Jool5 - Moar motherships edition (and some personal rules)

[Goufalite]

Hi everyone! After 1,600 hours (and still not getting back from Eve) I decided to give a try to the "Jool5" challenge.

It's a Level 1 entry but with some additional personal rules for realism and fun.

And now some precisions...

Costs:
- strato1 (Laythe SSTO)                                                   : 45,827
- bottommothership (kerbol/moon transfer)      : 311,170
- topmothership (tylo and other moons lander): 124,204
- bottommothership2 (moar motherships)           : 243,421 x 2 = 486,842
Total = 968,043

Imgur album showing ships and difficulty settings

Shared folder containing ships and savefiles

Remarks

What are all the HG-5 antennae on the motherships?

When I first started the challenge I disabled additional ground stations, relying only on the pilot's probe control point ability. But it was very hard and I needed a Kerbin full coverage for the Laythe Kerbnet mapping part.

What are the two new SAS axis?

It's the "Smart Docking Aid" mod. It provides a SAS lock for the docking port alignment. Unfortunately I didn't use it a lot because the Okto2 probe lacks this feature and the lander was more easy to maneuver than the mothership.

Why is the ship in a green/orange halo?

It's the "Easy Vessel Switch" mod. Maintain Alt and click on a ship to directly switch to it. You can also highlight parts by pressing O.

What's the talkie/walkie symbol? / What's "probe control point"?

Wiki entry . In short one or two pilots with a specific command pod or probe core and a relay antenna can control distant in range ships (full control of probes or maneuver nodes for manned ships) without a KSC connection.

More info on the Module Manager patch for EVA jetpacks?

I have a few rants with KSP: no stock docking port alignment indicator, omnipotent kerbals in default science and sandbox modes (and now career since 1.11.1) and magically refuelling EVA jetpacks. To my big surprise they added in 1.11.1 a flag in the cfg file of the jetpack and canister to prevent them from refuelling, or at least leave mods decide. With the module manager patch below, jetpacks and canisters don't refuel, at all, BUT there's an interesting side effect where this is limited to the object itself, meaning that when a jetpack is empty, simply dump it and take another! The downside is that only an engineer can dump stuff in space and there is no indication on which jetpack is empty or not.

Before 1.11 I used the EVA fuel mod but it is currently on hold due to the cargofication of the jetpack, but in general I use a lot of ladders and moderate my spacewalks with intense use of docking (with stock missing's DPAI mod of course)

Spoiler

 

@PART[evaJetpack]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]
    {
        %reinitResourcesOnStoreInVessel = false
    }
}

@PART[evaCylinder]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]
    {
        %reinitResourcesOnStoreInVessel = false
    }
}

 

Was this mission tested?

At first I wanted to use the standard "moar motherships" without modifications and played normally without capturing on 1.10.1. I didn't want to capture stuff and then run out of fuel near Vall. The first mission went well (with a few attempts, I made the Laythe landing after the whole trip) and I managed to be stuck near Bop with 1050m/s of fuel and a bad Tylo encounter to go back to Kerbin.
I waited for 1.11 since it announced Joolian moons revamp, but 1.11.0 added the "flag falling" glitch. I waited longer and 1.11.1 added the "full SAS kerbals anywhere" bug, forcing me to recreate a new career save and move ships. Without any news of another hotfix I launched the mission, encountered the explosive EVA struts bug and moved along.
Despite a very bad moon alignment when encountering Jool I saved more fuel than the very first time and the Bop stranding gave me the idea to use the lander to go to Bop.

Thanks for reading!

Edited March 22, 2021 by Goufalite
badly embedded video