Rusty6899

I don't really play sandbox now that career is nicely up and running. I have to say I do find grinding through the tech tree to be quite tedious. My thoughts on the matter are as follows, I do not see why anyone would really care about science points in sandbox, as it would just be a rapidly increasing number with no real benefit. Maybe some people would be interested to see how many they have accrued, but it does seem like a bit of a strange pursuit. I do think that sandbox mode should have the science reports as they are a nice, if small, reward for your achievements.

You'd have loved my old laptop .

Isp is the specific impulse and is calculated by the following equation... Isp = thrust / (mass flow rate * standard gravity) Standard gravity is 9.81m/s2 (This value is used anywhere in the universe it isn't just to local gravity) Mass flow rate is the mass of fuel that is burnt each second at full thrust. KSP gives you the Isp, so you don't really need to worry about calculating it. The game fairly recently started to include mass flow rate in it's part description, making it easier to calculate the length of each burn (previously you had to calculate mass flow rate from the Isp and thrust). Basically, the Isp is a measure of fuel efficiency. It is easier to understand if you consider that it is just asking the questions; How much thrust will I get? And for how long? Higher thrust engines will burn through fuel much quicker than low thrust engines, in general, and tend to have lower Isp. The Isp will not always be the most important factor in selecting an engine for a stage. Often a lighter engine, with a lower Isp will allow you to take a smaller amount of fuel to fulfill your delta-V requirements. Keeping your mass low will often be as great a consideration. Remember that for every tonne of payload, you will generally require roughly 10 tonnes to get into orbit. I would strongly recommend that you learn how to calculate delta-V and make an excel spreadsheet to allow you to (fairly) quickly design ships. Failing that, you would be best getting a mod that gives you a delta-V readout. I originally played the game by trial and error and managed to return from Duna, refueling multiple times. As soon as I learnt how to calculate delta-V, my ships became much more efficient, much more reliable for getting to where I wanted to go, and crucially, the part counts were reduced by a factor of 5.

Although it is extremely satisfying to use that website, I think that this forum is generally "above" such behaviour.

I rarely need more than 2 stages to get into LKO, and for light crafts it is doable in a single stage (due to vastly overpowered large engines). Normally, I design my stages so that they run out at a particular milestone, e.g. if I am going to Moho, I'll try to make one stage finish after my ejection burn from LKO, so that I have a good idea of how much fuel I have left relative to my expectation. I manually calculate delta-v so, after I launch, I only know exactly how much delta-V I have at the moment of each discrete stage. It therefore helps to get this information at the same point at which I know how much delta-V I need for the rest of my mission.

I think that science equipment that required a simple digital readout i.e.thermometers, barometers etc. should have 100% transmit value (or at least a very high percentage). The experiments that require kerbals should be much more valuable and have a significant transmit penalty. After all, it would be much harder to transmit a 100 page experimental report than a single number, however a human (or in this case kerbal) is capable of performing much more sophisticated experiments than a machine. The way I see it, surface samples should offer the most valuable, with EVA reports being less valuable and then the simple equipment offering fairly meager research value. I would like to see the Science Jr. and Goo Container offering more science if a kerbal is present to observe the results and/or if the data is returned. It would be good to have long term experiments as well, for example recording the temperature throughout an entire day or year, or measuring the gravity data across the course of a highly eccentric orbit. The problem is that these suggestions would require a large amount of re-balancing and so are unlikely to be implemented at any point. I do, however, think that science could do with an overhaul to make it more realistic and to make more difficult experiments produce a better yield of science.

It would be almost certain that the first priority would be to either transport one back to earth or, preferably, transport scientists there to study them. Although there would be immense difficulties in any manned mission to the Jovian system, I think that the huge importance of the discovery would justify the cost associated with the mission. It would probably justify a permanent colony being formed somewhere around Jupiter as there would inevitably be many lifetimes worth of research to perform. I imagine that a "Europa Race" would drive huge progress in the development in renewable life support systems akin to the advances in aerospace that stemmed from the space race in the 60's. There probably isn't much going on there, though.

Considering how easily obtained funds are, I don't really think that it's vital to meticulously recover every spent part. I wouldn't be surprised if the plan was to keep recovery as it is at the moment. It's already ridiculously easy to have rockets go SSTO, meaning recoverability can be shamelessly abused. I suppose it just depends upon your playing style. I tend to set up satellites and spam the "science data from space around..." contracts, which in itself is a function that can be exploited.

First of all you work out what you want to bring back from Duna (i.e. a capsule + any science equipment). I, personally, try to get my Duna lander back to Kerbin without staging as it only requires an extra 500 m/s dV and I try to make my Duna landers fairly wide so that I can mount plenty of parachutes and science equipment on radially attached fuel tanks. This makes staging awkward if you want to return all the equipment. So you need a lander with ~2000 m/s dV. Design your lander and calculate its total mass, then make yourself a LKO --> Duna transfer stage, with ~1200m/s dV. Then it's just a case of getting the thing into orbit. If you're travelling light, it shouldn't weigh much, 150t is plenty.

I just started playing with mods last week. So far I have played with Deadly Re-Entry, FAR, KW Rocketry, TAC and Kerbal Alarm Clock. Of these, I would say that Kerbal Alarm Clock, FAR and Deadly Re-entry would be good additions to the stock game (although I believe that the devs are planning on adding re-entry effects/damage and a better aerodynamics model). I really only added KW Rocketry for the fairings (which should be available in stock). I do like playing with Life Support, but in my opinion it is probably best done as a mod, as it would just add another layer of complexity to what is already a steep learning curve at the start of the game.

I have made manned return missions to Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Dres and Moho. I have been working on the Jool-5 challenge intermittently, but keep getting distracted by w̶o̶r̶k̶ new KSP updates. Still need to land on Bop and Pol and get back (which I will do when I can be bothered). I have landed on Gilly and Eve, but I have never returned from either and I have never been to Eeloo. I spent quite a while meticulously designing a rocket to take me to Eeloo and back and then never bothered to launch it.

It kind of annoys me when contracts come up at awkward times, If I'm doing an "Explore Mun" contract, I shouldn't have to go back to the Space Centre during the mission to pick up the "science data from space around" and "Plant a Flag" missions. I also made a blunder by making a return trip to Moho straight after visiting Duna, so I missed out on what I assume would be a lucrative contract.

I'd say that the Mainsails, Skippers and Poodles are some of the few engines that everyone knows the name for. In the VAB, everyone selects and remembers parts based on their appearance, as their picture is displayed with no name unless you hover over them. This should be taken into consideration at Mission Control.

An interesting idea, but it would be vastly more expensive than RCS + Monopropellant costs. I'd say you'd be far better with regular RCS.

Yeh, I find it a little bit annoying too. I know all the parts, but not their names. They should have a picture by the side. I doubt things like this are going to be a priority, but it'd be nice to see.

My mate showed me the game back in 0.18 or something. I really liked the look of it, but didn't get it until 0.21.

I think that playing without "revert to VAB/Launchpad" and the autosave function makes the game a lot more financially demanding. If you don't plan a big mission well, or if your rocket is unstable, then you can kiss √500,000 goodbye. It still doesn't provide a huge challenge, if you know what you're doing, but this could be easily overcome, by making contracts more difficult e.g. being given fewer attempts/less time to complete them.

I did pretty much the same thing, but with two separate landers, one for each body, with each lander having enough delta-v to land, ascend, and return to Kerbin. I think that was probably more efficient than building a lander able to land on both in sequence. It meant that I didn't need to research docking ports first as well. To be honest, I don't find any difficulty in staying within budget. I hadn't really thought of building satellites to get money from the "transmit data from x" contracts. It's definitely good that the game has found a use for long-term satellite usage though. Although they are maybe a little over-generous with the funds rewarded from them.

Tsiolkervsky

I'd make a command pod with a hand crank generator installed and a remote guidance unit with a small solar panel already attached. I might try to make more uses for EVAs, particularly with more realistic damage modelling which required skilled Kerbals to carry out repairs and manual construction in orbit. Basically, Kerbals would have a crow bar and some gaffa tape and could prise apart or stick together two parts. Moving parts around would work a lot like docking, but with a Kerbal(s) holding them and using EVA propellant. I'd also make a few changes to science, contracts etc. just to see if I could make them any better. I haven't used any mods yet (although I think I might start fairly soon) so I don't know how much of this is already available.

I loved playing KSP without autosave, as it meant that you had to make decisions on the fly and never give up on a lost cause. Yesterday I had to launch a lander into Minmus orbit using only RCS as I botched my landing and destroyed all my engines, then use my orbital station to ferry it back to Kerbin and, finally, raise the Periapsis of my orbital station above 70km to avoid crashing that into the planet. Much more interesting than just pressing F9 and nailing the landing. I also lost close to K300,000 on a failed launch to Duna, but my improvised launch escape system saved both my Kerbals, and I was able to make the necessary improvements to make sure the 2nd launch went ok. Later on my game crashed and I lost hours of progress because I hadn't been saving my game. I'm not really sure if I trust the game enough to keep them turned off, but it takes self control not to use quick load.

I completed the first two that I was given, but was quite disappointed that they were both just in low, circular, prograde orbits around Kerbin. I had hoped that there would be more variation, but I guess that will happen eventually.

I had a bit of a mare today. I have been playing without quick saves. All was going well, I had landed on Duna, taken a surface sample, planted a flag etc. and returned to my ship. I then noticed that I hadn't repacked my parachutes, so I got back out my craft and repacked all of them bar two, which I seemingly couldn't reach from the ladder. I then pressed the spacebar to drop down so that I could walk round and pack the remaining parachutes, when the screen went black, I heard an explosion and a message came up on the screen saying that my ship was destroyed along with my Kerbal. Feeling cheated, I attempted to reload the persistent file, because I thought that might take me back to before the crash, however as the screen was still black (even back at the space centre, although with the mission icons/cash/rep bars still were displayed) I couldn't tell whether I had loaded from before or after the crash. I then reloaded my most recent save (as I can still save the game from the space centre screen) which was from ages before. As soon as I loaded the game, I saw the auto-save message, and realised that my persistent file was now the one from much earlier, meaning that I had lost hours of progress. Frustratingly I still have craft files from my most recent missions, but can't use them because I haven't researched the required parts. Is there any way of overcoming this and getting my progress back, or will I have to grind all that science back? Please excuse any misuse of terminology, or any incoherence that may have crept in to my description.

Any chance you could take me through posting a craft file? I'm on a Mac if that makes any difference. Also, the crafts are from back in 0.23, so before the largest engines came in. I have a much more efficient design now.

The most ridiculous one I had was testing the S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster in orbit around Kerbin. Obviously I couldn't stack anything underneath it, so I ended up putting it upside down at the top of my rocket. I only had a tiny unmanned command module to use as well, so my rocket looked completely ridiculous. The contract was far too lucrative to refuse though.