Francois424

Parts count > Beauty > Utility > Reusability. I will also sacrifice burn times to be able to use Large Ion engines, although sometimes the Nukes are better. If I can have a 15k dv ugly craft vs a 10k dv beauty, I'll often save the ugly but use the beauty. I've tried re-usable vessel but my favorite one kept having a Kraken strike every time I'd get in orbit of Kerbin. I've only recently (1 year later) started working on re-usable crafts. Of course with 1.0.5 100-120 parts is the max before running into the yellow timer so it kinda cramp my style and I rely on very small craft docked to a main fuel tank Shuttle-style and I make the 120 parts budget. I have no choice but to be hopeful of KSP1.1 and wait. Or mod my own parts to futher reduce part count (such as a 2000 kilo-newton nuke or a 1000 kilo newton Ion + Nuclear reactor(one part instead of 4-10 solar panels)). I usually mod my things but that disqualifies me for most accomplishments. I got out of Eve with my quad-rotor craft last week... I did not brag about THAT part. EJ_SA is working on a ONE PART space shuttle with ONE PART Orange tank + TWO PARTS boosters (+ decouplers, struts, rcs ports... when you stick them on)... but a 50 parts space shuttle dropping to sub 25 once in space? hell yeah !

I missed this suggestion the first time around. But checking which options you want in a "Custom" game would be insanely fun. I kinda like paying upgrades with science. It gives a purpose on stripping Minmus and Mün clean and still have a lot of wiggle room to clean up some other bodies. Some options should be : - Contracts [ yes / no ] - Science [ yes / no ] - Money [ yes / no ] - Reputation [ yes / no ] - Building needs upgrade [ yes / no ] Why? I can have a "Science mode w/Contracts" without editing my save file to unlock everything on the KSC. But I could still have everything else except updating buildings... could even remove money if I wanted. Having the choices in the menu would be the best for everyone.

I've tried doing that back in 0.24.2 and the trailers always crashed or do not want to turn correctly to follow my main drive. How do you manage it... genuinely curious.

So I DID send Jeb in an untested craft to Pol yesterday... Skipping right away to the good stuff : Hovering close to the ground, Apollo-style, looking for a place to land : KSC? The Ion-Delta has Landed ! Far shot of the flag, Jeb, and Valentina (She insisted to tag along and even tho knowing it might have been a fail mission. I guess she did not take kindly of not being part of the Eve exploration rover mission), Mandatory Close shot : Final shot before taking off back to the orbiting fuel tank and it's Nuclear propulsion (not that I need it as this tiny plane is rated for 6500 dV on it's own. Gotta love having an ion engine). So there we go, Pol just got a bit of love too. Really starting to run out of interesting missions until 1.1 hits. I wonder where I'll go next ? Maybe rove a bit on Eeloo, my shuttle is nearing that place anyways. Stay posted !

I would try and stick a Beam in the middle of your 3 engines, strut the outside (the 3 points of your 'triangle' to the decoupler. Or you can add another inverted triangle below to contain the engines (just put stack decouplers for each engine). But it will need strutting either way.

Finally reached the North Pole of Eve. What a long ride that was. At first I was looking into Eve's specs, and I notice that it's only 100km more than Kerbin, for 700 km(?). Yeah, forgot to multiply by 3.14159 to calculate the circumference... then noticed that value is not in the game information on selected planets/moon... why ? Maybe should be in. But w/e the trip took me 1350km divided on many 50km stretch on many RL days. Data gathered from all the experience will be invaluable in future KSP career games ! Here's a few mementos of my trip : A beautiful Eve sunset. Just looks amazing with the displays of colors. I always RP it as an Aurora Borealis hitting the super strong Eve magnetic field. Nearing the north Pole... Umm very unusual canyons and quite difficult to navigate. Kudos to the creator of the rover I am using for making it extremely sturdy. You know what? I better check what the game has in store for me, 10km out from the poles more or less... OUCH, Why do I get the feeling I know where this is going ? Okay so after about a gazillion F9 moments, I made it NEAR the pole. I wanted to get a picture on the edge but quite frankly it's impossible to reach by driving. Some canyons would just make the rover explode. at other moment I slammed the breaks and phantom/Kraken force would accelerate my rover to insane speeds. So I turned back to get out of there and it took nearly 90 minutes to do 3-5 kilometers. If you go there, be careful of the 10km circle around that pointy edge (see above picture). It's deadly. If you want a rover challenge, go, do it, but don't come crying back to me afterwards. So Here I am, near "Eve's Hand" (an Eve-rated "Scott Feather"), almost ready for extraction... but there's 2 last pieces of business before ! The drone ! We forgot the un-manned plane we landed on Eve. So we remote-controlled onto it and had to bring it here as well... And finally, the North Pole flag... ... ... Umm guys, I said the North Pole Flag ... come on, Mission control are waiting ! You know the one with the flag in the midle of the 3 vehicle with you guys smiling ? . . . . . . . . . *Small Kerbal Voices* "Humm, sorry boss the Picture for that one did NOT take, we know we pressed the correct keys to make it happen, but it came out blank !" . . . . . . . . . *Grumbles, swearing, kicking some rockomax garbage lying around* -- " Okay, who wanted to go to the Eeloo retirement station again ?"... "Oh the room emptied before I asked..." -- Angry Shout -- "JEB !!! Where are you I need to vent you on a suicide mission to Pol with an untested craft !"

I used to play 0.24.2 all the time with the 64 bits client, and only crashed once landing on the Mün. As long as KER/KAC are a thing in 64-bits, I'll stay there. there are, of course, about 50 more I would want haha.

The slowdowns caused by parts count, and the lack of (stock) tools to remedy such problems. Since 0.25 it progressively became worse and worse, such as my 200 parts craft lagging as much as my old 450 parts one. We should be able to take the body of a ship (Tanks of any type of propellant + RCS + Nosecones) and make it ONE part. RCS Jets/Engines/docking ports could not, but we'd save a ton on fuel tanks/SAS alone. Lack of electric Propellers, and no way to easily edit the tech tree comes in close second. Barring that, I'm hoping for 1,1 and we'll work our way from there.

My first Jool-5 back in 0.90 (or was it 0.25 ?). Although my mothership was modded (end-game engines using 4 Super Ions of 250Kn/ea), everyone of my landers used stock parts/fuel, which meant bring a huge white tank of LFO to the mission. Crashed a few times learning how-to's on Tylo and trying to land on Land on Laythe as my "Laythe Ascender" did very poorly on water (Ironic, I know). That was fun, and I'll need to do this again in 1.1 (stock if good performances and no need to reduce part count)

Whenever it happens I hope it happens in my lifetime. I feel kinda sad we haven't gone anywhere, not even the moon (manned) since my birth, let alone since I was old enough to remember stuff. Unmanned is pretty cool don't get me wrong, so is discovering exo-planets. But it's about time humanity does something and I don't care if it's Chinese, US,UK, whomever. I'm going to say in the fourthies (~2040 or so).

What mod are those golden containers ?

I've have this bug for a while now (I think since 1.0.5), and tonight I was not careful and just lost a ship without any F9 safety to recover. I transferred BOB from my a stock Mk 1_2 pod to the stock science lab, and the portraits disappeared. Now when this happen you must do nothing, go back to tracking or change ship, then come back, boom, solve. But I pressed "C" to go into IVA mode thinking I would check the interior of the LAB. Ship was completely locked-up. I tryied going to tracking center, now impossible to select my craft at all. Oh everything else in the game works fine btw, but that one does not. Quitting the game to main menu and back does not work either. Quitting the game to Desktop does not work either. No crashes or anything. As long as I do not try to return to that ship, everything works fine. Just thought I'd post this here in case anybody else had the issue. With 1.1 so close I hope it's fixed in that version.

A few pages back I had replicated the "Tharsis" from that dice game. It was as flimsy as the real thing asking nothing more than to break apart on the easiest of turns (or almost). I did use it extensively, ferrying crew here and there in the Kerbol System, but I retired it 2 days ago. I decided to work on it's replacement, combining crew space (9), a full suite of stock science experiments, a Science Lab (not for abusing science but a nice place for the scientist to live and store all experiments), and an improved engine section. 12,500 Delta-V @ 192 THR (0.13 TWR tho... I could have had 17.5K D-V @ 0.03 TWR, but I'm not that crazy), 2 shielded docking ports, 1 Docking Sr, Nuclear Reactor, and the usual utilities including an Ore Scanner. The Mk1_2 pod + the Hitchhiker features an heatshield and can be decoupled to return to Kerbin, and another one (or RP - the same one) can be brought back-up to re-dock for a crew rotation. Now that I think about it, I did not put any remote control on the rest of the ship... Oh well, no biggies, let's hope the main computer does not die or go on a murdering spree. Very solid, does not wobble, and perfect for long range expeditions (worse case, the 3 docking ports allow for more Xenon tanks for extended range) to future OPM. Enjoy !

That base on Laythe is coming along fine !

I've never used it, but kOS might be what you are looking for. Of course ou have to program it yourself, but at least it's something.

Ever since I first landed on Pol in 0.23.5, I fell in love with her. It's a long distance relationship and her father does not like me "Aerobreaking" by anymore, so we don't see each other often. But I will put a station around her one day. We'll be together every day then, fueling that love to even further horizons !

I managed to get an experimental Eve Rotor-lifter to bring my 3 Kerbal home... I used the space shuttle approach but with a much bigger tank (about 10k LF for one nuke; lots of DV... Long burn times), Got in orbit 91x91km of EVE... Decouple == MAJOR EXPLOSION ! F9 - Decouple == LolNope ! MAJOR EXPLOSION. Quit - Reload, Decouple == "I'm Afraid I can't do that, Francois424..." MAJOR EXPLOSION. Okay, I manage a safe re-entry even with that strapped on my belly... Decouple while around 20km == BIG BADABOUM ! Explosionssssss ! /SadPanda. I went to VAB but as I looked over the ship specs I noticed I had Kerbin Selected for KER, so even tho D-V is a non-issue, my maximum TWR on EVE is about 0.95, so I most likely would not have been able to lift off anyways. Back to drawing board... My poor Kerbals will have to sit tight for another year it looks like. Still, here is the picture of my last 2 days. At least I got the launcher right (and the craft, even tho not Eve Worthy in current config). :

@Proteus Man I love your design. This take my Rotund interplanetary (w/Nukes) ship, boost it on steroid both on looks and technology and goes home with it. If I did not ground myself to KSP 1.1 I'd just jump-in and do a Jool-6 (Snark's mod for Jool biomes) with it. But I still have to bring the Eve crew home *shudders* which is what I've been working on for 2 weeks >_<; Soon..TM

My List : - Electric Propellers -- For Kerbin/Eve/Laythe/Jool (if it ever gets multiple atmospheric biomes), future atmospheric Bodies. - Larger parts (2.5m Nerva, 1.25/2.5m Ion Engines, 1,25m RTG) -- Part Count reducer. - Nuclear Reactor (1.25/2.5m) -- Easy! I did mine in 5min, take the code from fuel cell but change LFO by a created "Uranium" resource (I used very close to RL weight and works great), and make it efficient. - Bigger "Stick-it-on" solar Panels ( 2x2 / 3x3 and the likes ) - a 2-Kerbal capsule - Either a fuel switcher so we can cram whatever we want in tanks, or Some decent space-looking LF tanks. Either spherical tanks or rocket looking parts. And I agree with @BloodDusk using current parts if all my boosters are the exact same 6 parts (Cone, ASAS, Orange tank, Orange tank, ASAS, Mainsail), then welding it together for 1 part would be awesome. @fireblade274 agreed ! KSP1.1 will trump everything by allowing quite the collection of mods to be used.

@ThePULSAR I've know about this for a while, and I *still* cannot find any way to purchase this. I've followed your link, kickstarter, which does not allow to purchase after the original deadline (stupid but whatever). I've even left a comment to Nassault on his channel, no answer. I wanted to have the physical goodies that came with it to watch it on my TV. Oh well, there's at least YouTube, eventually.

Hey all, a simple request for you expert modders out there that should not take long. I want a transparent (like KER) rectangle into which the only thing displayed is for example : 216 km/h (in case of my vehicule rolling/flying/falling @ 60 m/s). No need for decimal point after the integer as well. The size ? About a quarter up to half? of the image to follow. Color should be something bright to be able to be read against most of KSP planet's background... Electronics-Led-blue ? Something like this (remove the lines, the LX1017682 (obviously) and the MPH unless you want to program this indicator to be configurable to display both, which I am not asking for) : Thank you for any assistance

If it can bring 64 bits stable 1.1 earlier, I'm game. 64 bits is top priority for me. Thanks for keeping us posted guys !

As much as I like plane and making copies of shuttles, or making an X-15 that can get to space... In the long run I prefer a 3-5min launch to a 9-15min one. That is really the gist of it. With re-entry heat of 1.0.x, I really miss an ablator underside that I would love to stick on my shuttles / planes. Maybe in 1.2

I had this Eeloo station back in 0.90 where I would send Kerbals I did not need anymore. Sometimes they wanted to stretch their legs so head down to the planet to drive a few KMs into a not-so-balanced rover. When they had enough they could come back to the retirement home station. Since this was before ISRU and I had not installed Kethane or anything else, I had made a part called the KRAKEN DRIVE (based on ppl's stories on the forum) that would had infinite fuel @ 100 thrust. It was only used by the shuttle on that station so there was no abuse in game

"Home Grown Rocketry" has some really nice parts including an amazing Soyuz capsule which are 1.875m. I've been watching Mike Aben's series on Youtube and both is "Korion" and the ships he launches are really nice. If you're interested, you can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgN6W0hEKhqavS5M-Xj7bjQ I might get these parts in 1.1 to experiment with them. But after the future art pass on existing parts, I would not mind some nice additions in the stock game as well.