Weekly Challenge #47: Rock Collection

[Dakota]

Newton Kerman is looking to expand her extra-Kerbinial rock collection. She's a perfectionist, however, so only a complete representative sample of rocks from any given celestial body will do. Due to the ongoing "Operation Duna Rescue Cubed" Campaign, we can only fit a single launch into our schedule for this mission, so you'll have to make it count. We need you to:

1. In a single launch,
2. collect surface samples from every ground biome and point of interest on a celestial body of your choice,
3. and return them all to Kerbin.

A low-gravity target like Minmus, Gilly, or Bop will suffice, but if you would put together a rock collection from somewhere more exotic, it might get Newton to stop bothering us. Mission Control thanks you in advance.

[ralanboyle]

I like this idea a lot. My issue is that biome maps aren't available yet (that I know of). The smaller moons are fairly easy without maps but that's no fun. I'd like to try Laythe but I can't plan the trip without having a good list of landing locations. 

[ralanboyle]

Welp, I made a ship that can get to Laythe, land, and then circumnavigate the planet in airplane mode before returning to orbit and then coming home. It works on water and land so I should be able to complete this challenge. Unfortunately, the game is having trouble recognizing where the ground is on Laythe, so when I land 9/10 times it slightly clips into the ground and crashes. The other 1/10 times I can land but then the Kerbal cant move around in EVA because they are floating above the ground. Then the plane clips into the ground again when the Kerbal boards. I can get around most of this by landing in the water and then driving to land but the landing gear immediately clips into the sand and causes a crash.  Frustrating, but I guess I'm gonna have to wait to run the challenge. 

[astrobond]

On 3/8/2024 at 3:44 PM, ralanboyle said:

Welp, I made a ship that can get to Laythe, land, and then circumnavigate the planet in airplane mode before returning to orbit and then coming home. It works on water and land so I should be able to complete this challenge. Unfortunately, the game is having trouble recognizing where the ground is on Laythe, so when I land 9/10 times it slightly clips into the ground and crashes. The other 1/10 times I can land but then the Kerbal cant move around in EVA because they are floating above the ground. Then the plane clips into the ground again when the Kerbal boards. I can get around most of this by landing in the water and then driving to land but the landing gear immediately clips into the sand and causes a crash.  Frustrating, but I guess I'm gonna have to wait to run the challenge. 

Hi @ralanboyle, I found that if you land, drive or EVA at the end of the night or early in the morning, the ground is safe, like if the temperature is taken in account on Laythe...

Hope this help

 

[ralanboyle]

On 3/10/2024 at 4:25 AM, astrobond said:

Hi @ralanboyle, I found that if you land, drive or EVA at the end of the night or early in the morning, the ground is safe, like if the temperature is taken in account on Laythe...

Hope this help

 

Weird, I'll try a dawn landing. 

[ralanboyle]

I can't tell if landing at Dawn helped or not but I got it done. I had to persevere through a pretty big range of glitches, but in the end I believe I got every biome on Laythe. This mission was fun aside from the glitches, so maybe I'll run it again somewhere else. Myabe...

Poles, Hills, Shores, Shallows, Ocean, Mealoficious Rex.