Madrias

I... I suppose I'm somewhere between option one and two. I picked two because it makes more sense to how I play. Sure, I have Reverts disabled, Crews Don't Respawn, and take efforts to avoid killing them, but if a handful die while testing ejectable cockpits, ejection EVA seats, grabbing science mid-reentry, and in landing mishaps, well, the world keeps turning. So far in my Career save, I've given Jeb, Bill, and Bob a permanent resort as Tower Commanders of the Island Runway to get them out of the spotlight (and because I'm thoroughly convinced that they do respawn, even when you say not to), but I've managed to total 6 Kerbals between testing setups. As for Sandbox, I've probably killed about a dozen, but I play more sandbox than Career, and I've got access to things like radial chutes.

I actually am the insane pilot, Yellow Dart. If I can take off or land on that runway, I can land anywhere. As for usefulness... Well, the bumps do occasionally tilt troublesome planes in such a manner that they catch wind under the wings and sail into the sky.

I've had it stick in Radial while I was building in Mirror. As for ideas... Got a few minor ones, though they may take some plugin code to make 'em work. One, I'm inspired by the Bahamuto Dynamics Critter Crawler, but more of a ruggedized design. Eight-legged, non retractable, but otherwise controls like a rover (the BD one tends to not like to turn... Found that out a lot of times the hard way). Essentially, the thought was to take the RoveMax baseplate, stick a round section in there, and mount legs to that. Only reason I ask here about it is because there's a lot of talent for the unusual, and because the BD one is saddled with retracting legs and a tuck-away engine I don't need. The second is a nice, UFO (flying saucer) styled cockpit. High visibility, and stack-mounts to either 1.25 or 2.5m stacks. Minimalist IVA, consisting of a low-mounted dash panel with Compass, Navball, and Altimeter.

I've lost so many Kerbin Science Air Rovers to eclipses that it's not even funny anymore. Doesn't matter whether I'm farting my way through the sky on an Ant engine, glowing brightly with Xenon, or spraying my way across an ocean with monopropellant, an eclipse will outright kill my airborne science rovers. I carry, maybe, 5 minutes of battery onboard (excepting for the Xenon one, which usually just dies the instant the solar panels are obstructed), but usually, I'm in the middle of transmitting back that awesome temperature science report when it happens. I've started space-taping Kerbals into the seats on the bloody things.

One thing I'm not fond of in 0.90 is the fact that I can't lock the symmetry mode while building. If I'm in the SPH, then I want to be building in Mirror symmetry unless I change it to Radial for some reason. Don't know how many designs I've given up on because for whatever reason, the game gets it stuck in "You want Radial, right?" "No, I wanted Mirror. *presses toggle key*" "Ha! You'll be stuck in Radial symmetry unless you rip this whole structure apart and replace the one offending piece that I think you want in Radial mode." If it wouldn't be too much work, can we have two buttons added to the GUI? Both under the Symmetry button, one being Symmetry Toggle and the other Symmetry Lock. And by default, have it locked?

I really need to quit messing around in 0.25 and at least try to get used to 0.90. That whole editor merge kinda screwed me over, especially that part with the "switch modes" being not locked down like it should be. The player should be in complete control of mode switch, not "I think you want this attached as Radial, not mirror." "I want mirrored." "Sorry, I say it's radial, and I won't let you change it back!"

Don't have any pictures, but I've been flying over Minmus at 32m/s in a half-busted rover. Tracks are awesome!

Have you tried approaching the water at a lower rate of speed? Try approaching around 22 m/s or so.

I'd assume he's running out of jet fuel at the midway point, not electrical charge. What he needs is a good electric powered propeller, in my opinion, but I know not everyone likes using propellers for propulsion.

What terrain detail do you run on, and does this happen with different wheels?

Gaalidas, I like the way you think! We do need landing gear that doubles as repulsors! Would certainly help with the effort of getting MK3 stuff off of the ground when loaded. My current effort is trying to deliver a pair of Rockomax Jumbo 64 tanks, plus their landing gear, to Kerbin's North Pole. I've got a research base up there and, well, given all the driving around we've had to do, some of our machinery is threatening to run out of gas. So we've stripped the oxidizer from the biggest gas cans we can fit in the MK3 Heavy system, fitted them with wheels, docking ports, probe cores, lights, and electrical supplies, and tried to fly them out to the North. Well, 12 jet engines and the biggest array of floppy wing panels I've ever seen later, I've managed to get off the runway, start to make my northbound turn, and that's about as far as I've gotten, given that unforseen problems have hit on a few occasions. (Who knew you actually have to strut your payloads before making a turn with a MK3 Super-Heavy? I didn't until the fuel tank dislodged from the docking port, smashed into the cargo doors, and caused an explosion.) Managed one run where I got close and had to set it down, only to find the stock landing gear isn't tough enough to handle that kind of weight settling onto it at 70 m/s. Hence thinking "hey, we could really, really use some sturdy landing gear" and "I know tank tracks make decent gear, but they don't retract." And yes, I know tank tracks work as good landing gear from experience. Got a couple planes that used that in 0.25.

Lo-Fi, I wouldn't mind some new landing gear for the MK3 Super Heavy part system. Think airliner or cargo plane style multi-wheeled gear units. That'd really make my day.

Yeah, a nice electric blower fan would be perfect. Bonus points if it has a filter that needs cleaning, so it blows out dust particles because Jeb swiped the ventilation fan from R&D to propel himself around on his new hover cycle.

I see no flaws with Kerbal Foundries going Beta. Although one thing you could use would be an atmospheric version of your APU. I find carrying oxidizer troublesome when building mostly electric vehicles, and get quite a lot out of the Firespitter Biplane Cockpit's 20 units of liquid fuel. Making a version of it use intake air and liquid fuel would be useful for those of us who really aren't heading into space any time soon. After all, I have biomes on Kerbin to go explore. May not be able to claim any science points in Sandbox, but I can read the flavor text and have fun cruising around the world in my flying truck, once I get around to building one in 0.90. Oh, and some form of slim, or otherwise small electric air engine would be nice (using electricity and air to propel itself, having some form of low thrust value, but being small enough to easily mount multiples for thrust multiplication. Of course, they'd be useless in space, and low enough thrust to avoid making them into electric boosters.)

Hmm... Could be good news for one of my 0.22 based SSTO's. Evil little thing used an air-hogged turbojet to scream to high altitude, then fired off a pair of those MK55 Radials strapped to the wings just before flameout on the jet. Horrible fuel efficiency, but for a crew shuttle, it was great. Most of the time, it was just doing crew transfer to the Station, or to interplanetary ships, so it only had to make a 120 or 150 km orbit. It'd circularize on the 55's, rendezvous with RCS fuel, stop at the station to pick up some rocket gas and drop off crew, pick up any crew to be returned to Kerbin, and blast off for home, consuming the entire quantity of rocket fuel in a desperate bid to guarantee a lower-than-35km periapsis. Then it was a return to home factor on the jet engine, which had plenty of fuel left. It also meant I had plenty of work to do with dropping off and exchanging gas tanks, which meant I always had something to do in my space program. Transfer crew, crew return to Kerbin, launch Minmus base, send shuttles of crew, rotate station crew, send up gas tanker to replace empty Rockomax Orange with full Rockomax Orange, return empty tank to Kerbin for recycling, and so on. Those ships consumed fuel rather well, though I found myself switching to alternate engines often enough because those radials were incapable of the 200 km orbit circularization needed when I started making heavier motherships. Was a bit more picky back then, that 120 km was my stations, 150 was inter-Kerbin/ light interplanetary ships, and 200 was for Jool Class ships. These days, I spend a lot of time not really leaving the Kerbin system. I don't have the patience for the long missions anymore, as there's not much new to see.

In a solid .625m tube, not easily, no, but I know the Kerbonov pack has an armored command seat which looks similar to how I'd want the cockpit done, but it's one, open cockpit, and two, a command seat.

Well, I've had my fun fartin' around in 0.90 for now. Time, I suppose, to get back to testing new and improved parts. I'm planning on only having a core layout this time, no more filling the KSP GameData folder full of stuff until KSP completely pukes, but I can get by with a few modified parts here and there. Biggest one's gonna have to be a super-high-power RTG and battery combo to replace those wonderful devices known as fission reactors I kept carrying around from the Interstellar kit. Unfortunately, my choice in flight gear is a bit limited at the moment, and again, we've been gifted with cockpits I can't use because you can't bloody see out of them. And also we haven't gotten any 0.625m cockpits, either. So I'll patiently wait to see what comes up as options. Although I have installed that tug cockpit for rover duty because, well, it's actually kinda awesome. No frills driving cab, great forward and road-angle visibility, absolutely great for it. Not as much fun for flying, but I've done a few IVA only landings.

I had an oops and sent Jeb flying into the side of the VAB. Under full acceleration from a RT-10 solid booster.

Thank you for the mild reminder that I need to go make an infiniglider in KSP 0.90! Knew I was forgetting something.

I play on Easy Mode with some added funds (and carefully calculated science to unlock some wings and a jet engine) so I can just jump right in and have some fun. In previous Career games, I've never had any desire to go much further than a handful of science tiers. Now that I can upgrade the buildings from the "overgrown hobbyist space club" to "International Space Administration" I feel I have something to work toward (yeah, hard to understand that when I'm making Career mode a laugh, but I want science, unlocks, and funds with no chance to fail.) and that pushes me into enjoying my Career game a little more. By the time I finished building my space center up, I had a significant number of parts unlocked and had started to treat it as sandbox with cash and science and contracts.

I've played, for a long time, with "debris return" rules. Sure, crapping boosters, spent stages, nuclear engines, and RTG's everywhere can be amusing when you're running a farce of a space program, but when you're getting serious about it, it's about time to go grab the Klaw and go grab your garbage. My rule set: Nuclear Engines cannot be crashed near bases nor returned to Kerbin. They can either be taken to the Scrapyard on Eve or shot into Jool, but no other options. Debris must be deorbited. Doesn't matter how, where, or with what, but no garbage flying around in space. Crash site debris will be left alone. Landers that leave pieces behind as reminders are also fine. Rovers are rovers if they still have a purpose. If it has run out of battery and can't recharge, it's garbage. Go return it to Kerbin.

I'm still operating under 0.25. No Firespitter is a no-go for me. I need my propellers.

Lo-Fi, could you please skip me the link to that cockpit? Looks like it'd be awesome for IVA rover driving.

Traveling by Rover to places on Kerbin only to experience total structural failure. As in everything just fell apart at 30 m/s. That moment when you want to tell the scientists, "Weld it this time! Your glue-and-tape strategy falls apart!"

Nope. Your standards are your standards, but I have my own, and they depend on the purposes of the craft, what mods I have used on the craft, and generally where I intend to run it. After all, an atmospheric electric plane with Firespitter Propellers will use Action Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 for basic controls on the engine (Toggle, Cargo Throttle, Normal Throttle, Reverse Thrust respectively.) and have no retracting solar panels onboard. Meanwhile, a space probe might have Action Group 1 bound to Solar Panels, and Action Group 2 bound to Toggle Engine. A rover for high-gravity worlds won't have an action group bound for Rear Wheel Steering Lock, and won't have Reaction Wheels on an easily accessed action group. A rover for the Mun or Minmus would have Action Group 3 as Steering Lock/Unlock and 4 as Reaction Wheels Toggle. Meanwhile a shuttle would use entirely different action groups. My point is, not everyone has the same preferred set. Add to that the physical differences between players and hardware, and we'd never agree on a standard.