Madrias

I'm of the mindset that it's best to give people a choice between stock and modded. Just like with Stock vs. FAR, you get some who adamantly refuse to use the other for each their own reasons. Some people would like to take the extra challenge involved in making a fully stock plane do things others thought they needed a mod for. Others have a different mod that does similar (Firespitter to KAX, for example, although I personally use both), and others still would rather use something like B9 Aerospace (another mod I love to use) in order to make good looking planes. Then of course, there's the factor of "what do you do" when someone shows up and wants to use even more mods that tend to be cosmetic in nature, but aren't explicitly laid out in your challenge...

I tried to get the general feel across without any reference material. Many design considerations were used, from the more balloon-styled rover wheels to the exaggerated height of the car body and hood (or bonnet, for you British folk out there), the high seating position, the wide bumpers, just to get the right feel. It's capable of reaching 25m/s at wide open throttle, and executing a full-lock turn with the front wheels at that speed is not a problem. The choice of the Interstellar Mod's fusion reactor was mostly based on familiarity with the unit. I know it's way overkill for what was needed, but I wanted to make sure, no matter the circumstances, that I had more power than I needed. There's two intake-air + Electric charge smoke generators hiding under the floorplate, and due to a manufacturing defect (aka, poor config bashing) they draw way more power than I intended. The choice to use structural pylons for body pieces was actually simple: I needed an angle piece that wasn't awkward to use. In hindsight, I wish I'd used a B9 Aerospace structural plate to cover the door area of the car, but I didn't think of that at the time. All in all, I had fun building it, and it's certainly a blast to drive around the KSC. Short of jumping it off the launchpad, it's near impossible to wreck. I've flipped it once because I turned while on the runway slope and didn't slow down from 22m/s to 17 to be safe. Both Kerbals did survive the roll-over, though they were ejected from their seats. In the side-profile of it, you can see one in the background that I wrecked... I kinda hit the MK1 monument at wide-open on an unmanned test one. Love that stealth rover, though! That's sure to be sneaky.

I built a car that is very hard to flip while driving at KSC. It may not comply with any racing rules from an official challenge (there are very many mod parts in this thing, some of which are my own brilliant ideas, like lining the bottom with structural panels that weigh 3 tons), but I'm tempted to try loading up Persistant Trails and trying a run on a Formula K track. I've got config modded wheels (mostly to increase the amount of impact they can take without breaking), 3 ton "lead" plates stacked under the belly, KAS toolboxes for looks, KSP Interstellar's power systems for the radiators and the reactor that powers it, B9 for the awesome windshields, and a resized but not reweighed structural panel (0.5 x 0.5) as well as a structural pylon resized by half. Pardon the night shots, I was enjoying driving too much to stop and wind time ahead. It can take a corner at wide open throttle and not flip. I based the vehicle on old cartoons, if you're curious about the style.

A dedicated bloody spot for .craft files so they don't flood the Spaceport when I'm looking for better boosters and spaceplane cockpits.

I tend to design logical chunks, but my stations have no order to them. Sure, I've got Crew Habitation, Science Wing, Power Generation Station, Central Core, and Fuel Depot, but they go up in stages and get stuck together. After that, expansions are added as needed. I've built my share of additional docking rings, solar stacks, Interstellar Mod Nuclear Power Generation Units, Kethane Refinement Devices, and Deployable Service Modules (Space tugs, one-man-deorbital-units, flying-gas-cans). As such, my stations always look like a mess.

"Touching down and BRAKES!" *front landing gear snaps off, cockpit meets runway at 300m/s* "Well, crap."

You want a good mind-frak, KSP Docking on 3 screens, 5040x1050 resolution. I've gotten up dizzy a few times after that.

Oh, that looks cool! Air intakes and twin-engine system for the MK2 system. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but do I spy a tail-surface mounting point above and between the twin engines?

After having a stray booster smash through my space station, yeah, you bet I deorbit my debris.

Whoa! May I ask what parts pack you used to get that cockpit and those engines? Spaceplane fanatic here wants to have more options.

Orange tanks have been around longer and most of us old-folks use a lot of 'em. All of my space stations in current operation are designed around orange tanks, my spaceplanes are sized to cradle an orange tank under them, my SSTO carries an orange tank in the cargo hold. Everything about these new 3.75m parts requires relearning while the 2.5m orange tank still works.

Of course... I would be flying a solar powered plane when a bloody eclipse happened. Never seen one before and yet, just when I thought my bad luck had run out (Kraken killed my car, my mun rocket exploded, and I made a beautiful SSTO*) I get an eclipse that shuts off my charging system and forces me to land. *Single Stage to Ocean

I've captured two asteroids with the Claw, but I've found it to be most useful for dragging debris into suborbital trajectories. No more building strut-ships in Career Mode to deorbit that booster I left up there on Day One and having to sit through orbital cycles because timewarp turns off collisions. Now I can go up, grab it with the Claw, give it a firm shove retrograde, decouple, and keep my sanity (what little is left of it) while clearing my skies.

As if it wasn't already hard enough finding the parts you need... Seriously. I do often times do vague searches when I'm looking for something interesting, but just search for "cockpit" sometime and count not how many mods you find, but how many people have tagged their .craft file with 'cockpit' so that you have to wade through dozens of (often times) multi-posted craft files.

Tried driving around the KSC in a little 'car' I'd built. Four seats, all loaded with Kerbals, went to do my usual sprint past the dishes, and: The Kraken ate my car! My Kerbals were thrown across the map to a horrifying death in the ocean!

Sooner or later, you'll be back here, wondering where the last 1383 hours have gone... (my current time played in KSP... Even beats my Skyrim counter, which tops out at only 732 hours...)

Managed to still deliver my Eve plane even though I double-staged with my interplanetary drive active. Turns out I only had 500 units of fuel left in that stage and the Mainsail burned it all up. It put me on course to intercept with one of my refueling stations, so I docked, grabbed a big orange fuel can, and ran the distance from Kerbin's SOI to Eve on the Linear Aerospikes. Descended into Eve's atmosphere and ignited my KSP Interstellar Tech. Thermal Turbojet and cruised to a safe landing upon which I knocked the engine off. First winged Eve base, but they've got a fusion power plant onboard that thing so I'm not too worried. The docking ports are both still there, there's plenty of power, and I'll get around to sending a true lander there at some point with some friends, more snacks, and a better place to stay that the MK1 Cockpit that Dunlorf happily hopped into. (maxed Courage, and only halfway up the stupidity bar. Brave pilot smiled the whole way, even when the engine fell off... Both times.)

Realistically, I don't use either. Sure, I've tried MechJeb in the past, but it was during a lazy streak where I was getting tired of fiddling with orbital transfers and transfer windows, of gravity turns and rockets that explode on the pad. Delta-V calculation was furthest from my mind. I've tried Kerbal Engineer, but for what I do (spaceplanes), it's a little... lacking. My strategy for interplanetary travel involves getting a spaceplane into orbit, docking to a big orange jumbo tank in orbit, sending myself screaming across space to another station where I drop off my expended tank, and use the planes VTOL rocket landing capabilities to cruise down to the planet's surface on 4 Toroidal Aerospikes. I suppose it's why I've never really been afraid of Eve, I can manage to build a "heavy return assembly" that bolts on under the plane and allows me to sling myself back from the heavy atmosphere on very efficient engines (Interplanetary mod's Thermal Turbojet and the Thermal Rocket Nozzle, the first of which flies by hot atmosphere and the other, well, is a rocket, to some degree), deposit my heavy return assembly back at Eve Station, run my plane back home, and then send a mission out with my mobile Kethane refinery to convert Kethane into fuels to refill my depleted orange tanks. So in the end, I've found neither to be overly useful for me. Mechjeb is great when you're feeling lazy, but it's inefficient on fuels. Kerbal Engineer is great when you're building rockets, but a spaceplane pilot like me found little use in it back in 0.21 and I've not used it since.

An idea I'd like to see, actually, for multiwheels would be a car cab to go with the truck one. Maybe some car body pieces as well, although not perhaps the most necessary.

I still have that! I just didn't think to use it, I was having too much fun buzzing around riding an engine with wings. More fun than a solid rocket booster, that's for sure.

I used infinite fuel to bring Jeb home from the Mun after I failed my aerobraking pass in my spaceplane and wasted my fuel. Most of my planes are built with part clipping on. It's not to gain extra delta-V, but simply to try making the plane look less crap, or to put an engine where it should be able to fit. I have never filled out a Career Mode tech tree. Once I hit spaceplanes, I slow way down and just focus on the science. My rockets suck, but I could build a spaceplane half asleep. Yeah, I know, it's Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Flight Simulator, but I don't get rockets. When I build 'em, they just explode. It took me 4 versions to like FAR. I actually, up until 0.23, used to hate Ferram's Aerospace Research. For whatever reason, my brain took a long time to click and realize the planes did in fact fly better in FAR than they did in Stock. I think what won me over was making high-altitude motor-gliders with Procedural wings + Firespitter and having them actually, you know, work.

I only have a couple that are must-haves for me. Firespitter, as it's great for making planes that actually work well. Ferram's Aerospace Research (FAR), as it makes your planes fly like planes, not plywood kites. B9 Aerospace, as the vanilla spaceplane stuff is kinda missing the spaceplane stuff. MK2 Cockpit Internals, as I do appreciate being able to see when flying. After that, it's pick and choose from modpacks for me, and then delete 90% of the stuff I don't intend to ever use.

Well, even if the turboprop was included by accident, that didn't stop me from following Kerbal tradition here. Strapped wings, a gas tank, a seat, and a probe core to a turboprop and flew it around. Quite a lot of fun.

I have 3: The MK1 Cockpit. Great one for flying IVA planes. The MK2 Cockpit. With a mod, a beautiful IVA cockpit, but even without the mod, it's a great way to make inline jet fighters. The Cupola. A beautiful IVA pod with everything you need.

I don't have Permadeath on, but I've been planting flags around the KSC flagpole. Probably got 8 of 'em there. The big 3, however, are safe and sound in my Minmus Permanent Polar Station.