LethalDose

That's exactly the information I'm asking for from the people who do use them...

For Q3, you may want to change your patched conic draw mode and limit in your .cfg files. More info here.

Not sure if that's the best advice for someone's first career game...

Not sure which posts these are aimed at, but if it's mine, I'd simply summarize the previous post as: "Spaceplanes >>> tail-sitters because the are former way easier to land precisely (at KSC or elsewhere)"

yeah... don't be... When you say "rockets/tail-sitter jets", you could mean a ton of of things. I'm going to answer to the best of my understand of what you're asking, but, based on how you've used terminology before, I could be way off. IMO, SSTO VTOL rockets and jets for LKO operations that aren't re-usable are absurd and inefficient (I feel Tsiolkovsky adequately explains this viewpoint for me), and re-usable SSTO VTOL rockets and jets for LKO operations require nearly, if not fully, as much work to develop properly as spaceplanes. The key word/phrase there is "develop properly", because if I'm going to spend the time, effort and funds to build an SSTO, you can be frakking sure I'm going to want it to be reusable. In my experience, designing reusable SSTO VTOL rockets-style vessels to get into orbit and flying them is slightly easier than spaceplanes, but getting them back from orbit and landing at the KSC is a vastly greater engineering and piloting task for me. Scott Manley has done this in his interstellar videos, but I'm not Manley and I don't use the interstellar mod, which seems to have a ton of propulsion systems better suited for both HTOL and VTOL SSTOs. The planes are just easier and safer for me to land than tail-sitters. Admittedly, I haven't wasted spent tons of time on them, but I think the quantity and quality of work required to make tail-sitters work is comparable to spaceplanes. Spaceplanes are great for ferrying small structural (e.g. probes) and moderately-sized non-structural (resources, kerbals, science, etc.) to and from LKO. For larger payloads, expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) are my chosen solution. Haven't done anything with the new Mk3 parts yet... frankly not sure what use I'll have for them. But, Pecan, you've made it clear you don't think reusability or pin-point landing are important qualities for SSTOs to have, so I guess my view-points are simply invalid to your discussion, if what I said had anything to do with it to begin with. I will have to look into that, though I brought that up primarily to make the point that there are things about how rockets fly in space that bug me. It's not just the aero model. Though once again, it seems Ferram comes through like a champ.

Mind if I ask how you use them (Altitude, speed, situation, settings, etc.)? Every time I've tried air brakes, they always seem to get pulled right off the wings. I'd like to learn how to use them 'right'.

Take as little LF and Oxidizer as you can. That way you don't have to lift excess weight into orbit. Move most of the fuel into the forward tanks as needed on re-entry ("lawn dart"). You can shift the fuel towards the aft if you need to more pitch authority during landing or atmospheric flight. You can also lock the fuel flow in the forward tanks during ascent to get the the CoM forward. Try to build vessel so that your tanks are close to the CoM of the vessel to reduce how the mass shifts during flight. Try to put your pitch control surfaces as far forward and aft from the CoM as possible to maximize pitch authority. I think that's the most generic advice I can give. If you post your vessels, we can give more specific advice.

Not everyone can rendezvous and dock in 5 minutes. Really.

I'd also recommend Procedural Fairings to use with FAR. It'll make your life easier. Interplanetary missions to Eve/Gilly and Duna/Ike would be the next logical step, but you may want to try expanding missions on Mun/Minmus/LKO before reaching further out into the system, e.g. building a station in any of those locations may be useful for future missions.

Well, I guess I'm glad we amuse you... I don't see how the lack of IRL spaceplanes somehow makes the stock aero/drag model (based on mass, instead of cross-section, shape, or skin area) not stupid... The only thing 'realism' has to do with anything is the frame of reference of the player: If planes actually fly like planes and rockets actually fly like rockets, it's a lot easier to play the game. FAR fixes that. Trust me, if the rocket equation didn't work for rockets in space, I'd complain about that too. There are very few problems with how vessels behave in space, and serious issues with how they behave in the atmosphere. On that matter, I'd prefer stock KSP to hold Isp constant and varied thrust based on atmospheric density, like it does in real-life. I guess I need to complain about that more... Further, you're quoting me, but I never said "spaceplane is the way to do things". It's one way to do things. It's one way I do things that I'm familiar enough to provide advise to other players.

Okay, I prefer spaceplane SSTOs for reusable vehicles, so that's what all my advice is going to focus on. I only use horizontal take-off and landing aircraft. First bit of advice I would give is to get FAR. The stock aerodynamic model is... developmentally challenged. FAR improves the way vessels fly and gives you some nice in-flight tools. Second piece of advice, read this. Best advice for aircraft design in KSP I've ever seen. Finally, I would recommend you build regular aircraft before you start working on aircraft that can even sub-orbital trajectories (entering space, but not an orbit). Get used to taking off and landing. Figure out how to build vessels that perform well in the lower atmosphere, then figure out high atmosphere, then figure out how to get to orbit. Each is going to build on the other, and you need to tackle each step in turn. The worst thing I see players do is go straight to large, complex vessels before they get a handle on simpler, necessary fundamentals. Also, learn all this in a sandbox game before you start doing it in a career game. It'll just be easier to learn with all the parts before you start spending funds on the jets/planes. Emphasized part is pretty dismissive of very valid design strategy. Spaceplanes are moderately difficult to learn, but not that bad when you find a design that works for your play style. They're most efficient when used as surface-to-orbit ferries, but given how disgustingly inefficient some players build rockets, it's hard to criticize players for building single-stage vessels that go beyond LKO... IMO, Shuttles are a total nightmare, though. Much worse to design than spaceplanes due to the offset thrust and asymmetric design. Nope, you can do cool stuff with spaceplanes. It takes work though. I tried and quit a handful of times before getting a handle on it. Try the advice above, figure out where you're having trouble and come on back with more specific questions.

Well, the devs have stated that the stability issues with the win x64 got substantially worse in 0.25 (may have been 0.24, but I think it was 0.25). Because it has anecdotally worked well for you doesn't mean that it works for many other people. Avoiding 64-bit KSP for windows like the freaking plague seems to be pretty sound advice. Edit: This reddit post would support it was 0.25 where it got worse.

sounds like it.

I can personally say I've never had a problem with aircraft stability on the ground that couldn't be fixed by making sure the gear had zero camber and straddled the CoM. Also, I think your CoL should be ahead of the rear wheels, but I've never had the CoL and CoM so far apart this was an issue. It may be an issue with the plane above.

A trick i've used before is to put modular girders on the sides of the fuselage and putting the gear on the bottom of the girders. It provides a wider, more stable wheel base while keeping the wheels straight up and down (no camber).

This may be a bug. I feel like a similar issue (temp scan around Gilly at an illegal altitude) has been posted previously. I don't recall a fix there either.

A bit of advice for launching directly into a polar orbit: set your velocity reading to "orbit" mode from "surface" mode straight off the pad. That way, when you can get your prograde straight onto 0 degrees (or 180 degree) heading for a near perfect polar orbit.

All good reasons that disabling quick/saves in hard-mode is beyond idiotic.

I have wanted this feature for almost as long as I've played the game, and this isn't the first time I've seen it mentioned. Tweakables would be perfect for this, e.g. tweak RCS engines to activate on translation and/or attitude adjustment.

You may want to consider OKS/MKS for base building parts and resource generation for TAC-LS

It sounds like the issue's been resolved, but I would also recommend some reaction wheels just to make the whole thing generally more controllable. SRBs don't have gimbal capabilities, your aerodynamic surfaces are pretty close to the CoM on the longitudinal axis, I don't see RCS, and the only part with a reaction wheel I see is the pod, which is really weak compared to the size of the vessel. I suspect even if you get the drift-in-the-same-direction issue resolved, it's still gonna be tricky to control.

Yeah, it's all measure from the planet's center.

Personally, no. Not after I get paid for what I did contracted to do.

Yeah, OBS user here, albeit limited. Screenshots are built into the game. So that's free, too.

Cool. Any idea at what altitude(s) the "noticeable increase in performance" starts?