Long-term Laythe Mission (pic heavy) - ^_^ With Part 45 ^_^

[Logan.Darklighter]

That dinner keeps being beat.

Too bad they're all eating mush. If they were eating meat then you could say they are beating... oh skip it...

[Sesni]

"Aldner: "No. It's not like you'd choose this spot to build a tourist resort or anything."

YES! Finally, a space tourism reference!

[Geschosskopf]

....I'll keep doing it if I get good responses, but I've recently been working on the ships for their exit strategy.

All good things must come to an end. I'll miss it.

On a philosophical note, the end-game is always looming over the head of ambitious space programs. The game is about exploration but eventually all the blank spaces on the map get filled in, although some "Here there be Krakens" warnings might remain. The purpose of exploration is to pave the way for expansion but 2 things nip that in the bud. First, there's nothing really in the game for the expansion phase. Sure, we can plunk down clusters of low-rent housing but this is really no different from landing any other ship and the housing units do nothing but sit there. And second, such things count as "ships in flight" against whatever total your computer and the game itself can handle, which ain't really that much, so any such colonies you create eventually start getting in the way of further "happening" things, like more exploration and building other "colonies". Hence, my massacre of 18 probes the other day.

This can get depression if you think about it too much, or find it out for yourself when you hit the limits on what we can currently do in the game. Oh well, maybe in KSP II

[TehDarkNoob]

Seems like there's more humor recently.

I like it.

[Lundmunchkins]

Did anyone notice that 4 of the islands names make "Hellou Its Scott Manley"?

[Tangle]

Did anyone notice that 4 of the islands names make "Hellou Its Scott Manley"?

That was a while ago...

[jfull]

No offense... but it seems that lately this has just been about Kerbals flying around Laythe and occasionally getting hardware deliveries from Kerbin.

The Solar Flare challenge you did a little while was very interesting though.

Maybe you ought to increase the scale of the operation on Laythe? Now that its been quite thoroughly charted, it might be time to send an entire colony (just a large base with many more Kerbals).

Alternately, you could shift the focus to somewhere other than Laythe for a little while.

Its just my opinion, but if you ever feel like you're losing your steam with this, it might be best to finish it in a grand finale rather than let it drag on.

This is, of course, just my own opinion, and you need not consider any of it.

[Brotoro]

No offense... but it seems that lately this has just been about Kerbals flying around Laythe and occasionally getting hardware deliveries from Kerbin...

No offense taken.

This mission was originally part of my series of plans to set up a transportation system for routinely moving kerbals around so they could explore the Kerbol system in detail. So, as much as possible, I wanted to do things with reusable vehicles (including the somewhat tedious need to send tugs home for re-use, rather than just popping a new ship up on the screen every time).

I wanted to do things on a reasonably small scale (not just build a gigantic beastie of a ship and immediately haul out tons and tons of anything you might want). So my kerbals made do with a little equipment at first (they drove as much as possible rather than flew, because that's cheaper; they had to make do without backup vehicles at first, so they had to be slow and careful about what they tried to accomplish).

I wanted them to do things in a reasonable timeline. So there would be no, "Oops, Bill got stranded…well, let's place everything into suspended animation while we send a rescue ship out from Kerbin," kind of thing).

The plan was to build up the infrastructure over time, sending out as many kinds of ships as I could think of that would be useful on Laythe (the exception being a VTOL airplane for landing on water, since I have a bad habit of breaking those when I try to land/takeoff from water…and I wanted ships I could use reliably).

I also wanted to explore all of the islands, at least minimally (which I have basically done by now). And I wanted to do it in a way that would be justifiable in the context of the storyline (so, for example, while I always wanted to send someone to North Fredoly to look for Fredoly Kerman's landing site, I waited until I had a good reason to do so in the game. I did jump the gun with a dream excursion to Bsalis Island to do the Leap of Laythe, but I also got there 'legitimately' eventually).

When I started this mission back in version 0.18, it was also my expectation that I would be exploiting indigenous resources, and having this first group of kerbals set up that infrastructure as well. I expected this would require missions to Vall and other of the Joolian moons to get what was needed, depending on how Squad's resource system worked. But that never materialized, so I did without (which mostly involved sending more fuel, and making sure the ships were designed with the notion that their fuel supply was in orbit).

I also liked the challenge of keeping the mission running through multiple versions of KSP. This involved finding workarounds to various problems (like the original upgraded landing legs). It also involved thinking up ways to incorporate new parts and perhaps retrofit them to existing hardware (and while I enjoyed finding a way to put Goo on the BirdDogs, I'm not particularly interested in doing the missions I probably should with them, like sending Nelemy to the North pole with his Goo buddies, or sending Kurt to the top of a mountain with the materials bay…and I expect you would agree that would be just more flying around).

And when we got cool new toys like RAPIER engines to play with, I wanted to try a comparison between ramjet and RAPIER powered SSTO spaceplanes…so why not do it on Laythe with my kerbals there? Certainly those are items on the list of potentially useful hardware that should be on Laythe.

Even though there was no need to go there for resources, I did the Vall exploration mission anyway. And I used female kerbals because some people on the forum seemed to think female kerbals would be a pox upon the kerbal universe and should never be added to the game…and I wanted to show that they can be competent, entertaining little kerbals just like the boys.

The solar flare was added as a mechanism to get Hellou and Emilynn to Laythe, and to stretch out the mission in general to appease the people who were enjoying the antics of my band of explorers. And once you have a geologist on Laythe, it makes sense to put her to good use for a while.

But anyway... Sending replacements and rotating the old crew out has always been part of the plan. And although I intend to increase the number of kerbals on Laythe (and elsewhere in the Joolian system), I don't think we're anywhere near the point where we try to make a colony, yet. There need to be some serious experiments done with growing plants on Laythe before that's possible…but I expect future crews on Laythe will include focusing on that (but I really don't intend to follow the future crews in detail).

The exit strategy for the current crew will involve going out via the outer moons. I've been working on the necessary ships, but Tylo has been giving me some problems. The Tylo lander/ascent ship I used during my initial Kerbol system exploration program was bigger and clumsier than need be…but trying to make a reusable Tylo SSTO is difficult to justify if one can send out an additional small disposable lander/ascent ship for the weight of extra fuel a big SSTO would require (it would be a different story if we had exploitable resources, of course). And I find it much harder to land on Tylo than on Laythe (with is very safe and easy in comparison). I need to develop a system where I have a good chance of success without killing my happy little kerbals.

And, yes, Scotius… if all the kerbalnauts who are anxious to go on long space missions all pile into the Joolian system when that opportunity arises (after an all-clear from the threat of more solar flares), then when the mission to set up an exploration infrastructure on Duna comes along, who might be available as crew? (This is why I mentioned the lack of much having been done on Duna...yet...because of the kerbal's fixation on the Joolian system.)

Edited February 24, 2014 by Brotoro

[bsalis]

it seems that lately this has just been about Kerbals flying around Laythe

The problem is that exploring the islands of Laythe by air is so much fun! Each island is a place you can visit and say that you have been there. They all have their own distinct shape and terrain features. They are also typically small enough to explore comfortably by rover (if you are into that). By comparison, Duna is an ocean of red ground, where Here is no more distinct from There. On a practical note too, flying is the only real practical way of getting around Laythe quickly.

Personally I have found "Long-term Laythe" a wonderfully entertaining ride, and have observed the changing nature of exploration with a sense of mirth. Starting with BirdDog as a "late addition", with a focus on rovering Dansen Island and even some boating action as well. To a more prominently air oriented exploration. To me it's just a logical progression. But lets not forget the Vall adventures, the earthquake, solar flare, and general roleplay making the most of dynamically generated terrain and rock scatter!

Now that its been quite thoroughly charted

Well, how thorough is thoroughly? ... there are about 78 significant sized islands on Laythe, and (i speculate) about as many as 200 in total. The crew on Laythe have plenty of places to visit if they so choose.

[meve12]

Maybe send someone to check on Bop?

...though only if you write a mean horror story.

Moho might also be a good target.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

If you do switch the Laythe crew, and later on happen to install Sido's Urania system, PLEASE make a mission in which the spetacular six(or just the fearsome four if you don't want Hellou and Emilynn in it) go to Hestia(the green photosyntetic planet). It'll be hilarious to see Nelemy making theories that Hestia is green because it is composed of souls from deceased Kerbals.

[tuckjohn]

I will be very sad when/if you decide to pull out from Laythe - this crew is amazing Unless you decide to send them as spearhead in Duna colonisation program

Could you do this Brotoro when you finally pull the plug on lathe? I think that could make an interesting series. Or you could go to eve.....but before then, may I recomend that you send a nifty hanger for your planes and rovers?

Edited February 25, 2014 by tuckjohn

[sarkun]

Just wanter to pop in and say I enjoy your KSP stories very much. Double points for tastefully done female Kerbals.

[Patupi]

Just a thought (and unfortunately just a thought since my computer has died this morning and I'm relegated to my tablet for a while) it wouldn't be too hard to make a simple modification to Kethane via Module Manager to make it more to your taste. For example, since there are two 'Kethane Converters' in the pack...

1) Modify the large converter to have two outputs rather than four. One takes Kethane in and outputs Liquid fuel. Energy intensive, as it is in the base Kethane. Two take intake air in and outputs Oxider. Less energy intensive but takes considerable time.

2) Modify the small converter to make monopropellant using Kethane as a catalyst with water (is it possible to make the converters only work when they are in water? I'm not sure. I'd need to check the CFGs for that. I know it's possible in KSPI's system). IE, park your ship with a small converter just off from a beach, fill the kethane tanks, then make monopropellant. I'd say this would also be slow, but less energy intensive compared to standard Kethane, but I'm no chemist so might want some fiddling to get to feel right.

The rest of the components would be fine for you, and I believe you can define locations of deposits manually via CFG to match your map too... except they don't increase in level the closer to the center you get. They have a constant amount over the whole area, like a 'lake' underground that you tap. Similarly when you drill and mine Kethane the whole area reduces, not just the 'hex' you are on.

The liquid fuel and oxidizer thing I could do for you fairly quickly as a module manager thing, if I had my computer. The monopropellant thing might take a bit of research to work up. Not sure how easy defining that it only works when in water is. *shrugs*

Just a thought to see if this would help with expanding the future of the Long Term Laythe Mission. I'd love to see this slowly expand into a full base/colony. Heck, one possibility is to have your crew ship in 'supplies' in generic RCS containers (disabled so they don't get accidentally used) then use the Kerb City thing to make a base that is just graphics, not parts. I've never used that myself so I couldn't say how easy that would be, but it's certainly doable.

Here's hoping the current crew, or their replacements, have many years of Laythe exploring ahead of them.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Patupi

[randomness5555]

I have an Idea. How about once they have been collected, you send them to another planet? Not sure which one, but send the same crew, and keep the story aspect. I am tempted to try something like this but it's hard work (I can't do planetary transfers and am poor at flying around the kerbin system, relying on mechjeb for that stuff) But I still like the idea of a more permenant story driven mission. Hmmm....

[SuperWeegee4000]

Hey, who unstickied this?!

[Deddly]

It was stickied because it was thread of the month

[AppleDavidJeans]

Mebe they should sticky the top 5 threads in Mission Reports.

[Brotoro]

Mebe they should sticky the top 5 threads in Mission Reports.

If you want to see the most-viewed threads in a forum, you can just click on the "Views" column heading (or any other column heading) and it will sort by that heading. And click it again to sort in the other direction.

[AppleDavidJeans]

If you all want no-stop access to this thread, just bookmark it in your browser. Simple enough.

[AeroAviation]

This is amazing! I hope you keep it up

[AppleDavidJeans]

Bump Bump Bump

[Patupi]

It's the thread that goes bump in the night! *looks out window* Um, goes bump in the day. Or something.

On similar news, how's the exploration business going Brotoro? Hopefully nothing drastic happened to make strife and disaster for our plucky Kerbals? (IE, computer trouble... KSP trouble etc)

[Brotoro]

Part 29 stuff is flown...pictures edited.......just have to do the write up. Been busy. Should have time in a couple days.

[Patupi]

Good to hear things are going well. Keep up the great story telling Brotoro.