raygundan

Yeah... I'm honestly sorta indifferent to whether we end up with realism or soupodynamics or something totally new and different. I just want it to stop changing so I can settle in and play.

Took me a second to figure out what you'd done with those engine/intake clusters-- that's a really clever way to make a "big engine" out of a zillion little ones. I like it! As to flying hotdogs... I'm in complete and total agreement. That does seem to be the necessary design style. It's even what I called my test SSTO.

I'm on board with the nerfs... but the nerfing seems wildly inconsistent. Planes definitely seem more realistic now... but I *accidentally* SSTO'd a tiny little 7-part test rocket playing around last night. 1.0 seems to heavily favor the 1950s sci-fi vision of one-piece land-on-tail rockets flying everywhere. Which, truth be told, I can probably get behind, realism or not.

The burns do take a while-- I wouldn't want to fly it without MechJeb. With MechJeb, though, it's mostly just "set up the nodes and go to the grocery store for an hour or two." The hitchhiker storage can has had an IVA view for quite a while now-- at least back to 24, and possibly sooner. I'm not sure if you can click on it or not, although I suspect you can. I usually just click the "IVA" button on a kerbal that's in there. I love that interior-- it's got a real "space station" feel to it, and there's a bunch of kerbal jokes in there. (Edit: on re-reading your post, I see you meant the window specifically, not just the IVA-- you're right, you just double-click the window) It is a shame about the main ship. It was designed to be recovered and flown home in the SSTO, but I had so many KSP glitches toward the end of the flight, and the last save where the undock didn't cause things to fly apart in weird ways was three moons back. Fortunately the SSTO had extra seats, and spacewalking everybody over worked-- if it weren't for that, I probably would have had to launch a rescue. I've got a better (shorter, much better summarized, extra sarcasm) writeup and some different models of the Cormorant SSTO at http://imgur.com/a/1Mz6C if you want to check them out. There's a single-pilot heavy-cargo version, the original general-purpose, and one that can take 18 kerbals *and* an orange tank's worth of cargo. Thanks again for all your time and effort with this challenge!!! It was a lot of fun, and it's great to have an external goal like this to push you to try some cool stuff.

Argh-- I not only paid, I double checked that all were visible, and there were descriptions on every image. It appears that the descriptions are lost, and many of the images have vanished. I will re-upload those when I get home tonight, and I'm sorry for the mess. I've had a lot of trouble with imgur lately-- descriptions and images are just randomly vanishing, from both new and old albums. I have no idea why. - - - Updated - - - It looks like imgur ate quite a few of the images as well as all the descriptions I put in. I'll blow the album away and re-upload as soon as I can-- I have them all backed up separately at home. My apologies for that-- I would swear that I double-checked everything before submitting, even. Edit: the missing images have been re-uploaded and added to the album, located here: http://imgur.com/a/MTIch

One more for the pile, Ziv... I feel bad piling this on just after you asked for help looking through the submissions! I used my Cormorant reusable SSTO to carry the Minnow interplanetary vehicle to orbit. Built and flown in .90, and the only mod used is MechJeb. Craft file for download Highlights: * The whole thing fits cleanly in a cargo bay * Jeb and Bill fly the Cormorant to LKO while Bob, Lorim, Nelfin, Elbald, and Borvey go to Jool * It actually worked! * 83 tons on the runway * SSTO lifter and one pod fully recovered Low points: * The Kraken was ever-present. I've never had this many game issues before... but despite them all, everybody made it home. * I accidentally attached the last few Xenon drop tanks to the wrong thing, forcing a change in the planned order in which I visited the moons to use the fuel Mission Summary: Five kerbals on five moons, making this an entry for Level 3, but with a launch weight of 83.217t, it's light enough to be #11 in the Low Mass Contender list! Can an entry be considered for both categories? Jeb and Bill: flew Cormorant to LKO Bob: landed on Laythe Lorim: landed on Vall Nelfin: landed on Bop Elbald: landed on Pol Borvey: landed on Tylo Everybody: landed back on Kerbin, safe and sound, despite repeatedly meeting the Kraken*. Without further ado... the exhaustive album of the trip! *Kraken stuff: I had five corrupted savegame files that couldn't be recovered-- when loaded, they all did insane things. One would load without any of the parts originally surface-attached to the command pods. Three different times, I had a bug where an undocking pod would suddenly catapult away from the ship 90 degrees from the docking port, the port would fly in a different direction, and small parts would remain in their original position by the main vessel, attached to nothing but unmovable. And once, a few of the SSTO's parts would detect collisions with the ground and explode (wing, tailfin, intakes) while the plane was still 100m in the air. The fuel lines on the Vall lander got corrupted somehow when the subassembly was placed in the cargo bay, so I managed the fuel manually during the flight. The lander pod would spin in small circles if you tried to use SAS to hold it still, but only when not attached to lift stages... it managed to make it despite this, but I wish I knew why. Near the end, a bug that caused the ship to disintegrate when undocking meant that all the kerbals had to be spacewalked back to the SSTO and the second pod and 4-man can had to be left in orbit. The original intent was to land with the entire Minnow back in the cargo bay, and I'm really glad I thought to put enough seats in the SSTO for everybody just in case. I've had nothing but good luck until now with KSP... I guess it was time for me to meet the Kraken. But despite the Krakens... everybody got home alive, with the mission accomplished!

Of course, both together weigh about double what a single OKTO2 weighed. This has some rather beefy ramifications-- it will increase the size of a well-optimized Eve ascent vehicle by something like 20%. I'm sure I'll get over it, but the old one was the central piece around which a lot of very complicated vehicles got built, since it was the lightest source of control and torque. And since the lightest replacement in .90 is so much heavier, the designs aren't something you can just rework a little and use-- they'll need to be fully rebuilt around the heavier core with substantially increased fuel and thrust. RIP, 12-ton Eve lander. You'll join my self-flipping rover in the list of nostalgic designs that no longer work and can't be fixed. On the plus side... building is fun. So I'll have an excuse to build a 15-ton Eve lander! But if I beg for anything from Squad... it would be to put just the tiiiiiiniest bit of torque back in the Okto2. It can be a tenth of what it was to give some balance and create reasons to use the other parts, but with nothing at all, a huge number of neato vehicles will just stop working. Sometimes, this can't be helped-- but here, I don't think there's a strong reason to not include a tiny bit of torque for compatibility with years of old designs. - - - Updated - - - Aaaaactually, now that I've vented for a moment, I think there's at a partial workaround. It's ugly, but it will at least salvage vehicles built around the combination of the old Okto2 and a Command Seat. Adding the small reaction wheel to a vehicle using the Okto2 and a command seat adds .05t, but removing the chair and replacing it with a short section of ladder (all of which are currently massless) removes .05t. Yes, your kerbal is now riding a rocket while hanging onto a ladder, but this will at least salvage older designs-- and the coincidentally perfect one-for-one trade means nothing else will change. I can't think of a stock solution for vehicles without a seat, though-- tiny, highly-optimized unmanned probes will still have to be reworked, I think. Unless somebody else can think of a quick-and-dirty way to give a probe control and reaction wheels for .04t, those designs will remain on the scrapheap in .90. Also, if you were *already* using an Okto2 with a ladder for super-ultra-minimal-weight, you're still boned.

It's totally fine by me! I went back and re-read the challenge rules, and it turns out I missed the provisos to rule one... I thought I literally had to bring it all home, including any cargo I dropped, in order to meet the "fully reusable" challenge rules. In hindsight, that seems slightly insane, and I should have realized I was missing something. Thanks for taking the time to set the challenge up and review all the silliness we've all submitted. It's greatly appreciated, and really adds the sort of actual missions the game lacks right now.

Sorry about the omission-- I even had MajorJim's entry in mind, I just somehow completely forgot to put it in the post. I've edited my original post to add it.

I thought these were kinda funny-looking when I first built them... but they've grown on me. The Cormorant family of heavy-lift SSTO spaceplanes: Available in three option packages: Standard: (263 parts, 93.5t, $241,770, 6 passengers, 36t of cargo to LKO, max cargo length the same as an orange tank) Heavy: (265 parts, 94.02t, $240,822, 1 passenger, 40t+ of cargo to LKO, 33% longer cargo bay than standard) Crew Cab: (269 parts, 98.01t, $267,718, 18 passengers, same cargo weight/size as standard) *all weights include a full 36t orange tank as test cargo. Note: it's much easier to read the mission report if you go directly to the imgur writeup. For some reason, the forum version puts the image descriptions directly on top of the thumbnails-- but you can still click to the left and right of the large image to go forward/backward. And I'll cast my vote for MajorJim

I humbly present the Cormorant (0.90) family of heavy-lift reusable SSTO spaceplanes as my "big" entry, all three under 100t but capable of delivering at least 36t of cargo to LKO. Further down, you can find the Loon III (0.25) as my "small" entry-- a ten-ton SSTOMdjLtPB. Available in three option packages: Standard: (263 parts, 93.5t, $241,770, 6 passengers, 36t of cargo to LKO, max cargo length the same as an orange tank) Heavy: (265 parts, 94.02t, $240,822, 1 passenger, 40t+ of cargo to LKO, 33% longer cargo bay than standard) Crew Cab: (269 parts, 98.01t, $267,718, 18 passengers, same cargo weight/size as standard) *all weights include a full 36t orange tank as test cargo. I believe the Cormorant is eligible for Utilateral Commendation and the Advanced Pilot Precision award And not to be forgotten, the Loon III: a ten-ton, two-kerbal reusable SSTO with a full science package capable of (in a single flight) landing on Minmus, Laythe, Pol, and Bop with flybys of Duna, Jool, and Tylo before returning to land on Kerbin with all the parts it started with. It might be prodigiously ugly, and sure... it spends a lot of time flying backwards. But it's truly a big thing in a small package. I believe the Loon is eligible for Expeditionary, Utilateral Distinction, Astrokerbal Distinction, Kosmokerbal Commendation, and the Advanced pilot precision award (1stClass). I humbly await the judges' verdict.

I felt like I was cheating, so I went ahead and built and flew the Heron III to Eve and back this afternoon, to make sure I was dotting and crossing all the things I needed to, even though you were nice enough to give me a pass. Besides... it gave me something new to do, and I was in a bit of an out-of-new-things-to-do dry spell with KSP anyway. The big differences are launch weight (The Heron III is 192.95t on the pad, while the Heron II was 258.405t), part count (334 vs. 500), and cost ($202,872 vs. $464,532). It sacrifices the vacuum lander and the 4-man habitat module, so it's a much more Eve-focused and optimized design. Nearly 70 tons lighter, 156 fewer parts, and less than half the price of the Heron II-- but still capable of visiting sea level on Eve and returning (although still not in the way this challenge requires... so it's only a Level 2 entry). The lander module is identical, and weighs 24.1t with 182 parts when ready for Eve ascent. The updated Heron III was built and flown in 0.90, and uses the latest MechJeb. Photo log of the mission, with the resource panel and MechJeb delta-V stats onscreen is below-- and the entire mission is present, with no lost-to-a-hard-drive-crash photos substituted with shots of a different mission this time. .craft file Takeoff point coordinates on Eve: 2* 49' 57" S, 171* 24' 03" W, about 6500m altitude and just 30km south of the equator. (note: landing point was on the equator about 30km north of the takeoff point, but these coordinates could certainly be used as an efficient landing site)

[quote name=Laie;1692231And I want this challenge to be about returning from Eve' date=' not about crossing all t's and dotting all i's. The latter is often necessary, especially when I have doubts. Which in this case I don't. Take that badge, you earned it. However, Jebediah's level is supposed to be about taking off from sea level. I didn't expect that people would bring their own crawler-transporters.

That settles it... I *am* a moron. Thanks!

I feel like a complete and total imbecile asking this question, but what is a resource panel? Everybody else in the thread seems to know exactly what it means... so I gather I probably should. Alas, I am apparently a moron. Also, if it doesn't satisfy the requirements, it doesn't satisfy the requirements. Your challenge, your rules-- even if I've been to Eve a bazillion times, I don't want a badge I didn't really earn! I will probably not fly the entire multi-landing mission again because it took sometime like two and a half weeks of real life... but I would be happy to update the ship for 0.90 and make the Eve run again. But I clearly have some terminology gaps and don't fully understand what I need to provide-- if you could elaborate a bit on what you need to see, I'll make sure the next iteration is up-to-snuff. Particularly where this mysterious panel is concerned. Is it a mod part I need to have on the ship? And finally, before I go building the Heron III... is the rover/lander concept sufficient to meet the bar for your Level 3? Or is driving the first 6500m of the ascent from sea level a disqualifier?

Oh man, I don't know how I missed this thread-- I was building my Eve Missions right around the time this started! If it's not too late for a late submission, I'll toss mine in. It definitely satisfies the requirements for levels one and two. Whether it satisfies level three, I will leave up to the judges. It does take the entire lander to sea level and back-- but it does *not* launch from sea level. It must be driven to an altitude of around 6500m before launch. I will accept the decision either way, as it wasn't designed with this challenge in mind. I do feel that it meets the spirit of the requirement, however, in that it takes the entire lander, the kerbal, and the science equipment to sea level and back even if it does not use rockets to get from sea level to 6500m. Eve's lower atmosphere is like soup, but solar power is abundant. Using electric wheels for the first few thousand meters of ascent was just more efficient. I suppose an argument could be made that my "ascent" is actually when the drive from sea level begins... but again, it's your challenge. The lifter is a straightforward two-stage asparagus-- the only real oddity here is that the center stack feeds forward to the transit stage, so that it can burn its engines during liftoff as well, giving us a substantial efficiency boost. The transit stage has both nukes and ion engines. The Eve lander section is a "reformatted" asparagus lifter with rover wheels-- literally the entire lander vehicle can be driven around. (And it was-- the lander was manually driven more than 200km on Eve's surface on this mission.) There is a separate vacuum lander can attached to the transit vehicle that can be used on small airless bodies. A third detachable unit, lifeboat pod with 4000m/s worth of ion dV, is also carried to help bail me out from screwups. The transit vehicle is spacious, with the vacuum lander can, a 4-man lander can, and the Eve lander pod. The Heron II Note: the forum gallery does a really awkward job with the imgur description text, letting it overlap the thumbnails to the point where you can't click on them. It is formatted much more cleanly if you just go directly to the writeup: http://imgur.com/a/owNWP. To Sea Level on Eve and back, with a pod and a leave-behind science rover. I believe this was version 0.25. Weight on the launch pad was just 258t, all stock except MechJeb. In addition to taking a science package, a kerbal, and a pod to sea level on Eve and returning them, the mission also carried a leave-behind remote science rover that stayed on Eve. Additionally, the mission landed on Gilly, made orbit around Duna, landed on Ike, and landed on Minmus before returning. Upon reaching Kerbin orbit, both parts of the transit vehicle and the vacuum lander were parked in orbit-- leaving a reusable 5-man habitat with multiple docking ports, a fuel tank, and two nuclear engines. It can serve as a space station or transit vehicle in future missions. Flight writeup here: http://imgur.com/a/owNWP I believe *most* of the data requested in the challenge is provided in the writeup, but I'll return later this evening to edit this post and add anything that's missing. Okay, filling in the data: - weight and part count of the vessel on the launchpad 258.405t on the launchpad, exactly 500 parts - weight and part count awaiting liftoff on Eve 24.1t, 182 parts - the approximate price tag of your entire mission, if at all possible $464,532 total price. Landed pieces may be recovered as well, but the all-in cost is just simpler. - game version 0.25 - mods used MechJeb - tell me how you found your landing site. "I tried until I got lucky" is perfectly alright, but inquiring minds want to know. The landing site was just a "near enough." The *takeoff* site, which is an entirely different matter, I found in a forum thread about the area where the tallest mountains on Eve were located. I don't think I hit precisely the tallest one, but I drove the lander/return vehicle for nearly six realtime hours across Eve looking for progressively taller places. - if there's anything that your are especially proud of, be sure to point it out (provide a direct link to a picture if applicable). It sends a Kerbal, a pod, a full science package, and a leave-behind remote-control rover to Eve with only 258t on the pad. I gave special attention to trying to make the whole thing look reasonably rocket-like. It's still an asparagus lander, but repackaged to fit vertically into the largest-diameter parts-- if we had fairings, it could have actually been enclosed. Despite the attempts to make the whole thing as light as possible, the kerbal has a spacious ship for the ride-- room for seven kerbals give him space to stretch out. And probably the proudest of all, it also landed on Gilly, Ike, and Minmus, made orbit around Duna, left a rover on Eve, and a space station at 300km around Kerbin. From a single 258t launch vehicle. - please also mention the things that didn't work out so well / required a lot of saveloading / you would do different next time. The biggest drawback is the use of a pod for ascent in this one. It's required for this challenge, but Eve itself doesn't seem to actually require it. A later version I built, the Egret, makes the trip with only 163t on the pad-- there is a pod for the Kerbal to ride in while driving around Eve, but as long as you're above about 5000m for your launch, the temperature on Eve is actually within the range a spacesuit can handle. So the pod is dropped on launch to lighten the fuel needed for return, which in turn makes *everything* lighter and easier to pilot. The kerbal is only exposed for the brief period during ascent from Eve, and I've verified that the temperature is within a spacesuit's tolerances during the entire brief flight. I like the Egret much better-- but its use of a chair for ascent probably disqualifies it, even if Jeb is in a pod for every other phase of the mission.

With the turbojet speed limit in mind, maybe try to get a running start and then aim for the highest suborbital arc you can manage, and then shut your intakes to minimize drag and fly "downhill" like a lawn dart? Probably squeak out a few more m/s with gravity doing the accelerating, up until you hit terminal velocity. Have to get above about 35,000m, since that's roughly where terminal velocity is 2400m/s. And to get there, you'd probably have to airhog like mad... but it would still be fun. It's like a turbojet-launched ballistic roller-coaster for kerbals!

I'll enter my little SSTO-that-could. I've added the instructions for takeoff and in-space flight to the .craft files and linked them. There's a version with MechJeb and a pure stock version attached. The Loon III: .craft file (includes MechJeb) .craft file (No MechJeb or other mods) * Less than ten tons! * Room for two kerbals! * Only stock parts! (MechJeb optional) * Capable of making a Kerbin-Minmus-Duna-Jool-Laythe-Tylo-Pol-Bop-Kerbin circuit with landings at Minmus, Laythe, Pol, and Bop in one flight! * Complete science package! * Spends most of its time flying backwards, on purpose! * An exciting array of ladders for kerbal exercise! It's not going to win any beauty contests, but it'll do an awful lot with just ten tons. Complete test mission writeup with exciting pictures and sarcasm! In orbit, with MechJeb delta-V window and resource tab open:

This little guy is capable of single-stage to Laythe and back at about 12.5t on the runway, with a full science package: I haven't *quite* finished the whole flight process-- I've flown it to Laythe, landed, taken off, made the transit back to Kerbin, and parked it in a stable orbit before I had to call it a night, so it hasn't actually *landed* yet-- but I've got ample dV to deorbit, and it's pretty forgiving to land. I may not hit the runway (or only hit it briefly at a funny angle), but I'll definitely be in the grass by KSC. All stock parts except MechJeb, two intakes, one RAPIER engine and two ion engines, and just the single pair of wings, x-tail, and two canards, no hidden clipped-in triple wings or anything.

I've been using them quite a bit lately, and they're definitely more fun to fly than they used to be. At four times the thrust, that's a substantial improvement already-- but the more recent versions of the game also seem to work reliably at 4x physics warp for me-- meaning your "real world" burn times with ion engines are 1/16th as long as they used to be. The thrust is probably unrealistically high for the ions, but it's a good compromise to make the engines "playable" for exactly the reasons you outline. Using them before 23.5 was a ticket to dullsville. The part count thing remains an issue, though. The engines aren't so bad-- but enough of those tiny fuel tanks to move a big ship gets ridiculous. A slightly larger Xenon tank would be fantastic.

I'm guessing most of the high-scoring entries do this-- I know mine did. It makes a HUGE difference. It's still worth pointing out, though, particularly if people haven't played in a while and are used to (or have a ship from) an older version. The new lander can actually weighs more by default than the old one, but the only difference is the monopropellant it carries. If you remove it, the can weighs the same .6 it always has. Often this is the difference between a ship that "used to work in 21" and working just fine now. Thanks for pointing it out-- if I'd seen your post a while ago, it would have saved me quite a bit of time discovering it on my own!

I'm not going to win, or anything... but I've finally succeeded in bringing a pod back from Eve! It's a little overbuilt because I'm a lousy pilot, so all my designs take that into account-- but at 26.1 tons at landing, and 23.8 tons just before takeoff ('chutes, outer wheels, and landing legs dropped) it's at least respectable. If it's not too late to put my name on the scoreboard, here is the Heron II, complete with exceedingly overexcited and verbose trip report. Heron II Craft File I know lifters aren't required, but I wasn't building for this contest directly... so the whole mess is there. All stock except MechJeb. Here's a picture parked just before ascent. I've tested takeoff from as low as 6300m, and from 6500m, it makes orbit with about 91m/s of delta-v left. 9157 total delta-V before takeoff. After detaching unneeded parts for launch, with delta-V numbers: And after reaching orbit: Many thanks to a post Tavert made at some point in the dim and distant past, explaining why TWR is at least AS important as delta-V, if not more so, when doing Eve ascents. My last design was seriously underpowered by comparison, and it was this insight that made it all possible.

I think it just depends on what you, individually, think of as "balanced." There are far too many different ways to look at balance for there to only be one answer to this.

Think of them as user-friendly optimizations for people playing on low-end computers. Just playing around a bit, the new two-engine liquid booster cut more than 100 parts from my "old standby" heavy-lifter design, opening up some real possibilities for cool new stuff that I couldn't have done without slamming into the part-count wall. If you prefer the look, process, feel, or performance of hand-building clusters... you still can. And both of us probably still will.

I think this is it in a nutshell. "Balance" means about a half-dozen different things to start with. Off the top of my head, here's a few: * Part effectiveness should be uniform enough that every part in the game sees common use * Cost should correlate well with performance * Tech-tree level should correlate well with performance * Things should correlate with the real-world * Gameplay concerns should be balanced against realism I'm sure there's more. Some of these things can't even be true at the same time. Realism fights with gameplay and cost/tech correlations. A realistically balanced tree has overwhelming "best parts" like real life does, and nine-tenths of the things in the game would go unused. Every design would use either the one engine with the highest performance, or the one engine with the best cost/performance. The ion engine and the LV-N are great examples where gameplay tradeoffs were made against realism-- the ion is a zillion times more powerful than real life, simply because using it would require tedious, dull gameplay with hours-long burns. The LV-N is quite a bit *less* powerful than real life, because a realistic nuclear thermal rocket with high TWR and Isp would quickly replace every other engine in every design. In short, there will *always* be something that is "imbalanced" to somebody because there is no solution that satisfies everyone's definition of balance. KSP does a pretty reasonable job of doing some of all of the above-- but there's at least one imbalanced outlier in every category. I think that's about the best you can hope for without just throwing out some definitions of "balanced."