Madrias

I can tolerate the 64-bit quirks, actually. It's worth it for the "I can do that? I can install every mod in my mods archive?" factor. No more cycling mods in and out, dumping pieces from parts packs, etc.

I'd rather have 6 tons too much than 6 units too few. Sure, I spend more getting it up there, but at the end of the day, what matters is that things got where they needed to go, and I had plenty of spare fuel for doing stupid stuff like not using perfect efficiency. After all, I suck with rockets, but until I get spaceplanes, I have to do things this way. Once I've got planes, all those extra fuel cans end up being dumped on stations with docking ports attached, so after I have docking ports and spaceplanes, I never worry about that 'half empty fuel can' left 'floating in orbit' because I'll just pick it up, give it a shove, dock it with the station, and once it's empty, hook it to the belly-port and carry it down for a nice, safe landing.

My last rather important one to my save: Land! Sweet Land! The crew of Skyrider One have returned to the KSC, landing lightly on the runway after a six hour flight. Where did they go? Around Kerbin, of course.

You manage to goof up your staging and fire off some very expensive fireworks in the form of your SRB's and the radial decouplers at the same time. You don't check your staging, and an attempt to merely dump your SRB's leaves the capsule riding an engine at full throttle with no control... Trying to save money in career mode, you use fewer struts, only to have the plane completely disintegrate mid air because of a critical failure that would have been easily prevented by using one more pair of struts.

I can say this, that is a beautiful looking helicopter! Looks like it would be a blast to fly. I'd probably try to go some distance in IVA view just to admire the surroundings.

That's why I suggested the ones from KSP Interstellar. Last I checked (though my version may be a bit out of date), they had stack-mount 0.625 radiators. One of those is more than enough to cool a 0.625 fission reactor.

Voculus, I've just been using Interstellar's probe-size fission reactor for power. I know it's way overpowered for that application, but it works.

I've done my share of improvised abort sequences. They don't work too well for spaceplanes. Decouple the pilot's seat, blast your self away from the inevitable wreck with some sepratrons, and deploy chutes to save the pilots. I've had to do that because I don't use revert, even from 0.22.

I've been playing this game with no quicksave, no quickload, and no reverts for quite some time. That nervous feeling you've got? I've used it as a reason to strap on a few of those trash-bins full-o'-boom and a few more struts where I think weak points are, double-check my staging one last time, and then hit launch. Max your throttle, enable SAS, give yourself a count backwards from 10, and squish the staging key for all it's worth. If you're really worried for your crew, set up a simple abort stage on an easily-reachable action group key. Decouple your uppermost stage, fire that engine, push you away from your debris. Get to a safe zone, dump your engine and pull your chutes. Just remember that at the first sign of stuff going boom, you NEED to hit that button. Keep your throttle up, smash that key, and ride off into the sunset, and remember to look at your cool explosions. After all, you paid for those fireworks. In other words: If you're worried about losing Kerbals, set up proper ejection sequences.

Seems to function okay in x64 for me, but I'm not the greatest of testers to ask.

I'm pushing my 64-bit for all it's worth. No more cutting out the HL parts from B9, no more dumping 90% of some random part pack that I use 3 parts from, and no more quibbles about whether to use KSP Interstellar with extra awesome on top. Only thing I'm having trouble with is that I'm digging around looking for more awesome plane parts. I've got B9, Firespitter, Kerbonov, B9 Expansion, Lack Luster Labs + their stock expansion kit, and yet I'm still running into the "I want this or that and I can't find it," problem. Specifically: I'm trying to find a pilot's seat with reasonable view (yes, IVA is needed, and no, the MK1 IVA is not an acceptable view, there's no side views...) that mounts to a 1m stack. I'd prefer it to be slightly angular in design, but I could make something work if it's a bubble type canopy. Basic idea is this: if it looks like it should fit on a fighter plane, I'd be interested. With 64-bit and 12GB of RAM, I'm not too worried about installing parts packs for one part, and I figure, ask the community. Asking Google has failed because I don't know how to precisely word it in ways to produce the results I want. Asking the Forum Search never seems to work for me. When in doubt, ask the community. And yes, I want a plane pod, not a rocket capsule. I fly planes, I only crash rockets.

I managed to do it semi-legit. I've got 1000 whole funds and I've gotta test an SRB in orbit. I've got nothing to get me there for 1000 funds.... How'd I do it? I don't normally build rockets, I build spaceplanes. I have a very hard time making orbit with a rocket, so I tended to overbuild... And it bit me in the butt.

Started construction in x64 mode on my new aircraft. This undoubtedly WILL have the slowest time on the board. I can't imagine a vehicle going slower than a non-infinigliding aircraft packing an Ion Thruster and a, well, shall we say "secret weapon" in store for how to actually make it work. My hardest part has always been getting Xenon drives airborne from the runway, so I've developed a strategy that doesn't involve rocket boosters or drop-away props. Two words: Hooligan. Labs. I'll post again once I've finished started my circle around the world. There's an Ion drive onboard, but I don't feel I'll be using it a lot. It's a Gravity-Class Infinite Glider for a reason, and no, it's not to be confused with "Infiniglider." Very, very different strategies. ------------ And now, Live from Madness Industries Space Exploration, Ground Control has launched a new vessel. The journey will be broken into many parts over many days. I think driving or boating might actually be faster... Not sure whether it'll be counted as Xenon Class as I'm out of Xenon Gas, but can fly just fine without it. Even from landing. I'd accept an "Engineless" category or a "Xenon" category placing, though understand that this plane does not actually exploit infiniglide. It's a very much manual experience. I'm alternating between Action Group 2 and Action Group 3 to keep my speed and altitude up. I've consumed all the Xenon a little under 50 minutes into my trip. Estimated Mission Required Time: 16 hours. ------------ Another Live Update from Madness Industries and the Voyage of Gravity One. Leg two's a little short, but I didn't feel like flying for 4 hours straight the second run. I still covered a good amount of distance, though, and I now only have half a planet to fly around. That whole leg was flown, obviously, with no Xenon. Estimate on Mission Required Time at this point: 14 hours. ------------- A short, but effective journey marks the third leg. Flying tired is always a bad idea, so I landed before the two-second nod-offs hit. Still flying 64-bit.

I've had to make two saves for Career mode. My first one, I blew the budget on my first launch and started off badly, and things spiraled downhill fast. My second save, however, is struggling. Mind you, I'm the guy who would rather be flying spaceplanes than rockets, and all the early stuff is, is rockets. So I continually mess up, cause accidents, have staging issues and stuff blows up. I've built more ships to be launched than I've been able to launch because of the lack of cash. I think Career mode is hard enough for a new guy, and even though I've played KSP since 0.17, I'm not the master wizard of rockets, either. Once I unlock basic spaceplane tech ("if" might be more appropriate than "once," though...) I'll be okay, but until then, I'm in a deep budget crunch.

Solved half my problem with kissing hillsides at 200 m/s... Use more anti-grav thrusters. Now I can cruise along at stupid speeds until I find water (which, from what I've seen in this thread, might not be a problem for much longer...) at which I pull up on the control surfaces and the jets, and lift clumsily into the sky. Now if only I could master landing on these things without busting up my speeder, I'd be happy. More hover altitude would be nice, as the tweakable up to 4 isn't quite enough for me. Call me picky if you want, but I'd like more of an air-cushion between my high-speed craft and deadly dirt, and altitude would be a good way to do it. Also fun to cruise around KSC with an ion thruster. Slow, yes, but fun. It's like driving a frictionless hovercraft.

I've played maybe 30 minutes of 0.24 and I'm already thinking the career mode is better. Not easier, but not harder. I can bust out a couple contracts early on and unlock a few parts that I find mission critical, then cruise smoothly into having a lot more fun than should be allowed. Not having to waddle around KSC is nice. Not having to rocket-hop until I can get spaceplane parts, also nice. Test a few decouplers or rockets on the ground and get a little bit for it. Sling a rocket skybound and test something at altitude, or trying to break a record. Suddenly, I find myself liking career mode, and hating myself for trying it before the mods update and I can load it down with Firespitter and a few dozen others. Oh, and I'm glad for 64-bit mode. I will, of course, use it.

I've had KSP on Steam since 0.20. Why? I find it more convenient. Steam Auto-Update, despite being a royal pain for some games, is a godsend for KSP. I already have a clone of each version once I get it modded out and tweaked to perfection. Steam just does the whole, "Whoa! New KSP version. Put that in the Download Queue and wait for a free moment." thing for me.

Oh, I know I was going really fast. I'm just saying, I was hurtling along at 200m/s and a little drop always proves fatal because there's no "gravitic cushion" to catch you. You drop below your hover height and the repulsors, or bits of your craft, hit the ground and break apart. As for the water idea, it just made me think that if we could get the anti-grav working over water, I'd be interested in trying to ground/water-circumnavigate Kerbin. I think the reason the repulsors have become so popular is because it's so Kerbal it actually makes sense. Here's a world where little green men blow themselves up trying to make it to space. A world where fusion reactors and gigantic batteries fit right in alongside those wooden parts you've strapped to the rocket, and yet here's a few small little pieces that help you fly across Kerbin (or Laythe, or the Mun, or Minmus) at stupidly high speeds in any random direction. In other words: The repulsors are popular because it's something many people have wanted and few modders have gotten 'right' with their attempts. Some don't work, some act purely like hacked gravity. Yours work like wheels that go in every direction at once, yet manage to also be reasonably balanced by being power hungry.

Fair enough on the water issue. I figured there'd be some reason why it is that lots of things just say "nope" when they touch water. As for hover altitude, the current maximum setting isn't high enough for some of the craft I've been mucking about with. Flying off a small jump tends to smash up the vehicle on landing rather than decelerating it and catching it in a gentle hover.

Been having quite a bit of fun with the anti-grav units. The only 2 things I wish they had, and I discovered this while screaming along at nearly 200 m/s, would be an ability to float over water, and maybe a higher hover altitude. Smashing one's nose into the terrain at super high speed isn't exactly 'fun' and water is a definite hazard with these. But they're a lot of fun. Was sliding all around the KSC, I made a very-hard-to-control podracer with KAS and Quantum Struts, and I tried using 'em as landing gear for a plane with limited success. But I've enjoyed them so far.

I'm having a good bit of fun with the crawling base. It's a lot of fun, and kinda amusing to see what can be constructed within the small amount of space it provides. EDIT: I just found an awesome, interesting feature of the crawlers. To replicate it for yourself, walk into one of Kerbin's oceans and just keep walking. You'll see it soon enough. It's awesome. You can walk underwater.

These are a lot of fun! Made a hot rod for testing purposes and, well, I wasted 4 hours ripping up the KSC with the best wheels I've used in KSP ever.

I tend to keep going and carry on. I'm of the mindset that the big three get a nice comfortable retirement on the Island Runway and I start working through my list of willing victims... I mean, um, applicants. If they blow up, they blow up. If they survive, they get another round.

I tend to vomit up whatever comes to mind as a name. Sometimes it's a description, like "ION Rover," a spaceplane with an ion drive as the landing stage, for worlds like Duna or for one-shot landings on Eve or Laythe, where it can't pull back up. Sometimes it's something humorous, designed simply to torture kerbals, like the "Bottle Rocket Ion Glider" which uses the big Rockomax BACC solid rocket booster to throw a small ion propelled space plane at space. Sometimes it explodes, other times it makes it. Either way, getting sent to the BRIG is a punishment no Kerbal wants, but it's done as a result of crashing a craft. And then there are the times where I actually have a planned mission and so it's named. Last one was in Career mode, "Solara 7,' the last of my solar-science gathering probes.

My furthest spacewalk, roughly 7km. I needed to add one more member to my crew list to pilot the rover on the Mun. I don't tend to take off with EVA seats loaded, but I realized all too late that with 3 men in the crew pod, I needed to move two to Science Bay (forgot to load it out first) and that meant I needed one to stay with the ship. Insurance policy, after all. You don't crash and kill your pilot when you're driving across the Mun. Well, I got as close as I can (I'm really bad at orbital rendezvous, despite being able to make it to other planets easily enough...) and just sent Neilgas Kerman across the 7km gap to sit in the rover seat the whole way to the Mun. That mission ended well. Neilgas and the Rover were separated first, and they landed softly in the East Farside Crater (according to the Biome name I got from the EVA report). I sent down the ship with the Science Module, designed as the first available Mun base I'd made in that career save. I left a probe satellite in orbit, in accordance with my own rules regarding long-duration Kerballed missions (at least one comsat in orbit, preferably modern. A comsat must have one 88-88 dish antenna, a DTS flat-folding antenna, and a Communotron, minimum, and cannot be allowed to run out of power at any time during the mission.) ------ My second longest space walk was Jeb pushing his capsule retrograde to make a 100km orbit a re-entry. 3km of nudging and pushing, followed by resolutely crawling back inside and waiting to try some more (a rule I use to discourage 'get out and push' as well as infinite EVA fuel is that 5 minutes must pass between EVA fuel depletions. This is to allow the onboard compressors in the capsule to compress the gasses Kerbals exhale into a usable fuel. It is also to allow a Kerbal to unwind and relieve stress so that they don't become a puff of smoke out of frustration.) Then there was a 1km final burn on that walk to reach atmo. I was in the capsule then, but it still took 4 orbits to fall into the atmosphere enough to re-enter. Needless to say, I over-engineer my fuel budgets now. At least 10% more than the mission requires.