RO/RP-0 Development Branch testing

[Bornholio]

Development branch starts including tooling costs, and roll out costs. Started a hard mode test (300% funds and allow saves) turned off rep mostly since it has no effect.

Minimized the mods I'm using including dropping RT and most part packs.

 

Most buildings cost x15 what they did previously and each procedural part has a tooling cost associated with its dimension. so first build of my bumper sounding rocket was over 80k in costs outside the parts and launch costs.

(noticed its changed to x5 building costs now that i look again)

Currently in February '52, first pad upgrade has gone through, thankfully i bought it as soon as possible.  But I'm worried about making it to orbit in time for my contract.

My first three launchers were tweaks of this one.  Solid engines got broken for a bit so I had to rely on N2 RCS for ullage on upper stages if i didn't hot stage.

 

This is my middle version of a  manned SO rocket.  Paid for 1.7m tanks and tooling for a cone adapter and 1.25m interstage fairings that got reused on all 5.

Did 5 launches suborbital manned, mostly to the 200km AP. Any much farther and reliable re-entry is not a sure thing.  Ramped the launchers up to include a retro burn on entry peak heating with the last one.

Latest sounding rocket, kind of extreme but still missing that last oomph for orbit.  2 A-9 Boosters, A-9 Main core, topped ASXR double stage each max burntime for one engine, N2 rcs and four rudamentary science instruments.  Just barely survives re-entry.  Hits 5km/s and Wyoming.

Tech purchased (not all earned yet) in early 52

1.2bp/s and 28.25science/yr for KCT

Edited August 6, 2017 by Bornholio
cleanup

[Bornholio]

august 7 worked too much

Silly designer, x-1 tanks are switchable and not pressurized by default, no supersonic for you.

got to lr-105s and lr89, plus aj10-137, from hard as all get out to orbit, to easy peasy including balloon tanks

restart and try a fast biosampler... much harder with heavy tanks, like playing stock+RSS and no smurff

[Bornholio]

Aug 8 testing, in between doing maintenance and lawn work on a day off i restarted again.  Since @NathanKell added several features (Astronaut retirement and down time), (more tooling changes), (KSC general maintenance costs) and @pap1723 moved the starting parts out so it cleans up the VAB since now the masses of aero and propeller  parts don't have to be visible but must be purchased.  This enables tooling costs to be factored into more parts and the entry cost modifier system applied to all parts.  Then node that contains them comes with a contract that completes after a delay of 2 seconds and grants the node.  That worked great and currently the costs are mostly 1 fund for each part (it contains more than 190 parts even with just required parts packs like sxt, vens and taerobee). 

Astronaut information on startup.

Maintenance, Astronaut, TACLS and KCT pile on each other at start.

New node for starting parts

Go get the new start mission first.

Pop out and the mission completes.

Node with Entry Cost parts all at one whole fund. Some are more and most will get some tooling setup charges add is suspect. Important to balance against the tooling costs for proc parts.

Did a custom settings career this time (hard, but reload/saves and 500% reward modifier) .

I think the astronaut retirement and the maintenance costs interface needs some love.  In particular the maintenance costs screen pops up and locks some inputs pretty regularly.

 

The first few normal lob rockets were all built on V-2/WAC bumpers, tooling costs are looking stable and reasonable for the reward.  The heavier tanks are harder to judge by intuition and sure can't make it to orbit with the first few nodes of techs. Make sure you save enough money for those '56 engines or its going to be a hard grind.

Launch one had a late A-4 low power failure and the WAC failed to ignite (my fault) but it still made 160km.

Second WAC failed to ignite also even with sepatrons. Third time was the charm. Got most water/shores/grassland science.

Did the manned mission as soon as I had X-1 cockpit, other than that and an A-9 Engine its mostly the same as my booster. Until several nodes happen i won't push it any farther.

Improvements to separation, Retro burn sepatrons and added N2 RCS after the first guy took 30g of re-entry force. The others took 12ish gees. Maybe crew off time should be linked to max G force squared

Did alternating sounding rocket (Difficult missions with other missions until the only other missions available were the X planes (sonic) missions which had a plane in construction for 340 days and the first orbital missions.  Made a very cheap V-2 rocket with only a Aerobee core to start the engine and let it go straight, each mission cost about 1k 300ish for the rocket depending on payload and 500-600 for rollout costs, each took about 5 days and a day rollout, not sure how many days are between that and the next mission available.  Did my eleventh sounding rocket mission in late August.

Tech at the end of science harvesting wave 1:

made a Short tank section to stretch over the V-2(A-4) tanks and mate to the conic.  Contained the variable amounts of payload requirement for each mission. Waste space was filled with fuel and fuel minimized to make the altitude required.

Mission   Alt-Mission   Alt-Reached   PayloadUnits    Reward   dV
 

Sounding Rocket Missions

1	200	406	60u	10k	----
2	400	402	70u	11k
3	200	326	555u	11k
4	200	312	770u	12k
5	300	322	545u	12k
6	200	278	1165u	13k	3114dV
7	400		560u	13k	3295dV
8	300	302	825u	13k	3225dV
9	100	163	3740u	15k	2529dV
10	200	230	2225u	16k	2913dV
				126k	total 37k Costs (yeah for 3bp)
#	km	Altitude	payload	reward	dV fuel

one later mission had a motor failure just as it unclamped.

Building construction take a lot longer, investing in VAB build rate is critical for this speed (1.2bp/s)

Edited August 9, 2017 by Bornholio

[NathanKell]

Yep, happily @soundnfury is working on a UI for maintenance. For retirements...what do you suggest? Should we just not have the retirement popups? Certainly you'd want one when you hire a crew member, I'd think, unless you want to manually look at the tooltip, and certainly you'd want one when someone retires?

[Bornholio]

7 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

Yep, happily @soundnfury is working on a UI for maintenance. For retirements...what do you suggest? Should we just not have the retirement popups? Certainly you'd want one when you hire a crew member, I'd think, unless you want to manually look at the tooltip, and certainly you'd want one when someone retires?

They are fine maybe just not have them center. Would be nice to have a summary somewhere maybe a toolbar screen. Or super awesome would be in the Astronaut screen. The maintenance popup was the only one that started to get annoying.

Added more info above also.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Bornholio

[Bornholio]

Aug 9 testing, my sons time off before school start has me running heavy duty.  Did a large number of X-Plane (sonic) by taking my first planes (2xGE, +XLR

So astronauts have this nice extra information in mouse over. Bobby is happy he got to do a Suborbital hop to 230km high extended his contract.

Charles Moore needs some fun or he won't stay on past '59

Maintenance costs and a new training feature have their own toolbar button now.

Sounding rocket mission for new altitude record is in.  If you want to slightly increase and re-run it multiple times, power down just after making AP high enough otherwise the new one will be higher than whater you end up at.  I did not, faster to take the money from the milestones.

Minimizing cost minimizes build times, so no avionics, just Hit R and spacebar a couple of times straight up

Early game has very little to do after finishing early SO contracts are done. Doing repeatable Xplane(sonic) missions to pass some time. Can't wait till RO/RP-0 can go 1.3 so i have a working runway. (go get kerbal constructs if you need to run plane missions and put a good one in)

Landing it on the runway is critical, that why I parachute in every time.  By parachuting in i make turnaround time just the time to roll it back in (still pretty long) but compared to the 200 day construction easy to do.

Turns like an SR-71, yeah not very good, but stable and fast 735m/s at 25km

Need to keep it along the coast so i can navigate .  No tracking station for near a year so no navigation help.

Heading to 15km and 550m/s for the contract.

Lobbing attacks at texas to grab biomes after getting new science.

Massive pile of dog poo fired into orbit. So bad I'm embarrassed to post its picture. No avionics except an aerobee core, its less satellite than intentional space junk.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Bornholio

[AbhChallenger]

I have been considering trying a Realism Overhaul KSP install (Just my opinion. That REALLY ought to be made into a single install package so that the challenge is the realism of the mod instead of needing youtube videos just to get it running) Yet this seems like a massive difficulty spike for those used to stock career mechanics.

Will the default difficulty settings be forgiving for those not yet used to these mechanics?

[a_schack]

5 hours ago, AbhChallenger said:

I have been considering trying a Realism Overhaul KSP install (Just my opinion. That REALLY ought to be made into a single install package so that the challenge is the realism of the mod instead of needing youtube videos just to get it running) Yet this seems like a massive difficulty spike for those used to stock career mechanics.

Will the default difficulty settings be forgiving for those not yet used to these mechanics?

Right now the big issue with installing is that CKAN is giving you 1.3 mods that'll break the game (won't even start). As for installing manually, I don't find it difficult, but I can understand why it might not be the easiest.

About the difficulty spike from stock, that's always been there, and it's one of the defining things about Realism Overhaul. I can't see any forgiving mechanics being introduced as that'd basically be reverting back to stock mechanics. RP-0 doesn't really make the game more difficult, it just changes career a lot and makes it more streamlined. Especially with the new contracts, which are heavensent.

But yes. It's a big ramp up in difficulty to go from stock to RO. And one well worth it. The sense of accomplishment when succeeding is far greater than anything experienced in stock.

Edited August 10, 2017 by a_schack

[kurgut]

Hi, My tech tree have some empty nodes, like the very first rocketry parts, is there a mod to fill that propelly?

Thanks for the amazing work

Edited May 23, 2018 by kurgut