SSTO Base Challenge:

[Xemina]

OK, but someone did ask me and I said Plane type. So why didn't you check?

Edited August 2, 2017 by Xemina

[sevenperforce]

51 minutes ago, DeltaVerb said:

OK, but someone did ask me and I said Plane type. So why didn't you check?

Oh, I did. There is a whole set of discussion above about what constitutes a good challenge. And by the time you were asked, I had already built the SSTO and put it in LKO.

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

Careful now! I sense that there could be someone in this thread, who is having fun wrong!!

[zolotiyeruki]

The 50k funds requirement is gonna make this one a lot harder.  I have a rather beautiful plane that'll do the job nicely, but it costs 157k.

EDIT: Yeah, requiring both Mk3 AND a cost <50k is really hard.  I noticed that the other entries were nowhere near that cost.

Are there any rules about shedding weight along the way, such as dropping empty fuel tanks? I assume all engines have to stay attached.

EDIT2:  Hang on, ONLY RAPIERS and LV-Ns?  And under 50k?  And Mk3?  Wow, that's pretty tight.  A single LV-N costs 10k, and a pair of RAPIERs will cost you 12k.  There's half the cost, before you even add a cockpit, payload, wings, cargo bays, landing gear, control surfaces, solar panels....

EDIT3:  I don't want to rag on the OP too much, since I think he/she's got a decent idea for the challenge, but one of the rules for posting challenges is that OP must complete it themselves in order to prove its possibility.

Edited August 3, 2017 by zolotiyeruki

[Xemina]

On 8/3/2017 at 8:53 PM, zolotiyeruki said:

The 50k funds requirement is gonna make this one a lot harder.  I have a rather beautiful plane that'll do the job nicely, but it costs 157k.

EDIT: Yeah, requiring both Mk3 AND a cost <50k is really hard.  I noticed that the other entries were nowhere near that cost.

Are there any rules about shedding weight along the way, such as dropping empty fuel tanks? I assume all engines have to stay attached.

EDIT2:  Hang on, ONLY RAPIERS and LV-Ns?  And under 50k?  And Mk3?  Wow, that's pretty tight.  A single LV-N costs 10k, and a pair of RAPIERs will cost you 12k.  There's half the cost, before you even add a cockpit, payload, wings, cargo bays, landing gear, control surfaces, solar panels....

EDIT3:  I don't want to rag on the OP too much, since I think he/she's got a decent idea for the challenge, but one of the rules for posting challenges is that OP must complete it themselves in order to prove its possibility.

You're allowed to drop fuel tanks, engines etc. Cost now 150,000.

[tseitsei89]

This is awesome thread OP just keeps changing the rules every other post... How do you honestly think anyone can make a legit entry to this challenge if you change the rules and criteria once a day? You know it takes time to plan and execute a good entry for a challenge like this and it is really irritating if you take the time to plan a good ship just to find out that the OP of the challenge has (once again) decided to change the rules...

[ARS]

Hate to nitpick, but the eve challenge is really impossible to do in stock. If your definition of SSTO in this challenge is a plane type, then, with 150k credits, it's completely impossible to be completed. Reason:

Plane-style SSTO rely on airbreathing jet engine (Which is fuel efficient) in order to save fuel while in kerbin atmosphere before switching on rocket engine when out of atmosphere where jet engines cannot function anymore. A full-rocket engine SSTO is possible, but it's unlikely to get you anywhere due to the lower fuel efficiency of rocket engines compared to jets. But on eve, no jet engines are functional, so you are forced to use rocket engine, which is really inefficient when used as SSTO engine on eve, and that's not even counting payload or getting there in the first place. Also, eve atmosphere decreases the performance of rocket engines due to it's pressure, the only engines that can work efficiently on eve and unaffected with this factor is vector, mammoth and aerospike. Even getting out of eve and making a stable orbit using stock plane SSTO on eve, assuming the plane is already there, is not an easy task, especially with only 150k credits. Full topic read here:

Either give some special rules on eve challenge such as higher money limit (go on, I dare you ask any experienced KSP player to find someone going to eve and back using plane-style SSTO that costs only 150k credit in pure stock), or using mods with engine parts suitable for eve. Otherwise, if its impossible to do, then what's the point placing that on difficulty levels? Why bother expecting players to do it anyway? Give us a goal that can be completed legitimately and still within the realm of possibility. What's happening here is like placing a reward for rank 1-2-3, but the rules was rigged so that no one will ever obtain rank 1

Edited August 5, 2017 by ARS

[Xemina]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Hate to nitpick, but the eve challenge is really impossible to do in stock. If your definition of SSTO in this challenge is a plane type, then, with 150k credits, it's completely impossible to be completed. Reason:

Plane-style SSTO rely on airbreathing jet engine (Which is fuel efficient) in order to save fuel while in kerbin atmosphere before switching on rocket engine when out of atmosphere where jet engines cannot function anymore. A full-rocket engine SSTO is possible, but it's unlikely to get you anywhere due to the lower fuel efficiency of rocket engines compared to jets. But on eve, no jet engines are functional, so you are forced to use rocket engine, which is really inefficient when used as SSTO engine on eve, and that's not even counting payload or getting there in the first place. Also, eve atmosphere decreases the performance of rocket engines due to it's pressure, the only engines that can work efficiently on eve and unaffected with this factor is vector, mammoth and aerospike. Even getting out of eve and making a stable orbit using stock plane SSTO on eve, assuming the plane is already there, is not an easy task, especially with only 150k credits. Full topic read here:

Either give some special rules on eve challenge such as higher money limit (go on, I dare you ask any experienced KSP player to find someone going to eve and back using plane-style SSTO that costs only 150k credit in pure stock), or using mods with engine parts suitable for eve. Otherwise, if its impossible to do, then what's the point placing that on difficulty levels? Why bother expecting players to do it anyway? Give us a goal that can be completed legitimately and still within the realm of possibility. What's happening here is like placing a reward for rank 1-2-3, but the rules was rigged so that no one will ever obtain rank 1

Umm, 1 I said you can use mod engines.2. it is nearly impossible otherwise it wouldn't be called impossible.

[sevenperforce]

4 hours ago, DeltaVerb said:

You're allowed to drop fuel tanks, engines etc. Cost now 150,000.

So now you can drop tanks and engines? Uh, that's called staging. Which means it is not in any way an SSTO...like, not even a little bit.

22 minutes ago, DeltaVerb said:

Umm, 1 I said you can use mod engines.

We can use mod engines? Great. I'll just "mod" the cfg of the Dawn engine so it has a sea-level TWR of 50 and can run on a single RTG. Torchship time!

I hate to rag on the OP too hard here, but this challenge just keeps changing and changing in every conceivable way. 

[Xemina]

47 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

So now you can drop tanks and engines? Uh, that's called staging. Which means it is not in any way an SSTO...like, not even a little bit.

We can use mod engines? Great. I'll just "mod" the cfg of the Dawn engine so it has a sea-level TWR of 50 and can run on a single RTG. Torchship time!

I hate to rag on the OP too hard here, but this challenge just keeps changing and changing in every conceivable way. 

Ummm... it's not staging as such, it's just dropping. When you let cargo out with a decoupler in space, you're getting rid of weight. I should probably lock the thread, but I'm not going to, as this was my first post. To be honest this was one of the reasons I didn't want to sign up.

You can no longer drop engines.

Edited August 5, 2017 by Xemina
I probably will lock

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, DeltaVerb said:

Ummm... it's not staging as such, it's just dropping. When you let cargo out with a decoupler in space, you're getting rid of weight. I should probably lock the thread, but I'm not going to, as this was my first post.

You can no longer drop engines.

Well, for what it's worth, I'm sorry we were so hard on you for your first post. The thing is, there are a LOT of challenges and people learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn't. Please don't take the pushback personally; it's just a hint that there are a lot of things to keep in mind in order to make a good challenge. 

Welcome to the forums!

[ARS]

If you don't mind I'm giving you advice, it would helps a lot if you allowed engine parts from mods or remove the cost limitation. Building an SSTO takes a lot of planning, depending on the destination. Also, give the detail of how scoring works. Please don't take these critics on a personal level. Some of us do understand what your challenge is, but some of us do spot some inconsistencies in the rules that conflicts with the game mechanic itself. Like @sevenperforce said, we're sorry if a we seem pressuring you too hard for your first post.  Anyway, welcome to the forums!

[Xemina]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

If you don't mind I'm giving you advice, it would helps a lot if you allowed engine parts from mods or remove the cost limitation. Building an SSTO takes a lot of planning, depending on the destination. Also, give the detail of how scoring works. Please don't take these critics on a personal level. Some of us do understand what your challenge is, but some of us do spot some inconsistencies in the rules that conflicts with the game mechanic itself. Like @sevenperforce said, we're sorry if a we seem pressuring you too hard for your first post.  Anyway, welcome to the forums!

I said you're allowed. 

[Spricigo]

2 hours ago, DeltaVerb said:

Ummm... it's not staging as such, it's just dropping. When you let cargo out with a decoupler in space, you're getting rid of weight. I should probably lock the thread, but I'm not going to, as this was my first post. To be honest this was one of the reasons I didn't want to sign up.

You can no longer drop engines.

Sorry about the harshness, but at this time you need to accept that this challenge didn't worked out and let it rest. I know how it feels, the first challenge I attempted to host received the grand total of 0 entries, besides my efforts to keep it alive just didn't happened. 

But keep all the criticism/advice in consideration and try again when you are ready. Also keep in mind something you probably noticed by now: hosting a challenge is hard, up to eleven harder than attempting a challenge. You will need to put a lot of thought to avoid some traps and make the challenge interesting.

My advice:

1.Take as much preparation as you need before creating the thread to avoid the need to later adjustments. You can make and fix a lot of mistakes before you create the thread and only will know, after the thread is up people will notice and that will give a bad impression.

2.Before you even open the thread for a challenge, attempt it yourself. People will want to know the challenge is possible, so you want to know it also. Also a good chance to find something you may have overlooked in the rules and fix it before starting the challenge.

3.Get the terms rigth. Avoid vague terms and if something is open to misinterpretation in your rules clarify it  (e.g. for the purpose of this challenge a Base is   ... )

4.Modded challenge are less common for  reason: there is a lot of different mods out there and each one you accept will make harder to make a ballanced challenge. If you want to allow mods consider which ones will be allowed and which ones will be banned, or consider to have stock and modded categories.

0. Browse the other challanges, look how other people handle this and, if you feel like, attempt some (even if you don't share your result, just to get a handg of how is to deal with the limitation set for someone else)

[Xemina]

Hey! @sevenperforce! Check out my new challenge!

[monstah]

Closed per OP request