whistlehead

Ladies and gentlemen, I have made it... to SPACE! I decided as one final fling in 0.22 to achieve the first thing I tried to do in the game - take a spaceplane into space. Meet the Soothsayer. Two basics, six turbos, three LV-45s, eight 24-77s and one LV-N for long distance travel (untouched during ascent). I haven't tried it out for range yet but I'm hopeful of the Mun at least. Started out with an orange tank and no clue of where I was going, and a conviction it wouldn't work. A few hours later, SPACE. Full mission report whenever I repeat it with a finger over the F1 key! (And when I can pluck up the courage to deorbit the thing) Regards, Chris

Banned for false accusations. I'll have you know those unicorns all died of natural causes, such as standing in a tightly enclosed pen underneath a five-ton hydraulic crusher.

Granted. The universe has been overruled by the House of Krakens and has ceased to exist. I wish I could think of a better wish than this one.

I wish Jeb would stop flying all those darn rockets over my house...

Yup. The user below me didn't have enough boosters on their second-last launch.

Banned for not actually coming up with aforementioned clever reasoning.

While my experience of texturing does not stray further than diffuse and alpha right now, I've always wanted to develop further in these areas and I'll most certainly look into it. I don't think baloons are going to happen just yet - airships first. It might actually be easier to start with a modern style airship, as this wouldn't require the visible ribs of older ships. It would also look better with current stock parts and Firespitter - so I wouldn'tneed to think about my own engines or pods just yet, only the essentials - i.e. making it fly!

I think I see what you mean - it's the physics rather than the polys which drag KSP down, so such a large single entity = fewer parts = smoother running = polys matter less As to balloons - I'm going to such with airships for now. Heck, I still don't know if what I'm planning is possible

A *very* rough render mainly to show the scale I'm thinking - the envelope segments are 3.2 orange tanks high (or 24 metres for those of you stuck in the metric system). I guess I could also do smaller ones, but this is the kind of size I had originally intended to make. The final thing will have more polys on the front end and hugely better textures (hopefully). It also won't have the smoothing issue on the nose - though as I'm not sure what caused it I can't guarantee! @Talisar - I'll have to download it, thanks. Regards, Chris

@Pizzaoverhead: We'll see about the damaged parts - I think that's a thing to do later rather than at the start. As you say, first thing is to get the parts made. In terms of parts, that's pretty much what I'd come up with, though I might leave out the cargo bay for now. I'm thinking of having a radial fuel gondola part and the rest of the gondola parts (cabin, cargo, more fuel) are attached inline with that part. I'll pop a few rough diagrams of what I'm thinking up sometime soon to clarify. @Tommygun: I'm going to stick with 30's style for now, but I already had plans for more modern ships to match the stock parts, and I see no reason not to make steam parts later on - I'm a bit of a steampunk fan. Tech tree integration could be fun! The interest I'm getting is very encouraging - and I'm now very tempted to go ahead. Just need to make sure I don't prioritise this over my coursework! Regards, Chris

I like the battery drain idea - I hadn't come up with that. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to create a part which turns IntakeAir to ComoressedAir at the cost of electricity, though as I say I've never scripted a KSP part before. And thanks! This is my preferred idea, but I don't know if it's workable or not. Regards, Chris

Thanks - if I go ahead I will do, though I do have an alternative idea which I explain below. As my idea progesses, I have a few more queries. Most important: - It is possible to make trust-reversing engines, or would it be better to use IR rotatrons to turn the engine over? - If I used small propellers as a replacement RCS system, could I animate the props? Alternatively, could I make the model swap out with one with a 'rotating disk' (just a transparent circle which looks like a moving propellor)? Along the same lines, could I configure the props to run off the main fuel supply? - Possibly most importantly - How should I deal with the issue of creating lift? - Idea 1: Could I make the envelope of the airship use a combination of two resources (Helium/Hydrogen [maybe just call it Lifting Gas?] and Compressed Air [ballast?]) for lift? The idea that I have is that compressed air could fill and empty in flight, acting as ballast to move the airship up and down - i.e. it would add mass to the envelope. Meanwhile, Lifting Gas would have a negative mass. This would be an expendable resource which once drained is gone forever - or until refilled, either through docking or KAS. The user would have the option to drain Lifting Gas to drop quickly, with the obvious disadvantage of not being able to get back into the air again. To add difficulty, Lifting Gas would drain very slowly over time, as Hydrogen and Helium do in reality, meaning you can't fly forever. - Idea 2: Alternatively (and perhaps more simply) could I just give the envelope a negative mass and use a ballast resource? A possible extension of this is to use a convertor to convert IntakeAir to ballast. - Idea 3: Should I just use Hooligan? For ideas 1 and 2 I'm thinking that I could possibly get action groups to alter the resources quantities. Not so important Those are my main queries. I have a few others, but they aren't so important: - Regarding transportable lifting gas tanks to build stations to refill your airships (for idea 1) - obviously the lifting gas would need to be compressed in these tanks so they could store an appropriate quantity and not float away. Could I use another resource (compressed lifting gas) in these tanks and have a Kethane-style convertor part to attach to a fuelling rig? Or could I make a convertor which converts a generic game resource to lifting gas? - I quite like the idea of having to fit exhausts to remove exhaust gases, similar to WasteHeat in Interstellar. Would the simple solution be to essentially copy this across but with a different resource? I realise this is rather a large set of questions (and that I might be getting too ambitious), especially as I still may not actually create the item in question, but I am very interested to know if it's possible. I might create a roadmap for myself to see if I could fit in creating this around the other things I have to do - but I need to set the fundamentals first. I have got a touch of experience in writing configs for game parts, but not in KSP and never anything especially complex. Regards, Chris

I've been making virtual models for railway simulator Trainz for a while now (though I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly an exceptional talent) - and I'd like to have a shot at doing the same for KSP. The first thing that springs to mind is an airship pack of more traditional design than the Hooligan labs components - big cigars, built in sections. This is just a vague idea at the moment, but if anyone could give me some pointers as to how exactly to create a part which works with Hooligan labs I'd much appreciate it. Alternatively, could I simply set the mass to be so low that it floats naturally? Does KSP's physics allow for that? EDIT: As clarification, I'm thinking simple parts that are always inflated - not deflatable parts like some of the Hooligan components Regards, Chris

I think that OP is suggesting lightning rods to be purely cosmetic - in which case I'm all for it. Preferably with climbable ladders... EDIT: reading in more detail looks like actual lightning is suggested

Might be better as a mod - but what about implementing a 'simulator' in the VAB/SPH which shows how the centre of mass moves as the vehicle uses fuel in the order it would use fuel in-game? Might be particularly useful for spaceplanes. Personally, I'd make it an upgrade to the VAB/SPH (see HERE) Just a thought, Chris

I really quite like this - much better than having to carefully clip the camera through parts to see what you're doing - or even removing parts just to get at what you're doing. When tweakables are implemented, I think a right click "Hide" option would be great - maybe not fully invisible, just ghosted out (similar to unconnected parts), and unclickable other than right click to unhide.

I would not even consider making kerbals bad at piloting (or at least, worse than they are now)! While I take the point of SAS-type stabilisation, I think that could be problematic, especially with large space stations. I know I wouldn't like to have a stability system you can't turn off. Extra structural stability on re-entry actually sounds pretty good; I hadn't thought of that. Personally, I still rather like my original idea as an optional, non-OP autopilot and an extra layer of budgeting vs ease, but of course I would

As the only rocket with both asparagus staging and the capability to land on the Mün, I choose Xeldrak.

In my opinion, adding female Kerbals into the game is pretty much a must-do, primarily for the aforementioned reason of getting young girls interested in space and not alienating them from the very beginning. The design on that voyager plater is absolutely perfect. Feminine while not sexual and entirely fitting with the current kerbal design. On a slight aside, if female kerbals were to be implemented, what would happen to Bill, Bob and Jeb? Would they still be the first-launch trio? Would one of them have to undergo some rather radical surgery? Would a new female trio of invincibles be introduced? And how could they have the same meaning as that which bob bill and jeb have acquired? Maybe it would be better to lose the big three - after all, only long-term players and forum members will get the joke. It's tricky.

I did actually think of that immediately after posting... Nonetheless, diminishing returns are still a positive in my mind - maybe a faster rate of reduction though.

While I quite like what you've suggested, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that diminishing returns are to some extent a Good Thing - the reason being that in real life data from an experiment is only considered reliable if it can be repeated, this being the entire basis of the scientific method. Fi the game were to be used as a means of encouraging scientific though in younger children/teenagers, for example, then I'd like to see some element of the true scientific method in this magic resource we call Science. That doesn't mean the current system works. I just don't think it's sensible for experiments to be a one-shot deal, as this is simply not how science truly works. Regards, Chris

Training Just looking at the KSP wiki page on planned features, I notice that there's one which says "Crew tasks: Have the crew take charge of controlling the craft (provided they can handle it)". I was just thinking about how this might be implemented, and I reckon the best way to do it would be to have some kind of training system for Kerbals. Training a Kerbal would require your astronaut complex to be at a certain level (see next suggestion) and would cost a certain amount of money - maybe even as much as building a small spacecraft. Training might endow your Kerbal with progressively more impressive MechJeb-style abilities, maybe progressing from circularisation to Hohmann transfers to aerobraking to *gasp* landing! And, most important of all, upgrading a kerbal would give them a shiny new spacesuit colour. I do, however, realise that this quickly starts to stray over the line into autopilot, which the wiki page informs me isn't happening. However, the reason I think that this isn't as potentially game-breaking as full-blown autopilot is that if you manage to kill that kerbal - they're dead. You're not getting that training back. Which provides a bit of an incentive to keep the little green guys alive! Also, by having talents assigned to individual kerbals, each of them can only be on one craft at once, so for every 'autopiloted' ship you'd need to train another kerbal at great expense. Or successfully return your other kerbal pilots. Another feature which I feel would fix any game-breaking tendencies would be only allowing a certain number of autonomous manoeuvres per kerbal per launch. After each kerbal's manoeuvre limit is reached, they have to be returned to Kerbin before they can perform any more (It's tiring stuff, this spaceflight business). This would be upgradeable - more well-trained kerbal could perform a few more actions per launch. What this means is that you still have to do most of the grunt work - or train a LOT of pilots. And you'd have to bring them all back - or pay to train more - before you can launch the next semi-auto mission. For example, with a kerbal with level 1 endurance you might decide to automate a Münar capture, but you have to aim for the SOI in the first place and you have to do the orbital manoeuvres. Or maybe you can do the capture for yourself but you hate circularising. What you can delegate depends entirely on how much you've upgraded your kerbal. It should also be possible under this system to upgrade a kerbal's Science ability, maybe as a simple multiplier (let's say they're sending back more detailed notes or something). This gives you a reason to pile loads of kerbals onto one ship! Here's a very crude mockup of a RANDOMLY SELECTED Kerbal's stats screen: In other words, Jeb here is able to do any type of manoeuvre you want, but only three manoeuvres per launch. He also adds a slight multiplier to science collected - say 5%. And all of these stats are upgradeable inside the Astronaut complex. You'd hover over the boxes to show what that box allows the kerbal to do when unlocked. As a little bonus to the system, some kerbals could come with better skills right from the start - but cost slightly more to hire. Building upgrades I'd also like to see building upgrades implemented. I see this as being something along these lines: VAB/SPH: In the VAB you might start out with, say, a 20 part limit. You might then upgrade this to 40 parts. Then to 80. Then 160. And so on. The SPH would be similar. Runway: I'd like to see length/width upgrades, but I have a feeling that this might be a little tricky to implement without blowing up anything that's already there. Unless it came up with a "You must recover vessel X before upgrading" R&D: The R&D facility might give a slight science multiplier for each upgrade - or maybe upgrading would be necessary to reach the next level of the tech tree. Astronaut complex: The astronaut complex would give access to the training mentioned above. It would also be able to house more kerbals at any one time. Observatories: I've seen a lot of debate on how these should be implimented. Upgrades would seem to be the simplest system. Upgrades would simply unlock planets on the map, one or two at a time. Until discovery planets would still exist but not appear on the map until you hit their SOI. So it would be theoretically possible to shoot for planets without upgrading, but a little tricky... Less importantly, it would be nice to see visual upgrades to building too, representing how advanced they are, though this would obviously require multiple new exterior models for everything and interior models for the SPH and VAB so might be time consuming to no real end. It would be nice though. Starting out would be in slightly tumbledown, rickety buildings, e.g. a corrugated iron hanger for a SPH and a dirt strip (island-style) for a runway. The observatory (if implemented) could just start out as one guy with a telescope! As noted above, this might cause problems with collision meshes and destroying what's already there, so the aforementioned message would be absolutely necessary. How do I think this would add to the game? I think what I've suggested would add an extra layer to the money system of the game (when it's implemented) without being overly complex, make the game simpler to play BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT IT and without being game-breaking, and (less importantly) create a visual reward of sorts for committed players. One last thing The system I've suggested does allow some leeway for the possibility of an 'easy mode' in which facilities are fully upgraded from the off (as they are now). The starting budget in my easy mode would be higher too, and everything else is the same. But that's slightly besides the point of this thread. TL;DR - Kerbals can be upgraded in piloting skill, endurance and science -at cost. - Building can be upgraded to give access to kerbal upgrades/bigger rockets/moar parts If you've got this far, thanks for reading and please feel free to share your thoughts. Regards, Chris

As most of you probably know, KSP makes the unrealistic assumption that cross-section is proportional to mass in its drag model. I'm just wondering if it bases this entirely on the full mass of parts, or if it updates as the ship's mass reduces (i.e. as you use fuel), thereby reducing drag as fuel is used. Thanks Chris

Posted since I asked the question, even! Thanks for the heads-up.

It's probably been asked before - but does this work with remotetech 2? If so, does it work alongside it but based on its own rules, or does it work with those laid down by remotetech? Thanks, Chris