Tharios

If it's in Sandbox mode, all parts should be fully upgraded. Does the thermal rocket run on Xenon at all? I thought just the plasma thruster did? I can't check right now because I had to ditch all my mods.

Considering he mentions a number of times the specific mistakes that prevented him from simply getting the entire tree in a single mission...yeah, probably.

Watch Scott Manley's second science acquisition video. It'll make you weep at your own ineptitude. I know it did for me.

I haven't played with that yet, but I kind of saw the problem coming. A system like that really only works with geostationary satellites, and it's not possible to achieve stationary orbit around any of the moons. I've always thought the LoS effect was a little too strictly enforced in a game where you're forced to realign everything manually. There's also the fact that LoS and the distance loss is going to become a real problem for anyone who ends up using the Rescaled Kerbin Mod. But, we'll see what happens.

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the inclusion of fusion reactors because I'm just never going to get to using antimatter. I am not, and will never be, capable of getting large stations into orbit around other worlds, even one piece at a time.

While I do think some of the gaps in thrusts between the "best" thermal propulsion/reactor combinations and the "worst" combinations of same is much too large, I can't say I agree otherwise. Plasma rockets are for space only. It's not a restriction of options, it's just a fact of the device...it's what they're for. The same is kind of true of the thermal VTOL, it'd be cool to get it to work, but it really shouldn't.

Yes and no. The KSPI lab currently really does it all. It handles data collection, and all those other non-research functions. I suppose it would be better to say the stock lab will be redundant. It's highly unlikely to do anything the KSPI lab can't. In fact, reading about it, I'd actually almost have to say they GOT the idea from the KSPI lab.

Redundancy? At that point, I would probably suggest including his lab in the mod...but only its model...overwriting it onto the base-game's lab instead. No point at all in having two labs unless each does something massively different.

Just read the blog post for goals in .23 One of them is the introduction of a science lab. Which is really just a double-sized hitchhiker container. You going to be keeping your lab model in the Mod if theirs makes it into the update, Fractal? Harvester's .23 blog.

Revelation...Kerbals are miniaturized Hulks!

Don't trample on the hard-won and blood-born liberties of free Kerbals everywhere! To give up liberty for safety is to deserve neither and lose both! Oh man...I can never say that line with a straight face...oh, the laughs.

See, I was wrong about that part.

Afaik, most current efforts center around a principle pretty much identical to the Vista. Laser a small mass of deuterium/tritium, and use it to ignite regular hydrogen into a sustained plasma state by compressing it with magnetic fields. Burning straight deuterium/tritium for power is wholly impractical. It's just not a big enough bang for as little as can be reasonably used. I don't currently know of any reactor efforts which are D/T only. I could be wrong. Really though, even an AM reactor would just be little bits of AM that are used to ignite magnetically compressed hydrogen to get it to a usable plasma state without having to use a bunch of power for massive lasers too. Otherwise, an AM reactor wouldn't produce much (currently) usable energy at all. It'd generate a lot of thermal potential, but not all that much more than most nuclear reactors, and that would be only a tiny fraction of its power...the rest would be wasted. If we really want to get the most out of any such reactors, we'll have to develop materials that, in concert, are capable of interacting with the radiation from the reaction the same way solar panels convert visible wavelength photons into electricity. In the meantime, our only options are to use as much of the energy to generate as much heat as possible to use over the broadest system to get the most mechanical/electrical potential out of it. Or, to pass the plasma through networks of coils to generate electrical fields as it passes. Fortunately, there are already materials under research that will be capable of directly converting thermal energy into electrical energy. That...may have come across as patronizing or condescending. It was not intended as such...please don't take it that way.

I would think a reactor would require less effort than the Vista engine, since it's self-contained rather than expulsive. So, perhaps significantly reduced need for Deuterium and Tritium, and about the same liquid fuel consumption rate as a Vista on 1/2 throttle or so? Overall power output pretty much in between nukes and AM...though leaning a tad toward AM for the complexity of fueling the things.

Yup, updated the day after release. The current wobble isn't because of insecure parts. They have hardly any flex while flying without ASAS. There's a lot of force exerted when I try to maneuver because I like my planes stable. As soon as I hit the ASAS though, all the flaps go bananas and flop the planes around til they finally shake apart.

I know this isn't specifically the place, but I was wondering if any of you had encountered catastrophic ASAS wobble, and if any of you knew of a means to counter it? I've made craft that are so stable they're hard to make do anything but fly straight, but the instant I hit ASAS...they wobble to pieces as it overcompensates for, well, nothing. Currently, along with KSPI, I've got FAR and B9. But it should be noted, I've always had this problem even with the stock game. Suggestions? I ask here because I trust your opinions.

Gearbox bought up the IP after THQ tanked. They're remastering HW and HW2 for modern systems. Another developer (with a lot of HW talent that used to work for Relic) has been working on a game they were calling Hardware: Shipbreakers. After Gearbox acquired the HW IP, the makers of Shipbreakers partnered with them and retooled the game into a spinoff of HW, retitling it Homeworld: Shipbreakers. It takes place on Kharak, where the player is tasked with running a salvage company to acquire ancient ship wreckage in the Great Desert. Gearbox has said that they'd be interested in making HW3 if HW:S and the remastered originals do well enough. Rejoice.

Fractal...get ready for yet another wave of interest in your mod. Scott Manley has decided to do a new web series that, while including a boatload of other mods, is centered around acquiring and supporting your warp drive legitimately and exploring the system with your engines. - By Scott Manley

Sounds like maybe a bug when a reactor emergency shuts down during lab's research process?

I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm sure Fractal will adjust it as he thinks necessary. Keep in mind, too, that I'm sure he's already considering how to make KSPI either mutually compatible, or modally adjustable between the standard planetary system scale, and the soon to come "Realistic" scale being done in a mod by NathanKell. So almost everything is bound to change rather radically sometime over the next year. For the time being, I get the feeling that with all the other options available, the DT Vista is a bit shelved for the time being as he works on things with higher priorities. I could be wrong.

As I understand the concept, the deuterium and tritium are just to create a little burst of energy to ignite a cloud of hydrogen expelled from the engine nozzle. Throttle controls the amount of hydrogen released for that purpose. As thrust goes up with the throttle, Isp drops. Since KSP doesn't distinguish between jet fuel, rocket fuel, and liquid hydrogen, all "liquid fuel" in the game is assumed to be hydrogen. So, you have to have the deuterium and tritium, but that's for ignition, not thrust. And you need the liquid fuel as the actual propellant. And it takes a massive amount of power to control the reaction enough to get anything useful out of it, so you essentially almost do need an AM reactor and generator just to power a fusion engine. That said, I do think maybe it's time to include fusion reactors for that purpose, acquired about the same time as the DT Vista...and otherwise probably as complicated to run.

You have to have a Kerbal EVA and get near or grab onto it, and then right click to get the info window to get the repair reactor option. Is that right, guys? I haven't busted a reactor yet, so I'm not totally sure.

Misread what you originally said. Sorry. Yeah, single-engine version is bugged.

Not a bug. Your thermal turbojet is set to "prevent flameout" thrust limiter mode. Meaning it'll power up as far as you set the throttle, but won't produce any thrust if there's no power. Which there isn't, because your reactors aren't running at all. Hence, 0 thrust.