Vanilla Sky

[xendelaar]

Hi Y'all,

After a short break from KSP I've decided to start a new "challenge" for myself. It's a fairly simple one, I believe, but I haven't done this before, so that makes things more interesting for me.

This time I will play a career game on normal without any mods where the main goal is to plant a flag on every celestial body with a solid surface.

Here is a small list of the rules I came up with to make things more interesting.

Rules:

• no mods (not even visuals or KER)
• land a kerbal on every planet, plant a flag and get him/her back home
• external aids, like excel are allowed
• using the web based Alex Moon script (or anything similar) for route planning is prohibited. I'm just going to eyeball the trajectories.
• no cheats

Let's start, shall we?

 

 

 

[xendelaar]

The Beginning

The beginning was a blast. Gathering science around Kerban, Minmus and the Mun was a piece of cake. I didn't take any pictures because I did these missions, more or less, on auto pilot.
After a flyby to the Mun I gained enough funds to upgrade all buildings so I could perform EVA's. Next, I visited the Mun and Minmus, where I planted my first two flags. I took Bob with me to perform as much science as he could along the way. The science points from these missions were enough to unlock the powerful Nerv engine.

With this baby unlocked, my next visit will be to Duna.

The road to Duna

The ship to Duna is a relatively simple one. Without the use of KER or Alex Moon, I won´t be able to fly as efficient as I´m used to, but since I´m playing on normal funds won´t be a bottleneck at all. So I´m planning to build my ships beefy!

Here's a small impression of the mission:

Some Highlights:

• I forgot to put the landing gear on a proper spot. So I had to land the ship on its side on Duna. Getting back in orbit was...tricky XD
• When I wanted to plot a course back home, my antenna wasn't powerful enough to reach kerbin. I had to wait year before the signal was strong enough. For my next mission I will be bringing a pilot instead of a scientist + octacore!
• During the landing back on kerbin my impact velocity was a bit too high and most parts got destroyed. Luckily the Bob and the science got saved.

*

So there you have it. My first vanilla visit on another planet. My next stop will be Dres.

 

*thanks @cratercracker for providing me with a cool flag

Edited October 14, 2017 by xendelaar

[Whirligig Girl]

would you accept a mod that adds a solid surface to Jool and Sun?

[xendelaar]

7 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

would you accept a mod that adds a solid surface to Jool and Sun?

hehe i would install it immediately! I wonder how long a day on the sun lasts

[cratercracker]

This is going to be pretty! And i know it! And i knew it! 

Good luck!

[xendelaar]

6 hours ago, cratercracker said:

This is going to be pretty! And i know it! And i knew it! 

Good luck!

 hehe. . i take a break from time to time. but ksp is always calling. in the beginning it's but a whisper... but after a certain time it changes into a seductive shout... i guess hehe. 

 it's good to be back buddy 

 

[cratercracker]

Just now, xendelaar said:

 hehe. . i take a break from time to time. but ksp is always calling. in the beginning it's but a whisper... but after a certain time it changes into a seductive shout... i guess hehe. 

 it's good to be back buddy 

 

It sure is mate!

Call me if you need something! (flag/patch/advertisment/idea)

[Geschosskopf]

Planting a flag everywhere is a challenge no matter how you slice it.  Good luck!

[xendelaar]

Mission To Dres

My next visit will be to Dres. I made a small vessel and crammed it with all available science stuff. This time I took Jeb with me since I don´t really need the science any more. It´s kind of a shame actually... Playing on normal mode really doesn't give you the incentive to perform any science grinding on planets: most of the important tech nodes (engine parts) can be unlocked within the SOI of Kerbin, without any  biome hopping.

Sorry for my rambling... onward!  Here is the mission a small GIF of the mission.

Some highlights

• The mission was actually very easy. I thought getting a proper encounter with Dres would be difficult but that seemed to be a piece of cake.
• The ship was a bit oversized (just like the previous one), but I use the spare fuel to break when I'm descending back on Kerbin. This makes the heat shield a bit redundant, but it is still a nice backup to have! 
• Designing ships without KER is a pain. I never know if I connected all fuel parts correctly. It feels like i'm flying a bit blind.
  I also had to adjust my current delta v calculator (excel) in order to account for asparagus staging. This was a neat exercise!

Here's Jeb planting a nice flag pole in the soft cushy surface of Dres. Dres is ours now!

Next stop will be Gilly.

[xendelaar]

Going to Gilly

Gilly was a really easy target. Here is a small GIF of the mission:

A highlight

•  The Vanilla Sky `challenge` doesn't feel like a challenge at all. I thought it would be much more difficult to fly without all my helpful mods. Instead.. the game is pretty doable without them... Sure.. I do miss precise node and KER and Alex Moon... but they´re not that necessary in order to make the game playable.
  Don´t get me wrong: I still love the challenge! I just hoped it was a bit more tricky.

My next mission will be to Moho. I could go for a Miner/Refiner vessel to reduce the weight of the ship, but I think I will go for a return trip without refuelling. Maybe that will make everything a bit more interesting.

And also:

via Imgflip Meme Generator

Thanks for reading.

 

[Geschosskopf]

Jool-5 and Eve will definitely be interesting the way you're doing things.

But seriously, if you're using a dV calculator outside the game, what real difference is there between that and using KER or MJ?  Other than knowing you had to write it yourself, I mean.

[xendelaar]

9 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Jool-5 and Eve will definitely be interesting the way you're doing things.

But seriously, if you're using a dV calculator outside the game, what real difference is there between that and using KER or MJ?  Other than knowing you had to write it yourself, I mean.

That’s a very interesting question! I’ve been wondering that myself. Especially when I found out it wasn’t all that difficult to play the game without any add-ons! That was kind of a letdown. It also makes writing mission reports feel a bit awkward, because I’m not doing anything new (IMO).

Perhaps playing with a mod like KER or using a homemade calculation sheet is more or less the same thing. Besides the fact that KER supplies me with more information than I’m able to calculate myself, they both provide additional data to make the game more easy to play.
I guess for me,  the Vanilla “challenge” is just a way to prove myself that I’m in total control of the game… Without the need of 3^rd party add-ons. Without these add-ons, there are still certain things I’m not able to calculate myself.
For instance, Getting from the surface of Eve back into orbit requires a pretty high TWR. At the moment, without KER, I have no idea what the atmospheric TWR is of every engine on that planet. I’ll have to find a way to calculate that. These kind of little puzzles gives me a rush hehe. So in that way it is something new to me. The same thing applied for calculating delta V budgets from asparagus staging. I didn’t know how to math that until I uninstalled KER!
Another interesting idea comes to mind. With my modded install, I sometimes use SCANSAT to find a proper landing spot. This is especially usefull when visiting Eve. Without the mod, I’ll have to find a way to work with that thing SQUAD provided, which isn’t as powerful as SCANSAT. At least… I think it is…I have no experience with Kerbnet. So with the Vanilla install, I’ll have to use Kerbnet to get find a proper landing spot on Eve. Or, I’ll just do it using trial and error with a little bit of luck… we’ll see!  

So these are some reasons why I choose to go for Vanilla this time. I know my points are not rock solid, but it’s the best I come up with at  the moment.   And it’s just a good excuse to stay of the streets.

 

Thanks for the interesting post @Geschosskopf!

Edited October 17, 2017 by xendelaar

[Geschosskopf]

7 hours ago, xendelaar said:

That’s a very interesting question! I’ve been wondering that myself. Especially when I found out it wasn’t all that difficult to play the game without any add-ons! That was kind of a letdown. It also makes writing mission reports feel a bit awkward, because I’m not doing anything new (IMO).

Well, it's so old, it's "new"   Or at least different.

If you're finding this disappointing, have you ever looked at the various versions of the Caveman challenge?  That's REALLY going without the usual crutches  

 

7 hours ago, xendelaar said:

Perhaps playing with a mod like KER or using a homemade calculation sheet is more or less the same thing. Besides the fact that KER supplies me with more information than I’m able to calculate myself, they both provide additional data to make the game more easy to play.
I guess for me,  the Vanilla “challenge” is just a way to prove myself that I’m in total control of the game… Without the need of 3^rd party add-ons. Without these add-ons, there are still certain things I’m not able to calculate myself.
For instance, Getting from the surface of Eve back into orbit requires a pretty high TWR. At the moment, without KER, I have no idea what the atmospheric TWR is of every engine on that planet. I’ll have to find a way to calculate that. These kind of little puzzles gives me a rush hehe. So in that way it is something new to me. The same thing applied for calculating delta V budgets from asparagus staging. I didn’t know how to math that until I uninstalled KER!

There's definitely some fun in that.  There are many folks who use kOS to write their own autopilots rather than use MJ, just because they enjoy coding such things.  I'm too lazy (and not enough of a programmer) for that.  But very occasionally, I run into something I need to automate that's not on MJ's list, so I use kOS for that (flying with warpdrive, for example).

As to engines in atmospheres, I'd suggest asking somebody like Ferram or Nathankell for all the details.  All I know is that each engine, in its ModuleEngines section, has a field called "atmosphereCurve".  This provides 3 or more points on a graph to show how the performance changes within Kerbin's atmosphere, with the rest of the curve fit to them and the values extrapolated to other atmospheres.  It's pretty cryptic.  I used to know what these values meant but I've forgotten. 

 

7 hours ago, xendelaar said:

Another interesting idea comes to mind. With my modded install, I sometimes use SCANSAT to find a proper landing spot. This is especially usefull when visiting Eve. Without the mod, I’ll have to find a way to work with that thing SQUAD provided, which isn’t as powerful as SCANSAT. At least… I think it is…I have no experience with Kerbnet. So with the Vanilla install, I’ll have to use Kerbnet to get find a proper landing spot on Eve. Or, I’ll just do it using trial and error with a little bit of luck… we’ll see!  

Hmm, yeah, I hadn't thought of that.  I've never used the CommNet thing, either, although I did  use the stock Ore-finding system before CommNet.  But back before mining was a thing, all that mattered was finding a reasonably flat spot on or near the equator, which you can eyeball from space.  The hardest thing to eyeball is hitting land at all on Laythe, but there are some good places you can hit fairly easily with a standardized procedure.