aftershockzap

Waiting for updates::: KSP's version of black friday... "They just announced multiplayer!" "Oh god"

I should not have told my 3 year old son that KSP was getting updated as "Tommorow" Usually I see KSP updates come out around 5 P.M. my time, so now my son is sticking his feet in my face saying "IS it updated yet???"

My google skills have failed me and I am trying to remember something my professor told me about how forces interact and I figured, someone here will probably know. Question: Quick setup, Object A is a huge wall at rest. Object B is a smaller massed object with a velocity. (Say a car) Object B crashes into Object A. Object B is damaged. I (Think) know that the Normal force of the collision causes object B to experience rapid deceleration. My question is this: Is the damage on object B technically caused by the Normal force, Or the rapid deceleration?

Yeah that would be awesome to get the craft file! I can get some design ideas... And also because this morning I, once again, built a rover for my kethane mission to minmus. Rover worked perfectly, so I then built a heavy launcher for it. First test went well, launcher almost made it into orbit. Needed a small amount more fuel and some additional torque at high alt. Went back, made final adjustments...saved Duplication bug. Whole craft file useless... hahaha my luck!

(off topic) I love how the results are pretty evenly spread out. So basically Squad can develop whatever they want and keep a lot of people happy! Especially because most people probably picked 3 out of that list. I for one and desperate for career mode just because I think having the option to be forced to use lower quality rockets for better payouts will keep me playing KSP for days on end... ...On second thought I have stuff to do during the day so maybe career mode isn't so great...

I downloaded kethane for the first time after the 21.1 patch to try it out. (Finally hit a part-lag limitation on a station I was building and decided I was ready to try mods now that I know the computer/game/physicsx limitation) I literally spent my morning before college building my first kethane rover, attempting to do a very complex top-docking fuel transfer from a rover (miner) and a lander (to take kethane to a station for refining). Let me tell you, after hours of alignment frustration, your design is fantastic, simple, and solves the mobility issue I had with using a lander as a miner. I am inspired sir! I can't build rovers very well but every time I see one of your crazy rovers, I see myself trying anyway haha

I watched every video I could find on docking. I designed ships, attempted to dock, redesigned. It took me AGES before I completed a docking attempt. Yep.... ages... Turns out having docking ports on backwards gets you really really good at aligning docking ports! The truth is reading this thread helped me understand how to have two ships intercept, and having a good RCS balance for your first docking attempts is key. Balanced RCS meaning sometimes less is more.

The smaller docking ports also have a right and wrong way. Lately when troubleshooting docking ports I try to make the payloads into rovers so I can trouble shoot the docking ports on land. (Yeah, so I flipped them illogically around from the starting position when I first built a dockable ship in VAB, what about it!?!) Edit: Also SAS can sometimes resist the docking magnets when turned on either one or both of the ships your trying to dock so if your having problems you can try to toggle sas to see if that fixes it.

If your steam account isn't patching KSP, exit steam and re open it and it should see the patch! Going to find 2 hours of spare time lying around somewhere. . .

I only logged onto the forum to tell steam users that you may have to close and reopen steam before it will see the update! (Its not as kind hearted as you think, im just waiting for the download to finish)

I'm a bit rusty on my lessons on forces and such but... We are talking about moon's with no atmosphere, so the only thing that can effect a ship is gravity. If you slingshot around a moon, you are using the gravity of the moon to make you go faster. You will keep going faster until one thing happens, you reach your lowest point in altitude. This is either by going around the planet, or crashing into it. Preforming a slingshot is attempting to ensure that you are losing altitude relative to the mun for a LONGER amount of time than you will be gaining altitude. I.E. if you get really close to the front of the moon from kerbin orbit, you will sail really close to the moon, fly past, and shoot out somewhere behind the moon's orbit. This works as a sling only because the moon is moving in an orbit as well, and because of your speed with the moon's speed you spend more time falling to the lowest altitude than "gaining altitude" in the moons SOI. (I.E. spend 10 min in mun's SOI falling to lowest altitude. After that point you spend only 5 min in the moon's SOI until exiting. This time difference is what gives you a bonus in velocity) The only force that changed the influence on your ship is mearly the speed at which the moon moved away from the vessel. A reverse slingshot will only change your exit point and velocity, but not slow you down as you are still in the "Falling rising" trap. At worse you would gain no additional dV. Again the only way to change your orbit is with something other than gravity. These are, ship thrust, atmosphere, or lithobreaking. Imagine this: The moon needs as much time as possible to capture you in an orbit, SO you are on the EXACT orbit around kerbin as the moon is. Exact. You are going 1 m/s slower than the moon. The moment the moon catches you, you fall. You crash into the moon at a point, A. Gravity aided in your crash but it was only the moon itself that stopped you! Now Jeb has dug a 10 meter by 10 meter hole on you crash site and you launch the same ship again. When you impact the moon now, you will impact 10 meters deeper than you did before! Because of the hole! Now Jeb tunnels through the entire moon! You fall all the way to the center, and you begin your deceleration. Now its easy to think that you would be trapped by the moon because gravity has the most time to effect your ship right? But we forgot about one thing, the moon is also moving! So RIGHT before your speed with the moon would = 0 m/s, you will find yourself stuck at the 1 m/s slower than the moon, as the speed of the moon was just enough to push you right outside of its SOI before you achieved an orbit. I hope this was as clear and accurate as it was when it was in my head =/

If I am remembering correctly, the only way to get a true gravity capture in this game is from a stable mun orbit (any moon will do) flying to the moon's parent planet. The reason this works is because the moon itself is also within the parent planet's SOI, its just at close range the moon's influence overpowers the parent planet. Again this only works if you start from a stable moon orbit (I.E. your going pretty slow as is) and burn to the moon's Parent planet. In the same respect, the sun works the same way. The second you leave a planet (Unless entering another planet's SOI) you are "captured" by the suns gravity, because all planets orbiting a star are also located within the star's SOI

Out of necessity, more than anything else. Got the lander into orbit, escaped Kerbin, burning for Duna! Pictures at some point. #EDIT: ACK late for work. Will have to complete landing tonight. Whenever I am designing my launchers to deliver payloads As a personal principle (not saying anything against your designs!) I try my hardest to ensure that not one strut nor part that will leave behind a piece is left on my payload. This gives me a wide variety of design challenges that are even more frustrating not to solve because at the end of the day you could ALWAYS break that "no struts to payload" rule, but cannot actually bring yourself to do so. (I like re-usable ships so loads of unique payloads for 1 time launches like cargo transports and re-fuelers which can be quiet a challenge etc) and whenever I am having a hard time getting something into space, I look at this picture and say, Its possible. I'm going to get more coffee as I attempt to balance a com that is really REALLY off due to my payload.

My dumb mistake was not realizing there was a front to docking ports. However, I found out that I have gotten EXTREMELY good at orbital rendezvous AND lining up docking ports. Seriously, after hearing how hard docking was, I just thought I didn't have it lined up right every time I bumped ships together, ran out of mono fuel from bumping ships together, and then re did it all. Just... wish I could have posted the look on my face when I fixed the docking ports and saw how easy it suddenly was to dock. Seriously just O_O That was it!? Really, really trucking good at orbital rendezvous and aligning ships. What silly mistake caused you to get REALLY good at something else?

I'm not sure about pictures, but as far as how the game is running have you messed with the "Max Physics Delta Time" setting inside of the options menu before entering a game? The link is to the forum post which explained how it works but long story short: Slide the bar to the right for smoother gameplay/fps, but the game's simulation timescale will slow down. This only slows down the game as needed however, and you can tell when the game has decided to slow down by looking at the "METS: " timer in the top left of the screen. If the writing is green, game time is normal. It then goes to yellow and red. Launching a rocket/flying in atmosphere or a large ship part count can kill performance (semi)regardless of pc specs for various reasons that would be too long winded =P

No one can be sure without pictures, but, its probably miss-attached like the Johnno said! Sometimes the decouplers attach inside the engine instead of where it should, and its very hard to tell the difference. I had a rocket that should have released 4 engines between 2 stages. The first set of two engines, perfect. The second set EVERY TIME would stay on ship hanging with struts just like two swaying, highly explosive, anchors. I tried EVERYTHING to get them to work. I even attached 16 (Yes 16) Sepertron engines just to ENSURE it wasn't the struts. In the end I trashed the two non working setups and copied (alt+left click on windows) the two correctly working setups and after a lot of pain re-struted everything. Worked first time. First station launch successful at a stable orbit of 400km. Just long enough to realize that every docking port was installed backwards.

A few weeks ago my father showed me this game. My father installed the demo on my computer himself. Heres the thing, my father should have retired last year. He is an engineer that lately works on aircraft engine sensors for early stall warnings etc. He told me just yesterday that he thought the only point and click puzzle game in the world was Myst. He cannot figure out how to install a game on windows 8, let alone discover one on his own. And even if he found it at work through his friends, the fact that he could come home and repeat the steps. . . Lets just say my jaw was on the ground. As for how the game was? Awful. KSP should be ashamed. I had a test that monday. What were you thinking developing a game like this? 11:30 P.M. turned to 3:30 A.M. faster than I could say "Maybe just 30 min" Seriously though, best game ever.

I don't know the exact time it took but long enough to 1) Run out of parts before launching a rocket 2) Launch a stock rocket because of 1 3) Fail to read the nav ball at all-crash 4) Find Wallet

A middle of the road answer! I've almost completed my engineering degree and am very well versed with all aspects of the maths involved behind large portions of this game. Having said that, I will always ignore the math for this game. For me designing a rocket is like being able to test physics and crazy ideas without having to justify it. To prove designs with math would just be... well... more like work now.

Warning, long post so before I begin, I will start with explaining why this post is here! First off, I.R.L. free time for myself is something I get maybe a few times a week without going into personal details so because my idea is a very large project, I thought I would just ask the community if your interested before putting forth the time! Second, in relation the lack of free time from the above, I am writing this while waiting for an appointment on my tablet which has no spell checker. I have the spelling of maybe a feeble child so, please forgive me. I have an idea for a new design challenge that will use an extremely detailed point system determine the winning designs (More on why this is different later) of launch vehicles with the emphisis of multipurpose useage and a very different cargo area specification. The rules would be simple, its the scoring that presents the challanege! The rules: The launch vehicle must deliver the cargo to a stable circular orbit around kerbin of between 450,000 and 455,000 feet. The cargo must not be used nor damaged in ANY WAY. ...End... What about damage to the launch vehicle? Umm... That was ment to happen! Thats right, the point of the challange is just to deliver cargo, anything goes as long as the cargo is in an orbit, and untouched! Here is the twist. The points! This is what I want to know if you would like me to spend time developing: **warning this idea is undevloped and in depth, which is why i'm asking if there is interest BEFORE balancing the following rambalings** The point system would boil down into two factors. Multiplyers and raw score. The "Raw Score" would be some computation of Cost of ship(Taking into account any parts SAFELY returned!) vs. payload mass. The multiplyers were where the design part of the challange would come in. I would attempt to give certian features a point system, that would be multiplied by the raw score to determine winners. A very small part of what I had in mind was this: +1 for each different sized docking port on launch vehicle +1 for each radious size of cargo bay (I.E. 1 large fuel tank = +.5(Yeah, its supposted to bee a fraction =D), 2 tanks radious=1, so on) +1 for length of cargo bay The multiplication is what makes the design part so fun, thats the multipurpose part. Deliver a massivly wide thin payload, stupidly long payload, whatever. The point system is what would take into account all the smaller design details and allocate a score. So you delivered a smaller mass payload, but your cargo bay had space for 3 large stations, or 8 smaller sized moduels, or 25 probes. and thus your multipler was huge because your vehicle was that multipurpose! And lastely keep it fun, and kerbal. Once you launch 1 PAYLOAD into space. Thats it. Your rocket design is flawless and cannot be disputed. Your rocket works and your score payload proves it, so if the buyer blows up? "Pilot error." Runs out of fuel? "Should have bought the extended model." But the rocket can't deliver my payload!? "Sounds like a case of didn't buy insurance" So thats it, I know its very vauge at the moment but thats because I would really have to sit down and crunch numbers to balance all the ideas and I just reeally don't want to do it if this challange is boring to others so yeah, thanks!