Madrias

I'm just doing a nice slow-cruise across some water with the repulsors, then I'll grab the latest of the latest updates. I kinda like the APU, though it's a bit... underwhelming at times. But it's balanced, I think. Might just be me being so used to the KSP Interstellar nuclear reactors and their near-limitless power. Still, I noticed a few things while building my little floating car, and one I'm very eager to try turning up, though I'll need the power plant to try it, if the power consumption increase is something I've seen correctly... Wonder what the maximum altitude is on these repulsors now...

Those little tracks look like something I could totally use. As for sounds, all I can do is grin. And yes, I have the Delorean, I've floated the Delorean, and I've found myself somewhat wanting more vehicles to fly around Kerbin. This mod just keeps getting better.

I don't do videos, actually. But I've found that the proper positioning of repulsors set at maximum height, with full strength and damping, can absorb 30 m/s downward velocity easily. My record is 60 m/s with that speed-challenge racer I built, but then again, I'm the crazy one. Repulsors have all sorts of epic uses. Wishing I had more cool parts to put them on. Also wish there was a way to get into the part and config bash a bit. Sure, setting maximum height to 8 is nice, but there are days (and ships) where I'd like 12, or maybe 16, or even 32. I know, I know, I'm insane, and these are supposed to only be a hover unit, not a flight module, but it's something I'd love to be able to play around with. If I could do that, and could find a command pod that was a car (and not the ones from KSO, as fun as they are. I'd like more 'realistic' designs.), I'd be tempted to strap a Flight Repulsor or two underneath, a jet on the back, and find some way to bury a few control surfaces in order to give me steering control. After all, it's not quite KSP unless Jeb takes off down the runway in a jet car.

The Repulsors are great electro-kinetic anti-lithobraking devices. I love using them as a safety barrier to take a lot of the thump out of a crapped-up landing.

What do I use rovers for? A lot of things. Mobile rocket launch platforms, high-speed repulsor-craft, manned exploration of worlds, and general purpose insanity. How do I get them from world to world? Very carefully. I build a rover, then build a carrying system for it. It's almost always overengineered, but it will get me nearly anywhere I need to go. How do I land them? Atmospheric worlds, I use a metric crap-ton of parachutes. Non-atmospheric worlds, a combination of rockets and lithobraking. Yes, I design some landing units to use aggressive lithobraking as a landing method. Would a custom lander system interest me? Possibly. What would interest me more? A high-visibility driving cab. As for an existing system that I use... not really. Most of my landing stages are custom. I've been abusing repulsors as soft-landing-devices lately...

I was inspired by the "Wrong Brothers" for my new Career save, and I'm having lots of fun with it. It's hard, but fun.

Parachutes for safe landing, ejectable cockpits, jettison all un-necessary equipment. My basic standards.

Ejectable Command Pod. Best thing I've got against the "Why's it blowing up!?" Four sepratrons, RCS fuel tank, RCS thrusters, parachutes, and a simple decoupling ring. Decouple and blast sepratrons, clearing away from the wreckage. If in space, use RCS to deorbit, if in atmo, skip this step. Deploy parachutes in Atmo and return to ground slowly. I've done my share of get out and push. Also managed a Minmus Escape and Return to Kerbin on craft RCS alone. Ran out of fuel at the 40m/s mark, used RCS to make orbit. Used RCS to make it back home, plotting a maneuver node for a direct blast back down into Kerbin's atmosphere. Ran out of RCS with a 22km Periapsis at Kerbin. Now I make sure every ship I send up has plenty of extra RCS because, while the thrust is equivalent to an ion engine at full blast, it's one last engine to use when krap happens. I've shot the boosters to my shuttle through my wings (staging error) and proceeded to make it to orbit with no wings. Transferred crew to my space station, used the docking port on the shuttle to mount a probe core. The now probe-controlled broken-shuttle was turned retrograde, then deorbited. At 10 km, I deployed the chutes to see if the remains could be reused. They settled down with only mild explosions as I broke the tail surfaces and knocked the engines off.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure how easy/hard/impossible it would be to do, but a set of tracks with a steering knuckle would be completely amazing, and amusing. Especially for a small set of tracks. As for what I'd voted for in the poll: Rover bodies. If only because we're missing nice, individual parts that allow us to build awesome cars, trucks, boats, and dune buggies. Sure, KSO gave us beautiful one-piece solutions for a lot of things, but there's something to KSP and that whole mix-and-match factor. Being able to put together a car from, say, 5 or 6 pieces, not including wheels, could be nice. I'm not saying that we need individual quarter panels, doors, etc. I was thinking along the lines of Frame Pieces, front-clip, hood, front-half-cab, rear-half-cab, rear-clip, engine, wheels/tracks/screws Each part does the following. Frame Pieces: has mounting points for "wheels", engine, front clip. Front Clip: Has mounting point to attach to frame, hole for engine, mounting point for front half of the cab. Contains lights, has high impact resistance, has electric charge holding capacity. Cab Halves: Holds Kerbals in varying amounts. Front holds two Kerbals, rear holds 0-5 Kerbals, depending on design. Has antenna built in. Engine: Makes noise, generates resource "Torque" used by drive mechanisms, generates Electric Charge, consumes Fuel. Hood: covers engine. Some with holes for larger engines that would otherwise stick through. Rear Clip: holds Fuel, contains lights. Wheels/tracks/screws: Same as what we have, but with mounting nodes and configured to run on Torque instead of Electric Charge. Yes, I know my idea is a mess, but it's just what came to mind right now. Between the frame parts, various front clips, cabs, engines, rear pieces and drive outputs, a small scattering of parts made to fit with one another could allow untold combinations of vehicles.

That moment when you're traveling across the Mun at a reasonable rate of speed with your probe rover, you just left the ground over a crater, and your batteries die. Another one I get often enough: That moment when you've just launched your new spaceplane/shuttle/rocket and take off, ascend to orbit, and prepare to dock for fuel. Only to realize you've put a mission-critical part on the wrong side of your decoupler, and that decoupler is resting on your docking port.

Immortal? No. Long-lived, yes. The graphics will help it live longer, and the creative nature of the game keeps it from falling aside, but I don't think it'll be a game that keeps being picked up by more than just our generation of gamers. All it'll take is someone, whether it's Squad, or some other developer somewhere out there, to make a similar game not tied down to Unity. Unity is good for some things, but the very nature of what KSP does to pull loopholes hurts KSP's long run. Sure, it's a great little game that's fun to play. The question remains: Will we be able to convince later groups of gamers to play it.

Brakes? Who needs brakes? Just design the craft to handle lift-off and landing. As for stopping, I suppose having an engine with Reverse Thrust comes in handy...

Sounds like I may need to boot up KSP DevBox x64 and start bashing on repulsors, wheels, and KSO until something breaks or cries for mercy.

Okay, I'm having way too much fun with this! The Kerbostar is beautiful both in looks and functionality, being easily the simplest, easiest helicopter to fly. Turn SAS on, throttle up slightly above 33%, and away you go. Then you add to that the cars (which, other than putting the wheels on, I have had no troubles with, and that's simply me not knowing which way's up on the tires) which I've scattered around KSC, and I realize this is the mod I've been waiting for since rover parts were introduced. An ability to drive around KSC with relative ease, followed by being able to fly not just shuttles and spaceplanes made from shuttles, but helicopters that look great and fly beautifully. Not to mention the Kerbostar's ability to carry 5 Kerbals in relative comfort is something very nice for me. Only thing missing on the Kerbostar for me, and that's easily .cfg bashed, is an electric rotor for worlds with atmosphere but no oxygen. And even at that, it's not needed. That's just me being a goof-off again and thinking "hey, if I could land a Kerbostar on Eve, that'd be cool, right?"

I think the LV-N is very balanced, actually. Low thrust, absurdly heavy, but it has tons of fuel efficiency. My only "rule" in my space program is no igniting LV-N's in the atmosphere.

I launch when I bloody well feel like it. However, while I'm up there, I'll try for something kinda-maybe-sorta efficient. Then again, I plan a lot of missions around a 150% delta-V budget (sure, it means I carry a crapload of fuel around that I might never burn, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Better to have way too much than to have 25 units of fuel too little... especially when it comes to avoiding the old 'get out and push' that many of us do). There have been a few times in the past where my strategy was to burn hard for the target, because I knew I had the fuel budget to do it (Seriously, the ship had enough dV to make it to Eeloo and back twice over. I was going to Minmus), then spend lots of fuel slowing down for my landing. Sure, it's wasteful, but when you're bored and it wasn't Career mode, it was worth doing.

So, got any ideas on a craft I can build to test something?

Gonna try to use my speed-record machine with water repulsors soon. We'll see if I can sink it by going too fast. Edit: 747m/s and it shrugs it off! Impressive. No pictures, but it's not like there's anything awesome to see. Just my speed-challenge craft sailing over endless blue.

North Pole of Kerbin's pretty flat, if you're willing to get there. And I'm back with my participation in the challenge. Surely I have one of the fastest closed-seat repulsorcraft? Or perhaps the only one where Jeb dared Bob to drive it? After all, doesn't Bob look like he's having so much fun?

Well, Darren9, I won't be able to beat that, but I'm bringing my home-made Devastation Incorporated (my in-game military research division of Madness Industries) Forcefyre Prototype to the table. I've config edited in order to consume less fuel, but the engine has always, and will always produce 1680 thrust.

Do I detect a challenge, Lo-Fi? Do you really want me to try breaking speed records? I'll post once I get something really fast going...

Kurtjmac of YouTube. I think it was mentioned on an episode of Far Lands or Bust, and I googled it, tried the demo, and then promptly picked up 0.17.

Airhogging, for me, is intakes occupying the same space, or more than 3 radial intakes per engine. That being said, I've done a lot of designs with blatant airhogging because it's fun flying jet engines toward LKO, watching the last wisps of intake air vanish at 60km, then coasting to apoapsis to fire off minimal amounts of rocket.

Page up and Page down for upshift and downshift respectively.

I'd simply figured a wicked cool hover tank had to have a laser cannon. Sure, it shoots Cannon shells, .50 caliber bullets, 20mm shells, and can actually break things by running into/over them, but I had to have a laser cannon.