G'th

I FRICKIN LANDED ON DUNA FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER 2000+ HOURS OF PLAYING KSP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, sort of. I'm testing my new Duna lander (based on a certain ascent vehicle from a certain recent movie) so I hyperedited it into orbit above Duna to see how well it could land. The way I came in for landing ended up being fairly inefficient as I nearly burned all of my fuel by the time I touched down (even though I had a good 300m/s buffer). But considering this was my first soft landing on an atmospheric body other than Kerbin I think I did well. But even though I technically cheated (by skipping the whole Duna transfer thing), it still is the first time I've landed any Kerbal safely on another planet. And suffice it to say, IT WAS FRICKIN AWESOME! Obviously I landed in a relatively uninteresting area but even so. In doing this I've finally found the inspiration and drive to actually go through with an entire Duna exploration program, something I've been trying to get off the ground since forever but never could do because I'd either get bored and want to change up my mods or I'd end up playing something else.

A mix of both would be the most efficient out of a choice of either or. There's purposes on both sides that the other can't provide efficiently, and they both can complement each other pretty well. You wouldn't want to construct a super large space station with medium lift vehicles (as it'll take years if not decades and very possibly be more costly depending on how you do it), but you also don't want to use heavy lift if you're not fully utilizing its capabilities with every launch.

Just a handy tip for anybody having issues with the experiments exploding is to try and do this: When you have the item out ready to be placed, instead of trying to attach it to the ground or just dropping it, instead raise it (using B IIRC) some way above the surface so that the entire experiment is above the surface. Then, drop it. It'll drop but shouldn't explode, and depending on the gravity of the place you're in it should just plop down, bounce a little and come to a rest.

Well he actually explained it to me. His dad was apparently one of those types as well, so growing up he was already hearing about that. But then came his schooling where his teachers either never really got into it or just plain didn't know how to explain it, and all he ever picked up on was how much radiation is in space. He knew planes could work and such (because duh) but because no one could explain space travel to him he more or less resigned to being extremely doubtful that it was possible, at least farther out than the Van Allen belts at any rate.

I don't think any spacecraft would ever be designed with the option to potentially destroy itself at the flick of a switch, no matter how many layers of security and what not you could put on top of it. And more over, they needed explosive decompression, and just going by how the doors were portrayed in the movie, they wouldn't have been able to generate near the same amount of thrust from just opening the doors as they would by blowing the door.

So, me and my friend just got back from seeing the Martian some two hours ago. And after the movie finished out (and of course I was flush with amazement) he told me that he didn't believe we could really go to Mars or even the Moon! Yes, my friend is (or, was) one of those people who don't believe spaceflight is actually possible. So, upon hearing this rather than scoffing and getting all huffy puffy, I convinced him to come watch me go to Mars in KSP-RO. And I did, and he was still unconvinced (naturally because this is a game yadda yadda yadda) so then I booted up Orbiter for him. Now, he's the type of gamer that, much like me, likes to play flight simulators. So, when I booted up Orbiter and did the same thing, it was quite literally like seeing a light-bulb flicker on as he watched me do it. So, once I saw that he was actually open to the idea, I started explaining how it actually works. And all said and done, I just took him home, now a full on believer. Hooray for science!

Tequila

Easy. Go to Tekto

Indeed and if you don't turn it off and try to turn it off after the fact, it doesn't wipe the effect along with it.

Is there any mod out currently that disables or otherwise gets rid of the annoying red glow parts get when they start to get overheated? It is extraordinarily annoying and it practically never goes away.

^ I can't speak for the quality of OpenGL on Linux, but using forceopengl on Windows for me only sacrifices AA, which for me has never been a deal breaker visually. And it enables me to pack on quite a bit of mods, both visual and otherwise.

Yeah part count is going to be a huge culprit for lag. And spaceplanes in particular are VERY easy to go overboard with on part counts. And when you throw in aero effects (where it has to look at each part to see how its supposed to be behaving, etc etc) it just gets worse. Something else you can do is to reduce the AeroFX quality (which can be found in the in-game settings) to low or even minimal. They won't look smooth, but they'll be functional. And honestly I think the lower settings look a little bit better anyway, so it might work better for you and save you some frames.

Gimp, Photoshop, or Paint.net. Beyond that, as long as you use the correct image size (250x160) then the world is your oyster really, you can do just about anything you want with it. A good trick though if you're trying to do something thats a bit more detailed and can't be done very easily in the small size , is to start your flag with an image size of 2500x1600 so that you'll have a lot more breathing room. Basically with that you'd just create your flag as if you were operating at the actual size, but now you can put some more detail into it that wouldn't have been easy at the smaller size. This is very useful for anything thats text heavy (or requires larger text but can't get to fit properly into the smaller size). Then once you're done with that, just rescale the entire image down to 250x160 and you have your flag. You likely won't retain any very very small details (IE stuff you can barely see even on the larger size), but any medium sized details will be much more pronounced after you scale it down compared to if you just did it at the smaller size.

Welp, unless KSP does it differently than every other game out there, there shouldn't be any need to mess with the mesh unless you're going to completely change the shape of the planet's surface or if you want to do some proper bump maps, both of which aren't that necessarily required if you want to to do a high resolution texture. Changing the planets surface would be too much work for what you want to do, and doing a bump map would result in a very high visual quality, but on the same token I'm not even sure if KSP can utilize a bump map for planets. I've never seen a texture pack that's included one. Now, as for creating a higher resolution texture, all you need is an image editing program (Gimp, Photoshop, or Paint.net are going to be the key choices, with the first and last being completely free and without hassle to acquire) and some moderate artistic ability. Typically what I would do is pull up the original texture as a reference and go about recreating it in whatever resolution you want your new texture to be. Another method, and one that might be easier if you don't have any artistic ability, is to just upscale the original texture and then go about touching it up so that its richer and takes more of an advantage of the increased resolution. However, doing this isn't a perfect solution as the end result can run the gamut from awful looking to amazing regardless of skill level.

^ Going off of the life support idea, I think it might be interesting if the MedBay could extend life support for a set amount of Kerbals, essentially making it so either all or only a certain set of life support resources last longer.

So, I've been making preparations to finally start visiting some of the planets I've never actually sent anything too legitimately, and my first attempt I want to actually be a Voyager 1 esque mission (using the Voyager from the Real Probes mod no less ). Now, my question is to get that key transfer from Jool to Sarnus. Now the easiest way would be to just wait until they're aligned right so that you can send the probe and just let it go. However, if what I've been reading in various places is correct, then I should be able to just use Jool to fling me over to Sarnus regardless right? (also, though I know I shouldn't because i'm making it that much harder on myself, I'll also be using remote tech for this)

Manned? Only to interplanetary space. Unmanned? I've landed probes on Eve and Duna, though one was DOA and the other wasn't even intended to be able to land. I'm planning on changing that though once and for all.

It truly is an extraordinary read. You will weep at how plausible it is when you realize just how much of it could have been real. Anywhoo, here's a catalog of my current ETS recreations: Looks wise a lot of it is still being tweaked, but performance wise they are working as perfectly as I can get. Eventually I should stop being stubborn and do the Russian and ESA rockets too. But for the Russian stuff I've been hesitant because all the decent Russian mods are all disconnected and I'm not even sure what all could go together or not. (I know Tantares, but I'd still need to sit down and see if I could actually make the Russian rockets using nothing but the pack. And theres also the fact that I'm bigger on replica parts rather than stockalike stuff). I'm also not ashamed to just say that Russian spacecraft are just freaking weird looking to me ESA wouldn't be too terribly difficult, but because they're not manned rockets (and because my only unmanned launches wouldn't look right not being flown on an American rocket anyway) I would hardly ever use them beyond a screenshot to say "i did it!" But, if this mod carries out the entire ETS catalog, then I won't have to! Dat crawler tho

Yeah thats my method. I control my breathing and try to hold my breath for consecutively longer periods until they go away. Sometimes takes a while though.

Every modding community always those hidden gem mods that are very obscure but just so very very awesome that its basically criminal they don't get more exposure, and I'm always searching for them no matter what game it is. My favorite hidden gem for KSP right now is Starvision's Flag Decals mod, which I was able to re-purpose in order to make this possible: There used to be a couple more but updates have long since broken them beyond my ability to repair. So, what are your favorite hidden gems?

It would be a cool mod I think, especially for Interstellar players. Treat the alien tech like free parts from contracts (so that you can either keep it indefinitely in your part catalog or use it once on a craft) and it'd definitely give some neat purposes to exploring out in the void. For instance, combining such a mod with something like KerbalGalaxy, and then making it so the parts either only spawn in interstellar space or embedded in very rare asteroids (perhaps E-class?) would be very interesting. You'd also need some specialized scanning equipment to do it though so its not just "pick the obvious alien tech floating out here that I can somehow see".

Oh you guys suck I'm just finishing up recreating all of it using other mods and now you guys are just outright making the parts >.< Anyways, do feel free to hit me up for help on this. Not only am I intimately familiar with pretty much all of the American rockets and spacecraft, I've also figured out some appropriate stats for the F1-A and J2-S engines (as they form the crux of what I think is the coolest part of ETS). Something I definitely recommend is to work on enhancing the detail in the parts as you go. While nixonheads models were great for the illustrations, gamewise they'll be a bit lacking. Another thing to consider is the interaction with FASA (as well as the other Apollo era mods), as well as to whether or not to do your own Sky/Spacelab. There's going to be quite a bit of overlap between the Apollo era mods and this and for anyone who wants to go from Apollo all the way through Skylab and Spacelab, Freedom and then Artemis, Orion, and Armstrong (like I do ), they'll end up with a cluttered partlist that has redundant and possibly incompatible parts that reasonably shouldn't be. Personally I'd say either work on making things interchangeable with FASA, or once the core of this is completed work on developing your own early Apollo architecture (Saturn V/1B, Block II Apollo, LM) and Sky/Spacelab. This way people can either just use this mod or can pair it with FASA and you still end up with the best of both worlds.

Today, I played around some more with decorating: Suffice to say, fairings are so much better when they're decorated.

^ Lots of all of that is what started it in the first place xD But alas, they are gone now. My remedy finally kicked in.

Please oh please give me your hiccup cures its been like, an hours >.<