Madrias

Yep, I had fun with making a tank in my own way. Very destructive, even if it'd only take one good hit to destroy it. That turret makes the Scorpion MK1 rather very dangerous...

Hover... Tank... I can do that! Loading up x64 now to go try. Couldn't be any harder than my, um, "mobile" base.

Okay, I'm functional at this moment, so time to use this time to do something... insane. What kind of craft do I feel like building today...

I carry my mods folder from install to install. I've probably had those since their release. Another one I still keep around (and keep messing with) is Nuke's half-meter parts. Very useful in a tight spot. As for the repulsors, I really need to quit trying to jump mountains in the middle of Kerbin's night. I'm getting sick of slamming into the side of mountains at 250 m/s...

That's not the craft that ran out of fuel. Yes, those are Hakari's Scifi engines. They're resized and I relabeled the resource they run on, as well as renamed them, but they are still the original engines. They're about half-size, I cut the thrust on them, as well, to make them more controllable, but it is Hakari's engines. The craft that I ran out of gas, however, was using a resized Basic Jet Engine... I'm not afraid to config-bash, though it's amusing when I introduce problems.

Only for repulsorcraft, lo-fi. I've seen a few YouTubers go further than I plan to.

I felt a bit bored. Made a mobile base held up by 24 Dev Repulsors. Cruised smoothly until I got bored of driving. As for high-speed repulsorcraft, I'll make my run to the North Pole eventually. I got about 3/4 of the way there... and ran out of gas.

I just install and run the mods. 64-bit solved my memory crash issues (my 23.5 install runs at 3.2GB constantly... up until it crashes at 3.6GB) and so I just run with that. The bugs and quirks really haven't been noticed by me (other than the Unity Right-Click bug, which is only mildly annoying. Right click, then left click will work again. Really no problem), or if they have, they're not all that annoying. Granted, I'm used to little quirks that could possibly blend in with the usual things that my "desktop" manages to do. And yes, there's quotes for a reason.

I did not know that the Move Center was a toggle. I'll have to give it another try with a rotatron under there, see if I can drive any reasonable distance with auto-centering steering. And, for the record, I built and drove that thing on 64-bit 24.2.

Only reason I don't want to use Infernal Robotics is that there's no self centering. I tried using a rotatron to turn the front steering box and while it worked wonders, it quickly became a nightmare. Constantly playing with corrective steering trying to drive straight. Hence, my idea. Right now it's using a free-floating docking washer, so it doesn't mind which way it turns. I use the track steering to turn the whole machine, and the rear tracks are set to 75% torque so the truck is always pulling itself rather than pushing. The front brakes are also disabled so that I can quickly realign steering by applying brakes. I thought it to be a minor marvel of engineering when I built it. All the little things that made it actually work. As for Thunderbirds, I've not seen it, so I'm a bit lost there.

If you're willing to take an idea, I wouldn't mind a set of tracks like the ones I've used on that truck, but with an ability to steer like rover wheels. You know, pivoting on the attachment point. It's just an idea, and I have no idea how hard (or whether it's even possible) to implement it would be, but it'd allow me to rebuild the truck into a more stable long-distance platform.

Well, I built a half-track truck, but Bill didn't like the look of it and told me to put more tracks on it, less wheels. So I built this: And guess who kicked out the door of his coffin and said, "Gimme the keys, I'm driving." Shoulda known Jeb was just sleeping... Ignore the last 3 screenshots in the album, I try to keep anything driving-related together. The first 6 are the awesome truck. Uses Infernal Robotics to allow the front tracks to swivel independantly (free-moving docking washer. Literally, the only thing turning the truck are your tracks), a fission reactor buried as the core of the super-big-block V8 sitting on the nose, Procedural parts for a few key things, Firespitter for the most-abused airplane cockpits I've ever used, B9 for the windscreen, and of course, Kerbal Foundries for the tracks. And yes, Jeb does visit his crash site, the big pile of repulsors laying every which way.

I'm enjoying the tank tracks! Made a micro tank with them, some Firespitter parts, the Bahamuto Armory Vulcan Guns, and a config modded RTG (10x the power generation, but I added in Decay Heat, which goes down over time. Lose all the heat and the RTG is merely a lump of weight.) Quite a bit of fun. I like how they instantly respond to rover controls, one of the things I did dislike in the original RBI tracks. They'd respond quickly, but acceleration left something to be desired. These, not a problem, they accelerate like rover wheels. Had no problem with traveling 7 KM to my target site, then destroying a simple block of structural panels. I'm impressed. A good amount of power draw, more than a rover wheel under starting draw, but correct me if I'm wrong, but once you reach peak RPM, I think the power draw was fading down. The old RBI tracks did that, too, and was something I wished could be applied to rover wheels. It takes much less to maintain RPM than it does to reach it. It's very impressive. Grip was superb, climbing a bit of a rough hill from a dead stop, though I had to keep stopping to let my 400 unit battery recharge (which wasn't ever really a problem) and it'd just pick up and go again, chewing battery until I'd coast to a stop, apply brakes, and do it again. Turning rate, also pretty good. No problems with being able to turn. In fact, I'm glad they're actually a little bit twitchy. The old RBI tracks had the opposite quirk, they tended to refuse to turn while traveling at any reasonable rate of speed. These, not a problem making a rapid 90-degree turn at 15 m/s. Made aiming a pain on approach (My brain has enough trouble going in one direction, now let's try swiveling a cannon to point at something and keep the tank chassis going straight...) but I liked the fact that they would actually respond like that. Didn't run into the usual "stock rover code suspension bug" where the wheels oscillate at a high rate of speed, preventing braking, steering, or accelerating in a direction other than wherever the wheels plan to go. Think infiniglide-for-rovers, except infinitely more destructive when it happens. Also had no problem with a terrain bug at 16 m/s that snuck up on me (was in IVA view) and ran right over a terrain seam. That usually leads to wheels ripped off of rovers, instant screaming, and an explosion. These tracks... No problem. A slight bump and away we went. Loss of steering responsiveness above 20 m/s, but that doesn't bother me. Application of the brakes brought my tiny tank down to a low enough speed to turn. In fact, I'm glad of this because it means making half tracks is easier. No having to worry about the tank tracks being the dominant steering compared to the rover wheels. Haven't played with repulsors yet since the update, I really wanted to try those tracks. And once I clear my space center and surrounding properties from crashed debris, I'll make some lucky Kerbal a half-track hot-rod so they can go racing down the runway.

I'm enjoying the use of the RAPIER as a dual-mode assistance engine. It pushes me to stupid altitudes on jet power alone. It kicks over to be a rocket and burns up the little bit of fuel I let it use. Then I kick the LV-N's in the butt and fly into a nice calm orbit.

I'm excited for the tank tracks, too. Got a few designs in mind that might use 'em. I'm thinking Bill wants a half-track hot-rod.

I've found an interesting strategy for how I build in order to quit smashing up my repulsor-craft. First, mount the repulsors lower, giving up the self-leveling strategy in favor of ground clearance. Second, add a couple SAS wheels to allow an ability to change orientation mid-flight when the vehicle leaves the ground. Third, use more of them. After all, I'm flying with a reactor on-board, I have unlimited power. Well, maybe the strategy isn't all that interesting, but it works for me so far. Granted, I killed Jeb again with testing what amounted to essentially a sci-fi hot rod. Two turbojets, a command seat, a probe core, and 8 repulsors. Was screaming along until I flipped the bloody thing mid air and couldn't recover. Landed reactor end first, lost all my power, the repulsors dropped out, and Jeb went flying into a hill. But at least now I know the strategy works. Just, perhaps, not go trying to break the sound barrier 3 meters off the ground next time...

I'll be honest, I never really used the quicksave/quickload functions. However, I've been a blatant abuser of "return to Hangar" for missions. I've decided, no more of this. No more weaseling out and just warping to the hangar whenever a plane starts to explode. No more "Oh crap, there's a missing fuel line. Time to restart!" No more "Well, maybe if I cram the throttle wide open this time, I'll get a better takeoff, let's relaunch" tactics. The result: Frustration. I go for those buttons only to remember - after I brought out the menu - that I disabled them already. So I spend a good chunk of time watching failed designs turn into million-root fireworks. Then again, I'm enjoying watching my very expensive fireworks, and half the time my ejection systems save the pilots, so that's always a plus.

Up until I started to get to an ability to make spaceplanes, I was using lots of solids. Still not up for Career SSTO yet, but I've stopped chucking SRB's everywhere now. I've switched to liquid fuel boosters as designs got more efficient, and then after that, I've switched to just plain old LF/O droptanks.

I've built my share of abort sequences. Usually something designed to get the Kerbals into a safe orbit around wherever they end up so I can send a nice friendly return mission (Probe controlled, so I don't strand more Kerbals because of my incompetance. I can claim a misguided probe to be an intentional satellite.) and bring 'em home. Mun and Minmus coffee runs have a powerful enough abort sequence to throw them home, usually of the variety of "Point ship retrograde, light sepratrons, hold on to helmet." Yes, I'm insane enough to use SRB's as an abort stage...

Despite being a spaceplane pilot, I'd say Eve Return. Sure, landing on everything at Jool is... difficult. However, everything other than aerobraking at Jool can be simulated on Kerbin. Eve, however, is a gravity well that contains an atmosphere with the consistency of paste. At the same time, Eve is a pain to land on. Either it's mountains or it's oceans. Very few flat spots that I've found. At the same time, the atmosphere doesn't support the use of jet engines. Still, I did enjoy sending a winged probe there and back again. I hate sending Kerbals there, though. I'd rather do a Kerballed Jool V run.

Easily Laythe. Minimal effort to make a Laythe-glider and enjoy cruising. Hardest part is just getting the bloody thing skybound in the first place.

Test a BACC SRB on the Surface of Minmus. That one sucked. I managed to luckily point my ship toward Kerbin (I know, not very efficient, but come on, I had a solid rocket booster exploding behind me.) and managed to carefully get Jeb back home. Another one that bugged me was "Test small gear bay at 30km on Kerbin" Wasn't until I realized I had to right click and run test that I managed to figure that one out. Kept opening and closing the landing gear...

I see I'm not the only one who runs a tri-screen setup! 5760x1080 appears to be what you use, I use 5040x1050. Impressive! As for the craft, great way to promote the mod, I think. Those repulsors come in really, really handy.

Major improvements for me on memory usage, and only a minor hit to FPS. And at the same time, GPU temps fell through the floor. Wasn't sure what, exactly, to expect, but I'm happy with the results. As for my machine, it's certainly non-standard. I built it so that other than swapping GPUs out for better ones when that time arrives, I won't need a CPU upgrade for... quite some time. I did the survey, you can find my rig in there from the comments section. Mine was done with the official KSP 64 bit, though.

Only a couple shortcuts, but I have all the way back to 0.18. Sadly, I don't have my original install of 0.17, and somewhere along the way, my 0.19 became corrupt and unplayable, but I still have all the mods and all the cool stuff I did back then. I try to maintain having each version because I hate not being able to go back, fiddle with something I made in 0.20, or drive a rover from 0.21 in the old version of Kerbtown, Kerbin City, or to experience other aerodynamic systems (FAR) without mucking up my main. Or just to have a clean, pure stock folder where I can do those challenges that require "stock only" without trying to remember "Did this part come with the game?" Then there's the big ones. My KSP x64 current play folder, and also my 0.23.5 Main and 0.23.5 Stockless Challenge. Yes, I made a folder where I removed all the stock parts except the science gear. You want a tough challenge, try that in Career mode. Just, um, give yourself something for a command pod.