Madrias

My recommendation: Start with the basics, regardless of mode. A MK1 Capsule, an upper stage with an LV-T45, a lower stage with three LV-T30's, and three radially attached boosters. If you're running Career mode, prioritize unlocks that have science gear in 'em. Otherwise, be planning to make lots of return trips. Or, become an oddball like me, and fly everywhere with spaceplanes. Lots of 'em. Start by trying simple things, like building a plane that can get off the runway, then one that can fly without engaging SAS (cause they fixed that so it isn't instant flappy-spam syndrome with your control surfaces anymore), then trying to get to space in a proper MSTO (Multi Stage to Orbit), and once you're comfortable, make a space station, dock a few planes, and attempt SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) and docking with your new station. Also, landing on planets and moons can be fun. If you're doing Career Mode, your big three are Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus. Why? They have biomes which each can be exploited for science. You'll likely deal with Kerbin on your first few flights, but soon, it'll be for your landings. The Mun, well, it got re-surfaced and it's no longer the endless flat paradise it once was. Someone went around and punched a bunch of dirty great craters into it. Minmus, well, I'll let you know once I manage to land something on it without my poor landing skills getting the crew stranded. There are a few planets/moons with atmosphere, which can be fun with spaceplanes to go investigate. Bring lots of rocket fuel if you do. Landing legs now have suspension, so say goodbye to rough landings resulting in a sudden bounce and parts flying. Also say goodbye to your engine if you build a craft heavier than the landing legs. 0.23 brought in Tweakables, and I think you can jam the suspension with it. You can also reduce thrust of any engine now for proper power-balancing. A lot has changed, but KSP, at its core, is still KSP. You'll get back in the swing of things.

I'm scared to say it, but what day are we going to see 7 of those coupled to each other hexagonally? Actually, no, I'm afraid my computer will melt just from seeing images of something that crazy, so I don't dare challenge Whackjob.

Out of curiosity, any chance for a 1m bomb bay? Possibly both in round and oblong configs?

Vexx, now I wanna see Whackjob try to put a ring of, well, anything around Kerbin. Other than Debris cause that's easy.

I modified my Ion engines to push their thrust up, but as I increased it by a multiplier of 5, I took a multiplier of 10 out of the ISP. Made it more fair and balanced in my eyes.

I'm the inversion of common KSP players. I'm absolutely terribad with rockets. Give me 30 minutes and I'll whip you up a shiny new SSTO. Give me an hour and I'll even try to hide the intakes. That being said, my range around the solar system is a little shaky. Sure, I can get out to almost any planet and orbit, but landing is a bit tricky for me. Always has been. If there's no atmo to glide in with, I struggle to try landing without rendering my vehicle incapable of return. Yeah, I brag a little about my skill with the SSTO, but only because I know I'm the inversion of common. I make no mistake in saying that I've never successfully landed a rocket on the Mun. Vertically descending SSTO doesn't count, in my opinion, as a rocket. I struggle in Career mode because I have so little access to plane parts early on, so I'm forced to defy common convention, aim for Aerodynamics and Flight Control before staggering lazily down the tech tree in order to unlock more science stuff, then try building spaceplanes out of what can best be summed up as junk. And I'm honest: if I find myself having difficulty, I ask for help. At this point, I consider worlds with high gravity and no/low atmo to be impossible because my skill is not that good. Worlds with atmo are a gentle breeze as I can glide in, pick my LZ, drop gear, and make a beautiful, gentle touchdown on soft dirt. I consider myself good, but by no means an expert. Oh, and I officially can say I much dislike the RAPIER engines. Makes SSTO too easy, and the second stage is way too inefficient for the workload it does. Better to use Airhogged Turbojet, then 2 LV-T45 to make space, if you ask me. Can run the '45s at about 1/3 thrust if you're good with your intake planning and can get 'er up to about 25-30km altitude before flameout on that jet. Running Machingbird trials helped me make better SSTO's. Everyone says rockets are faster, but I can kiss orbit in 10 minutes flat with a well designed plane, although it is kinda done with brute force and ignorance with a 45 degree flight profile. In the end, I consider myself good at half the game, and the other half I'm lacking in, so that makes me average.

Grabbed this mainly cause you made probes and ion engines useful. I'll report back after I have some fun slinging probes to the far edges of the solar system.

I had to do it. SSTO to Mun. It can make it back, but it'll certainly be close. As you can tell, it's just a gray-suit flying, but that was cause it was the Maiden Voyage of that design. Always wanted to try the RAPIER engines.

Dropping the landing gear and coming in for the runway... Forgot to drop the drop tanks... Dropped the tanks, but was too late to land... Swooped around for another pass at landing... "Aw, FRAK!" Slammed right into my drop tanks.

I am about to rip my hair out with this Spaceplane Grand Tour. So many spent fuel tanks have been plonked into random decaying orbits. Way too many. As in all of the ones I'd sent to my Jool Station, Eve Station, Moho Station, and Sol Station. I'll have to drop by the Kerbin Gas Station on my way to Eeloo!

Blame it on Jeb playing with space tape again.

Took off in my SkyHawk SSTO, stopped at my aptly-named "LKO Gas Station" for a Rockomax Orange, flew all the way out to Laythe, orbited, and came back toward Kerbin. Dropped off my empty fuel can in Minmus Orbit, then dipped into Kerbin's atmosphere. Flared back and let my reentry trails glow bright yellow (no Deadly Reentry or Ferram Aerospace Research in my messing around file), came in to land in the dark when I saw my four markers (probes with lights) in a pattern I recognized all too well. Dropped my gear, turned to 90 degrees, and touched down right on the runway. Couldn't believe my luck. Was worth getting yelled at for waking everyone up in the house with my short shout of joy.

1: I'd forgotten about Mechjeb actually being useful for "point in the right direction" instead of "Fly my rocket for me" mode. 2: I'm usually at my most touchy-feely on re-entry, trying to minimize the likelyhood of flipping over and out of control. I'll have to consider riding it out till there's enough air to hold it. While I can't sense a changing Center of Mass, Lift, or Thrust, I can, however, almost build an SSTO half asleep. As mentioned, shuttles may carry more, and may be able to beat my SkyHawk's time to orbit (roughly 10 minutes from runway to space. It's designed for a 45 degree ascent profile), but they take me much more time in the assembly hangar. I figure I'll try a shuttle again soon enough, I just need to relax and be confident in my new attempts. And make sure my Center of Thrust stays reasonably the same through my ascent stages.

Shuttles, no, spaceplanes, yes. The shuttle is particularly difficult to build, and even if you've built a good one, it's got bad flight tendancies in the air. Mine always wanted to roll over. Found myself building SSTO's because compared to the shuttle, they were a piece of cake to build and fly. That being said, I can understand enjoying the challenge. SSTO is a challenge for a lot of people, though I've found that once you get the basics in mind, SSTO is easy. Shuttles, even once you know the basics, are intolerably difficult for me to control.

It kinda depends. In my Career saves, all debris must be deorbited... eventually. In sandbox, it depends on which era of space I'm running. 0.23, full debris, deorbit at will. 0.22, Max 50 Persistant, Designed Deorbital. 0.21, full debris, deorbit capable. 0.20, Debris Disabled.

Now that's epic! Real rotor wash! A tri-bladed rotor and I'd be set for quite some time to make lots of helicopters, or other such rotorcraft.

Terrain seams ripping the wheels off my rovers and scattering their debris in a 40 meter line from the impact site. As if it wasn't already hard enough to get to the Mun, then get science on the Mun, now I have to send two ships: a new science hunter and a rescue mission.

"Oh, fudge! I forgot to stage-lock!" Dumped my drop tanks on the way to Laythe, complete failure of the mission. "I wonder if there's land in there?" So far haven't found out if I can actually land on Jool. Need More Chutes! "Pull UP! UP UP UP! Oh bugger." SSTO becoming SSTR (single stage to runway) "A fart would have more power than this!" Ion Engine probe. No more needs to be said.

Devastation Incorporated. We blew it up so you don't have to. Our plan is to get everywhere in the galaxy by plane, instead of those awful rockets. Flying a plane is so much more elegant, and you can charge higher prices.

Oh no. 9, 9, and 2. This is going to hurt a lot. At least it doesn't have to be an SSTO spaceplane. And at least I'm not forced to clean up debris. Hope I've got enough refueling stations out there, but I'll try. Grand Tour in a spaceplane and I've got to inclination change for each planet.

I got overzealous and threw together a bunch of parts without struts in the 0.13 demo. Hit launch, staged it, and, well, it exploded. But it was enough to get me hooked. Any game that lets you fall on your face and fail because you did something so drastically foolish, like strapping 5 tanks to a capsule, a rocket, then surface coupling more rockets to the rocket, then boosters to the rocket, and boosters to the boosters, not using any struts, then hitting the launch button, well, that game ends up rather awesome. My first 'true' flight was done in the 0.18 full edition. Simple little delta wing jet plane that I spiraled into the air, ran out of fuel, then crashed into the ocean. I have rarely flown rockets after that moment.

Have you tried building a spaceplane and cruising around Kerbin? There's a decent bit of science to find in the biomes if you've got enough equipment. Find somewhere you haven't been, land, EVA, grab the report while holding the ladder, store it, climb down to the ground, report, surface sample, climb back up, then board. Now you've gotten more science out of a biome. Currently, Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus have biomes. Labs are only really good for purging your experiment cans so that they can be reused. For the effort to design and build a rocket/spaceplane to take the lab with you, and the extra two Kerbals that have to be deposited from the Crew tab because it's not a cockpit, I've found it to be more trouble than it tends to be worth. Build your design to be a one-shot wonder, fly, land, get your science, get back to Kerbin, and recover. Crew reports and EVA reports and Surface Samples don't take up 'space' in your cockpit, so you can theoretically collect reports and samples in your cockpit. If you have to ditch a stage that has science gear on it, EVA, gather your science experiments, and put them in your cockpit. You'll get a fair amount of value, rather than losing out on it, or wasting precious time/electricity/science by transmitting it back. If your design contains parts that you fear might break on landing, do the same. Better to not get 100% than to certainly get 0% for destroying it. Probes are pretty fairly worthless. For the amount of time and effort, you might as well yank the probe core off and plunk on any of the manned cockpits/capsules, or do a daring space mission with a Kerbal in a command chair. Speaking of command chairs, last I checked, a Kerbal sitting in one could benefit science by technically being "in EVA" and having access to an EVA report. On a rover with a seat mounted low enough, you can do a rolling Surface Sample, speeding up your science hunting. Combine that with having a Kerbal in a cockpit/capsule and you can get EVA and Crew reports simultaneously. So it can be advantageous, albeit risky, to hurl a Kerbal into space riding a chair while his best buddy flies in the cockpit. If you need a reason to do it, just think that Jeb bet the guy in the 'hot seat' wouldn't do it. Now you've got an instant daredevil.

Just done it and having tons of fun. I kinda like the biplane parts. Any chance of any parts purely designed around stunt planes?

Older cards like my 580's do require 2 cards. I think the 600 series can run Surround on one card, I know the 700 series can, but as you said, it's much better to have multi-cards. I've also piped KSP to my living room TV through HDMI (sadly, through my GTS 250 PhysX card. Not a problem, just that it wasn't on my native cards) and enjoyed playing from my comfy recliner with the Saitek X52 on our old 46" TV. Still looks great.

Three screens in nVidia Surround does a wicked job. Those are not done at my 'native' resolution, but one full scaling down from it. 4320x900. I normally play in 5040x1050, but I downscaled to reduce file size a bit. Sadly, for those of you viewing on a single monitor, it'll be hard to appreciate what I actually see. Also, to answer the most common questions I get about surround, I'll just list a few of 'em. "Don't the edges of the screens bother you?" No. You don't notice them when playing. Even in KSP with info on both sides of your focus screen, you look directly at what you need and back again. And in flight, the extra information is out of the way. "Isn't it expensive?" To a point. Two cards are needed to do it, and three matched monitors, but even my well-worn set of GTX 580's can play KSP respectably quick on 3 monitors I got cheaply. "I have an AMD card, can I do the same thing?" Pretty much. AMD calls theirs "Eyefinity" while nVidia calls it "Surround." I'm not sure about hardware requirements, though, for the AMD side of things. and the most often asked question: "Why?" Because I wanted to try it. And then I found it fun. And yes, day to day tasks aren't really any different with 3 screens acting as one. Quirks here and there, but you adapt. But, I don't intend to derail the thread entirely. I merely felt obligated to join in on the KSP experience enhancements.