Diche Bach

Sample of some stuff I know well. Hope you enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2IeHIG_6d4 . . . and I should stop there before I get really carried away

Ah thanks for clarifying all of that Tavert! Great fun stuff I've actually enjoyed playing and replaying the "Alpha" mission and the "Sputnik I" mission in the NT Space Program and the Stock mission pack for Mission Controller. Basically just, send up a probe to 70 or 75 km and land it safely. Because MC uses a budget there is an incentive to use as cheap of rocket as you can, and also to land it on land-best of all flat land where it won't get damaged-because you can recycle it for more. It is actually somewhat challenging to get a ballistic missile to come down more or less where it took off from! Very interesting to fiddle around and see how little course and velocity changes can have dramatic changes on the shape of the parabola, but I should stop as I risk sending this thread off topic.

Welcome Papics! I too am a relative newcomer, although verbose. Don't let that post count fool ya; with a Ph.D. in anthropology, I know even LESS about gravity wells and such than you do! Nonetheless I have managed to do a couple successful "sling shot" maneuvers around the Mun. I played with Stock for about 90 hours of play, and then it just seemed time to add the mods. Can share my list of which ones I thought looked good when you are ready.

They sound a bit 'tinny' to me. I think the engine sounds could do with a bit of 'thickening' for lack of a better word. Sounds are IMO a huge part of what makes a good game a great game. I would call the sounds in KSP at present, overall good. The music is very good. Some of the sounds are perfect. But overall they could stand to be revisited and improved a bit. Engine sounds being one of the ones that I think could stand a bit of improvement.

Whats the cheapest launcher + probe that you guys have managed to complete the Sputnik II mission in Stock mission pack for this plugin? I can get the Alpha (NT Space Program) and Sputnik I done for about 10,000 kerbal dollars. But I've been fiddling alot and it seems to be hard to get under about 42,000 kerballars and still have a otal Atmo Delta-V in the 4500 ballpark and a TWR reasonably above 1. So far, this is about the best I've come up with: Sputnik 4 Tri-FL which is costing me about 42.2k Kerballars.

50. Hair fire caused by premature pyrotechnic detonation.

Thanks for clarifying that Cilph. I'm having a lot of fun with this, so I'll have a look at the github issue tracker and see if I can make any worthwhile contributions. It looks like I'm still using RemoteTech1, but now I haven't noticed that.

Okay! More-or-less what I expected. I guess in the real world, drag is far more complicated. I could infer from your post that, at this point, aerodynamic parts such as conical nose cones do not actually reduce drag and increase efficiency? Also when you say "more pitch" you mean that, they need to pitch away from vertical earlier in their ascent (typically toward zero eh?). If I am correct then, outside of a model that reflected the real life aerodynamic stresses of turning while under thrust, is there really any downside to engaging in a more stepwise pitching to east process like Moon Goddess described for a ship of _any_ size? I would imagine that for a small turn, there is a bit of lost velocity but if you are doing say, 5-degrees to east every 1000, or 1500m of ascent, I would think that, in the relatively simple model you seem to be describing for KSP, that ascent pattern would be optimum for effectively all ships, though perhaps more critical for attaining orbit for a low TWR ship? My past few orbits I've been following exactly this type of ascent path (ascend 1000 or 1500 m, turn 5 degrees east; repeat). This is so far with ships that have adequate surface TWR (2.09 with 7.8 Max TWR and 4535 Atmo Dv) and 28.6 ton mass. I am pretty confident I'm getting into a low orbit (75 or 80km) with more fuel left over using the stepwise ascent path.

This post and the ones immediately before and after should help.

I very much respect and appreciate how Harvester thinks! He knows what he is doing! Moreover, he makes a very compelling argument as much. Lets all keep in mind guys that: It took Bethesda, what? 10 or 15 years to progress from Morrowind through Oblivion and to Skyrim (not that everyone would necessarily agree that was a steady improvement across the board). Yes, I know that there were other TES games before Morrowind, and no I'm not firm on those dates. Suffice to say, it was a LOT of years in the making. Truly GREAT games take any iterations to manifest. I think between Civ 1 and Civ 4 (the last one I'd consider an improvement on the preceding on) it must've been what? 20 years!? Lets hope that KSP proves to be that kind of long-lived EPIC game, that Squad is swimming in enough cash to hire as many new folks as they want, and that the mod community continues to thrive as much as it amazingly does given this is an Alpha stage game. All this to say: if something on your wish list doesn't make it into the next update because a major untouched area of the game needs some attention, well, just try to be patient

Couple issues I'm having with the Flight Computer: 1. It seems you _must_ click the maneuver command after the node is set up and the throttle command has been sent. A small thing but worth noting if it is easy to reconfigure it somehow. 2. If you give it a burn command for which it doesn't actually have enough fuel, it seems to be very difficult to get to relinquish command. Clicking the Flight Computer off didn't give me back control of my throttle I had to right-click the engine to turn it off. 3. Can it handle retro-grade burns? I'm guessing it can and it was just that I set the countdown to be just past the node and so it didn't actually turn itself. 99% sure I setup it a retro manuever node then a delayed throttle command then clicked manuever, and instead of doing a retro burn it did a prograde burn. ADDIT: yeah I'm pretty sure that when I plot a retrograde maneuver node, it is doing a prograde burn. I can do a quick Youtube video of what I'm doing if no one else is seeing this. It may just be that I'm doing something wrong.

Since I'm learning to use the RemoteTech Flight Computer, I've started doing something like this and anecdotally it does seem to spare more fuel. What are the actual ship parameters that determine the "optimum" ascent path? Would it be possible to use an 'eyeball' and intuition method with any given spaceship, and adjust your flight path accordingly?

ROFLMAO!! Wow, some good ones in here! I myself have had a few close calls, but given that I was a very active caver in TAG and the Ozarks between 1986 and about 2000 the fact that I'm alive at all is perhaps a testament to either my luck, or skill. A quick synopsis: Age 3, "playing" with the neighbors chihuahua in the apartment building in St. Louis. He bit me right on my left eye. Had to be rushed to the emergency room for surgery and about 25 stitches is what they tell me. Luckily it did no permanent damage to the eye. Age 12, "riding my bicycle" down fairly steep hill; attempted a sharp left hand turn onto an alleyway. Somehow flipped the bike up 2 or 3 meters into the air and wound up landing straddled on top of a 5ft tall chain link fence. Luckily the family jewels don't seem to have been damaged but I still have the scar tissue. Age 25 or so, 'pit bopping' trip in NE Alabama when I got down to the bottom of this 45 meter pit, I thought "Something didn't seem right about that lip." So I decided to go ahead and climb straight out instead of letting Ray climb out first. I climbed very gently so as not to bounce the rope. Once I was up 10 or 15 meters I could see this huge fuzz ball about 3 meters right below the lip. By the time I passed it, the sheath was completely gone and the core was about halfway cut through. Some years later: trapped in a flooded cave for 19 hours because I followed some damn fool whom I should've known didn't know what he was doing. Broke my clavicle a few years after that, which required a 6 hour self rescue (I had 6 other people with me). That was pretty much the end of my caving and accident-having era!

I agree with this 100%

Thanks Bubba!

I'm still struggling to complete the first couple of missions in the NT Space Program and the Stock pack. I do not want to tell you how many times I've redone those "Alpha" and "Sputnik I" missions . . . Now that I'm getting the hang of using the RT Flight Computer I should be able to make it through the next steps and start to put up Comm sats (i.e., your repeatable missions). But until I had at least put a couple of unmanned probes into stable orbits it just seemed like "cheating" to skip ahead to those missions. So in sum: please retain the curent difficulty level or the 'default.' Some of us are not that masterful, and you could always have three levels of diffculty instead of two eh?

Once I get up to about 50km and until I'm in orbit, the current Navball confuses the heck out of me. I still dont' feel like I have an intuition for how to read it at those sorts of altitudes. At low altitudes and in space it is okay for me, though I still cannot fathom why the north and south keys seem to cause the thing to tilt in oppositive directions on the nav ball compared to the east and west keys. Meaning. D makes it tilt right, i.e., east, and A makes it tilt left, i.e., west. But the fact that the W Pitch adjustment (up/back) seems to make it point south, whereas the S Pitch adjustment (down/forward) seems to make it point north again, confuses the heck out of me. I don't know if the Apollo ball would be really any better or not, but yeah . . . some kinda change to the NavBall would be good to me. This one seems good for flying an aircraft, but not really so good for something that goes into space. Also the numbers on it are so tiny for me on my screen that I basically can't read them.

Thanks guys!

Mod list is included in first post now, and a Youtube clip too. Hmm, don't think so. Its got some solar panels and a 200 battery which should last it for a good 10 minutes or so.

Before installing mods, I was doing pretty well with getting in to orbit, doing fly-bys, etc. Now I seem to be having problems of the most basic sort. For example, any idea why the throttle on this ship "Sputnik I Rocket." would just cut to zero after a 20 or so seconds in flight and then be unresponseive. It is designed to be able to complete the "Beta" mission in "NT Space Program" mission pack for Mission Controller, and also to be able to do the "Sputnik II" mission in the Stock mission pack for that plugin. These missions both require attaining a stable low orbit while carrying 3 communotron antennae plus one each of the science instruments and then safely returning to Kerbin (thus the parachute and the lander legs to break the fall a bit). Also once I get up to about 10km it becomes uncontrollable. I don't get it. It seems like this (except the RT and lander stuff on top) is largely the same type of rocket I've launched dozens of times no problemo. Mods that are installed (though I'm not trying to "use" any of the autopilot or flight computer features on anything): B9 Aerospace Pack R3 Chatterer HOME 1.03 Ioncross Crew Support Plugin Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Engineer Redux Kethane Lazor Docking Cam Mechjeb 2.09 Mission Controller NovaPunch 2.02 NT Space Program Orbital Construction Procedural Fairings 2.2 Protractor RemoteTech Sub-Assembly Manager TAC Fuel Balancer Appreciate any ideas on why my ship won't fly and/or any general helpful advice on ship design. Here is a short clip that shows what keeps happening when I try to get this into orbit. 1. At about about ~20 seconds in, the throttle just cuts out and then won't respond. 2. Once I jettison the solid boosters about about 35 seconds, the throttle becomes responsive again. 3. From about 45 seconds onward you can see me struggling to keep it under control, it is unresponse to pitch commands using the keyboard and wants to roll west and south. 4. Finally at about 1:00 I try to get it under control with the RemoteTech Flight Computer but even that does not work. Is it just that it is top heavy? But then why the weird thing with the throttle cutting and and staying unresponsive for a while? ADDIT: also of note, it has two command pods on it: one at the top for the final probe vehicle, and one about midway (nearer the starting center of gravity). In the video I launch it without transferring control to the lower command pod, but in repeated tests, this doesn't make any difference. Even if I change to "Control From Here" at the lower command pod that is closer to the center of gravity, it still exhibits the same uncontrollable wobble westn southwesterly after it gets about a minute up.

I was totally lost until I found this: Key Bindings

410. Our planet is completely uninhabited except for some scientists and engineers waddling around inside the buildings at KSC. 411. Apart from KSC, our temperate planet with ample oceans and expansive green fields is devoid of animal and plant life, cities, roads and infrastructure. 412. Unlike Earth, with its ~180 nations, thousands of languages, billions of humans and tens of thousands of sub-cultures, Kerbin appears to have zero cultural or linguistic diversity and a total lack of native governments or institutions apart from the Kerbal Space Program. (Although it has been conjectured that "Kerbal civilisation may live underground or underwater due to some unknown factor" 413. The absence of any apparent sexual dimorphism or obvious juvenile or elderly individuals among our species suggests that we Kerbals are asexually reproducing immortal hive-mind critters. 414. Our resiliency to shock, lack of air, sleep deprivation, radiation, extremes of heat and cold are strong indicators of our evolutionary relationship to the Incredible Hulk, who as shown in this picture, HAS been known to bop around in space without a space suit or means of propulsion other than bounding from planet to planet. 415. This leads this commentator to conjecture that we Kerbals are in fact the 14th Lost Tribe of the Hulks.

ADDIT: That is Great JDP, thanks! So I gather that right now, RT and MJ can't work together to allow MJ to execute actions while a vehicle is out of RT contact? Anyway, not a problem as one can clearly use the RT Flight Computer to get it done. Thanks for showing us how! Ah, I'm having the same problem (I think) so I'll have to check this out.

ADDIT: Just noticed JDP posted a "how to" video for using the RT Flight Computer, so this problem is seemingly solved for me. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/16347-0-20-RemoteTech-Relay-Network-–-RemoteTech-2-has-opened-up-for-playtesting?p=574447&viewfull=1#post574447 Trying to finish the Sputnik III stock mission in Mission Controller mod pack. Got RemoteTech2 and MJ running. KSC only provides about a 65-degree window for comms with satellites, so I was hoping I could use MechJeb Maneuver Planner to program the probe to do a burn at apoapsis (far side of planet from KSC) and get the periapsis up above the 75km minimum to complete the mission. But alas, once the vehicle goes out of RT radio contact, the "MechJeb Control" button goes red and the maneuver node I planned did not execute. The obvious solutions are to: (a) make Sputnik manned; ( send up manned missions with KEO and enough other geosynch satellites to ring Kerbin with comms links; either of which I certainly could do. But obviously, for roleplaying purposes, sending up a manned mission _before_ I manage the first unmanned low orbital satellite seems a bit out of whack! Any suggestions here?

Do you guys think it is possible that, given this is still an alpha stage game, that the developers haven't even thought all this stuff through as much as you have, and that the characteristics of some of these planets are at present, simply anomalous relative to the laws of chemistry and physics? I'm new to the game so, no idea if this is the sort of thing they would've sorted out already or not. The other thing to consider is that: even today, Jupiter and his moons (I know most planets are referred to by the feminine pronoun but in this case that just doesn't seem right) remain largely mysterious and unknown. Indeed, the finest details of _Earth's_ geologic history and structure remain somewhat mysterious even now.