Lucius

Yep, had a feeling i remembered it from before, and yeah like you said, i def don't expect a breakneck race to fix it, especially first day, just hoping to make sure the problems are up there for review!

Anyone reading this: From some LIMITED tests with this and very little else in 1.0, There seems to be a problem with the fuel tanks not being able to attach anything underneath them

I think (a fantastically useless truth), the benefits to the barn were glazed over when we really look at it, but having modded a fair amount, I'll weigh this for the barn: The tiered building system right now goes: 30 parts 250,000 bucks for 255 parts a million bucks for infinite parts It seems to be a very ... jaunty and jagged set of steps to ascend. It may be alright and bearable when you've played KSP long enough that you know how to maximize for it, but the barn... regardless of whether you like the art style or not, the barn is a new tier that smooths out building transition very nicely. And it made total canon sense in that what sort of launchpad could handle a 30-part rocket? Definitely the one built right outside a wooden barn! Seems like the perfect place for launching sounding rockets and practice flights and nothing too "serious". I guess, i feel that's what we really missed out on with not having the barn yet: Imagine for instance, a barn, 100,000 to upgrade to the tier "1" VAB, get 75 parts or something suitable enough for a full ride to the Mun, then maybe 300-400k for tier 2 and 200-300 parts, then a million for a VAB with infinite parts, a ridiculous stretch goal to give longevity to your career goals! I think everyone got so hung up on the artstyle of the barn that they neglected to realize what a 4 tier space center meant in terms of game balance: A much smoother, much more finessed game experience in career So yeah Harvester, in case you read this or you're rethinking the barn, please work to get Barn into the next release!

Just to save people some confusion: I deleted my entire install for a fresh 1.0, This needs module manager! It doesn't seem to say it anywhere, but it won't work without MM! Heads up everyone!

Because ... thats the point of the mod? There are dozens of rescales that just rescale if you want that. But to be less rude: The problem is addressing the fundamental limits of KSP, as well as personal playstyle: FIRST OFF, let's talk stock vs modded: a lot of us really enjoy the stock-ish, "little green men" feel of KSP. It feels like a fun little not-crazy-realistic simulator that lets you enjoy your own personal head-canon solar system however you want to. Now this is ABSOLUTELY personal preference, and I mean no personal offense to the people who have made the incredible realism mods like RO and RSS and RP-0, but some of us don't want to get THAT in depth. There is an entire thread devoted simply to trying to design a way to get to Mars and return where people are mashing minds and problem-solving. That's great, in its own way! but its not what some people want from KSP. THE STRUGGLE IS THIS: I like the KSP parts, i like the feel and the aesthetic and the un-realism that lets you laugh instead of get mad when something blows up. HOWEVER: I don't like being able to put a chair on top of a first tier solid rocket booster and reach orbit or even the mun with it. I don't like exactly what some videos have outlined: at tier 0 science you can fly to the moon and back on 3-4 pieces. OKAY SO WHY NOT JUST SCALE THE PLANETS UP? Well, i've tried those too, and actually they're not bad. I really liked a few of them, REALLY solid idea. But lets briefly discuss the problems those hit, i'm going to point to a few, but please remember i really love all the mod developers and i know they've put blood and sweat into it. PQS/Scale distance problems: After about 3.2x planetary scale, planets start to look really ugly. You start to have a lot of problems in low orbit. If you've played 64k Kerbin or even to a lesser extend Skyrex's 1/4/7, you see the problem. you REALLY see it in RSS, and its what the developer of RVE has spent so long adjusting and trying to fix. Career mode limitations: At this point in time we do not have the ability to mod the limits of each tier of the space center, so if you're trying to play a legitimate campaign and not cheat and immerse yourself, good ....ing luck getting into orbit at 64k with stock parts. Now you have to start modding parts and adjusting the whole system. So wham, you might as well be playing RSS with RO now, you're sinking a good amount of work into fixing the game to play like KSP already does So, okay, we can scale the planets up a FAIR amount, but not an insane amount, for example purposes lets say 3.2x. However getting into orbit at 3.2x isn't that much more difficult than stock, and you want a reason to use the big parts. You want big rockets, you want a solid reason to really build large behemoths and not just so you can land an entire colony on duna in a single launch. You want large, immersive realistic feeling rockets, but with a realistic workable kerbin that falls within the limitations sort of .. served to us with the game's confines. So why not scale the distances between planets up? The moon is a 3-4 day journey irl, not the 12 hour journey of stock KSP, so why not make the spaces further apart, where it won't graphically affect the gameplay, and the player can still get into orbit easily with the restrictions the career introduces, but if they're clever they can combine ships together and build their ACTUAL solutions to traverse planets, like the gemini/agena solution. I feel like, by making it easy to get into orbit but hard to get anywhere, you force the player to TRULY be creative within the confines of a system they can actually immersively work with. And it allows you to use mods like Tantares or FASA etc and still have them work without needing to mod them. The massive amounts of dV available in stock from things like a gemini launcher (Take a gemini pod on a titan rocket to duna one day, in one launch, and you feel the pain) will still make it easy to get into space, but good luck just "popping" over to Mun now! Blah blah blah i know, but i hope you can see where this sort of thing would really appeal!

Depending on the efficiency of your ascent: Around 5500. Not too bad for LKO. But expect 1800 dV to reach Mun, and a good 800 dV landing or taking off. The real catch here isn't orbit, its getting anywhere from orbit. You need to bring a load of fuel if you want to go anywhere, which makes that 5500 dV interesting.

Mmmm i see where you're coming from, and at first that's exactly how i felt too, But I feel, for a lot of people at least, there's just not much drive to kick around the Kerbin system. Everyone does the mandatory trip to Duna (how many million pictures of that have you seen...), and most will at least hyperedit to Jool just to see Laythe with the gas giant in the back. But how often do you see people clamoring to go to Eeloo, or Dres the sad space potato? I feel like there are a LOT of completely ignored parts of the solar system that just need a dust up, a recoloring, a nice graphical overhaul that make them worth SEEING and landing on, instead of just letting them float out like sad grey meteors.

Mmmmm i know what you mean: What I found myself focusing on most when i was tooling around with planet redesigns in this mod were: -Like you did, slapped Gilly on Duna, removed Ike and threw in Bop instead. Made it much more Mars-y, and the little asteroid moons made a fun reason to float around Duna other than just the mandatory "I went to Mars!" reason. -Added a LOT of environmental effects to Eve. Like you see in the album before, anything that makes it feel like a more interesting less "purple" sort of planet, deadly and worth respecting in the same way we respect Venus -HEAVILY considered taking dres, slapping it with Eeloo, and making them a binary system on the fringes with some interesting effects to it, maybe adding an atmosphere to Eeloo too. Give SOMETHING interesting to make the trek to the furthest reaches worthwhile -Rings for Jool. The rings i added in those pictures are adapted from an idea from Skyrex who i have already contacted and politely consented to let the idea be distributed with this pack if you find you like it. I'll gladly distribute the atmospheric presets for Env.Vis. Overhaul that i used to get that effect, if you want to incorporate it. This just makes the Jool trek all the more appreciable. In my tiny opinion, the kerbal system is already pretty small, if you're looking to maintain a "stock"ish feel just upscaled, you'd do better to make each planet that already exists INTERESTING rather than cramming even more planets in. BUT, yes, its totally true that in my experiments it was damn hard to add atmospheres to anywhere without just resorting to Kopernicus. But again if you want i'd be more than happy to send you my little tinkered up take on some of the planets that you're free to incoporate any of. I love what you're doing, and looking forward to giving v0.2 a shot over the next couple weeks til 1.0 release.

Please don't add any new planets with kopernicus! We have so many planets that are bland/unused/unvisited that can be rearranged and spruced up with some atmospheric work, without using buggy and fairly unsupported Kopernicus. JUST MY HUMBLE OPINION, but had to weigh in. My little album earlier was a collection of things you can do with just EVE overhaul and RSS.

Yes exactly! KIS could use plenty of help fleshing out their system with models/etc, so don't be discouraged, see if they want a hand!

Indeed, you need to look into Kerbal Inventory System

Hm seems like you don't get the contract completed unless you bring home the experiment in a KEES container? I had it in a kerbal's KIS inventory and though i got the science for retrieving the experiment, the contract was uncompleted

Awesome! Fantastic news! Let me know if you surf through your inbox mate!

Hey all: Been fiddling with configs and clouds and all manner of little things, just thought i'd show off a few "concepts" I've been enjoying.

Gotta say, With the new ISS style focus-tracking system, this mod went from interesting but annoying to being absolutely irreplacable. Good job man, keep it up!

So i have to say, i've been REALLY enjoying this. It takes *time* to get into a proper orbit with the size of the planet, but i always found SKRX 1/4/7 and 6.4 made the planet, as mentioned before, just a little too big for stock parts to be worth having at all. I rarely venture away from stock or Tantares with these, and they all seem to work as their real life counterpart intends as well with this scale size! The planet distances is FANTASTIC as well. I've been to Mun and Minmus a handful of times, and Duna once now, and each time it felt like i had to pack for a JOURNEY. Even just to Minmus (with a life support mod) i had to do a multi-launch system where i had life support station orbiter, a lander, a re-entry craft, and the burn vessel all seperately brought up and assembled (the 2200+ dV to get there now makes it very justifiable, as well as the fuel needed to get off the surface into orbit ... no more Toyota Corolla Landers) *MY* Main problems so far are this: 1) I use Better Atmospheres (never been an Astronomer's Pack person, meh. Have you SEEN how Mun looks in BA?). Now i think this would be a universal problem for any atmo pack but, i can definitely say from BA: there is some serious atmospheric anomalies: Clouds clipping into weird circles etc, clipping through mountains causing z fighting issues when in orbit, city lights HAVE to be raised or they're invisible LOL. Putting in the good time to make the atmosphere mods work with this would, i feel, make a hell of a difference to the mod. If i can manage to get a half-decent looking BA one i'll post it here myself. 2) Diversity. Maybe this is just me, but i would LOVE to have something stand this pack out *juuuust* a touch from just being a rescale. Honestly, i wouldn't mind if you went crazy like SKRX resize and did some super-hot volcanic planet, or rings to Jool, or recolors, you don't even need to add new planets just re-arrange the ones we have now. I'd really, REALLY like to see this have a little flavour of its own. 3) Deadly Re-entry, as its prone to do, and i think you mentioned this above, was either WAY WAY too easy, or insanely too hard. I kinda rolled my own config in the end that was RSS setting, with 1.2* to all the top modifiers. Ended up about right for me. But again thats all personal taste. I want to feel like my ablative shielding had a use, but not have it all burnt out halfway down and suddenly have a capsule explode even though i had a super shallow entry. And i think that about covers it for starters. Love the mod, know you're crazy busy, but please don't drop it, it'd be a shame, especially once 1.0 finally drops.

Mmm yeah: If you thumb through the config, i havn't touched the weights at all yet. I wouldn't like to change them TOO much, at most double a few of them, but if you compare the size of the modules, in general Beale's tubes are MUCH smaller than the SS tubes. I'd be interested in input for proper weights for them, maybe 1.5* each (The stock tube plus the equipment? Not sure. Want it to maintain a gamey feel), but its not something i've deeply considered yet. As to the efficiency ... thats one I'd certainly like to hear as well. I CONSIDERED having 2 or 3 kerbals per lab, but on that i have a fundamental problem with how SS works: If you were to have as many labs as the ISS, for instance, you would need 8-10 kerbals working fulltime, as well as whatever kerbals you would need to pilot, do EVA, etc etc. I get that some people like to have huge 100 kerbal stations, but i just... i disagree with SS in that you shouldn't need that many kerbals to keep a station running every experiment you want. If you assembled a Tantares MIR with every laboratory, you would need i think ... and this is rough off-hand ... you would need 3-4 kerbals at most? 1 for zoo, 1 for lab, 1 to do any piloting needed and maybe an engineer if you run with KIS/Dang-it etc. And thats how the ISS often functions. Thats how the MIR functioned in its day. A 3 man crew can maintain a LOT of things at once. What i'm saying is, you're right, the new labs are actually more "efficient" ... just slower. I just feel like, when compared to real life, thats much more realistic, while still maintaining a gamey, "dont have to shuffle people everywhere" feeling. But yes i would LOVE feedback on cost and weight adjustments for certain. What weights especially would feel more right to you?

Hey all, Just wanted to say, if you enjoy Station Science but are looking to spice it up a little, i just merged some of the pieces of Tantares (Soviet-alike pack) with Station Science, as well as TAC Life support to give a more interesting "station" feel. Head over to THIS LINK if you want to get your hands on it and give it a try.

OOOO good someone else may touch this, fantastic i was considering going over all the tweakscale configs myself but, its tedious for certain, wasn't relishing the idea. BASICALLY tweakscale configs are remarkably easy. There's one already packaged with Tantares to study, but basically, for fuel tanks its remarkably easy: You input the name of the part, and the size it currently is. I think with the way his freescale is set up now, thats literally all you'll need to do. For novelty parts like antennae, i *think* you could just call them a "surface" part and let them scale freely. Shouldnt really affect any of their other stats. They're fairly simple but for the number of parts in Tantares (something over 100 now?) its just a bit time consuming. Might consider just putting in a night and cranking it out to your preference

MrMeeb: Consider using KIDS: linked here And then using it to INCREASE your ISP rather than decrease it, which would require a custom preset with say, 1.2 or 1.4 times the efficiency.

Nice Niemand, what graphics mod are you using there? Your nighttime lights look fantastic

Hope you enjoy! The idea is that really... you have sort of modular stations. You can choose to build a small salyut-ish station, just a small 2 man life support module, and a laboratory, and fly experiments to it. Or with the same sized parts, you could instead build a larger hub for 4 people and have recyclers. Or you can add one extra piece and house 2 people, a lab, and a cyclometer. Or make it just the cyclometer and a large hab and recyclers. Now make a dozen different variations of these small hubs, one with a spectrometer, one with life support heavy, one with a lab, one with a zoo bay and one with a cyclo, and merge them all together on a central hub, and you have a REAL MIR. I think you'll find the options you have in hacking stuff together is pretty cool! Let me know what you like/dislike when you do give it a shot.

Thank YOU for the work, i love the pack, just wanted to give it more *reach*. Thanks for all the hard work almighty loaf. Also the MM file is fairly smoothly crafted with dependancies so, if you want to add it to your pack directly at any point, feel free, i don't think it should cause any problems *for people without the mods.*

Hey all, SO: This is Tantares Station Science/TAC LS overhaul FIRST ALPHA ATTEMPT, so feel free to take a swing at the balance and usefulness of it, and give feedback PLEASE. *******REQUIRES FIRESPITTER, STATION SCIENCE, and TAC LIFE SUPPORT********************** *******PLEASE DON'T BUG BEALE IF THEY AREN'T IDEAL (heh). Write it here or PM me************ All i have really graced is the Salyut, TKS, and Cygnus vessels. ALL LABS/ETC ARE HALF AS EFFECTIVE AS THEIR COUNTERPARTS, BUT MUCH LIGHTER It works as follows: Cygnus - now has several MM clones that perform different missions. You can send up any one of the six Station Science experiments individually with the Cygnus, or there is a seventh variant USING FIRESPITTER that has the option to swap between life support necessities, fuel, monoprop/elec, and kibbal. The original cygnus module still exists as well SALYUT - now the largest tubes, the V-C1s, are capable of being spectrometers or cyclometrons. Their size really suited the feel. This means if you want to do some SERIOUS station science, you have a reason to haul a heavy-ass station element into space rather than just an empty tube that looks nice. The V-C2s now function as laboratories, zoology bay, or simply a very large crew habitat for 4 with accompanying life storage. I figure if you're going to haul one of those into space, it better be worth it. The V-C3s, the smallest tubes, now serve as either a 2 man habitat, or as a "life support" hub with large amounts of electricity, and all the recyclers for oxygen and water that one would expect. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE LIFE SUPPORT SUPPLIES, so make sure you include them or you'll have a bad time. TKS - The Spektre module now has a double that is a spectrometer. There is no reason, just... it makes me laugh every time. The TK-OB05A, the smaller TKS tube, now functions like the V-C3, as either a small habitat or a life support recycler and power source. The TK-OB10A, the larger tube, is now a zoology bay and laboratory just like the V-C2. ISSUES/CONCERNS/FUTURE GOALS: - There is no real "power hub", it feels, though you can easily chain a few crew support hubs together and has massive amounts of power. I am not sure how i feel about this, as on the one hand i really like the idea of forcing you to slap batteries or the outside of the station and make it into a big ugly mess for a true Salyut/MIR feeling. However, if you want to assemble a nice balanced one, feel free and i'll add it. - SPEAKING OF BALANCE - This is far from balanced. I have increased the prices to each module QUITE a bit. I *would* increase them more but i don't want them to be insanely prohibitive. I have placed them in tech tree locations where i feel they are fairly accessible. I would not like to see these so far down the tech tree that there's no point in having them as you don't need science anymore. Generally they line up with either where the Tantares pieces would be accessible anyways, or where the SS modules would be anyways. However i am all ears about balance issues! - I have been insanely generous with the life support available, on the few parts i have touched. The way i see it, most stations were well supplied for up to 3 months, there's no reason to be sending up a supply ship a week just to keep your Station Science modules going. How annoying does it get to warp for 3 minutes, slow down, send a new supply ship up, and then warp for 3 minutes again. - FUTURE GOAL - Different textures for the Cygnus modules depending on what they are carrying. FUTURE GOAL - Maybe integrate Nehemiah's station experiments, they are pretty Soviet in their style. But they are largely IVA which i don't even touch... NOW, IF YOU READ THROUGH ALL THAT, HERE IS THE LINK FOR TESTING: Tantares SS/TLS Overhaul

Want to weigh in here and say: The Tantares is not the Soyuz, its the Tantares. I personally like that it has its own style: It is a 2 seater pod. If you want a 3 seater: Get HGR. Or use the 3 seater that came with the game. Or the other 3 seaters that come with Tantares. As a 2-seater, the module fills a very specific gap in the game, which lacks a 2-seater module. Its also lighter, cheaper, and smaller than for example the HGR 3 seater "soyuz" clone. This makes it ideal for a variety of missions and, in fact, makes it a perfect little "assorted space mission" capsule in much the same way the soyuz is, as its so light and cheap and small. Just compare the size of the HGR soyuz that seats 3 and the Tantares soyuz that seats 2. On top of which, if you really want to take 3 people, just assemble a typical soyuz craft with an orbital habitation module on top that holds the third person. They may not be able to re-enter, but like many soyuz missions you might be dropping kerbals off at space stations or delivering them to other bases or crafts. It encourages that kind of outward thinking. In my PERSONAL opinion, there are so many options for 3-man capsules already, don't change the Tanta into a 3-seater, it either means you'l have to change the stats that make it so favourable, or else you'll make it feel truly hacky.