khyron42

About 10 minutes after I posted that, a huge thunderstorm came through the area knocking over trees and power lines. I still don\'t have power, and don\'t know when I will. I\'ll fly when I can today!

My flight\'s under way. I\'ll update once I get there. The Polar Researcher I is well equipped for a flight down to Lake Kostok and back, and carries comm gear, cameras, lights for polar nights, and weaponry for fending off any hungry wildlife. 14 minutes under way and I\'m just south of the southernmost end of KSC\'s continent.

It seems the original landers of Thrionian bases are doomed. I\'ll fly my turn tonight after work!

I think a limit isn\'t needed, but if someone tries a landing at a base with lots of ships and finds the lag is too horrible, they should be allowed to change base targets and try again during that same turn. Different computers have different limits that will allow some people to still land at crowded bases just fine, but at the same time people could land such high-part-count craft at a base that less capable computers would have problems after only two or three landings.

A Keosynchronous communication satellite with antennas pointed towards Kerbin and enough solar panels to power it would be good. It should ideally be right above the continent where KSC is. You can do this easily by only gravity-turning 20 degrees during the launch burn and getting Ap out to 2868, then circularizing once you get there.

Zekes - have you looked at the Kosmos pack? it gives more variety of the same basic options, and has a low-resolution version to make things easier on people with less RAM in their systems. I\'m not saying you should pick it over ExPI if you prefer that one - I just wasn\'t sure if you had downloaded it. The pictures in the OP there don\'t do it justice, there\'s a lot of variety in it - perhaps too much for this project, who knows.

I think you\'re overly generous saying any non-infinite tank. Single 3-meter tank, 5 engines, and enough fuel to make it to Minmus and back 3-4 times over. Image Gallery.

Nice location! MisterSpork, it\'s your turn - it looks like Candre named his base in honor of yours (or you\'re both in the same RP nation), have fun with the landing! I\'ve updated rule #1 to include TheCardinal\'s offer to build memory-limited packages for anyone who\'s computer has issues with the whole mod list and persistence file. ----- I\'ve decided to add the Fixed Camera mod on my upcoming turn.

I think what I\'ll do is put something into the OP on the Community thread saying that if people need an option for much smaller memory requirements, they can PM you. Knowing which base they intend to land at, you (or I) can use Kessler to delete all the craft that aren\'t related to that base, and then you can run your tool in combination with the known mod list to produce the pared-down 'only the essentials' combined mod pack. What you\'re doing here impresses and amuses me. When I was in college in the early 90\'s using a computer with only 192 KB of RAM, I wrote my own modem comm program because the existing comm programs needed more memory than I had. That comm program was solely so that I could dial into the university\'s internet access and play MUDs over the very minimal 1200 bps modem in that computer. Your efforts to play a game you enjoy in spite of your memory limitations reminded me of that time!

Cardinal - are you getting close to releasing this, or just want to keep it for your internal use? I appreciate your offer to babysit the mod community base thread and keep it updated, but I was also thinking to just give people instructions on it once this tool is available. I can see it being quite a headache for you to make sure you have the latest mod parts downloaded, let alone the rest of the process this must take!

challenge accepted? Meet the Albatross. Completely stock and ugly as sin, and I\'m surprised it made it off the ground (it was a pretty close call.) 1350 internal fuel and 3600 external fuel in drop tanks, which looks like enough fuel for 3 hours 26 minutes of continuous full-throttle burn by the single engine. I still can\'t believe I managed to get it airborne... but I probably should have tested handling without the drop tanks. This could be fun. Currently 12 minutes underway and approaching 5000 feet, with a measly 65 km traveled to date. I\'ll see how it goes.

Sounds good, TheCardinal. Can we count on you to redo that analysis and build a new zip down the road whenever other players hit this problem? For now, I\'ll move Stelar down to the end of the list. It\'s not fair to keep everyone else waiting any longer for their turns. Candre, it\'s your turn. I look forward to seeing where the new Minmus base is!

Stelar, I\'ve built this modified save that only includes the Minmus base craft. For this list, you\'ll only need a shorter list of mods: NovaPunch (sorry) MechJeb Carts BACE Probodobodyne So you can at least leave out the Thunderbird and Sunbeam to save memory. I\'ll merge yours back into the bigger picture file if you can fly it with this setup. ---- A test launch with that one and a fairly small craft capable of reaching minmus still needed 1.8 GB of RAM - you may be unable to fly to any base on this save any more

I currently have 12 GB, but that\'s because the minecraft server I\'m hosting uses 8 GB of it. I also always run performance and usage monitoring software. With the current set of mods and save files, with an active flight under way, KSP uses a total of 2.5 GB of RAM. I\'m honestly not sure how much of that is the mods, and how much is the gargantuan save file we\'ve been building; I\'ll test right now with a clean persistence file but the same mods, and update this post. If that reduces the memory by a lot, I will see about a workaround for you. ---- With the same mods but no persistence file, the total memory used by KSP is 1.7 GB. I think your best bet will be to work from an edited persistence file that only includes the craft that make up your destination base, and then I can merge your ship into the full-sized file after your flight. But before I work on that, try flying with no other ships in the persistence file, and see it works smoothly enough under those conditions; if not, the reduced-size persistence file won\'t help any.

I had posted (links to) screenshots back on page 1 that included coordinates for the two above-ground ones... I didn\'t make them in-forum images to avoid spoilers. I guess I should have put 'Here are the coordinates' in big bold letters, though.

RedDwarf - cool, just let us know when you want to reserve a spot on the list. You\'ll probably have a week or two between signing up and getting around to your turn, plenty of time to finalize a design that will work Gojira - Updated. That gives us five reservations for Aluminium Oxide, so there\'s now the option to 'Open a third Munar Base' when people make new reservations after yours!

You can always download the persistence file and take (and post) whatever shots you like!

It was always unstable, I think - kept breaking off one more engine every time someone landed nearby, and finally fell over. at least all the fuel is stil intact!

The save file had the right number of craft in it, but I noticed it said Radion\'s lander was on a suborbital trajectory instead of landed! I loaded it quickly before it could crash; somehow it was 70 meters up in the air! It must have last saved around there and then not saved again before you uploaded the persistent.sfs. I hit mechjeb\'s land button in time though and relanded it, and have confirmed that it\'s saved now and showing 'landed' when I go back to the tracking station. I think the file size reduction was because with the really long flight time, a large debris item left by one of the previous flights crashed and removed itself from the save.

Whoops! great timing, Radion! I\'ll update the first post again. However, that persistence file is much smaller than it was when speedollama handed it off to you - I fear you may have missed a mod and I\'ll have to do a merge again. Checking.

The updates we\'re seeing for 0.16 will require starting over from scratch, but we still have weeks to go before it will likely be released. I think I\'ll also change the rules around to try and allow more options; perhaps these changes... - Instead of having to choose a base beforehand, just book a flight slot. This slot allows you one launch, use as you see fit. - Land no more than 1-2 controllable craft at any base per turn, but if your single launch that turn can drop rovers at every existing base go for it. Feel free to leave crew wandering on the surface too (since EVAs will be coming in 0.16) - Mods used shouldn\'t need any files aside from the persistent.sfs files to be handed off to the next player (No Space Dock mod or other similar ones.) - Creating new land bases will be allowed only if every existing base on that planet/moon has been landed at by at least 4 players. If multiple bases are full enough to create new ones, you can only create one new one per turn. - Space stations are allowed, if & when docking ends up being included. They\'ll count as a new base so only one per turn. Any other changes that would make sense? I wanted to avoid the space dock like mods to keep things simpler for handing off between turns, and to encourage building things that can actually get off the ground on their own. Updating the list now. Sorry for missing your request, zekes, I\'ve put you in the list where you should have been if I hadn\'t derped. RedDwarfIV - I don\'t see a request to launch from you before now, does this mean you want to be put on the list? If so, just name the base you\'ll be landing at and I\'ll get you on there! It\'s been 48 hours with nothing from Radion. StelarCF, you are go for launch!

The problem was that it was a VERY short poll duration. Less than a day. Commander Zoom commented on 'not seeing the poll' almost an hour after the poll closed.

My point was, we drew it that way for separating south america without any real reason to, just because it looked like a good spot to draw a line. In south america\'s case the narrowest end happens to actually be on a plate boundary. There\'s another plate boundary half way up, right at the southern border of Mexico. There are other places on Earth where we draw the continent boundaries well away from the plate boundaries, so it\'s not like we\'re consistent. I was offering one reason why it\'s perfectly ok for the boundary to be anywhere, and 'narrow spot' doesn\'t really make any more (or less) sense than 'halfway across.'

If we assume the 'continents' are divided up like Earth along plate tectonic boundaries, a strike boundary that transitions to a subduction boundary just offshore could very well happen along the wider part of the isthmus. The wide spot would be caused by a combination of collision uplift (like the himalayas) and volcanic activity from the subduction zone. Or, being Kerbal, it could be due to both continents preferring to do their garbage dumping off the isthmus, gradually creating an anthropogenic (kerbalogenic?) wide spot.

Nice shuttle! Radion is up now.