3 Years "Away" from KSP: Any Suggestions?

[Tyko]

Just now, Alshain said:

Somebody made a rather amusing time lapse gif of it.  Sadly I don't have a copy, but it was hilarious and sad at the same time.

I'd love to see it. I tend towards trying to play in a "serious, realistic" style, but sometimes, when you watch your 4 Ton lander go surfing down a slope you just have to throw up your hands, turn on SAS and enjoy the ride.

[Diche Bach]

I've got this one "early stage" mission that is giving me a lot of trouble.

Activate a Flea engine: Alt 30km to 37km Vel 30m/s to 210m/s

I've found that is effectively "very slow" for an altitude that low, so getting up to that altitude and then retro-orienting to slow down is what I've come up with.

Even then, the mission seems to want me to be "at that alt and vel" and THEN activate the engine. More than once, I've activated the flea (the last engine stage) when I was at about 29km and ~400m/s, point it up and retro to trajectory, and slow it down to the proper range while above 30km and below 37km. The text for each of the mission specifics goes all green (not the header part of it), but then when I start to drop and get below 30km it doesn't complete.

Couple other questions:

2. What does "cross-feed" (an option on some of the de-couplers) do?

3. I seem to recall that those external fuel lines were really useful but now it eludes me.

[Red Iron Crown]

1. Sometimes the test contracts require the part to be activated by staging rather than right clicking on it, could that be it?

2: Enabling "crossfeed" on decouplers allows engines to draw fuel from tanks that are separated from them by a decoupler. This is ordinarily not desirable behavior but the option is there for edge cases.

3. Fuel lines are very useful for drop tanks and advanced staging techniques like onion or asparagus staging. These can give greater efficiency at the cost of more complexity. A basic diagram of these styles of staging is here.

[Diche Bach]

Thanks for that info Red Crown!

41 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

1. Sometimes the test contracts require the part to be activated by staging rather than right clicking on it, could that be it?

Yes, I think this is the case. But it seems to be even more specific than that: It seems that the flea must be activated by staging WHILE the alt and vel parameters are in the specified range. If the flea is "staged" while the parameters are in range, that is not good enough. You've got to be in range, THEN stage activate it.

This seems to be a bit of a trick, because at about 20km any speed less than about 300m/s seems to result in plummeting. So the paradox seems to be: you've got to accelerate beyond the specified velocity range to get to the specified altitude range, and then slow it down (while not losing altitude) and then, once you are between 30 and 210 m/s and between 30km and 37km altitude stage activate the flea.

 

ADDIT: FINALLY got that sucker! Good mission I guess as it forced me to improve my control and intuition on the angle and velocity.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Diche Bach
ADDIT