The ultimate Jool 5 challenge (part 4)

[FTLparachute]

My submission for Jeb Level, modded, in 1.12.5

I used the 'Jool VI/J6', a single launch monstrosity with 1168 parts and over 13000 tons. Managed to land at every biome in the Jool system, collecting repeats of split-value experiments and performing seabed landings on Laythe. In total, I managed to recover 154,,217.1 science from Jool and its moons, which is a new WR.

The reason I've submitted for modded is that the relay and Darts use part variants that, while only being a boattail around the Dart and a removed truss on the relay, still don't exist in stock and therefore invalidate the mission for that category. Also used Parallax 2, which seems to mildly change the terrain, as seen by the burial of Vallhenge.

Also did one instance of savefile editing to fix a broken docking port, but other than that nothing else was done.

Edited March 29 by FTLparachute

[king of nowhere]

9 hours ago, FTLparachute said:

My submission for Jeb Level, modded, in 1.12.5

I used the 'Jool VI/J6', a single launch monstrosity with 1168 parts and over 13000 tons. Managed to land at every biome in the Jool system, collecting repeats of split-value experiments and performing seabed landings on Laythe. In total, I managed to recover 154,,217.1 science from Jool and its moons, which is a new WR.

The reason I've submitted for modded is that the relay and Darts use part variants that, while only being a boattail around the Dart and a removed truss on the relay, still don't exist in stock and therefore invalidate the mission for that category. Also used Parallax 2, which seems to mildly change the terrain, as seen by the burial of Vallhenge.

Also did one instance of savefile editing to fix a broken docking port, but other than that nothing else was done.

ok, i will review it in the next days.

 

[king of nowhere]

On 3/29/2025 at 6:13 PM, FTLparachute said:

My submission for Jeb Level, modded, in 1.12.5

I used the 'Jool VI/J6', a single launch monstrosity with 1168 parts and over 13000 tons. Managed to land at every biome in the Jool system, collecting repeats of split-value experiments and performing seabed landings on Laythe. In total, I managed to recover 154,,217.1 science from Jool and its moons, which is a new WR.

The reason I've submitted for modded is that the relay and Darts use part variants that, while only being a boattail around the Dart and a removed truss on the relay, still don't exist in stock and therefore invalidate the mission for that category. Also used Parallax 2, which seems to mildly change the terrain, as seen by the burial of Vallhenge.

Also did one instance of savefile editing to fix a broken docking port, but other than that nothing else was done.

what are the parts i highlighted? i am not familiar with your mods or reskin

[FTLparachute]

2 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

what are the parts i highlighted? i am not familiar with your mods or reskin

Restock part reskins

The right rover had the 1.25m port on it, although said rover was not used on this mission

The left rover had (front) the 0.625m cargo part and an ESU(back). I later modified the rover by adding another ESU behind it and the 1.25m probe core on the back of the rover.

(tbh, i need to remove that image since most of the crafts went through design changes which are not reflected in the original images)

[king of nowhere]

On 3/29/2025 at 6:13 PM, FTLparachute said:

My submission for Jeb Level, modded, in 1.12.5

 

other question: i see in the jool landing that you went to "sea level", tried to ascend by helicopter, failed. then you say that "once passed [the 120 km boundary], the rocket fires up". does that mean that you ditched the return from sea level after all?

 

EDIT: no, wait, i see you then restarted the mission so it's moot

 

EDIT again:

check with me if i got this straight:

the plane was supposed to have a core pod, but you forgot it; so you had to bring an extra pilot.

because of that, you didn't have room inside to bring back one of the drivers of the tardigrades.

hence you strapped on the roof an external seat that you had somewhere and you went to orbit with the kerbal there?

that's magnificent.

Edited Friday at 08:51 PM by king of nowhere

[FTLparachute]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

other question: i see in the jool landing that you went to "sea level", tried to ascend by helicopter, failed. then you say that "once passed [the 120 km boundary], the rocket fires up". does that mean that you ditched the return from sea level after all?

 

EDIT: no, wait, i see you then restarted the mission so it's moot

Yeah, had to restart a couple of times because of perfectionism reasons.

Can see from likes that you've at least gotten to the actually successful attempt though.

Edited Friday at 08:54 PM by FTLparachute

[FTLparachute]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

other question: i see in the jool landing that you went to "sea level", tried to ascend by helicopter, failed. then you say that "once passed [the 120 km boundary], the rocket fires up". does that mean that you ditched the return from sea level after all?

 

EDIT: no, wait, i see you then restarted the mission so it's moot

 

EDIT again:

check with me if i got this straight:

the plane was supposed to have a core pod, but you forgot it; so you had to bring an extra pilot.

because of that, you didn't have room inside to bring back one of the drivers of the tardigrades.

hence you strapped on the roof an external seat that you had somewhere and you went to orbit with the kerbal there?

that's magnificent.

Yep, and the chair was attached in orbit so Felipe got a face full of re-entry plasma to boot

[king of nowhere]

On 3/29/2025 at 6:13 PM, FTLparachute said:

My submission for Jeb Level, modded, in 1.12.5

I used the 'Jool VI/J6', a single launch monstrosity with 1168 parts and over 13000 tons. Managed to land at every biome in the Jool system, collecting repeats of split-value experiments and performing seabed landings on Laythe. In total, I managed to recover 154,217.1 science from Jool and its moons, which is a new WR.

The reason I've submitted for modded is that the relay and Darts use part variants that, while only being a boattail around the Dart and a removed truss on the relay, still don't exist in stock and therefore invalidate the mission for that category. Also used Parallax 2, which seems to mildly change the terrain, as seen by the burial of Vallhenge.

Also did one instance of savefile editing to fix a broken docking port, but other than that nothing else was done.

congratulations on your mission!
i like those epic missions that go out of their way to be as thorough as possible - and the occasional design error that makes things more interesting. i have to leave now, but you'll be added to the leaderboard as soon as we can clarify a couple issues.

1) you mentioned modded experiments? for the purpose of tracking records, please do break down exactly where all your science comes from. in particular, modded science would authomatically disqualify you from jeb level - but if we can figure out exactly how much they were worth and remove them from the total, i can add that. you probably still made the record if you collected 4x samples of every experiment and the deployable science.

2) did you crash something on laythe to get a seismic report? i don't remember seeing it. it would mean there's still some science available

 

 

i have to lament two things about your report, though.

the first is, sometimes you put the caption of a picture over it, sometiemes under, and that complicates reading. as you go on, you seem to put them all under the pictures, so maybe it was just a quirk of the early reports, before you adopted a consistent format.

the second, which I found most annoying, is your fondness for unnecessary, unexplained acronyms. starting from "new WR", it took me a bit to figure out it stands for world record, was there any reason to not spell it out? "drive to the TMA", "arrive back to the TAV", "a FRT presented itself", "locating VMA 1"... to further complicate matters, you also give acronym names to your vessels, so whenever i encounter one such acronym i wonder whether it's a craft, and have to go check back to the first post to make sure it isn't. by the way, TAV really looks like it's a vessel, but it's not included in the first page showing the crafts.

[FTLparachute]

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

1) you mentioned modded experiments? for the purpose of tracking records, please do break down exactly where all your science comes from. in particular, modded science would authomatically disqualify you from jeb level - but if we can figure out exactly how much they were worth and remove them from the total, i can add that. you probably still made the record if you collected 4x samples of every experiment and the deployable science.

Pretty sure all my experiments were stock, can you tell me where I said this?

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

2) did you crash something on laythe to get a seismic report? i don't remember seeing it. it would mean there's still some science available

The original plan was to crash the Sea Hawk, as I calculated it could reach the required kinetic energy to do so. However, I failed to realise that the seismometer had an interioi limit (going too close limits science) which caused me enough frustration to abandon the idea. I later realised this while doing the other seismometers, but I decided against doing another return to Laythe's surface.

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

the first is, sometimes you put the caption of a picture over it, sometiemes under, and that complicates reading. as you go on, you seem to put them all under the pictures, so maybe it was just a quirk of the early reports, before you adopted a consistent format.

Yeah, started doing it under after the first posts since I found that easier to read - anything after would have been an error on my behalf

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

the second, which I found most annoying, is your fondness for unnecessary, unexplained acronyms. starting from "new WR", it took me a bit to figure out it stands for world record, was there any reason to not spell it out? "drive to the TMA", "arrive back to the TAV", "a FRT presented itself", "locating VMA 1"... to further complicate matters, you also give acronym names to your vessels, so whenever i encounter one such acronym i wonder whether it's a craft, and have to go check back to the first post to make sure it isn't. by the way, TAV really looks like it's a vessel, but it's not included in the first page showing the crafts.

Entirely my mistake on the acronyms. The xMA-1's were references to the monoliths, seen as they are designated as TMAs in 2001, but the rest were pretty inexcusable and a result of me being lazy doing the reports themselves. Sorry about that.

EDIT: About the Tylo Ascent Vehicle, I decided to not mention it in the original post since it was designed solely as the return stage for the Potatus2 crew. It was only after that when I actually used it again. Now that you mention it, I probably could have brought it up before hand, though tbh that whole report is a mess.

Edited Sunday at 12:51 PM by FTLparachute

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, FTLparachute said:

Pretty sure all my experiments were stock, can you tell me where I said this?

oh, i misread. you wrote "without the use of lab or modded experiments".

I inserted your entry in the board, congratulations