What did you do in KSP2 today?

[SpazeGibbonz]

I launched a spacecraft (mothership+lander) to the mun.

While it was on escape trajectory, i launched 2 more craft sequentially, the first one making an almost perfect circular orbit between 99-101km, the following one made a highly elliptical orbit - i'm time efficient!

When i returned to the ship en route to moon (which just sat there, SAS off, engine idle etc), it was burning full speed in a random direction and by the time i hit X to 0 the throttle again it was too late and i missed the moon completely - i hit F9, loaded into the flight again, same thing: throttle is at 100% accelerating in a random direction. I did repeat that a few times, double and triple checked in tracking station that the craft was in fact NOT accelerating, but every time i loaded into it, it was full throttle regardless... so i reloaded one final time, constantly hammering the X key while on loading screen, and voila - i still had a Mun Periapsis, albeit it was shifted and precious deltaV was wasted for that - but i'm only going to the mun with plans to return so what's deltaV worth anyways? Also all that time efficiency went out the window obviously (not in terms of in game time, but irl time).

I then made it to the mun, my lander touched down and Val planted a flag - her second one on the mun, hence she left a cheeky remark of how the first one apparently didn't count and THIS being the ONLY flag in a mun's mare (first one wasn't a mission, nobody asked Val to do it)..

She then prepared her take-off, ready for the rendezvous with mothership. In order to switch on the lights around the docking port, i took control of the mother ship to figure out it was now wildy spinning in orbit, kinda out of control.. SAS didn't help, reloading didn't help, restarting the game luckily did.

After the 2 ships been linked up, we made our way back to Kerbin - where both craft splashed down safely without any further incidents.

[Mister Spock]

Kerbin-rise over the Mun, as my Apollo-style spacecraft prepares to separate the Munar lander from the Command Module.

Separation went fine – except that my VAB engineers cleverly installed a decoupler instead of a stack-separator, so the decoupler remains glued to the command module, obscuring its docking port. HEADS WILL ROLL! I can’t pry the thing off, sigh. This may slightly complicate docking, lol.

Nonetheless, I safely landed Donley Kerman on the Mun, making Kerbal history! Er, we had a little bit of parking trouble, but I later cured this by shoving the lander a few times. I'm also a bit worried that the docking port looks a little crooked, like a drunk's New Year's hat.

One more tiny complication is that Donley has only 308 m/s of delta-V left, probably not enough to make Munar orbit. But the good news is that this moots my multiple docking-port issues. I'll just send the orbiter home, build a better rocket with a bigger lander, and return to rescue Donley. We got this!

[hatterson]

1 hour ago, Mister Spock said:

Kerbin-rise over the Mun, as my Apollo-style spacecraft prepares to separate the Munar lander from the Command Module.

Separation went fine – except that my VAB engineers cleverly installed a decoupler instead of a stack-separator, so the decoupler remains glued to the command module, obscuring its docking port. HEADS WILL ROLL! I can’t pry the thing off, sigh. This may slightly complicate docking, lol.

Nonetheless, I safely landed Donley Kerman on the Mun, making Kerbal history! Er, we had a little bit of parking trouble, but I later cured this by shoving the lander a few times. I'm also a bit worried that the docking port looks a little crooked, like a drunk's New Year's hat.

One more tiny complication is that Donley has only 308 m/s of delta-V left, probably not enough to make Munar orbit. But the good news is that this moots my multiple docking-port issues. I'll just send the orbiter home, build a better rocket with a bigger lander, and return to rescue Donley. We got this!

If the decoupler is attached to the docking port you should be able to just undock it to free up the port.

[Mister Spock]

Oh! I hadn't thought of that. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

[Periple]

I returned to the mothership from Dres surface!

Everything still going pretty smoothly. There are bugs but they fall under annoyances with workarounds rather than blockers:

• My orbit was decaying after I took off from Dres. Going to time warp fixed it and after I was high enough up it stopped decaying.
• I'd really like to be able to plan burns on Vespa but I can't because it only has RCS and the game thinks the dV is zero.
• The tracking station went all wonky after I undocked and docked. It displayed "Unknown" for the location of some of our vessels and also the names did strange things, at one point it was something like "Combined-23" and then it went to "Default Workspace-17" or something like that. It'd be really nice to be able to name vessels like in KSP1, so that the name is associated with a pod/seat/probe core and each of them has a priority. 
• The map view also behaved strangely, when I controlled a vessel around Eeloo and went to map view it was back on Dres, and when I got out of map view I was back controlling the Dres vessel.

Anyway here's a pic of Val flying back into orbit, and then easing the Vespa into its snug little home.

Edit: All right, hit a game-breaker. When I reloaded, the vehicle bay had clipped into the mobile lab, and when I decided to jettison the science module in order to go home, the RCS on the command module just didn't fire and I had no way to re-dock to the propulsion module. Still it was a pretty good run considering that it was the first iteration of campaign mode!

Edited January 16 by Periple

[Mikki]

On 1/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, Oak7603 said:

I have spent all day fighting with Tylo. She won, Several times. Back to the VAB.

Aaaah yes, now it all makes sense... i`m so stupid....  Thank you for this insight, i must have been drunk anytime i tried to land on .. her.

... "Everybody gets a second chance..." 

Let me solo her... OMG 

I am with you. 

[Scarecrow71]

I tried for several hours today to build a ship capable of getting from Kerbin to Duna and back, complete with a lander.  Nope.  Didn't happen.  Simply do not have enough of the tech tree unlocked.

So I resolved that tomorrow I am going to go to both the Mun and Minmus, different biomes than where the monuments are, and collect more science so I can unlock new parts.

[Periple]

5 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I tried for several hours today to build a ship capable of getting from Kerbin to Duna and back, complete with a lander.  Nope.  Didn't happen.  Simply do not have enough of the tech tree unlocked.

Where did you get stuck? A Duna return ship shouldn’t be much more challenging to build than a Mun return ship and can be done fairly easily once you unlock the Terrier (and efficiently once you have the Spark). 

[Oak7603]

So in my endeavours to get to Jool, to complete the next missions, to unlock some more tech that will help me try and repatriate those Kerbals I have littered around the Jool system, I built and tested a sky crane to prove concept of landing an unmanned rover.  The crane build took off and landed on Kerbin, then it has now landed and deployed on the mun (bugs not withstanding). I figured if I can land one there, I can do it on an atmospheric planet too so hopefully, some unmanned missions will net me some science.

[Scarecrow71]

8 hours ago, Periple said:

Where did you get stuck? A Duna return ship shouldn’t be much more challenging to build than a Mun return ship and can be done fairly easily once you unlock the Terrier (and efficiently once you have the Spark). 

I built a lander with 3000 dV, which is more than enough to get from LDO to the surface and back to LDO.  So no issue there.

I built a transfer stage with 4000 dV, which is more than enough to get from LKO to Duna, capture/orbit, and then have enough fuel to either ferry the lander home OR refuel the lander so it can get home on its own.  So no issue there.

The problem is building something to get into LKO from the surface of Kerbin.  No matter how many fuel tanks or engines I use, I cannot get enough TWR or dV to get into LKO.  I have the mainsail unlocked, and I've got plenty of medium tanks.  But I cannot build something to get into orbit.  Which is annoying, because I can easily get to Duna and back in KSP1 with these parts.

I am simply not sure what I am doing wrong, and I'm frustrated that the sequel, which is supposed to be designed to be EASIER FOR NEW PLAYERS us so damned hard for someone with >1000 hours in the original.

[hatterson]

6 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I built a lander with 3000 dV, which is more than enough to get from LDO to the surface and back to LDO.  So no issue there.

I built a transfer stage with 4000 dV, which is more than enough to get from LKO to Duna, capture/orbit, and then have enough fuel to either ferry the lander home OR refuel the lander so it can get home on its own.  So no issue there.

The problem is building something to get into LKO from the surface of Kerbin.  No matter how many fuel tanks or engines I use, I cannot get enough TWR or dV to get into LKO.  I have the mainsail unlocked, and I've got plenty of medium tanks.  But I cannot build something to get into orbit.  Which is annoying, because I can easily get to Duna and back in KSP1 with these parts.

I am simply not sure what I am doing wrong, and I'm frustrated that the sequel, which is supposed to be designed to be EASIER FOR NEW PLAYERS us so damned hard for someone with >1000 hours in the original.

Option 1: More boosters. Eventually it'll work

Option 2: Send up the lander and the orbiter separate and then dock them in LKO

Option 3: Send them up together but unfueled and then send up refueling launches

Option 4: Send them up separate *and* unfueled and send up refueling launches.

Option 5: Send someone your save file and we can give you design suggestions with the parts you have.

Edited January 17 by hatterson

[cocoscacao]

Option 1.1: Asparagus staging?

[NexusHelium]

27 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The problem is building something to get into LKO from the surface of Kerbin.  No matter how many fuel tanks or engines I use, I cannot get enough TWR or dV to get into LKO.  I have the mainsail unlocked, and I've got plenty of medium tanks.  But I cannot build something to get into orbit.  Which is annoying, because I can easily get to Duna and back in KSP1 with these parts.

Just do what I did and crash directly into the planet! If you wish hard enough, maybe you'll slow down just enough to deploy your parachute during reentry! (That was a fun mission)

[Periple]

It sounds like you're overbuilding, especially with your transfer stage, 2000 m/s will be plenty to eject from Kerbin and get to Duna orbit. Your lander stage has enough to get all the way back to Kerbin from the Duna surface if it's packing a heat shield and can drop straight into the atmosphere -- it'll be very similar to re-entering from Munar orbit. 

If you have 4k dV on the transfer stage, it will be very heavy and you'll have that much more trouble lofting it.

FWIW (spoilered in case you don't want to see it) here's my career Duna return ship -- it used a Poodle for the transfer stage, Sparks for the lander/return stage, and a Skipper with four Reliant boosters for the lifter:

Spoiler

 

[hatterson]

On the bright side, if you do have a 3000 m/s lander and a 4000 m/s orbiter you'd be able to do multiple biome hops on Duna, transfer out to Ike, do a few biome hops there, and then head back to Kerbin, so you'd be getting solid science.

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Periple said:

It sounds like you're overbuilding, especially with your transfer stage, 2000 m/s will be plenty to eject from Kerbin and get to Duna orbit. Your lander stage has enough to get all the way back to Kerbin from the Duna surface if it's packing a heat shield and can drop straight into the atmosphere -- it'll be very similar to re-entering from Munar orbit. 

If you have 4k dV on the transfer stage, it will be very heavy and you'll have that much more trouble lofting it.

FWIW (spoilered in case you don't want to see it) here's my career Duna return ship -- it used a Poodle for the transfer stage, Sparks for the lander/return stage, and a Skipper with four Reliant boosters for the lifter:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So I was able to get a build that got off Kerbin, but as soon as I tried to fire the transfer stage I ran into the bug where your ship spins out of control.  Could not for the life of me get it to stop.  I finally just created a maneuver and burned as I know that will eventually spin me towards/on the node marker.  After that's done, I spin uncontrollably until I reach Duna's SOI, at which point I have to try and capture while spinning.  Except this time the ship continues to spin regardless of maneuver marker, so I miss Duna.  I have to reload MULTIPLE TIMES, and every time this happens.  I finally got fed up and said "Ok, Lazy Orbit it is".  And that still had me spinning uncontrollably.  So I decouple the transfer stage thinking "Well, I can hit the surface and get back...I hope."

I start my descent, getting the landing site near the signal.  I hit 10km with an orbital/surface speed of ~300 m/s...and the chutes don't deploy.  Either through staging or manually.  I wore out the mouse button, and the chutes never deployed.  Quicksave/reload...nothing.  Restart game...nothing.

I quit.  At this point, I just quit.  I'm going back to KSP1 until the chute issue is resolved.  The spinning out of control might have been my fault, and I'm sure I can design a craft to deal with that.  But chutes not deploying?  That's on the devs, not me.  And I refuse to play if staging doesn't work.

[Periple]

That’s sad to hear! It’s funny how individual these things seem to be though, I’ve never had issues with chutes nor have I hit the uncontrollable spin bug either. Who knows what’s triggering them! 

[hatterson]

2 minutes ago, Periple said:

That’s sad to hear! It’s funny how individual these things seem to be though, I’ve never had issues with chutes nor have I hit the uncontrollable spin bug either. Who knows what’s triggering them! 

I've never hit the uncontrollable spin bug, but have seen the chute bug a few times although it's usually only 1 out of a large number that won't open and a save + load has always fixed it.

[Scarecrow71]

None of my chutes would open today.  Not a single one.  No matter how many times I hit the space bar, no matter how many times I clicked on them manually.  And I'm not going to report these again; I've reported both multiple times.

[Sp1f]

Threaded the needle on Eeloo.

Spoiler

 

 

[Audaylon]

22 minutes ago, Sp1f said:

Threaded the needle on Eeloo.

  Hide contents

 

 

Brooooooooooooooo

[Periple]

I started a new career this time with mission rewards dialed way down so I need to focus more on Science. 

I built a space station around the Mun for surface trips. Here's one of them.

[Mikki]

My Kerbals argue about the lenght of this interplanetary ship. The VAB may be too short. The control surfaces at the end are also too short.  

After some adjustment the issues look solved:

Spoiler

 

Edited January 18 by Mikki

[The Aziz]

Look at all the unnecessary mass...

 

As for me, I've finished the main storyline so far, and I like where it's heading when the time comes. In one launch I landed on Laythe with a tiny rover (and reloaded for like 20 times because it wouldn't hit the tiny* island with the discoverable (no I didn't use the skycrane, ran out of space). 

*Had to drive 36km to reach the target. At ~10m/s it took some time.

In the same launch I packed a Kerbal into a Pol lander which got separated from main nuclear spacecraft during the flyby and captured on its own power. Landed snd entered the orbit with 100m/s to spare (he's gonna wait for rescue... For some time). And finally an unmanned Tylo lander, that barely made it thanks to its stupidly low TWR. Now the time for the rest of secondary missions.

[Mister Spock]

I finished my first Apollo-style landing on the Mun -- there and back again, safely. I landed on the Mun many times in KSP1, but I never did the Apollo thing, so this was a thrill for me. I used a huge rocket to get into orbit around Kerbin:

Which gave me the luxury of a pretty big middle stage for the transfer to the Mun:

The command module and LEM separated there. Wish I had a better picture of this big moment.

The requisite picture of Shepble Kerbal planting a flag in the Mare Turbidum -- the stormy sea, my Kerbals call it, because there's some mysterious noisy transmission nearby. I'll investigate that in my next mission.

Maybe the most exciting part for me -- the LEM rejoining the command module Snoopy, manned by Tim Kerman, I think. (I tend to put less famous Kerbals in charge of things.)

The crew safely returned to Kerbin, though I didn't take pictures because there was a little excitement involving a forgotten decoupler and some improvisation with parachutes. But never mind that! Mission accomplished!