Dangerous_Beans

i noticed a difference with a core i5-3570k going from stock to 4.4, and from there to 4.8. if you are fine with overclocking i would recommend it. i can't speak about haswell, but my ivy bridge CPU is 3.8ghz turbo and i am able to get it to 4.4ghz at stock voltages, so 16% faster than turbo. at 1.2v i can push 4.8ghz. turbo is a good feature, but it doesn't make overclocking irrelevant.

there is a tutorial on sas here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41941-New-SAS-functionality-and-You! generally you want them around the centre of mass. you want the centre of mass and the centre of thrust aligned on the long axis of the craft. if either are significantly off then the engines will produce a rotational force around the centre of mass, and it will spin out of control. the benefit of the fuel lines is you can make the engine in the centre stage drain from the outer stage tanks, so you can use all the engines from the start, and when you dump the boosters you still have a full tank in the centre. the spinning seems to come from struts not being exactly symmetrical. put a reaction wheel on the top of each booster if it is too bad, or tail fins, otherwise it doesn't matter too much.

why is that? lasers have a range dictated by their focusing optics, and require bulky electrical systems that produce a lot of waste heat. missiles have a "range" dictated by their delta V, and just require some sort of rack to haul them around.

i thought the Oberth effect was due to the preservation of momentum; if your rocket is moving quickly then the propellent has more kinetic energy, cause it's also moving, and that energy has to go somewhere. it's just relative to the speed of the rocket, regardless of the system the rocket is part of. put another way, i can't see why this would occur in a parabolic escape orbit, but not in a highly eccentric orbit. either way, your velocity is still highest at the periapsis so the fuel will do extra work because it has more kinetic energy. I'm probably missing something, i haven't studied physics in a decade.

do struts linking the wheels together help? another possibility might be to build a large H frame with wheels along the long edges, and hang everything from that? beyond that i can't suggest anything.

i'm not sure about that; the mine could spin around pretty quickly in the last second before it detonates, and at the distances lasers will be effective at light is pretty close to instantaneous, so there is no dodging time. so varied acceleration wouldn't help. the best countermeasure would be to shoot them, but for that you have to know that they are a threat. the other option is to just not be nearby. both are things that you're unlikely to be doing if you just think that its a missile that missed or debris.

bomb pumped lasers are useful, because you can send the laser off on a different path to the missile. so the missile can look like it will miss by 10,000km, then detonate and blast off a bunch of lasers. having a bunch of bomb pumped lasers mixed with kinetic kill missiles means your opponent has to shoot down every one, not just the ones that are going to hit them. same logic applies to Casaba-Howitzers.

yeah, a lot of the time they don't seems to have enough. that is what i was getting at with my comment about improving the wheel simulation; depending on what you are doing, a rover can either slide around like it's on ice (as you said), or flip end over end. so the simulation needs improving, rather than just including weaker brakes or an anti-skid system.

thinking about it, the problem with KSP brakes is actually that the wheels have too much traction. my long construction rovers (4m+) will lift the rear wheels under hard braking, when in reality a similar vehicle would lock the front wheels and start to skid. to have a vehicle that will do stoppies you need a much shorter wheelbase (my bike has a 1.5m wheelbase, and you have to really try to get the end off the ground). i think improvements in how the game detects rover wheel collisions and measures friction would help this.

i've always found i have enough time to just turn around. my tugs could easily mount retros, but they happily spin on the spot, and even my inter-planetry ship can be flipped end over end fairly easily. the mass that retros would require seems better spent on more fuel.

any reason why you have LV-30/45s, LV-Ns and backwards facing LV-909s?

I'm glad your Kerbals packed good healthy food, rather than just snacks. Is Kembree stuck on Eve, or does ze have a way back off?

you don't have to drop down into Kerbin SOI, if you raise your orbit you can escape Minimus SOI while still staying in Kerbin SOI (burning prograde from the far side of minimus should do this). going down the Kerbin gravity well just seems like a waste of fuel in this scenario. the orbital periods are starting to get long out there, but the furthest off you can be from a launch window is about 7 days. i'm not sure if that is enough to cancel out the fuel savings from launching from so high.

this guy built one: http://www.mindspring.com/~sportrocketry/ksp/birddog.html looks like Captain Sierra's suggestion.

my biggest problem is remembering to keep things simple and to specialise. for instance: i spent ages trying to design a system that could land 4-6 expansion arms for my Mun base on the Mun. every attempt failed, and i just couldn't get it. so i sent them up one at a time, and used a light duty tug to land them. much easier, more effective, and i have realised that i don't need 6 of the expansion arms anyway.

just to be pedantic, wouldn't Mach 0.89234E+9972 in a vacuum be 0m/s ? to quote from wikipedia: "Mach number (M or Ma) /ˈmÉ‘ËÂx/ is a dimensionless quantity representing the ratio of speed of an object moving through a fluid and the local speed of sound."

i have seen the same thing. i don't think there is an easy way to fix it, you probably need to delete the craft and start over.

How much weight can the little rover take? is it able to move those full jumbo cans around on Kerbin? i was trying to do this last night, and failing, so this should be really helpful. thanks

It's clearly at the beginning of the second stage, just after the first lot of boosters are dropped, and just before a vital strut fails and the entire thing explodes

wouldn't that depend on your thrust to weight ratio? a rocket with a T/W of 2 can only go terminal velocity, so if your T/W is <2 (a<19.6m/s/s) you are fine to run at 100% throttle. also Mechjeb has a prevent overheat tool which seems to work quite well.

if you right click on a docking port, pod, or probe body you get an option that says "control from here". if you choose that option the orientation of that part will be used to determine forward/backwards directions. if you have probe bodies in weird places you often end up with the game getting confused, so it's good to check.

wouldn't the burn time be the Dv of the stage, divided by the average acceleration? so for a jumbo tank with a mainsail in a vacuum, Dv = 330*9.81*ln(42/10)=4,645.8 and average acceleration would be (1500/42+1500/10)/2=92.8m/s/s, so that gives a burn time of 4645.8/92.8=50s swap out the mainsail for an LV-N and you get 14,217m/s Dv, with an average acceleration of 5.58m/s for a burn time of ~2,548s, about 2/3rds of an hour. Where did i go wrong?

ok, when i get a chance i'll try to replicate it, and next time is happens i'll grab a copy of the log.

i think Tophir's point can be extended to any game; you have an initial phase where you are messing around and learning how the game works, and then a phase where you understand the mechanics and can then pursue a more thought out strategy. that would defiantly match my experience with computer games, and even some aspects of pen and paper role-playing games. even for a (hypothetical) shooter i have moved from "hey, i have a rocket launcher, blam-blam-blam! damn, need more ammo", to "ok, nearest gun is the impact rifle to the south, then i can loop around via the flack cannon spawn point to see what is happening in the central area". so it isn't the game changing, it's how you understand the game that's changing, and maybe you like the initial phase more.

97-ish km according to the wiki. a quick google search suggested you need ~11-12km/s of Dv. my approach would be to check Gilly for Kethane. trying to use kethane at the bottom of a 16m/s/s gravity well with a 100km thick atmosphere seems like a horrible task. based off the Dv subway chart, it would be cheaper to ship in fuel from Eloo. if there is no useful kethane on Gilly, then i would launch a series of automated tankers from Kerbin. as for putting kerbins on the ground, a purpose built asparagus staged rocket could be parachuted down. Jeb can get out and plant his flag, as the actress said to the bishop, before leaving and never coming back.