The KSP Caveman Challenge 1.3.x - 1.10.x [re-booted]

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

(BTW, the link in your sig for "KSP 1.0.x Complete Printable Stock Science Checklists" is not working, I think due to one of the many forum changes.)

Ok.. thanks for that.. I really do need to get around to updating those for 1.4 anyway.. a lot has changed since then.

Edit.. link in sig has been fixed.. hopefully.

In any case, this is the new URL for it here:

 

Edited September 9, 2018 by JAFO

[MinimalMinmus]

I decided to have a field day for those who want to join the order of the trilobite, with a table of resonance orbits

Terminology: [n:p] where n/p is [Amount of orbital revolutions for the target planet]/[Amount of orbital revolutions for the ship]

General formula: T1²/a1³=T2²/a2³    <=>    a2³=(T1/T2)²*a1³    <=>    a2=(T1/T2)^(2/3) *a1

How to use this table:

1) Select your target planet, and its fixed Ap/Pe

2) Select the Ap/Pe corresponding to your starting planet

3) You now have your target orbit.

4) To reach it, boost from planet #1 until you reach planet #2's orbit, then adjust while crossing planet #2.

 

NOTE 1: Colorized but not bold results are optimized, but the least common multiple of the resonance is fairly high, making them impractical without a way to accelerate time even further. Consider using other orbits.

NOTE 2: Be careful while visiting Moho, Dres and Eeloo, as their orbits is fairly elliptic, so try to intersect the point on their orbit in which their distance to the sun is their SMA.

 

Example: I want to go to Duna, from Kerbin.

Duna's HGA: 20,7 Gm

Kerbin=> Duna suggested Pe: 13,5 Gm

So, the orbit needed for a K=>D resonant transfer is a 13.5 Gm-20.7 Gm orbit. The orbit is [3:4], so every 4 times I go around the sun, Duna will be near.

Now, it's a matter of slowly adjusting the orbit until Duna is at my apoapsis during orbit 4n.

[Mr. Peabody]

8 hours ago, Jacke said:

That's not spaceflight.  And that's not proper spaceflight testing either.  Between that, not being able to launch unkerballed rockets at start, and the silly hoops I had to jump through to store multiple Crew Reports, I was really disappointed.

Cavemen will take any science they can get their hands on. Especially in harder difficulty levels, science can be very hard to come by.

P.S. Do I hear one of those nasty users who want safety first in career mode? How very un-kerbal. 

2 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I decided to have a field day for those who want to join the order of the trilobite, with a table of resonance orbits:

Very impressive and extremely useful! Will it be OK if I link it in the topic for ease of access?

[MinimalMinmus]

10 minutes ago, The Dunatian said:

Very impressive and extremely useful! Will it be OK if I link it in the topic for ease of access?

Yes of course!

Edited September 9, 2018 by MinimalMinmus

[joshudson]

Resonance orbits. Excel plots. That's doing it the hard way. I'm eyeballing Hohmanns and plane change burns. The correction technique is to aim one day ahead take along a little extra delta V so I can "hover" for a day or two and wait for the SOI to reach me. Though for the Mun my eyeballing is so reliable I can hit the Mun without a midcourse burn.

Edited September 9, 2018 by joshudson

[Jacke]

3 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I decided to have a field day for those who want to join the order of the trilobite, with a table of resonance orbits

Cool!  I'd really have to up my Kerbal game to do the Caveman Challenge, but it's something I'm working towards.  And that chart would help.

It's also made me think even if the conditions on modding were relaxed, the Caveman Challenge would be very hard with a life support mod.  Maybe almost impossible?

 

33 minutes ago, The Dunatian said:

Cavemen will take any science they can get their hands on. Especially in harder difficulty levels, science can be very hard to come by.

Realistic Cavemen don't expect Science or supper to be right outside the cave mouth.   But if not so realistic, it's nice when it is.

 

33 minutes ago, The Dunatian said:

P.S. Do I hear one of those nasty users who want safety first in career mode? How very un-kerbal.

On the serious side....

Spoiler

I remember Columbia, Challenger, Soyuz 11, Apollo 13, Soyuz 1, and Apollo 1.

And sometimes even in KSP, I want to be serious and safe.

But when I'm not, I also realise that rigorous safety testing, as in the real world, best handles the low hanging fruit and sets up the more spectacular failures when there's insufficient attention to detail and damnable Fate intervenes.

[IncongruousGoat]

8 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Cool!  I'd really have to up my Kerbal game to do the Caveman Challenge, but it's something I'm working towards.  And that chart would help.

It's also made me think even if the conditions on modding were relaxed, the Caveman Challenge would be very hard with a life support mod.  Maybe almost impossible?

The Caveman challenge isn't all that hard on the lower difficulties. It definitely doesn't require going interplanetary - the only reason you're seeing that is because the recent posts have, for the most part, either been people pushing the limits of caveman capabilities, or people doing one of the higher difficulty levels.

Also, I can't imagine that life support would be any impediment if you didn't have to go interplanetary. The Mun isn't very far away.

[MinimalMinmus]

I love how, in the first threads, the bar for a "very impressive feat" was completing Corundum or Diamond, with some doubting it's even possible to achieve the order of the trilobite.

Today, "Very impressive" is achieving NCD. Or going to JOOL.

[MinimalMinmus]

I decided to upgrade my table!

It works a bit differently now: it is made so that you reach the target planet's apoapsis, simplifying the whole conundrum with the 3 smaller planets. And I'm still OK with links towards it!

 

Notice that some orbits have become impossible because of this: the correction needed to reach elliptical orbits gives them a negative Pe, which is an interesting concept.

Edited September 9, 2018 by MinimalMinmus

[JAFO]

8 hours ago, Jacke said:

Cool!  I'd really have to up my Kerbal game to do the Caveman Challenge, but it's something I'm working towards.

Truly, the first 3 levels in particular should give you very little trouble at all.. have a read through the earlier Caveman threads for some examples.. they're linked to in the first post. The reason you see so many mind-numbingly difficult missions in this thread is that the old hands have now gotten bored with the basic stuff, and are just showing off.

 

8 hours ago, Jacke said:

It's also made me think even if the conditions on modding were relaxed, the Caveman Challenge would be very hard with a life support mod.

8 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Also, I can't imagine that life support would be any impediment if you didn't have to go interplanetary. The Mun isn't very far away.

While the Mun isn't very far off, Minmus is far enough away that it would make life-support a real pain for a caveman.. and if you play it straight, even a Mun trip should require some supplies.

And in those cases, yes, Jacke, the payload limitations are bad enough that it would present some serious obstacles.. (which I've no doubt could be overcome, with a bit of caveman ingenuity)

[IncongruousGoat]

1 minute ago, JAFO said:

The reason you see so many mind-numbingly difficult missions in this thread is that the old hands have now gotten bored with the basic stuff, and are just showing off.

Sounds about right, yes. Although I'd say it's half showing off, and half trying to not be bored.

[JAFO]

2 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Sounds about right, yes. Although I'd say it's half showing off, and half trying to not be bored.

Just so long as it's clear it was said with tongue firmly in cheek! 

Frankly, I'm in awe of what you lot have achieved!

[Mr. Peabody]

21 hours ago, Jacke said:

Cool!  I'd really have to up my Kerbal game to do the Caveman Challenge, but it's something I'm working towards.

It's also made me think even if the conditions on modding were relaxed, the Caveman Challenge would be very hard with a life support mod.  Maybe almost impossible?

The rules for this challenge have remained almost entirely unchanged since the original version, so I don't think it would be my place to relax rules relating to the use of mods, especially without the support of the original poster. On another note, I hope you didn't take my remark about unmanned before manned seriously. I am personally against such a major change in the tech tree but I was just having fun.   It would be great to see you give this challenge a whack. 

19 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I decided to upgrade my table!

Even more impressive and very easy to read! I'll link it the OP.

[dvader]

I just finished Vanadium and...

17 hours ago, JAFO said:

The reason you see so many mind-numbingly difficult missions in this thread is that the old hands have now gotten bored with the basic stuff, and are just showing off.

Whoa... That was disturbingly accurate

I wanted something new to do  so I decided to go for the "Stayputnik version" with no contracts, no kerbals (only unmanned rockets) and no tech above 45 so basically only Stayputniks for all ships.

So, just for showing off... sorry... curiosity, I was wondering how difficult it would be to send an unmanned probe to Eve and back with no coms coverage so only full throttle burns in whatever direction. It was inspired by @5thHorsemans Jool Mix-Up mission (which I intend to try next). The idea was that if you point your craft prograde at Ap, then it should be retrograde at Pe and hence you can both increase and decrease your orbital period and thus get an intercept. I figured it might be a useful tool in the caveman arsenal for harder games. The short version, it worked but... no... it was a LOT of work and not very practical at all. It actually helped to not have SAS since a burn would make the craft rotate and thus you could change direction slowly. Repeated orbital calculations were critical for success and I think I only used two reloads, one going to Eve and one going back.

The short version in pictures is here:

Spoiler

I started with just enough Kerbin ground based grinding for the Stayputnik. Then I went directly for Kerbol science as a test mission for my interplanetary craft. I deliberately went away from Kerbol so it would be easy to burn toward Kerbin right when exiting Kerbins SoI.

The next mission was heading directly for Eve. Well, not directly. It took almost 4 years to reach Eve and another 5 to return to Kerbin. The Pe at Eve was 8.7 Mm and the inclination was increased quite a bit.

The return required one reload since I was too impatient the first time and didn't check the orbit often enough and eventually got annoyed and reloaded. With more patience, I got a nice intercept the second time. The radio started working before I reached the SoI and I had control again. Plan B was to adjust to a perfect orbit and have another rendezvous in about 4 years but Plan A worked so I didn't have to.

But there was a minor problem. I had 475 dV left and orbital energy calculations suggested I needed 477 dV to achieve orbit if burning at Pe. Fortunately, calculations suggested I only needed a 400 dV Radial In burn to hit the atmosphere so that's what I did.

Finally, after 9 years I had science from Eve using an unmanned probe without ComNet coverage!

At first I thought I might try to get as little science as possible from Kerbin/Minmus/Mun, but after Eve.... no... Jool would probably be easy because of the large SoI but the other planets would be harder than Eve. So, Minmus it is. Landing without SAS was a challenge but I had landing legs! I got temp and pressure from two biomes, tried to get midlands but it was lowlands again, tried to got to greater flats but lost radio and had to emergency burn to save the ship. Figured I probably had enough anyway and went home.

After returning, I was still missing 6 science so I checked the materials bay on the runway. Before, no tech above Lvl 45.

... and after!

About 240 science from Eve, 525 from the Minmus mission, 130 from Kerbol and the rest from Kerbin.

 

 

Here are detailed videos. The first covers the beginning and the Kerbol mission.

Spoiler

 

The second is the Eve mission so there's lots and lots of waiting, small corrections, calculations etc. Eve intercept at 5:35 and Kerbin intercept at 11:38.

Spoiler

 

Finally, Minmus just to quickly finish things. A very wobbly landing at 2:54 and return to Kerbin at 5:17.

Spoiler

 

And that's it for Vanadium.

Edited September 10, 2018 by dvader

[JAFO]

8 hours ago, The Dunatian said:

The rules for this challenge have remained almost entirely unchanged since the original version, so I don't think it would be my place to relax rules relating to the use of mods, especially without the support of the original poster.

This brings up something I was wondering about after @Jacke's comment..

The intention of the mod rules basically was to prevent challengers using anything which might give them more information than normal, or make things easier in some way.. So would there necessarily be any objection to mods which made things even harder?

I'm thinking, for instance of things like life-support, which was mentioned earlier. This would cut into the already limited payload restrictions, without doing anything to actually assist the player.

Edited September 11, 2018 by JAFO

[IncongruousGoat]

3 minutes ago, JAFO said:

This brings up something I was wondering about after @Jacke's comment..

The intention of the mod rules basically was to prevent challengers using anything which might give them more information than normal, or make things easier in some way.. So would there necessarily be any objection to mods which made things even harder?

I'm thinking, for instance of things like life-support, which was mentioned earlier. This would cut into the already limited payload restrictions, without doing anything to actually assist the player.

Hmmm. My main objection would be that, with the exception of life support, mods that can be said to make the challenge harder change the game too much to be easily judged (i.e. Realism Overhaul, Principia), don't add anything to make the caveman challenge more difficult from an engineering and piloting perspective (i.e. BARIS), or may just change something in a way that doesn't necessarily make things more difficult (i.e. FAR). Life support is a tricky one, although I can't see it catching on too much since it prohibits long-distance ladder riding, as well as adding even more of a mass penalty to interplanetary missions.

[JAFO]

6 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Hmmm.  <snip>

Fair points..

[MinimalMinmus]

5 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Hmmm. My main objection would be that, with the exception of life support, mods that can be said to make the challenge harder change the game too much to be easily judged (i.e. Realism Overhaul, Principia), don't add anything to make the caveman challenge more difficult from an engineering and piloting perspective (i.e. BARIS), or may just change something in a way that doesn't necessarily make things more difficult (i.e. FAR). Life support is a tricky one, although I can't see it catching on too much since it prohibits long-distance ladder riding, as well as adding even more of a mass penalty to interplanetary missions.

How about "neutral" mods? I'm thinking OPM here. Yes the payoff to reach Sarnus is huge... it's also insanely hard.

[Muetdhiver]

@MinimalMinmusYour transfer table is a thing of beauty. Mine is much more messy and unfriendly XD. Well Done.

As for mods making caveman harder : OPM does not make things a lot harder (IMO) as DV increase over Jool is not that high. (though waiting for 2-3 orbits is going to be a slog...)

I found that 3.2X rescale with SETI (unmaned before maned) and missing history  with 30% income is plenty challenging. Very different feel* w.r.t to regular caveman, but I highly recommend it.

Landing anything on Mun is really, really hard in caveman 3.2X on a 18t/30 parts budget...

*Keeping costs low is hard, keeping probes with coms is hard, every mission becomes convolved with seting up com relays on the cheap and so on. Also, it makes non-return interplanetary a thing, e.g. landing a probe on Eve or other such things. But as I said, very different feel that "regular" caveman.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Muetdhiver

[fourfa]

I want to do a caveman run with Mandatory RCS which nerfs reaction wheels and forces real work on reaction control and more piloting effort (the forum page for the mod lists extra parts, mainly smaller RCS jets, but those are now optional). Also deep-throttle engine nerfs, ullage... 

[Sirad]

What proof i have to provide to getting added to the Caveman List ?

[Mr. Peabody]

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 5:03 PM, dvader said:

And that's it for Vanadium.

@dvader, Congratulations on finishing every aspect of the Caveman challenge. Yabba Dabba Doo!

It is my privilege to present you with the badge of honor, the ultimate symbol of caveman spirit!  

11 hours ago, Sirad said:

What proof i have to provide to getting added to the Caveman List ?

Take screenshots documenting how you acquired the majority of your science points. After you reach the qualifying level of the tech tree post a screenshot of it and of your science archives. This will allow me to make sure everything is above board.

[JAFO]

19 hours ago, Sirad said:

What proof i have to provide to getting added to the Caveman List ?

To what @The Dunatian said, I would add that you should also include screenshots of your chosen difficulty settings before the challenge attempt was started.

[dvader]

7 hours ago, The Dunatian said:

It is my privilege to present you with the badge of honor, the ultimate symbol of caveman spirit!  

So bright... so beautiful... our precioussss...

On 9/12/2018 at 3:16 PM, Muetdhiver said:

I found that 3.2X rescale with SETI (unmaned before maned) and missing history  with 30% income is plenty challenging. Very different feel* w.r.t to regular caveman, but I highly recommend it.

Landing anything on Mun is really, really hard in caveman 3.2X on a 18t/30 parts budget...

*Keeping costs low is hard, keeping probes with coms is hard, every mission becomes convolved with seting up com relays on the cheap and so on. Also, it makes non-return interplanetary a thing, e.g. landing a probe on Eve or other such things. But as I said, very different feel that "regular" caveman.

That is something I would consider. I would not add mods that just increase the payload mass (like life support) since it can be grindy enough as it is. What would be interesting though is unmanned before manned (non-return missions are an option), perhaps banning Kerbin biome science and use a different universe (I would consider the Snarkiverse).

There would be less science around Kerbin and interplanetary would be encouraged. Add a "no contracts" condition and you have to plan for both cash and science return of each mission (thus, grinding the Mun is not an option). It would probably encourage fly-by missions and non-return missions which would be "realistic". I would still ban KER and MechJeb but allow time warp mods so interplanetary is less of a pain.

 

[Muetdhiver]

6 hours ago, dvader said:

So bright... so beautiful... our precioussss...

That is something I would consider. I would not add mods that just increase the payload mass (like life support) since it can be grindy enough as it is. What would be interesting though is unmanned before manned (non-return missions are an option), perhaps banning Kerbin biome science and use a different universe (I would consider the Snarkiverse).

There would be less science around Kerbin and interplanetary would be encouraged. Add a "no contracts" condition and you have to plan for both cash and science return of each mission (thus, grinding the Mun is not an option). It would probably encourage fly-by missions and non-return missions which would be "realistic". I would still ban KER and MechJeb but allow time warp mods so interplanetary is less of a pain.

 

The n°1 issue with UBM caveman is coms for interplanetary. It's a real pain to deal with, and you have to get creative (A relay tower on woomerang + "string" of relay lauches prior to main mission did help) to make it work.

Also, in 3.2X Mun landing a minimal probe is really difficult at 30part/18tons. You have to pack 9K DV which is... an interesting challenge. I am thinking of doing something in that vein some time soon, Snarkverse could be an entertaining option

UBM + Snarkverse + 3.2X + Missing history maybe ? Seems simple enough as far as modpacks go.

Edited September 14, 2018 by Muetdhiver