Comms networks

[Silverwood]

Hello

I have started to progress beyond Kerbin with some unmanned probes. However the issue now is comms, so i was wondering what networks people have created to remain in contact with probes. I have got two Satellites in orbit around Kerbin and the Mun, but nothing else.

Any ideas on what works best?

Keith

[DrLicor]

Sounds like you need some of this  

 

[Spricigo]

Very simple commnet:

1 long range relay in polar high elliptic orbit.

3 short range relay equally spaced in equatorial circul orbit altitude higher than celestial body radius. 

 Expanding that:

1 extra long range relay for the rare cases where the first one get occluded.  At this point is pretty close full coverage all the time.

 

Edit to add an image of the setup:

Spoiler

 

Edited August 22, 2017 by Spricigo

[Epicdreamer]

And a bit more (but just a little bit) complicated:

3 commsats in a circular polar orbit with a radius larger than the radius of the orbit of the outermost moon of a system.

So for the Kerbin system this would result in a 3 sat system, evenly dustributed along a polar orbit larger than the orbit of Minmus (which is aproximatly 42Mm if I remember correct). So put those sats in a 45-50Mm polar orbit.

Advantage: these 3 sats will cover the whole system pretty well. You can add a few sats in an equatorial orbit around every body (Mun/Minmus) to enlarge the coverage to (nearly) full.

Disadvantage: getting those sats there with only the first few tiers of the tech tree unlocked can be challenging. And you do need either direct or relay antennas that can reach those polar orbit relays on every probe or ship you send out.

But this configuration works absolutely fine for me on every planetary system with moons

[Silverwood]

Okey dokey, thanks as usual. I will try these ideas.

Keith

[tomf]

If you have the base stations of Kerbin turned on, which they are on most difficulty levels IIRC then you don't need to work about relays around Kerbin. As for the mun I use a single relay in a very eccentric polar orbit so it spends almost all its time well above one of the poles. That way a probe in an equatorial orbit can see it almost all the time.

[Spricigo]

On 25/08/2017 at 10:53 AM, tomf said:

If you have the base stations of Kerbin turned on, which they are on most difficulty levels IIRC then you don't need to work about relays around Kerbin.

On by default in all preset difficulties.