KSP Caveman Evolved Challenge

[zanie420]

@jonny and @ManEatingApe, how the hell did you both pull off a Duna intercept without conics? Thanks for making it seem so simple! I spent literally all day yesterday attempting this over and over without success. I fear I am misunderstanding something fundamental. I am using the transfer window planner mod, which provides a visual reference, to setup the phase angle and depart at the correct ejection angle. However when I advance time, I never seem to be within Duna's SOI. This is soooooooooooo frustrating!

EDIT: I did it! What I was doing was messing up my mid course correction burn. For some reason it is kind of anit-intuitive to me. I was arriving too early. After reading up some, I realized I need to burn retro and radial to correct for that. After slipping past my first intercept today, I learned you have to patiently wait for closest approach and not warp over it.... which I think I may have been doing ALL DAY YESTERDAY!!!!!

Edited August 10, 2017 by zanie420
finally got an intercept!

[ManEatingApe]

4 hours ago, zanie420 said:

After slipping past my first intercept today, I learned you have to patiently wait for closest approach and not warp over it....

It's a tricky thing to pull off, nicely done!

I always budget way way over the normal dV needed in order to account for correction burns.

Then the correction burns to fix the previous "correction" burns. 

[zanie420]

Got to Ike and Duna!

For Ike I upgraded the Astronaut Complex to get EVAs, so Jeb could reset instruments, and of course walk around on Ike and Duna. After landing on Duna I upgraded the Tracking Center to finally have conics! Not sure if I want to return Jeb home, or exploit the very close Moho and Eve windows.... that will be next video  

Edited August 11, 2017 by zanie420

[zanie420]

Part 3 uploading today. Got Jeb home from Duna, with a lot of science, and upgraded R&D, so I could get the nukes. Nearly filled out the tech tree. Landed Bob on Moho, but used JUST slightly too much fuel getting there and did not have enough to get back without doing a gravity assist at Eve and adding a few years to the return trip. Decided to send Jeb out with spare fuel to rescue him. It was much easier after landing Bob, upgrading mission control, and being able to plan maneuvers! Returned to Kerbin with both Kerbals and tons of Moho science! Contemplating next upgrade....

Edited August 14, 2017 by zanie420

[Superfluous J]

On 8/11/2017 at 7:18 PM, zanie420 said:

Got to Ike and Duna!

For Ike I upgraded the Astronaut Complex to get EVAs, so Jeb could reset instruments, and of course walk around on Ike and Duna. After landing on Duna I upgraded the Tracking Center to finally have conics! Not sure if I want to return Jeb home, or exploit the very close Moho and Eve windows.... that will be next video  

Well done on that minimal ship to Ike and Duna. I'm working on the new leaderboard now, not sure how long it will take, but you're on it with 3 points currently, Kerbin SOI, Duna Landing, and Ike.

[Superfluous J]

I've got the leaderboard back up. I am not going to say it's CORRECT, mind you. I'd be surprised if I didn't leave something out, going through all the posts in the thread. Feel free to point out where I was wrong.

Two interesting points:
@Jetski won this thing MORE THAN A MONTH before anybody else did. Then, within the span of 5 days, 3 people won (myself included).
Everybody who has gotten over halfway done, has won (assuming I got the numbers right).

[Jetski]

12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I've got the leaderboard back up. I am not going to say it's CORRECT, mind you. I'd be surprised if I didn't leave something out, going through all the posts in the thread. Feel free to point out where I was wrong.

Two interesting points:
@Jetski won this thing MORE THAN A MONTH before anybody else did. Then, within the span of 5 days, 3 people won (myself included).
Everybody who has gotten over halfway done, has won (assuming I got the numbers right).

I may have gotten a little obsessed with this one - I think I did most of it in 2 days

 

[zanie420]

 

Same for me with Munless Night remember?!? I did most of that one in 3 days. I might be able to pull this challenge off by tomorrow. I landed on Dres last night. I need to do the commentary for my video showing my return from Duna, as well as landing and returning from Moho before uploading it today. They keeping coming in around 45mins long, even with the video speed up 5x. I am not good at cutting out what needs cutting. I guess I figure people can just fast forward.....

[zanie420]

On 8/13/2017 at 6:24 AM, zanie420 said:

Got Jeb home from Duna, with a lot of science, and upgraded R&D, so I could get the nukes. Nearly filled out the tech tree. Landed Bob on Moho, but used JUST slightly too much fuel getting there and did not have enough to get back without doing a gravity assist at Eve and adding a few years to the return trip. Decided to send Jeb out with spare fuel to rescue him. It was much easier after landing Bob, upgrading mission control, and being able to plan maneuvers! Returned to Kerbin with both Kerbals and tons of Moho science! Contemplating next upgrade....

Doing Dres right now, after upgrading the VAB for the Moho return. I upgraded the launchpad for the Dres landing. At the very last moment before burning back to Kerbin with TONS of excess deltaV, I decided to divert to Gilly instead since an Eve window is currently open. Returning home with 2 upgrades will help and I won't have to use any deltaV later on Gilly in my Eve mission!

@5thHorseman, I watched all your videos and bow humbly to your production quality. It must be excruciating to watch mine and I appologize

Edited August 14, 2017 by zanie420
upgrading clafication

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, zanie420 said:

 

@5thHorseman, I watched all your videos and bow humbly to your production quality. It must be excruciating to watch mine and I appologize

 

Awww thanks. I have have about 5 years of experience hacking YouTube videos together, but this was a new experience for me. I recorded everything in advance without commentary, tried to only record the important things but generally got 2-4 hours of video, watched it all at 2x speed, jumping forward when necessary to skip big boring things that aren't worth commenting on, and jotting down comments with time stamps. 95% of what I wrote, I actually ended up saying verbatim. Rarely did I go off script. Then, I pasted my comment track under the video track and just cut the video down so the timestamps matched my script.

I say "Just" but it of course took a lot of time. You can't do a KSP video without taking a lot of time. As you know

[zanie420]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

I say "Just" but it of course took a lot of time. You can't do a KSP video without taking a lot of time. As you know

I am getting quicker! I just finished landing my Dres to Gilly mission. Just need to add commentary and upload. With Gilly I chose R&D, knowing my return of science would nearly unlock all the nodes. Once back on Kerbin I struggled to decide, but eventually picked the tracking station. Maybe a probe returned from Eve now that I have the range?  

[zanie420]

@5thHorseman, why did I get the 'modded' category? I don't have anything installed that was considered non-stock in other challenges I complete as stock. Not a huge deal I guess.

Update: After only needing 4 nodes left on the tech tree with the science returned from Dres/Gilly, I sent Bob back out, this time to Minmus. He cleaned out nearly every biome and returned (albeit with issues) with more than enough to complete the tree. With all the tech unlocked, I feel limited only by the launch pad really. Thinking I maybe should have taken that instead of the tracking station.... oh well. My progress so far:

Mun/Minmus      Launch pad
Ike                     Astronaut complex
Duna land         Tracking Station    
Duna return       R&D
Moho land         Mission Control
Moho return      VAB
Dres landing     Launch pad
Gilly landing     R&D 
Dres return      Tracking Station

[zanie420]

 

12 hours ago, zanie420 said:

I upgraded the launchpad for the Dres landing. At the very last moment before burning back to Kerbin with TONS of excess deltaV, I decided to divert to Gilly instead since an Eve window is currently open. Returning home with 2 upgrades will help and I won't have to use any deltaV later on Gilly in my Eve mission!

7 hours ago, zanie420 said:

I am getting quicker! I just finished landing my Dres to Gilly mission. With Gilly I chose R&D, knowing my return of science would nearly unlock all the nodes. Once back on Kerbin I struggled to decide, but eventually picked the tracking station. Maybe a probe returned from Eve now that I have the range?  

 

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, zanie420 said:

@5thHorseman, why did I get the 'modded' category? I don't have anything installed that was considered non-stock in other challenges I complete as stock. Not a huge deal I guess.

It's not. I blatantly refused to do my own challenge in Stock

You are using a mod that tells you your dV. You are also using a mod that automatically collects science. This is nothing to be ashamed of, I use two different mods to do the same things, along with some others to do other things. However, these mods allow you to circumvent some of the limitations of stock.

Essentially, if a mod changes gameplay at all (whether to make it easier or harder) you get the Modded flag. You don't have to right click your thermometer to get science. You know to the m/s2 how much dV you have at a glance. You can send a ship to Duna and do other things, confident that the alarm clock will tell you when to pay attention to it again. That's "modded."

And it's a better way to play, in my opinion.

[zanie420]

12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

It's not. I blatantly refused to do my own challenge in Stock

You are using a mod that tells you your dV. You are also using a mod that automatically collects science. This is nothing to be ashamed of, I use two different mods to do the same things, along with some others to do other things. However, these mods allow you to circumvent some of the limitations of stock.

Essentially, if a mod changes gameplay at all (whether to make it easier or harder) you get the Modded flag. You don't have to right click your thermometer to get science. You know to the m/s2 how much dV you have at a glance. You can send a ship to Duna and do other things, confident that the alarm clock will tell you when to pay attention to it again. That's "modded."

And it's a better way to play, in my opinion.

I blatantly did not see the modded vs lightly modded explanation on the board! Totally makes sense

Update:  As @Jetski did, I am going to tackle Jool/Eeloo together. Since I don't have to actually return from each moon, I decided to go witch a modified version of the craft I did my Jool5 run in. Tech tree is maxed so I left behind all the science instruments as well. Kept my Tylo lander the same since I KNOW it can land and return to low orbit with a Kerbal aboard. Time to refuel at Minmus before heading out!

[zanie420]

Update: I am afraid the next video will be very very long. I made a direct transfer, after refueling, from Minmus to a Laythe gravity assist, to a Pol encounter and landing. Refueled at Pol. Transferred from Pol to Tylo and dropped to circular orbit with AP down below 10km. Jeb used a separate disposable lander to land haphazardly, and then nearly regain orbit. Finished orbiting on EVA prop and rendezvoused with main ship. Realized I forgot to upgrade for Pol, so chose Launch Pad. For Tylo the VAB. Transferred to Laythe aerobrake and landing, upgraded SPH. Starting to get low on funds very much like @5thHorseman, but the runaway is cheap....

[zanie420]

Update: Video done, just need to add commentary and upload. Got it down to under an hour.....   Transferred from Laythe to Bop and landed. Refueled and transferred to Vall and landed, completing the Jool5. Took Runway upgrade for Bop, and Admin building for Vall. Next stop Eeloo!

[zanie420]

15 hours ago, zanie420 said:

 I made a direct transfer, after refueling, from Minmus to a Laythe gravity assist, to a Pol encounter and landing. Refueled at Pol. Transferred from Pol to Tylo and dropped to circular orbit with AP down below 10km. Jeb used a separate disposable lander to land haphazardly, and then nearly regain orbit. Finished orbiting on EVA prop and rendezvoused with main ship. Realized I forgot to upgrade for Pol, so chose Mission Control. For Tylo the VAB. Transferred to Laythe aerobrake and landing, upgraded SPH.

11 hours ago, zanie420 said:

Transferred from Laythe to Bop and landed. Refueled and transferred to Vall and landed, completing the Jool5. Took Runway upgrade for Bop, and Admin building for Vall. Next stop Eeloo!

Transferred from Vall to Pol, refueled and waited 19 years for Eeloo window. Transferred to Eeloo and landed. Upgraded runway. Returned to Kerbin aerobrake losing 2 engines. Splashed down and recovered. Upgraded Astronaut complex.

Somehow I uploaded the video without sound......hoping to remedy that today. I only have Eve left to do and here is my progress so far:

Mun/Minmus        Launch pad
Ike                       Astronaut complex
Duna land           Tracking Station    
Duna return         R&D
Moho land           Mission Control
Moho return        VAB
Dres landing       Launch pad
Gilly landing       R&D 
Dres return        Tracking Station
Pol landing         Mission control
Tylo landing       VAB
Laythe landing   SPH
Bop landing       Runway
Vall landing        Admin building
Eeloo landing    Runway
Eeloo return      Astronaut complex

Edited August 17, 2017 by zanie420
correction

[zanie420]

Apparently you can no longer add custom audio to a video track in the Youtube editor anymore   I will have to re-upload the part 5 video with sound, and I have crappy DSL throttled uploads, and this last video took almost 5 hours to send. 

[zanie420]

On 7/31/2017 at 11:37 AM, ManEatingApe said:

Please do! I've shamelessly pinched some ideas from Foxster's excellent Eve landers in this challenge thread, especially using the circular intake and small hardpoint to minimise drag. For example 33.2 tons here and an incredible 18.79 tons here (kudos to @Foxster)

Mine are a bit bigger to make up for ham-fisted flying skills, but do the trick from most elevations (below 500m you'll have to jetpack the final part into orbit )

 

Oh I fully intend to pinch your Eve craft @ManEatingApe, but since I do not need to stop at Gilly it will be customized.  Thanks!

[IncongruousGoat]

Wow. It's been a while since I posted anything here. Real life has been preventing me from devoting the attention I'd like to this, but I managed to eke out another mission. This time, we head for Dres and Eeloo, in an effort to nail a few more building upgrades before we head for Jool.

Spoiler

Here she is, the mighty Dawn:

I think you can probably guess where I got the name from. Anyways, launch went off without a hitch, other than having to burn the transfer stage a bit to circulaize.

The transfer to Dres was a bit interesting. I still don't have access to maneuver nodes, so I had to eyeball the whole transfer. On top of that, Dawn, with only one measly nuclear engine, produces barely 2 m/s of acceleration, fully fueled. This in turn meant I had to split the transfer burn up into three segments. By eye. Thankfully, I only had to quickload once-my initial transfer had too high of an apoapsis.

Capture at Dres was uneventful, although the burn itself had to be started rather far out due to both low TWR and Dres's low escape velocity.

Likewise, landing was uneventful, and spirits were high (Bob's reservations about the fuel level notwithstanding)

Transfer to Eeloo was relatively easy-Dawn's TWR had risen enough by this point that the burn could be attempted in one go, and I nailed the ejection angle, leading to an easy encounter with Eeloo.

Capture went smoothly, the large static panels on the lander providing more than enough power even all the way out at Eeloo.

Landing was, once again, just fine. Bob found himself overwhelmed by the vast distances he'd crossed, and felt the need to point it out on the flag.

Ascent wasn't quite as perfect-the lander ran out of fuel, and Bob had to resort to using his jetpack to complete the rendezvous. In the end, though, he made it back to Dawn with all the science in tow.

It was at this point that I realized my mistake. You see, up until now, Dawn's transfer stage had been using the SAS capabilities of the lander's probe core. This worked fine as long as the lander was attached... but, now that I had ditched the lander in low Eeloo orbit, the transfer stage was left without any SAS capabilities. Bob, of course, was no help, being more trained in experiment refurbishment than piloting. This left me flying the entire return from Eeloo to Kerbin without either maneuver nodes nor SAS capabilities. needless to say, the piloting was frustrating.

The escape burn from Eeloo went as well as could be expected, by which I mean it had a periapsis roughly around where Kerbin's orbit is.

An inclination change burn and a braking burn at periapsis later, and I still didn't have a Kerbin encounter. Without maneuver nodes, and with the clunky way interplanetary closest approaches show up, I knew that the only way I could get an encounter the way I was trying to would be by dead luck. So, I decided to try warping to apoapsis and dropping my periapsis instead-the hope being that if I were close enough to an encounter with my current trajectory, dropping the periapsis would secure a proper encounter, albeit at a higher relative velocity.

To my surprise, it worked. I had a Kerbin encounter. Admittedly, my periapsis was well within Eve's orbit, and I was nearly out of fuel, but I had a Kerbin encounter. A very high velocity Kerbin encounter.

Which leads me to the next problem. My capsule's heat shield was perfectly capable of surviving re-entry. However. The entry velocity, some 6.1 km/s, was so high that any deviation from retrograde upon atmospheric entry would cause the capsule to explode, just from the little bt of heating that would leak around the heat shield. Normally, this wouldn't be too much of a problem... if I had SAS. Which I didn't. Coupled with the fact that I had to try several entry periapses before finding one that would leave me captured, this sensitivity to heading made re-entry very frustrating.

Eventually, though, Bob made it safely to the surface, with his bounty of science and upgrades in tow. And what a bounty it was. 4,400 science and four whole building upgrades came as a result of this mission.

I've only spent three of them, leveling up the VAB and launchpad to T3 and mission control to T2. The next in the queue is the R&D center, but I can't exactly afford its 2 million fund upgrade cost quite yet. I haven't spent any of the science, either-I'm waiting for the R&D upgrade before I go and do that.

The album (relink) has been updated with screenshots, for those seeking even more details.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Dres and Eeloo

And very well done at that. Nice little 4-pointer there

[zanie420]

Just returned from Eve and have completed the challenge, thanks to @ManEatingApe . Video uploading. Did we ever work out a badge yet @5thHorseman?

[Jetski]

2 hours ago, zanie420 said:

Just returned from Eve and have completed the challenge, thanks to @ManEatingApe . Video uploading. Did we ever work out a badge yet @5thHorseman?

I vote for this:

Of course I would vote for it though, since I made it back when nobody had finished this one yet

Maybe we could write something on it...

 

Edited August 20, 2017 by Jetski

[zanie420]

15 hours ago, zanie420 said:

Just returned from Eve and have completed the challenge, thanks to @ManEatingApe . Video uploading. 

Going to take a few hours..... I tacked on the Eve mission to the end of the last video and am re-uploading it now. So this shows the Jool5, Eeloo landing/return, as well and the Eve landing/return. Then showcasing a fully upgraded KSC!

 

12 hours ago, Jetski said:

I vote for this:

Of course I would vote for it though, since I made it back when nobody had finished this one yet

Maybe we could write something on it...

 

I like it! What say you @5thHorseman? Nice leaderboard revamp by the way. I look forward to seeing my completion.  Once again, sorry about the long video. If you saw my last silent movie, then you can just skip ahead to the Eve mission with about 18 mins left.