Hardest thing you have built (not including the vab and sph)

[Aidan likes minmus]

Mine was my first space station and yes I'm a newbie at this game

[Cirocco]

you mean an in-space construction through docking ports?

None on my side. All the stuff I launched so far has been in one launch. I've had a couple of instances where I launched a lander seperately from the transfer ship and docked them in orbit, or where I used up the transfer fuel to make orbit and refueled the ship once I made parking orbit, but that always only consists a single basic rendezvous and docking manuevre, so I hardly think that qualifies as "construction".

If we're including spaceplane hangar and VAB: super-heavy, long range interplanetary SSTO spaceplanes. Still working on those, they're hard as nails.

[Aidan likes minmus]

Perty mu h anything that used a docking port or claw like captuirng a asteroid and building on it

[Evanitis]

Newcommer too, so there will be better stuff in the thread.

My current high-priority mission: a Jool craft I thrown together from pieces I left around in Kerbin SoI, only like 20% of it was designed for the task it does. Very unstable, adequately inefficient. It incorporates many mementos of the skyrocketing achievements of the space exploration of the past years, like the first nerve engines we ever produced, and such. Interplanetary transfer burn was hell. 1/3 thrusting, 2/3 waititng for the wobble to stop. It's on intercept course now though. But I'm sure it's not coming back in it's present form.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Evanitis

[zekes]

Easily this. Took 5 hours to build 20 hours to get working. Only made 3 launches with it, doesn't work anymore thanks to 1.0. Built it just before .90 so it was way before the Mk3 shuttles and it's way bigger- it's full size, in dimentions. In weight it's 2400 tons, 400 more than the REAL WORLD SPACE SHUTTLE SLS. Some 1400 parts, all stock.

[SemiaCloud]

I assembled two planes together while in flight.

[Sharpy]

I'm pretty new to the game, but this nuclear tug.

It was all delivered to orbit in one launch, though could have been split into 3 or so launches with much lighter launch stages. Still, the launch phase was pretty streamlined (only the cupola on the side - but in fact I could have attached it too...)

Note the real "tugging" port is on the bottom. These are just "adapters" to allow pulling different things - they need to be installed on the right port (by a drone, the one right next to the cupola.)

[hellion13]

Designing and building a Formula 1 styled rover to go to any planet with an atmosphere.

With the new aero in the game, the aerodynamics on the car actually work. And at 60m/s the limits on the wheels (150mph) it needs the aero to turn or the whole thing lifts like a plane and proceeds to disassemble itself.

Getting it to fly on a rocket was another mess entirely. Ended up with Tweakscale to get a bigger service bay to use as a roll out garage. It worked. Though 60m/s is way too fast for Duna.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

This. I spent many hours building it.

[JDCollie]

This here was my first permanently habitable Munbase, and as such I made a lot of mistakes that really increased the difficulty of the build. If I did it again (which I intend to ) I think the process would be much more simple, and have a lower part count to boot. I've made lots of things since then (this was in 0.25) that were probably as complicated, but none that were as difficult for me. Oh, and Remote Tech was enabled on this build too

On the plus side, despite the difficulty, the base could sustain life support for several kerbals indefinitely, manufacture fuel, and produce and launch vehicles. I actually manufactured about 60% of the modules for the base on site, rather than transporting them from Kerbin.

Also, obviously not stock. Mods used included MKS/OKS, EPL, KAS, and lots and lots of others that I can't think of off the top of my head.

[SaturnianBlue]

MESSENGER space probe replica with the whole trajectory, and the whole mission story, which was hard to gather the pieces on. Spent almost a month making it fly.

Edit: That album is really long, to actually get a good view of the spacecraft, skip to like, image 20.

Took 2 weeks to build, a week to make the rocket fly, and another week flying it across the solar system...

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Havent really done too much in orbit construction however.

Edited June 29, 2015 by SaturnianBlue
More detail

[justidutch]

This ring station was the hardest thing I've constructed outside of the VAB.

[Geschosskopf]

The most difficult thing I ever built outside the VAB/SPH would certainly be the Mo-Henge Project. This was a Stonehenge-style megalithic solar observatory/calendar thing on a planet whose days are longer than its years and is in a highly inclined orbit. The resulting construct was........interestingly useless

[Plume & Akakak]

tinier is harder.

ok, that was in the VAB.

[ko1Stein]

In .24 + .25, I built a huge 501-part interplanetary ship to explore the entire Jool system. It carried two SSTO planes and a base for Laythe, a single-use Tylo lander, a lander for all smaller moons and a suicidal probe for Jool itself. It had space for 17 Kerbals and over three Jumbo-64 tanks worth of fuel. After a tense 45-minute transfer burn and a violent aerocapture at Laythe (no reentry heating or this might have gone badly), the save file finally gave up when I reached Vall and updated to .90.

The moral of the story: plan small, and never put the engines into the rear unless you want to fly a spaghetti with a weight over 250 tons.

(as my computer is currently in repair, I have no access to my screenshots)

[Randazzo]

Posted elsewhere before, but:

573 tons fully fueled and assembled (some 420 of that was the propulsion alone... I don't like low TWR). Took ages of running fuel from Minmus to get it filled up. Went to Sarnus from the Outer Planets Mod. Here it's dropping the second set of drop tanks while burning for capture over Sarnus. The first tanks were dropped over Kerbin during the 13 minute escape burn.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Randazzo

[imaspacestation]

Haven't really built much outside the VAB/SPH. I did built a big space station once, but found it to be utterly useless. Could have just shot a single fuelcan into orbit instead.

In the SPH the hardest thing for me to build was an SSTO Spaceplane that could carry two orange tanks as payload. That took a while to get right.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Haven't really built much outside the VAB/SPH. I did built a big space station once, but found it to be utterly useless. Could have just shot a single fuelcan into orbit instead.

In the SPH the hardest thing for me to build was an SSTO Spaceplane that could carry two orange tanks as payload. That took a while to get right.

In the SPH the hardest thing for me to build was an SSTO Spaceplane that could carry two orange tanks as payload. That took a while to get right.

Spaceplane that could carry two orange tanks as payload.

two orange tanks

That is incredible! Have you shared that on the spacecraft exchange?

[Kryten 2X4B 523P]

My Minmus mining / research base. Assembled on site using 2 crawlers and many, many launches. Got reasonably good at landing within 300m of the base.

Beauty shot with my crew transfer "Space Bus Mk2" in the background

[annallia]

I would say my old 0.2x mun base.

I've had some tough stations thanks to the limitations of mods being used and such... but the mun base was a whole nother basket of crazy.

Not only did I have to be careful to design each piece of it to connect at the exact same height (that was actually easyish) but I had to design and fly large rovers to mun with cranes (KAS) to lift the modules and move them together. I also had to manage to land them all in the same rather small area (really not my strong suit) because if I landed in any of the craters nearby my rovers were not strong enough to pull the module up the crater walls (they barely made it themselves).

As if that wasn't bad enough... It also required some pin point landings (wasn't so bad with small skycranes) to build upward instead of just outward.

[Speadge]

This ring station was the hardest thing I've constructed outside of the VAB.

http://jscript.ca/ksp-images/beta/ring%20station%202/Screen%20Shot%202015-02-24%20at%2012.17.17%20AM.png

http://jscript.ca/ksp-images/beta/ring%20station%202/Screen%20Shot%202015-02-24%20at%2012.17.35%20AM.png

http://jscript.ca/ksp-images/beta/ring%20station%202/Screen%20Shot%202015-02-24%20at%2012.19.19%20AM.png

Where can I get those parts?

What's the game performance like?

[justidutch]

That station (and everything I do) is all stock parts.

Game performance was okay - I never actually checked the FPS stats. If I remember correctly the station by itself was under 400 parts. But performance totally bogged down if another ship came into the picture, docking, refuelling, partying, etc.

[problemecium]

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited June 30, 2015 by parameciumkid
wrong album, derp

[Vanamonde]

Since this is turning out to be a showcase-type thread, it has been moved to Spacecraft Exchange.

[Zucal]

This was pretty... interesting.