keoki

Also, my altimeter doesn't show real readings.... Mechjeb seems to have good data, so I can fly ok, but my altimeter has strange readings that make no sense. So I had to use navball guidence to insure I hit my orbital slope... I'm fairly un-modded. the only plugins I have are mechjeb and isa mapsat (which I don't use, it doesn't work for me). I think the NP parts are the main weird thing I've done. I did try to install a couple of shuttle systems, but I ended up backing them out when KSP didn't start up after I installed them... Perhaps one of the prerequisites for one of the shuttle packages screwed something up...

Yeah, I'm an ee, so I tend to think of electric power first in designing a ship, so no I was at fill power. In fact, I hadn't deployed the main electric loads, so the ship had enough charging capacity to stay fully charged even in the shadow of the planet... using nuke batts in addition to solar. My ship is designed to deploy a lander, while an orbital section remains in orbit with some functional payload with battery and enough fuel to change orbits a few times. Actually the craft is intended for a more distant survey mission, I was just shaking the bugs out with a local mapping trip first... I figure I might as well map the homeworld first, and drop the rover on a local anomaly... I think I'm going to redesign with a multi-rover, multi-satellite craft, to see if I can break my record on science gathered in one mission for my next away mission...

So I was playing with this last night... Worked pretty good, till I overloaded it... I was playing with an orbit strategy of getting to an almost polar orbit, filling the map, then going polar to finish. I did a lot of warping, and ran three sensors at the same time, and suddenly the map screen snowed out, went grey and the game eventually crashed. When I relaunched and tried to start over, I am stuck with the grey map... and my original map craft is still in orbit. Can I delete the database and resume mapping with my two birds? How do I delete the database?

Saving data for a return produces a LOT less science than transmitting a smaller amount of data over and over under different conditions. The goo for example, it can produce about 200 points worth of science when you enter soi of a new body, do some aerobraking, or have other changing conditions. So read and transmit over and over, for every science instrument you have that still produces meaningful amounts of science. If you plan a good flight, you should be able to rack up 2000 science points in a mission.

Ok, so I looked up the link for the launch stability enhancer... I use those... In fact I've found ways to enhance those things holding power, you buttress them with additional units behind them. When you do that you can reduce the launch-pad drop quite a bit, and hold fairly heavy loads. I was hoping that was something else I wasn't using... oh well... Kerbal Joint Reinforcement sounds like what I was looking for, but I was hoping for a feature that was part of the game, instead of a mod... I mean changing the laws of physics is fun and all, but it feels like a cheat... It sounds like the actual answer is that this "problem" is a feature of the difficulty level of the game, and it was my job to invent a way to overcome the problem. That last statement is the whole point of the whole game.

Lots of good answers in here guys. Many of them I already had tried with varying success... Botch's suggestion was pretty much the first thing I tried, and I found it difficult to get struts to adhere to surfaces without enough of an angle to allow clearance for the strut. The strut seems to be the only part that forces clearance... Everything else will happlily go through walls... Walls can go around struts, if the struts are there first.... sometimes. And when you build sub-assemblies that use struts, sometimes struts will disappear and seem hard to replace... Also, the struts weight doesn't appear to be as predicted by the part, they appear to be lighter, so perhaps the given weight is the maximum for the strut's longest length. The struts on fins seem to be very useful, as the fins appear to have a side to side rigidity so you don't have to side strut your trusses if you don't want to, though you should if they were real. The fins seem to be stronger than they should be for what they are, I get girder strength for 1/6th the weight, and the part adds control surfaces during takeoff... though that is a mixed blessing as I find that too many fins has a cost in fuel, as does allowing the autopilot steer the ship while in the atmosphere (the autopilot can double the fuel it takes to reach orbit). Gimbals and just enough SAS to barely control the ship seems to be the right mix if you want to let the autopilot drive, though I suspect there are probably other ways to trim/damp the autopilot stick response. I'm an engineer in real life, that is what makes this game so cool, it employs a lot of semi-realistic engineering. Sure, it is based on simplified models, but it is supposed to be fun! Now we just need a network version of the game so we can have joint missions... the only problem with joint missions is I guess you wouldn't be able to use the time warp... at least not until everyone agreed to the warp interval... Thanks for the feedback guys!

It's not that I don't like them, it's that I don't see them in anyone's video clips. But the launch stability enhancer sounds like something I'm not paying any attention to. As for the girders VS wings, yes, girders would work, but at the cost of weight. My main question was how do you build heavy in the first place, I have been successfully building light. But for launching craft capable of a return from a larger moon, the launch is going to be heavier than I had been making. Plus my science platform is getting crowded.

What I do is set up a science platform, usually attached to a lander/rover. As I approach any new situation, I observe all of my science expiraments. Any that yield useful science, I hit over and over, until the yield is low enough to stop(or flying is eventful itself). I usually draw the line at .4 units of science. I can have missions that yield 2000 units of science... it keeps going up as I add devices to my science platform. I group the equipment so that it is convenient to keep clicking. Also, for manned missions, your men can contribute crew reports, eva reports, and surface samples. Keep working your crew and your equipment until the science gains are no longer worth the effort. But be aware that the science yield can increase whenever conditions change. So check on your equipment often. Keep in mind that each transmission requires quite a bit of power, so plan for renewable power as soon as you have it, and plan for backups. If you start driving with a solar panel open, it will shatter. That could end your mission if you have no contingency. I put small fixed panels on convenient surfaces, have a couple folding panels tucked in good places, and also pack several different kinds of rechargable batteries in different locations. When you roll your rover, or hit a good size bump, you will loose some components. Your spares will keep the mission alive. And I have found that having multiple goo containers and thermometers doesn't seem to help, but it may be a sequencing thing. I'll try not transmitting until I read the high-point data and see if that does anything. I have noticed that they tend to be a fixed percentage yield, so if you were promised 70 points, but you had 10 of them before you transmitted, I don't know if your yield is discounted more than the standard 40%, but I'm sure KerbMav knows what he's talking about... I have carried spare science equipment, but my sequencing was different, I transmitted after each read, so I didn't get a chance to observe what Kerb did. If you have the room for spare science gear, it doesn't hurt to have it along. If it helps you get your science readings faster, such as during a aerobraking maneuver, where time is limited, then having a bunch of experiments lined up for a sequence of quick reads for later transmission makes a lot of sense. You get 100% science credit for returning your science home, but you can gather 400 times more science if you transmit it each time you gather it, at a much lower rate of return (usually around 40%). So you can observe your goo, come home and get 70 points. Or you can fly around into 10 different situations, and read the goo 15 times in each situation, only get 40% credit for your observations, and come back with 2000 points. You decide. A good mission is to make a close pass to every moon of Jool, running the heck out of your science as you do, then land on Laythe. The goo gets points rich every time you are near something new or are doing anything new. So don't forget to check it often. Same is true for the other gadgets. I'm ready to try and feed the kracken some goo, I bet the goo scores some points then.... If I can figure out how...

Ok, so I've been very successful with launching very tall 2.5 meter based rockets, pretty much as tall as you can build them in the VAB. As long as I don't over-power my ships with the boosters (which also means keeping them light) the snap-together construction in the VAB is working fine. However I was doing some thinking on reducing the height of my stages for my standard workhorse, and I figured that this would add some additional capabilities. So I started unlocking some heavy rocketry, only to find that these larger parts are not reliably holding together. They frequently will bounce apart when dropped onto the launch pad. The assembly will have failed control connections intermittantly at different sections, so while it may land on the launch pad in perfect working order one time, the next 4 times, one or more stages will have a open connection and nothing below that stage works. Now I've come up with a work around that works really well, but I don't see that anyone else is using that work around in their craft, so I'm wondering what other people are doing to bind their larger diameter rocketry sections together. My work around is to add struts where they are easy to add because I have some angles to work with, and where I have straight sections with a trouble spot, I put some fins, with struts leading up and down from the leading and trailing tips of the fin, forming a rigging/brace structure that both stiffens and provides apparent compression for the rocket sections at the joints, resulting in perfect performance. This also allows for larger boosters to be used, and the resulting vehicle can be used to lift heavy loads. But my question is, what do the people that are "doing it right" doing to get larger rocket sections to hold together? I mean just a single large engine, a short tank, and a small capsule rattle and shake like there is nothing holding them together at all, and I know they are "connected" just as well as my reliable 2.5 meter rockets that are as tall as the VAB. To be fair, my tall rockets have bottom sections that are multiple 2.5 meter sections strutted together in clusters of 6, and large blocks of solid boosters strutted to the bottom, so it's not just a long pencil... And even those had problems when I apply too much force. I was surprised my rigging system worked, for a long time I thought my collapses under high-power were from excessive thrust force, but now I see it was from insufficient section clamping force, and is actually lateral collapse, I can sustain much much greater engine loads (and support greater payloads) this way. And my end-to-end control path appears to be reliable during the "drop" to the launch pad. But my large diameter rockets look "unusual"...

Asked and answered..... I'm not sure what I did wrong the first time I did this, but I just tried again, and it appears that my understanding of the time estimate was correct, and it did exactly what I told it to do. Must have fat-fingered something.

I'm trying to use the warp helper tool to help prevent overshooting my maneuver points. I have to gameplay at night, so drifting off to sleep during the warp events is common, and waking up after I overshoot my stopping point is a big problem. But warp helper will solve that issue cleanly. The problem is I'm not sure how to interpret the time estimates from protractor. For example, when it tells me 90.11:21, what does that mean? I thought it meant 90 days 11 hours and 21 minutes, but it was closer to about 85 days. I warped 90 days, and way overshot the 0 point (rather than undershooting by 11 hours). So I'm guessing I wasn't far off of 90 days, but it was something short of 90 days.... But perhaps it was how I used the helper. What I did was use the maneuver node editor to push a note 90 days into the future. Then I used the warp helper to warp to that node. So either I don't understand how protractor estimates time (very likely) or I didn't use the maneuver editor correctly. I've been having a problem where when trying to place a maneuver node on a final burn when inside the SOI, I can mouse over the SOI start, and it shows the approach time, but if I click it drops the note on my next orbit, one sol into the future. This is maddening when trying to quickly plan a tricky burn, but maneuver node editor is helping me dial back the node time to this orbit, so it appears that I know how that tool works just fine.

For me, a PC user running windows, the VAB zoom is the + and - on the numeric keypad, not the main keyboard.

A strategy that I found that works best is to manage your power. During active flight, most engines generate charging current when running, so they will charge the batteries, but when they are off, the rest of your systems suck the power down. Even when you don't need those systems to do anything. Since there can be many different systems using power, and you aren't always sure what is using power, the easiest approach to conserving battery is to turn the battery off when you are not needing it for maneuvers or communication. Early in career mode, before I unlocked solar panels, I would pack a lot of battery, and once I had it fully charged, I would turn it all off so that I could keep parasitic losses from idling equipment from eating my power up. My first 4 attemps to go to minimus, I ran out of power during my final maneuver to prepare for an orbital burn. It didn't matter how much battery I had, I would be fully charged once I completed my transfer burn, I would warp to my point for my orbital capture, start to turn into the burn, and run out of power. The first flight I had two batteries, the second time I had 4, the 3rd flight I had like 10, and each time I ran out of power at the exact same moment. My 4th flight I turned everything in the ship off before the warp, and I STILL ran out of power. But what worked was to have multiple sets of battery, and turn those off when holding a charge, and only turn them on one or two at a time. If I was doing something critical, I would turn on a couple. And always, when doing a burn, turn on your cells that are not full, to capture the generator power from the engine. To turn a battery off, left click on it, and then click the green arrow in the lower right. It will turn into a circle with a slash. Once you master conserving power, you will probably do enough science fairly quickly and get some solar panels, and some larger batteries. Eventually you can get some radio isotope cells to combine with battery. Think of the battery as the quick source of electric power, and your solar panels, engines, and isotope generators as battery chargers. If your battery charging rate exceeds your parasitic losses, then a battery that can handle the demands of maneuvers and other bursts of power requirements (like radio transmissions) should be all you need. But if your charging is not keeping up with parasitic losses, then you pretty much need to turn the batteries off like I suggest to have any power left when you come out of a warp. If you forget to conserve power, then the first thing you need to do when coming out of warp is to fire up your engines, because it seems that a warp will tend to drain 99.9% of your power, leaving you .1% to make the right first move. Turning on a generator is the only good first move. If you maneuver first, you won't have enough battery to light the engines... you probably won't even finish the maneuver. I'm an engineer, and this behavior isn't a perfect example of reality, but being forced to make hard choices and conserve resources is still a very realistic concept. I found it interesting that adding more and more battery didn't solve the problem, the solution came from finding a different approach. This game is addictive.

I have a really nice rover designed, but I really need to decouple the wheels from the flight controls. I don't just want to move the flight controls to other keys, I want the wheel controls to not be flight controls. One issue I am having is that during construction, the parts are forced rto fit together in a manner that my rover's frontside is at a 45 degree angle to flight geometry. When you move the wheels for the first time they seem ok, but after running for a while, the wheels start to become directionally unstable and jitter left to right while turning. Usually it is just one wheel at a time, but it cannot decide which way to turn. After running for a while all of the wheels start to jitter in the turns. So you can try to turn right, and sometimes you go right, and sometimes you go left. This rover is very stable, but with unstable turning action in light gravity, it will still go sailing. If I could actually define left and right for each wheel, and bind those directions to keys, separate from attitude control, I would probably cure the jitter. I think the jitter is from the off-axis assembly that I am forced to use. I see stabilizer fins jitter in the same manner during flight, depending on where they are connected, and what flight control is trying to do. When flight movements don't cleanly translate to an obvious physical motion, the shifting between the two possible motion directions appears to be how the program deals with the ambiguity. I'll continue to try other construction methods to see if I can align the axis, but I shouldn't have to if I could define the motion of the wheels myself. Thanks for the clue on the docking mode. It didn't help me solve my steering jitter problem, but it pointed me in the right direction to understand what others are talking about when they talk about docking mode. But to be clear, I don't care what keys do what. But it would be nice if I could leave sas on and use it with the attitude controls to help the rover be stable during high-speed risky driving, while independently with different controls drive the wheels. People are talking about doing that, so I know it is being done... Ok, so I looked in the settings again, this time after exiting the game, and I can see the places to configure the controls. I looked in settings once before, but I guess it was during the game and it didn't show this page. It also has axis bindings, so if I can figure out how to use that, I can probably fix my turn jitter problem... Excellent!

Yeah, where there is water, there is air, so flying is a good option... Fuel is the main issue. Electric power helps keep things light. Honestly this came up because I ran out of fuel trying to de-orbit onto a small island for a landing, and it occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to recover by boating to land. We have rover autopilots now, so throw open some solar panels, and set a course, and go do other things while the rover-boat trolls along. As for the pesky ion engine, I would love to make use of that for something, but until we can warp while throttled up, I'm not sure what good the ion engine is for game play. Hopefully we can have some autonomous deep space probes to explore other star systems in a future version of the game.

I'm in career mode, and I'm realizing that to explore the worlds with liquid on them, it might be nice to have an electric outboard motor that I can run off of solar power to get around. Spinning rover wheels in the water seems to have no effect, in fact the oceans have no current, it seems. I can turn, and splash, but no directional movement seems possible. Has anyone figured an electric form of liquid surface propulsion? I know I could use jets or rockets, but that isn't what I'm looking for.

Use the staging view. The orbit map, well it's an orbit map, so it has map stuff on it.

So how do I remap my wheel motion keys?

Sorry if this is a silly question, but when I search for how to remap keys, all I get is people saying you should remap your rover keys. But no one will offer a link on how to do it so searching for remapping is useless. I found a great page with rover hints, but what good is a hints page without links to information for following through on the hints?? http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1lvf2v/rover_tips/ My rover worked great on Kerbin, but as soon as I got it to a planet with lower gravity, suddenly I realize just how incompatible SAS and wheel motions are when on the same keys. I was wondering about that before, but suddenly became painfully aware of how messy that linkage was. So I found lots of people agree, and the solution is agreed upon as well... but I guess no one expects their discussion of the remappings to be read by someone trying to figure out how to do a remapping... I found the key bindings page, but it left me with even more questions, like how do you change modes, as it seems the same keys do different things in different modes, in addition to operate dissimilar systems such as rudders, wheels, jets, and reactions wheels. It's pretty amazing that I can complete a single flight with nearly 1000 points worth of science, and I can't drive a darn rover a couple of clicks without blowing up, or rolling it real good... I tried a lot of different things for bumpers, roll cages, self-writing mechanisms... The best anti-explosion bumpers so far is some extra wheels. With a big tumble, using the wheels that look air filled, I frequently pop a tire, turns out you can fix blown tires with a right click menu. So my most robust rover so far is a capsule on a reaction wheel on a rover base, and the thing is covered with solar panels, some batteries shoved into the capsule walls with only the LED's showing, several antennas (so I can loose a couple when the rover rolls). a couple girder segments to protect soft parts of the capsule that get hit on rolls a lot, and wheels all around to protect bits that might snap off in a roll. I tried landing struts at first, but their impact tolerance is very limited, they just snap off if the thing tilts. The wheels and girders have very high impact tolerance, and I have some struts at the corners to keep the capsule from snapping off when the chutes deploy. But keyboard remapping so that RCS works for me rather than against me, would let me leave half of this stuff off, and have a roll-free rover with a lower mass, and a lower center of gravity. While I wrote this I designed a new rover that doesn't tip over, but I still need to remap the wheels...

Well, I spent a week in sandbox mode, and have guys or probes in orbit around everything with a gravity well that I can find. So I decided to start career mode, first evening in I think I did pretty well, generated some ribbons, even orbited three bodies(not counting the sun) on one launch with a safe return using a multi-orbit airbrake to drop from a steep orbit because I was too low on fuel to risk a final burn to deorbit. , but I can't find the button to edit my signature to post my ribbons. Do new forum users not get a signature or something? It seems to be missing from the settings page... spent an hour looking for it. It's been a few years since I installed vbulletin, so this installation is all different than the versions I've worked with... Damned addictive game. I went 20 years with little interest in computer games, then $23 and I'm hooked. At least I have something to do while the wife watches football now... Keoki