Weekly Challenge #16 - Build a Base!

[Ghostii_Space]

Hello Kerbonauts!

This week, we challenge you to... Build a Base!

Primary: Land 1) a habitat that can hold at least 20 kerbals on the surface of the Mun or Minmus. It should have solar panels and at least one antenna

Secondary: Land 2) a pressurized Rover that can hold at least 6 Kerbals, and 3) a communication and observation tower which is as tall as possible!

Jeb: Use the same transport vehicle design (booster, transfer stages, sky crane, etc.) to deliver each of the previous base elements.

Val: Build this base on a body outside Kerbin's sphere of influence.

Tim C: Build this base within 1km of a unique point of interest e.g. the mohole, Dres canyon, Vall crevasse, etc.

[Pat20999]

25 minutes ago, Ghostii_Space said:

Hello Kerbonauts!

This week, we challenge you to... Build a Base!

Primary: Land 1) a habitat that can hold at least 20 kerbals on the surface of the Mun or Minmus. It should have solar panels and at least one antenna

Secondary: Land 2) a pressurized Rover that can hold at least 6 Kerbals, and 3) a communication and observation tower which is as tall as possible!

Jeb: Use the same transport vehicle design (booster, transfer stages, sky crane, etc.) to deliver each of the previous base elements.

Val: Build this base on a body outside Kerbin's sphere of influence.

Tim C: Build this base within 1km of a unique point of interest e.g. the mohole, Dres canyon, Vall crevasse, etc.

Yes!

[Stephensan]

imma stop before I get agitated at this game... i have completed up to Tim-C version in my book.

This might be sent early without completely everything, its currently noon and the clouds are making it PITCH black. there is a huge storm with some of the darkest red out there `

this mission is quite impossible.

Did the first part amazingly got a nice looking base that was quite functional, over the top, and made, in some ways a lot of sense. Large solar panels up at the top to get extra light, smaller "fatter" shorter solar panels in the lower parts, with tons of batteries, tons of stationary solar panels, and stabilizers up on top, with the upmost point being for communications.. A lot of time was put into it building, the stages, and everything, however, this weekly challenge is a fail!  These Builds/ The Unseen Builds that won't be seen with the testing, have been on other workspaces for along time, and all i needed to do was to use them..  And make it "more formal" in terms, of this mission was already completed a long time ago for me, so i thought this is a perfect time to set everything up and show it out, Well, the game has other statements to prove me otherwise.

The rapid disassembly, reverting with quick saves/manual saves rips apart gears, or just removes the entire ship besides 3 parts..

The loading of a large object back into the high complex physics mode, destroying the product/item that was landed, is just enough is enough. Four separate "world" saves and all lead to the same thing even if the "main" base is completely different, it's always when the object is loaded back into the complex physics mode from the simplified one does the base disassemble..

Then the number of struts just to keep it intact due to quicksaving deciding that connected parts need to jiggle themselves apart..

Or quick saving, or coming back after logging out of the game, does the game decide that you are not attached to anything, and "flings" you into at 2400 kms spaces at 1-2fps and is completely unrecoverable, so you have to keep going "further and further" back in your quicksaves/saves to hope and attempt to save your mission.

Solar Panels not turning either, they become useless.

And at the end, the amount of parts/degradation of fps makes it more and more frustrating when you need to complete the same thing over and over to get that "thank god X didn't happen this time".. Then on top of this fps "leaks" where after a certain time period its pretty much forces you to quit out of the game to get anything called fps instead of fpm.

Anyway, here is the mission. I completed, 

Here is the "Mothership" I called it 

Just about 500 900m/s out in space or so of delta V.. isn't very stable due to NOT having RCS, when testing/working on this it causes a way higher chance of rapid disassembly.. also having just a decoupled wasn't possible with the part amount/ how much you can realistically bring in space, so everything was launched into stages, 4 stages in total iirc.. But as you can see there is a docking port at the bottom of everything/top of everything depending on the part.

 

This, is called internally for me "The Rock Will Move"

almost all of this COULD be recoverable if automatic landing existed in the game, but due to it not being implemented, this Goes into the ocean/forced to crash" due to not being able to control 5+ objects at once and needing them to almost land all at the same time.... iirc 5300m/s delta-V, but I would say realistically if you want everything to land 4,500~ m/s.

 

This is the "Deep Solar System Tug"

From playing/actual use the weight had to be dropped just a little to be able to move from the ground, but more precision flying would have been able to easily be able to get the full load, this is one of my generic builds that is attempting to be useful for everything while also still looking good... The delta V I cannot measure due to using docking ports it was always at 0 m/s when in use, but it "sipped" power in total, you could go everywhere and anywhere with this, including returning this to Low Kerbin Orbit to restock fuel with refueling launch.. so this build can and will be able to complete the Jeb, Val, and Tim C.

have to launch it via the airstrip due to sometimes breaking apart on launchpad.

It being almost completely into a stable orbit.

it in a stable orbit with the Tug finally being attached to it just before removing the "Rock"

It being in deep space, you can see Kerbin and the Mun.. like 20-30 pixels or so.

wondering where we will land.

you can see the broken solar panels here...

Here is the rover.. i have attempted many times to put both together however ksp 2 doesn't like this...

So it will stand here, i was able to land it, doing everything that i did with the Mothership to land, besides using the TUG until the last second for extra delta V.. but as soon as i get to close to the target everything breaks apart.... The amount of frustration is huge not being able to get everything together.

 

( I want to finish this later) my edit will be here the storm is quite bad.

 

Editing/Edit/Adding.

 

How does this complete every mission needed?

• Almost everything is reuseable if was able to land automatically, or if you took your time and properly did everything and refueled it when the TUG needed to be refueled (i doubt you really need to do this) AFTER you fuel it up fully the first time.. i should have said way earlier i was saying a little bit could only be brought initially, you need to refuel it a couple of times doing like one circle tank of a load at a time, attempting to launch this thing at once with full fuel is a big no no. its 4 stages fully to get everything up and going.
• Inital mothership, TUG, refilling TUG, and Rover.
• Important POI a dormant volcano, who knows what the kerbins can learn about this location, only if they were able to have both the main base, and the rover in the same save, this is a complete fundamental part that is broken.. I cannot attempt hundreds of more times or hundreds of times to get that one landing JUST before everything breaks apart. i cannot stand to attempt to get both connected together.
   
• Its on Ike..

( i had to revert to a save JUST before i landed due to a "funny bug" so it's not in the 100% same position)

just to say this is already landed and everything on IKE and was the last save before getting off (the last save it does WHEN you get off), this was the one with the photos of solar panels and everything a few photos back, going back to it does this! what is wrong with this, its completely broken and missing everything.

Here is the TUG in action, i forgot to show myself doing the DUNA and everything due to the frustration of everything breaking apart etc i was getting agitated when doing that section due to the need to do quicksave after the burn to get everything right.

 

 

 

How was the Mission in total?

Serviceable, it IS easily capable if you can withstand the bugs, or have the complete patience to compete/fight with the bugs, i cannot and will not afford myself to do such a thing, i can do it a couple of times, but after that's that.

The fps was horrible, on avg 10-5 fps, almost ALL photos had to have the physics frozen just so i can really move around the camera to take a snapshot of the game.. and you can see even with all the photos being frozen, its pretty poor framerates up on top.

The number of struts was a lot, and i needed to do about 30-50 retry/full restarts due to needing to add more and more struts.

REALLY wish i landed it with a view of duna.

 

What i wish i the game could have done better besides the fps/known bugs?

An option to have a set time to do a save. the saves when and if it happens is spratic and 2-3 hours can happen between each one, so almost every single action needs to be done with a F5 afterward.

Having a photo mode, with super photo resolution mode like Nividas Defunct Not Supported Ansel Mode. Taking good photos that you can see all the details is quite hard in this game, even in these smaller builds at 4k res.. almost all these photos needed to be zoomed out QUITE far.. and you, as a viewer, or creator of the photos feel like the photos are lacking when you build these HUGE builds, or want a lot of detail but photos are just lacking quality when we need it most, there is almost no way to get a real scale without doing a KTPV. (Kerbal Third Person View) of the ship with the camera being REALLY zoomed in, i had to do it a couple of times just to show the SIZE of it, but any of the zoomed-out photos just becomes a blurry mess after a couple of "clicks of the scroll wheel"

Resolutions/Screen modes not sticking... Use 4k DLDSR in fullscreen window mode, however, it loves to reset to a fullscreen one notch below 4k.. causing it to lock up and not want to re-fullsize itself after clicking off, making you need to completely close down the window and restart the app to THEN do the correct settings before you click off again.

Option to set the gear, or SAS or BOTH to attempt to set the rocket straight up and down when landed, the rocket was leaning and i attempted about 4 hours to get a flat landing, its a nice option for these "bases" or landing a rocket.. Yes its nice that the gear goes to full strength 100% everywhere but i would much rather have it "getting rather close" to the ground to have a rocket that is pointing straight up and down, rather than the game making the springs way to strong and when landing, or after landing it doesn't sway due to the gear "getting back into place, which is near the tipping point", its workable right now but the lack of an option to "set it up and down" is rather frustrating with the larger builds, or tall builds.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Stephensan
Storm is gone.

[Yang366]

Hi Kerbonauts.

Here is a failure too, even with much simpler vessels.

First build all my parts into the VAB. All right, no trouble, but a few decouplers rotated and a restart due to parts not able to return to the toolbox anymore.
Well... better than usual.

First launch : main base and space crane. Boosters detached at launching thus returned to VAB and add a few struts.
Second launch is a success. Gravity turn and transfer to Minmus. Circularisation ok, start looking for a nice plateau (expecting to put the tower high).

There, landing has been harder than usual. Seems that trajectories decayed too fast ! Tim needed to correct the decent plane many times.
Anyway, landing succeeded and space-crane returned to orbit, waiting for next shipment.
Planted a flag to celebrate.

Returned to VAB, built the second rocket with the rover. Even simpler, no trouble at all.
Third launch succeeded and the rover soon rendezvous with the space crane.
Landing at the right place was not so hard... only to find the main base had disappeared!!!
Switching to the base using control station, I found it slowly drifting into Minmus!
I may have landed into quicksands...

Reload and land on a nearby lake. Craned the rover to find the wheels wobbling madly in place. Reminds me of Dres challenge.
I'll try to land the tower tomorrow. And maybe a second base near the rover... Hope that ice is stronger than mountains and Bob will not drown as Tim did...

 

[dvilardi]

I'm getting back to KSP after ~6 years, so I only did the primarly challenge this time.

The ship: I did a regular 2-stage ship for this one (first stage achieves a circular orbit around kerbin and the second stage transfer to and lands on Minmus. To carry 20 kerbins I used a 4 seat pod and 2 8 seat cabins.

 

Liftoff: harder than I expected (I actually iterated over 10 times on the ship design as it was super wobbly and sometimes unstable when trying to rotate during climb)

 

 

Shaping the orbit: Circularizing the orbit around Kerbin was a challenge for this ship (it has a ton of inertia and does not rotate easily when commanded to). Once the first stage is left, things start to ease off.

 

Transferring to Minmus: somewhat easy maneuver after the orbit angles are corrected and the first stage is ditched.

 

Fairings out: once the ship got into the orbit of Minmus I finally decided to remove the front fairing. I could have done this sooner, I guess.

 

Completely unrelated to the challenge, I absolutely loved this view

 

Landing process begins: i truly thought this was going to be the easiest part but boy was I wrong. I took forever to find a somewhat flat surface and had to settle for a slightly inclined one.

 

Finally landed: like I said, I gave up on finding a flat surface (as seen by some legs not actually touching the ground). The building-like architecture is tough to land. I might try a more horizontal approach later.

Also clearly I overestimated the amount of fuel needed for this mission. On previous iterations I ended up having too little fuel for landing, but apparently I overcorrected.

 

All 20 kerbals are safe on their new Minmus base

 

 

[Stephensan]

Yeah attempting to do the TUG+Mothership+Vehicle, there isn't just a simple way to fight the void, wobble, yeeting, and other small bugs.. even landing one "hovering the other one with very fine control", it still does the void, wobble and yeeting..

 

i think if we had options to make a build "hover" perfectly i think we COULD get the rover landed with the base, but doing both rovers, plus a small "landing assembly" and the mothership, the 645~+++ parts is just rather hard. Perhaps this mission and further missions like this can be possible with further improvements for user QOL, such as "pick a spot landing", auto/assisted rendezvous, auto hovering, pointing straight up and down, atmospheric drag/landing lines etc..

I have further tried another 6 hours attempting this but i will stop now.

 

There is many features that could have made this a lot easier, but i understand that it isn't needed at this stage, nevertheless, when those colonies, interstellar, resource gathering, etc gets added i think it needs to be implemented in the game.. MechJeb, and another mod i have forgot the name can do it in ksp1, i don't see the reason for it not to be in ksp-2.. Its those quality-of-life features that you wish you had when you NEED them, but it mostly can be "hidden" in the menu bar, and even disabled for "hardcore players", i would say those options will help newcomers a lot more than just a "here is a tutorial, good luck"...

[Chris Windle]

I decided since I finally posted completion of a challenge last week, why not go for two weeks in a row. I have never built a base before, but figured it couldn't be too difficult. I decided instead of just going to the Mun, I would shoot for Duna and try landing my base right next to the Kerbel Face, in order to meet the Val and Tim C challenges.   I wanted to meet the other challenges, too, and since there have been so many problems with docking ports, I decided to build the entire base as a single transport and send it all in one, go, complete with habitat for at least 20 Kerbels and a large communication/observation tower.  Then, I would send the pressurized rover as a second trip using the same transport vehicle used to send the base.   I figured if Matt Loane can send huge satellites, floating bases, bases in the Mohole, all in one go, why can't I?  I even designed my base with a similar look to one of his.    I forgot to take a screenshot on takeoff, but here we are entering Duna orbit, trying to locate our landing spot:


And here we are beginning our descent to Duna:


And here we are using the atmosphere to our advantage (is 52 parachutes a lot?):



And after 17 tries, here we are finally landing almost on top of the face:



It was at this point I realized that I sent the base without any Kerbels.  No problem, I will just load up the rover with Kerbels and bring them on the next trip.   

I have made many rovers before, but mostly smaller 2 Kerbel units, with outside seats.  But, I have had so many issues trying to get the rover attached without completely scrambling it all up during the build or in-flight, so I decided to use a pre-built good-sized rover off the kspbuilds webiste, to avoid this problem.  I am not sure why I thought these rovers would be immune to all of the problems I have seen, but I must have thought this for some reason.  I grabbed the Draken Nomad, primarily because it was pressurized, held 12 Kerbels, and already come with a sky crane attached to it.  I couldn't just use the stock version,  so  I added some LED light strips to give it a neon underglow. 

Of course, it took several attempts to attach the rover to my launch vehicle, without rotating the engines or scrambling the rover up so much that it looked like it had been in a head-on collision going 120mph. But, In the end I had it attached and we launched it towards Duna.   I  even remembered to get the screenshot this time:

It was at this point that the Kraken arrived, unannounced, to setup camp for awhile. I don't know how many tries it took to get the lander to Duna without blowing up mid flight, flipping the launch vehicle uncontrollably on launch or having the rover flip upside down trying to land, or hitting the ground going sideways, or all sorts of other wrong endings.   Here we are bringing down the rover to Duma (almost guaranteed that this was not one of the successful landings):

After repeated reloads and attempts to land without crashing, I was beginning to get dejected.  I have learned to save as soon  as I land and cut the engines, because this seems to be the most common occurrence of the game crashing for me.   But, this time it was especially bad.  I think I looped 6 times loading my save, having it immediately crash and then restarting the game and repeating this, before I finally stopped for several hours, before gaining enough patience to try it again.  Sp. after the break, I finally managed to land with only a short drive to the base, without the PC crashing or the rover crashing., yay!  But, upon driving to the base, guess what?  the base was gone.  I had to think for a bit...did I load the wrong save at some point before launching my rover?  I checked the tracking station, and yep there was no base there.  This was close to a point where I considered scrubbing the entire challenge, but I was not going to let this beat me.  So, I loaded up my save with the base, and repeated the whole process of sending the Rover to Duna, retrying to get it to land without crashing and finally got the rover to the base, only the base was not there again.  what? 

I figured, this was some Kraken BS, while Tim C Kermin speculated it might be the spider people came and dismantled our base and took it all underground, before we could get there with the rover.  All I knew is that I was going to get to the bottom of it.  So, I enabled the lazy orbit mod, loaded  my base save, switched to the VAB,, grabbed my rover, and then just landed it next to the base....and poof, the base was still gone.  I went to the tracking station, and it showed my base was still there.  I tried to take control, but It wouldn't let me do that because I was controlling another vessel?  Back to that problem that happned pre patch 1 issue.  So, I jumped one of my Kerbels out of the rover and then took control of my base, and this worked.  So, where was my base?  it was inside Duna and falling inwards, of course.  After repeating dozens of experiments trying to figure out how to get my base and the rover to Duna without one or both of them sinking into the planet, I discovered I just had to have one Kerbel be onsite, not even in the base, and the base would remain on the surface.  I guess as long as there is someone around that can see the base, the base is not allowed to defy physics.  But, if there is nobody around to see it, then physics don't apply.  So, after so many hours of repeating the same thing over and over, I finally managed to get my rover and 12 kerbels to the base on Duna.  I had them all come out (except one stayed inside to make sure the base didn't randomly teleport somewhere) to take a successful challenge screen shot:



And then, I was so exhausted, I declared I was done and called it a day.  Then, after waking up 12 hours later, I decided it was time to post the screenshots here. .

Edited June 12, 2023 by Chris Windle

[Socraticat]

The worst part of this mission, for me, was a terrible window to Eeloo. I don't know anything about Eeloo. I went there once in KSP2. All I knew is that it had a flat enough surface for my mobile base and a low enough gravity to make landing the assymetrical beast possible. All in all it went pretty well.

I'm going to sit in the editor and cruise around Minmus for the rest of the week. I got some OK footage.

This is as many kerbals as I was able to liberate from my vessel before the Kraken used a teleportation spell on a kerbal as a distraction so it could eat the craft. I did save before though, so there's that.

It is a base that can hold 24 Kerbals, has 4 solar panels, 7 antennas and a tower capable of expansion. Is this Val Level?

I went for the all in one because every time I try to manage two craft on land in the same mission, one is bound to be consumed by the Kraken. And also because I chose Eeloo- I know nothing about Eeloo.

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Socraticat

[febrion]

#SadFace

Been trying for 3 days to progress with this challenge, but every single attempt is met with failure after failure.  I still haven't figured out exactly what's going wrong, but the most common issue I'm facing is where the entire launch assembly decides to flip 180^o when the SRBs get to about 50% fuel¹.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the COM shifting too high at that point, but so far I've been unable to come up with any solution to this issue (the constant bugs, some requiring a full restart, don't make the troubleshooting any easier...)  I managed to get my first payload into LKO once (didn't have any fuel left to deliver it anywhere, but I guess I could've sent up a tug), but every other launch either flip-flops at about 10-15km up, explodes on the launchpad, or simply falls to pieces before even launching.  I'm too stubborn to give up, so I'll be back at it later in the week (hopefully), keeping my fingers crossed that maybe the 721^st time is the charm  

 

¹After reviewing some of the videos, it also seems to be right at the first atmospheric boundary (approx. 7000m up) - most of the launches (I've been trying all kinds of launchers to get this thing into orbit) seem to experience a dramatic stability degradation at this exact point, pretty consistently.  Now I wish I saved more of my launch videos (I tend to delete them after the launch fails, was just trying to get a successful launch recorded), will definitely be checking out the next several - might be some useful information in the failures, either a systematic problem with the way I'm building launchers, or a bug in the game itself (while I've had issues like this in KSP1, it was only with really wacky builds that honestly never should have been able to get into orbit at all...)

[Socraticat]

Here it is, in all it's glory... the Eloo Train, "IngFacility"- known by the cadets as the Oblong Habitat. All of the veterans, One Tim, and a buncha noobs are crammed into this thing to generate some HYPE for the game. So let's hear it for the

HYPE TRAIN TO ELOO!!! CHOO CHOO!!!

 

Table of Contents:

 

And here's a gallery in 4 parts (not full representation of contents) Just some cool shots.

1. The Hub/ Rover-Base

Spoiler

 

2. Choo Choo.

Spoiler

 

3. Kerbin Background

Spoiler

 

4. Eeloo Background

Spoiler

 

 

That was fun. Thanks.

[vincemarz]

So while Ive been doing missions since launch, I actually missed last weeks (I got too busy building a space station using only 1 SSTO over and over) and decided to do both last week's and this week's in one go, one launch too. So here is everything landed and setup on Gilly:

Here's the full rocket on the launchpad:

It was an absolute beast to pilot, but once up out of atmosphere, surprisingly stable for what it was

With the last boosters off, ready to go interplanetary:

And this is the final landing, I actually disconnected the "viewing tower" from the main station before I landed anything, then once it was all settled, I popped off the symmetrical rover pieces (made load balancing stupid easy) and assembled them, Gilly's super low gravity made it hard, but it also made my fuel last far longer than was needed:

[Stephensan]

On 6/14/2023 at 10:25 PM, vincemarz said:

So while Ive been doing missions since launch, I actually missed last weeks (I got too busy building a space station using only 1 SSTO over and over) and decided to do both last week's and this week's in one go, one launch too. So here is everything landed and setup on Gilly:

Here's the full rocket on the launchpad:

It was an absolute beast to pilot, but once up out of atmosphere, surprisingly stable for what it was

With the last boosters off, ready to go interplanetary:

And this is the final landing, I actually disconnected the "viewing tower" from the main station before I landed anything, then once it was all settled, I popped off the symmetrical rover pieces (made load balancing stupid easy) and assembled them, Gilly's super low gravity made it hard, but it also made my fuel last far longer than was needed:

i cannot impore how absolutely jealous i am that you got a rover and a base down in one save without a kraken attack

[Goddchen]

So here is my take on this challenge. Unfortunately I had to revert back to just stage 1 since I encountered too many bugs this time. Had a lot of fun anyway.

 

[Stansci]

My 1st KSP 2 Mun base! A little late to the challenge, but fun nevertheless!

[dragonart777]

i doing mission i am also late.  but doing it for the fun.   my only question is  why a bass.  you not added that part in yet ?

we just building basic ships cause nothing new has been added in yet ?   or am i missing a update or something.  

[Socraticat]

On 6/19/2023 at 1:39 PM, dragonart777 said:

my only question is  why a bass.

If you check the Kerbal Wiki for some semantics on what constitutes a base, you'll find that there's nothing stopping a player from creating a base without "Base specific" parts or milestones. 

Quote

A simple base may be launched as a single unit, and will differ from other craft only in minor ways. The most significant of these is a lack of propulsion. While bases may possess wheels for basic mobility, and remaining landing legs, they typically lack rocket engines. Other than that, a base may possess electrical systems, one or more command modules, environmental sensors, electric lights, or any other structure.

So feel free to use your imagination with the parts available and bug workarounds to get you there!

[vianna77]

I hope this one is Tim C level... I tried the primary and secondary as best as I could...

Launching...

Spoiler

 

Showing the base...

Spoiler

Landing in the dark is VERY difficult   Forgot to install the lamps...
 

Spoiler

 

[JohanFos]

It looks complicated... but okay, I hope I'll quickly figure out the mechanics of the game