My New Best Friend is Hyperedit - Memoir of a "No Cheat" Lifestyle

[impyre]

I'm one of those hard-nosed do-it-your-selfers... or at least that's what I thought. I couldn't bear the idea of Mechjeb or hyperedit. Once upon a time I calculated my dV by hand with my trusty TI-30xs. But eventually I discovered KER, and learned that it did that for me. Cool, no more browsing for part mass, fuel mass, blah blah... jus gimme my dV already... moar building and flying, less calculating! Throughout the versions, I continually improved my skills. I mean... I really play KSP like a boss... I can land/RV from IVA without any issues, eyeball most of my intercept/encounter burns, know most of the dV requirements by heart. I've done wonderful things, and insane things.

This brings us to today. I've been playing a new career mode playthrough, and I've been using sandbox as my "simulator"... testing ideas before fielding them in the "real" Kerbin... where consequences can be tragic. I found that constantly having to launch things into orbit just so I can test out new reentry profiles, deceleration methods, shielding methods, etc... got old fast. I didn't care about the launch, it was mundane now... just something I had to do before I could get to the interesting part. Enter Hyperedit... I figured it might be helpful while testing in sandbox mode. I'd never taint my main career save with such a... cheaty abomination.

Eventually I went back into career mode, and began working on building my station... which will fulfill a contract and also act as a staging area for my upcoming Duna expedition that is leaving in about 40 days (got a lotta work to do). I've painstakingly constructed several fully recoverable launch platforms... a matching set if you will. I have a 2t, 5t, 10t, 15t, 20t, 30t, and 40t so far. Each has been tested and certified. Guaranteed to get rated payload to maximum orbit of 300km x 300km, then deorbit itself for recovery. I've been using 20t modules exclusively for my station, and after launching about 3 20t station modules in succession without incident (quite boring launches honestly)... I started to wonder... why not use hyperedit? I mean, anything I put up fits within one of my launchers... they are fully recoverable (aside from fuel obviously... but at several million funds, who cares about a bit of fuel... amirite?... plus, mining!).

The first time I put up a module with hyperedit, it felt so wrong... and yet, somehow felt right. I got to skip straight to the fun part... building my station and playing around with new parts in space. Meanwhile, Jeb and Bob are careening toward minmus with a satellite escort (launched separately... b/c, you know, contracts require that) that RV'd with them on the far side of the Mun (after a gravity assist). They're gonna bring back some of that sweet sweet data for my new station. I'll still launch things manually if I'm testing new designs, or doing something else different or unique... but the mundane routine launch has lost its appeal. Don't you judge me!

On a more serious note... play the game how you want to and let others play how they want to. Just have fun. Thanks, and goodnight!

[3Dave]

Welcome to the dark side. Enjoy the cookies!

Seriously though, you hit on the key issue there. mundane launches and maneuvers. its fun to fly rockets maybe the first 10-20 times. but once you figure out how to fly the correct launch profile, you get bored pretty quick and would rather just get to the good part. Mechjeb is there with its ascent guidance computer. Its entertaining to play with nodes and get that perfect < 100m separation rendezvous a few times. but then that gets old. Mechjeb rendezvous autopilot. lets you skip straight to the actual building part. which has to be done manually still, at least i always do, the docking autopilot has always been extremely wasteful of RCS fuel and very slow, unless its been fixed lately. I dont care though, i enjoy docking.

I haven't really messed with hyperedit much. i enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to get impossible payloads into orbit. and i enjoy building massive 5 meter saturn v style launchers to do it. lol

[Kerbart]

One of the things I'm considering is building a station in parts, docking all parts together, and then deleting it and replacing it with the station without the jelly docking ports (and moar struts). It's not like you're cheating by putting the thing in orbit with hyperedit, it's just that (aside from using quantum struts) right now it seems like the only way to get a mechanically cohesive station in place.

There are various tools to take care of the mundane launches though. I use kRPC with Python, allowing me to write my own launch scripts (I never warmed up for the klunky KERBAL LOLZ KOS language), I know there's some kind of routine mission manager, etc.

[impyre]

@3Dave: Try several thousand launches... it gets old once you feel like you've mastered it. But yeah, I still like to launch crazy things myself. And I agree, docking/building is fun. Just last night I was doing a rendezvous with my station, and I was on final approach... had several kilometers to go, and figured that was a good time to get something to drink. I was walking back to me seat to see my new station module careening toward my station at somewhere around 150m/s relative velocity... it's easy to forget exactly how fast that is in the vast emptiness of space... until an approaching station reminds you. I didn't get to my seat in time, I had to watch as a hitchhiker container flew off into space. That was a fun rescue mission.

@Kerbart: Dude... that's a *fantastic* idea! I don't know why it didn't occur to me. Perhaps I haven't been toying with hyperedit long enough yet.

[almagnus1]

Or you can go with the mod approach: MKS/OKS to build a station, and then EPLP to turn it into a shipyard. Then you just build stuff out in space from collected resources, and stop launching from the surface except to bring new victi... err... "recruits" to space.

Then you just expand from Kerbin and colonize the entire system.

[Lord Aurelius]

Hyperedit is great, especially for testing landers and rovers (and things far too large to be reasonably put into orbit using traditional means by anyone who isn't Whackjob). Definitely very cheaty, but sometimes that's exactly what I want.

[funk]

Some things in KSP become boring after you've done them multiple times, using different approaches failed again and again until mastering. That's because I love spaceplanes and planes in general. They always behave different, especially with FAR. And it's great fun to fly some small maneuverable planes without SSAS near-threshold to stall. Destroyed buildings and quaking mountains included. (ehm.. perhaps not the best methaper today...sry)

Or you can go with the mod approach: MKS/OKS to build a station, and then EPLP to turn it into a shipyard. Then you just build stuff out in space from collected resources, and stop launching from the surface except to bring new victi... err... "recruits" to space.

Then you just expand from Kerbin and colonize the entire system.

Yep, and then I'm using Hyperdedit to load some EC for the first start of the generators, because I don't want to draw a KAS-Pipe during lowFPS EVA.

Edited May 5, 2015 by funk

[-ctn-]

I use hyper edit mostly when I'm short on time (I get to play a few hours before work, if I'm lucky.) I always made sure I knew how to do everything manually though - I've paper planned several missions and often design craft using stats on my phone, calculating dV, ect. For me, it was important to learn how to do it and successfully do it enough times to "reward" myself with using hyperedit or mechjeb. I like knowing I don't need to use them, but they are massively convenient.

[sarbian]

But NASA has used teleporter for the last 40 years !