Moencino

I'll check it out, thanks Derek. I'm still hoping for input on the whole retrograde orbit if going to Duna thing. Is that a bad suggestion, and should I launch to the East as usual before heading to Duna? Any input is appreciated, as I'm just going off 'flying to Duna' guides I've found online.

Thanks again to you both. Thus far I've only been to the Mun, and have spent the last couple weeks building and testing a base, lander, and refueling/utility rover for a Duna mission. One guide I read suggested sending more than one ship at a time to take advantage of a given launch window. So I'm sending 3. Might send a fuel barge as well, not sure. Anyway, the guides to Duna I've read suggest starting from a retrograde Kerbin orbit. Is that just bad advice?

You're totally right, Narcosis! I'm glad you two figured out my screw-up...I was wondering what the hell I was doing so wrong that I couldn't get it into orbit. This also explains why getting the various chunks of my Duna expedition into Kerbin orbit required far bigger boosters than seemed to make sense based on my Mun expeditions. Total facepalm moment. I love how much there is to learn in this game about real life considerations for space flight.

DOH! I totally missed that part of your post! That must be the problem! I just flew your exact profile as described and still couldn't make it work. I think you've figured out why. Thanks! Off to confirm...

Again, thanks for the detail, Temstar. I'll go try it right now.

The heading was really arbitrary - I'm just studying the benefits of this particular booster style compared to what I've built myself thus far. Since I'm planning a Duna expedition, I've taken to Westerly departures.

Thanks for the detailed flight profile, Temstar. Ok, well this is a good thing, because clearly I can learn something about flying a better launch. Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong? Here's my flight plan: Launch Prep: Full power, SAS engaged. Launch 2900m - 1st pair booster separation 10.8k - 2nd pair booster separation and roll to 45 degree angle facing 270 degrees. Hold that course and monitor Ap as it climbs toward 75k 31.3k - 3rd pair booster separation. Still holding 45 degree angle at 270 degrees. Ap now 39.7k. Ap 75k - cut power, rotate to prograde, drift until about 30 seconds from Ap intercept then bring back to full power. Burn time remaining in S1, 46 seconds. Fuel exhausted in S1 with Ap at 76k and Pe at -519k I'm assuming I'm doing something terribly wrong with where I'm burning. Could I get some input please? Much appreciated!

After reading about your booster designs, I gave them a try. Aesthetically they're awesome, and I love the clustered centre booster. Just looks awesome. My problem is that I can't get them into orbit. Has something changed in the game since these were released such that the stock craft can no longer get to orbit? I run out of fuel every time. So far I've tried the Nova and Zenith Vll, neither of which could I get into a stable orbit. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong? Asparagus staging is something I've become very familiar with, so that's not the problem. I'm launching with the stock payload - only thing I'm adding is the Engineering mod so I can track stats during launch. I separate the 2nd pair of boosters just after 10k, do my gravity turn and hold it at 45 degrees until I get the apoapsis to 75k, then I burn prograde until I run out of gas - I never even get close to getting the periapsis wrapped around the back of Kerbin. I'm assuming we're not expected to transfer fuel from the payload to complete the burn. Any thoughts? I'd love to make these great looking boosters work. Thanks for the effort made in building and sharing them!

Absolutely LOVE this mod. Adds so much to the atmosphere and fun. Thanks very much for all your hard work on this!

Ahhh, ok, I'll try that. Thanks J.

Love these struts! I agree they could use some love in the texture department, and for my taste the orange is a woefully day-glow (something a little more rugged n' weathered would look fantastic), the style is fantastic. I wanted to use them in my first station, but alas...one of the key parts simply won't work. Photos below, but basically the 6 way adapter won't connect regardless of what I do. It'll connect on the round side, but not the triangle side. Sadly, that means I can't make it fit the plan I had. Any thoughts on what's going on? No problem connecting the round side: No amount of spinning, rotating, or adjusting camera angles will let me connect the triangle side. It clicks into place like it wants to connect, but won't actually attach.

Ahhh, that would explain a lot. Including the 4gb cap. I just did more reading on this, and discovered also that PhysX can't handle multi threading. Yikes. 3/4 of my computer is sleeping! Hopefully the future holds 64bit and multiprocessor support.

I have the Engineer mod, which shows me the stuff I'm most curious about. Again, I'm sure MechJeb is overflowing with useful stuff, but I'm going to hold off on automation a while until I feel I've mastered the various maneuvering disciplines. Maybe if I knew what I was missing I'd be in a bigger hurry to install it, but the whole ignorance is bliss thing...

That's my feeling too, but the app I use to monitor my memory never comes close to tapping out. Perhaps KSP isn't taking full advantage of all that RAM? Either way, I agree in that something has to give - I'm just trying to figure out what the most efficient thing to give up is, so that I can keep some of the less demanding toys to play with.

After having learned a LOT in my first week (thanks largely to the kind folk who've responded in such detail here in the forums), I've wiped my computer clean of KSP, and done a fresh install. I foolishly forgot to save my screenshots, but it's a small thing. My motivation was this: I'd put a handful of addons in, including the FusTek station parts, and discovered terrible lag in the VAB when on the 'pods' tab - especially if my camera was facing the door. As long as the pods tab wasn't selected, the lag wasn't too bad. But it got much worse. In orbit, I was getting increasing lag, to the point where it just wasn't all that fun. I deleted the FusTek parts I wasn't using, hoping that would somehow help. It didn't. As I wasn't sure what was causing all the lag, I decided to start fresh, and find a balance between cool addons and playability. Thus begins my experiment to see how many toys I can put in my toybox. Fresh install addon list: B9 (Despite it being HUGE, there's no perceptible lag in the VAB. Is this a bad idea? The beautiful designs, textures, and animated cargo doors n' such are such nice eye candy.) Improved trusses and girders Engineer FusTek common birthing mechanisms Chatterer (super fun little addon I just installed) Crew manifest [WIP] THSS - Tri-Hexagonal Structural Strut (just discovered this addon and love it) Quantum struts (haven't tried them yet, but didn't like how badly my station wobbled in my previous post) Infernal Robotics (just installed it, and ermahgerd it looks freakin' awesome!) Lazor docking cam (one of my faves so far) I think that's it. I seem to be the only one not using MecJeb, but thus far I haven't felt the need for an autopilot. I'm sure certain things will become tedious eventually, at which point I'll investigate it. With all the above installed, it's running smoothly at maxed settings, 1920x1200. But I haven't actually built anything yet. So, my question: What exactly causes lag? Something in the FusTek station pack did for me. If I delete parts I never use from their respective folders, will that reduce resource demand? Or it is unrelated? I'm not sure which the culprit is: plugins associated with addons, part count of a ship, a specific addon, a specific combination of addons, my early 2009 PowerMac, or a combination of them all. I'm really looking for the empirical feedback that might ensure my continued enjoyment of the game until Apple releases the new PowerMacs in the fall. Are there specific things I can do to minimize lag while maximizing use of fun addons and the rich look of the game?

Simply wow. You've shown what imagination and tenacity can accomplish with stock parts. Serious kudos, Monk, you're very talented. I'm inspired to be more imaginative in my own designs!

Doh! I looked in there and didn't see them. The part name must not be obvious. That or I'm just not especially clever this evening. Thanks very much, Sumghai.

First up, thanks to all who've taken the time to give some much-needed advice through my first week of playing. After struggling with unplayable lag, I've decided to strip out most of the part packs I had, and just go with some basics. One thing I really do want, however, are the massive panels you see in this image, but I can't figure out which addon they're from. I've had no luck hunting online either. They were a random find that I can't randomly find again. Anyone know?

Another update: Since I felt the station breaking up was game mechanics rather than my fault, I went ahead and used the 'terminate' feature to kill off the broken bits. Fortunately they were all in section 2, so I was able to save section 1. I rebuilt section 2 to get rid of the overlap on that part I mentioned above, added an escape pod, then relaunched it. As an aside, I freakin LOVE the docking cam addon. Section 3 was still drifting nearby, so I hopped in it and hooked it up. The shot below is the current state of things, where I've just detached the last booster section before I send it into the atmosphere. Section 2's booster remains attached until I can drain its fuel into the next section: the fuel port. Though I'm getting wary of adding more sections: it's VERY wiggly now when I do any maneuvers. As in 'going to break apart' wiggly. I think there's an addon to add the reenforcing cables in orbit? I've been getting WAY more lag using these FusTek station parts. I never had a single bit before using that addon pack. I'm thinking I might have to purge it until the new PowerMac is launched and I can upgrade. Lag kills fun dead. As long as I can use some extra trusses and the docking cam, I might just keep my addons to a bare minimum. Anyway, thanks again for the advice. Cheers! Mo

Hmmm, ok, thanks for your feedback guys. You've described some limitations I wasn't aware I should be careful of. Yes, I had some clipping on the station (middle of picture below). I guess I'm unclear about what degree of clipping is ok. Very often when parts are rotated in 5 degree increments, there's clipping at the joining edges, though only a little (as on the big truss array above). In the truss example, it seems fine. When I rotate spotlights into position, they're often wildly clipped, but they seem fine. Is there a degree of clipping that's ok and one that's not? Also, I just revisited Icarus (the aptly named station now in pieces and destined to be deorbited), and saw that SAS was on. Is that a problem? From the posts above I should be careful there's no flexing in a station before I leave it, but what about SAS and RCS? Should those both be shut off, or are they unrelated to this misfortune? I'm eager to learn all I can to ensure there's no repeat. One last thought: I've installed a few mods, but after installing the FusTek station modules, when I'm in the VAB with the Pods tab up, it lags me terribly. As soon as I switch to other tabs it's fine. My computer stats: PowerMac 2.66G, quad core, with 10G of RAM. ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB graphics card. Ya, it's a few years old...like most creative professionals, I've been waiting a LONG time for Apple to put out the new PowerMac. Seems we only have a few more weeks to wait. My system may not be helping, but it's run other demanding games pretty smoothly. I'm getting the impression that KSP is unusually demanding on resources. I played EVE for a while, which is visually much richer (polygons aplenty, and lots of work for a video card), and had no issues at all unless there were hundreds of ships in the same place. I'm loving KSP, but I need to figure how to keep my stations in one piece. Again, thanks for your input everyone.

Indulging a full evening of first station building, I was just bringing my 3rd piece into orbit. I was pretty excited about this next piece (the science facility, with a cutting-edge array for mapping graviton rifts), as it was a beast to design and get into orbit. I was closing in on the station, and as I got within 100m, I was confused to see so many little markers floating around. At first I figured it was just that each piece gets its own marker, which seemed odd to me, as I'd think once assembled they'd become one. I was on the dark side, so I just kept moving forward, hoping to see more once I got closer. Then my lights hit it, and I could see what was happening: the station was in pieces. It was perfectly fine when last I'd left it. Now it was in 3 chunks, presumably with the crew having an Apollo 13 moment, running around patching holes. I've gotta' be honest - I'm pretty bummed. Many hours of (enjoyable) work for naught, though I certainly learned a ton during construction. Any thoughts? (one note: not sure if it's relevant, but the closer observation pod you see on top with the shutters closed (on the station, not the array)- I had to keep them closed, as opening them made the docking port on the left pop off for some reason. The far pod shutters worked fine.) The array, a few minutes before discovering the station in pieces: The station that blew up:

Thanks very much to you both for taking the time to share your feedback. Tech, in that awesome video you linked are rotating rings like in 2001. Do you know which addon that is? Looks amazing, but Google isn't helping me track it down. I've been given the distinct impression that part count is really important! I haven't had any lag issues yet, and know that would seriously detract from the game for me. I'll endeavour to keep part count to a minimum as suggested. And I agree that myriad docking ports seems unimportant: if I had 4, I'm sure that would be more than sufficient. While I could certainly put a station together with stock parts, some folk have put together such beautiful addon parts, that it would be a shame not to use those as well. Any other suggestions of handy addons for this project would be appreciated. Thanks again!

So I'd like to build a station in Munar orbit. I've seen some beautiful designs out there, but the part addons seem to be for previous versions of the game. Any suggestions as to which station parts are worth downloading? Any other advice or useful links for someone new to building a station would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks for this part! It's the first part I've added to the game since joining last week. Worked on some rover designs last night, and got one up to 120m/s (rocket assisted) while testing the limits of the Kage. Love the wheels you've added, too - seems they're capable of higher speeds than noted on the warranty, but the ensuing crashes always resulted in the chair disconnecting from the Kage. Perhaps a special 5-point harness chair is in order?

Just logging back into the game. I'll give it another shot, but I think I've tried that, Johnno. The solution that sort of worked was to attach a big girder to the ship, so it was sticking out to the side. That somehow let me move it back to the middle of the platform, where I could zoom in better. In a game I've really fallen in love with, camera issues in the VAB are the only real complaint I have. But I know the game is in development still, so it's not really a complaint