Bobe

I'm not sure if this is a Rocketry thing or not, but my engines keep jolting suddenly under the slightest bit or torque, leaving them almost dangling in an offset position. My control inputs are very gentle during initial ascent, but I typically perform a 90 degree roll so that any radial engines are aligned horizontally. Even if I turn at the slowest rate possible by gingerly tapping the roll key, the engines still jolt violently.

Ah I see, makes sense. I'll look into that once I've actually figured out how to stop this rocket from wobbling.

Sorry if I've missed a discussion on this, but are there any plans to add a command unit? I'm desperately looking for a 3.75m guidance unit for my large cargo rockets. Also, for some reason, after installing RT all my rockets automatically cut their thrust shortly after launch. Is this a bug or a feature?

I've been constructing my own mission with elements inspired by this mission, but I just can't get my rocket to be consistently stable. The rocket is very similar to Kata's Ares V, but with SRBs from KW Rocketry instead of American Pack (I assume). I can't figure out where to put the remote guidance unit. The only place that could make sense from the video is inside the payload fairing, but because I have to put it below the payload it is crushed by the weight. I also tried putting a small unit on the underside of the payload at the top, but this just causes the typical wobble because it's turning in opposition to the engine vectoring. Locking the engine gimbal just makes the rocket virtually uncontrollable. ----- EVERYTHING ABOVE CAN BE IGNORED ----- In the video, the transfer stage appears to be mounted in the fairing on some sort of pylon between the three engines. What is this part? Also, when performing the 15 minute transfer burn, did the burn start at T 0 or earlier to compensate for the long burn time? MechJeb is starting at T 0, resulting in a very odd trajectory. In fact, I just checked on it now. At T + 11 minutes, I'm at 485km going 2200 m/s, and my remaining ÃŽâ€v, which had gotten to half the required amount, is actually going up. What am I doing wrong? EDIT: I see in the video that the burn started roughly 7 minutes before the node. Did you just manually keep it in the right direction, or can MJ lock on to the node icon ( not actually sure what it's called) after you've manually started the burn?

Does anyone know which mod those girders and circular structural sections on Kopernicus come from? I'm assuming something like Girder Pack or KOSMOS, but both are out of date. EDIT: From reading the .craft file, the round sections look like fairing plates from NovaPunch. part = NP.fairings.375m.plate_4291961728

Sorry, I meant what difference does that make to having it enabled by default without the need for a part. I assume you were referring to that.

What difference does that make?

Wouldn't it just be much simpler if the mod did this by default? Does anyone prefer using a part rather than just having it always on (and optionally disabled of course)?

It took me some time to realize that the reason some of my rockets bending and wobbling like an arrow in slow motion (for reference: ) is that there were two sets of reaction wheels fighting one another. This is what I believe anyway.Typically when launching a payload that has its own guidance system and possibly a separate reaction wheel, the rocket itself has a guidance system and a reaction wheel, usually 1.25m and 2.5m respectively between the payload and the rocket. So when launching, the two SAS systems are trying to fly the rocket and it seems like they end up creating some kind of resonance that ultimately wants to snap the rocket in half. I'm able to disable the payload's reaction wheels on the launchpad, but it would be so much more convenient if I could do it in the VAB, especially when I'm using KW Rocketry fairings and I have to randomly click until I find the part.

Is it possible to combine two fairing bases so that you effectively get a 0 ejection force? I'm just building a simple probe launcher, but for worlds with low gravity, such as Minmus, a 500 ejection force alters the orbit dramatically. I've tried just adding an upside down fairing on top of the payload, but it won't let me place it. I can place a second fairing above the payload facing the same direction, but because of how the panels fit together, the two bases are locked in place relative to each other. So when I decouple the payload, it basically fires out and hits the second base and then sort of tumbles out the side. This is not an elegant solution, so I was wondering if there was anything else I could try.

Is it possible to make the plugin work without needing to attach a part to your ship (for example Docking Port Alignment Indicator)? It would be much nicer to remove the dependency and prevent any issues later on if the mod happens to be uninstalled.

You can actually save yourself a lot of time by instead manually deleting everything in the game folder except for KSP_Data and Launcher_Data, as well as the .exes and settings.cfg. KSP_Data contains the core game files and as far as I'm aware remains unaffected by mods, and it makes up the majority of the game's file size (~700MB). Then just run game cache integrity verification. I did this after backing up my save files, but I decided to just create a new save game so there was no chance of corruption. Of course I suppose this depends on the person and how much time you've invested in a particular save game.

Did you try using a new save game? It may be that the save game you're using has some embedded data associated with one or mods that are causing an issue. Just guessing here.

I don't know if any of these have been discussed already, but I'd just like to list a few things that I personally think would enhance Kethane. Firstly, Kethane deposits should, in my opinion, regenerate over time. Ideally they would appear in new locations, perhaps slowly increasing in yield until a certain threshold is reached. New deposits would only be generated if the planet's total kethane yield drops below a given value. Second, I'd like one or both of the scanners to have a "focus" mode. Entering this mode allows you to select a single point on the grid. After a certain amount of time, say maybe 60 times the normal scanning period, while in line of sight of the selected point, an 18 block section is scanned (i.e., the selected point and two "rings" around it). The scanner would then automatically resume normal surveying.

Could you list all the mods you have installed, as well as any you previously had installed? Also, do you see the grid on the main menu screen?

In an earlier post I realized my error with the fuel lines. It looks like this now: Note that all my fuel supplies have been replenished. The challenge now is figuring how how to take the raw kethane and refuel the main ship. If I dock with the ship and then turn on the converter, will it fill the main fuel tank? Ideally I want it to fill the lander's tank first and then the main ship's tank. EDIT: No need to answer that, it's happening as we speak. I actually had to leave the converter on so it actively produced fuel as I burned it to get into orbit, so by the time I docked with the ship I had half the kethane I left with (roughly 8000 units). However, this managed to fully refuel my main ship and almost fully replenish my monopropellant supply, which was more than enough to begin with.

I don't know what it was, but I just jumped back in to the game (I was tabbed out with a probe left to scan for more kethane), switched to the lander and started the conversion. It works fine. Maybe I just needed to switch to another ship and back, not sure.

Hmm, I managed to land it on Mun and filled up the kethane tanks, but when I activated the converter nothing happened except for the cooling efficiency going from 100% to NaN. Is it doing this because it doesn't recognize any parts that can be filled with fuel?

I'm not sure exactly what causes this, but it happened to me and I simply reverted to a fresh install of KSP and it worked fine. Most likely some incompatibility with another mod or some weird save file corruption. Three mods I had installed when it wasn't working were MechJeb, Engineer Redux and B9 Aerospace Pack. I didn't reinstall these after the fresh install. I also had ISA MapSat installed for a time but uninstalled it beforehand. I'm not sure if there was anything in the save files associated with that mod that might have caused a conflict. Are you using any of these mods? Might be a place to start looking. In fact, ISA MapSat is probably the most likely to cause issues, as it also manipulates the planet textures (or something to that effect). Also, in general it seems to just make the game very unstable.

Oh, I see what I've done wrong. So it should theoretically work as I intended without any fuel lines?

Like this?

I actually did originally have just one converter in the middle. I think I changed it because I thought eight drills going to one converter would cause a bottleneck. If I just have the four kethane tanks with fuel lines going to the converter in the middle, which will still be above the liquid fuel tank, will it first fill up the liquid fuel tank and then fill the kethane tanks?

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but I just started using Kethane and I'm having a hard time understanding how the extraction, conversion and ultimately refueling process is meant to ideally work. I've got the scanning working, no problems there. I haven't been able to find any decent tutorial videos, and most articles simply reiterate what the mod does, not how to use it. From what I could gather from the few videos, as dated and unstructured as they were, it's a matter of creating a lander, drilling the kethane and then bringing it back to a ship. However, I'm finding it difficult to construct a lander that is able to land and take off under its own power and still haul enough kethane to refuel the ship. So basically, what I'm trying to learn here is how I might go about building a simple drilling lander that can return to a main ship to refuel it. This was my first attempt: I know it's probably all wrong, but what do I need to do to fix it? I'm sure I'd need some fuel lines going from the kethane tanks to the centre tank perhaps. Essentially what I'm trying to achieve there is to have the ungainly thing land using the Poodle and the single tank of liquid fuel, then I would deploy the solar panels to allow drilling to start. Some of the extracted kethane is used to power the four rector units to stabilize power consumption and the rest is converted into liquid fuel and oxidizer and pumped into the centre tank. Once full, the four kethane tanks would be filled with raw kethane. I could then launch back up and rendezvous with a ship in orbit and transfer the kethane to the ship's fuel tank. I'm not sure whether conversion at this stage would happen on the lander or on the ship. Obviously a lander like this will only really work for low-gravity worlds, but it is feasible?

Have there been any discussions about adding the ability to click and drag to re-position a maneuver along the orbital path? I find it frustrating having to start over each time I want to refine the ejection angle.

Yeah flight time cumulates quite a lot, but still might be interesting to keep track of. I would probably define a mission as one that either was recovered, aborted or failed (exploded), but like you say that is narrow range of scenarios. Perhaps you should have the ability to plan and start missions after launch and then designate when a mission has been completed yourself. This is perhaps a little messy, and it would mean that you could hypothetically just "complete" hundreds of tiny missions, but why would you? It would just spam your mission history. The only reason to do this I can imagine is to exploit an achievement system, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.