XrayLima

Seen a few folks looking to find out why the Thrust Plate is size limited to 1.5m or fairings to 3m etc - Its all slightly hidden in the release notes for v6.0 back in May: Fixed it for me.

Mines doing the same - was fine last night, not changed anything. Was about to do fresh install and try again but sounds like you've tried that. Anyone got any thoughts, this is pretty game killing!

Due to visual improvements freaking out, my KSC is currently appearing underwater. This has spurred me into reviewing my lifestyle choices in order to avert rising sea levels due to climate change...... Joking aside, broken mods are just a part of a game constantly being updated. I consider it a price worth paying and am just grateful to modders for their epic efforts. Also - Climate change, rather than mods is definitely worth getting angry about.

OK, this is going to sound stupid. Is there any way to to check if the Fn key is stuck down? Do any of the other Fn functions work without the Fn key being held down? Are the rest of your F1-F12 keys behaving?

Hmm, I'll need to look at what can be dumped during an abort, I'm obviously too heavy. The current design has two sepatrons in the nose, and 8 canted parallel to the cone. This lifts the capsule, (+ 2x radial drogue, 2x Oscar-B, 4x RCS blocks, 1x Mk16 Parachute, 1x Mk2-R Radial chute, 1 x Mechjeb unit and the heatshield) to just over 300m, from a static pad abort. This gives the chutes just about enough time to open properly. 6 Sepatrons only get me to 190m -ish and that means, even with Smartparts opening the chutes, I hit the deck at about 15-20m/s. Too fast for comfort. I've just about managed to squeeze a 400km x 400km orbit and safe return (with no orbital debris, 2nd stage PE < 20km) from without deviating from the Gemini-Titan design too heavily. It just feels very heavy and wasteful, with a launch TWR of 1.3, and 2nd Stage TWR of 0.8ish and I'm sure it could be better.

I suppose homemade Ore, Lf, Ox or Monoprop once back to Kerbin really only have curiosity value. There will be a mine/factory that can make it cheaper and better than our dinky little drills and processor. Real value is when it's still in orbit! Then a single tank is worth the cost of the tank, the contents and the cost of the whole rocket to get it up there in the first place!

Hey there folks, With the two kerbal Gemini-like capsule, how do you like to enable safe aborts whilst keeping mostly to the spirit of the Gemini-Titan design? We don't have, or at least I couldn't see a stock 'eject' option and I'm not sure it would work for a pad abort with stock parachutes (I've still to play with these) anyway. I don't think NASA were all too sure of the ejection seat abort method either...... Fitting Sepatrons makes the capsule rather heavy and wasteful. I was just wondering what other players prefer to do to recreate Gemini? XrayLima

@Ser - But I'm the CEO and frankly, their safety is not always paramount in my mind! I'm a very poor employer frankly. But maybe you are on to something, maybe the trigger for striking is a multiplier of Reputation and the inverse of their Courage attribute?! That way, low courage Kerbals strike at low negative rep, but eventually if you keep messing up, the whole team is on strike! Mix this with random equipment failures and this could get messy!

Possibly, but one Kerbal not turning up to work is absenteeism not a strike! That aside, that would work, perhaps at low negative reputation. But once that drops further I think they would all walk out. If the game then generated viable probe only missions to enable you to rebuild your reputation, that could lead to a more interesting career, particularly in Moderate or Hard difficulties. Plus I really really want to see a Kerbal picket line, especially after what I've put them through.

After watching me play KSP for a short while and hearing some of my bigger "Ooops'" my girlfriend has suggested a rather brilliant addition to the contract game mechanics: If Reputation is negative (or suitable level of negative) or if three failed launches/landings in a row - Your Kerbonauts go on strike. No manned missions until fixed. Jeb, Val, et al are visible in the VAB/SPH with placards protesting. As she said, 'I wouldn't get in that spaceship, not sure they would either!" Somehow this just makes me smile. XrayLima

Is there a breakdown / tutorial into how KSP uses heat and how that might be modified by other in game parameters? It seems relatively poorly documented, and what I'm trying to eventually do, seems rather harder than it needs to be. For example, has anyone got an idea how to introduce a given amount of heat to a part when the throttle is 0% and none when it it is 100% following a y=1/x curve when fuel is available. I'd start with a linear relationship to throttle if it simplified things.

I recently saw a post regarding the thermal behavior of LV-N engines which got me looking at modding an engine to behave correctly, temperature wise. Turns out that that isn't so easy, at least for a newbie like me. So I started to wonder, could I create a simple 'Heater' with basic on/off thermstat that consumes EC to get my head around how heat works in KSP? Has anyone seen one out there, is this already a thing? This led to more questions! What controls the minimum temp that radiators will cool a ship down to? Is there an internal preset? How could I modify this? Could a heater and a TCS create a conformable internal temperature window for my Kerbals? Is this even possible? I can barely program, and creating my own PartModules is a pretty vertical learning curve, so thoughts and suggestions are seriously welcome!!

Thanks, I had begun to think the same. Getting more complicated...... :-(

Ok, this is likely one of those questions that is either really easy to answer or virtually impossible, and given I haven't (yet) got a clue what I'm doing could be a waste of time. But here goes: How might I, through MM or otherwise, make a copy of the LV-N that produces maximum heat at 0% throttle, minimum heat at 100% throttle when active and remain cold when shutdown? Equally I'd like it to generate some EC at 0% throttle and none at 100%. In all other ways I'd like it to behave normally (glow when hot, produce exhaust scaled correctly to throttle etc, conduct/radiate heat as normal). Initially this seemed reasonable, but the more I read, the less I can see regarding heat and energy transfer and we are getting waaay past my ability range. Thoughts?

I'm intrigued by LV-N thermal behavior. I would love to see a basic mod that adjusted LV-N behavior simplistically to follow the following rules. LV-N's have two heat parameters, internal and external. Internal temperature builds over a time constant until it tends to a max temperature.over say 90 seconds This is greater than the max temp of the engine. Over this period Internal temp rate of rise is moderated by Internal Temp x (1/Throttle). A bit of maths needed here! External temperature equates to External temp=Internal Temp x (1/Throttle). Again heat gain/loss occurs over a time constant Therefore at 100% throttle, external engine temp is constant. At 0% throttle, engine external heat will rise over the time constant until overheat. Thrust = (Int temp / Int Temp Max) x Throttle. Therefore thrust scales with reactor core temp. Fuel flow however scales with thrust, therefore low temp engines are very inefficient. This quick thought would result in engines that on start need cooling unless you want to run cold and inefficient, and at a steady temp when at 100%. You could even run them hotter than design for increased thrust for set fuel flow, but closer to the max temp. I have no idea how to make this a mod, and the thought needs refinement but this actually feels doable somehow. And brings back a realistic need for cooling. Thoughts??

Easy - 5 Kerbal, multi launch, constructed in orbit, beast of a thing trip to Duna. Boring wait for window and multi week transfer. Landed Ascent/Descent vehicle perfectly. Realised I hadn't fitted a ladder. Came straight home, not one of them even EVA'd. Doh.

The Ariane 4 had the option for Solid Rocket Boosters (Small) and Liquid Rocket Boosters (Big, I think) or a mixture. Totally Kerbal.

I'd say the Soviet N1 wasn't very Kerbal like and in fact the R7 family with it's long tapered booster sections doesn't fit the natural design visual that seems 'Kerbal'. Then again, my rockets probably don't look exactly like anyone else's. But the Ariane family 1-4 seem very Kerbal in the way they seem made of lots of bits stuck together, some grey, some orange, fins in funny place etc. I saw the diagram and had to check it wasn't taken from KSP!

I decided to take a look at older versions of the Ariane family today, and blimey, the really really look kerbal! Odd coloured sections, fins all over the place, kind of noodley, no two tanks with the same design.... Awesome!

First of all, a massive thank you to @sarbian and other contributors for the now YEARS of development of this mod, possibly the most important mod in use in KSP today. Going back a few pages trying to see what is currently going on in the latest Dev build and why things aren't quite behaving right I was pretty p'ed off to see some of the attitude thrown his, and others who have inputed into this project, way. I for one value the work he and they have done for nothing more than the enjoyment of it. So firstly I'd just like to say thank you and wish all of you involved in this Mod a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. Joyeux noël! So back to the main reason I was having a lurk, quite a few of my designs are having issues with control overreaction when using MechJeb. @Foxster seems to have identified the same above. Unless the active docking port is aligned on the longitudinal axis, during docking the port 'swings' over the target port, never quite lining up. When aligned it works fine. Likewise a rover tends to 'snake', particularly with all wheel steering and the forward velocity increases and decreases sinusoidally around the target speed. Autowarp struggles to kick in as the alignment takes a very long time to settle down. Rolls during ascents tend to be very violent and take a long time to correct. So much so that I now disable roll on fins. This all sounds like (to my uneducated ears) issues with the underlying PID control. So my question - does anyone have, or is willing to provide, a guide to tweaking this? Does this work? I've always just left it alone, but I'm struggling now. My very seasick Kerbals will thank you!! Currently at work, so no logs etc at this point, but if this is not a common problem and unique to me I'll happily provide once home again. Again, a very merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all. *Edited because I can't spell

As @regex says, I'm pretty much sure we've had all we are going to get for nothing in Stock KSP. The wish list by @Lord Aurelius & others above is exactly that, wishful. We might get lucky and devs will see some of these lists and start making DLC packs with them in as a way of generating revenue, but as for in Stock, the boat has sailed. Not necessarily a bad thing, paying for DLC packs would pay for continued development of the core program (performance, improved memory usage, updates to Unity, etc) as well as parts going forward. Only thing I think is really missing is art pass on the oldest stock items and a look at the sound, both of which are very outdated and let down the product a bit. I would love to be proven wrong, but at some point wages need to be paid or everyone turns off the lights and goes home.

Many versions ago, before contracts, I wrote out a series of missions that I would have expected a space program to complete, each leading to the next. This roughly mirrored the US / USSR development timeline (suborbital leads to orbital, orbital leads to Mun /Minmus, probe before manned etc) up to the development of the ISS, except for a Station on Minmus following the Minmus landing. Following the lessons learned from the Minmus station and the ISS, a Duna mission was constructed and sent, followed by a Duna Station. All in all, writing out the logical missions one following the other took about an hour, about two pages, about 50 missons or so, so that you couldn't take shortcuts but was actually quite a fun interesting project on it's own.

@RatchetinSpace In that case I, for one, welcome our new Kerbal Overlords.

Ah, that's a shame! But thanks for letting me know, I was thinking of trying something similar.

No idea if this might work, but (here it comes) there is a mod that might help! This has chutes which apparently don't collapse on touching the ground. I have no idea if these would help you, not something I've tried, but I am aware of the type of thing you are trying to do and the forces when the rocket stack topples at sea are pretty hefty. Worth a try? XrayLima