Clockwork_werewolf

I've got Jeb up there in a pod. He keeps giving crew reports. for Role playing purposes I consider it Jeb TV each one sponsored by the relevant company. it's kind of like Chris Hadfield on the ISS except I charge.

Getting a Mun landing is far too long for people to rewrite every time. See the above post for a very good tutorial ^

I think one of the deciding factors is how many people DON'T use a mod, not how many do. Another factor is, does it change the game-play in a good way (and I don't mean easier). Third is simplicity to update not just implement. Forth is personal choice. KAS can be very buggy and although I can't see many people complaining about it's inclusion it could on it's own add a week or two to EVERY update in the future. Some bugs are fine in mod, people can wait for updates and play a bit buggy or uninstall the mod, neither of these good if it is included in stock. Precise node may well be a modification they take on board although it would be a case of them changing their code not adapting the mod. Engineer features things like Delta-V readouts that are specifically against the designers wishes for stock. I understand why people use it and squad is very good about not just allowing but helping modders but that doesn't mean they should change want they want. I can see no reason not to include chatterer other than the extra work (and that shouldn't be much) and it shouldn't need much if any upkeep. Part Welding would very much make the game too easy. It removes the need for struts and makes ships almost indestructible and solid like a rock. Even real rockets have problems with bending and compression that can result in problems. Apollo 13 may have even been saved by an early engine shutdown due to compression shock waves.

As far as I understand it the drive has one very important point to understand. Firstly stationary energy loss is due to heat, in a perfect conductor the drive could produce force with no loss of energy. It could NOT produce thrust with no energy loss. The photons inside the chamber produce an unequal force due to quantum effects but as soon as the device accelerate then the force is negated. As such the device would have a very low acceleration but a very high force. Think of it this way, right now gravity is applying a large force to you but no energy is used or loss unless you more up or down. With a perfect conductor this would make a great hover device but not that good a thruster. It would however still be a fuel less thruster, so might be worth consideration.

If I want a craft to dock I stick it on there. If not, I never use it.

See above post, 3 medium landing legs can take about 22 tons landing at 14 m/s. Only 4 engines (rapier, toroidal, LFB KR-1x2 and S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster) can beat this for impact speed. The 3 legs are equal in mass to just ONE radial parachute. Laie is very right about parachute speeds. 14m/s is easy, 7m/s is very hard. ONLY partly filled Sepratrons can beat a parachute for mass to thrust/drag. Unless the pod is so tiny that the mass of parachutes needed is so tiny its not worth talking about. An automated Sepratron firer would work though. Unless you have that you can't beat parachutes for mass. I tend to feel that the cost of the extra mass in fuel/engines/tanks greatly outweighs the savings in Sepratrons/parachutes.

If you are running sandbox then this is defiantly the best way to get the most fuel per ship mass into space. If you just want the most fuel up there then the largest engines work best for part counts to fuel. If you are using funds then this is definitely not the best way to do it. Each stage needs a radial decoupler and fuel line costing 750 combined. That's the same as a medium solid rocket. I won't go into details unless you are using funds.

I've been playing around with land things hard using different combinations of Sepratron, parachutes and landing legs. I was using a 13 ton lander with a fuel tank (6m/s impact tolerance) on the bottom do make it harder as most pods have a high impact tolerance. Two Sepratrons (minimum to have central thrust) reduced the speed by 2m/s at 12-14 m/s. The mass for these was 0.0725 per sep that's 0.145 in total. One small parachute reduced the speed after opening to roughly 22-23 m/s. The mass for this was 0.1. One large or two radial parachutes reduced the speed after opening to roughly 13-14 m/s. The mass for these was 0.3. Three radial parachutes reduced the speed after opening to roughly 9.4-9.6 m/s. The mass for these was 0.45. Four radial parachutes reduced the speed after opening to roughly 8.3-8.5 m/s. The mass for these was 0.6. Three medium landing legs would semi break on impact under about 16m/s. They would be FULLY recoverable for all funds but no longer compress or extend. Their mass was 0.05 so 0.15 in total. Adding a whole bunch of wings made it possible to sometimes land the craft on the runway for a full 100% recovery. 2 delta wings, 2 small control surfaces, 4 AV-R8 wingless and 2 swept wings were used for a mass of 0.34. 3 Landing gear were used but they are mass-less in flight. The craft was quite hard to fly and not all tests were landed safely. Halving the fuel in the Sepratrons allowed me to reduce their mass to 0.0425 per sep. This amount of fuel meant it was difficult to time their firing correctly to not cut out before landing. At any speeds above 14 m/s it was very difficult to time the firings right even with full fuel. In conclusion: The best 100% recoverable lander used one large parachute or two radials with 3 medium landing legs. This was 0.45 tons total landing gear for 13.12 tons of lander, meaning landing gear was 3.4% of the mass of the lander. Somewhere between 22 and 43 tons this setup no longer guarantied a safe landing. The lightest lander was using wings but the craft was not very easy to control of land. It did however let me land on the runway (sometimes) for a full refund. With an automatic Sepratron firing mechanism and 50-25% fuel in each it might be possible to build a lander with a reduced mass than this. Due to human error I couldn't get this to be mass effective in any test even when repeated multiple times. The Sepratron uses 2.44 fuel a second. If an automated device could be designed to fire at one second from the ground then each Sepratron could be reduced to 2.4 fuel from 8 and its mass reduced to 0.0305. At this mass 4 could be used for less mass than a radial parachute (0.0305 x 4 = 0.122). Correct use of low number of parachutes with a heavy lander and Sepratons for the last second before landing could result in a low mass but is very difficult in reality.

Ok, cool. It was actually done by hand to learn all the techniques. Model made in sketchup (better suggestions for modeling welcome) with 4 side braces instead of 6. Texture made in paint.net using the layers then flattened down for the finish. The shading was actually done in Unity rather than blender because I couldn't get the smoothness from a normal map (my fault I suspect). I just ticked the smooth unity box and it came out great. It's the only part because I wanted to get the first right rather than have to fix ten parts when they are done and have to be redone.

Thanks for the comment, I know it's nice to not have any criticism but it's hard to tell that from people that just don't care enough to post about the problems.

Yea it's due to the way time is accelerated in KSP. KSP can't just double the number of calculation per second as this would fry computers if you ship is bigger than about 250 parts (or what ever number of parts your computer could handle divided by 2). For 4x acceleration it would be about 125 parts. So what the game does is multiply the ingoing and out going numbers. The air coming in gets multiplied by 2-4 times for the air intakes. Now although the engines should be using 4 times the amount (I'm unclear if they use 4 times the air, it could be a bug) The cut off point it still 0.10 air which is really 0.025 in normal time. The random air turbulence in 2-4 times speed makes suing this affect a little difficult in reality.

OK so I should assume this part is perfect then? Really any criticism would be nice. I'm going to use these techniques to make more parts and I want to know I'm doing it right to begin with.

I can't answer the terminal velocity part but there are other things. 1: Are you using any landing legs? 2: Whats the mass of the lander? 3: How many parachutes are you using? 4: Why not add wings and a jet engine to get to back to KSP for the full 100% refund? (unless your aim is perfect). 5: Have you tried lowering the fuel in the sepotrons so their weight is less but they also do more of a punch than a long burn? 6: Why not add a few more parachute so that the window of error is bigger? I'm interested in this idea though, I tried this a bit in 0.23 but there was no real purpose to it.

I stand corrected. It must have worked that way once but it's not like we can see the code behind all of this so maybe it changed. The air intakes still need it but that could be because there are no other air stores on any ships.

Add a launch escape system. Put all the parachute on the abort button. Check all fuel lines, parachutes, stage orders and struts. LAUNCH! In a side note I've lost over a 1.5 mil in failed craft and even had one fall over on the launch pad (no reverts and x8 costs). I know your feels.

Actually Tao is right. The alternator generates electricity but without any storage this can't be used harvested. The Air intakes store a tiny amount of air for this reason and the flow of air is defined by their storage as much as how much air they have coming in. The electric storage is not needed on any engine without an alternator and any storage of 0 is also useless so I have no idea why it is in there.

Also her is a screen shot of the tank under a Stayputnik and on top of a FLT-100 tank

In reality I made this part for a life support mod I'm making but this is the first parts I'm publishing as it may be useful to more people. I would love feedback on the part and my modeling. I suspect I used some bad techniques and that it could be improved in countless ways. I'm here to find out what they are and improve them. http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/222748-clockwork-life-support The part is just a tank like the flt-100 that holds 100 oxidizer and nothing else. It's for use in space planes and life support systems.

If you want to get people to be excited about a game, you spend millions on advertising, you spend millions on modeling and artists so that every gun and military man is accurate down to the nose hair. You base it off of last years game and then sell it to people that don't know that £60 for 50 hours game-play (at best) is not a good deal. If you want people to actually keep playing a game other things are important. I'm using Minecraft and KSP as the guides here because I suspect they have both eaten hundreds of hours of my time. KSP is at 896 hours on steam for me. Setting. I did think of putting sandbox first but actually there are sandbox games that don't last that long. If you base a game in a city or a war then even if the player has a very large area to explore it all kind of looks the same after a while. Kerbal has all the land areas of earth at an insane scale to any other game (apart from Minecraft which is infinite). Then it adds all the other planets and moons with different gravities and such. Minecraft has biomes to add to player. Setting alone would never keep a game interesting. Sandbox. You don't have to do anything/ you can do anything whenever. People like stories but we get a lot of plots in games and mostly they are the same. Someone is bad, someone killed someone you care about. Someone is trying to take over the world blah blah blah. How about "here is a space program, have fun". Freedom to go anywhere and see anything you like makes people spend much more time on games. Skyrim actually had this problem, after getting level 50 I realized I should probably do more of the main quest but just the bits that were on my path anyway. I saw reviews that said one problem (tongue in cheek) was there wasn't enough to keep you on the main quest. I've clocked up over 200 hours on Skyrim but it doesn't have... Building. House, base, space station, spaceship. Am I talking about KSP or mine craft? With enough imagination and a bit of skill you can make anything. Anything. Imagination is almost endless when not crushed by society. Designing things and then making them takes time but it is also a very basic human skill and very enjoyable. We love to build and get such a warm glow when we do, this is why engineers are the happiest profession in the world. Even though they are defiantly not the best payed they are still the happiest in absolute terms not just adjusting for pay. Rules. You might think a game without rules would be fun but without some difficulty's it just becomes painting and painting with only the games parts. Some struggle helps give us the feeling the end product is real and an achievement. I got very board of mine craft creative because of this I think I only spent an hour or two with it. The struggle of figuring out the rules and why to get round them is very satisfying. Even in sandbox KSP unless you turn on most alt-f12 cheats you will have to figure out how to get stuff into space and not explode/run out of fuel/go haywire. Learning is actually fun when it's not just data you have to assimilate. Mods. They had to be in this list. I stopped playing Minecraft until I found mods like Tekkit and Hexxen. When I found these they probably added hundreds of hours to my play time again. I may not use many mods in KSP but I have tried a fair few (most of the usual suspects) and I understand that they add new challenges, new abilities new styles and new parts that greatly increase peoples interest in the game.

One fix is to download module manager then make a txt file, name it what you like, rename the ending to .CFG and put in the file the line @PART[*]:FINAL { @cost *= 3 } Dump this and the module manager .dll in the gamedata folder. Now every time the game loads while this code is in there, all parts should cost 3 times as much. The loading screen should talk about 185 parts changed or something like that. You can change the number to anything you like, mine is set to *= 8 so everthing costs 8 times as much and a mk1 pod costs 4200. This might not be exactly what you are looking for but it certainly makes it harder.

Elevons/canards are for tilting up and down. They should be as far forward and backwards as possible because they want maximum leverage for turning up and down. Ailerons are for rolling a craft. They should be as far sideways as possible because they want maximum leverage for rolling the craft. I almost always have a canard in front, I'm not sure what is telling you not to. They do need to be balanced with the center of lift though. In KSP the name of the part (aileron, elevator, canard ect) is just a suggestion as to its use. Canards can be used on wing ends as ailerons. Ailerons can be used on the back of a craft as rudders or elevators or on the front as canards. Their size affects their force, their position denotes their use, their name is just a suggestion.

I apologize if it seemed like that was my intent. I was answering "Why do you insist on making a maximum profit on every mission?". It also works as a difficulty modifier which I feel makes it as hard as some new players find it. Experienced players often don't realise that new players can find all of the information it has taken them ten's or hundreds of hours to learn can be overwhelming. Also an experienced player can often do the same thing as a new player for a quarter or less of the cost. This is also why I felt it worth mentioning my cost increase. It makes me struggle as much as some new players.

Because I'm running at x8 base cost now. That's 4200 for a basic 1 man pod (with no parachute or anything). For a new player they will be very inefficient and I have seen them burn all their money or use 200k for a failed mun mission. This is why they need some easy but boring tech, for in case they need it. Most will not and can just ignore it. Also the biomes are not applied to every experiment meaning only a few of them get all the biomes and new players do not know about all the biomes, where to find them or even that they exist so a health bit of extra is fine when it takes three of them to get a tier 2 (15-20) science tech node. Also I would like to make it clear I don't bother hovering up all the Kerbin science, I just think it's good that it is there for those that need it.

Considering how useless Kerbin experiments are they are worth far less in science than the effort required to get them. They let beginners get the 20-30 science to unlock 2 techs and that's about it unless you fly or rocket off to other parts. Rocketing now costs money and flying takes so much time that anyone is welcome to the 10 science for half and hours flying. Leave the Kerbin science and consider is testing. In a real life example the Russians once tested a rover's life sensing equipment on earth and found nothing. This was very important data meaning the sensor was useless. This "science" data would let them design a better tester just like unlocking tech tree tech. Also the number of biomes don't need to be nerfed if the value of each becomes less. Making the reward reduce encourages people to find new sources, limiting the rewards FORCES people to get new sources whether they can do it or not. This causes people to get "stuck" and is not a good game Mechanic. If you can easily adapt you have no problem, if you can't then boredom is much better than being stuck for ever and giving up.

Yea I like this idea. The first Mun landing you do should reward you with a lot of science. New players often struggle with getting there and back safely so it should be rewarded. I would say go with first biome 100%, second 50%, third 25%, forth 12.5% ect. I would also add that every plant a flag on the Mun and transmit data from orbit should have a lowering value. Not like the biomes as repeat business is all that's keeping my cost x 8 space industry alive but still reduced every time. Maybe 80% of old value so first 30k, second 24k, third 19.2k, forth 15.3k ect. It would still be enough money that new players will realise there is a point to leaving a probe or kerbal up there and for it to be cost affective to send up a second craft. But the diminishing returns would mean that players went after new planets rather than grinding science from orbit missions. Another option for the grinding science from orbit could be that you only get payed is there is actual science to return. New science items and labs would have more of a purpose then.