Jool 500 Kolonization Challenge

[Wardstone111]

Another few mods I found that could be good are FAR, deadly reantry, Tarser and Cacteye.

[septemberWaves]

25 minutes ago, Wardstone111 said:

Another few mods I found that could be good are FAR, deadly reantry, Tarser and Cacteye.

I think I'd just overlooked FAR, I had meant to add it in. I'd forgotten about CactEye, and do you mean Tarsier? Because I've been playing around with that and was going to add it in as well. Deadly Re-entry I've not used but I will add it in.

[Jhawk1099]

Ok here is a link to my thread about this challenge! I will repost here whenever another video comes out but not the video itself unless no one minds. Anyway thanks for this amazing challenge @eloquentJane

[Wardstone111]

2 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I think I'd just overlooked FAR, I had meant to add it in. I'd forgotten about CactEye, and do you mean Tarsier? Because I've been playing around with that and was going to add it in as well. Deadly Re-entry I've not used but I will add it in.

Yes Tarsier, I am bad at spelling mod names.

[Luovahulluus]

@eloquentJane, you wanted feedback, so here comes. You said, in reply to me: "You don't have to complete all of [the categories] to qualify but you need to at least attempt every category of the challenge." 

And later:

"You win if you make a self-sustaining colony of 500 kerbals in the Jool system in a semi-realistic fashion as intended by the layout of the challenge; at the most basic level that's all there is to it."

I think you should be more clear in your op what is absolutely necessary and what is for points. 

The biggest problem I have with the challenge is, you tell us how to do, instead of what needs to be achieved. Like the 25ton Tylo lifter: instead of telling us we have to have one (for no apparent reason), explain to us what needs to be achieved, and let us figure out ourselves that we need a 25ton lifter or something similar. That gives us a feeling that we are planning our own colony instead of fulfilling your vision of it.

Another example, the satellite network. Setting it up is a great achievement, and should be rewarded (if you feel like it). However, my kerbals use the instantaneous subspace communication, and the work required to set up the network (just because you want there to be one) seems kind of moot. If the task was clearly marked as optional, it wouldn't seem like such a chore. Those who have a lot of time to play the game and want the points would still do it. Those of us who can only play 5 to 15 hours a week can just skip it and still create a big, self-sustaining colony in a reasonable amount of real life time. People attempting the hard level are going to need to do some kind of network anyway, as they are using remote tech.

I also don't see a reason why you are making limits for how heavy our satellites, probes and landers are. Making larger stuff requires a larger and more expensive lifter. You already have a system in place that penalizes large stuff. No need to make it a hard rule.

All that said, I'm still going to attempt to create a colony, my vision of it. And I appreciate the work you have done to set this challenge up.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Luovahulluus

[septemberWaves]

@Luovahulluus I can understand where you're coming from, the wording in the main post isn't ideal and I am going to reword it when I have the time to ensure that everything's more clear (I've had a little bit of difficulty re-reading it myself a couple of times so I definitely understand the need for more clarity). And I wouldn't exactly say that I'm telling you how to do this challenge instead of what needs to be achieved; rather that there are just some design aspects that must be satisfied, in a similar way to the fact that stock satellite contracts often require certain science equipment on board regardless of whether you need the science from that location. I will change the main post to make everything more clear.

[Wardstone111]

I have just been looking through CKAN to check if any mods were updated and Crowd Sourced Science may be a good idea for people playing in career mode. It adds more science into the game plus more interesting science descriptions.

[Luovahulluus]

@eloquentJane. The difference between stock contracts and an epic challenge as the Jool 500 is the scale. I don't mind doing a quick contract for some money/science rewards, even if it really doesn't make any sense. The reward in this challenge is the accomplishment. That's why, in my opinion, we should have as much freedom to design stuff as possible. That makes the accomplishment even greater. So instead of having a 25ton lifter sitting at Tylo, you could tell a story that the scientist back home need 25 tons of soil samples from Tylo, and you get 5 points for delivering it to Kerbin. (You can use that if you want to.) Now the lifter has a purpose. I'm sure people will come up with so much more creative solutions when there is more room to play with.

Btw. Kerbal Crew Manifest lets you add, edit and remove kerbals to your roster. I don't know if that's too cheaty for your taste, but it's updated to 1.1

 

[Jetski]

Next chapter is up.

Loaded 55 Kolonists aboard my first Colony Transport in high Kerbin orbit and froze them.  Interesting way to hire Kerbals, DeepFreeze removes the frozen Kerbals from your roster, so prices go back down for hiring.  With my mining profits, I can buy them in batches of 30ish and freeze them for about 8 million funds, and repeat as needed as long as I keep them frozen.  I intend to hire and freeze all 500 before I send them to Jool, pretty much the only way I can afford that many without yet another mod.

[Wardstone111]

I have just notice there is KW rocketry on 1.1.2. It adds quite a lot of new rockets into the game and just thought you may want to add it to your list.

[septemberWaves]

Unfortunately due to the unforseen game update I won't be able to update the guide this weekend, since most of the mods now have issues (more issues than I can deal with in-game).

1 hour ago, Wardstone111 said:

I have just notice there is KW rocketry on 1.1.2. It adds quite a lot of new rockets into the game and just thought you may want to add it to your list.

I was looking at that mod earlier actually. I don't have time to test it out much right now, but I'll definitely look into it when I do have the time.

[Jetski]

3 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

Unfortunately due to the unforseen game update I won't be able to update the guide this weekend, since most of the mods now have issues (more issues than I can deal with in-game).

I was looking at that mod earlier actually. I don't have time to test it out much right now, but I'll definitely look into it when I do have the time.

Yep, project on hold until at least SpaceY, NFT and MKS-Lite are updated.  Had the solar panels fall off my colony ship, and some major texture glitches with a SpaceY fuel tank

[Wardstone111]

I was planning to start going to Jool this week but the tracking station stopped working properly for some unknown reason.

[septemberWaves]

20 hours ago, Jetski said:

Yep, project on hold until at least SpaceY, NFT and MKS-Lite are updated.  Had the solar panels fall off my colony ship, and some major texture glitches with a SpaceY fuel tank

I've been having texture glitches with SpaceY, Fuel Tanks Plus, and Colour Coded Cans since 1.1 came out. Anything which used to use InterstellarMeshSwitch seems to be having that issue, but it doesn't seem to happen when there's no USI mods installed for some reason.

----------------------------------------------------------------

On a completely different note, I'm not completely inactive in KSP while I'm waiting for all the Jool 500 mods to work. I've started a stock parts (plus MechJeb) thread in Mission Reports with a focus mainly on exploring various Kopernicus planets & moons. Currently the only updated ones that I know of are Xen's Planet Collection (which has some really nice additions) but I'll be adding more as things get updated, and doing missions for that thread over time. It's here if anyone is interested.

[Oafman]

On 2 May 2016 at 7:18 AM, Wardstone111 said:

I was planning to start going to Jool this week but the tracking station stopped working properly for some unknown reason.

Did it not show any ships in the column on the left, and not allow you to click on any ships on the map, and not allow you to exit back to KSC?

If so, I keep getting that in 1.1 too. 

 

Back in 0.9ish, I once played a whole save for months with no tracking centre, because whenever I clicked on it the game crashed. I just kept a drone parked up at KSC, and used its map screen as a de facto tracking centre...!

 

 

[Wardstone111]

On ‎03‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 5:13 PM, Oafman said:

Did it not show any ships in the column on the left, and not allow you to click on any ships on the map, and not allow you to exit back to KSC?

If so, I keep getting that in 1.1 too. 

 

Back in 0.9ish, I once played a whole save for months with no tracking centre, because whenever I clicked on it the game crashed. I just kept a drone parked up at KSC, and used its map screen as a de facto tracking centre...!

 

 

Exactly that bug. I have solved it by stopping using debris on there. Did it only have Space Station 1 on the side bar by any chance?

[Artheus]

This is probably one of the best and most challenging Challenges. When I finally somewhat complete my Career Playthrough and move on to 1.1, I will come back to this. 

[Pds314]

The reason the atomic age mod turbojet doesn't consume any resource but intake atmosphere is because REAL nuclear turbojets don't. The only thing they consume is U-235, which for all practical purposes is unlimited. The SLAM would've had a range of 113000 kilometers, Almost triple the circumference of the Earth, going at Mach 3+ just meters from the ground. A high-altitude version would probably have been able to stay in supersonic cruise for an unprecedented length of time, and a nuclear high-bypass jet could stay airborne so long that it would be practical to have it fly FOREVER with perhaps monthly fuel resupplies, or simply carry enough Uranium onboard to let the reactor outlive the airframe.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Pds314

[septemberWaves]

@Pds314 I understand how it works and why it doesn't consume propellant (I have a fairly good knowledge of nuclear reactors, it was a potential career path that I'd considered before I decided to settle on rocket science). The reason it's banned is because it doesn't seem balanced enough for it to not consume any resources other than the intake atmosphere. And yes I realize that numerous engines (particularly from Near Future Propulsion) have high enough ISPs that they may be considered similarly unbalanced, but those engines are expensive to put on a ship and difficult to run whilst keeping mass fairly low, and they do consume propellant which must be refuelled if you want to reuse the vehicle. Basically, regardless of the fact that the AA nuclear turbojets work according to how they would in reality, I don't want to allow engines that will never require refuelling to be reusable.

[Pds314]

18 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

@Pds314 I understand how it works and why it doesn't consume propellant (I have a fairly good knowledge of nuclear reactors, it was a potential career path that I'd considered before I decided to settle on rocket science). The reason it's banned is because it doesn't seem balanced enough for it to not consume any resources other than the intake atmosphere. And yes I realize that numerous engines (particularly from Near Future Propulsion) have high enough ISPs that they may be considered similarly unbalanced, but those engines are expensive to put on a ship and difficult to run whilst keeping mass fairly low, and they do consume propellant which must be refuelled if you want to reuse the vehicle. Basically, regardless of the fact that the AA nuclear turbojets work according to how they would in reality, I don't want to allow engines that will never require refuelling to be reusable.

Yeah. To be fair, I've yet to see a mod accurately portray the, err... problems... with nuclear propulsion. I.E. flyover and ground handling being a nightmare because you've transmuted the engine into a flying superfund site. The numbers on NERVA-type rockets are especially troublesome, with anyone anywhere near the thing who's not behind a shadow shield accumulating lethal doses VERY quickly. Also the mess of trying to decommission such craft without simply burying them in the desert and calling it good. I saw something somewhere showing the maneuvers that a small, manned NERVA-type spacecraft would need to do even to dock without irradiating the other ship or being irradiated by it.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Pds314

[Jetski]

We are back in business with Chapter 6, after some grievous losses to the program.  The 1.1.2 update killed my main colony transport with 55+ Kerbals frozen aboard, and also ate my mining rig.  But both have been replaced, and we've loaded the first of the new Kolonists aboard.

[Chris97b]

Hmm, this sounds like quite an interesting challenge. Though I would agree with the posters above that the requirements seem a bit oddly specific. I would say rather than specifying things like X number of satellites around each moon in Y orbits, it would be far more interesting to just say "Must have RT installed with signal delay enabled" and leave it up to the user to decide how best to handle that situation. In RT for instance, near 100% coverage of the Joolian system is entirely possible with *far* less than the 8 satellites per moon you specify. I think it would be interesting to leave it up to the user whether they would rather have a smaller network but take the chance of occasional blackouts during mission critical maneuvers, or opt for a complete 100% uptime network at the expense of more hardware and launches.

The same is true of things like resource scanning satellites/rovers and intra-Joolian transports. I would think it's enough to say "Must have a life support mod installed with perma-death enabled". Life support for 500 kerbals is absolutely going to require heavy ISRU and hauling things around between moons, and I think one of the interesting aspects of a challenge is to see how different users approach the problems. If I manage to build my setup in such a way that I only need to ever lift 10 tons off of Tylo, should I be penalized that my Tylo transport can't handle 25 tons of cargo? Or rewarded for designing a system that doesn't require that much heavy lifting?

I would also think it would be fun to add an Extraplanetary Launchpads category as well. With EPL I would be interested to see just how few launches from Kerbin you could get away with, and I think that would add a very interesting dynamic to the challenge. You would constantly be faced with the question of whether it's better to launch a massive expensive rocket from Kerbin, at little to no resource cost other than funds; or build it in-situ at the expense of massive amounts of resources. Obviously scores for EPL enabled games are in no way going to be competitive, so I'd say make that a category all its own

There are a *ton* of quality of life mods that aren't on the list that wouldn't give any kind of unfair advantage (Capcom, contract packs, docking alignment indicators, Part Commander, those sort of things). I would respectfully suggest that rather than maintain a list of approved mods, it might be easier to just disallow the obviously cheaty stuff (warp drives, KSPI, 0 prop use engines, that sort of thing).

Also with respect to cheaty things, I would be interested to get your take on savefile hackery for things like SMA alignment on RT satellites and adding kerbls to the roster (cause screw hiring 500 kerbals with the stock mechanics, and KSI placement hasn't updated for 1.1.2 yet). Would you consider this cheating, or no?

I am definitely going to give this a try, but to be honest I will have quite a few quality of life type mods that aren't on the list, and I'm thinking about maybe going with EPL as well, just to see how that goes. This would disqualify my score of course, but honestly I don't care about a score, I just want to try out the challenge

 

[Jetski]

3 hours ago, Chris97b said:

Hmm, this sounds like quite an interesting challenge. Though I would agree with the posters above that the requirements seem a bit oddly specific. I would say rather than specifying things like X number of satellites around each moon in Y orbits, it would be far more interesting to just say "Must have RT installed with signal delay enabled" and leave it up to the user to decide how best to handle that situation. In RT for instance, near 100% coverage of the Joolian system is entirely possible with *far* less than the 8 satellites per moon you specify. I think it would be interesting to leave it up to the user whether they would rather have a smaller network but take the chance of occasional blackouts during mission critical maneuvers, or opt for a complete 100% uptime network at the expense of more hardware and launches.

The same is true of things like resource scanning satellites/rovers and intra-Joolian transports. I would think it's enough to say "Must have a life support mod installed with perma-death enabled". Life support for 500 kerbals is absolutely going to require heavy ISRU and hauling things around between moons, and I think one of the interesting aspects of a challenge is to see how different users approach the problems. If I manage to build my setup in such a way that I only need to ever lift 10 tons off of Tylo, should I be penalized that my Tylo transport can't handle 25 tons of cargo? Or rewarded for designing a system that doesn't require that much heavy lifting?

I would also think it would be fun to add an Extraplanetary Launchpads category as well. With EPL I would be interested to see just how few launches from Kerbin you could get away with, and I think that would add a very interesting dynamic to the challenge. You would constantly be faced with the question of whether it's better to launch a massive expensive rocket from Kerbin, at little to no resource cost other than funds; or build it in-situ at the expense of massive amounts of resources. Obviously scores for EPL enabled games are in no way going to be competitive, so I'd say make that a category all its own

There are a *ton* of quality of life mods that aren't on the list that wouldn't give any kind of unfair advantage (Capcom, contract packs, docking alignment indicators, Part Commander, those sort of things). I would respectfully suggest that rather than maintain a list of approved mods, it might be easier to just disallow the obviously cheaty stuff (warp drives, KSPI, 0 prop use engines, that sort of thing).

Also with respect to cheaty things, I would be interested to get your take on savefile hackery for things like SMA alignment on RT satellites and adding kerbls to the roster (cause screw hiring 500 kerbals with the stock mechanics, and KSI placement hasn't updated for 1.1.2 yet). Would you consider this cheating, or no?

I am definitely going to give this a try, but to be honest I will have quite a few quality of life type mods that aren't on the list, and I'm thinking about maybe going with EPL as well, just to see how that goes. This would disqualify my score of course, but honestly I don't care about a score, I just want to try out the challenge

 

EPL and Deepfreeze you could pretty much knock this out with a single launch.  500-pax orbital mothership of frozen Kerbals, and a single lander EPL mining base to bootstrap into the entire system, thawing crew as needed.  Also there are a few workarounds to buying Kerbals with stock pricing - I've got a good thing going with mining for funds and hiring and freezing them in batches of 32, as frozen Kerbals don't count towards your pricing.  If you don't want to use Deepfreeze, there are other mods that allow recruitment.  I kind of miss CivPop, that was a really cool way to add Kerbals by recruiting them from a civilian population.

Edit: this just got me interested in EPL and bootstrap bases.  Now I'm going to be sidetracked for hours...

Edited May 5, 2016 by Jetski

[Chris97b]

Aah interesting, I may have to play with the deepfreeze idea. I was planning on using it anyway as I didn't really want to think about life support for a massive colony ship. That may just make the stock hiring do-able.

As far as EPL, yeah with stock EPL it would be a bit overpowered, but I'm using MKS as well which makes the EPL resource chain far more of a headache, so I don't feel like I would be cheating too much by using it

I hear you on CiviPop, that was an awesome mod and absolutely perfect for this type of challenge. I keep hoping one of these days it will get updated, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Jetski]

OK, so I spent about an hour and a half on an EPL/MKS Lite modded attempt.  Completely unacceptable for this challenge, sorry @eloquentJane, but definitely proof that it makes it REALLY easy.  It was actually really fun, but a surface base on a slope on Pol (I just landed wherever, no scouting) was a bit buggy for my taste.  Kept having to move survey stakes, try a build, have it explode or launch into orbit, repeat as needed.  Self sustaining took about 2 builds with MKS.