Vedexent

It's still possible to us asparagus, and retrieve some of the costs, using remote guidance control units in the liquid stages. They are full "ships" as far as KSP is considered, and can be recovered through the tracking station. Yes - they're still more expensive than cheap SRBs, and yes, since you only get a %age of the cost back, they loss is higher. But they might not be a completely unreasonable option in some cases.

1. A picture would help - but you automatically have any part you contract to test. Either you already have it, or you will be given a limited stock of "experimental" versions of that part to test. You won't even have a contract you can't test. 2. I'm not using pen & paper - but I agree the window is very small. 3. Kerbal Engineer Redux? It now works with 0.24. I don't consider it "cheating" since it can't fly the ship for you, just give you information. If you really want, you can just put the build engineer chip on your rocket in the VAB, and take it off just before launch. 4. Contracts give you an advance up front. They'll take it BACK (plus some ... maybe) if you FAIL in the contract (it expires and you still haven't succeeded), but they are willing to front you some cash to build new test rockets. If you've used up all the advances by "blowing up ships" ... well, don't blow up ships! Engineer should help, see #3. 5. I wish there was a way to do this too! There is a RandomCrew mod somewhere - but it doesn't work quite the way I'd like. A "crew rotation" mod would be nice. Don't forget you can always deliberately pick crew in the VAB, so you can pick some poor nobody as a test pilot. 6. I think you mean contracts? But yes - the tech tree would have to give you the Stayputnik unmanned control pod BEFORE any manned Kerbal pods. While I haven't tried, I don't think tech trees are hard to edit. Perhaps someone has - or will - mod this?

This. I bought the game off the website way back when. I also bought it again on Steam rather than transferring it - mostly because I want to support the game, and hey - it's ~$20, it's not like buying a $70 AAA title multiple times. So, yes - I'd pony up $$ for expansions. EDIT: I also wonder how many of the "not over $10" and "No" crowd still want Squad to implement "new feature X" for free, on the next release. TANSTAAFL, people.

First of all - this is a great mod. I especially appreciate how it's really a generic resource framework, and not just some hard coded resources. However - I'm having some interesting "issues" regarding how the Mod treats Carbon Dioxide. Background: I've been trying to develop a hydroponics/aeroponics bay part. To that end, I: Created two additional pair of of custom resources: Food,Waste,Water, and WasteWater, in the \Resources\IonCrewSupport.cfg Added these resource in the \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg file, as ION_SUPPORT_KERBAL_RESOURCE, with consumption rates (1 Kerbal consumes 1 unit of Food and Water, and produced 1 Unit of WasteWater and Waste, per day or 1/85600 per second). Copied a small inline RCS tank model under a new name, and added new resources storage capabilities to it. Copied a large inline tank model, and gave it a new name Created a file for ModuleManager in the Mod's root folder (with all the others), for the new large inline tank name (Hydroponics Bay) adding an IonModuleGenerator MODULE to the part, specifying INPUT_RESOURCE and OUTPUT_RESOURCE entries in the MODULE block. Waste, WasteWater, CarbonDioxide, and a lot of power go in - Food,Oxygen, and Water come out. Rates are ~10% higher than 1 Kerbal will produce. All resources are required for conversion. This means that the hydroponics bay's output may fluctuate up and down a bit as it runs out of waste to convert, but overall the hydroponics bay works to keep one Kerbal alive. This worked quite well for Food/Waste and Water/WasteWater. Under 100K time acceleration, rounding errors would cause resources to "leak" out of the system, but that seemed to add a bit more realism; a small closed life support system wouldn't be perfect, and it took hundreds of days to draw down resources significantly, so deep space missions were still practical. However, carbon dioxide acted weird. Whenever I would come out of time warp, carbon dioxide would suddenly and very quickly deplete. Oxygen was maxed out, so it looks like there was very rapid O2 conversion going on, and I hadn't added a recycle converter. I went into \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg and removed the built-in Carbon Dioxide scrubber in ION_SUPPORT_POD_GENERATOR. No change. Carbon dioxide would still disappear rapidly, coming out of warp. Thinking that there was some sort of "hard coded" treatment of CarbonDioxide/Oxygen going on, I created a new pair of resources O2/CO2 and defined them like I had Food/Waste - using the consumption rates built in for Oxygen/CarbonDioxide. I then removed the entries for Oxygen and CarbonDioxide from \Resources\IonCrewSupport.cfg and \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg. AFAIK, this should have removed it as a resource, and removed any "resource check" from the life support system. I also then altered both my edited "resource tank" and "hydroponics bay" to use O2/CO2 in place of Oxygen/Carbon dioxide. This worked OK - CO2 did not spontaneously convert like CarbonDioxide had, and O2 behave inversely to CO2. However, the game still dropped out of warp every hour, and eventually the Kerbal pilot died, just as if the Mod was still checking for oxygen and carbonDioxide, which I removed from \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg. So - does anyone have any ideas what is happening? It almost looks like there's some hardcoding going on with Oxygen/CarbonDioxide. Or, am I missing a crucial configuration file somewhere?

I had an Apollo style Munar mission: Kerbin-Mun command ship/transfer stage, and a lander. I had build in the in-line command computer module in the command stage so that I could theoretically fly it "from the ground" when the single Kerbalnaut was away on the Munar landing. Lander ran out of fuel partway on the accent stage, and had not quite reached an orbital trajectory. I had the pilot go EVA mid-arch, and using the suit thrusters, managed to just barely get him into a stable orbit while the lander crashed back into the Mun. Switched over to the command ship, and rendezvoused with the pilot, got him on board, and flew home.

With re-entry heat being only cosmetic right now, it makes me wish you could put parachutes on Kerbalnauts: you could do an EVA thruster re-entry without the ship. I've done an EVA orbital burn from the Mun when the lander ran out of fuel before establishing a full orbit, so I think an EVA re-entry could be fun.

As for the OP - I don't think it's an age thing; I think it's a personality thing. I'm sure there are teenagers and some pre-teens with the patience and focus to deal with the details of some of the more complex aspects of KSP. I suspect there are adults in their 40s or over which don't. I suspect that older player are more likely to have the patience and focus - but as I have no data, I'm not going to make a claim on that front.

IQ has been indeed going up. Average scores in a test which measures arbitrary problem rational problem solving, has been going up steadily as Western civilization has becoming more and more technologically oriented. Go figure. That doesn't make someone born in 1800 a moron compared to someone was born in 2000. There are other kinds of intelligence scores which have been going down. That doesn't makes someone born in 2000 dumber than someone born in 1800, either. It just means that the cultural focus of intelligence and learning has been changing over time, in the Western world. I also highly doubt that there are noticeable IQ changes within a span of 10 years.

I would say yes to any aspect of MechJeb which is purely informational in nature: give me information to better plan and execute something, but don't do it for me. Winging it, guesstimating, and going with your "gut feeling" might be fine to get you into orbit, but fine tuning a burn from Kerbin orbit straight into a Jool aerobraking maneuver before you're more than 240Km away from Kerbin needs some decimal places, and that's why I have MechJeb (and Protractor on anything Interplanetary) on most of my designs. As the node planner "does it for me" for way to many kinds of maneuvers, I'd rather see it not be part of the stock game. I'd even be willing to give up the "smart ass", if all 6 vector icons showed on the "meatball" (dynamically updated, so that the normal/anti-normal vectors are showed in "real time"), and the cross-hairs and target icons could be tuned down to a single pixel width so I can get the thrust vector exact.

Can't find the Duna pyramid, or the rover camera - but the face is intact.

Tried the Kethane mod? You could put Kethane refinery parts onto the station, along with Kethane storage, and fuel storage. Now the station has actual game use as a fuel refinery and a fuel depot. Put one around Minmus - high up the Kerbin gravity well - and you can mine fuel from Minmus and refuel vessels before setting off on interplanetary burn. That allows you either smaller/more efficient interplanetary missions, or loads of excess delta-v when you get to the target (very handy if it's a mission to Jool; you'll want to be able to hop from moon to moon).

What color? Red, green, or blue? Oh wait ... it doesn't matter....

Only if you're doing flights within the Kerbin/Mun/Minmus system. Once you start doing interplanetary flights, that game changes; cryogenic fuel might be a bad choice for 200 days flight to Jool

Ah, Got it I could see that the return velocity coming back from apoapsis would be way higher and increase the effect, but I didn't take into consideration the energy used to set up the orbit - and yeah, I can see that there just isn't a net gain here. Thank you! edit: I do have a Kethane refinery / re-fueling station in orbit of Minmus though, so perhaps the idea isn't completely dead if I can replace the fuel needed to get out to Minmus. Still - the original question was a "no starter".

Agreed - that's the optimum simple case: lowest orbit, highest "natural" velocity, best efficiency. Doing a deep dive from a highly elliptical orbit would give you a much higher velocity, and thus more of an effect - but it seems way more complicated to set up.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any mods, or online web applications, that help one to set up using the Oberth effect on an interplanetary ejection burn. I'm thinking that ideally, one would want to set up a highly elliptical orbit around Kerbin, with a periapsis of - say - 100km, and the apoapsis as close out of the edge of the Kerbin SOI as possible. Provided one doesn't have problems with accidental slingshot maneuvers around Minmus of the Mun, one would be going max possible orbital speed at the periapsis; maximum Oberth effect on one's burn to Duna, Jool, or wherever. The problems I see with this are: Timing: One would have to "tune" the orbital period so that the craft arrives at periapsis just as one needed to be burning for ejection Angle: You would have to set up the initial elliptical orbit up so that the hyperbolic ejection path after the periapsis burn would be either in prograde or retrograde to Kerbin's orbit. I'm thinking the direction of the "long axis" of the ellipse would be related to the Kerbin phase angle around the Sun. Has anyone had any successful experience setting this all up? Does anyone know of any tools / mods that could help set this up? Or - alternatively - have I missed something and it's not as complicated as it seems? Thanks,

Interesting. I especially like that ships/Kerbals still use resources when not active. Do I understand this correctly, in that if I park Bill in orbit around Minmus with an O2 tank, and forget about him while I've flying a probe to Jool, he can suffocate? If so, suddenly the alarm clock mod becomes important; even if MechJeb warps to "alarm points" automatically, I would still need to track "external" events. I've been tinkering with resource conversion in the Kethane mod (e.g. adding the ability to create Oxygen for my current life support mod), so I can see stations/bases not being 100% able to re-cycle resources (we can't do that, and we're the size of a planet; think oil) - you just have to make sure they're well supplied with Kethane. I do like the idea also of modding the jet intakes to consume power and be able to "scoop" materials from the atmosphere or oceans - this might be a much less costly (in terms of power and equipment) means of gathering resources, so that a base on Laythe might be able to survive with minimal energy cost and converters, while a base on the Mun might be constantly mining Kethane to keep running. I would very much like to see large greenhouse habitat modules that would consume large amounts of power and water (waste water? convert waste water to water?) into modest amounts of food.

Hey - different strokes for different folks. For me the fun is in making it work. I might only ever write an automated script to try it out once, but it's still "can you make ion engines practical to use in KSP and realistic at the same time" is - to me at least - an interesting problem. Your idea of what's fun may - almost certainly does, from your comments - differ.

It could be interesting to try more "realistic" ion engines ... but only if I can automate the ship to some extent.

All depends on what you deem "reasonable". Yes - they take too much "user time" right now, hence the desire to automate their use. As for stopping, I'm already aerobraking at any target that has an atmosphere; why waste 1,400 m/s delta-v do an insertion burn into the Jool system of moons when you can do one 11 m/s course correction at target ascending node, and drop your Jool periapsis to 120km? I don't know about you, but I can use another 1,400 m/s to hop around Jool's moons.

I know that MechJeb had Autom8 LUA based scripting language, and I understand that it is not currently available until the devs re-work it. Are there any other options for programming - any mods? What I'd like to do is set up an ion-engine auto-burn script, something like: while (ship.velocity < kerbin.EscapeVel()): if (-180 < ship.timeToPE() < 180): ship.burnPrograde() Basically automate periapsis "kicks" with the ion engines and walk away from the game for a few hours. Any ideas, or do I just need to be patient and wait for Autom8 2.0 (or write my own mod)? Edit: arg! Kerbal Scripting Language

You can always just set the number of persistent debris to zero in the game settings. The game will remove debris as they are created.

You might look at MechJeb 2.0 - NOT to land for you (although, you can do that as well if you want) - but to use the landing prediction function. If you want to do the landings yourself, use MechJeb for information, not control. Even if you don't give it control, it will give you the predicted landing coordinates, and even put a blue marker on the map. Playing around with this landing on Minmus is a good way of learning what maneuver burns (prograde, retrograde, normal, anti-normal, etc.) will do to the placement of the marker, and the landing coordinates. Also - letting MechJeb land on a target position a few times, while you watch what it does and try and figure out why is quite educational. Practice this way, and you'll have a much better understanding on how to drop your lander right where you want it.

Recently having fun with the Kethane mod (putting a fuel refinery/depot in orbit of Minmus makes interplanetary exploration a lot easier). I'm also branching out with the life support mods - but I'm wondering: is there a cross over: Life support machinery that will convert Kethane to O2 and/or water? I did some Googling and searching here on the Forums, to no avail. I haven't seen any Kethane power life support yet. Ideally, I'd love to be able to attach a solar power array (and/or nuclear thermoelectric cells), a CO2 scrubber, a hydroponics pod, and a Kethane convertor to a big Kethane tank for long term deep-space station life support. Any ideas/suggestion? Thanks,