Building a Munar base?

[strider3]

Hopefully this is the correct forum for this question. I recently did a polar orbit scan of Mun with the M700 to determine the best places for mining ( I don't have the science for the M4435 narrow-band scanner or I would have put it on the probe also). Anywho, Let's talk "mining" for a bit. How is mining worthwhile...I get that you can make fuel...but then what, sell it? So, question 1 is: is mining worth the trouble?

If it is, the questions multiply (they always seem to!):

When I have the science for the M4435...is there a way to "mark the spot" with the best ore concentrations so I can easily find that spot from Mun orbit, and land there?

How do you build a "base"? I would like to have a small base for mining ops and science research but I have no idea what parts are used and how that is accomplished.

[Foxster]

It's not really worth the trouble mining if you are just playing the game through and reaching the end of the tech tree and such. You can go anywhere in the system from a single launch without refueling. 

If you get into building space stations all over the place and perhaps building bases on different planets then part of the "fun" could be building a refueling station, Minmus being favorite for the low gravity. 

As for building a base...It's whatever your imagination makes it. Again, it tends to have little real purpose in terms of moving the game along, it's more of a self-generated goal. There are some great mods out there with hab modules and life support that are worth checking out. 

[Snark]

As for "what's the point of mining":

If you're talking about the Kerbin system (Mun and Minmus), there really isn't any economic point.  Theoretically yes, you could mine fuel and then either make money by selling it, or save money by not having to launch so much fuel up from Kerbin.  However, it would require so much play time for so little financial gain that there wouldn't be much economic point.  You could make a lot more money in a lot less of your time by just doing a contract or two.

There are basically two reasons for doing mining:

First, just for the fun of it.    It can be a fun "role-playing" experience to say, "I'm going to fuel my operations from the Mun and have a big fuel depot in Kerbin orbit" or whatever.  I don't do that much myself these days, because I've already done that enough that the novelty wore off and it's not particularly fun for me anymore.  But I sure had a ball with it for a career or two.  So, if your prime motivation is gameplay rather than economic, go to it!

Second, if you're mining outside the Kerbin system, it can have a big payoff.  Doing a return mission that will thoroughly explore the Jool system, or Moho, or wherever, becomes a lot easier if you only have to carry fuel for one-way and can refuel locally for the return journey.  You only have to pack half the dV (or less!), which saves a whole bunch of money and makes the engineering much simpler.

As for how to build a base:  Hooking things together on the surface of planets is currently a bit of a "hole" in KSP.  It's really difficult and frustrating.  It's possible to latch things together on the surface using docking ports, and some folks have had success with it, but I find it incredibly finicky and frustrating, to the point that it kills my enjoyment of the game.  There are a couple of workarounds for this that I've used:

Option #1:  Don't build a surface base.  Build an orbital base.  The thing that goes down to land just mines the fuel and flies it up to an orbital depot, which is where you build all your stuff.  Since you never have to connect together two things that are sitting on the surface, there's no problem.

Option #2:  Use Kerbal Attachment System.  It's a handy mod that includes these nifty little "connector ports", a small radially attached piece that an EVA kerbal can hook up with just a couple of mouse clicks.  Just land ship A within a couple of dozen meters of ship B, send out an EVA kerbal, clickety-click, they're connected by a "pipe" and now they act like they're one ship.  When you're done, they're easily disconnected again.  This way is my favorite. 

No, there's no way to "mark the spot" in stock.  I usually just turn on the overlay display in the orbital map and just land my ship on the brightest "glowy spot".  Some mods do let you add markers in the map view and/or the flight view-- for example, I believe ScanSat has such a marker.  But I generally don't bother with them, I just use the stock map overlay.

[strider3]

Thank you both. This was a question for the future, as I don't have the science to do most of it. But, it's always helpful to know which way to spend your science points. I believe I will save these options for the future...as you said Snark...having "fuel stops" along a long journey would be helpful. That philosophy reminds me of the early Western U.S. explorers. They would have "caches" of stuff placed in areas and they would slowly expand their travel abilities by leap-frogging until they had a line of these caches that would support a long journey, without bringing everything needed to survive. Interestingly (or not) I live near the Cache Le Poudre river, French for "hide the powder" (a direct translation). The early trappers in the area named the river because they would store little caches of gunpowder and other supplies in the area.

You helpful people can look forward to my next post..."let's talk Administration Building strategies"...or you can run away like mad! LOL!

[Plusck]

9 hours ago, Snark said:

[...]

Option #1:  Don't build a surface base.  Build an orbital base.  The thing that goes down to land just mines the fuel and flies it up to an orbital depot, which is where you build all your stuff.  Since you never have to connect together two things that are sitting on the surface, there's no problem.

Option #2:  Use Kerbal Attachment System.  It's a handy mod that includes these nifty little "connector ports", a small radially attached piece that an EVA kerbal can hook up with just a couple of mouse clicks.  Just land ship A within a couple of dozen meters of ship B, send out an EVA kerbal, clickety-click, they're connected by a "pipe" and now they act like they're one ship.  When you're done, they're easily disconnected again.  This way is my favorite. 

[...]

Absolutely agree with all of that, but there is also:

Option #3: make your base mostly horizontal, and mount the biggest landing legs on it in the SPH, in mirrored pairs, at exactly the half-way line, and docking ports at the same half-way line (or at the ends, or one end...  Then do the same for whatever you want to add to be base, with a docking port at the front end, but also add wheels to it (preferably rugged ones) so that the wheels don't quite touch the ground with landing legs fully extended. When it is empty, the landing legs will lift it higher than the heavier base, but with the legs lifted and wheels on the ground, it will sit slightly lower. With a little jostling, you can get them to hook up quite easily, even on relatively uneven ground.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Plusck

[Wemb]

12 hours ago, Victor3 said:

Thank you both. This was a question for the future, as I don't have the science to do most of it.

Regardless of the in-game economics, it can be fun trying this - but I found it very difficult to even make it pay off in terms of refining enough fuel to get the fuel back into orbit on the Mun - sure my design was rubbish and inefficient, but still, the gravity on the Mun makes it challenging - so if you are going to try this, I'd suggest doing it on Minmus.

Snark's Option 1 - an orbital lander is going to be easier, but I doubt you'll be able to make it work on the Mun. Option 2 is a lot of fun, though I've still not managed to build a refueling base with pipework that didn't occasionally just detonate without warning. 

Oh, and as for science, there's nothing really in the stock game to be gained from it - you _can_ land a science lab on the moons and get extra science, but since you can max out the tech tree without a science lab at all, and since they take so long to generate returns (compared to bringing the raw data back home), it's rather all just cosmetic. At least the fuel base can help you reduce the need for sending fuel into orbit as well as your rockets.

Might want to look into things like USI's Kolonisation mod if you want a real base/challenge. 

Wemb

Edited April 22, 2016 by Wemb

[davidy12]

Why build moon bases you ask?

Why do we build rockets? Why build space stations.

FOR THE FUN OF IT!!!  

I love building bases because its fun, even in sandbox mode, think about how you can build it

 

[Snark]

5 hours ago, Plusck said:

Option #3:  <useful technical description of technique>

Yes, there's certainly that, and certainly there are plenty of folks who have made surface base-building work for them in stock... but that sort of thing is exactly what I was referring to when I said:

14 hours ago, Snark said:

It's possible to latch things together on the surface using docking ports, and some folks have had success with it, but I find it incredibly finicky and frustrating, to the point that it kills my enjoyment of the game.

...I've done it like you describe, it's just that it's so time consuming and fiddly that it's a total buzzkill for me.  I find myself getting impatient and irritated, instead of actually enjoying the game.  I'm not sure why my reaction is so strong (I'm fairly OCD; goodness knows I plow enough hours into other aspects of this game, why should I get so frustrated at this one?)  My guess is that it comes down to basically two things, for me.  The first is, I get frustrated because it's not supposed to be hard.  Things in the game that are hard, because doing them IRL would be hard, are great!  It's what makes KSP a fun challenge.  But this feels like such a pointless interruption of gameplay for something that ought to be dead simple that it just bugs me.  It's as if they made a minigame out of "here are the 12 steps you have to do to zip up your spacesuit before you can send a kerbal on a mission."  The other thing about it that bugs me is that it's putting a very narrow design limit on what things have to look like to make them dockable, which again bugs me:  I look at my base and don't see "oh yay, here's this neat base that I designed!", but rather "here's this ugly kludge that's not how I would have designed a base, but that I did in order to work around this silly artificial limitation of the game."

I'm not saying that this would necessarily be anyone else's experience, but it's certainly mine.  I find that I just can't stand it, I'd rather spend my time and design efforts elsewhere, so I just can't be bothered.  KAS answers the problem perfectly for me, so it's what I do.

[Plusck]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

Yes, there's certainly that, and certainly there are plenty of folks who have made surface base-building work for them in stock... but that sort of thing is exactly what I was referring to when I said:

...I've done it like you describe, it's just that it's so time consuming and fiddly that it's a total buzzkill for me.  I find myself getting impatient and irritated, instead of actually enjoying the game.  I'm not sure why my reaction is so strong (I'm fairly OCD; goodness knows I plow enough hours into other aspects of this game, why should I get so frustrated at this one?)  My guess is that it comes down to basically two things, for me.  The first is, I get frustrated because it's not supposed to be hard.  Things in the game that are hard, because doing them IRL would be hard, are great!  It's what makes KSP a fun challenge.  But this feels like such a pointless interruption of gameplay for something that ought to be dead simple that it just bugs me.  It's as if they made a minigame out of "here are the 12 steps you have to do to zip up your spacesuit before you can send a kerbal on a mission."  The other thing about it that bugs me is that it's putting a very narrow design limit on what things have to look like to make them dockable, which again bugs me:  I look at my base and don't see "oh yay, here's this neat base that I designed!", but rather "here's this ugly kludge that's not how I would have designed a base, but that I did in order to work around this silly artificial limitation of the game."

I'm not saying that this would necessarily be anyone else's experience, but it's certainly mine.  I find that I just can't stand it, I'd rather spend my time and design efforts elsewhere, so I just can't be bothered.  KAS answers the problem perfectly for me, so it's what I do.

Sorry, I must have skipped over that bit in your post.

However, it really doesn't have to be hard.

To demonstrate, I made a savegame especially for you: killed off all my ships and crew, squandered my money, wrecked KSC, and left just this poor soul trying to get fueled up: moho landing save game

The savegame name should tell you all you need to know to land at exactly the right spot. It gives you a couple of hundred metres altitude to get used to the lander (basically, empty as it is, you'll accelerate with 1 thrust increment and slow with 2...). Then just lift the landing gear, turn and drive to the mining craft (head for the end with the big thermal thingy sticking straight up). Approach at less than 2m/s and it should be done. I personally leave SAS and RCS on while driving since I have the driving keys mapped to the number pad.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, Plusck said:

However, it really doesn't have to be hard.

To demonstrate, I made a savegame especially for you: killed off all my ships and crew, squandered my money, wrecked KSC, and left just this poor soul trying to get fueled up: moho landing save game

The savegame name should tell you all you need to know to land at exactly the right spot. It gives you a couple of hundred metres altitude to get used to the lander (basically, empty as it is, you'll accelerate with 1 thrust increment and slow with 2...). Then just lift the landing gear, turn and drive to the mining craft (head for the end with the big thermal thingy sticking straight up). Approach at less than 2m/s and it should be done. I personally leave SAS and RCS on while driving since I have the driving keys mapped to the number pad.

Thank you, I really appreciate your taking the trouble (and hopefully your link can help other folks).  However, even without looking at it (which I can't at the moment, not being in front of my KSP machine), I can tell you that it's a complete non-starter for me.

For one thing, you lost me the moment you said "wheels".  I do not want wheels on my base.  Period, full stop.  Wheels are for rovers.  Bases are buildings.  If I have to have #*(&#% wheels sticking out from every component of my otherwise reasonable-looking base, it's going to be like sandpaper on my soul.  I just can't stand it.  Every time I look at those silly useless things sticking out of a structure that does not need them or want them, and that only slapped 'em on there because of a regrettable hole in the game that forces me to use them because it's the only tool at my disposal, I'll cringe and feel a little surge of resentment rage.

I'm not saying it's rational, I'm saying I hate it.

In addition to which:  There is no stock put-things-on-wheels solution that I would find acceptable, even if I didn't aesthetically object to wheels poking out of my buildings.  I've done this.  I do appreciate your taking the effort, but trust me that when I say "it's horrible," it's not because I don't know how to do it, it's because I hate it.  Different things bug different people in KSP. 

It's too fiddly.  There's always backing-and-filling to get the damn docking ports lined up right, and multiple tries required, and half the time something doesn't work anyway because there's a bit of bumpiness to the terrain and it doesn't work so now you have to go and hunt up a different location that's smoother so they will align properly, and even if you do that and you successfully hook up your first three base components, now you come along with your 4th component and the ground's too bumpy for that so you have to disassemble your whole damn base and try to drive it somewhere that all the components can hook up...

Uh-uh.  Nope.  Not gonna go there.  Do not want.

If the technique works for you, great!  I know from reading the forums that it works for other folks, too.  However it has never, does not now, and will never work for me.  Ever.  So if I didn't have KAS to work with, I'd probably just abandon planetary bases entirely as not worth the annoyance.

But that's just me.    Hopefully your technique may work for other folks, who have different play styles, frustration tolerance levels, or hot-button issues than I do!

[Plusck]

2 minutes ago, Snark said:

Thank you, I really appreciate your taking the trouble (and hopefully your link can help other folks).  However, even without looking at it (which I can't at the moment, not being in front of my KSP machine), I can tell you that it's a complete non-starter for me.

For one thing, you lost me the moment you said "wheels".  I do not want wheels on my base.  Period, full stop.  Wheels are for rovers.  Bases are buildings. 

[...]

It's too fiddly.  There's always backing-and-filling to get the damn docking ports lined up right, and multiple tries required, and half the time something doesn't work anyway because there's a bit of bumpiness to the terrain and it doesn't work so now you have to go and hunt up a different location that's smoother so they will align properly, [...]

Uh-uh.  Nope.  Not gonna go there.  Do not want.

[...]

But that's just me.    Hopefully your technique may work for other folks, who have different play styles, frustration tolerance levels, or hot-button issues than I do!

(I snipped the quote a bit just for convenience)

OK, I get it, you hate wheels on anything but rovers.

However (and I do appreciate your acknowledgement that this is not rational), why don't you hate having landing legs on bases too? Perhaps because it's easier to pretend that they're fixed jacks used to stabilise the base... but then mobile homes have wheels and jacks, and while you might understandably hate them, they do form the closest analogy to the sort of thing we'd need to have if we started trying to drop numerous modules onto a distant planet or moon. And yes, it will necessarily be fiddly.

And the stock game provides huge wheels which seem to have the express purpose of supporting massive constructions... like bases. Though I don't actually use them.

Still, the thing I gave you to land is a lander and fuel carrier. It is not intended to be the main part of a base, but something which can roll up to it and syphon off fluids. From a realism (or rather not-breaking-credulity) standpoint, it is perfectly logical. I doubt a real base would want people pointing large rockets anywhere near their fuel stockpiles, so wheels would be a must for that role anyway. So it's a temporary attachment to the centre of the base. Wheels are a natural fit for this purpose.

And the other point about that lander is that it is simple to build, once you've done it once, and does not require numerous attempts to connect just as long as you approach straight on, which is not too difficult to do. That was one of the main points about providing that savegame: to demonstrate that it does not have to be fiddly.

And that "doing it once" was also relatively simple. I've spent far more time just trying to build something to land and take off from Eve.

However, if you do want to get fiddly (and "you" in this context certainly cannot refer to you personally, I know), that lander also provides that possibility: the wheels can come off, once attached, as long as the tanks aren't full. Decouple the docking port and they roll out from under the body of the lander. If you want to build a huge base on legs alone, just put a docking port under a central 2.5m part and you can use the wheels waiting on the surface. That, of course, is very fiddly but again, this is probably what we'd need to do for anything other than huge bases - and they will probably be cut directly out of the rock.

[flatbear]

on a side note, is there an easy way cheat mate/dock parts of a mun base? I forgot some of my rcs thrusters that I put on my other mun base parts and now its really hard to get this last part to mate to the rest of the base.  Thanks.  (usually I try and use low thrust to hover and then use rcs to dock but I dont have enough rcs thrusters here D:) (please forgive the use of mechjeb)

Edited April 23, 2016 by flatbear