James_Eh

Thanks to all for the answers, finally got a chance to try tonight, and switching the staging to blow off one each time adds some keystrokes, but completely fixes the issue. (space - ] - space - ] ] - space) Good to know before I watched 'em hurtle back to Eve. Then, sigh, I couldn't take the excitement and left my son to crash 'em into each other. Which he did. With panache.

Alrighty, will try that next. As soon as I can reboot the game. (Crashed again.)

Yah, it was a struggle to make sure all 3 capsules were crewed, every time I turned my back the outer two depopulated but I finally managed to keep them there. You've touched on the heart of my question though, which is why I took great pains to mention that I was out of the atmosphere. Is it sub-orbital that causes things to evaporate outside of 2.5 km? I thought it was flight-in-atmosphere.

Fairly simple thing I would have thought. In testing for the "mission-of-a-lifetime" , I launched a ship which was meant to hit Ap way out of the atmosphere. This would allow me to blow the little lander cans off of the depleted drive section individually (or all 3 at once which was my plan) and then individually establish a non-decaying orbit with each one using either "]" if it was close enough or map view if not. I seem to lose the ability to flip back to the two uncontrolled ships as soon as I blow them off. I know the atmosphere rule... but I'm in space!!! (Left the KER stats in there to avoid that question.) It gets worse - I can control the ship that I wind up focused on, but all of the menu options stop working so I can't revert, can't exit to the Space Center, etc - but I can still fly the ship in the focus. Can't even click on the thing that shows me fuel, electricity, etc. Staging totally disappears, but the throttle controls still work and I can manually deploy the chute. I can go to map view and watch as the other two cans slowly plummet to Kerbin, but can't switch to them. (Not a huge sample size here, I've tried it 3 times with wildly different Ap's... but every time same behaviour, every time happening WAY out of the atmosphere.) I am using .25 x64, with only the very latest KER installed. All I am hoping somebody can tell me, is - do I put this down as another glitch either caused by x64 or mods (in this case ONE mod, and a very widely used one at that), or is there something fundamental about controlling multiple manned crafts (OUT of the atmosphere!!) which I have never managed to see on the forums???

Eve's gravity used to be 1.3G until we all dropped such a mass of rocket bits onto it. I'll bet if I opened up previous versions of the game and tallied up I have 5000T of stuff strewn across the surface all on my own. The seas are purple because that's the colour into which Kerbin metal and rocket doodads bio-degrade.

Phew. I refer you to the only KSP sin I ever confessed. Time for some magic !!

Well, I'd be a little offended if I didn't know that sometimes what I am sure is correct winds up being only sometimes correct... I'll send you a picture of my usual wee mid-game probes and if you wouldn't mind maybe you could throw me suggestions about how to get them on their way in a cheaper fashion.

Aha! Is this why I find that I have to hit space repeatedly during ascent to activate the next stage since I installed .25?? I had assumed it was just part of the general oddness with 64 bit.

I haven't tried this. I find the drudgery of science in and around KSP to be the opposite of fun. Is it easier/quicker than the drudgery of yet another trip to Minmus?

I find that when operating with a very limited budget, I can use 4 (3 then 1) of the giant boosters to throw a probe into orbit which can then proceed to pretty much anywhere. I have yet to find a non-booster design which is remotely as cheap.

Better that than a late night session, then checking in the next day to discover that the perfect Eve aerobrake/circularization that you remembered from the night before was, in fact, at Jool. (Darn brown pops!)

... Aw, dammit. Once again I am reminded to do science stuff IN BETWEEN PLANETS !!!

"Nukes" are LV-N's. So yah, that's one of my two obvious POIs. Your other point about the science instruments is more debatable, though. The contract system tends to reward you you for the FIRST transmission of data, not the quality. So, if you send a wee probe to Eve with just a thermometer and some electricity, you're well on your way to reaping the full science rewards of the "Explore Eve" contract. Especially (particularly!) if you have outsourced RnD. (As others have mentioned, the conversion of fundz to science via the strategies will undoubtedly be tweaked...) My thoughts above, btw, are referring to a stock game.

After resolutely sticking with sandbox from .19 thru .23.5, I finally broke down and started .24.2 in career mode and have continued with numerous runs through the .25 career at increasing levels of difficulty. I'm wondering if others find that there are a couple of absolutely key tech unlocks which, when accomplished, signify a point where there is no doubt that the program will continue to grow and flourish? (Despite the odd horrific design that thunders into the ocean on you...) For me there are two key moments. Unlocking the KD25k giant boosters pretty much opens up the entire system to cheap launches of one way probes, and then opening the LV-N's finishes the deal for return missions. (Of course early on you have to get a way to generate electricity, but I'm referring to the later achievements I guess...) Any thoughts? Maybe I'm just rambling because I realized I hadn't posted in a while...

Wait a second... this would tend to suggest that my general practice of 50 struts per booster is maybe not optimal...

Well, erm, OK, at some point maybe I'll look at that mod, but that's really not at all directed at my question. I frankly find the highest warp speed terrifying to use as it is, unless I have >100 days to whatever I need to do...

Yah Bop certainly has some work to do to finish crunching up into a better sphere. I'm somewhat more aghast regarding how high of a timewarp it allowed me above Pol. Seriously I can remember twiddling my thumbs for the better part of an hour because I was waiting for Laythe to rotate underneath my orbit. Why is it carte blanche at Pol?

I did some searches, full disclosure I didn't try terribly hard, so sorry if this is a repeat, but: Is there some reason why, when you are in orbit around Pol, you can timewarp to whatever degree you want no matter what your altitude is, but then when you head to Bop, the usual rules apply? I was waiting in orbit around Pol with a node aimed at Bop and I hit the timewarp key repeatedly knowing full well I wasn't going to be able to do much because I was quite low, and to my surprise I almost blew right through the node (many days away) because it let me increase the warp factor to the second highest level. (Probably would have allowed the highest but by then I was frantically stabbing at the unwarp key...) So having avoided that disaster, I made my sedate transfer to Bop, established a low orbit... and now it won't let me time warp at all because I am below 24,500 m. I seem to remember having this issue before, but I have never seen it so blatantly as now. Thoughts? (Using 25.0 x64 but I don't think that is the culprit, as I said I think I recall tripping over this before.)

Yep, that's my experience in 0.25. As soon as I click EVA, I have to hit the S control, and more often than not the Kerbal does not get ejected away. As mentioned above, it helps to have a ladder underneath the pod rungs so that you can back him down that ladder somewhat - this gains you time. They tend to drift in the "W" direction (typically to the top of the ship) in all of my experiences. Seems independent of whether you are in a low orbit around Kerbin, or somewhere interplanetary.

I vote for Canada. Because who doesn't want to come to Canada in February?

I wonder if they are treading a bit lightly in this area? At the moment there are no mandatory contracts, and IMHO that's a good thing given how different people want different things. However creating a contract about a dinosaur-killer headed towards Kerbin would pretty much have to be an obligatory "accept", no?

Ooohhh, ooohhh!!! Best idea I've been given for a rover paint job forever! Off to Eeloo with my General Lee rover!!!

Nope, it's all about the torque, not my bad ship design. Stupid torque!

I have to reinstall MJ to check, I had a hissy fit a couple of versions ago and dropped it, but I don't recall that it ever gave a negative angle. Just anything from 0 (direct equatorial perfect "oh-look-at-me" orbit) to 90 (polar N-S) to 180 (perfect retrograde) to 270 (polar S-N) and back to zero. But now that I read what I wrote, it seems to me that I should have been able to make it toggle back and forth between 359 and 0 by wobbling around the equator, and I don't recall ever seeing that. I pretty much guarantee I would have with my umptyteen spaceplane disasters over time... <edit> Move along, move along... "Phase angles", right. Duh.

I left my son in charge of walking/jetpacking Bill a couple of km on Minmus while I went to stir stuff for supper. Somehow he killed him. I had to breathe deeply and remember that getting him in trouble would be stupid. (Despite the fact that I ONLY LEFT FOR A MINUTE AND YOU KILLED BILL!!!!!!!) In-out-in-out...