JNSQ Exploration: A video series spanning almost three realtime years

[Gordon Fecyk]

Way back in Summer 2019, I participated in the JNSQ Space Race. That was my first actual KSP competition, plus it used add-ons and an upscaled star system I wasn't very familiar with. I published a YouTube playlist as 'Not Manley' for that competition, taking my YouTube caption-inspired Purple Space Program persona and adding a Québécois / French Manitoban theme in the spirit of the planet pack's name sake.

At the end of that series one or two of my ten viewers  suggested exploring the rest of the system. So I started a JNSQ Exploration series, maintaining that theme while emulating Mark Thrimm's Galileo's Planet Pack exploration series. I didn't expect it to take three real-time years and four versions of KSP to finish it, though! Maybe Mark had the right idea to quit after getting to Tellumo orbit. But I stuck with it and finished exploring Nara finally, on 03 October 2021.

What I'd like to do in this thread is inflate my YouTube view count, um, I mean, go behind the scenes in the production of this series. Talk about the mistakes made, the bloopers recorded, the bugs worked around, and tie up some loose ends. For instance, Duna's anomalies are a lot more than the sand dunes I thought I found. I'd also love to discuss what happened with everyone here, talk about how things could have improved, and share your own experiences.

I'll also make my save file available (70 MB, Google Drive) for you to examine, and possibly even load up. The save and craft files do work in KSP 1.12.2, but you'll need to get all of the add-ons to use the craft left behind. Ol' Boom Boom 2, for instance, is still returning from Lindor. I'll add a post detailing all of the add-ons right after.

Enjoy this "making-of" mission report for:

The JNSQ Exploration Series

aka: "Le voyage d'espace, Je Ne Sais Quoi." Or also, "I should've stopped after Duna."

Team Galileo released their Magnum Opus, after the success of Galileo's Planet Pack, in May 2019. According to them, this is the result of everything they learned from GPP. It is a challenge, but it is not an RSS-scale of a challenge. If you have a powerful enough PC, do consider playing in this gorgeous expanded vision of the stock solar system!

Here's the playlist in full. What I'll do is, time permitting, add one response for each world. These could include some screen shots of oddball things, maybe the odd blooper reel. Let me know what you think of each of these.

The next post will include the add-on list so you can reproduce this environment. It works in KSP 1.12.2 with the correct versions of each add-on. Make sure you make a copy of KSP separate from your SteamApps folder, and make sure the built-in Users group has read/write access to the copy, so log files and saves work properly without needing admin or root permission.

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Gordon Fecyk
French grammar

[Gordon Fecyk]

Add-on List

11/23/2020  19:58    <DIR>          000_ClickThroughBlocker (Required by LinuxGuruGamer add-ons)
11/22/2020  11:23    <DIR>          000_USITools (Included in Orion)
11/23/2020  19:58    <DIR>          001_ToolbarControl (Required by LinuxGuruGamer add-ons)
11/22/2020  09:25    <DIR>          BonVoyage
02/28/2021  09:45    <DIR>          CommunityResourcePack (Required by Rational Resources)
11/22/2020  09:35    <DIR>          CommunityTechTree (Required by UnKerballed Start)
03/20/2021  06:28    <DIR>          ConfigurableContainers
01/29/2021  20:58    <DIR>          DistantObject
11/22/2020  13:11    <DIR>          EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements
11/22/2020  09:45    <DIR>          EVAStruts
11/22/2020  09:45    <DIR>          EVATransfer
08/11/2021  19:34    <DIR>          ExplodiumBreathingEngines
04/14/2021  20:55    <DIR>          ExtraplanetaryLaunchpads
02/28/2021  16:38    <DIR>          FerramAerospaceResearch
11/22/2020  11:23    <DIR>          Firespitter (Included in Orion)
11/22/2020  07:06    <DIR>          JNSQ (Remember to add Kronometer)
11/22/2020  09:58    <DIR>          JX2Antenna
10/03/2021  11:45    <DIR>          KerbalEngineer
01/26/2021  18:49    <DIR>          Kopernicus
01/26/2021  18:49    <DIR>          ModularFlightIntegrator (Use the one included with Kopernicus)
11/22/2020  10:12    <DIR>          OSMods_MunPocketEdition
11/22/2020  10:17    <DIR>          RealPlume (Included in RealPlume Stock)
11/22/2020  10:17    <DIR>          RealPlume-Stock
12/01/2020  19:19    <DIR>          ReentryParticleEffect
11/22/2020  10:30    <DIR>          SCANsat
11/22/2020  11:16    <DIR>          scatterer
11/22/2020  10:17    <DIR>          SmokeScreen (Included in RealPlume Stock)
11/22/2020  06:56    <DIR>          Squad
11/22/2020  06:56    <DIR>          SquadExpansion
11/22/2020  11:08    <DIR>          TextureReplacer
11/22/2020  13:13    <DIR>          TriggerTech
11/22/2020  13:13    <DIR>              KerbalAlarmClock
11/22/2020  13:14    <DIR>              TransferWindowPlanner
02/28/2021  09:03    <DIR>          UmbraSpaceIndustries
11/22/2020  11:23    <DIR>              Kontainers (included in Orion)
11/22/2020  11:23    <DIR>              Orion
11/22/2020  11:23    <DIR>              ReactorPack (included in Orion)
02/28/2021  09:03    <DIR>              WarpDrive
11/22/2020  09:37    <DIR>          UnKerballedStart
08/23/2020  08:58           141,312 ModuleManager.4.1.4.dll (Use the one included with Kopernicus)

Make sure you use a Kronometer version compatible with your KSP installation. As time permits I'll come back here and provide forum thread links to each of these.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Gordon Fecyk
Added some links

[RevanX_LSR]

Can send me a list of all your soundtracks.? You and Kerbin are awesome, eh?

[Gordon Fecyk]

12 hours ago, JNSQFan said:

Can send me a list of all your soundtracks.?

That's a good idea! I'll include a track list with every 'making of' post I add here.

[Gordon Fecyk]

Part 1: Kerbin
Δv: 4900 m/s to low Kerbin orbit, 1935 m/s to stationary orbit, 1575 m/s to escape

I came off winning the JNSQ Space Race being quite familiar with this Kerbin, but I had to re-learn the game when I first started off. Don't underestimate your builds when starting off; use the included Engineer in KSP 1.10 and later, or Kerbal Engineer, to get the delta-v right.

The clouds look different in here compared to the Space Race as I used an updated JNSQ. The screen shot here came from the Space Race. Here's a better example:

I think this was also the first playthrough I did where I scraped science from every KSC object I could, including DLC landing areas. Apparently you can nose up to a building, stay pressed against it, and take science from it as though it were its own biome. I earned almost 1000 science doing that!

After the first launch to orbit I removed the celestial shadows and city lights plugins from Environmental Visual Enhancements, as they didn't make sense to me on Kerbin. Scatterer does celestial shadows quite nicely. I found on airless bodies the shadows plugin would set brightness to absolute zero on airless worlds, even with ambient lighting set to maximum, and even killing headlight illumination on the surfaces of these worlds.

About the crew

When I started this save I renamed my kerbals in the persistent.sfs file right away and reloaded. I used Texture Replacer as well to replace the suits and faces. I also quickly hired another scientist and engineer, and renamed them too.

Chris Kerman is my version of Chris Hadfield, fighter pilot extraordinaire and Canada's most popular astronaut. Yes, Canada has astronauts, eh? Though we usually hitch rides from Americans and Russians.

Bob and Doug Kerman are my childhood heroes Bob McKenzie and his brother Doug.

How's it goin' eh?

You can argue if these two hoseheads defined modern Canadian culture or not, but for a while, these guys put Canada on the world culture map. And yes I appropriated Bob Kerman for this role even though he already existed as the default scientist. It's my head-canon, eh?

Roberta Lynn Kerman is Canada's first female astronaut Roberta Lynn Bondar. She's still out in the wild, encouraging young women to pursue careers in science and engineering. And also, not a nut job.

Julie Kerman is our second female astronaut, or at least one of the more famous ones, Julie Payette. Perhaps not quite as level-headed as her scientist counterpart Roberta these days, but she still holds a distinction as being our first female space engineer and also once holding the post of Governor General.

Replacing Julie for the Lindor mission is Jenni-Anne MacKerman, representing Jennifer Anne Sidey-Gibbons, a current (as of 2021) engineer at the Canadian Space Agency. I believe she holds the distinction of having the longest name of anyone in the CSA.

Valentina Kerman remains as our female pilot, representing Valentina Tereshkova, perhaps the most famous female astronaut in modern canon. She is a member of the Russian parliament today.

Soundtrack

Where possible I stuck with French, French-Canadian, or similar themed music to match this playthrough's "je ne sais quoi." 

• 8th and Fitzwater (backtrack) - Storyblocks (no longer available) - essentially my JNSQ theme music.
• KSP Mission Control theme - Víctor Machado, Edú Castillo, Squad
• Space Fighter Loop - Kevin MacLeod 
• Master of the Feast - Kevin MacLeod
• Impact Lento - Kevin MacLeod, also part of KSP soundtrack
• A Street in France - Storyblocks (no longer available)
• Peaceful Desolation - Kevin MacLeod
• Musette Full 01 - Storyblocks (also no longer available - what's going on Storyblocks?)

 

[Gordon Fecyk]

Part 2: Minmus
Δv: 1575 m/s from low Kerbin orbit, 350 m/s to capture, 315 m/s to land or ascend

This is still the easiest place to get to. It's even easier if you have Principia installed, or have a Module Manager patch to put the JNSQ system into Principia mode. 

That inner ridge around the large crater behind the monolith is no longer present in JNSQ 0.9 or in 0.10.0. I'm not sure why the ridge appeared; I thought it was a distinctive feature of these worlds as I saw it repeated on Moho and Ike.

During a do-over playthrough I found the same monolith and it looked like this now:

It might be that I picked a different terrain detail setting, or it has to do with the version of Kopernicus I was using here - this was on KSP 1.9.1 with what was then called Kopernicus Continued.

This was also my first encounter with one of many "north poles."

From what I've read about Kopernicus, these occur when the top pixels of the terrain map image don't match the bottom pixels. The pole, or sink hole, is the height of the bottom edge of the map.

And in the episode, I was definitely a fool for not paying attention to my ejection burn. Fortunately, Bob Kerman was able to get out and push.

There was one of many mispronunciations near the end of this episode, where "the west of the way" led to congratulating the CFL's Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Yes, they do play gridiron football up there. I recorded all of these without a script, so there are plenty of slip-ups like this one. YouTube's auto-caption system was comedy gold for this!

Soundtrack

• French Mime Happy - Storyblocks (again, no longer available)
• KSP Construction Music #3, slightly pitch-adjusted  - Víctor Machado, Edú Castillo, Squad
• Bathed in the Light - Kevin MacLeod (Part of KSP Soundtrack)
• Wizardtorium - Kevin MacLeod (Part of KSP Soundtrack)
• Ambient Dreamscape - JDP (I think from Bensound, but I forget - I know I have a license here somewhere)
• O Canada (one of many, many uses) - Allan Gilliland, played by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
• Brightly Fancy - Kevin MacLeod
• Batty McFaddin  - Kevin MacLeod
• Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Gordon Fecyk
Grammar

[RevanX_LSR]

Thanks so much!  I really would love to see your next playthrough.

 

Oh yeah and also Im still generally quite knew to this forum, so yeah, but I have some modding experience especially when it comes to JNSQalike planet packs.

[Gordon Fecyk]

More is coming, I was just held up last week by Real Life^tm. 

[Gordon Fecyk]

Part 03: The Mün
Δv: 1545 m/s from low Kerbin orbit, 400 m/s to capture, 910 m/s to land or ascend

In JNSQ 0.7 there was a static monolith buried under the münar surface, which you can see in the episode. I had a similar problem at Eve with the random monolith, but this seemed to correct itself with KSP 1.9 and JNSQ 0.8. Or maybe I had the wrong terrain setting, for all I know.

We were also, "sending Alberta out to go pick up some moon rocks," if YouTube's captioning is to be believed.

In a do-over playthrough I visited the Mün's north pole, and if I did that during the series I would've known this to be a harbinger of oddities to come.

And during that same do-over, I drove by hand to the random monolith. During that drive, I thought my nice, new (eBay-sourced - don't ask) RTX 3070 Founder's Edition graphics card was melting down because everything was turning yellow and then orange... nope! That was Scatterer doing its thing:

What were the chances of this happening?

I was also a lot more thorough on that do-over run, picking up exotic and voroni crater biomes, and bringing a scanning arm and seismometer. Overall, a better science-gathering experience.

Soundtrack

• French Café Romance - Storyblocks (Also no longer available, sheesh)
• Grove Grove - Kevin MacLeod (Part of KSP Soundtrack)
• Procession of the King - Kevin MacLeod
• Out Cause Is Just - Storyblocks (no longer available)
• Bathed in the Light - Kevin MacLeod (Part of KSP Soundtrack)
• O Canada - Allan Gilliland, played by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
• Son Of A Rocket - Kevin MacLeod
• Condorman Theme - Henry Mancini, Disney

[Gordon Fecyk]

Part 04: Moho
Δv: 3.3 km/s from low Kerbin orbit, 4 to 6 km/s to capture, 1.7 km/s to land or ascend

I first attempted to launch a ship to Moho's altitude above the sun, and return it, to make sure we could survive the trip. After that, it was a straight-forward engineering problem.

The Moho mission craft originally rivalled the Soviet UR-700, and even that required a low orbit refueling. It also required a second launch to get a refueling craft to Moho as well. Looking back I should've added some relay satellites to that second launch. At the time I wasn't as concerned about real life time constraints so I hadn't considered stronger part mods yet.

During a do-over playthrough though, I earned enough science on Minmus and the Mun that I could research the Roverdude Orion engines. That made Moho considerably easier:

I also paid better attention to thrust torque and adjusted the connections on that rover, so Val didn't have to fight the helm so much piloting the 'pain train.'

This was also the rover design that ultimately made it to Hamek, Eeloo and its moons, and Nara's moons. Using the wider decouplers provided a wider wheel base, granting better control on the surface. Using a booster, the rover could also land and ascend back to low Moho orbit, though not without difficulty as JadeOfMaar observed during that playthrough.

Continuing the trend from Minmus. I suspect this version of Moho was compensating for something.

Soundtrack

• French Fries - Storyblocks (Hopefully we get past the unavailable ones soon!)
• Son of a Rocket - Kevin MacLeod
• Bathed In The Light - Kevin MacLeod (Part of KSP Soundtrack)
• Descent Level 6, Mercury Solar Lab - Interplay / Parallax
• Descent Level 7, Mercury Core - Interplay / Parallax (Part of a long series of using Descent music for these worlds)
• O Canada - Allan Gilliland, played by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
• Brightly Fancy - Kevin MacLeod
• At Launch - Kevin MacLeod
• KSP Main Theme - Víctor Machado, Edú Castillo, Squad

[RevanX_LSR]

Thanks so much!  Im just wondering, but when is your next upload?  Its been quite a while since youve uploaded.  I really enjoy your series and i was watching nothing but your videos for months!  Also, here's an interesting fact:  On one pole is a spike and on the other will be a hole because terrain generation is such that if the altitude at the north pole is higher than the south pole then, the north pole will have the hole while the south pole will have a spike (and vice versa).  Just don't fly up on them.

[Gordon Fecyk]

40 minutes ago, JNSQFan said:

It's been quite a while since youve uploaded.

A lot is happening in real life and I haven't had a chance to start a new project. I was thinking about something involving extensions to the system - JNSQ only supports expansion with other Galileo add-ons, but that might be enough to continue the series with a new generation of explorers.

I want to make sure the expanded system is stable and that there are no Kraken-invoked surprises.

[RevanX_LSR]

Thanks!

[RevanX_LSR]

Try GEP for x2.5

[Gordon Fecyk]

On 12/2/2021 at 7:13 AM, JNSQFan said:

Try GEP for x2.5

And now you spoiled it!  But seriously, GPP and GEP are the only planet packs Team Galileo is supporting alongside JNSQ. With the warp drive I'm hoping to continue the journey, provided the save file survives the migration to the  new system.

[Gordon Fecyk]

Part 05: Eve
Δv: 1.8 km/s from low Kerbin orbit, 2.3 km/s to capture, 7 km/s to ascend, can land on parachutes

I'm very familiar with this place after succeeding in the Purple Space Program series. This version of Eve is actually a little easier than stock Eve, due to a lower atmosphere ceiling and lower gravity. Things only get difficult below 6 km or so in altitude, and if you can land on one of many equatorial plateaus, you will find any Eve lander you designed for stock Eve should work.

Or maybe not.

The faster low orbit speed causes higher atmospheric entry heat. You could reduce that with a descent stage and bring it down to stock Eve speeds, but you're better off researching the 10 m heat shield and using that. The problem with that becomes, how do you get rid of the thing?

At that low altitude and high atmospheric pressure, sepatrons don't work. 

The second attempt was luckier. Ferram Aerospace adds some chaos to the aerodynamics, allowing giant Frisbees™ to behave more like giant Frisbees™.

This Eve also has multiple possibly-copyright-infringing ocean bodies, named after Japanese Kaiju, which makes sense since this Eve is a monster! Even so, hydrocarbon lakes and the Explodium Sea make a return appearance, justifying the use of Explodium Breathing Engines.

I didn't visit Eve in a do-over playthrough, so I don't have any bonus images. I have a bonus video though (4 minutes, YouTube), showcasing the ascent without commentary. While this design worked near sea level, you can also use OhioBob's Eve Optimized Engines in 10 atmosphere mode, or the new optional Javelin engine provided with JNSQ 0.10.1.

The (very!) warm sun prompted the use of Namco's Horinesian Sundance music. And well, the routine consumption of live kerbals by this monster suggested the rest of the musical theme for this episode.

Soundtrack

• French Lovers  - Storyblocks (also unavailable)
• Mission Control - Víctor Machado, Edú Castillo, Squad (KSP Soundtrack)
• The French Theatre of Doooooooom! - Storyblocks (unavailable)
• Peaceful Desolation - Kevin MacLeod
• Tempting Secrets - Kevin MacLeod
• Volatile Reaction - Kevin MacLeod
• O Canada - Allan Gilliland, played by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
• Horinesian Sundance - Namco, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2
• Boss Battle - Namco, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2
• Boss Defeat - Namco, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 (because wow, it sure felt like winning!)

Edited December 5, 2021 by Gordon Fecyk
Grammar!

[RevanX_LSR]

Sorry!!!!!