blackfire83

I must orbit a body before landing there. And I must land an unmanned craft before landing Kerbals. It slows progression, and it makes sense.

I like this thread. That being said, Kerbal-kind in both my Sandbox game and Career game are doomed. In my Sandbox game, I've got a few Kerbals in a base on the Mun, a few in a Base/Kethane Drilling Operation on Minmus, and a couple in an LKO orbit. No Kerbals on any extra-Kerbal body with an atmosphere, though. We're doomed. In my Career game, I've yet to leave Kerbals anywhere outside of the atmosphere. Now I have goals, though! Time to get a Duna and/or Laythe colony going on. As well as a space station in a polar orbit at the terminus line, me thinks.

Sorry I'm late to reply. Thanks for the ideas concerning my GUI not showing up. Unfortunately, this problem is even occurring on a Vanilla installation. However, the debug menu gives a hint as to what may be going on: [Exception]: TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'CBAttributeMap' from assembly 'Assembly-CSharp, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. This is repeated over and over. Not sure what the problem is, but I'm assuming I don't have some critical files. Thanks again for your help.

I might need to construct such a behemoth, just.... cause.

My apologies if this has been asked before, but does this have any known conflicts with other mods? When I started a RADAR Scan, it caused parts of my interface to disappear (namely the Kerbal Alarm Clock window), but also caused the pause screen to disappear. (I press escape and the game pauses, but the pause screen doesn't actually appear). I assume that the SCANsat interface is supposed to appear when I start a RADAR Scan, but that isn't happening either. Any suggestions would be quite welcome. Thanks.

Congrats. That first docking is one of the coolest feelings in KSP.

I love it. It's the classic Kerbal learning curve. I'm pretty sure we all were at that stage at some point. I find it best to design your craft from the 'top' down. If your goal is a lander, design your lander first. If you need to return, attach a return stage to it. Many times this can be the same stage as your insertion stage. Of course, design the insertion stage to get you from Kerbin orbit to your destination. Then design a launcher stage that will get that whole mess into orbit. Also, SRB's on any stage but the first launch stage are not efficient. And another thing to keep in mind is to try to design your stages in such a way that you're getting rid of the tanks/engines that aren't necessary anymore so that you're only pushing the weight that is absolutely necessary.

Really digging that VTOL SSTO. Might have to see what I can do about replicating that. I've been fiddling around with making a 'science packet lander' which is just a QUBE probe body with all the scientific instruments and a small antenna. But I'm struggling with how to land the sucker on it's bottom without other parts still attached. I've created a separatable 'box' of structural panels but am having difficulty landing it. Just figuring out the minimal delta-v needed to land from orbit. Would it be better (i.e. more size and weight efficient) to rely on just RCS for de-orbit and landing?

Jack Wolfe, that is one sexy rocket. Well done, good sir. And Monkeh, I like the design of that interplanetary stage and lander/rovers. I've got some building to do.

Remembering all the parts. I get caught up in grand designs, get them launched and ready to go, then realize I forgot solar panels and that my craft is now coasting uselessly in space. I wish the stock capsules/drone brains had small solar panels built in so that they didn't die in space.

Here's another endorsement for Kerbal Alarm Clock. One of those mods that is so incredibly useful, but doesn't even remotely feel like "cheating".

There are many methods of landing a rover. On a planet/moon with an atmosphere, you could just jettison the rover from orbit and use parachutes to land it. As for the Mun and other bodies without atmosphere, you'll need to land them with rockets or RCS. Here's one of my favorite methods: I love Skycranes! This one is at the perfect height so that the rover can actually re-dock with the Skycrane and then be moved to another location.

I'll be glad to see this first implementation of 'science', but like others have stated, I'm very much looking forward to them adding a purpose to planetary exploration. At this point, it's sheer roleplaying. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, but I'd love to see game systems tied into it to give it a bit more direction.

Honestly, these terms hardly apply to this game, or the trend, in general, of 'releasing' a game before it's done. In fact, the word 'release' probably doesn't apply either! To more accurately contribute to the discussion, I was always under the assumption that in Beta, a game was considered more or less "feature complete", meaning they're only ironing things out, not adding whole new features. KSP is clearly an alpha, by that standard.

As Steven implied, weight of the craft can make a difference, so even if you get two craft to match perfectly on Kerbin, factors such as emptying fuel tanks, stages being discarded, etc can cause the docking ports to not line up. It's a giant pain in the rear. I'd really like a "stretchy" docking tunnel type of thing to be implemented sometime soon!