory it should take nothing more than launch it to the pad(without stabilizers, if possible), hit alt+h for hyperedit, choose orbit editor, enter wanted altitude and click "Set". If it crashes everything, try adding something to sen the base flying, even for a short moment, for it to not be counted as "landed". Worked for mine test flights that way on 0.21.1. Edit: looks like I've been to slow... By the way I had no idea the clamps automatically detached, good to know.

I haven't tried it, it's supposed to work to some extent, but bugs out sometimes - like planes trying to fly straight up, etc.

When in VAB, open the AG tab(the blue gear button at the top of the screen), then select one of the bottom groups(these with numbers) and after that, click on your vehicle's lights one after another, each one will show you the option to turn on, turn off and toggle, which you click in order to add it to the group. After doing it for all the lights you want, save and launch. Now the number of the group you added them will do these actions when pressed(the number keys on top of your keyboard, not the numpad, 0 means 10th group). Sometimes you need to hold that key for a moment if your craft is so big everything lags. But for lights, you can simply use "U" or the yellowish button next to your altimeter to toggle all the lights at once, they get automatically assigned to this group during construction.

Thanks a lot, people I'll take two small modules with me as well and see what configuration works best(F5/F9 a few times), then detach the not needed one(s). They will be a line of empty fuel tanks and a chute. I will try it in about 12 hours, as the ship is now fully assembled, refueled and is only waiting for a small kethane refinery to be added to its end. Thanks for the links, and for the "Aerobraking for noobs" tutorial, you all amaze me by how kind and helpful people can actually be online By the way, the shields are only supposed to look pretty and provide some visual effects for nice screens, so no need to worry about stuff exploding from overheating.

The ship has been(almost) completely assembled and filled to about 2/3(it already has over 8km/s to apply, does it need even more?). Now it only needs a temporary orbital construction yard on its back, along with some spares. Once in Laythe orbit, the spares will be used to build a larger, proper yard. I am not taking the final one with me because of the massive lag. A spare parts container, a construction yard module and an RTG are three parts, the completed dock will be more like 75 parts when done. The ship has already turned into something similar to a slideshow... But it looks almost just what I wanted it to look (again, zooming in can be useful here)

Have a look at my signature, maybe you'll find some inspiration there these bases were/are a real challenge to design, move to their destinations and assemble. You could try something like that if you haven't already.

Thanks for the tip. It will be an interplanetary vessel only, so it won't be landing anywhere, only using Jool's atmosphere to slow down. The "spine" is made from fuel tanks, for the aerobraking I'll move all the fuel left to the main, front tank, maybe it'll help.

I haven't really done any aerobraking in my KSP career, so I don't know how exactly how ships behave then. I will be sending this ship(the 3rd and the last picture) to Jool, then to Laythe orbit. The front RCS tanks will be replaced with a heatshield structure, and there will be two one-kerbal rovers on the "arms" on the back side. The rear rocket has already been detached. My question: if I want the ship to be properly aligned while aerobraking(heatshield to front), should I put something at the rear end to keep it straight? Like a small chute, little wings to make it something like an arrow? What would work best here?

Adding the last part of this base(click the pic for a link), having an EVA walk outside through it and having the feeling that everything turned out just like I've hoped it will be.

This time it will be a short preview of the multi-module mission to Laythe. I will add more pictures later, these are here only to ensure you that I am working on it The pictures are high-res and the ship quite complicated, so you may want to watch the album on Imgur instead of the embedded one. By the way, I still have no idea how to name the ship - if at all. Any ideas?

You can get rid of the problem and have the exact same part in the end(even without the now unneeded fuel line) bu using a Sr docking port oriented the docking side up, instead of the decoupler. You can also set the "undock" action to an action group to not have to manually detach it when needed. It's a bit more wobbly, but works without the need for fuel lines.

Nukes. The one long engine that has ISP of 200/800(the only long, thin engine, I can't remember the proper name... LVN or something like that). It has the power much lower than the mainsail, but is very fuel efficient in space. And for interplanetary/orbital maneuvers you don't have to worry about thrust, only the fuel usage.

Mainsails? Bad idea for anything interplanetary(unless you only want the looks, not functionality), as it will probably run out of fuel somewhere on the way. Be sure to check the tanks+engines module before assembling everything in orbit.

If you mean the one on the island not too far from the main KSC, it's a bit to the right if you take off from the runway. If you are approaching from the KSC, it's on the left side of the island. I cannot help you about the other one(if it exists at all ) as I haven't seen it yet.

Good job by the way, the cockpit cam looks hilarious. My only question: how comes Jeb wasn't assigned to such a breakthrough mission? My only idea was that he rejected it because "MOAR BOOSTERS" couldn't have been used here...

Yet another facepalm moment, right? it's still better than finding out the hard way that the mainsail used on the lander(don't ask why) is too long to be supported by the landing legs, so everything falls over... You could at least hit F9.

That's the exact way to do this wrong. This way you have three stacks of engine/port/port, and when you add the tri-coupler, it gets attached to one pair of docking ports. the way to do this is to make a rocket/tri-coupler/3x engine/3x decoupler or separator(whichever you prefer)/ 3x docking port facing down. Then, you take 1x symmetry, not 3x, and place a single docking port(let's name it X) so it "connects" to one of your already placed. Then, take a tricoupler and orient it so it faces the right way; hold it under the one docking port and when it looks like it's oriented right, click Q or E twice to make it rotate. NOW place it. Take two more docking ports and put them on the two available nodes on the tri-coupler. Now pick up the X port, hit Q or E twice and place it under any of the ports(if the thing is rotated, use Q, E or shift+Q/E to fit it). Works fine for me all the time

First of all - is it just me, or did all the post writing "buttons" like font size, img tag, code tag disappear after the recent downtime? Secondly, I would have to send a manned expedition to the current orbital dock, as even if I were to send a KAS assisted refueller, it would not be able to attach itself - I need to place a removable radial KAS port for that. I cannot use Jeb or Bill for any of that, because their cams aren't showing in the corner of the screen, and the extraplanetary launchpad(the command pod they sneaked into at launch) seemingly HAS NO HATCH - meaning no EVA for them. Therefore, I need to deorbit it back to Kerbin to ever use them again... The good sides to that: I am now designing necessary modules for a complete interplanetary voyage, including landing chutes, heat shields, deorbit engines etc, 10 types(about 25 modules total) will be taken to Laythe in the first transfer, another 15 or so in the second one. Most of the core ones will be sent to orbit as one, to be later equipped with smaller ones I couldn't have launched already strapped, either out of fear that they could throw everything off-balance during the launch, or because I couldn't place them where I want to in VAB. Subassembly Loader doesn't allow placing anything if the picked/core part has no free nodes, and in case of my rovers and miniblimps, they don't. I think I've seen some tiny mod here which enables people to change the core part during the construction, but it seems my search-fu is too weak now... (and now I am waiting for the usual mod suggestion ). I'll post an imgur album with the pics of the separate parts in a day or two, the next episode will be all about the launch and transfer to Laythe, which will probably take some of my time to complete.

Thanks a lot for a quick answer, it's just what I needed I 've been trying to merge some functionality from decouplers, docking ports etc, but had no idea really how to create additional nodes that would work as intended. Thanks again. Now, time to test that quadcoupler-decoupler-dockingport monster...

Hello, modders. I'm trying to make some new parts for my station(and maybe to share with you, if they work well) etc to lower the completed station parts count, and to do that, I need the docking port functionality. The question here is, what does the "top" part of the code target specifically? MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top nodeType = size1 } is it the part of the node name in nodes config, like here: node_stack_top = 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 if yes, would setting referenceAttachNode = bottom instead make the opposite end of the port be the "docking" end? And yet a bit more - do the nodes' names have to follow a specific format if I were to add more nodes to a part? Like creating a construction node A1? node_stack_A1 I am not talking about making that node another dock yet, just about adding various nodes to part cfg.