Duke23

Interesting info here! It's nice to see how everything compares, I actually feel a little better after seeing all the figures side by side. I agree with you something is up with the test on the FX-8350. I could see how the graphics might bog it down a bit, my 260x isn't that much better in the grand scheme of things and I find it limiting my FPS in some situations, particularly looking at a large ship with Kerbin in the background in LKO. ETA: I would expect the 8350 with the .1ghz overclock to run pretty much neck and neck with my stock 4350 as the extra cores aren't really going to help in this game or most games for that matter. I may actually run this test again soon because I've made a couple changes to the computer hardware that could make a slight difference. I reconfigured my RAM to run properly in dual channel mode (long story) and applied the Microsoft scheduling patch for AMD Bulldozer / Piledriver chips, also a slight GPU overclock but that will be irrelevant when my new card shows up. Before running dual channel the lack of the patch didn't make much difference but between the three configurations (dual channel w/o patch, single channel w/o patch, and dual channel with patch) there are noticeable differences in FPS stability, load times, and stuttering in my modded Skyrim. I just did it yesterday and haven't run KSP again yet to test. Also something to note is that with some mods in KSP I noticed an unbearable FPS drop. My tanker station with a bunch of crap docked to it went from ~20fps down to ~10fps. I think Kethane was the culprit but I can't prove it because I removed another mod or two at the same time when it got bad and my framerates went back to normal.

Well I did something stupid earlier. I finished loading up the KSS Trident with its payload to go to Duna -- most of a base plus rover plus skycrane. Did I mention this was a horribly designed ship that was put into service without proper testing? I think I did earlier. It's a major pain to get any payload docked to it because of the 3 engine design, but I made it work. As usual I didn't want to wait for a transfer window before actually leaving Kerbin so I burned for about 10 minutes until I was headed out of SOI. Everything is working just fine. Then once in Kerbol orbit I decided I'd go do something else and fire up MechJeb to do a Hohmann transfer over to Duna whenever the appropriate time was, which was 150+ days (I forget how many). I stepped away from the computer for a couple minutes thinking the worst that can happen is its done with the burn and coasting through space at a rate I'd have to walk away for 2 months to notice. When I came back, my ship was bright red. What the heck?! I looked closer and the entire ship was skimming through Kerbin's atmosphere at a very high speed and my periapsis was already non existent. Facepalm. I didn't get my Kerbol orbit far enough away from Kerbin and it caught back up to me, screwing my entire mission that took 5 or more launches to get ready. I alt-F4'd the whole thing hoping that it'd revert to an autosave right before or right after leaving Kerbin's SOI instead of having to redo this entire mission. That was a few hours ago... I went out for a while and I'm scared to open KSP again. lol. Man, I just really didn't want to do another 10 minute burn.

If I find myself stuck or getting bored with what I'm doing, I make up some random goal that has nothing to do with anything and go for it. That usually leads down a long road of distraction until I figure out the next step. Like build a modular base on the polar ice cap of Kerbin. Which was such a success I decided to put one on the Mun which spawned a whole new set of obstacles, solutions, catastrophes, etc. And the bonus was I was testing an interplanetary prototype ship at the time and ended up being able to test it for a variety of things that would have been overlooked had I just checked the delta v and shot off out of Kerbin SOI (stability, payload capacity, maneuverability, did I forget anything stupid like lights or docking ports, etc). I also find that quicksaves can sometimes take fun out of a mission. Like if I use them every time I screw up the slightest thing, it becomes a little monotonous. On the other hand if for example I accidentally crash somewhere and then have to stop everything and launch a mission to save the pilot, it's just more variety and more fun. I think next I'll be trying some of the popular mods that open new doors.

I facepalmed several times while realizing (during preparation for sending out a Duna base) that the skycrane I want to use isn't compatible with the rear docking port on the Trident. D'oh. The skycrane and most modules are based on a 2/4 engine design while the Trident has 3 sets of 2 engines. And I can't redesign the skycrane to fit or I'll also have to redesign the solar array, tractor rover, and living quarters so they can be dropped on the surface. I'm going with this: put those incompatible pieces forward of the engines and hope it plays nice with the rest and doesn't unbalance the ship too much. I've only got two pieces up so far out of 5. Because of this I'm designing a new ship earlier than I wanted... But I wasn't too fond of the Trident's aesthetics anyway. It was built to be either a heavy hauler to Duna or a Jool system science ship, and it's making the Duna part more difficult that it has to be.

I'm running an AMD FX-4350 (4.2GHz) and Radeon R7 260x OC Edition with the graphics set all the way up and resolution at 1600x900. I usually get anywhere from 25-40 FPS depending on exactly what I'm doing and where (definitely not at my LKO tanker station or my Mun base, that's more like 7-20 FPS depending on what's going on around them) and my resolution change, up from 1366x768, in general hasn't made a difference. The GPU will bring down my FPS when looking at the ground at Kerbin and when using orange tanks for some reason, but mine is not overclocked at the moment either. I should probably turn down the graphics just a hair for now actually. Usually as others have undoubtably said, low FPS can be blamed on the CPU. The physics calculations in this game can melt even the fastest processors with these single core physics calculations... I bought this particular CPU over the 8350 simply because of the slightly higher stock clock speed since its a budget gaming rig. Overall I'm getting MUCH higher FPS than I was with my old laptop (Core i3 @ 2.3GHz, Intel Mobile 3000HD set at lowest graphics and 1366x768). Hope that helps some. I'd recommend a better graphics card than what I have to do max all the time, but its decent.

Just ran this on my rig. How'd I do? lol Mobo: MSI 970A-G46 (may be a limiting factor*) CPU: AMD FX-4350 running at stock 4.2 GHz GPU: MSI Radeon R7 260x OC Edition (overclock disabled at the moment) RAM: 8GB DDR3 GSkill RipJaws @ 1600MHz *I've read that this Mobo can't fully handle the 125w power draw of this CPU and will sometimes throttle it to keep from overheating the VRM. It will be replaced when budget allows. Also I derped and decoupled one or two booster stages late, if that makes a difference. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4VOBam9oo-3dXJXUDh6Njl6UUE/edit?usp=sharing Edit again to add: Holy crap, I just went to run this test again for my own satisfaction... And I forgot to throttle up the rocket before activating because most of my rockets at the moment don't use launch clamps or SRBs (and some will destroy the payload if I don't throttle up gradually). So when I realized that of course I tried to throttle up and save it. The crash was amazing.

Thanks! I was so scared I was going to be stuck... The science on that lander was the only reason I even went there. I wanted to unlock whatever new tech I could before building a proper Jool ship. Also a mission update: I ditched the lander in Dres orbit and made it home with a little fuel left by aerobraking at Kerbin

I literally just found out from this thread that you can fix rover wheels. D'oh! So many abandoned rovers. My longest drive in one stretch was about 30km (and back) across the northern ice cap of Kerbin thanks to a rocket malfunction while I was building a base. I had an MJ unit on that one so I locked target and sat back... And MJ crashed into said target and destroyed the rover so I had to reload a save and manually take over about 2km out. If that rover had an odometer though it'd probably range around 150km and soon to be more. I made it about 20km on the Mun with an old rocket powered rover before I hit a small ridge too fast and it just disintegrated and scattered the parts over another couple km.

My record so far is (only?) 1.4 kilometers because I underestimated the atmosphere for my Duna rescue mission and didn't really bring enough fuel to make corrections. Usually I try to make sure there's a rover available for things like that but I was packing light and hoping for the best. It was actually pretty good considering my track record of plopping down anywhere from 5-20km away from target.

Oh I see. Yes that certainly does change things lol. Massive ships like that fascinate me for some reason. If you try it good luck, I just had to aerobrake my largest ship at ~32km coming back from Dres to assist capture. That was the scariest thing I've done since my first Duna landing I think ("no seriously, deploy the chutes!")... I'll admit I retried it a few times. 38km did almost nothing and I flew right back into Kerbol orbit, 23km was way too much all the thrust in the world wouldn't save me from making a large fiery hole in the ground.

Oh my god. I fell into the lander I put on Dres and wobbled and balanced perfectly like this. I can't push it back. Oh my god. Whew. I jumped up into it and was able to use the reaction wheels to turn it back on its feet. And I take back my statement about waiting until the AN for transfer. I should have just been smarter about it in general

In my last d'oh moment (or series of them to be more accurate), Kurt died, one skycrane crash landed, another had to ditch its payload and then itself was ditched, and several future parts to my Mun base were lost. How, you ask? Because I'm an idiot, apparently. I had made a "living quarters" for my Mun base which I knew was a little off balance but I didn't think it was a big deal. After all, the deorbit burn and approach went fine. But when it was time to touch down, my skycrane derped out and all the throttle in the world wouldn't counteract the Mun's gravity (and the module was about .5 tons lighter than the last one I had dropped with it). Kurt was in the living quarters and died on impact but Kirbus the pilot survived with "minor" damage to the skycrane. So of course I blamed the skycrane and Kirbus demanded another one be sent to him with a new living quarters, which it was. This one: Instead of being unable to defeat gravity at the last second, this one deorbited fine but spazzed out a little on the decel burn and when it came time to really throttle up, it started to cartwheel so the payload was ditched. That's when I knew it was the module, not the skycrane. So I went and redesigned it and sent out another one (it had 3 struts hanging off it with docking ports at the end -- one at each side and one on the other side from the front door) so I took off the unbalanced one and that one was landed perfectly fine. THEN I got the bright idea to build a new rover and a solar array to send out there which sounded great, but because of the way it was built I had to do the stupidest orbital payload transfer ever, which looked like this: You can probably already see the problem. Because of the size of the rover and the engine arrangement on the skycrane, it was impossible to dock with it. So I took the solar array down and left the rover in orbit while I designed ANOTHER skycrane, which was really just the same one but with two fewer engines and some parachutes for a possible future Duna mission. I wasted way too much time with that mission.

My rescue mission to Duna and detour at Ike let me unlock a couple tech tree nodes, so I've been playing around with the big boy toys. Tested out a "refueling cube" for my large ships (it did NOT work): And currently I'm taking my newest ship, the KSS Trident, out to Dres. I brought a small lander so hopefully I will be able to touch down. This new ship is like the Maverick on steroids with almost 13,000 units of fuel capacity, 6 LV-Ns, and over 11,000m/s of DeltaV (compared to the Maverick's ~5,500) when fully fueled and loaded with only a small lander. The smaller tank behind the battery was already filled when I brought it up just in case the lifter decided it hated me, and I only bothered to fill the outer tanks before going out since I was already irritated with trying to get fuel to it with last generation tech and it's packing about 8,500 DV as is. It is also my first ship to not use solar panels as it sports 4 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. I really hope I don't run out of fuel halfway back from Dres, that would be disappointing and these figures for getting there are higher than I expected. I'll have to be more careful of my transfer window when coming back which I... Well I didn't do that at all when I left, I just burned prograde until I hit a Kerbin exit trajectory, which was apparently a really bad idea and I should have at least waited until the AN. Whatever though, too late to nit pick it now. Flying by the seat of my pants never gets old!

Jeb is "dude in charge" and although a bit insane he is very good at what he does and always takes the lead. A risk taker that can actually pull it off. Almost never on solid ground, he is usually found piloting a large transfer ship or other high profile missions or hanging out at the station waiting on a bigger and better ship to be built. He does like to test new designs but he does not however go on my "I wonder if this will actually fly" missions. Recently piloted my newest and best transfer ship to Duna to rescue Bill and ran out of fuel while trying to rendezvous with my orbital station on the return, used RCS to complete rendezvous and docking. Bill and Bob are the "normal" ones and are usually found on routine missions close to home but are considered experienced and reliable. Bob has been on my orbital station for quite a while and is in charge of its operation at the moment, while Bill tends to randomly sneak into dangerous missions without anyone noticing until it's too late to turn around (One-way trip to Duna, for example) Tomrod is a brave soul and has piloted several risky rescue missions or just plain untested ships or both, but is sometimes a little braindead. Once performed a successful rescue mission then absent mindedly almost got himself stuck in Kerbol orbit because he wanted to take a "detour." Currently on hiatus at the Mun Outpost after helping Kirbus to assemble it. Kirbus is a darn good pilot, a bit cocky and and very lucky. Usually found pushing the structural limits of a Skycrane somewhere. Has survived a couple nasty crashes and will try anything once, even if he has to abort the payload into the dirt to avoid getting himself killed. Recently was in charge of putting most of my Mun base on the surface; crash landed one Skycrane killing Kurt in the process and almost crashed the replacement he was sent (both due to engineering oversights on the payload). Kurt is a pretty chill guy. Willing to go on the "dangerous missions" but is careful and doesn't really take risks. First Kerbal to orbit the Mun. He was supposed to touch down and return but when fuel got low he decided not to do either, and instead parked himself in the best orbit possible for rescue. Recently killed in a tragic Mun accident (but has since resurrected himself). Geneton is the rookie pilot and alternates between overly cocky and nervous. Tends to do dumb things against his superiors' advice while arguing that its the "better way" or get himself into sticky situations but luckily hasn't crashed anything yet. Recently piloted the rescue lander at Duna and was the first Kerbal to touch down on Ike.

I found this thread while looking around for what others are flying to the Jool system (planning my first mission soon). That, sir, is impressive. I got a good laugh out of the lander testing too... Man I thought my current interplanetary ship's 6.5 minute burn to get to the Mun was bad. But it was well above normal working weight during testing, dragging a bunch of crap out there for a permanent base. Anyway I'm curious, did the beast ever make it? Or are you still burning

Managed to finish up the mission today When we last left our heroes things were going as well as expected, but fuel supplies were in question. As the Maverick swung back around within comm distance, everyone was anxious to get the rendezvous in motion. Jeb: Maverick to lander, are you ready to rendezvous? Bill: I was ready about 6 months ago. Let's do this. Jeb: Alright. Gen, what's your fuel status? Geneton: 373/450 units. I used a little more than I should have on corrective burns, but Bill would have hated me if I didn't try. Jeb: You should arrive with a few units to spare if you time everything right. Wait for my signal to -- Geneton! You're taking off way too early! Geneton: I've got this. I can take my apo out to 155km to slow down and be within 6km of you next orbit. Jeb: You realize that makes no sense, right? Geneton: ****! 33.5 units of fuel left after circularization, and my maneuver node was way off. There's something wrong with this computer. Jeb: That horrible ascent path you took didn't help... *sigh* Do what you can to get close, the Maverick can handle the rest. Geneton: I've taken my apo out to 369km, descending node 12.3 degrees and I've got nothing left but RCS. Jeb: What in the world were you trying to do? Ah, nevermind. I've raised my apoapsis to compensate and I have a 5.5km intercept. Killing relative speed at the ascending node... Don't touch anything, I'm coming to you. Geneton: 1.2km from you, I have a visual. 500m... 200...100... 50m. Jeb: Relative speed is less than 0.1. I'll rotate the ship so you don't screw this up too. Geneton: Sorry, next time I'll do better. Docking complete. Jeb: Doesn't matter now. I'm coming down to get your data. Everyone ready to take a look at Ike? Bill: Can we just go home? Geneton: Let me land on Ike, I'll prove that I can handle this. Jeb: If we have the fuel I'd have no problem with that. Bill, what's the status on that tanker? Bill: Apoapsis 1370km Periapsis 1026km, Ascending Node 147.3 degrees. It's not pretty. It's carrying about 1500 units of fuel but I don't think it's worth the trouble. Jeb: Let me run a few calculations, maybe we can meet it halfway... Wait a minute. It's traveling the opposite direction of us! Why did they even bother to send it? Setting course for Ike. Jeb: It's... Smaller than I expected. Gen, I've got 2152 units of fuel on the Maverick. I think we have enough to send you down but I'm going to be cutting it close on the return trip. It's up to you, but the extra science would be nice. Geneton: Let's do it, I'll watch my fuel better this time. I think I see a large flat spot over there -- Preparing for sep-- Jeb: WAIT. I'm not finished topping off your tanks. Are you trying to get yourself stuck out here? Geneton: Right. Awaiting your signal... Jeb: Okay, you're good now. Bring it down just like we practiced at the Mun. Geneton: Almost there. Burning retro for deceleration. Jeb: Nice approach. Geneton: This is too easy! Jeb: Alright, don't get cocky. Remember what happened an hour ago? Geneton: Even better than the Mun! Look how high I can jump! Jeb: I can't see you from here, Gen... Have your fun but don't forget to grab a soil sample and test for any seismic disturbances. Geneton: Of course. I'm almost finished now, I'll be meeting up with you shortly. Geneton: Heading to you Jeb. Approach is looking good. I'm circularized and have a 1.6km intercept at the ascending node, 182 units of fuel left. Jeb: Good, keep it coming. Geneton: I'm coming in at 6m/s. 60m, 30... Slowing down. Jeb: Alright that's close enough! I can feel the heat off your engines! Switch to RCS. Geneton: Docked and ready to go. Jeb: Alright, let's go home! Bill: Finally! Jeb: Don't get impatient, it looks like we're going to have to wait a while for a good transfer window back to Kerbin. After much waiting and burning and waiting some more, our heroes are back in Kerbin's SOI. Jeb: Alright, I've got 1620 units of fuel left. Starting circularization. The ascending node is pretty far off from the SSS Station, I don't know if we will have enough fuel to correct it. Bill: Home never looked so good! I don't care how you take us in, just put me on the ground. Jeb: Circularization complete. 365 units of fuel left. ...Settle in for a minute, I think I can rendezvous with the SSS. Jeb: Intercept established, but the tanks are almost dry. I don't think I'm gonna have enough to kill relative velocity... That's it, 383m away and all fuel is gone... 6 lousy meters per second. Screw that, I've practically got enough Monopropellant to deorbit this thing! I'm coming in. Bob: Jeb, what are you doing? I've never seen you approach so slow. Jeb: Don't ask. Bob: Well I'm glad to see you guys back in one piece. Bill, how was the ride? Bill: I don't want to see the inside of a ship for a long time! Jeb: Approaching docking port on Section 2... Docking at .02m/s, I'm tired of this station trying to rip itself apart. Alright. Gen, grab some fuel and take that lander down to Kerbin to deliver the data we collected... Take Bill with you. Geneton: On it! Jeb: Oh, and drop these extra science pods in the ocean, they're spent. Sweet sweet science. Notes: Of course just a spruced up telling of my haphazard rescue mission right down to the minute details (estimated some in the first post; this post they were pretty much spot on because I wrote a lot of it down). I think the Maverick itself was the only part of that mission I can be proud of, and only because it's been extensively tested. That was its first interplanetary mission though. MechJeb helped out a bit for plotting "efficient" courses in Kerbol SOI which had to be manually corrected anyway, the longer burns, and for the Smart A.S.S. feature. Autoland/ascent/rendezvous/dock were NOT used, what fun would that have been? Only other mod of note was the Docking Alignment Indicator by Navyfish which has proved to be invaluable. No quickloads were used that I recall. Hope someone was amused by it, I know it was fun for me. Just the right amount of screw ups to make it interesting without anything too catastrophic!

This was going to be a standard "what did you do in KSP today" post, but I thought that in premature celebration of the mission's success I'd write up a little story for it. It's not going to be terribly image intensive because I was too busy biting my nails to take a lot of screenshots, but I had to share. Edit: Maybe I should have put this in Mission Reports? I didn't see that before I posted. After making one final run to the Mun to drop off a solar array for the new outpost, the Storm MK II returned to the SSS Orbital Tanker Station for a minor refit for its most important mission yet, and assumed the name KSS Maverick. It was time to rescue Bill from Duna after him being stranded there for over a year. Bob: Jeb, how's she looking? Jeb: Looking great. All systems nominal. The tanks are topped off and Geneton is all settled in the lander. You should really think about upgrading that station so they don't have to send you a refill every time I come by. It wasn't so bad before that empty fuel tank knocked out Section 3, I tried to tell those guys to drop them before circularizing. We are a bit nervous but Bill is our priority and I think Gen's got enough parachutes on that rig to land on the Mun dry. Bob: Um, I don't think I'd try that -- You know what, nevermind. Best of luck. Let's try to bring the ship back in one piece... Jeb: Don't I always? Bob: ...Just be careful. Are you sure you don't want to take the escape pod? Jeb: You need it more than I do with all these hotshots trying to dock at 10m/s. I can do without the extra weight for this one. Jeb: Everything is within acceptable tolerances for Duna approach. Man that was a long ride! I'm bringing us in to about 120km... Starting circularization burn. You hanging in back there Gen? Geneton: It's getting a little warm, maybe we should have docked the lander up front? Jeb: You're the first to complain... I'm sure that tin can of yours can take it. You just might glow a little from the radiation. Geneton: The WHAT? Jeb: Nothing. Jeb: Maverick to ISM-2, do you copy? Bill: Bout time you guys got here. Can the new guy land that thing close enough or what? Jeb: Don't worry he was one of the top pilots in his class. Circularization burn complete... Hang on Gen, I need to grab your science data. Don't forget to collect any data you can on the surface to augment whatever Bill already has. Geneton: Roger. Initiating separation for atmospheric entry. All systems go. Jeb: You're cleared for deorbit. You've got one shot at this, make it count. -- Bill, did that tanker ever make it out here? Bill: It's here, but you're not gonna like its orbit. Jeb: Jeez, is that thing in polar orbit? Always gotta let the flunkies fly the probes, huh. I probably won't need it anyway. Geneton: Deorbiting now. Wait, why am I not moving? Jeb: Try lighting up the main engines, that usually helps. Geneton: Right, sorry. Just a little nervous. Deorbiting now. I should come down just past Bill's lander. Jeb: You're doing fine, just keep it steady. Geneton: I'm coming in too fast! This is nothing like training! Jeb: Hang in there Gen! This isn't the Mun, stay off the throttle. You don't have enough fuel for a decel burn. The atmosphere is thin but don't worry the parachutes will do their job. Geneton: Alright... 25km to target. I'm losing speed early, I thought you said -- burning for correction! Jeb: Watch your fuel. Bill can kick rocks, it's better than both of you getting stuck down there. Geneton: Deploying parachutes. It's working! Looks like I'm gonna come up short though. Jeb: Okay, just set her down and we'll figure out the rest. Bill: Are you even on the right side of the planet? Geneton: Very funny. Parachutes fully deployed, I was getting worried for a minute -- 9.7m/s at 100m. Jeb: Nice and easy. Burn just before you touch down. 4-5m/s should be fine. Geneton: The eagle has landed. Jeb: The what? Geneton: I don't know, I heard it somewhere. I just touched down, everything is looking good. Fuel levels are better than I had hoped. I'm, um, 1.4km away from Bill though. Bill: You rookies can't get anything right. Exiting my ship now, and grabbing all the data I can carry. Geneton: I'm not going anywhere. Bill: Man, that is one ugly lander. Where did you find that thing, Jeb's back yard? Anyway I'm happy to see it. Geneton: Can you grab the data from that pod before you come up? I can't chance taking off with it. Bill: After all that walking, and you guys taking a year to come get me... Fine. Let's just go. Jeb: Are you guys about done messing around down there? Get set up for rendezvous so we can get going. I want to take a closer look at Ike on the way out. You're gonna have to wait a few hours for a good intercept. Geneton: I'm ready when you are. Jeb: I'm about to be out of comm range. Shutting off all nonessential systems to conserve energy, see you on the other side. To be continued... Do Bill and Geneton have enough fuel to rendezvous? Will Jeb risk trying to catch up with the tanker before leaving? Will our heroes fly by Ike, or attempt a landing FOAR SCIENCE? Find out on the next minisode! And what idiot was flying the tanker?

Well I don't think I tried to go straight up except for the first couple that I didn't intend to get into an actual orbit... But I did build some fail-tastic rockets that looked far better than they functioned when I was learning the mechanics of it all (the balance between fuel capacity and TWR) On the other hand I did build a couple of probes that were designed to (and did) go straight up and out of Kerbin's SOI to transfer to another planet. Maybe not the most efficient way but hey I was just seeing if it would work. One of them as I recall did an accidental flyby/slingshot around the Mun within 30km of the surface and at a very high speed just because I wasn't paying attention.

Take 2 with the Storm MK II's Mun Base project and a redesigned for the third time lander, this time with moar thrust. The Storm is carrying the living quarters on the side and a Comm dish setup behind the lander. Figure I'll take that first since its light to make sure this lander isn't going to go all derpy on me. Edit: Finally some success! I found out the living quarters were unbalanced which apparently didn't make much difference until I was closer to the Mun. So I quickly redesigned it and sent it out on a one-way transfer probe PLUS a slightly redesigned "Mun Dropper" with extra torque for those larger slightly unbalanced modules. This one went down so smoothly I thought something was wrong. So now I have two almost identical sky cranes at the Mun, one on the surface (at the moment) and one docked to the Storm in orbit. If I have enough fuel left over I'm gonna just leave one there, probably the less controllable one since it would only be used to escape to a transfer ship. Docking this crap together was easier than it was on Kerbin. Since the gravity is so low the magnets on the docking ports pull the tractor off the ground stable but not quite docked where I can rotate it because it's so slippery up there I can never approach straight. Then just a slight thrust from the side mounted engines and it's docked and ready to go flip over wherever I need it to go. Unfortunately at the time it was built I didn't need to transport any Kerbals so I didn't think to put any seats on it just like I didn't put any freaking lights on either of the sky cranes. So I will probably be sending a new and more fun rover for the dudes stationed at the base.

I forgot to edit my post on the second page but I did find a couple screenies for your amusement from my first Mun trip (I honestly can't remember now if I landed or not, I don't have any screenshots of a landing) This one is a two-parter, the larger stage stayed in LKO to collect some science and the small capsule on the end went to the Mun. I seem to remember Johnwise crashing on reentry with the science section. Apologies for the quality, it was on my old computer in v.22. And this is the crazy contraption I sent to go pick Kurt up from Munar orbit.

^Wow, that's really cool. I bet your CPU hates you lol... That actually gives me a couple ideas, not that I'm going to rip it off or anything. Just that my next station is going to be a little less "discarded ship pieces parked in orbit" and more station. I just had a mishap with my Mun base project. Either I overestimated the capabilities of my lander or I underestimated the weight of the hitchhiker container setup I was bringing down (the more likely case)... Actually I just checked the weights after I wrote that and this makes no sense to me at all. I got the rover down with no issues and didn't expect any (1.3t). Got the 360 unit fuel tank down alright (5.1t, this is the one I was worried about). Then I go to bring down the living quarters (4.6t) and everything is going fine until the last, I dunno, 50m? It was so close but it was like the Mun just decided to suck the whole ship down at the last second and I couldn't overpower the gravity for some reason. Hit the ground somewhere around 20-30m/s at full throttle, after being at ~5m/s just seconds earlier. Kirbus, the pilot, survived with only minor damage to his lander but Kurt was in the hitchhiker container which vaporized on impact. The only way I can even rationalize this is if Kurt weighed about a ton. I did the exact same thing each time: Drop off, rendezvous with transfer ship and top off the tanks, head back. I can't even blame the Kraken for this one, I thought it was a glitch so I tried again two more times with similar results and then just accepted it. I guess Jeb will head back in the orbiting ship and break the news to everyone in person.

Because I'm a genius, I flew all the way to the Mun and undocked the lander / rover only to realize two of the engines on the lander were pointed at wheels on the rover so it was impossible to land. I called it a day and redocked to the main ship and headed home. When I got there I ditched the lander and sent up a new and "improved" one, which won't fit onto the main ship the way I wanted it to. But it's okay, I'll make it work. I did manage to get the Mun base modules docked to the ship this time, on the side ports. I couldn't do it before because they were too heavy for my docking bot but I was able to do it with the lander. Currently on the way back to try this again and hope my lander's engines are powerful enough to bring down 5t of module each trip. On the negative side of things, there is absolutely no way this ship is going outside Kerbin's SOI, at least not with anything attached to it. I had about 2500 DV when I left LKO, which is down significantly from its unloaded DV obviously. But why would I take it somewhere without loads of useless stuff? Also I'm starting to learn why some people love MechJeb so much. If I had to actually pay attention through this 6 minute burn just to go to the Mun, I might lose my mind.

The shakedown cruise of the KSS Storm went better than expected. It went to the Mun under full working load and established rough equatorial orbit then dropped the lander onto a spot I thought I hadn't been yet. Turns out that I had, and I had some extra fuel (in the Storm, not the lander) so I made a rendezvous and refilled the lander's tanks then took the whole thing to an orbit maybe 20 degrees off the poles. I was then able to set the lander down in a nice big crater that I knew for sure I hadn't been to, and make the trip worthwhile by bringing home some science. Good thing I remembered to get the data back to the cockpit via EVA because I spent too much time on the surface playing around with the lander and had to jettison the main tanks and go to the "oh crap" stage, which didn't have RCS. So it's a good thing I took the docking bot with me because I had to retrieve the command pod and bring it back to the Storm. The return trip was uneventful and I got home with fuel to spare, which was expected since it's really supposed to be an interplanetary ship. Mission pictures: Nice view of Kerbin from here: However, the cruise did reveal some flaws and some things I just probably should have done differently. So now I have it's successor which hasn't been properly named yet (it's operating under the name KSS Storm MK II at the moment). Its core went up in one piece and weighs in at just over 70 tons which as it turns out is right around where my current lifter maxes out with a couple modifications to accommodate the new ship's long engines, and I had to burn the nukes a bit to finish circularizing. The main differences in this ship are removal of one large fuel tank (just plain not needed for what I'm using it for at the moment), a hitchhiker container, and better looks IMO. Its maiden voyage will be to bring a tractor rover to the Mun to be dropped for my future base there. It was also supposed to take the first two base modules as well, a hitchhiker and a fuel tank for the rover that can be seen in the background, but due to technical oversights on the size of docking port used on the side tanks it will have to come back for them and tow them like the rover instead. Ready for action As you can see from the picture above (if you remember my others, at least) there was a slight mishap at my tanker station. I was time warping with debris nearby and when I stopped warp a large fuel tank had transposed itself into one of the tanks on the station and when I stopped warp... Kablewy. 2 solar arrays were ripped off, the hitchhiker containers I had recently brought up got flung out to who knows where. Thankfully that section was unmanned and nothing "too important" was harmed. Actually, it's the same tank you can see floating in the background of this next pic from when it was all still intact. Rover being grabbed

Threads like this remind me why I love this game. My first couple rockets didn't even make it out of the atmosphere and I still can't figure out what I was thinking with the one that finally made stable orbit. It felt so great to get it right and I just knew I was going somewhere from there. And oh god the preparations I made to go to the Mun for the first time. It went way smoother than expected, the landing itself was about as close to perfect as I could have asked for. But I ran out of fuel before I could get back out of Mun orbit and had to launch a "massive" (now completely laughable) rescue mission before I even knew how to rendezvous properly. So my first zero-g EVA ended up being a nail-biting 200+m leap of faith. It was the ultimate victory to bring my Mun-walking hero home. I'll try to remember to edit this post and add pics of what I can find when I get home, I know I still have one of the rescue ship at least.

Impressive! I like how they're just clinging to the thing for dear life, lol. I'm scared to even attempt a rescue mission for my Kerbal stranded on Eve I like it. I wonder if wings work underwater to an extent, could make a sort of hydrofoil (I think that's the right word)? I've yet to try a boat, well other than the accidental kind that happens at a couple hundred m/s at the end of KSC Runway and goes boom. I have been working on my Kerbin polar base a little more, got a Comm dish setup now and the base is now manned with 4 Kerbals. I managed to get the dish the closest to the base of anything else yet at around 2.2km away (I know, not impressive at all). I'm really getting some use out of that little tractor rover, glad I packed plenty of power for it. It can make about 10km without having to stop and wait for the sun to come back out. (I guess I'm not exactly on the pole or the sun would stay out?) In the background of this screenshot you can see my little "oopsie" from when I brought the first 3 Kerbals in. Retrieved the module from about 10km away and brought it right up to the base then as I was turning around to dock it I went into reverse and tipped the whole thing over on its end, rover and all. I tried to use the landing legs + SAS to right it but it just wasn't happening and the command module popped off the large SAS which was still connected to the rover. I was able to get the rover + SAS unit rightside up and my Kerbals were fine of course, didn't even have to roll the command module. Closeup of my, um, miscalculation.