celem

I generally have a shuffle going on whilst playing KSP and havent really picked a default 'theme'. On occasion the shuffle gets it just right though. I had an Eve ascent vehicle come to pieces a few days ago, the external command chair was about all that was left and it popped chutes and headed back down to the surface with it's plucky pilot. The thing landed the right way up with the Kerbal still strapped to it, making it look for all the world like a lawnchair. Right at that moment the shuffle brought me The Kinks and Sunny Afternoon. Now I just need to send the poor guy an 'ice cold beer'. I also made a short video for a mate who was looking to get into KSP where I showed a series of launches, manouevers and landings all highly sped up, I stuck Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg on that one and it was awesome. Older UK gamers may recall this as the Alton Towers themesong

Its done, well the first version of it is ready anyway. Find the thread here

Alrighty then. A thread appeared recently where someone was asking for a science checklist, and after some searching I couldnt find one that was both comprehensive and up-to-date. "But Celem, 0.23 added the science archives feature! So whats the point?", I hear you cry. Well as you probably know the science archives show science you have actually collected, whether it was returned to Kerbin's surface or not. However it does not list any science that you have never sampled. This makes some sense in-game since this info is really a spoiler. And so, I have designed a complete database of every piece of science possible within the game. As such this entire web application constitutes a spoiler, access at own discretion. Requirements: Any modern browser capable of running Javascript. It should display correctly on any of the major browsers and is HTML5 compliant. Link: here - You can right-click on the page once it loads and save a local copy if you wish, the application will function just fine offline. Disclaimer: This is a development version, theres a few bits on my to-do list, including double-checking that eve/laythe's ocean/land biomes work like the kerboin system'sthey dont. Planned Features: Filters and overviews - some buttons for you to sort/filter/exclude, view all, print-friendly etc. Checklist - Some method of turning this from a list into a 'check'list so that you can track progress, means dealing with persistence and influences layout/design (would be cookie based) Mission planner - add experiments to a planned mission, see readout of science yield for a return/xmit/labxmit style mission. Visual Updates - Make it pretty, less bare-bones. Refactoring - Code always needs cleaning Licence: The licence is a customised version of OpenBSD. Without getting complex you can do absolutely anything and everything with the application, provided you credit 'Celem' as original author. Unlike the more common GPL licence the OpenBSD does not stipulate which licence you yourself must apply to derivative works. Go nuts, but dont forget me. Source: The source is available by right-clicking the page once it loads and hitting 'view page source' (exact menu option may vary by browser). All javascript is in-line and therefore viewable through this method. The application makes no external calls. No data is sent from or recieved by your computer if locally saved and run offline. If run through my website above then the only data traffic is the initial pageload, all scripts are client-side. Feedback is welcomed. Layout and presentation suggestions are also most welcome Enjoy!

KSC, launchpad and runway are surface only biomes, they cease to exist as soon as you leave the ground, becoming Kerbin's Shores. Therefore no 'flying over' or 'space just above' exist for these. Those 3 are unique in this sense. You can see this by doing an eva report hanging off a ladder on the launchpad, you will get 'flying over kerbin's shores', while if you drop off the ladder you get launchpad. The link posted above is wrong in this respect, as it implies these biomes can be sampled above ground-level. When it comes to a checklist its fairly predictable once you understand how the experiments work. Different experiments use subtly different rules. i.e. not all care about biomes, those that do can cut-off the biomes at different points. An example of this is the grav detector which respects biomes all the way out to 'high space' whilst eva only cares about biomes until low space and things like goo pods which stop caring somewhere down in the atmosphere (I forget if it's flying over or actually landed). Also, while EVA from 'low orbit' or 'flying over' is unique per biome, EVA from upper atmosphere is always just 'upper atmosphere', no biomes apply. If you are willing to handle some Spoilers then open up the science.cfg file. Each experiment entry there has a 'situation mask' which is what limits it. (i.e. temp scans stop working at upper atmosphere) Im not certain which if any of those parameters in that file denote the experiments attitude towards biomes. EDIT: A proper checklist external to the game seems like a smart idea, so im bashing together an html tool for it just now. Maybe someone somewhere will find it useful

322hrs on Steam. Got the game right after .22 arrived. Maybe 75hrs off-steam in various modded clones. I play far too much in retrospect, it felt fine at the time, but a little quick math shows it to be something like 17 days over just 2 months, averaging out around 6hrs/day I've got some way to go to top my steam rankings though. I have 1.7 thousand hours (70 days) in X3. ( yah, meganerd who loves spacegames )

Came up with a new launcher design. My biggest stock launcher to-date, it can lift somewhere around 250-260 tonnes into LKO with a little dV in hand (it weighs something like 150k tonnes on the pad). It's even got a lower partcount than my 140t launcher which pleased me greatly, though it does of course mean that my smaller launchers could all use a redesign to take advantage of what I learned building this beast. Was so damn pleased with this accomplishment that I designed a 250 tonne payload consisting of a healthy transfer stage and dual lander setup. Launched 6 of these things and sent them to just about every spot in the game. Worked like a charm, launchers all functioned perfectly, untested transfer stages...flawless. Landers all have great twr/dV scores and im ecstatic. Approx a game-year later and I get the last of these vessels into orbit around it's destination. Alright then, time for the landings. One after another I deorbit landers and make touchdowns on Moho, Ike, Duna, Laythe, Vall, Bop, Tylo, Dres and Eeloo. Epic. All missions perfect, all landers safely down. Switch focus to Moho lander and prepare to do some EVA's, footprints, flags and basic science style stuff. Hatch is blocked. And of course all these ships are identical, so all 12 landers are useless. 9 hours of my life I wont see again. Cry...Cry some more...Sulk...Shutdown.

Was zoned out watching a movie and just couldnt face docking my latest refueller to my depot. Already sent up 5 similar launches today. So I slapped mechjeb on the sixth and gave him full control for the first time ever. Ascent, rendezvous and dock while I enjoy some hollywood SFX. I've finally found a mission profile that actually calls for the crazy amounts of monoprop in a 2.5m tank, that mechbugger uses insane amounts of both LF and Mono to get anything done. Be the last time I do that for sure

The Kerbals are doomed, no matter what. I recently started the Apocolypse Challenge which focuses very much on this kind of scenario. Getting as many off Kerbin before D-Day as possible. I dont know if anyone else has noticed this... but our Kerbals are all male (assuming they even have a gender system similar to that of humans). Yeah...thats not gonna work.

Very nice guide, good screenshots. You missed a trick on the very first 'PR' mission however. After hitting the EVA button, while the kerbal is hanging off the hatch, do an EVA report to get a 'while flying above kerbin's shores' result. You then right-click the command pod itself and hit 'store experiments' before letting go of the ladder and getting your pad EVA/sample. While this feels a bit cheesy (his feet are like 2 inches off the deck), its probably the only safe way to gather 'while flying above...' EVA reports. Trying these whilst actually flying will almost always result in the kerbal falling off. If you have a fast mouse-hand and/or some lag then you can also gather EVA while flying by jumping and filing a fast report. This can be extended even further. You mentioned repeating from the SPH for the runway data (note the eva report hanging off the pod is the same on pad/runway; flying over shores). In addition to this if your kerbal leaves the pad/runway and steps onto the grass you can gather EVA reports/samples from 'KSC'. Going further than this involves some serious legwork for your kerbals and is generally not worth it. You can also gather 'EVA report from Kerbin's Upper Atmosphere' on any of the flights after the first. This is a really dangerous bit of science to gather however as the kerbal can be blown off the ladder. I generally trip this one around 45km on a descent. Be FAST! Upper atmosphere may begin a bit lower than that, but higher is better when you got a guy hanging onto a ladder inside an atmosphere at MachX. Regardless of the things I mentioned above, this is an excellent series of mission profiles to get the tech tree rolling.

This issue also appears if you remained in the VAB after adding the crew but interacted with any part. Add a strut? Crew resets. Clicked a part on your ship? Crew resets (even if you put it back where it was or used ctrl-z to undo). By default the game will completely fill the root part if it's a part that can contain kerbals. any other crew containing part is left empty. If your root part is not kerbal-containing then it seems a little less predictable, but the game will pick one of the kerbal-capable parts and fill that (its also where vessel control will default to when sending the ship to the pad)

I have my main full game on the steam install. As you mentioned it overwrote my demo installation. I did exactly what you suggested, picked up the demo from the website and keep it as a seperate install. I had to use similar techniques in order to have multiple copies of KSP. I generally have my main steam install being completely unmodded and always kept up-to-date. I then have cloned copies all over the place with differing mod loadouts and even differing versions Your demo as grabbed from the site shouldnt perform any differantly to the steam install. It is worth noting however that as updates bring code optimisations the main game may well eventually speed up relative to the demo, which is a frozen snapshot of an older game version

It certainly adds more depth to the game, and of course gives us a cool looking module to slap onto space stations. But as it stands just now thats all i've used them for, as a cosmetic part. I do see some real promise with this mechanic though. I did experiment with a Munar mission as folks are describing, orbit the lab and do a repeat lander style mission with part cleaning on each rendezvous. I didnt transmit any of that data though, since (again, as mentioned) most of us like to bring kerbals home, and I see no point in transmitting anything from a ship that is returning anyway. Lots of fun, but time-consuming with all that docking. The mass is an issue for me too. I can generally come up with a solution whereby the lander has, say, 4 material bays and 4 goo pods, all radially mounted and jettisonable, with that whole sci kit still weighing in below 3t. The tradeoff here is that I need to carry enough fuel for multiple biome hops. It all has to be on the lander (rather than staying in orbit with the lab for refuels), though the fuel needed for sub-orbital hops is remarkably less than needed for multiple landing/ascents/rendezvous. Even in the theoretical situation where Eeloo has 10 biomes, i'd send a multi-hop lander before a lab, collect science on eva's at each landing spot, ditch the spent experiments, then meet up with a CM and move all the science/pilots to that pod for the return. So if you are 'gaming' and want max science as fast as possible, the lab will not help you. Use the older techniques developed for .22 and earlier, with multiples of the now non-resettable experiments. If however you like to do things in this game just because they can be done, then enjoy the lab, getting used to it now and coming up with some mission profiles/designs/ideas may well stand you in good stead for later updates. Smidge is quite right. As more biomes reach more of the bodies we have, its value is going to increase dramatically

You can find a table with some guideline speedlimits@altitudes for Kerbin here. You dont want to fall too far behind this either or you are losing energy to gravity rather than drag. Sweetspot is as close as you can get. Generally once you pass about 15-16km you can floor it with most sane designs. Certainly by mid to upper atmosphere the terminal velocity is increasing far faster than anything you can build, its really only an issue below 20km. If you have a really high TWR though you may shake the rocket to bits if you accelerate too violently. Mainsails in particular are destructive buggers at 100% and high TWR

Easy on the pessimism, it's his first post I would hope multiplayer is a bit faster than that since they are officially gunning for it. We will have fully modded resources by then already im sure. I've not honestly heard anything about weather in development plans. Anything that might affect career in the future is pretty much guesswork. Career is still a shell,they added science but beyond that it's all up in the air. So far what we have is a somewhat interesting way of unlocking the parts. Weather might be something moddable. I wouldnt know how to get it to affect much in the game though, career really doesnt have any variables you can mess with, theres just not enough there yet. For cosmetics I do like the mod (name escapes me, check the addon forum) that adds clouds. a planet with a water surface and no clouds looks ever so wrong to me.

I never really got to grips with any guides that suggested using the 'docking mode' provided ingame. It is however useful to know (and rarely spelled out anywhere) that you can reduce your closest approach to your target even as you slow the relative velocity, giving you a nice arcing brake line that looks super pro. While looking for your green pro/retro-grade markers to begin slowing to meet your target, also take a look at where the pink/purple target direction markers currently are. You really want these to line up. This is a docking approach (or collision course if you dont slow down). It may well shift a bit as you approach, but you can use the ijkl lateral RCS controls to keep the green (which will move) on the purple (which wont unless you use wasd) Once you get a bit more experience then you can make little radial burns to push the markers together whilst performing your brake. Its a wonderful fuzzy feeling when you can come to a stop under 500m.....just watch the jet wash, mainsails are NOT your friend (seriously, dont want crazy TWR for any of these stages really)

Couple occur to me upon reading this that are not mentioned. If someone is gonna update any missing to the wiki then useful to have em gathered. Some stuff I use without thinking about whether any readers understand; KAS (kerbal attachment system- mod) LKO - was explained earlier, but worth mentioning that you occasionaly see something like LDO. Which planet it is should be obvious from context HKO - High Kerbin/whatever Orbit SAS - cant actually recall the acronym, its something like stability and attitude control system. the large version is actually called S.A.S ingame, but use in a forum post probably refers to activating the system with the 't' key (could be any combo of torque parts on the ship) CM - command module, refers to a transfer ship that delivers a lander to orbit around some body, then waits there and takes it/pilots home again LM - less common, lander module, paired with a CM (above) Isp - mentioned earlier as Specific Impulse. Worth mentioning for newbs, this is fuel efficiency. Higher/Better SA - only seen this one a few times. From context I'm sure this is sub-assembly (in VAB) Ap - Apoapsis - highest point (ingame and forum abbrev.) Pe - Periaps - lowest point (ingame and forum abbrev.) SoI - Sphere of Influence. The frame of reference. The body that your trajectory is plotted around in blue on the map

Ahh that makes sense then. Good luck with your mission! From the CM stats you mentioned and the lander shot you posted, ought to be a walk in the parkdesert

Yeah looks good. Soda makes an important point; Aerobraking requires really flat entry over Duna. Your 4 chutes ought to be enough for a 20t rig, if you make them ladder accessible then you can repack them on the EVA and re-use for the Kerbin return. Even if you dont want to aerobrake away a lot of speed, you still want to come in as shallow as you can manage, you wont even get first deployment until 10-11km, thats not a lot of time to slow to a speed that wont shred your chutes and/or ship. You may need to pulse the engines once or twice to protect the chute deployment, when they actually open you ought not be going more than 100ms. Despite this assisted landing you ought to have plenty to lift-off and make the rendezvous with CM EDIT: wait, 4 chutes total? i see the 2 radial whites both on the same side of the ship, remember that this will cause a lopsided descent (unless you are light enough for the sas to hold attitude). those 2 on the plus side are repackable from the ladder. Not sure you can reach the 2 little white chutes mounted above the engines to repack.

Check your flight log with f3 to see where the very first failure occured. Any entries after that may be subsidiary problems caused by the first failure. Could be lack of struts, could be exceeding terminal velocity while in thick air. While drag doesnt work like it should you can have issues when adding lots of weight far from the center of mass. Levers and moments is pretty accurately mapped. So big flat pancake rockets can also fail for this reason.

Yeah i've seen this too around Kerbin. I suspect that what is happening is that you are passing close to it during various launches/orbits of crafts you are actually flying and it is getting caught up in the physics. I left a similar spent stage in a similar elliptical jool orbit and it never shifted over 5 game years (since i didnt send any more ships to jool).

Love it, very inventive. Gonna give this one a go over the holidays.

Yeah I was wanting the imagur album embed codes too. So I went and searched it up. your album will have an address like http://imagur.com/v4jt8cd9dk (example). The bbcode to embed the album would then be: (imgur)v4jt8cd9dk(/imgur). Just copy over the bit after the last slash and use the (imgur) tags (replace '()' with '[]'). Also I liked your designs mate. Lotta nukes on there, must admit that low TWR once I eventually light the nukes is a pain for my ships to deal with, since Im often pushing 250tonnes+ on only 6. Might have to experiment with those engine cluster adaptors and the LV-N's. I opted out of adding a full-blown lifesupport mod since I have already started. It would take some trickery to get everyone who is already en route upgraded to follow the new system. Gonna stick with 2 empty seats for every seat occupied, majority hitchikers to sim that side of stuff. Still pondering over that greenhouse, those do look vidually awesome. Not much of an update from my save. Been travelling several days and limited computer time, may let it idle until the new year while i prod at 0.23 (which i got a copy of, though all my saves are still running .22 for the sake of my mods)

The mod may not yet be updated for 0.23 The RAPIER is unique, there was never an engine like it before the latest release. The Engineer author needs a bit of time to do the coding.

Yeah. It's probably a minor difficulty increase for many or most, due to the way transmission now works and the extra work to get your science-payday. If you play as much kerbal as some folks round here seem to though, then any change is always a 'shift in strategy'. The game is pretty tricky to make harder for everyone at the same time. As kookoo mentions, mods are a good way to tweak the difficulty, and the way I think it should be handled. Lets the core game remain at least somewhat 'accessible'. (Don't hang up on that slightly seedy buzz-word. Im a software engineer, so I mean what it actually means rather than what the internet in general and gaming communities in particular would have you believe)

Yeah for that aspect of cleaning parts im finding it better to skip that lab entirely, carry multiples of the canisters/bays down and eva to recover the data before blowing them off and leaving them. Sub-orbital biome hop, rinse, repeat, RETURN! Probably work between moons as well as between biomes if the lander is built for that. Plus it doesnt need a powered Kerbin landing/chute-forest since you can return just the capsule.