What did you do in KSP2 today?

[Jeq]

Bug testing:

Warning:  Don't waste your valuable time for trying to do missions which needs heavy vessels entering atmospheres (Laythe, Eve).  Duna you might survive butg other than that it is very unpreictable. Developers should give this warning for players because it might get very frustating to do those missions, without knowing there is serious bug behind those failures.

[stephensmat]

I made my first Rover. Something I never really bothered with in KSP1, since it was easier to send Landers, but I've managed to create a simple, two seat rover with two experiments. More importantly, it's stable enough to drive in a straight line without immediately flipping over (which was surprisingly difficult to do).

I'm going to take her for a spin around Kerbin and see if I can grab some science points. After that, there's the little matter of trying to get her to the Mun/Minmus.

[Kimera Industries]

7 minutes ago, stephensmat said:

More importantly, it's stable enough to drive in a straight line without immediately flipping over (which was surprisingly difficult to do).

Don't get me started on how 'eh' rovers are in KSP1. It's like Lunar Roving Vehicle: On Ice!

[Vl3d]

Spoiler

On 1/4/2024 at 11:49 PM, Vl3d said:

I will not even tell you what happened... the story is in the photos. And this is just the beginning!

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On 1/5/2024 at 4:48 AM, Vl3d said:

I built a dinghy.

Then I upgraded it..

And.. now it has wheels and nuclear reactors. It's not the fastest, but it's reliable!

 

The saga continues...

[Aeolica]

22 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Can we see it?

 

[Guest]

I made a career trip to a certain high-latitude location on Duna. Very satisfying. Also remarkably smooth experience, so far I had one instance where the orbits went bonkers and I had to quit and reload but no other issues of note.

The small wings and control surfaces do seem to be made of paper now though, they vanish in a puff of smoke even from a low-orbit entry. I tried making them a quite a bit thicker but no dice, will probably have to check the medium or heavy wings to make something that survives re-entry. Maybe needs a bit of balancing?

I like the way the science costs are ramping up. At this point I don't have enough science to do the next story mission, so I'll have to do some side missions and gather science instead. Shakes things up a bit nicely. 

I do wish the story missions would open up more instead of just giving me the next breadcrumb in the trail. I'd like it if they were structured like, say, Outer Wilds, so I could do them in any order I like.

[Scarecrow71]

I started working on an interplanetary ship so I could go deal with the Duna signal mission.  I tried a few times to build something to just launch from the KSC, but nothing I created ended up with enough dV to get to Duna's surface and back.  So I decided to try building something in LKO.  I started with a hub (a probe core and a bunch of docking ports), and then sent up the first of two planned power arms (which are just a bunch of solar panels and some batteries).  So I give to you the start of Sekhmet I:

As stated, there will be another power arm, followed by a communications hub, a fuel hub (the current tank/engine is there currently to swipe any leftover fuel from the hubs that get sent up so I can then transfer that to the real fuel hub once it gets up there), and then a lander.

The real downside to this image is the stupid heat gauge that for some reason will not go away in LKO.  I've saved, loaded, quicksaved/quickloaded, quit the game and loaded.  The thing won't go away.  The overheating part?  A probe core.  When did it start overheating?  In the atmosphere...while it was shielded with a fairing.  And people say the heat system isn't broken.

Edited January 6, 2024 by Scarecrow71

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I tried a few times to build something to just launch from the KSC, but nothing I created ended up with enough dV to get to Duna's surface and back.

How much dV were you targeting? My Duna ship had 3300 (lifter stage) + 2200 (transfer stage) + 3200 (landing and return stage) and that ended up with about 850 m/s more than I needed. Just one kerbal and the mini materials science plus atmosphere analyzer for a payload. 

Edited January 6, 2024 by Periple

[Scarecrow71]

Just now, Periple said:

How much dV were you targeting? My Duna ship had 3300 (lifter stage) + 2200 (transfer stage) + 3200 (return stage) and that ended up with about 850 m/s more than I needed. Just one kerbal and the mini materials science plus atmosphere analyzer for a payload. 

I was trying to hit what you've got there, but I don't think I have enough of the tech tree unlocked yet to do it with a singular launch.  Getting to Duna and back should get me the rest of Tier II unlocked (I'll have science from Kerbolar orbit, high in space over Duna, low in space over Duna, atmospheric sample while landing, and Duna surface science).

I'm not overly concerned with not getting a singular launch here.  This gives me a chance to practice building in orbit!

[Guest]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

I'm not overly concerned with not getting a singular launch here.  This gives me a chance to practice building in orbit!

I don’t entirely trust docking yet so I’m trying to avoid having to do that!

[Vl3d]

16 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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The saga continues...

Stay away from Laythe, it's a death trap.

[stephensmat]

I managed to achieve something I've never done before. I landed a rover.

I had to feather my rockets again to get it out from underneath my lander, but lo behold, it worked.

One annoyance: it doesn't work nearly as well on Minmus as it does on Kerbin. The thing keeps flipping forward, head over axles. (Which is why I never really bothered with rovers in KSP1. ) So any advice on maintaining stability when driving slowy in a straight line is greatly appreciated.

Still... if we can pull it off, let's go exploring.

 

[Guest]

Minmus isn't great for rovers because of the low gravity. Try lowering the brake power for the front wheels, if it does a cartwheel when braking then that ought to fix it.

[The Aziz]

Also turn off the reaction wheels when not needed so it doesn't start leaning forward when accelerating. I set up a special action group ao I can quickly turn it back on if things go sideways, as low G environment you may get a lot of... "Air".

And you know, don't expect high speeds in there.

But also, I'd redesign it slightly for next attempt because center of mass is very high here, it's more prone to flipping, not sure why you dragged the wheels so far down.

[Urus28]

I spent most of my kerbal time around Jool this weekend...

[The Aziz]

I launched Moho mission. With speeds reaching 2000m/s @ 56km nothing blew up under my fairing.

Not long after, I plotted a capture burn at target that had to be started way before Pe

And after starting the burn exactly at the beginning of the node, not halfway to it, I ended up nearly exactly on planned trajectory.

hint hint

Landed inside Mohole in what appeared to be a complete impenetrable darkness.

I also flew a plane which then decided to not open the landing gear so I had to improvise my landing.

Edited January 8, 2024 by The Aziz

[Guest]

I dropped an atmosphere probe into Jool!

[Xacktar]

Welp, I made a mess of a trip to Jool.



This is Roverstack 1.  It looks nice now, but only years later as it reached Jool did I realize my mistakes.

First off,  my communications antenna were too weak for transmissions from Jool,  So it periodically lost comms unless I was close enough to the Big Henry probe on Bop to relay the signal. This presented many challenges, especially when coupled with the fact that I had a fairly large probe core for each of the 4 rovers and together they used more power than the exposed solar panels could provide.

Whoops!

Had to turn off all but one core as it flew to make sure it stayed electrically positive(when I could control it)

Upon reaching Laythe I realized my second mistake. 



I put a decoupler in the wrong spot so two rovers had to burn through the Laythe atmosphere together.  Rover 2 had a hard time of it but ended up making a good floatation device after we missed landfall. 



After that we popped over to Vall to deploy Rover 3 and find out it's signal strength was also too low to transmit back home. 



Next was the rover for Pol. This went surprisingly well but had the same commnet issue as Rover 3. I see a relay satellite mission in my future. 

[Guest]

I also dropped a rover! This one went to Tylo though. I had an orbiter with a big antenna on the same mission so no communications issues. Everything went well!

[Scarecrow71]

Still working on the orbital build to go to Duna.  Yes, I know, I could probably do this in one launch.  But I'm lacking some needed parts, and this gives me a chance to practice docking and building in orbit and such.  Anyhow, I was able to get a second power arm attached to the Sekhmet I hub, as well as a communications hub.  Two images:

The first image is what we have in orbit currently, while the second image is a sneak peek inside the fairing at the end of the communications hub.  For the first time in playing this game - over 1000 hours in KSP1, and 200+ in KSP2 - I used an engine mount.  I wanted to have an antenna of some kind at the far end of the truss, but I needed to have a fuel tank and an engine to get this up there.  I also needed to move the fuel from the existing spare tank to a new one (the existing spare tank is where the actual fuel tanks/engines for the interplanetary flight are going to be), so I used an engine mount to "hide" the antenna and keep the ability to have other parts on the thing.  Once docked, I moved the fuel from the existing tank to the new one at the end of the communications hub, and then quick-saved so I could jettison that fairing to give a show of what it will look like.  Gotta say that the engine mount is going to be getting some serious use in the future from me!

I have but 2 gripes with this.

1. The Sekhmet I hub wiggles all over the place.  It will not stay true to any SAS direction, instead choosing to wobble around said direction.  This is making docking difficult, and I'm finding I have to come in a little hot (to the tune of > 5 m/s in order to hit the target dead on).
2. That stupid temperature gauge is annoying.  I'm in orbit, not the atmosphere; I shouldn't have an overheated part.  I may have to edit the JSON file and adjust the temperature of both the OKTO and the cargo bay it is inside of (I checked yesterday, and both of these are > 200 in spite of being in orbit).

I still have to add:

1. Interplanetary fuel tanks and engines
2. A lander module

I might add some habitation modules (Wayfarer's) in the event there is a mission to create a space station.  Please do NOT spoil that for me; I do not want to know in advance if there is or not!  Let it be a surprise!

[Xacktar]

Had a bit of an interesting glitch today.  Switched from controlling my rover on Vall to my rover on Pol and, uh, had an unexpected hitchhiker. 





Vall wanted to come to Pol too. Since I am never one to let an interesting glitch go untested, I continued to switch to different places to see what I could do with my extra Vall. After switching back and forth to Vall a few times I managed to capture this:



This is a picture of Vall inside Vall inside yet another Vall. Kinda pretty, actually. XD

[darthgently]

33 minutes ago, Xacktar said:

Had a bit of an interesting glitch today.  Switched from controlling my rover on Vall to my rover on Pol and, uh, had an unexpected hitchhiker. 





Vall wanted to come to Pol too. Since I am never one to let an interesting glitch go untested, I continued to switch to different places to see what I could do with my extra Vall. After switching back and forth to Vall a few times I managed to capture this:



This is a picture of Vall inside Vall inside yet another Vall. Kinda pretty, actually. XD

Given the assumed logical scoping of data in any normal program, this, and other instances of other bodies suddenly imposing obscenely in a scene, is highly disturbing.  I can't believe a dev hasn't stayed awake on a coffee drip IV tracking this down as the solution would probably stomp several other bugs in one fell swoop.  This is pendulous and obvious low hanging fruit waiting to be plucked 

Edited January 9, 2024 by darthgently

[feradose.]

Came back from a 22000 science Jool tour! It took 8 launches, one being the mothership, one being the reentry vehicle, three being fuel tanks, one being a specialized Tylo lander, one being a specialized Laythe lander, and one being the SWERV engine module.



My favourite part was the Laythe descent. The atmosphere is just gorgeous. That's Icarus-L, my first SSTO on KSP2. It's called Icarus, because it burns the wings off during the ascent phase to squeeze out that little bit more Delta V. Does it still count as an SSTO if it loses parts...?


 

[Kimera Industries]

22 minutes ago, feradose. said:

It's called Icarus, because it burns the wings off during the ascent phase to squeeze out that little bit more Delta V. Does it still count as an SSTO if it loses parts...?

I love it! 

I think it's still an SSTO if parts explode, it's technically disqualified if something is detached with dedicated parts on purpose by the player.

[hatterson]

I had a fun re-entry coming back from Eeloo.

Don't worry everyone made it totally fine as long as we ignore the g forces