Psycix

At the same time, however, the lower your velocity, the less delta-V it takes to do a course change. Radial and normal burns should be done when traveling slow and far away. Prograde-retrograde when traveling fast.

Modeling it in great detail may indeed take too many polygons. Let's look at the LV-T30: Above the nozzle you can see a central can that covers most of the plumbing, but it does have the required size and shape for a combustion chamber and the like. The "exhaust pipe" on the side tells us it uses a gas-generator cycle to power the turbopumps. (the main alternative to a gas-generator cycle is the staged combustion cycle) If we compare it to a real-life one, for example, the Merlin1D, we can see that the proportions are realistic. The massive amount of plumbing and electronics above the engine can be ignored, they would be impossible to model and are better off stuck in the cylindrical top part like they did on the LV-T30. Merlin engine picture. In the subject of staged-combustion cycle, an example would be the NK-33, as you can see, the exhaust pipe is gone, and the russians went with a rather simple yet robust stack of turbines in an assembly parallel to the combustion chamber. The space shuttle main engine, or "SSME" is also a staged-combustion design, with all the stuff wrapped around the combustion chamber in a more complicated way. I think the Skipper and Mainsail engines can be compared to these: As you can see, there is a big volume in the top half of the engines that accommodates all of these parts, while providing a low-poly solution. They are then made visually pleasing by having some pipes run around to add detail. Personally I love how the mailsail has got a fuel line running down to the nozzle for regenerative cooling (although I hate how yellow it is), it is a small detail that shows the presence of a part as seen on real rocket engines. Aaaanyway, I think I'm getting carried away here, I hope you find this an interesting read. The message I'm trying to convey here: I think it is possible to make relatively low-poly models that satisfy all realistic aspects. Although the enthusiasts like me might enjoy seeing a high-poly turbine housing, a simple cylinder that shows "it is there" should be sufficient: it shows that the modeler put thought into it and the engine is realistically possible. I hope I'm not pushing my opinions, you're a modder with no obligations to me at all so I think the way you welcome feedback is amazing! May this inspire you to make many more awesome parts!

What is this supposed to mean? Eve has the second thickest atmosphere in the game, only superseded by our friendly neighborhood gas-giant Jool. Here, use this calculator to precisely calculate the required height of your periapsis. http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/ The most efficient thing is to do the course correction as soon as possible. Try to already get a low periapsis when doing the interplanetary transfer, and do the final steering as soon as you enter Eve's SOI.

Correct, and my opinion applies to that one as well I think I'm just worried people get misinformed about how rockets work, while there are already enough of physics misconceptions in the world, so I guess I'll have to go yell at the KSP devs now. But yeah, I guess it's just a pet peeve of mine. If you ever feel like modeling a gas-generator+turbopumps with the same quality as this project, I'll be the first one to drool at it.

Aerobrake! Not much more to say.

For the non believers: Source post. Thanks to yongedevil for performing the test. As you can see, the eventual science points obtained are almost the same. Transmission-only is equally as effective (and much more practical) rendering sample return useless.

I also made a thread about this very issue. I hope the next patch brings useful sample returns.

Try to go slower. Use retrorockets to slow down, or be creative and make some sort of helicopter.

It annoys me to see a nozzle (albeit a nice looking one) without space for combustion chamber and turbopumps, yet being called an engine. There is more to a rocket engine than just the nozzle. Other than that, nice work. I also like the way you gave it a purpose in a balanced way.

Actually, my point is that smart use of the F key is impossible/broken, because every time you tap it the SAS allows it to deviate way too much before holding the heading. During F-key maneuvering, I strongly prefer the aggressive SAS of 20 and before. That's my problem as well. You need to re-learn the entire way SAS responses. I hope I can adjust to it, but so far I think SAS takes too long to steer more aggressively. Sure, would re-introduce wobble, but wobble can be mitigated with F. I'm still hoping for an adjustable SAS system.

I think it is less suitable for having it mixed in with a series of small course corrections (like a gravity turn). It doesn't ramp up as aggressively as it did, and it veers off before settling in. This makes it useless for "hard-locking" a heading for a small amount of time.

My current explorer vessel has the following action groups: 1 - Goo 2 - Materials 3 - Temperature 4 - Pressure 5 - Crew report I faceroll them all, spamclick send, physics timewarp it 4x to speed it up. Then I do a dozen of in-out EVA's. Repeat for every point on each body: -High space -Near space -High atmosphere (if any) -Lower atmosphere (if any) -Surface -Biomes (if any) This method got me THOUSANDS of science points from a single duna+ike mission, unlocking most of the tech tree. Conlusion: System is flawed, encourages a grind and is not very interesting to play.

Turn off gravity, so that you can deploy the legs midair?

The only reason I am arguing is because I don't see any reason for disabling it while I see a few applications that may benefit from enabling it. I might not even use the feature myself, but I think it is simply a weird call to disable it for those who want to. Perhaps I'm crying about it, but I'm merely responding to people who think it should be disabled without giving a proper reason. I'm out of this thread.

No, because most of the science is already done. Why is everybody crying about a feature that doesn't harm them in any way? You can ignore it if you want to. I can't ignore the fact that it isn't there.

Yes, just have the diminishing returns in there exactly like in career.

You can't spend points in the game Tetris either. So there is no point for them, right? Why is it bad if points are there? Just existing. Simply "being there" for those who are interested in them. Nobody has to take note if they don't want to.

The challenge of unlocking the tech tree. There is no reason to make us unable to earn points like in career. (while simply not being able to spend them)

No, we can't do challenges like that because before we have those parts in career we've already done a lot of the science. So why not give them the same value as career mode?

Why? The fact that you have no desire for it doesn't mean nobody should be able to. To me you sound like this: "I don't use spaceplanes so they should be cut from the game." Why limit something for other people simply because you do not wish to use that yourself?

Why not? Really, this is bad reasoning. If you reason like that, why play sandbox at all? Why play KSP at all? It has no point right? Simple answer: Because it is fun. Instead of asking why we need it, give a good reason why we can't have it. In my opinion we need it because: It is fun to play sandbox, and being able to do experiments in sandbox is something we want to be able to do. We can go somewhere, collect a sample, and get confirmation of the game that we did so. People roleplay, and if the game allows us to do science in sandbox then we will do science in sandbox. Not because it has a point, but because it is fun. Sure, we can't spend the science points, but why would that matter? Think of it as being able to get a high-score. How sandbox is sandbox if you are not able to do everything? Challenges like: "Aquire x science points using "these" parts." would be impossible. If science is not allowed in sandbox "because you dont need the points", then career mode should shut down all science the moment you acquire enough points to complete the tech tree. Which would be silly, right? So how is sandbox different?

Any screenshots for the new stuff? I'm not installing it yet until I finished career stock.

I would prefer if it would ramp up somewhat more aggressively. It's great that we can go straight up without wobble, but alternating steering and SAS like I used to do doesn't work properly. Why don't we get to adjust SAS settings as we please?

So the only issue here is the camera issue that clipped and did not render the green planet, leaving you with a space background. They should indeed add some sort of green overlay to the screen when about to be crushed.

Correct. But you can get an equal amount and "exhaust the source" without having to do a return. My illustration was meant to show that you can get more points out of a single mission by transmitting instead of returning. I'll post accurate numbers later. The total amount of points available is equal. The question is, which is harder: Going one-way and spamming transmit 20 times, or going somewhere AND returning a few times?