To outer planet mod or not to outer planet mod?

[KerikBalm]

I hope this is the right forum... its part discussion of an addon, part discussion of suggestions/development, part gameplay...

Anyway, in career mode, I've now got missions launched for every planet in the kerbol system. Its just a matter of waiting for launch windows and return windows... the "hardware" is all up in orbit... some of it just needs a shuttle to transfer crew, other craft are already kerbaled and at the target bodies...

So now my thoughts turn towards a larger solar system... and the outer planets mod seems to be the best one out there.

I'm just not sure I want to install it... will I just feel obliged to visit more bodies, but the gameplay is essentially the same?From a gameplay perspective, what is added?

 

A moon in retrograde orbit around its planet? Yes, that sounds cool, but really it just means I capture on the other side of the planet... not soo interesting. Transfers to other moons get harder... a mission like the Jool 5 would be more complicated... but.. meh

-This moon has a really thin atmosphere? Ok I've sort of wanted a situation more like mars, where there's an atmosphere, but not much of one... Duna's is to thick to have that feeling most of the time (though it is quite thin in the highlands)... still, I'm not really convinced

A planet rotating clockwise instead of anticlockwise... meh, doesn't really change the gameplay any.

A trojan moon, Priax... sounds a bit interesting to plan a transfer from one moon to another... but it would be conceptually similar to plotting a move from one space station to another with the same orbital parameters... since theres no N body simulation here.

A moon with a moon... meh... somehow it seems like it would be more interesting to me if laythe had a moon (even though that would be ectremely unstable in the Jool system, if it were N-body... although the jool system would already eject val and bop if it were n body). one airless rock with another orbiting it? I've put an E class in orbit around Mun, and a C class around Minmus... close enough for me..

Tekto... this one actually sounds interesting to me... thick-ish atmosphere, low gravity... a proper titan analogue unlike laythe... no O2... this owuld be a new experience and inspire new spacecraft designs (all the others would just use the same basic type of craft that I use to land on airless bodies)... do I want to get the mod just for Tekto and maybe thatmo?

Plock- so its really far out...  long transfers... ok? Eeloo doesn't seem so far out but a dedicated eeloo mission still takes a while at time warp. Does this change much? does the feel/ambiance change with it being so far out? would Kerbol look sufficiently small to be "cool"? I guess it encourages non-hohman transfers, which I could already be trying for Jool and Eeloo. Do higher dV requirements really add much? I doubt these dV requirements are much higher than those for Moho.

 

When I think about it, I really only want to see 2-4 new bodies in the game: Something like titan, something with an atmosphere of... lets say 1/10th that of Duna's. If I were to do it... I'd add 1 ice giant, and give it 3-5 moons: 1 like titan/tekto, 1 in a retograde orbit, 1 pseudo trojan, and maybe 1 highly inclined orbit. I think that maybe the OPM adds too much "redundant" content, and I'll just be bored with missions to the new airless bodies around a planet I can't land on.

Has this been the experience of others? is adding 3 new ice/gas giants too much, if squad were to add planets again at some point, how many should they add? right now I'm thinking just 1 ice giant.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

I'm just not sure I want to install it... will I just feel obliged to visit more bodies, but the gameplay is essentially the same?From a gameplay perspective, what is added?

Oh dear lord, run don't walk to grab this mod and install it.  OPM = wonderful.

Well, okay, I guess everyone has their tastes, but I gotta say that I absolutely adore this mod.  So bear in mind that everything you read here is not even pretending to be impartial. 

First, Sarnus:  The visual impact of the rings is just stunning.  Yes, they don't have any actual gameplay impact, but they're really pretty to look at and I just love them.  Hale and Ovok are orbiting actually among the rings, and the views from the surface are great.

Ovok's egg shape makes for some really interesting gameplay.  Especially when you're out at the pointy end of the egg-- the high rotation speed of the moon means that the gravity's effectively considerably less than Gilly, which makes for some interesting interactions.

Slate is a Tylo-like experience, I just happen to like it because it's purty and much more interesting to look at than Tylo.

Far and away my favorite moon is Tekto.  It's worth installing OPM just for Tekto alone.  A low-gravity planet with a thick atmosphere:  that's a combination that KSP lacks, and it's very interesting to experiment with and explore.  Plus, it's just pretty, with an interesting landscape that includes lakes and seas.  I just love Tekto.

The moons Polta and Priax in their Trojan relationship are interesting to shuttle among.  I particularly like Priax, with its swiss-cheese appearance, the deep steep-walled craters.  It's a new look.

Wal/Tal makes for an interesting dynamic.  The big equatorial ridge on Wal produces some navigational challenges.

I'll admit that Nissee is kinda not really worth the trip, other than out of sheer completism-- incredibly remote and hard to get to, it's basically just a place to say you've done it.  I enjoyed Thatmo.  The atmosphere is so thin that it's a fun challenge to see what you can do with it.  For one thing, it has quite a high escape velocity.  I arrived with my big interplanetary mission very low on fuel, and needed to get a miner down to the surface with the absolute bare minimum of fuel, meaning I couldn't afford to just treat it like a vacuum planet and dump over 1000 m/s of dV to land, but parachutes can't deploy, so I used a lander that had wings to generate drag + lift to slow to something reasonable.  It was quite a challenge.

Haven't done Plock yet.  Sarnus / Urlum / Neidon line up nicely when the game starts, so you can reasonably do a "grand tour" that hits all three in a row, but Plock's way the heck out to one side, and by the time I'd done a full playthrough of every other OPM body, I didn't particularly feel like paying Plock a visit.

But anyway, I had enormous fun with Outer Planets.  It's worth installing just for Sarnus alone, even if you never go further than that.

One other thing to bear in mind, aside from the actual gameplay/novelty aspect:  the production value.  There are a lot of planet packs out there that are kinda amateurish. (No offense intended, I would love to produce a planet pack myself, and I expect that those planet packs out there are better than what I would produce, so I'm in no position to point fingers.)  Outer Planets is a cut above.  It's incredibly polished and professionally done, and the texturing / lighting is totally up to professional standards.  They could include it with the stock game and nobody would blink an eye-- it's easily as good as the stock planets in terms of production value, and that's something I don't think I can say about any other planet pack.

[GDJ]

I like OPM. I even tweaked it so the planets are really REALLY far away. I think Plock and Karen is around 2.5 TRILLION metres away.

Makes for a long flight, but heck, if the Voyager, New Horizon's, Pioneer, and a plethora of other probes can do it, so can I. I can wait, so can Kerbals.

Edited March 7, 2016 by GDJ

[Red Dwarf]

I'm totally with Snark on this. OPM feels like it's stock. Most of the time I forget that it isn't. It's just such a natural addition to the game.

[rdwulfe]

Even though I haven't gone past Duna in ages, you just convinced me to install this when I get my new system.

Edited March 7, 2016 by rdwulfe
Wrong planet name

[Francois424]

OPM is on Stock levels, no question about it.  Heck I would NOT be surprised it would be eaten-up and made stock by Squad themselves at some point in the future (unless they have some expansion plans of their own).

For better challenge, don't install any of the recommended super ISP engines.  Just go stock.  Might seem like no difference, but it adds-up.  Strap on some of Necrobone's large fuel tanks and the 4 Nerva-in-one (for parts count, at least until 1.1) so that your frame rates are manageable and you're all set.

I would still recommend at least trying a capture around all planets/moons to get the full experience.  Decide yourself if you wanna attempt landing or not.

[ShadowZone]

Simple answer: YES! to OPM.

 

[Dafni]

8 hours ago, Snark said:

Oh dear lord....

...

....and that's something I don't think I can say about any other planet pack.

Thank you @Snark, now I'll have to get it too. I was on the fence anyway, and you just shoved me over. Cheers

[KerikBalm]

So, since I've got no mission to Eeloo that has departed from LKO yet, I should be able to just drop this mod into my gamedata, and continue with my current career?

Are there any dV maps for OPM? I was looking at the OPM wiki, and a lot of the surface gravities seem rather high - Granted that Tylo's surface gravity is way too high for any analogue of a real life moon.

Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, only has a surface gravity of .146 G (which is actually lower than Earth's moon), and is just over 40% the radius of Earth... meanwhile Tylo is 100% of the radius of Kerbin.

How much more dV does it take to reach plock orbit and return vs the same at old Eeloo?

I wonder if my Eeloo mission ship that is just sitting in orbit should be able to get to Plock, or if I'll need to give it a little boost to eject from the kerbin system (like put it at minmus, and refuel it there)

[ShadowZone]

52 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

So, since I've got no mission to Eeloo that has departed from LKO yet, I should be able to just drop this mod into my gamedata, and continue with my current career?

Are there any dV maps for OPM? I was looking at the OPM wiki, and a lot of the surface gravities seem rather high - Granted that Tylo's surface gravity is way too high for any analogue of a real life moon.

Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, only has a surface gravity of .146 G (which is actually lower than Earth's moon), and is just over 40% the radius of Earth... meanwhile Tylo is 100% of the radius of Kerbin.

How much more dV does it take to reach plock orbit and return vs the same at old Eeloo?

I wonder if my Eeloo mission ship that is just sitting in orbit should be able to get to Plock, or if I'll need to give it a little boost to eject from the kerbin system (like put it at minmus, and refuel it there)

You could even have stuff on Eeloo, since it just turns into a moon of Sarnus

dV Map: http://imgur.com/MPgeM5O

Slate can be compared to Tylo, but the others are a lot easier. Tylo can be tricky due to the thick atmosphere.

[pslytely psycho]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Oh dear lord, run don't walk to grab this mod and install it.  OPM = wonderful.

"Lots of well deserved gushing over the finest planet mod"

@Snark is absolutely correct, as is everyone else endorsing this mod. It adds more of a feeling of 'completeness' to the game and feels very stock. And flying around the Sarnus System is eye candy at it's finest.

[Umlüx]

but keep in mind that OPM is very heavy on memory if you are already using a lot of mods.

otherwise, go for it!

[KerikBalm]

well, I'm not using a lot of mods (ker, HE, and a few of my own custom parts, which are just old models[like the old basic jet model] and modded .cfg files), but the game already runs pretty slow for me, does this mean the game will run even slower if I install it?

5 hours ago, ShadowZone said:

You could even have stuff on Eeloo, since it just turns into a moon of Sarnus

dV Map: http://imgur.com/MPgeM5O

Slate can be compared to Tylo, but the others are a lot easier. Tylo can be tricky due to the thick atmosphere.

Well, I have nothing on Eeloo, if I had a ship on the way... then it would be heading to nowhere after I install it.

I assume you mean Tekto and not Tylo? I hadn't heard anything about this mod giving tylo an atmosphere

[Snark]

10 hours ago, Francois424 said:

For better challenge, don't install any of the recommended super ISP engines.  Just go stock.  Might seem like no difference, but it adds-up.  Strap on some of Necrobone's large fuel tanks and the 4 Nerva-in-one (for parts count, at least until 1.1) so that your frame rates are manageable and you're all set.

I second this.  You don't actually need super-Isp engines to go to the outer planets, as long as you're willing to take a long time to get there.  The dV requirements aren't actually significantly higher than the dV to go to Eeloo... and, unlike Eeloo, you can actually do aerobraking when you get there (except for Plock).

I had tons of fun with OPM plus Extraplanetary Launchpads.  I sent a "grand tour" mothership with a workshop, orbital launchpad, a dozen kerbals, and a decent supply of metal out into the outer solar system, and it visited all the moons of all the gas giants.  Built landers, miners, etc. as needed.  So much fun. 

If you really want to pull out all the stops:  go whole-hog MKS/UKS + TAC/LS, and build a self-sustaining "colony ship".  Now there's an epic journey!

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

So, since I've got no mission to Eeloo that has departed from LKO yet, I should be able to just drop this mod into my gamedata, and continue with my current career?

Absolutely.  One of the nice things about OPM is that it leaves the inner solar system untouched (except for moving Eeloo into Sarnus orbit), so it's easy to install on an existing career save without disrupting anything.  Even if you already have stuff at Eeloo, it'll just be brought along for the ride when Eeloo moves to Sarnus, as @ShadowZone points out.

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I was looking at the OPM wiki, and a lot of the surface gravities seem rather high - Granted that Tylo's surface gravity is way too high for any analogue of a real life moon.

Not really.  Slate is basically another Tylo, except prettier and more interesting.  Thatmo is fairly massive, but it has a (very) thin atmosphere that you can use to shave hundreds of m/s off the dV for landing, if you're smart about it.  Everything else is perfectly manageable and is in line with the dV of typical stock KSP moons.

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

How much more dV does it take to reach plock orbit and return vs the same at old Eeloo?

It's pretty much the same-- only just a smidgeon more.  It takes a lot more time (if you're following a minimum-dV transfer), but not much more dV.  That's because you're already way above the vast majority of Kerbol's gravity well by the time you get to (stock) Eeloo-- it takes very little additional dV to go farther than that.

For example:  Let's say you're in LKO.  How much dV does it take to go to the Mun from there?  Around 850 m/s.  Okay, what if you want to go to Minmus instead?  Barely 100 m/s more, despite the fact that Minmus is orbiting four times higher than the Mun.  Okay, let's say you want to go beyond Minmus and escape Kerbin entirely-- how much dV more than a Minmus trip does that take?  Not even 50 m/s!  (IIRC)

Going to the Outer Planets is the same deal.  If you're willing to wait a long time (a really long time, i.e. decades) to get there, it's just not that much more dV.

Or you can do what I did.  I get very impatient about KSP calendar time-- I'm basically "role-playing" the kerbals and it bugs me to wait ten years, even if in reality it's just a few minutes of my time at max timewarp.  So I built a ship with much more dV than it needed, in order to cut the trip time down.  I was playing with Extraplanetary Launchpads, so I built a mobile construction ship and launched it with a stupidly high amount of dV so that it could make a trip from Kerbin to Sarnus (or Sarnus to Urlum, or Urlum to Neidon) in a couple of years, and then do mining and such to build a ship for the next stage of the journey on arrival.

But that's the beauty of KSP, there are so many ways to play (especially with mods) and you have a lot of choices about approach.

5 hours ago, ShadowZone said:

Tylo Tekto can be tricky due to the thick atmosphere.

(FTFY)

Tricky, yes, but also incredibly fun.  You can build a plane that will glide at 7 m/s!  And very, very easy to land on.  I had lots of fun exploring Tekto.  I set up a mining base for refueling my planes and could then explore around at my leisure.

4 hours ago, Umlüx said:

but keep in mind that OPM is very heavy on memory if you are already using a lot of mods.

Really?  I haven't noticed any problems at all (though admittedly I'm not running dozens of mods).  Are you basing this on a recent version of OPM?  'Coz OPM uses Kopernicus, and I was under the impression that recent versions of Kopernicus do some smart dynamic management of planet textures, which really lightens the load on memory.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and I'm certainly no expert in this area.  Just want to make sure that you're basing that on recent data, e.g. from the last couple of months and not from a year ago.  OPM's been around for quite a while.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Snark

[MiniMatt]

Curses! I was already kinda planning a grand tour colonisation effort to send off 1.0.5 in style whilst I've got all my shiny visual enhancement mods working.

Now thanks to this thread - it's all your fault - I'm going to have to redesign for another dozen planets

[KerikBalm]

"I second this.  You don't actually need super-Isp engines to go to the outer planets,"

I wasn't planning on it... the dV requirements are already roughly 1/3 the real life requirements, but the Isp is the same... it would be like if in real life we had a nerva engine getting 2,400 Isp.

"I had tons of fun with OPM plus Extraplanetary Launchpads."

Not planning on that... but I have set up rather large colonies/facilities on laythe and Duna... I'm not sure hoe much dV that would save on a transfer, but at least that way the journey is broken up into smaller trips. I imagine a transfer from a moon of Jool can save quite a bit of dV if one dips into Jool's gravity well and uses Oberth properly.

 

 

"Not really.  Slate is basically another Tylo, except prettier and more interesting.  Thatmo is fairly massive, but it has a (very) thin atmosphere that you can use to shave hundreds of m/s off the dV for landing, if you're smart about it.  Everything else is perfectly manageable and is in line with the dV of typical stock KSP moons."

Well, considering that in our real life solar system, only 2 moons, (one is ours) has surface gravity of 1/6th G or more. Only 3 Jovian moons and 1 saturnian(?) moon are bigger by radius.... seeing many other moons larger/with higher dV requirements than Mun puts me off a bit... The Mun should be close to the limit for the dV requirements for a moon. I already thought val was too high... now I see another 2 moons with a higher dV requirement than duna orbit?! Adding moons with twice the dV required of landing on Mun? seems like it continues a trend I didn't like... that the moons of a gas giant are nearly as big as planets... when they are in fact much much smaller.. Tylo and Laythe are improperly sized... but I excused tylo for the challenge, and Laythe for the coolness of a near-kerbin clone.... these moons... I don't know... no moon of Uranus comes close to our moon. Ony Triton comes close for Neptune. I'll again excuse tekto for coolness (plus Titan upstages our moon IRL)

"It's pretty much the same-- only just a smidgeon more.  It takes a lot more time (if you're following a minimum-dV transfer), but not much more dV.  That's because you're already way above the vast majority of Kerbol's gravity well by the time you get to (stock) Eeloo-- it takes very little additional dV to go farther than that."

I know and understand this, I was just looking for quantification

"Or you can do what I did.  I get very impatient about KSP calendar time-- I'm basically "role-playing" the kerbals and it bugs me to wait ten years, even if in reality it's just a few minutes of my time at max timewarp.  So I built a ship with much more dV than it needed, in order to cut the trip time down."

Me too, I was thinking these sort of fast transfers might be one gameplay thing that this mod encourages.

[Snark]

17 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

well, I'm not using a lot of mods (ker, HE, and a few of my own custom parts, which are just old models[like the old basic jet model] and modded .cfg files), but the game already runs pretty slow for me, does this mean the game will run even slower if I install it?

(Disclaimer:  I'm not an expert in the area I'm about to expound upon, I'm just giving my observations from a couple of years of playing KSP.  Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, rather than an authoritative answer.)

I wouldn't think so.  My experience with KSP has been that when it slows down, memory isn't the issue.  My experience is that KSP performance issues tend to sort themselves out into roughly three categories:

• Not enough graphics horsepower.  This happens if you have your quality settings cranked all the way up, or if you're running mods that go heavy on visual effects and eye candy.  The observable symptom:  crappy framerate, particularly when there's lots of visual stuff happening on-screen.  (e.g. you're in Kerbin orbit, and it slows down when you're looking down and Kerbin fills the screen, but it speeds up when you're looking up at empty space).
• Not enough CPU horsepower.  This happens if you have very high-part-count ships, or if you're running mods that have to do a lot of computation (e.g. mods that tinker with game physics).  The observable symptom:  crappy framerate, particularly when you have lots of ships, and/or very complex ships, inside the physics bubble, or when you're doing something that's physics-intensive such as flying through atmosphere.  But the framerate doesn't care much what the camera is looking at.
• Not enough memory.  This happens if you are running lots and lots and lots of mods, particularly if they're memory-intensive (such as mods with lots of textures in them, especially if the textures aren't efficiently implemented).  The observable symptom:  crashes.  That is, the game seems to work just fine, no particular framerate issues... until you get to that magical number of 3.7GB or so, and then suddenly the game crashes without warning.

So if you're having crappy framerate issues, I'd say it's more likely to be a GPU or CPU thing rather than an I'm-using-too-much-memory thing.  So as long as your game is stable (i.e. doesn't crash a lot), you can probably install OPM and it won't slow you down further by any appreciable amount.

On the other hand, if you're skating close to your memory limit (due to lots of mods) and getting frequent crashes already, then adding OPM onto the pile might be an issue.  How much of an issue, I don't know-- Kopernicus is better than it used to be at memory management, it swaps textures out when they're not needed.  Also, as I've mentioned before, OPM is incredibly polished with a lot of production value, which is one thing that sets it apart from every other planet pack I've seen.  Part of that "polish" is attention to system resource usage; I believe that the author has put quite a bit of effort into making it as memory-efficient as possible and not doing any of the things that a lot of planet pack authors do, which is to follow the easy path-of-least-resistance with textures that make them easy to author but very expensive in terms of memory usage.  So I suspect that OPM will be easier on your memory load than a lot of other planet packs would be.

28 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I assume you mean Tekto and not Tylo? I hadn't heard anything about this mod giving tylo an atmosphere

Yes, that's right, he meant Tekto. 

[Snark]

33 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Adding moons with twice the dV required of landing on Mun? seems like it continues a trend I didn't like... that the moons of a gas giant are nearly as big as planets... when they are in fact much much smaller.. Tylo and Laythe are improperly sized... but I excused tylo for the challenge, and Laythe for the coolness of a near-kerbin clone....

Well, the nice thing about OPM is that it has plenty of variety.  If you don't like super-high-dV moons, just stay away from Slate and you're fine. 

Agreed that our real solar system doesn't have a lot of super high-dV moons in it... but then, KSP is a game, and part of that is that it introduces an interesting variety of challenges.  I like that the stock game has Tylo in it, because "design a ship that can handle very high-dV landings on a vacuum world" is an interesting challenge that's different from the rest of the system.

One of the things that I love about OPM is that it introduces lots of neat challenges without feeling "gimmicky"-- they just seem to "fit" well and nicely match the "Kerbal way."  Totally in tune with the look-and-feel of KSP.

The Slate experience is pretty much the same as Tylo, just prettier and more interesting to look at.  Other than that, the other moons are much more manageable.  Thatmo has a high dV, but the fact that you can kill most of your velocity when landing, using its atmosphere, significantly mitigates the problem.  But it gives you a different challenge:  instead of "build a ship that can both land and take off in vacuum when there's a whole lot of dV", it's "build a ship that you can fly in 1% of Kerbin atmosphere to kill your velocity without faceplanting, and which can take off like a rocket with high dV on ascent."

And other than those two, none of the other moons are what I'd call particularly outsize.  They're mostly very manageable dV.  Most of the dV to get off Tekto comes just from dealing with its atmosphere.  Other than Slate and Thatmo, nothing else is significantly harder than Vall, and quite a few of the moons are smaller and easier than Minmus.

So it's not a planet pack of "lots of big moons with unrealistically high dV."  It's not a mod that's designed to try to spam dV; it's designed to be interestingly different and new, and it succeeds well at that. 

33 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

"Or you can do what I did.  I get very impatient about KSP calendar time-- I'm basically "role-playing" the kerbals and it bugs me to wait ten years, even if in reality it's just a few minutes of my time at max timewarp.  So I built a ship with much more dV than it needed, in order to cut the trip time down."

Me too, I was thinking these sort of fast transfers might be one gameplay thing that this mod encourages.

Yep.

It also opens up lots of peripheral possibilities with gameplay.  For example:  an adventure I had in OPM that's some of the most fun I've ever had with KSP, one of those Apollo-13, pull-it-out-of-the-hole-with-engineering moments.  Included below in a spoiler section so as not to bore people who have had it up to here with the "Let Me Tell You About My Rocket Ship" folks like me. 

Spoiler

I'm an inveterate user of quicksave-and-revert.  I do so shamelessly.  I discovered, during my super-high-dV transfer from Sarnus to Urlum, that the ship I built could not handle Urlum arrival.  It had a really high ballistic coefficient (long and skinny, lots of mass hiding behind its heat shield), so it was impossible to aerocapture.  The only way to get enough braking to capture was to go so low in the atmosphere that the ship would suddenly explode despite the heatshield.  And I had designed the ship with only a small amount of reserve fuel-- it was critically dependent on aerocapturing at Urlum, or it would go flying out into the depths of space forever.

The only quicksave point I had available to me was just a few hours before Urlum arrival.

I run Extraplanetary Launchpads (so I can build stuff off Kerbin), and also KAS/KIS (so an engineer with a power tool can assemble, disassemble, and reassemble ships).

So I had to save the mission, under various constraints including the following:

• Limited time-to-arrival.  That limits the size and complexity of what I can build, because anything too big wouldn't have time to finish construction before arrival.
• Limited metal for building parts.  My ship had critically low fuel, I was dependent on building a miner/lander after arrival that could fly down to the surface of Priax and scoop up a load of fuel.  So whatever I build can't use up too much of my metal, because I have to leave enough left over to build the miner after arrival.
• I can't actually build anything at all without jettisoning my heatshield, since it's mounted right on top of (and thereby obstructing) my orbital launchpad.

So... jettison the heatshield, frantically start building contraption components.  Meanwhile Bill's outside with his power drill, feverishly dismounting and discarding any ship components I can live without, to try to to lighten the load.  The constructed components pretty much have to be multi-part assemblies, which means that Bill can't attach them (KIS/KAS only allows you to attach/detach single parts), so Bill has to install docking ports to give the assemblies a place to fasten, then the parts need to be wrestled around and docked symmetrically in the right spots, then Bill needs to install struts because the docking-port attachments are going to be too weak and floppy to withstand the high g-forces of aerocapture, then the last thing I need to build is a new heatshield to replace the one I had to jettison...

It was sheer nirvana.  I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun in KSP.  And it never would have happened if I weren't running a mod that induced me to fly a stupidly high-dV transfer.

Oh, and... yes, we made it.  Last bolt tightened and Bill safely back inside just minutes before hitting Urlum's atmosphere.    Aerocapture successful, with enough metal left to build my Priax miner/refiner.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2016 by Snark

[KerikBalm]

Well, I went ahead and added it, and it hasn't caused any noticeable performance problems, so thats good, I run really light on mods (ie just a handful of parts using old part models before porkjet remade them, Kerbal engineer, and hyperedit... although I have another instal for "alien space programs"... ie KSP on Duna/Laythe/Eve).

I've been considering adding the atomic age mod pack, but so far I haven't, Tekto would be a great candidate for use of the atomic jet engine.

I just tried out a tekto landing... first I just put my Ap out to sarnus orbit (no actual intercept)... just time warping there took quite a lot of time... missions further out may require treating timewarps the same way I treat particularly long burns... start it, and then go do something else for a few/several/many minutes. After that, I HE'd to Tekto orbit... despite what it says on the wiki, and on the info screen, there seems to be no atmosphere until ~81km.. I could timewarp on rails just fine at 100km, which should be 5km inside the listed atmosphere.

You're right, Sarnus is pretty with its rings:

Its also cool to see slate in the sky as well...

But I feel that the vertical height is "exaggerated" too much on tekto. Vertical heights can already seem to be too much for stock bodies when looking at a body from far enough away to discern the curvature (which isn't so far in this roughly 1/10th scale system)... but Tekto just really seems to me to have things too high for the radius of the moon. The slopes might be too steep too often too, in many places, I don't really look at it and think that it looks like it could be a natural landscape (though it does have some good areas, and I'm of course suspending disbelief over the green atmosphere... certainly not any worse than eve's purple). I'm not sure what the ring shaped oceans are supposed to be... crater related somehow?

I wish we had an instrument to measure atmospheric density, not just pressure... because as far as I know, KSP properly models density as a function of pressure, temperature, and MW of the gas... tekto should be quite cold, so the atmosphere should be quite dense. The same goes for thatmo... which is "based on Neptune's major moon Triton," but its not just "a slightly exaggerated atmosphere to make it more fun"... the surface pressure is nearly 3 orders of magnitude higher... 700x thicker is not slightly exaggerated (assuming temperature and MW are comparable)

Tekto is also a good place to use one of my modded parts... an air augmented rocket/Ramrocket (does almost nothing to memory usage, because its the same model as the turboramjet, just a different .cfg file). 295 vacuum Isp, 1200 Isp at 1 atmosphere, 4:1 vacuum TWR, TWR augmented at higher mach numbers like the turboramjet, uses LFO, 1600 Isp at 5 atmosphere (ie, for use on eve). Made Tekto ascent a breeze with very little fuel usage. The electric fans(use the pre-porkjet basic jet engine model) I use should also be usable for flying around in theory... but power generation would be limiting (as is their mach 0.8 speed cap, which is quite low on tekto)

For fun, I hyperedited a craft to nedium orbit, using gigantors... 1 gigantor could keep a 0.625m probe powered. The one I used was supposed to drain 1.2 charge/minute. I guess the gigantor could probably supply the .625m probe cores that use 1.5 EC/min. In comparison, the RTG generates 45 EC/min... so 1 RTG was producing roughly 30x more power. So 1 RTG at 0.08 tons produces as much power as roughly 30*0.3 = 9 tons of gigantors.

23300 funds for an RTG produces as much power as 3000*30 = 90,000 funds worth of gigantors... yea... RTGs are the way to go

[Francois424]

If you manage to find a mod that works with Tekto, you could add the clouds for a different experience.

It made Tekto more enigmatic, and dangerous to fly in.

[Snark]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I've been considering adding the atomic age mod pack, but so far I haven't, Tekto would be a great candidate for use of the atomic jet engine.

It really is.  My epic OPM playthrough was with Atomic Age, and it was  such fun exploring Tekto with a nuclear turbojet.  (My miner was for fueling the other stuff).

The thing could glide at 7 m/s, even with that monster 9.5-ton engine on it.  It was fun to see how high in the atmosphere it could climb before running out of oomph.

[Red Iron Crown]

Moved this over to Add-On Discussions as it's mostly about one mod.

Judging by the ringing endorsements I'm going to have to give it a try.

[Dafni]

I went ahead and installed it and had a good look around. It is true what has been said here, that mod is gorgeous and the planets have a stock feeling to them

Thank you for bringing this mod to my attention again, I overlooked it for so long. Just when I started to feel like running out of places to go the game feels all new again.

Cheers

Daf

Edited March 8, 2016 by Dafni

[Geschosskopf]

On 3/7/2016 at 4:50 PM, KerikBalm said:

But I feel that the vertical height is "exaggerated" too much on tekto.

Well, Tekto is made of frozen hydrocarbons or something, so those stack differently than regular dirt.  And the gravity is very low so mountains can be higher, slopes steeper, etc.

C'mon, it's an alien planet.  It's NOT supposed to look like anything you're familiar with.  Just go with it

On 3/7/2016 at 4:50 PM, KerikBalm said:

....tekto should be quite cold, so the atmosphere should be quite dense. 

Is 17^K cold enough for you?  IIRC, that's what my thermometer says there.

On 3/7/2016 at 4:50 PM, KerikBalm said:

Tekto is also a good place to use one of my modded parts... an air augmented rocket/Ramrocket (does almost nothing to memory usage, because its the same model as the turboramjet, just a different .cfg file). 295 vacuum Isp, 1200 Isp at 1 atmosphere, 4:1 vacuum TWR, TWR augmented at higher mach numbers like the turboramjet, uses LFO, 1600 Isp at 5 atmosphere (ie, for use on eve). Made Tekto ascent a breeze with very little fuel usage. The electric fans(use the pre-porkjet basic jet engine model) I use should also be usable for flying around in theory... but power generation would be limiting (as is their mach 0.8 speed cap, which is quite low on tekto)

The best powerplant for flying on Tekto is the nuclear thermal jet, which requires neither fuel no electricity (and in fact makes electricity).  There are several on the mark to choose from.  I personally prefer the lighter version found in Mk2 Extension to the monster in Atomic Age.  And BTW, Mk2 Extension uses stock textures so has very, very little memory impact for a parts mod.

On 3/7/2016 at 4:50 PM, KerikBalm said:

23300 funds for an RTG produces as much power as 3000*30 = 90,000 funds worth of gigantors... yea... RTGs are the way to go

Or you could use stock fuel cells.  Although then you need to worry about refueling, and refueling isn't all that easy on Tekto.  Ore concentrations are quite low.  Which shouldn't be a problem because if Tekto is like Titan, it should have mountains made of water ice (to split into fuel), not to mention solid chunks of propane and such to burn with the oxygen you get from the water.  But KSP ISRU doesn't work like that.