Ravenchant

Your last one could use some work, but the rest are stunning. Love the red-hot coals! So true. It looks better on analog ones, but even a digital camera set to black&white mode can produce quite spectacular results. Was that directed towards Dispatcher or in general? Because I might have a few

2 ram or circular intakes per engine at most. With radial...the number can be higher, but those are usually one-engine planes. And no stacking, of course. The only exception to this rule was my machingbird challenge entry- airhogging is almost mandatory there!

Wha...how...oh boy. They're all over my crafts. I assumed people used them more The radial ants are useful outside of probes, for example in smaller skycranes. You just need a lot of 'em. Likewise, using 48-7S on girders instead of the orange or white radials has its merits. If nothing else, it definitely looks better than a truckload of 24-77s, with higher ISP. Nosecones are good for aesthetics, and linear RCS ports for balancing. But those two parts -> WHY?!

0.23 is out, yeah. A shame you currently can't touch this because the server is overloaded.

Oh wow. I wasn't even hoping to get into finals when submitting. Well...I don't think it was the best one, but hey, if people like it... Deathsoul97, antbin - congratulations! The same goes for all participants for making such interesting designs, they were fun to test Of course, a big thanks goes to Xeldrak for creating this challenge series and not losing his (?) nerves, and to anyone who voted for my entry on grounds of its functionality, and not looks Edit: Oh hey, 100th post! Better say something witty, better say something witty... nope, I got nothing.

No, I meant I couldn't decide for which one of the three to vote. Past tense used because antbin got it in the meantime. While Loki's entry (is it okay to shorten like that?) is probably more fun to drive because of...acrobatic potential, the one way ticket has more features Edit: I'll try to adress the skycrane stability issues sometime next week. Admittedly, it does tend to flip around a lot on Kerbin because of the dense atmo.

Let's see... booster separation, launch escape systems, soyuz-style capsule retrorockets and the occasional probe deorbiting. Yeah, they have their uses For use on boosters, attach them slightly below the CoM - as fuel drains away, the engine makes for a higher percentage of mass and so the center wanders downward.

Hm...I'm thinking of abstaining from voting. It's pretty much a tie between XolotlLoki, antbin and Deathsoul97, and picking one at random wouldn't be exactly fair, given how low the overall voter numbers are :/

This is...woah. Must have taken weeks. Impressive, and let's hope it doesn't get taken down The only ME ship I routinely make copies of is the Hugo Gernsback - similar in the end state, mind

Epic necro is epic. Also: IFF bird != the word play_the_trashmen = true

This...this is seriously by far the best AAR I've ever read. There's too many out there that only focus on spacecraft, but you manage to build up believable crew interactions and personal drama without delving too much into it. And I'm only at chapter 20 Congratulations! So...czokletmuss, how did you like Europa report?

Fair enough, I suppose. Nice pics! That stage separation shot is awesome.

Not with that description, sorry. You need to elaborate and sound a bit more professional to be taken seriously. When inspiring kids is among the top reasons...yeah. Maybe after the economic crisis stabilizes?

...why and how the heck did you put launch clamps into orbit?

Hm. I remember being disappointed with Spore, gave it away to a friend eventually. The start was fun and all, and designing creatures & craft really worked well, but the actual game was too...clean, cute (?) and repetitive for me. "What do you mean, I cannot melt this planet to slag with orbital bombardment from an armada of (custom-built!) ships? That's why I bought this game!" Never played Freelancer, Homeworld or any of the "classics". X3 would probably top if I could get it to work properly and not bugged-to-hell, but as it is I'd have to say Mass effect.

I meant Xeldrak, for preparing the challenge or adding contestants It wouldn't be really objective if I tested for you

I know, right? Sarcasm aside, it looks really interesting -reminiscent of the Eagle transporter. What is its function?

Count me in! There's what, 9 stock VAB crafts and 5 or 6 planes, which hardly cover the possibilities within this game. Of course, one could argue that players should first design the more advanced stuff themselves, but then again, orbital tugs or manned vessels that go beyond Minmus are never really explained, and there's no real-life precedent to gain ideas from. If time's an issue, I could help a bit

Thanks! I'm now happy I know German Have yet to test bizmar's craft, though.

Hm. A planet with 1/11 the diameter of another, equally dense planet would have 0.075% of the mass, and 9,1% of its surface gravity. The gravitational constant being 11x larger would make sense.

-snip- On topic: this looks really interesting! New planets are one of those things that everyone likes

The nose is conical, right? Find the drag coefficient of that in a table somewhere and then work with quadratic drag; as soon as you have TWR, "wet" and dry mass values of the rocket, you can write down differential equations for acceleration and speed, and probably come up with a fairly close estimate.

Personally, I couldn't find any faults with it. As our craft should be useable by new players, though...they would first need to know how to get 15+ tons to another planet.

I feel ya. That sense of being chased and helpless against what's chasing you is horrible. On the other hand, naughty dreams are nice to have

Lorrie was very nice, but as with sploden: while the craft is undeniably good, techniques used in the building are difficult to recreate by less experienced players. Sorry to see a disqualification here Moreso because he seemed to be winning... In other news, I just looked at the current results again and am slightly weirded out by the fact that mine is still among the top ones voted for. How many did actually test it offworld? All stages have a TWR < 1 on Kerbin, so some possible issues with its design can't even be spotted there. I do have an explanation for the upside down probe core, though. It was originally facing the right way, but as the skycrane is installed flipped on its core-less transfer stage, you couldn't point toward maneuver nodes because there is no retrograde blue marker. So this was changed.