Duke23

Nothing wrong with that of course. To me though half of my feeling of accomplishment in the game is that something *I* built from the ground up actually worked (or failed in a hilarious way). Not to say I never will grab a file to play with, I just haven't yet... There are people here who are infinitely better than me at designing ships with aesthetics in mind, mine are usually geared towards functionality with minor attention to the looks.

I do tend to get lost in the forums a good bit when playing... Or at work when I can't play, haha. I've kicked myself a couple times for that one. Something happens in the game and I have to come here and post a screenshot or 10 instead of continuing the game lol. It's also good for my inspiration. When I get frustrated because I'm stuck or just bored that I haven't come up with something new in a while, many times I can come here and see what other people are doing and it gives me some new ideas. I don't copy other people's designs and I've never used someone else's .craft aside from the performance test rocket but sometimes just seeing something that I didn't think of can make a big light flip on in my head.

I can attest to that. In my head I thought that figure applied to Kerbin conditions and not lower gravity, but... I had the bright idea of strapping an ion drive to the rover I was sending to Minmus as a last minute addition. I was pleased and it was working great hauling butt at about 50m/s across the greater flats until I throttled it up again as I zoomed out to check how much farther I had to go... BOOM! Oooops. Other than that, it's a pretty solid although basic rover that I used to carry some science supplies out to a different biome, take the data and leave the spent pieces. The revision model which will be going next time omits the ion drive (both for the sake of balance and Kerbal well-being) and relies only on RCS to speed up the process of starting or stopping and give downforce for turning.

I haven't, but mostly because I haven't been asked. I know a couple people that play and occasionally one of them will send me a craft file or screenshot and ask what I think...

Just came back from a series of disasters on Minmus... That place really is cursed. I was using the quicksave function heavily I'll admit. First I landed in the southern part of the Greater Flats (so I could drive over to Flats, Midlands, Slopes, etc) and I brought my brand new shiny rover with powered wheels, RCS for downforce and brake assist, and an ion engine because it sounded fun. When I released the rover it got stuck under the lander even though nothing was touching, so I had to thrust up and switch to the rover and reverse before the lander came back down (probe core on the rover). Well I had it humming along and since everything was flat, I decided I'd let it roll for a while and turned up the ion engine. I hit around 40m/s and zoomed out to see how far I had been (engine still throttled up) and I saw an explosion. As I was zooming back in I saw my rover with the poor Kerbal on it flipping through the air with 3 broken wheels. I'll admit that one was probably my fault... By some miracle I managed to flip it back on its wheels and decelerate with RCS and when I stopped my Kerbal was slumped over in the command seat like he was dead. I couldn't get him to move... He was still in the seat (and controlling the rover) but there was no option for him to get out. I finally got him to jump out of the seat, and he immediately fell over on top of the rover. Just collapsed and wouldn't get up, and his face was glitching. So I had to quick load. I had it going about 20m/s this time but apparently there's an area where its downhill (on the flats?!) and it speeds up for no reason. So before I realized that I started to turn and slide and then had another random flipping accident and everything got screwed up. Third time around I was able to make it down to the Midlands and then the Flats before I got nervous looking at the slopes and just returned to my ship. I hopped over to the slopes, lowlands, and southern pole without issue and headed home. The name on my flag is intentionally blurred in this screenshot...

I agree with Stevism. I like rovers, but a lot of times they're just not practical if you're trying to hit a couple biomes. For my last Mun mission I built a rocket powered rover... Mostly because I'm still kinda low tech and didn't yet have powered wheels, but also because it's freaking fun. It can run along the surface at about 20m/s with no problems but if you really want to cover some distance just tip the nose up with SAS and roll on the throttle. It also solves those pesky crater problems where you just can't get up the lip of it. Just remember to set 'er down easy, ~40m/s surface speed and ~5-7m/s vertical is fine as long as you're braced for impact on a reasonably flat surface where you can feather out the brakes and not tip it over. I think it would be a blast to take one of these to Minmus. Hopefully I'll have the external seat by the time I get done scraping the Mun for science.

This is a continuation of my Claw mission from this post (just the first screenshot). So, it was now time to decide what to do with the claw ship and the abandoned capsule it had brought back. I decided since it was fairly outdated I was going to bring a second ship up to take the capsule from it, remove the crew, deorbit the large ship (although I didn't have a good plan for this), and then bring the capsule safely to solid ground. This would be a dual purpose mission -- the hitchhiker container that I'd pick up the crew with would be dropped off in a higher orbit to serve as the core for a space station I'm planning to build. Well, here goes: Haters gonna hate. This could get interesting... Actually it just plain didn't work like that, the claw kept bouncing off. I had to come at it from the flat side of the capsule. Now we're cookin... Everyone leaves the orange ship except for Jeb, he's got some business to take care of. Jeb, wait, what are you doing? This is ONE way to handle that mission... (Warning to those who may care: One of the ship names is a bit profane) The vid looks best in 1080p Dropping off the hitchhiker... Passed right over KSC on the way down I only included this screenshot because of the look on James's face. "Yawn, not impressed." Parachutes didn't rip anything apart like I had feared... James takes a minute to do a jig before being picked up. Mission success!

I have to say thanks to everyone as well. I just updated from .23 a few days ago... I had gotten a little burned out from spending all my free time on it and was taking a break, intending to come back when .24 was released. Instead, .23.5 showed up and I was a little skeptical at first. After giving it a spin I like the tweaks and added parts, and I seem to have gotten a slight FPS increase as well. I haven't captured or diverted an asteroid yet but I'm close to sending out a mission for that. I gotta hand it to the devs here, some other companies that won't be named probably would have called it a day and slapped a $60 price tag on it a few versions back. I've been waiting for a game like this for years and just didn't know it. I used to design my own aircraft in X-Plane and keep wishing there was more to the space aspect of it... I like to say this is what Spore's space stage should have been; in general I've been disappointed with pretty much every space-related game I've played because of the lack of realism or depth or both. This game is maddeningly difficult, even stressful sometimes and the learning curve is steep at first but I just keep coming back for more. I've learned more about orbital mechanics and physics than I probably would have from forcing myself to read any number of books or articles on the subject otherwise, and had loads of fun while doing it. I always try to turn my friends onto KSP and some of them love it (one even found it before I did and I'm holding a grudge that he didn't tell me about it), some of them try the demo and ragequit, but a lot of people just don't seem to "get it" so I guess it takes a certain type of gamer to really appreciate it. Bottom line is even as a game that's still relatively early in development I feel like I got more than my money's worth out of it before I even made it out of Kerbin's SOI in version .22, and I'd go as far as to say I probably would have happily paid the $16 and some change (.23 gearup sale) just for the demo. There are still so many things I haven't found or done, the modding community makes the possibilities endless and I love seeing the crazy and elaborate things other players come up with. I've actually only seen one anomaly so far since I haven't gone out hunting them yet and I'm not even sure it wasn't a glitch -- In .23 (I think?) one of my Mun probes passed over a giant oval shaped hole that I swear I could see stars on the other side of, but I crashed several km away from it and haven't been able to find that area again. I think I have a screenshot of it buried somewhere. I'll stop rambling but I'll say this much: I can't wait to see what the final version looks like.

This or a variation of it is what I use 90% of the time I need a skycrane... This one was designed to be towed behind a larger ship and work in low grav non-atmospheric conditions but I added chutes so it could be used on Duna as well. It's a little much just to drop a small rover, but it also serves as a way to get back into orbit to rendezvous with another ship or transfer stage, and it's completely reusable. It won't work in higher gravity or thicker atmospheres (unless it's a one-way trip down) but it's a good reliable platform with power to spare.

Orbiting Kerbin with Bill and Bob in my thrown together claw ship while I decide whether to gas it up for an asteroid mission or trash it and redesign with better tech.

I designed a big heavy wide-body Rover just for Minmus and still crashed it... Might be better to have quick reflexes and a rocket powered rover (with rcs brakes) so you can correct if things go south? I've found that normal controls work fine for me on the Mun because the reaction wheels are trying to turn the same way I am and then I can activate the roll if I need help keeping the wheels planted. With docking controls it just barely turns at all. I'm not convinced that's better although it might help avoid a nasty crash depending on what you're trying to accomplish and where you're controlling the rover from.

On the way back from a pretty risky (based on my history) mission to the Mun. I don't have powered wheels yet and even if I did, well this is way cooler. I built a rover to attach to my slightly modified "Derka" series lander and... Ready to head out! Somehow landed this stupid thing safely... Checking out the scenery Wanted to hit another biome but I landed right in the middle of this massive crater so that was going to be a challenge... Oh wait, I have a low tech rocket powered rover! Hold on to your hats! James Kerman, boldly going where no one in their right mind has gone before. (Returning to the lander) BRAKES HIT THE BRAKES!! This thing does not like to be landed at 50m/s Goodbye and thanks for all the fish... Err, I mean science.

Minmus hates me too. No matter how careful I am there, if I don't just collect my science and leave something stupid always happens. Rovers cartwheeling across the surface, landers tipping over, kerbals faceplanting in the ground after getting thrown off said cartwheeling rover... Bad juju. And I'm about to send a series of manned missions there in my new save, how wonderful.

I feel like I've replied to this before but I don't see it... Most of mine are nothing special but there's a gem in there every now and then and they tend to be pretty random. Interesting names and important missions: Reach For The Mun! -- an Munar orbit-and-return mission with a bad staging order that ended in a rescue mission ISM-1&2 (Interplanetary Suicide Mission 1&2) -- One way trips to Eve and Duna, respectively. KSS Storm -- first reusable interplanetary ship, purpose built to rescue ISM-2 from Duna. Underwent extensive testing during a base building operation on the Mun. Rover With Thingy -- the "tractor" rover for my Duna base operation Big F****** Refill -- a (failed) orbital refueling platform that was a cube of orange tanks Domestic Scientific Terrorist -- Kerbin based point-and-launch biome hopper Jeb's Destiny -- first orbital ship in my original career save Jeb Getter -- for picking up Jeb as he orbited Kerbin in his space suit after a slight mishap KSS Trident -- first Jool-capable ship. Could travel to and return from pretty much anywhere but Eeloo with only a lander, or bring a 4-module colonization operation to Duna with enough extra fuel to run the skycrane. MAP Lifter (Multipurpose Asparagus Pusher) -- my first "heavy" lifter platform, designed to be bolted to the bottom of pretty much anything under 75T. It wasn't a true Asparagus design, instead it dropped concentric rings of tanks. Doubled as a transfer stage on smaller payloads. Mun Destroyer -- my largest (at the time) Mun lander Mun Dropper (I, II, III, IIID) -- Purpose built, mostly overpowered, skycranes for Mun missions. Mun Dropper IIID was modified for lower thrust and outfitted with parachutes, later sent to Duna with the KSS Trident Omniscience I -- shoddily built (failed) interplanetary probe. It failed because I forgot to extend the solar panels before time warping, not because it was shoddily built. D'oh. Probe Of Awesomeness (I, II, III) -- small, fast, interplanetary probes. III was outfitted with an extra stage and landing gear. Robotic Docking Assistant -- tiny probe with a regular and mini clampotron. Hitched a ride on the KSS Storm to grab and rotate decoupled base parts for the skycrane to more easily pick up. Also had to pick up the skycrane from nearby when I accidentally ran it out of RCS before redocking. Impending Crash (I, II, III, IV, IVb) -- early rocketry research spanning low and high atmospheric, a visit to space, a stable orbit, and an orbital science mission respectively Derka (I, II) -- Mun landers vaguely similar to the original Mun Destroyer. Derka II had a soft crash on the Mun. Jeb was killed during this mission due to a bug in quickloading on a ladder Probie -- early orbital refueling (probe) prototype S*** Grabber -- Claw mission to retrieve the abandoned command capsule from Reach For The Mun! Bird of Prey -- first functional weaponized orbital ship

I got bored and had one of those "I wonder what would happen if..." moments, so after some messing around on the ground I managed to weaponize some small RCS tanks using Separatrons. It's not particularly deadly compared to some of what I was originally testing, but it's entertaining (to me at least) and could probably disable a small ship fairly easily if you can manage to hit it. This isn't my best piloting since I was just messing around, but you get the idea.

Usually something like this... (launching from KSC, assuming new rocket design) []Cross fingers while waiting for physics []Cursory visual check of mission critical systems (does it have batteries, parachutes, solar panels, docking ports, RCS, etc?) []Cursory staging order check; revert to VAB to fix if a problem is found in this item or a previous one; start over from beginning []Throttle up and engage SAS []Cross fingers again as boosters engage []Realize I still staged wrong or forgot something which may result in wobbles, flips, undesired joint compression, and / or an explosion []Activate profanity module; revert to VAB []Try again And then there's the ever present scenario of "I just wasted too much fuel doing something stupid and have to figure out how to get home" This mostly applies to the Mun and Minmus of course -Ensure that I have enough fuel for initial orbit -Cross fingers that I have enough fuel for an injection burn into KSP equivalent of skip entry maneuver at Kerbin -Clench butt cheeks as my tanks go dry -Eject everything and hope the chutes don't rip themselves or anything else apart -Imagine what my poor Kerbals are feeling as they slam into the atmosphere at a few thousand m/s -Land softly and let out a sigh of relief

@Felsmak: That... Is impressive. I always enjoy seeing the odd creations people come up with in this game lol. Also you've just (re)inspired me to work on a weapon system. I got the idea after I fired two small fuel tanks up and out of sight using only a decoupler on Minmus, due to a slight design flaw. The idea was I'd jettison the larger tanks after landing and then take off with the smaller ones (assuming I'd used up the fuel to land) but... It was based on an older design that actually worked, but I threw this one together in orbit for some reason and when the side engines were attached to the lifter it made sense, but when I docked it to my lander well... You can kind of see how that turned out. *facepalm*

Apparently if you quicksave while hanging onto the upside down ladder of a crashed ship on the Mun... When you quickload you fall off the ladder and die. Maybe it's just me.

Pretty eventful day I'd say... Background: a couple days ago I talked about how I accidentally ditched my last engine on the way back from the Mun and got stuck, and had to jetpack back to an acceptable orbit and get rescued blah blah... Well earlier I unlocked the Clawwwwwrrrr! This is actually the last thing I did just now... So I built a ship fuel tank that seats 3 to go pick up the capsule just to see how it works. Not bad, although I had a bit of trouble getting it to actually hook on. The capsule was floating around between Minmus' and the Mun's orbits. The screenie was taken after I brought it back to Kerbin and realized I didn't exactly plan for the big ship to come back to solid ground, so even if I tried to deorbit the stupid capsule and land it safely I'd probably screw up and crash 2 of my dudes in the big ship as well. So for now it's just sitting there until I figure out exactly what I'm going to do. Probably send up a probe with a claw on it and switch off, then let it crash and burn. Might leave the big three up there floating for a while so they quit sneaking onto my dangerous missions, then refuel in a hundred or so game days and try to wrangle a class B asteroid that's set to pass through Minmus' general area. I built a ship to land on the Mun and actually bring back something other than EVA reports and soil samples, and biffed the landing... This is where it gets weird. Jeb (that sneaky *******) hopped out and was walking around, then realized he couldn't get back in the ship because the door was facing down and he kept bumping his head trying to grab the ladder. So I tried to quickload to a point where he hadn't left the ship yet (but it was still trashed) and it just so happened that he was on the ladder when I made the quicksave. As soon as it loaded, he fell off and died. Somehow. I still can't figure that out. After trying everything I logically could for about 5 minutes, I realized I couldn't save him so I let him go poof and I sent another ship to go pick up the data. (Jeb fairly quickly came back from the dead.) Then I got some docking ports etc so I decided to refit that ship to dock in LKO and refuel then cruise out to Minmus and back, which it did admirably with plenty of fuel to spare. Which is funny because I could have easily done it without refueling if I wanted to, and when I got back I just put the whole thing into a 30km aerobraking maneuver, watched the light show, then staged right behind the capsule's little backup engine and popped the chute... What a waste. And I know, that "tanker" is a joke. It was really made to go as far as possible and still have enough fuel to help out if I was stuck somewhere. I sent one just like it to the Mun "just in case", then decided to toss one up in LKO specifically for this mission. That was right before I unlocked Mainsails and orange tanks. Also I have no idea why I made the probe core able to leave the big tank behind under its own power, it's not like it matters. I think I was on two trains of thought and I was going to send one to Minmus with extra sensors on it then ditch the (full) tank in orbit and bring the data back. Who knows. This reminds me, I need to do something with that lander if I'm going to continue to use it (probably not). With the Skipper still attached at the bottom it's near impossible to dock because it's off balance, and will barely turn without RCS because originally I dropped that section as I was leaving LKO so I didn't care and never put reaction wheels on it. It seems that after taking my break on .23, I'm addicted again. Oh well.

Man I can't count the number of times I've sent up something "questionable" (read: laughably dangerous and ill-planned) only to have it blow itself into tiny chunks and then out from the cloud of debris comes the command module with intact parachutes and one very distraught Kerbal.

I work pretty hard to keep my Kerbals safe... As someone else mentioned, at least on serious missions. I tend to not count rocket tests, although I'm considering adopting a stricter "no do-overs" policy in general. I felt bad when I lost one of the little troopers in an unavoidable crash while colonizing the Mun in my old save. The pilot survived but trashed the skycrane, however I was dropping a habitation module with a Kerbal aboard which disintegrated on impact.

Minor annoyance when my altimeter freezes... But when I took base parts to Duna and my "tractor" rover's docking ports decided they wanted to lose magnetism and ability to dock, that's when I felt rage. Reloading didn't help. Maybe I broke one? But I'm pretty sure it was a glitch.

I was trying to background my interplanetary missions and use the alarm clock but it's hard for me to do that. I usually just stick to one mission until it's complete or I forget what in the world I was doing. I'd find myself killing time with ship improvements and test runs to the Mun or Minmus and back, or even building a base on Kerbin's ice caps and the Mun, just to find out my Duna / Jool mission is still floating along out in the abyss somewhere. I just don't have the patience to launch a new and potentially awesome mission then move onto something less interesting to me at the time while I wait. I do run simultaneous missions, but usually there's a reason for it like they are related and dependent on each other or I had a random idea I wanted to try out for a while.

I know I already complained about this one but I'm still chapped about it. Second Mun flyby on my new save and after flying over 3-4 biomes getting the science I needed, I got on an escape trajectory and then had to separate one last time and go home. Except I had the last engine set to fire at the same time it decoupled itself from the command module to drop down on Kerbin. D'oh. After ditching what was left of the ship and some nail biting usage of the jet pack to keep poor Jeb from getting slung into a ridiculous orbit by a second accidental Mun encounter, a rescue ship was sent and everything turned out okay, but holy crap. One little thing and an entire mission goes up in smoke. I couldn't just leave Jeb up there, and especially not with him carrying 250ish tech points which at my stage in the tech tree with this new save is pretty darn valuable. The best part was when I sat there in complete disbelief (because the mission was going so well until then) just staring blankly at the command module as the engine slowly drifted away going "...Did that seriously just freaking happen?"

I'm a little late to this but I had been taking a break from KSP due to just being burned out... I had vowed to come back when the new version came but I'm slow apparently. Today I dove in on .23.5 and started a new game. I unlocked a couple tech tree nodes and ran a mission to orbit the Mun but silly me I forgot my goo pods... So after unlocking a little bit more tech, I went back with a redesigned ship: Ugly ship, but I was just playing around and as I said I don't have much tech yet (and it's been a while since I played ). That's the only proper screenshot I have of it because I made a video of the mission that turned out to be an hour long because of... Well, I'll explain (but I apologize for the rest of the images being crappy because they were pulled from a recoded video). As a matter of fact, if you take a look at my staging order you can see exactly what screwed up this entire mission right when it counted the most. Everything was going great at first, with Jeb at the helm I could do no wrong. It was a simple mission: Grab as much science as I could between Kerbin and a low pass around the Mun, and come back home. Jeb swooped down to ~40km from the surface of Mun and passed over as many biomes as he could, then collected the experiments that were about to be dropped with the cruising stage to save weight. Jeb burned the last of the fuel in the cruising stage we had set up as he made the escape trajectory from the Mun. Everything was going according to plan until this moment. He surveyed the trajectory and plotted course for a ~80km encounter with Kerbin (if I remember correctly) and then went to drop the dead weight. Stage separation -- engine dropped. Stage separation -- experiments dropped. Fire off the last engine? Hm. Seems to be throttled up, but nothing is happening. Fire off the last engine! Oh... It just separated the capsule from the little putt putt engine I had intended to go back to Kerbin with. DAAAAAMMMMNNNNNIIIIIITTTTTT JEB!! He must have spent a good 2 minutes just looking around. What do I do now? Sit here in a wonky orbit and wait for help? No, not Jeb. As he looked at the trajectory he has also made another mistake that he tends to make in this situation (which wouldn't have mattered if he had an engine) -- He was going to have another encounter with the Mun and get thrown out into Minmus territory. Unacceptable. Jeb did no less than what I'd expect him to... Against mission control's advice he calmly exited the capsule, grabbed all the data from it, and began to burn retrograde with his jetpack like nobody's business. He was looking at a Kerbin periapsis of ~1500 km, which wasn't good but we could deal with that. Then a streak of luck -- He managed to alter the encounter with the Mun just enough that it actually brought him closer to Kerbin -- ~600km. So we waited... And when that periapsis came, he started to burn retrograde again. He was able to bring the apoapsis down to ~2000 km before thinking he'd better save some fuel for the rescue ship that was sure to come. ...Right? "...Crap." Let's do this! Of course, a rescue ship was immediately thrown together from debris laying around the launch pad from the last 5 prototype rockets. Up up and away! Except wait a minute. The rescue ship has already started its gravity turn when everyone realizes Jeb is orbiting in the opposite direction. Let's try that again. James Kerman may not be the brightest guy in the world, but he's a decent pilot after all, and the rescue mission is a complete success from here on out, minus a few gallons of fuel wasted on maneuvers that weren't exactly necessary. He was able to get within 25km of Jeb on his periapsis and then burn to match orbits and form an intercept course. 3km. One orbit and he's closing in... He can barely make out Jeb's helmet from the glow of the engine as he closes in at 15 meters. Jeb enters the ship and naturally complains about how long it took James to get there. The trip back to Kerbin was a boring one, as everything went according to plan. Rescue ship is blasting off after a cursory staging check, all systems go... Let's get out of here! It's funny how a simple mission can turn into a huge ordeal for no good reason.