What did you do in KSP2 today?

[Mikki]

@Periple Hi there, you have a real epic plane design going on there, i must adapt to your technology and try this for myself,  it looks well functioning. I will mention you if i post a plane similar to yours clearly. 

And it is very shiny 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Mikki said:

Hi there, you have a real epic plane design going on there, i must adapt to your technology and try this for myself,  it looks well functioning. I will mention you if i post a plane similar to yours clearly. 

And it is very shiny 

Why thank you! I wanted to make a really small SSTO, and I also wanted to keep the hatch clear for EVAs. That led to this double-wing design. The main wing is a bit anhedral because of the landing gear, but it doesn’t make it too squirrelly. It does fly pretty well, and is also hilariously overpowered, if heating was in it would be really easy to self-destruct just by going too fast!

I just got a bit frustrated at my first attempt failing due to a docked craft bug and didn’t feel like giving it a proper paint job, so bare metal it was!

[Scarecrow71]

What did I do?  I nearly uninstalled the game today.

I've been trying to get a craft from Kerbin to Moho, simply because I want to go interplanetary now to brush up on the skills.  And no matter what I try, I cannot do this.  Previously, I've tried launching one big craft into LKO, but the game has decided that any configuration of said craft - whether I modify an existing one OR if I build one brand new - the decouplers fail in flight.  At random times, and for no reason.  So ship go boom every time I launch.  Today, I thought "Maybe I can build the thing in orbit".  Launched the transfer stage, complete with a docking port on top of it, and got into LKO with a Pe of ~100km.  Created and launched a lander module, which I was going to dock on top of the transfer stage I just got into LKO.  Pe of ~90km.  Got a rendezvous, and burned to match speed/plane.  Set the transfer craft as the target, and clicked on Target on the SAS thing.  Even though I had MULTIPLE reaction wheels and RCS engaged, it still took a good 90 seconds for the craft to spin into position.  I then switched to the transfer craft, set the lander as the target, clicked Target on SAS, and turned RCS on.

Side note:  This is standard procedure for me.  I like to spin the ships towards one another, docking ports facing each other, so I can dock.  Doing this gives me a straight line, and it's how I do things.  And there is NOTHING wrong with doing it this way.

Anyhow, back to the story.  I click Target, and as the transfer craft is spinning to line up, the lander vehicle THAT I JUST SET TO TARGET AND HAD LINED UP starts spinning out of control.  WILDLY out of control.  For zero reason.  So I switch back to the lander to get it under control, and I get to watch the transfer craft spin wildly out of control for no reason.

I quit.  I'm done with KSP2 until this is fixed.  Struts are broken, SAS is broken, reaction wheels/RCS don't work, craft spin out of control for no reason.  These are foundational issues that are still not fixed some 8 months after launch.  How this is still this buggy is beyond me.

[Casellina X]

Brief detour for rover design.

Off to a successful start as you can see.

Complete with working brake lights!

Iterating over deployment methods. This has enough TWR and dV to get the thing off the ground so getting to the surface of the Mun should be no problem. But true to myself, I'll probably attach it to an overkill stage that will render this one obsolete.

The more eagle eyed among you will notice an RCS thruster at the nose of the rover to perform the tipping maneuver. You see the result of such here.

Upright!. The gear on the landing stage is a hindrance that I've since removed.

Finally, a lazy callback to The Twilight Zone Season 1 Episode 1 as the airman looks up at the moon and says, "next time Gadget, NEXT TIME!".

[Guest]

I took Tim C on a one-way trip to Eve. He has enough fuel to do a bit of tooling around but that's about it. I would need to send a rescue mission to bring him back up!

• Clouds are pretty! 
• I think some of the other environmental FX need a bit of tuning, like the sun's reflection from the sea.
• Landing gear didn't really work, the craft started bouncing around like a hamster on a pogo stick when I touched down; I immediately retracted my landing gear which saved the day. Take-off was hairy for the same reason, fortunately in that soupy atmosphere my plane flies almost from a standstill.
• I had to strut things a bit to get it into orbit; can't wait for the noodles to be stiffened up.

All in all it went pretty well, really. 

I've now done three interplanetary missions in one savegame (Duna, Laythe, Eve) and while I have had to quicksave/quickload a fair bit, I haven't had any blockers. Biggest issue for this one was the landing gear which just couldn't handle Eve gravity. Bring on FOR SCIENCE!

-- I also tried an Apollo-style Mun mission. A few rough bits:

• My lander didn't display dV
• When landed, the legs didn't touch the Munar surface, and when I EVA'd the craft jumped and fell on its side (could torque it back upright)
• After take-off from the Munar surface, my lander didn't display orbit lines

No showstoppers though, when I tried this in v0.1.0 or thereabouts it was a real pain.

Edit: There was a showstopper. When I reloaded, my lander (which did not show the orbit lines) was stationary relative to the surface at about 30 km altitude. It proceeded to fall straight down to the surface and make a crater. I.e. it bugged out and killed Val.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Periple

[cocoscacao]

21 hours ago, Casellina X said:

Brief detour for rover design

Same... But I got my inspiration from visiting my dentist. It didn't help with the rover challenge though...

[Casellina X]

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Same... But I got my inspiration from visiting my dentist.

The creativity and/or the ability to execute on that creativity you all have blows me away. I just can't seem to get outside the box.

[Astr0Guy5]

Inspired by all of you who have been posting pretty screenshots from 0.1.5, I took an hour to build a plane and fly around Kerbin at sunset. I can truly say this game is beautiful now, and my laptop 3060 achieves ~40 fps in flight on max settings. I can't wait for For Science! to make the planets look even more amazing! Also, I have to say this bird design is sick. 

Spoiler

 

[Antnee]

After checking in on some space news, I discovered the " Dream Chaser " is almost ready. I decided to explore the design principles of the lifting body. I made a " Mini Chaser " out of stock parts and gave her a run. Extremely impressed with how much lift was generated with those stumpy wings. Control of the craft was excellent, a bit too much lift perhaps..  

Launched using a conventional rocket.

Getting some juice before de-orbit.

De-orbit complete.

Coasting toward KSC.

Landed at KSC. Bit of a wiggle on the brakes, but all in all a great little test. Happy Flying!!!! 

[Vanamonde]

Hi @Antnee. Can you host your pics on a sharing site like Imgur and link to them here? Then we could see them. 

[Scarecrow71]

Finally - FINALLY - got to Moho.  I had some problems along the way, though:

1. RCS and Reaction Wheels aren't working, so the craft spins uncontrollably between maneuvers/burns.  If the engines aren't firing, I have no control over the ship.  Man, I hope this gets fixed (there is a bug report on this already).
2. The ejection burn from LKO to Moho did NOT look anything like what was planned based on the maneuver.  The trajectory was way off (the red line where the maneuver says you'll end up was merely a suggestion), and I ended the burn with far more fuel/dV left over than normal.  Like, HUNDREDS more.
3. I had to save and reload at one point as the craft did implode upon itself...and left no debris in space.  I got the message that things borked out, but nothing actually broke.  Weird.

I ended up reverting back to the VAB once I entered Moho's SOI as I realized I had neither the fuel nor the thrust needed to circularize and land.  Well, I could have landed...if it was a rapid, unplanned descent without a braking attempt.  But I did get there, and I did learn a few things about the craft I built.  Which should help in the long run.

[Antnee]

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Hi @Antnee. Can you host your pics on a sharing site like Imgur and link to them here? Then we could see them. 

Hello! Sure, not sure why drop box isn't working. TY!

 

[Antnee]

broken link again..

Edited November 2, 2023 by Antnee

[Antnee]

Hello, 

I hope these links below work. So, after reading the space news and catching up on the "Dream Chaser" I decided to study the concept of lifting bodies. I made a " Mini Chaser " out of stock parts and gave her a run. Extremely impressed with how much lift was generated with those stumpy wings. Control of the craft was excellent, a bit too much lift perhaps..  

Launched with a conventional rocket.

Getting some juice before de-orbit.

De-orbit complete with just enough LOX for a short closed cycle burn. 

Coasting toward KSC. Lots of lift.... too much lift...... need to adjust the weight/lift ratio, but fly's well!! (I'm also a terrible pilot)

Managed to wrangle it down, the excessive lift was kind of an issue. I was skipping down the runway for a bit. Initial touchdown speed was less than 50 ms, after a bit of imbalanced break wobble  Jeb's home safe!!!! 

[Vanamonde]

Yay. Pics work now. 

Shuttles are fun to land.

[Scarecrow71]

In preparation for my next interplanetary jaunt, I am testing different lander concepts.  First up is a ring-shaped lander that I sent to the Mun and back.  It took me far longer to create the ring section than it should have, and I honestly cannot wait to see if we get ring parts in For Science (or Colonies, or Interstellar, or anywhere else, for that matter).  All told, I did get it built, and it did fly.  Even over-strutted, however, it still wobbled a bit more than I'd like...but that's more an engineering thing than it is the game.  I have to figure out how to stabilize it.

Anyhow, pictures!

Spoiler

The one thing that really did irk me, and I believe is a bug, is that when I was landed, the craft continued to jerk and jump while it looked for retrograde.  I tried just clicking the lock button to get it off of retrograde, but that didn't work.  Checked to make sure RCS wasn't on.  Finally had to click on the button for SAS to turn it off altogether before the craft stopped bouncing.  If you are in flight and don't have anything selected, you either spin uncontrollably or you stop moving; why can't we get it so you stop moving around when landed and have nothing selected?

All told, not a bad day.  I like the ring shape, but I'm not sold on it as a final landing design.  Not yet, anyhow.

[ColKlonk2]

1st landing on the Mun   (decided to start playing the game after a few updates)

Edited November 3, 2023 by ColKlonk2

[cocoscacao]

Boring, regular, everyday Mun tour. But oh boy, this sight never gets old...

Edited November 3, 2023 by cocoscacao

[RealKerbal3x]

I tested some things ahead of a jaunt to Jool. This was the first time in many months that I booted up KSP2 to actually play, rather than just briefly checking what's changed.

I don't think I'll be consistently playing until 0.2.0.0 comes out, but I'm certainly encouraged by what I've seen. The game looks gorgeous (though I could do with a little more antialiasing) and performs pretty well even on max settings on my near-minimum-spec GPU, though the frames do take a hit with a lot of clouds in view. In a couple hours' gameplay, I encountered no serious bugs - nothing that couldn't be resolved with a quickload.

Laythe or bust! I want to watch the sunset there, and we'll see what happens after that

[Casellina X]

Wasn't expecting to have something today. I really only wanted to launch a missile at the moon but didn't get to it. I tried to deliver that rover from the other day, well, the other day. It wasn't supposed to make it to the Mun but it did. It also was a terribly designed craft with no ability to control itself by the time I needed to deorbit. So I tried and failed to safely touch down and eventually exploded in the process and closed the game in disgust. Well, the game autosaved so I was presented with my failed mission when opening the game today, so I decided to give it another go. I made a slight change with extra strutting, but also decided to get the COG of the final stage properly aligned to prevent excess tipping.

Tim C. Kerman...

riding his rocket sled...

TO THE MUN!

Time warp to PE for circularization.

Note the SM reaction wheel to prevent our prior mistakes.

A little Kraken action. Time warp + SAS led to an uncontrollable spin. There was actually a Kraken event prior to this but everything snaped back together. Fortunately I was able to halt the rotation and get ready to touch down.

And after finding a perfectly flat place to land...

Tim C. is on the loose and I've sent my first rover off Kerbin. Truthfully this isn't the real success. I had success a few minutes prior but those damn docking ports. No real bug, just failure to pay attention. After I cut the landing stage loose, I rolled forward, reveled in my success, and then rolled back a little. Well, a little magnetic attraction put me right back on the lander and the whole thing began to tumble down the incline. Everything I did seemed to make the situation worse, so I had to load up an autosave. Of course that autosave I was nearly landed but slightly under thrust, so I had to adapt quickly. Now that the rover is there, I understand how terrible it is. Floaty, slow to react, probably seconds from flipping over at any point in time. Maybe I'll iterate on the design down the line.

[Scarecrow71]

I am continuing to work with designing landers in KSP2.  This time, while I used my standard design (command module on top of a fuel tank on top of an engine), I used a non-standard module (Hitchhiker Container) with a probe core on it.  I also put this lander in a craft that also had a satellite attached to it that I left in Munar orbit.  I know at some point we will need to set up relay networks and launch satellites and such, so this became a test of not only the lander, but of deploying satellites at the same time.  I tried this once before on a trip to Duna (0.1.1, I think), and I had no control of the satellites; that bug is, thankfully, fixed.

The 2 issues I encountered here are:

1. Craft spinning out of control once in orbit.  Reaction wheels and RCS are still zero use, and this needs to be fixed prior to 0.2.0 launching.  We simply should not have to fight with craft to get them to stay in a straight freaking line when there is no thrust or time warp applied.  How this isn't fixed after 9 months is still beyond me.  Yes, I'm aware that there were larger bugs to fix.  But this is foundational, core gameplay mechanics that are still not fixed.
2. Several RCS thrusters were simply not firing when the entire craft was connected.  Specifically, 12 RCS thrusters connected directly to a medium-sized RCS tank at the top of the craft.  The RCS thrusters on the bottom of the craft that were all attached to their own, individual small-sized RCS tanks fired normally.  Really odd, and yes, I reported this as a bug today.

The only thing I wish I would have done is put parachutes on the lander.  In the VAB, the dV showing for the lander was less than I'd need to land, launch, and get back to Kerbin.  But once the craft was all by its lonesome in Mun orbit, I had like 2500 m/s of dV prior to landing.  Well, looks like these 4 are stuck until I send up a rescue mission.  Which I will have to do next!  Either that, or I can turn off impact damage and crash-land them on Kerbin.  I'd rather do the rescue mission.

Pictures!

Spoiler

Not sure why that shot on the Mun shows the ground is still 7m away.  I'm guessing that's due to ASL vs. height of the actual ground you are on, but I haven't found a way to switch between those 2 values like you can in KSP1.  Hmm.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[ColKlonk2]

Greased my Minmus landing.. manual control. 

(Hang on about 35 minutes for utube to try process the vid)

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by ColKlonk2

[Casellina X]

56 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Not sure why that shot on the Mun shows the ground is still 7m away.  I'm guessing that's due to ASL vs. height of the actual ground you are on, but I haven't found a way to switch between those 2 values like you can in KSP1.  Hmm.

You can change that manually by clicking on the ALT readout, it'll toggle from SEA to GROUND and back. Similar with the VEL readout, you can toggle SURFACE, TARGET, and ORBIT. VEL auto changes as you get to orbit. ALT seems to change whenever it wants to - default should be GROUND but on my prior rage quit it was set to SEA and I didn't touch it. As for why it reads 7m, it's probably taking the measurement from your root or control module. You have a MED  probe control on it at the top I believe? That's likely the culprit. A quick test may be to select the crew module and control from there, and the readout might change.

[Scarecrow71]

32 minutes ago, Casellina X said:

You can change that manually by clicking on the ALT readout, it'll toggle from SEA to GROUND and back. Similar with the VEL readout, you can toggle SURFACE, TARGET, and ORBIT. VEL auto changes as you get to orbit. ALT seems to change whenever it wants to - default should be GROUND but on my prior rage quit it was set to SEA and I didn't touch it. As for why it reads 7m, it's probably taking the measurement from your root or control module. You have a MED  probe control on it at the top I believe? That's likely the culprit. A quick test may be to select the crew module and control from there, and the readout might change.

Yeah, that's probably it.  In KSP1, it takes into account the distance from the lowest part of the craft to the ground, not where the command module is.  But I'll see if that's the culprit; it will certainly help with landing if that's the case as I'll be able to take into account distance from command module to the ground.

[Vl3d]