Making Life Difficult (a heavily modded colonisation playthrough)

[RedDwarfIV]

Not much of an update today, I was basically just refining the Stingray lander and Typhoon launcher. The former for increased control and delta-V, the latter for increased TWR. Three Stingrays arrived at Minmus, all with adjustments to the design.

 

One of the landers had insufficient delta-V to even reach Tarasque for a refuel. Needless to say, it's not the design I settled on. I had to refuel a Manticore at Wyvern 2 in order to rescue it.

 

One of the landers is in Minmus' Lowlands, another on the Lesser Flats. Neither of these biomes currently have WOLF depots, so I will have to set those up. It should be faster to have Tarasque build a pair of small landers to carry the Depot modules down than to launch from Kerbin, and they shouldn't exhaust the station's pitiful supply of SpecialisedParts.

 

[RedDwarfIV]

Constructing the depot landers took 4 days and about 5% of Tarasque's SpecialisedParts. So while it wasn't neccesarily faster in game-time, it was quicker for me, and much cheaper too.

 

Due to a terrain-spacecraft interaction conflict, Dragon base no longer exists. According to the logs, there were no crew at the station at the time. As the LH2 refineries were glitched out and inoperable, the facility's only use was mining ore for transfer to Planetary Storage. It wasn't very good at this. A WOLF base will soon be replacing that functionality anyway.

 

Both the Lowlands and Lesser Flats needed to be connected by Transport Routes to the Great Flats. This wasn't difficult for the Lowlands, and in fact I was able to simply drive the Sabretooth rover forwards and backwards between biomes to increase the payload capacity. Rather more challenging was the Lesser Flats, which were in night-time when the rover arrived. I had to drive it the last few hundred metres. Getting it back to sunlight also took a significant amount of time.

 

All the ExoticMinerals and most of the Water on Minmus available to WOLF are now being harvested. Respectable amounts of everything is arriving at the Greater Flats.

Next up, hiring a load of Specialist Kerbonauts, designing a WOLF base, and shipping it all to Minmus. This has been a long time coming, and it's the main thing keeping me from either time-warping to the next important Alarm or working on infrastructure elsewhere in the system. Leviathan has been sitting idle for an age. Nor can it sit at Ike forever without resupply.

[RedDwarfIV]

It's time! It's finally time! All that setup, which was kinda getting tedious with how many similar missions it involved, now gets to pay off. That WOLF base I'd been harping on about? Today's the day I finally got round to it.

First thing I did was find out what WOLF components I needed, and what Kerbals. The uninspiring craft in the image below was nothing more than a tool for planning the mission, one that would never leave the SPH, but it was useful nonetheless.

 

Once I had everything planned out, I designed a proper spacecraft to carry it all. Since it would be the foundation for my first WOLF base, it was given the name Starwolf 1. I assembled it at Mirage Station. 

(Unfortunately, there were some part clipping issues which left the vessel unusable, and I was forced to use Hyperedit to move a corrected version of the spacecraft to orbit. I consider this valid because it was a problem with the game, not me. Also, I had just spent 65 days building it, with no recent save file from beforehand.)

 

Mirage ran out of MaterialKits, so I sent up a resupply mission.  It did jiggle a bit after docking, but some Autostruts fixed that, unlike the Polecat.

 

Two thirds of the crew were lifted up to Starwolf 1 by a pair of Wizard 2 SSTOs.

 

Inspecting the payload; the base components. You can see why clipping was an issue.

 

I sent the first SSTO to Mirage to refuel, as it had used a non-optimal ascent profile. Unfortunately, all the LFO on the station had already been transferred to Starwolf 1, so I sent up an Olympus FTV to refill the tanks and help the SSTO return to KSC.

 

This flight proved the Wizard 2 was indeed an improvement over the original. Despite empty fuel tanks, the SSTO showed no signs of nose-down tendency, and was able to reach the runway instead of lawn-darting into the terrain nearby. The only issue I noted was its lacklustre glide capability. Without engine power, the Wizard drops rapidly, even while shedding forward velocity.

 

The second Wizard is still in orbit, but only because I wanted to focus on Starwolf. It was getting late. I can always land it later.

 

As I said, Wizards lifted two thirds of the crew. The last third posed a difficulty, because there were 7 Kerbonauts... and the Wizard can only carry six. Rather than have a whole extra flight just for one Kerbal, I instead took an old design for a larger manned spaceplane, and updated it. This is the Lancer 2, which exchanges all the scientific equipment of the original for a crew compartment. Not that the extra room was neccesary on this trip, but if I ever need a heavier crew SSTO in the future, I'll have one ready and waiting.

 

At long last, Starwolf 1 headed for Minmus. It would have taken 20 days waiting for Minmus to reach Kerbin's equator, so I took a quicker 10 day route.

 

The landing burn commences.

 

At the push of a single button, the vessel would disappear, and a virtual base would be created.

 

Success!

 

And now for something slightly different. The IPCV Andromeda mining vessel performed a correction burn. It is now 200 days from Jool.

 

The manned mission to Jool is now less than 50 days out. Don't think I've done any exploration missions for a while, so that should be a nice change of pace when it arrives.

[RedDwarfIV]

Starwolf 1 had the mission of setting up a self-sustaining WOLF base on Minmus. That was an incredibly important step, but was for all practical purposes useless, because everything it produced was used just to support itself. That's what I spent today rectifying. I wanted to expand the WOLF base's infrastructure so that it would generate MaterialKits, SpecialisedParts and Machinery in sufficient amounts that it would be usable by Tarasque Station.

After finding out what parts and Kerbals I would need for the expansion, I found that there was a defecit of MetallicOre. So I launched another Stingray.  Happily, Minmus was perfectly aligned for a minimum-energy transfer.

 

Rather than use Mirage to build the vessel in orbit again, I designed a spaceplace capable of carrying all the WOLF parts and Kerbal crew to Low Kerbin Orbit. This is the Oracle. 

 

A very heavy vehicle, the SSTO used up most of its fuel reaching orbit. In a lack of foresight, I had not fitted it with a docking port, so I sent two modified Manticore FTVs with grapplers to dock with it and transfer fuel.

 

Two was not enough, and rather than send up a third, I realised there was an easier alternative. The Oracle would not be returning from Minmus. There were many parts that it no longer required in order to fulful its mission. As such, I sent out a Kerbal to dismantle anything surplus to requirements. The result wasn't pretty, but it now had the delta-V needed.

 

Inspecting the cargo.

 

After connecting the vessel to the WOLF depot, the Oracle vanished, and the dashboard updated. There was now 10 Machinery, 15 MaterialKits and 16 SpecialisedParts available to do what I wanted with.

 

What needs doing now, is setting up a transport route from the Greater Flats to Minmus orbit, and adding a means for Tarasque to pull resources from WOLF. 

[Eclipse 32]

excited for the next post! earning a follow from me!

[RedDwarfIV]

On 12/15/2024 at 5:54 PM, Eclipse 32 said:

excited for the next post! earning a follow from me!

Thanks!

 

To set up the Greater Flats to Minmus Orbit transport route, I designed a lander. It came in at 100 tons fully loaded, so I was forced to design yet another launcher. I didn't name it.

 

This is the Mako WOLF cargo lander.

 

Having landed on the Greater Flats, I set the origin biome and lifted off.

 

Reached orbit, set it as the route destination. Seems this only cost 3 Transport Credits. I was expecting it to take rather more than that.

 

In order to allow Tarasque Station to draw resources from WOLF, it needed physical Hopper parts. I designed an upgrade module for the station and built it at Mirage. Doing so used up all the SpecialisedParts and MaterialKits. Sending up more had me down to my last 300k VF, so I spent a while deorbiting reusable boosters, along with a Wizard SSTO.

 

I'm almost certain this is a bug with Global Construction. The size of these kits are getting ridiculous.

 

Took about a month to build the module. Along with the WOLF hoppers, the module also included an expanded fuel depot and gravity ring for the Kerbals. It did need some rearranging of RCS ports, which a Kerbal engineer fixed in a matter of minutes.

 

As the upgrade module made its journey to Minmus, the IPTV Vanguard entered Jool's sphere of influence. It's still two months or so away from the planet, but I decided it was a good time to set up the arrival maneuver. This would use Tylo for a gravity assist, much reducing the delta-V needed. Not that the fusion powered beast needed the help, but I'll be honest, I've never done a gravity assist before. Seemed like a nice thing to do, since I had the opportunity right there.

 

I had to deploy the solar panels and activate the vessel's reactor. Without them, the habitat and life support systems were rapidly draining the battery banks. The main drive also requires a lot of stored power to initialise a burn.

 

The upgrade module arrived at Minmus and rendezvoused with Tarasque Station. I moved the Workshop over to the port which had previously been connected to the fuel depot.

 

I connected the old depot to the new one, so that the fuel could be transferred across. It also made moving any salvaged parts like the reactor much easier.

 

After everything of value was removed, what remained was disassembled tfor MaterialKits.

 

As it turned out, the WOLF orbital biome is Low Orbit only, and Tarasque was too high up. Happily, I still had some whacking great engines attached to the upgrade module to push it around with.

 

It required a second Mako trip, but all the resources are now reaching the station, and can be withdrawn in usable form.

 

I may want to send a couple more SpecialisedParts hoppers, as they have a much lower production rate than their MaterialKits counterpart. A place to store Machinery would be good, too.

[Eclipse 32]

nice! do you have any plans to go interstellar at some point?

[Kevin_kerman]

that would be cool

[RedDwarfIV]

4 hours ago, Eclipse 32 said:

nice! do you have any plans to go interstellar at some point?

I've considered it. I may do that at some point, but I've barely started with the extended Kerbol system, so doing so would be quite a ways off.

Also, as I understand it the cryo freezing mod is bugged and can kill the Kerbals you put into it, which is annoying because that mod is almost a necessity for interstellar colonisation.

[Eclipse 32]

hmm. orrrrrr you could just put a metric crud ton of LS and be resigned to a stupid big starship. i have a challenge going for that. link in my sig.

[RedDwarfIV]

7 hours ago, Eclipse 32 said:

hmm. orrrrrr you could just put a metric crud ton of LS and be resigned to a stupid big starship. i have a challenge going for that. link in my sig.

Looking it up, it seems the bug is a bad interaction with TAC Life Support, which I don't use. So should be good to go!

[Eclipse 32]

ok!

[Kevin_kerman]

12 hours ago, RedDwarfIV said:

Looking it up, it seems the bug is a bad interaction with TAC Life Support, which I don't use. So should be good to go!

Thats why i never encounter the bug, i use usi LS

[RedDwarfIV]

My Christmas present to you all; the completion of Tarasque Station!

 

Mirage still had quite a bit of construction resources left over from Tarasque Upgrade Module, so I felt it best to use it for the Tarasque Upgrade Package 2. This may have been a sub-optimal decision, given what I later learned, but it wasn't particularly bad either.

 

Aside from having to send the upgrade package from LKO to Minmus, the main reason for its sub-optimalness was that Mirage ran out of MaterialKits. I was able to correct that with a single Marauder flight.

 

I might want to refit Mirage to have a second standard docking port. It's not super important, though, since Marauders could just carry a senior docking port instead.

 

The SSTO had used up all its liquid hydrogen propellant reaching LKO. Due to a bug, the vertical stabilisers had monopropellant tanks I couldn't remove, so at least I was able to use the RCS to rendezvous and deorbit.

 

Construction completed, vessel launched.

 

While the TUP2 was on its way, I remembered that the Helium3 mining operation was a thing that existed. The tanks of both the harvester and lander were full, so I sent the lander up to dock with Elysium station and transfer the payload.

 

I also looked in on Valhalla station... and was exceedingly disappointed. Honestly, this station is absolutely worthless. It collected almost no hydrogen whatsoever, and a measly 5 units of antimatter. Pathetic.

 

Back to more useful space stations, the TUP2 arrived at Minmus.

 

The new section allows Tarasque to replenish its SpecialisedParts at about the same rate as MaterialKits, so kit construction should not become a bottleneck. It also has the tug needed for moving construction kits from the kit fabricator to the docking port.

 

As a little bonus; one of the Wayfarer probes arrived at Sarnus. Having set up a gravity assist maneuver at Jool to slow down the arriving exploration vessel, I felt confident in doing the same thing with an unmanned probe. As it turned out, this was the only way the probe possibly could have shed enough velocity to stay in the gas giant's sphere of influence - whilst it had plenty of delta-V, the craft was woefully lacking in energy generation. As far from Kerbol as it is, the Gigantor solar panels barely produce enough energy to power the command unit and comms transmitter, and that's with all four panels pointed straight at the sun. For the 120 m/s or so needed to set up the gravity assist, I was forced to repeatedly cut thrust and reorient sunward, spending days recharging before carrying out another burn. There is no way I could have braked the Wayfarer into Sarnus orbit without a gravity assist using this method.

Edited Wednesday at 03:02 AM by RedDwarfIV

[Eclipse 32]

do you have the RTG unlocked?

that could fix some of your power issues.

Edited Wednesday at 04:20 PM by Eclipse 32

[RedDwarfIV]

22 hours ago, Eclipse 32 said:

do you have the RTG unlocked?

that could fix some of your power issues.

I don't think I had it unlocked at the time I launched the probe.

[Eclipse 32]

On 12/26/2024 at 8:46 AM, RedDwarfIV said:

I don't think I had it unlocked at the time I launched the probe.

ah, ok. then there's only one choice. MOAR PROBES!

[RedDwarfIV]

8 hours ago, Eclipse 32 said:

ah, ok. then there's only one choice. MOAR PROBES!

No need, there's a manned mission on its way there already.

 

With Tarasque Station fully operational, I felt that the talents of Mirage's crew were being wasted with their limited access to construction materials. They're 4 star engineers. Besides, Tarasque's crew have been sitting in Minmus orbit for years at this point, they deserve a well earned break. That's why I launched a new vehicle, the Amaranth CRV, to carry out a crew transfer mission.

 

As the CRV made the multi-day journey to Kerbin's second moon, Vanguard carried out its Tylo slingshot maneuver, then set up a burn to intercept Laythe.

 

And while the Jool mission vessel went off to do that, the CRV arrived at Minmus. The crews were swapped, and Amaranth 1 headed home.

 

Having established that Tarasque was gaining MaterialKits and SpecialisedParts at a prodigious rate, I sent the Asgard freighter to go dock with it and bring some back for Mirage Station. Whilst Minmus is a great place for orbital construction, sometimes I will just need things near to Kerbin, that are too big for launches.

 

I decided it was time to deal with the funding issues. A new Marauder launched, proceeding to the other Asgard freighter to retrieve valuable Commodities. Landing the spaceplane wasn't easy, as when fully laden it could barely raise the nose even with all the fuel moved to the tail and the RCS firing. It still reached the ground intact, though it overran the runway. I'm going to need to modify the design further to fix this issue.

 

Vanguard arrived at Laythe, carrying out an 800 m/s burn to enter a 60km orbit.

 

Amaranth 1 arrived back at Kerbin and made a propulsive landing. While I wouldn't call touching down on a mountainside safe, nothing exploded and no one died.

 

 

After a number of orbits as Laythe made its way past the Jool eclipse, an island moved into the dayside and Jebediah Kerman plus a scientist Kerbonaut made their way to the Knight SSTO.

 

Numerous simulated landing attempts were carried out using the data gathered by the mission's science instruments, to work out the best descent and landing profile. During this, it was discovered that the Knight had a fatal flaw in its landing gear which consistently resulted in loss of spacecraft on touchdown to rapid unscheduled disassembley. When the problem had been identified and a solution found, one of Vanguard's engineers performed a spacewalk to modify the SSTO's landing gear. When the spaceplane made its descent for real, this effort would pay off.

 

It seems that Laythe, like Eve, is also a living world! The vegetation is much less alien than that found on the purple planet, which the Kerbals all agreed was preferable. This moon would make an excellent target for colonisation.

 

As it turns out, an SSTO designed for Kerbin is not optimal for Laythe. It was perfectly capable of raising the apoapsis to 55km on ascent using air-breathing engines alone, requiring only a few hundred m/s of delta-V to circularise and rendezvous with the mothership. It could have been loaded with most liquid fuel and a small amount of oxidiser, which would have dramatically increased the range the spaceplane could cover. As it stands, the Knight carried out surface science in the Dunes and Shore biomes. A landing was considered in the Peaks, but abandoned as too difficult with the reduced lift at that altitude.

A future Laythe SSTO design would benefit from increased wing area, more airbreathing thrust, and potentially a VTOL engine layout. The terrain was not conducive to long landing distances, with many ridges and pits wherever the ground was not dangerously sloped.

 

Vanguard carries a limited supply of LFO for its landers. It was decided that a more efficient use of that fuel would be for Vall, Bop and Pol landings, where it would stretch much further and allow far more biomes to be explored. As such, the fuel was recovered from the Knight, and the SSTO was released into Laythe orbit. The potential exists for it to be used in future missions, but for Vanguard, it is now dead weight to be shed.

 

The next mission will be sending Vanguard to Vall, determining if there is anything worth sending to Duna in the current transfer window, and beginning the exploitation of resources on Duna's moon Ike in preparation for industrialisation.