How can I tell if a planet is a gas giant?

[Sharpy]

I've got some planet packs and now I'm not sure if some of the planets can be landed on, or will result in my demise the same way attempt of landing on Jool does. I'd prefer to find out not through dying though, and I'm really not sure where to look for this info. Some help?

[bewing]

On the one hand, if you have Making History, you can just teleport a small craft to the "surface" of the planet in question and see what happens. If it starts sinking down to -250m altitude and then gets autodeleted, then you know.

On the other hand, Jool and Kerbol only have one biome, called "Surface", AFAIK. That biome is all at exactly the same altitude everywhere on the surface. So, my guess is that using Kerbnet, looking at the biomes, and then looking at the terrain altitude is probably definitive.

On the third hand, I am convinced that the early devs intended for you to be able to land on Jool, because landing on a gas giant would be funny. So the fact that a planet is a gas giant doesn't necessarily mean that it's deadly. The only way to definitively find out if the surface has a collider or not is to teleport or fly a probe there, and then see what happens when you try to land.

 

Edited November 3, 2018 by bewing

[Superfluous J]

I'm going to be that guy that mentions that all of these planet packs are fairly simple text files and you can just open them and read them to see how the planets are defined.

[putnamto]

Do  it  the  realistic  way, send  a  probe

[Gargamel]

Does is it go "Whoosh" or "Thump" when you try to land on it?   That's how you know. 

[Galileo]

54 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Does is it go "Whoosh" or "Thump" when you try to land on it?   That's how you know. 

I prefer “ker-plop” when I land.

[Klapaucius]

I went on a big kick sampling probably ten different planet packs and like @bewing suggests, using the Mission Builder.  I never came across muck, but there are some very high-gravity planets as well as a few that have lava oceans. Touching down on those is immediate destruction.  What planet packs have you got?

[Whirligig Girl]

Why not send a crash probe and find out

 

But seriously what planet packs are you playing where you can't tell if a celestial body is a gas giant or a terrestrial planet? They're usually pretty obvious--larger than Kerbin, have atmospheres, have horizontal cloud banding, usually live in the outer system, usually has lots of moons.

 

EDIT: I am dismayed that the top response thus far has been "cheat with Making History" when this kind of question is actually the perfect excuse to go exploring.

Edited November 3, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Sharpy]

8 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

I went on a big kick sampling probably ten different planet packs and like @bewing suggests, using the Mission Builder.  I never came across muck, but there are some very high-gravity planets as well as a few that have lava oceans. Touching down on those is immediate destruction.  What planet packs have you got?

Extrasolar and OPM. And already planning next playthrough with Galileo.

Currently targetting Heba and pondering "Is it landable?"

 

 

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, GregroxMun said:

EDIT: I am dismayed that the top response thus far has been "cheat with Making History" when this kind of question is actually the perfect excuse to go exploring.

Well it's only the top response because it was first. No response has been voted on.

[Whirligig Girl]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Well it's only the top response because it was first. No response has been voted on.

I am and was aware. But I'm not gonna vote now because then my post would be wrong :v

[bewing]

25 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

I am and was aware.

 

On 10/26/2018 at 7:11 PM, Sharpy said:

I'd prefer to find out not through dying though

The OP said specifically that he does not want to find out through exploration/trial and error/death.

 

[Whirligig Girl]

3 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Extrasolar and OPM. And already planning next playthrough with Galileo.

Currently targetting Heba and pondering "Is it landable?"

 

 

Very clearly a gas giant planet. Very rarely do you get planets that look like that which have surfaces--and then you can tell because they'll be much smaller than gas giants. You can find the planet's radius in the tracking station's infobox/knowledge base.

[Klapaucius]

4 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Extrasolar and OPM. And already planning next playthrough with Galileo.

Currently targetting Heba and pondering "Is it landable?"

 

 

That's a gas giant. One easy way to tell is go to the tracking station. Look at the radius. Pretty much anything more than 1500 km is a gas giant.  The one exception I know of to that is Reaper, from After Kerbin, which is an Eve like planet with high gravity and a dense atmosphere. It's radius is 3600.  Just to confirm, also look at the atmospheric height. Gas giants generally will be listed at well over 100,000.  Of course, there may be some exception out there in some planet pack that is just different, but those are pretty good guidelines to follow.

In a rather OCD moment, I created a spreadsheet of 16 different planet packs (in my case, looking for atmospheres to fly in) so I've got all those stats on an Excel file.  Its unfinished and has not been proofread for mistakes, but I can put it up on  Google docs if you wish.

[Sharpy]

Goddammit. I built the landers, went there, and tried landing one. More than 5km deep into Heba atmosphere everything exploded from overheating, including the heat shields. I tried only 2km... and the game edited the orbit to be above the atmosphere. Obviously the engine was long blown into vapors of Heba upper atmosphere. The Built-in orbit editor doesn't allow reentry trajectories, "helpfully" increasing the semi-major axis. Currently loading the game with Hyperedit.

 

Update: Yep, Heba is a gas giant.

[Gargamel]

22 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Update: Yep, Heba is a gas giant.

So....... "whoosh"?

[Sharpy]

On 11/5/2018 at 12:05 AM, Gargamel said:

So....... "whoosh"?

Poof. I took a dozen landers  - some optimized for atmosphere, some for light vacuum landing, a couple for heavyweight (Tylo-like). Managed to send some science from "flying low" on Heba too, the Oversize Signals Intelligence Satellite can reach a similar one in Kerbin orbit from Valentine (at single bar of signal strength though!)