Make First Optimal Duna Transfer Window Happen Sooner

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I'm going by the Transfer Window Planner mod here, but I think the start positions of the planets could be adjusted so that one could plan to fly to Duna much sooner in career- currently I think it's about 236 days in? It could easily be half that.

Also, is it possible to create a module manager file to to this, to have day one start 120 days later?

[Alshain]

I'm a little curious why it matters?  Why not just go to Eve or Moho while you wait.  They come around a lot sooner.

[tater]

Or they could make time actually meaningful, in which case the current window would be too soon. 

 

Dear diary, today is day one of our new space program, and after 3 grueling minutes of work we launched into orbit! By later in the day, we were on our way to the Mun!

Dear diary, today is day 5, and we've already explored the Mun and Munmus... now to build a base. To think we only thought of rockets a few days ago!

 

Career is so broken.

Edited April 26, 2016 by tater
Awful, embarrassing typos.

[Racescort666]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Or they could make time actually meaningful, in which case the current window would be too soon. 

 

Dear diary, today is day one of our new space program, and after 3 grueling minutes of work we launched into orbit! By later in the day, we were on our way tot he Mun!

Dear diary, today is day 5, and we've already explored the Mun and Munmus... now to build a base. To think we only though of rockets a few days ago!

 

Career is so broken.

I laughed out loud like a crazy person at this. 

Time is what you make of it I guess and there are good arguments for and against realism.

[tater]

Yeesh, I should not type from my phone Look at the typos.

 

[ghpstage]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Or they could make time actually meaningful, in which case the current window would be too soon. 

 

Dear diary, today is day one of our new space program, and after 3 grueling minutes of work we launched into orbit! By later in the day, we were on our way to the Mun!

Dear diary, today is day 5, and we've already explored the Mun and Munmus... now to build a base. To think we only thought of rockets a few days ago!

 

Career is so broken.

Love it 

But don't forget about rescuing Jeb from orbit 12 years after abandoning him!

As it is now, career does manage to provide constraints and weird requests that can spur ambitious and ridiculous missions, plenty of creativity and much hilarity, which certainly isn't a bad thing, but until time is made meaningful it will never feel anything like a 'career'

Edited April 26, 2016 by ghpstage

[tater]

So I'd rephrase OP's request to, "Why can't they make time progress in career so I don't feel like I've taken 50 days to replicate the last 60 years of space exploration?"

 

Some (easy?) ways to add time progression to KSP:

1. Life support. 

2. Have anything built in the VAB/SPH spin the clock forward some time period to launch, perhaps based on mass and number of parts. Perhaps any saved craft type that has launched at least once gets a substantial time discount. This build time might be on the order of a Minmonth.

3. Change fund payment in career. Give the player a budget per 50 day period (that's 1 Minmus month = Minmonth), then have a "Warp to next fiscal month" button. Not enough funds for your Mun rocket? Warp to next month.

Edited April 26, 2016 by tater

[ghpstage]

Not sure you meant it, but I wouldn't want the game to automatically jump forward after building a craft in the VAB as ongoing missions will be ongoing, though a button to jump to when craft are completed will be pretty important.

Aside from that nit pick, I like build times and your other suggestions. Something else that could work well with all three would be the ability to build multiple craft for use in 'quick' succession (limit of one launch per day perhaps?), but with stored craft having a 'monthly' storage cost based on craft cost/size. That way we can plan for maximising the use of transfer windows, plan for possible rescue needs, relatively short term orbital constructions and other things at a cost.

Edited April 26, 2016 by ghpstage

[tater]

Yeah, it could use more like the KCT roll out paradigm for this. Launch takes you to the launchpad, and then you can choose to warp from there if you like, or do other things. They should make no craft use power on the launchpad, though.

[Renegrade]

6 hours ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Also, is it possible to create a module manager file to to this, to have day one start 120 days later?

Not sure about that, but you could just use KAC to warp ahead however long you want.  You can enter a human-readable time (like days/years) or UT (long string of seconds) in as a "raw alarm" which can kill warp for you at any time you like.  So set up an alarm, hit max timewarp (it's just a jump to the left..), and walk away for a minute.  Just make sure you understand the difference between "interval" and "date"

(you'd want "date" given that you know the date it happens on)

With the current mechanics, there's no real penalty for warping ahead like that, and the game now properly supports games > 68 years.

[John FX]

I asked this a while ago.

I assumed there must be a date which, if you started your sandbox game on that date, you would have transfer windows to most planets coming up quite soon.

Sure it might be many years into the game but if you saved your game after warping you could then copy that save into a new game and bingo! you have transfer windows happening not long after you start.

[Kerbart]

You need extraorinary amounts of DV to get to Duna early and fast. But those would be lightweight probes anyway, to get the first pictures, do all kinds of telemetry, perhaps provide communications exchanges. You wouldn't start out if with a fully manned expedition on your first opportunity, right?

I have no problems with the timing. It allows you to explore the [redacted] out of the Kerbin system, unlock the tech tree, set up stations around Kerbin and its moons, perhaps even get a refueling operation around Minmus going, and even then you don't have to rush to slap your first Duna mission together. There's even time to simulate and try things out before you start that big journey.

[Skystorm]

@tater I'm pretty sure launch clamps provide power to your rocket while it sits on the launch pad.  If you use RemoteTech, the launch clamps also get a built-in omni-directional antenna so that you don't need to extend your antennas on the launch pad.

[tater]

28 minutes ago, Skystorm said:

@tater I'm pretty sure launch clamps provide power to your rocket while it sits on the launch pad.  If you use RemoteTech, the launch clamps also get a built-in omni-directional antenna so that you don't need to extend your antennas on the launch pad.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I don't always use clamps.

[regex]

So... should it be like a day 7 thing?  IIRC the Duna window is on day 59 which really isn't that far in timewarp.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

To answer some questions:

Eve and Moho are a bit advanced, Duna should be the first to come along- especially since it is first in the contracts that come up (along with Ike)

You can bang out a ton of contracts in 30-60 days, after that it gets a bit repetitious- I suppose one could simply fast forward through weeks of in game time, but if you have contracts pending then you are risking messing them up.

Just checked, according to TWP the first optimal window is at 230 days. That seems a bit far off, 100-120 days would be more reasonable. You can easily unlock 2.5m parts in a shorter timespan.

Either way, won't happen in stock so it is moot.

 

[fireblade274]

Even if you did change it, the bugs presented to current saves as planets are changed around in their positions, give me a headache just thinking about it.

[Skystorm]

@regex I'm not sure what you are spending on day 59 for Duna because the first low deltaV transfer I remember is around day 223 for about 1,610 m/s of deltaV.  How much deltaV are you spending on day 59 for that?  Seems like you are way off the optimal transfer window ... unless you are talking about Earth time instead of Kerbin time.

The very first transfer window in game that I recall is for Moho around day 40, but that is fairly early very expensive in terms of deltaV for a new career game.  Plus it has no atmosphere so it has a high insertion deltaV and no aerobraking possible.  It can be done though, and I did it once, but it leaves very little time to prepare a crew and ships for the transfer.

I don't recall a low deltaV transfer for Eve until after Duna sometime in early year 2.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Skystorm

[Nich]

I am pretty sure I have unlocked the tech tree in less then 25 days and 10 or less should be possible.  Although I do agree it is pretty disappointing unlocking the tech tree that quick and then warping that long for duna with is the next logical step.

[tater]

It's ridiculous that less than a month from messing with rockets, you have the parts to make Skylon. The entire career system is absurd.

[Renegrade]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Interesting, I didn't know that. I don't always use clamps.

They're quite handy for rescue missions (pay for kerbals?  Pfft! The game PAYS me to get FREE kerbals from orbit!).  I usually build my rescue ships with clamps so that they don't have to worry about launching low on juice (I warp ahead with the ship in the clamps until the target is approaching above KSC for LKO rescues).

7 hours ago, Skystorm said:

@regex I'm not sure what you are spending on day 59 for Duna because the first low deltaV transfer I remember is around day 223 for about 1,610 m/s of deltaV.  How much deltaV are you spending on day 59 for that?  Seems like you are way off the optimal transfer window ... unless you are talking about Earth time instead of Kerbin time.

I highlighted the relevant issue.  Day 59 is K-Day 236.

I've always disliked the addition of kerbal days/years, as it changed midway through development (0.23.5), resulting in this sort of confusion.  Also they don't qualify them at all, you can't tell which setting is being used at a glance unless it's past 6am on a given day or past day 365 in a given year.  If it had been kerbal days since the beginning, it would have been clearer, as we'd be used to the custom definition instead of the standard one, and using it most of the time.

Overloading of words is a bad idea.   "Day, noun.  A period of time between 21600s and 86400s.  Depends on context...very much so."

Also KSP and related mods *cough* need to use a julian date system (or at least have that option), but that's a different rant.  And even then, it should be like "1736 ED / 6944 KD", not something ambiguous.

[FungusForge]

On 4/25/2016 at 5:00 PM, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Also, is it possible to create a module manager file to to this, to have day one start 120 days later?

I think you'd need to fiddle with Kopernicus a bit for that. I've flipped Kerbin around so that days would flip over at midnight instead of midday. I haven't dived too deeply into the Kopernicus jazz, but I figure a planets position in orbit is there somewhere.

[mattinoz]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's ridiculous that less than a month from messing with rockets, you have the parts to make Skylon. The entire career system is absurd.

Well everything in the Kerbalverse is 10 times heavier, so maybe time is really ten times faster. So what might be a month to Kerbals is like months to us.

Wait that is still absurd in terms of time frame.

Time really does need to mean something in KSP it really is the missing piece to make the puzzle fit together.

[Alshain]

11 hours ago, tater said:

Interesting, I didn't know that. I don't always use clamps.

It gets better, you can attach lights to the clamps for night launches, the clams provide the electricity, and you get a full refund. Also, if you like a Liquid-start followed by a Solid start similar to the NASA STS launches, you can attach a fuel tank to the clamps and fuel lines to the craft and do it without draining your main tanks.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Alshain

[regex]

9 hours ago, Skystorm said:

unless you are talking about Earth time instead of Kerbin time.

Renegrade answered this; I use Earth time because I find Kerbin time stupid. 

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's ridiculous that less than a month from messing with rockets, you have the parts to make Skylon. The entire career system is absurd.

The more I think about this, the more I think career mode is just trying to be too many things to too many people.  It's so wide-open on options for how to play that you pretty much have to role-play.  If you do role-play, it's pretty okay, especially with contract weighting working now, but that's mainly because your resource points don't mean much after a certain point in the game and you basically have a sandbox.

On 4/25/2016 at 2:00 PM, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Also, is it possible to create a module manager file to to this, to have day one start 120 days later?

Yes, using Kopernicus, change Duna's mean anomaly at epoch 0.  The maths should be pretty easy to find online and all you need is a Module Manager patch to install it.  I have one that makes the Sun reasonably scaled instead of stupid huge in the sky.