Sundancer

Decided that all my older designs where horribly over-engineered and begun work on a new, slimmed down, line of vessels. As a result Mervey Kerman was stranded on the Mun. Cue rescue mission! Luckily I'd unlocked the Stayputnik probe core a mission or two earlier, as none of the ever so brave Kerbals wanted to risk being stranded alone with Mervey. Built a rocket with just over 9000(!) Dv, as per my usual design strategy and the mission was underway. Everything went fine and only the Mystery Goo samples were lost due to pressing the wrong key and boarding the original craft. All in all, a fairly successful session. Pleased with the rescue mission as it's the first I've done that hasn't ended up with more Kerbals needing to be brought home.

Thank you! It seems as though both of these things have been at work causing my confusion. You can imagine my surprise when my aircraft ended up with an apoaps of 200km with no rocket engines. Anyway, thanks once again and I'm marking this answered.

I just came back after a break of two months. I seem to recall that radial intakes were next to useless for any sort of high altitude flight. Logged in to check if anything has changed, since I've been able to get a plane with just two radials up to 26,000ft with no flameouts. Everything seems much easier than it was before. Just playing around I've been able to punch aircraft out of the atmosphere on jet power alone, trivialising (small) SSTO building. So I'd like to ask if there have been any changes to air intakes/air breathing engines/aircraft in general? Edit: I'm using FAR, if that has any major bearing on the situation. Although I was using FAR before I stopped playing right after 0.22 came out, so the experience should be the same.

I read a thread on here a little while ago saying that it works out the same. You just have to transmit a LOT of times. Here you go.

You have a point in that the long-term fanbase (I'm loathe to use the terms hardcore and casual) are the ones who will pretty much always instantly buy any new game and then do most of the testing and feedback. But there's no money in that, and that's what game development companies do. Make games to make money. People need to get over themselves and stop thinking that whichever company they like is making a game specifically for them. Using your example, the X series has been going on for quite some time now and has developed an incredibly dedicated fanbase. They're also the only dev team I know that's been able to consistently better themselves every single game, with very few faults to speak of. But before X:Rebirth was announced and publicised, how many people did you know that knew about X? Pretty much all my friends are gamers and before I mentioned it, no one had heard of it. It was the same with The Elder Scrolls. Arena and Daggerfall were (and still are) fantastic games, but before Morrowind barely anyone had heard of the series. Even then it took Oblivion to come out for the series to really take off. Then they come to Skyrim and remove a lot of features that made the games such a hit with the established fanbase and there was a rift in the community. Half of them were saying "This is so awesome, I can get lost for hours" and the other half saying "OMG it's rubbish" because they took out attributes/skills. Then you take a step back and realise that Squad, like Egosoft and Bethesda have to make money. We're lucky that we can mod our games into what we want them to be. With KSP you can use mods to increase difficulty. I'm sure with X:Rebirth we'll be able to mod in new playable ships. For the record, X:Rebirth is a new beginning as the name suggests. It's not part of the X:BTF, X2 and X3 series, hence it not being X:4. We only got to pilot one ship in X:BTF as well, if you recall. They added more in as the series progressed.

You have to look at it from the dev's perspective. At the end of the day, this game is their livelihood. If it's a "hardcore" game, the audience will be small but incredibly fanatical. That doesn't generate a great deal of profit. Whereas making the game accessible to us "younger and stupider" players enables them to keep shifting copies of the game, thus allowing them to put more work into the game and/or work on other projects. What's the problem anyway? If you want a hardcore game, download the mods that make it so. It's as simple as that. Making the game so hard that a complete novice can't enjoy it is counter productive so what games are all about.

That's how I've been doing my landings. It's just a matter of regulating the throttle and your angle relative to the retrograde marker to dictate exactly where and how hard you land. I've never actually landed where I intended to though The sense of accomplishment when you stick any landing for the first time is huge though, imo. Not sure how I'd manage in a situation like Skyrender's though. Shadows are how I did it on the Mun all three times that I've been there. Minmus is easier since if you aim for one of the lakes(?) you can use the altimeter. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to try a Minmus landing in the dark due to how close I came to the surface on my lake-landing. It's quite unnerving knowing that your landing site is "just over that cliff", but that cliff is approaching your lander at three or four hundred metre's per second (minimum!).

There's also a "recover" button hidden behind the altimeter. Simply take your mouse up to the top of the screen (above the altimeter) when you're watching your craft and, provided it's landed, there should be a "recover" drop down menu. This only works for the vessel you're currently controlling though. So if you're on EVA and you opt to recover, you'll have to do as BostLabs says via the spacecentre tracking screen to recover the vessel you left behind.

So it looks like I'm going to buy to some sweets and screw around Kerbin! Excellent. MrPopcup, your first suggestion is one that strikes a chord with me. I've been trying to make my craft smaller and more efficient, but I always seem to run into trouble. My new method is doing "simulated" (revert to launch/assembly) launches a few times to test new designs. I'd never have tried this if I hadn't been interrupted mid launch for my Eve craft. The original launch went horribly. On releasing the first stage the ship lost around 25m/s in vertical velocity, which clearly means the design isn't utilising the first stage to it's full advantage since the second stage then has to build that speed back up again (burning more fuel). After I got back to try again, it made orbit flawlessly. There's so much to bear in mind whilst playing this game... It's awesome. Having fun in planes is a favourite of mine already It's just a shame how the aerodynamics model is compared to FAR. In stock (my career install) I have to be really careful how I fly my aerobatics plane to avoid random flailing and then crashing. Yet with FAR I can consistently push that same design to the very limits of what it can do, and quite often beyond with no real issues. Heck, I can do a pseudo-Mig style maneuver with it and come out fine. But if I install FAR for launching rockets, they invariably end up burning six high powered rocket motors directly towards Kerbin once I begin the grav turn (and I do them smoothly as a matter of course, trying to stay within the pro-grade marker). I'll stick with my stock install until I can achieve circular orbits and/or Mun and Minmus flights with my eyes closed. Once that's done then it's time to ramp up the difficulty and try career again. You make a valid point with the rovers though. I ought to build one so I can start building a lifter around it. The issue I face with this though is the fact that building them in the VAB is a pain. I've built multiple in the SPH for messing around on Kerbin, but to attach them to a rocket they need to be in the VAB, which requires raging at the symmetry system for a few hours. Edit: Although, do the subassemblies carry over from one building to the other? If they do then I'm a happy camper.

Ouch, unlucky with that one. Your lander looks to be fairly similar to mine (mass-wise), and it took me between 50 and 100 units of fuel to get back. As has been suggested, quicksave and give it a go. The way I did it was burning putting myself into a retrograde orbit compared to Minmus's rotation on it's own axis. I simply burned until I achieved escape velocity and continued until my Kerbin periapsis was sub-40km. Doing this you'll have to skip through the atmosphere of Kerbin once or twice, but you can land back home without burning again. Also bear in mind that you can use your Kerbal's EVA suit thrusters to push your craft in a desired direction, should you run out of fuel on your actual rocket motor. It does look like he'll need to be rescued though. Disclaimer: My advice is probably rubbish due to my inexperience. One Minmus landing =/= knowing how to get there and back correctly. Despite having had resounding successes every time I've tried a non-Kerbin landing so far.

Something I've noticed when messing around in the SPH is that if you use angle-snap it's possible to get some minor clipping. But if you turn it off and rotate the part as necessary, you can get much more control over exactly how it clips into the other part. The easiest way to see this for yourself is (with angle snap on) take the Swept wing, and try to join another either in front or behind. Then turn off the angle snap and try again. The part will likely show up first at a weird angle, but with a bit of patience you can build nearly seamless wings that are far larger than you could manage normally. Of course, you may know this already... Edit: It's also not what you were looking for. Disregard this post.

Hello. I'm in career mode and I've done pretty much all I can in Kerbin's SOI. To that end I've got two ships in a 100km parking orbit, one destined for Eve and one for Duna. However, having looked up the optimal phase angles it's clear that I'm not in luck. Eve is around 30degrees ahead of Kerbin, and Duna is around 100degrees ahead. I think waiting for them to align correctly is my best course of action since there is every chance my ships won't make it, even in a best case scenario. IIRC they've got around 5/6000dV as they sit now. According to what I've read, that should be enough. But I'm terrible at this game so it probably won't be What would you recommend doing while I wait for them to line up? I'm going to be sending more missions to the Mun (maybe use a rover to cut down on how many) to pick up the science I've missed there, as well as refining both my Mun and Minmus rockets (read: practicing how to get there and back reliably). I'll also try and learn how to rendezvous and dock now that I have the parts. But all of this will only be ~7 in-game days. It would be nice to avoid time-warping too much, but it looks like that's what I'll have to do. As a sidenote, does anyone know if Kerbal Alarm Clock works in career mode?

Installed Engineer Redux as I got a bit tired of having to guesstimate whether I'd built a rocket fit for purpose. Then proceeded to put a Kerbal on Minmus for the first time, earning 506 points of science on the way. Now to send another couple of missions to the Mun (or one with a rover/hopping lander) to explore all the biomes and start work on a Duna mission.

With regards to that, is there any difference between using the SAS and Inline Stabilizer? Looking at the stats in-game they seem to be very similar. The SAS being heavier and requiring more electricity to run, for no extra torque. I've tried both and, personally, haven't noticed a difference. But then, I'd need a lot more time with the game to notice. Overall though I think it's alright though.

Two Mun landings and many, many failed attempts to build a rocket for Minmus. All my designs either don't have enough juice left once I get into orbit to make up for my errors, or they are an absolute pain to get into orbit in the first place (slowing down as they stage). Half tempted to bite the bullet and watch/read a tutorial just so I know how to do everything optimally. I get the impression my return trips are incredibly inefficient. If I can work out how to do it correctly I'm reasonably sure my Mun rocket could do Minmus too. I relied on Engineer a great deal, apparently.