O-Doc

I was tempted to vote for both you and Overfloater but, in my mind, both your craft were being compared to the Condor. This craft has a similar engine and fuel setup but has over 7km/s dV@LKO w/ drop tanks on the XR version. I felt, given the type of craft you were bringing to the competition(long range) that they should have had more dV. If you're looking for feedback then here goes: Pros Handling is solid Easy ascent and CoL balancing Very good engine setup Range is OK, 3.3km/s@LKO Wing shape, in general, is nice Cons No lights No docking port(empty tanks should give docking option) No RCS thrusters No ladder or ground access Too much dead weight in oxidizer to carry around EDIT: I might have been me that emptied the tanks while fiddling with CoM in the SPH. I'm not sure... I could nitpick smaller points but, some of those bigger issues should have been addressed as part of the process of building a complete SSTO. I hope that didn't come off too harsh, I really hate criticizing. It makes me feel like I'm being mean. Howver, you and Overfloater did make my shortlist so, I thought you guys brought some pretty solid kit to the competition.

Aerodynamics -Pros Takes the spamminess out of designs thus reducing part counts More of a challenge to get to orbit -Cons You cannot modify wing shapes to suit desired aerodynamic performance requirements Many old designs will become obsolete Universe Scale -Pros More planning involved Assets such as stations and bases get more use and thus, have more value -Cons More parts, if not scaled, means a slower game Exploration component is diminished as the planet surface area will be too big Isp -Pros Rocket design might actually become interesting -Cons Confusing to the point of restricting young age players Hard to display this information concisely in the interface Life Support -Pros More logistics and planning in gameplay -Cons Kerbals can die more easily making the game harder for new players Re-entry Danger -Pros Orbit planning becomes more important -Cons Many old designs will become obsolete Aero-braking as an option may disappear from mission planning Edit: If we get more realism in KSP then we have to have more info available in stock gameplay. Otherwise alot of these suggestions will badly hurt gameplay.

That's some nice metal Fengist. Since your specific problems are more or less covered in the previous post I'll give you some advice about getting to where you want to be. That is, building HOTOL SSTOs. Load up the Ares 4a and practice getting it to orbit. Your minimum goal should be to have at least a third of its fuel left in orbit. Once you can demonstrate the ability to achieve orbit with a proven design, go back to the SPH and improve the design so she doesn't have a tailstrike hazard, doesn't flip when doing hard turns and finally, put a nuke on it and try to get to the Mun orbit and back. It's an excellent learners' SSTO with a deliberately flawed design to teach you the basics without having to build from scratch.

I've had a think about it and the reason the structural intakes are wack might be due to the direction of flow being the same as their attachment node direction. I've stopped investigating it because I'll be waiting for those parts to become stock anyway. I'm glad the plane is now getting to orbit "properly".

I think there's some x64 issues with Firespitter which sets your intake air at less than a quarter. They still supply air but, not even close to their rating. I doubt this is intended. I admit, I do skim alot of forum posts because, you know, time etc. But, the major issues I see coming out of SP+ builds in stock are related to the aforementioned intake level problem. I don't think this intake stuff exits with FAR installed if that's worth anything. I could be wrong about the whole intake stuff but, that's been my experience and I've done alot of testing with those structural intakes.

Holy moly, you have a siege tank! Nice intake spam, too.

I personally disregard any "rules" when playing this game and make craft I enjoy. Some spam intakes, some don't. I just want to have fun flying them. Btw, I think my most spammy craft has 16 intakes per turbo and two units of lift rating per ton LOL!

Amen to that. I've dialed it back to about 6-8 RAMs per turbo. That craft you see has only 4 RAMs hidden in the body. Don't tell anyone. Don't forget, Wanderfound is on FAR, Overlfloater and Me are stock aero. That cargo bay door is sweet. I'm gonna have to mess around with it some time.

I've been having a look at SP+ in anticipation of v0.25. Here's a little thing came up with which I'll have to re-create when we get the new parts. It has enough dV to put 5T payload into orbit around Duna, Eve any maybe even Jool. I'm loving the potential new geometries this is going to provide in stock.

Nice tutorial. I feel inspired to make another VTOL. Just couple of points about the vid. Your CoM is off because landing gears are mass-less in the physics engine but not the VAB/SPH. Same as a number of parts, notably batteries. So keep those parts off when doing your aerodynamics. Second, docking ports are better than those adapters you use to attach engines to. They let you add fuel drop pods on top for extended range variants plus, they look better. One more thing. Instead of fuel lines and the engine plate for that turbo, get inside the last fuel tank and attach a line of cubic struts to attach the engine to. I haven't heard of wings being able to convey fuel, must test this. I use docking ports to attach VTOL engines to wings and that blocks the fuel so no need to use a plate. Good job.

Do I win? Cheers! [insert acceptance speech] Well done to everyone that entered, there was a heck of alot of creativity on display and I got to fly just about every craft which gives me plenty of ideas for upcoming SSTOs. Wanderfound, I gave your Migration a spin on the weekend. She's flies pretty nice in stock but I don't have enough FAR experience to compare it to. My only real criticism is that you are too front heavy with your control surfaces. Stack some more/larger elevons on the back, preferably at or behind the CoT. Time to do a celebration buzz of the tower in my Robin.

I have to agree with this. There's plenty of advice around these forums regarding how you can spam even more intakes. I personally would like to see your intake spamming technique evolve into something more aesthetic. Looks like you're having fun so, rep to you.

SP+ air intakes are broken. Sorry for trying to help.

If you're not air-hogging then more wings are going to be the key to getting out of the atmosphere efficiently. I think you really need more lift considering your current ascent relies mostly on a high TWR. Also, your are going to waste fuel without good horizontal stabilization because your control surfaces are going to be working(losing lift) on keeping your craft pointing in the right direction. Your center of lift is too high and far forward. I personally like the center of the CoM ball to align with the front edge of the CoL ball. The more unstable your aircraft the more "out of shape" you tend to get on ascent Which, is lost dV. Your ascent for this design can use some work too. Once you cease to accelerate and a decent rate with only turbos, punch your rockets and level out. When that acceleration starts to slow down, you should be losing altitude at that point. So, pull back hard and get as steep an AoA as your can up to 60 degrees and throttle down your power as your turbos start to cut out. But, keep the power on for as long as your can. Let your wings pull you out of the atmo. Once your turbos are throttled so low as to be damaging your ascent, switch them off, shut your intakes and punch out with your aerospikes just like you would with a VAB launched rocket. Pro tip: you're currently trying to do an air-hogging ascent with a non-air-hogging design. EDIT: Here's an imgur album of that maneuver from a long time ago with someone else's design, who complained of not having enough fuel to get into orbit:

Wow, that's awesome ferram4! I had assumed that because you can't modify parts that they won't be coded for FAR. My respect for your skills have just gone to a new level. Now I'm going to have a browse through FAR source code...

In X-Plane + Blender, wing aspect ratio, chord shape and fencing actually mean something.

I made Kerbdometer when doing a modded installation to sort out the efficient mods from the resource hoggers. Here's a recent challenge album which took about ten hours to fly. I can't wait for Unity 5...

I've had a good think about this for the last few days and played a bit of KSP in the mean time. I think I'm ready to articulate my opinion about realism in the game. There should be a realism game mode in terms of size and scaling. If N-Body physics is not too difficult to implement the, sure, why not. The default should be what it is now, tiny celestial bodies with the current 'lite' physics implementation(if N-body is going to hog CPU cycles even with Unity 5). Life support, deadly re-entry, etc should be game options. So, that's my own opinion. I personally prefer the smaller size Kerbol system because if it was too big then I wouldn't get any enjoyment out of the exploration component of the game. The other day I spotted my first easter egg and it felt great. There's no way you would find easter eggs on a larger scale. Also, I'm a big believer there should be more easter eggs and a reason to be on the surface exploring each 'planetoid'. So, the exploration part of the game is fun in the current scale. The other way I enjoy the game is building stuff and testing, testing, testing. Most of the game for me is spent in the VAB/SPH building machines because I'm a tinkerer personality. Then, I test ascents and mission performance over and over. If it took 6x as long to get into orbit that's 6x less testing I can do which is a big reduction in gameplay. Not to mention, when I want to build a space station or ground base it will take that much longer to achieve my goals. This game already takes a huge amount of time for me complete my personal projects in it. The last big station I built was 30hr+ of gaming and was built with and SSTO lifter to LKO to undock payload to tug which lifts it to KSO then, passes the football to my station builder which finally places it onto the station. The station was only about 25 parts, but still, that's a fair amount of gaming. I don't know if I could be bothered with it all if getting to orbit took 6x as long.

The 2min clips are pretty important for marketing the game. Those resources are being well used. It's best to do the cinematic about game features during the feature development. That way, you get more bang for your buck. The team gets to visualise the concept better during development and market that feature as it is being released. Then, when the game goes 1.0 you get to put a proper 1hr presentation together for games conventions and the like. If SQUAD aren't putting at least 10% of their resources into marketing they would be doing something wrong. Given they are a marketing company, they know the importance of developing marketing assets better than most.

I'll be testing that out at some point so I'll let you know. In regards to B9, I'm getting too much crashing to properly test craft so B9 craft might not make it onto my shortlist after all.

What's your approach to music copyright if I may ask?

I don't see anything unusual in those Imgur albums. The only difference between his high TWR ascent and my high TWR ascents is the fact that he doesn't have to power down a touch between 26km and 30km as my engines will decrease power assymmetrically through that part of the engine power curve. At 30km I power my engines back up to full throttle at 30km to 37km as well. This is not some mysterious air-intake exploit.

Air = Thrust It doesn't matter how you distribute your intakes.

This. I don't think the engine flameout is even an issue if you're paying attention to your ascent.

Thanks alot, much appreciated. I'm tempted to vote for your Beak of Darkness but, I need more time to look though everyone's effort. There's some mod installing to do. EDIT: OK guys, I've looked through the list and I'll include SP+, B9 and FAR as my mods to install for judging. Sorry if your craft require more mods. My machine only has 4GB RAM so mods with parts are a problem for me but, I will make an install with these three mods for this occasion.