What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Maverick_aus]

On 10 August 2016 at 2:58 AM, Flamingo said:

We came to an agreement that three wheels was nothing but a waste of money.

@Flamingo That's funny! Aeroplane skills, by the way.

 

5 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

KSP n00b here so might as well use this thread to introduce myself....

Also, KSP is the best thing EVER.

@Brikoleur Yah it IS. Hi and welcome aboard the phenomenon that is KSP! And welcome to the forum, a source of amusement, encouragement, guidance and fellowship, (oh and arcane, pedantic arguments! ) 
From the looks of things your first mission ended in perfect Kerbal style. 
Permit me to bestow a brief KSP welcome blessing:

As you sail the seas, space and sky
May your DV be high,
Your Krakens gentle, 
And your Kerbal's survive. 

19 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Been away for a while - eight months to be exact; last time I visited the forums the latest version was 1.0.4 and my box was getting increasingly unsuitable for playing KSP. Last weekend I finally ditched the onboard chip (10-year old tech as it turned out) for a dedicated video card (3-year old tech which was relatively new when I bought it; it took me that long to finally figure out why my system didn't want to work with it). KSP was one of the games I fired up to checkout my box's newfound glory...
 

Anyways, HOWDY, Y'ALL. It's been a while (good Lord, that sounds a bit like a countrified Adele song). Anybody want to summarize what all I've missed these last eight months? I guess we're up to 1.1.2 or something?  

G'day @capi3101, I'm relatively new around here on the forum, (but been playing a while) but welcome back! It will be interesting to see what you think of 1.1.x . I too have recently returned to the game after a long hiatus. I'm not sure if you'll notice the performance change from 1.0.x to 1.1.x given you've got a new rig to try the game on, which is ironic. I noticed a huge improvement as my poor laptop was just managing to run the game prior but now is much less laggy, and can even run with 1/2 textures, 'fast' rendering, and full ground detail and scatters. The performance optimisation has made all the difference when your right on the performance cliff like me. But allegedly the devs have been continuing to improve and clean up the code base too, with junky stuff taking up memory being reduced as modules are re written, so should be more performance gains round the corner.  
In the land of 1.1.3 we're all struggling along with bugged wheels. Not a modeller but understand it's to do with the mesh colliders on the wheels in the new version of Unity. They keep thinking they're smashing into other things. 
On the upside, Squad have redone the water physics, so that it's MUCH easier to create water-going craft, including sea-planes, and ships. 
Not sure where thermal stuff was up to when you last played, but believe there will be new learning for you there too. 
Anyhoo, welcome back to the fun and see you around. 

[capi3101]

2 hours ago, Maverick_aus said:

G'day @capi3101, I'm relatively new around here on the forum, (but been playing a while) but welcome back! It will be interesting to see what you think of 1.1.x . I too have recently returned to the game after a long hiatus. I'm not sure if you'll notice the performance change from 1.0.x to 1.1.x given you've got a new rig to try the game on, which is ironic. I noticed a huge improvement as my poor laptop was just managing to run the game prior but now is much less laggy, and can even run with 1/2 textures, 'fast' rendering, and full ground detail and scatters. The performance optimisation has made all the difference when your right on the performance cliff like me. But allegedly the devs have been continuing to improve and clean up the code base too, with junky stuff taking up memory being reduced as modules are re written, so should be more performance gains round the corner.  
In the land of 1.1.3 we're all struggling along with bugged wheels. Not a modeller but understand it's to do with the mesh colliders on the wheels in the new version of Unity. They keep thinking they're smashing into other things. 
On the upside, Squad have redone the water physics, so that it's MUCH easier to create water-going craft, including sea-planes, and ships. 
Not sure where thermal stuff was up to when you last played, but believe there will be new learning for you there too. 
Anyhoo, welcome back to the fun and see you around. 

I'm using FAR; have been since 1.0 and decided to stick with it in 1.1.3. There's definitely some new thermal stuff to learn - for starters, where do I go to find part temperatures now? 
It was nice to have Jeb pull nine gees yesterday during launch and have nothing burn off his craft...

So, yesterday I fired up 1.1.3 for the first time after getting all my ducks in a row. One thing I noticed right away is that the game seemed to be at least twice the size of the last version I played, which apparently was 1.0.5 (I think I said 1.0.4 earlier). Began Streetwind's early sci strategy for 1.0.x; was amazed at how well the game was working with the graphics turned up and liked a lot of the new interface controls. Still need to figure out which graphics settings to use so that the entire screen is used; my monitor (which is on the short list of things for me to upgrade next time I have more than $5 to work with) is one of the old CRT styles.

Not much actually done; game crashed on me while I was trying to swap out a Flea booster for a Hammer on a two-stage high-atmo sub-orbital Derpstick science craft and couldn't get the game to re-start. I did unlock three nodes of the tech tree prior to that and got all the early contracts except "Orbit Kerbin" taken care of.

[Corona688]

13 hours ago, eddiew said:

Pondered what the smallest thing I could send to Minmus and get back home would be.

Overall, not bad. First vessel to return, so with the bonus from that and just 2 thermometers, 144 science came out of the mission. Overspecced by ~550m/s so might see if I can fit some goo on the next one, or maybe an ECS if I have one available.

Also discovered that you can attach fuel pipes to engines through heatshields, and I shall be abusing this in future! 

 

The ant engine is nice for tiny stuff isn't it?  It's a poor man's ion drive in both senses of the word -- cheap and efficient, if not in terms of ISP, certainly in terms of mass.  You can squeeze several km/s out of sub-ton craft.

Don't be fooled by the spider, though.  Its efficiency is the pits.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Corona688

[Servo]

I've been running through the Apollo Applications Program challenge, and I made it up to Apollo 15 today. The goal was to be as realistic as possible using only stock parts, so I think I did a pretty good job. I brought along a rover, ALSEP, and the Lunar escape system. The LLES didn't work as planned (the kerbals kept falling off the ladders), but with slight revisions, I believe I can make it work. Will attempt Skylab and the rest soon.

[Flamingo]

8 hours ago, Maverick_aus said:

@Flamingo That's funny! Aeroplane skills, by the way.

Well Aeroplane skills, is for me just another word for reactionswheels in the cargobay  

 

[nosirrbro]

In 64K I attempted to do a minmus landing...

Instead, it became a Mun and Minmus flyby, because 64k is a lot harder than stock shut up. (also, re-entry was frightening)

Like a doofus rick, I failed to take any screenshots of me close to either moons, or coming back, but nevertheless here is what I did take.

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

I did STS-1b for the Shuttle Challenge, and finally designed something that makes use of the Mk2-Mk3 adapter.

[Maverick_aus]

10 hours ago, capi3101 said:

I'm using FAR; have been since 1.0 and decided to stick with it in 1.1.3. There's definitely some new thermal stuff to learn - for starters, where do I go to find part temperatures now? 

In terms of precise numbers...you use KER? If so, Thermal tab. If not, no idea in stock, sorry.
If you mean rough temp guideline, then have you noticed a little 'progress bar' appears next to the part telling you how hot you are? These are pretty helpful, as they kick in once your reaching critical temperatures, but hidden otherwise. However if you're heating up at a rapid enough pace, by the time they've appeared it can be too late to make a change to your flying/reentering.  If you're not seeing these perhaps they're turned off somewhere in the settings.

10 hours ago, capi3101 said:

So, yesterday I fired up 1.1.3 for the first time after getting all my ducks in a row. One thing I noticed right away is that the game seemed to be at least twice the size of the last version I played, which apparently was 1.0.5 (I think I said 1.0.4 earlier). Began Streetwind's early sci strategy for 1.0.x; was amazed at how well the game was working with the graphics turned up and liked a lot of the new interface controls. Still need to figure out which graphics settings to use so that the entire screen is used; my monitor (which is on the short list of things for me to upgrade next time I have more than $5 to work with) is one of the old CRT styles.

Cool. Retro. Grew up with those, haven't used a CRT for while. Nothing inherently wrong with them though. In broadcast video engineering the highest grade monitors used were still CRT's as the LCD couldn't reproduce accurate enough colours for grading. (that was a few years ago, and I've been out the game, it may have changed...). Isn't it just a matter of matching the OS and game's output resolution with the monitor's native resolution?

10 hours ago, capi3101 said:

... couldn't get the game to re-start.

Hmm, that's a worry. What did this look like? 

[limeyptwo]

Could someone pin this? It hat 1030 pages

[MiniMatt]

Today I realised the mining base deployed on page 1027 wasn't much use without a way of getting the free fuel some place useful. So I designed & deployed a system supply tanker.

Actually I designed about 12. Tested 3. And edited 2 hours of footage down to the 11 minutes which give the wholly unjustified impression I actually know what I'm doing. Everything else exploded. Or caught fire. Or caught fire then exploded.

 

[numerobis]

I had 1600 m/s. Tight for a manual landing on Mun and back to Kerbin, but doable, and it was time to plant my first flag on Mun (I've got a few on Minmus).

I'm not sure what happened but somehow I burned 1,150 m/s on landing alone. Now Val and Gwen are stuck with a large load of science. Oops. I can rescue the two easily enough, but it is a bit embarrassing.

[Mycroft]

Tried and failed to get a 1006 part monster to the pad. It carries like a thousand Kerbals, so my computer froze when I hit 'fill seats'.  

Had to abort.

[eddiew]

17 hours ago, capi3101 said:

I'm using FAR; have been since 1.0 and decided to stick with it in 1.1.3. There's definitely some new thermal stuff to learn - for starters, where do I go to find part temperatures now? ...
...
Not much actually done; game crashed on me while I was trying to swap out a Flea booster for a Hammer on a two-stage high-atmo sub-orbital Derpstick science craft and couldn't get the game to re-start. I did unlock three nodes of the tech tree prior to that and got all the early contracts except "Orbit Kerbin" taken care of.

As in maximum or current part temps? (Maximum may need you to right click the piece in the SPH menu to get the extended details, current generally doesn't show up until it's close to dangerous.)

I've actually felt that 1.1.x aero feels advanced enough that I don't feel a pressing need for FAR these days. Some things are out of whack, specifically the centre of lift seems way far back and you end up with all your planes having hunched shoulders, but it's a bit more intuitive than it was. Unfortunately, landing gear suffers horrible bugs in 1.1.3 and is likely to skid you off the runway on takeoff or landing, which has pretty much killed the spaceplane game for me   I guess your mileage will vary, but be prepared to have some annoyance if you do a lot of HOTOLs. I find the Hooligan Labs Airships mod is nice for making VTOL Kerbin hoppers for biome science  

The crash... sounds unlucky. I had a few to start with, but then I just outright deleted the game folder and made Steam download it all fresh, rather than running off an upgraded 1.0.5 install. Since then, it's been rock solid apart from a couple of very obviously mod-related crashes.

[Leopard]

New player on the eggbox, yesterday I mad my first mun flyby, then orbit (twice)...

this is in 'hard' mode (seems a good way to learn), no manoeuvre nodes (not unlocked) and the 30 part limit in force.

4th mission failed to make mun orbit but safely home.

no mods as eggbox, but got there eventually with a somewhat wobbly rocket, just need the funds to open the VAB so I can add struts to stop the wobble and think about a lander.

very rewarding to finally manage it, first try as well so horribly inefficient.

 

we don't talk about the failure getting into kerbin orbit

[MaxwellsDemon]

I didn't have much time for KSP (nor will I this weekend)   but I did spend some time poking around Roverdude's 'MKS-Lite' simplified colony system.

[TimePeriod]

Made myself a "cheap" 81 ton LKO rocket for about ½ a million kerbal-space-bucks, exactly 100 parts. <3 efficiency

Pics below.

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2016 by TimePeriod

[capi3101]

11 hours ago, Maverick_aus said:

In terms of precise numbers...you use KER? If so, Thermal tab. If not, no idea in stock, sorry.

If you mean rough temp guideline, then have you noticed a little 'progress bar' appears next to the part telling you how hot you are? These are pretty helpful, as they kick in once your reaching critical temperatures, but hidden otherwise. However if you're heating up at a rapid enough pace, by the time they've appeared it can be too late to make a change to your flying/reentering.  If you're not seeing these perhaps they're turned off somewhere in the settings.

I was talking about terms of precise numbers. I don't know if it was a stock feature or not, but I used to be able to right-click on a part and it would show its current temperature. I was also sure KER had something like that at one time and it may just be that I don't have it turned on. Gone for eight months and all that.

I am seeing the little progress bars; nothing has exploded yet, thank goodness...
 

11 hours ago, Maverick_aus said:

Cool. Retro. Grew up with those, haven't used a CRT for while. Nothing inherently wrong with them though. In broadcast video engineering the highest grade monitors used were still CRT's as the LCD couldn't reproduce accurate enough colours for grading. (that was a few years ago, and I've been out the game, it may have changed...). Isn't it just a matter of matching the OS and game's output resolution with the monitor's native resolution?

Yeah, it should be; account the fact that it hasn't been fixed to simple laziness on my part. It should just be a matter of calculating the desired height at a 4:3 aspect ratio. 

 

11 hours ago, Maverick_aus said:

Hmm, that's a worry. What did this look like? 

It pretty much went as I said in my earlier post; I was trying to swap out a Flea booster for a Hammer that had some Basic Fins and a decoupler on top. I trashed the Flea, then moved to attach the Hammer to the bottom of the paywad and the game crashed - Windows 7 said "KSP has stopped working, do you want to toss a discount brick through your someone else's computer" or some such. I closed the game and tried to re-start and it wouldn't go. I imagine the issue was with Windows 7 and not KSP, and the game worked just fine last night after the computer had been rebooted a couple of times, so I'm not too worried about it,
 

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

As in maximum or current part temps? (Maximum may need you to right click the piece in the SPH menu to get the extended details, current generally doesn't show up until it's close to dangerous.)

Current (see above).

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

I've actually felt that 1.1.x aero feels advanced enough that I don't feel a pressing need for FAR these days. Some things are out of whack, specifically the centre of lift seems way far back and you end up with all your planes having hunched shoulders, but it's a bit more intuitive than it was. Unfortunately, landing gear suffers horrible bugs in 1.1.3 and is likely to skid you off the runway on takeoff or landing, which has pretty much killed the spaceplane game for me   I guess your mileage will vary, but be prepared to have some annoyance if you do a lot of HOTOLs. I find the Hooligan Labs Airships mod is nice for making VTOL Kerbin hoppers for biome science  

Haven't tried my hand at planes just yet - I'm still getting started in the career game. Thanks for the heads up on the gear; has anybody offered any solutions mod-wise that anybody knows about?

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

The crash... sounds unlucky. I had a few to start with, but then I just outright deleted the game folder and made Steam download it all fresh, rather than running off an upgraded 1.0.5 install. Since then, it's been rock solid apart from a couple of very obviously mod-related crashes.

I'm guessing I probably had a mod crash on me - probably StageRecovery, were I to take a guess. I have noted that I have yet to successfully recover any stages, despite the ample parachutage added (largely Hammers with four Basic fins and a pair of radial chutes), though since I've been gone for eight months I have no idea if it's borked or the mod has been re-designed that way.

Last night I picked up where I left off on the early sci stuff. Took me three attempts to remember how to launch something into orbit, but ultimately got Val up there with two sci cans, two goo cans and six thermometers (for launchpad, low flight, high flight, orbit, high orbit and landing biome). Took a crew report in orbit and a bunch of EVA reports from Kerbin orbit and successfully returned her pod to the Highlands, where I got another EVA report and sci can from the landing biome. Used the sci collected to good number of the early nodes and took on some part testing contracts, which are slated for this evening's activities. I need to send Val back up to go into higher orbit but at this point I should be capable of building a Munar lander, so that's not necessarily a top concern.

One final question - is the Stayputnik still largely worthless (by which I mean no SAS)?

[MaxwellsDemon]

14 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

One final question - is the Stayputnik still largely worthless (by which I mean no SAS)?

Pretty much.  Its looks are all that it's really got going for it.  Fitted with a reaction wheel and a battery it's almost serviceable, but by itself about the only use for it I've found is as a cheap command pod for static launchpad part tests.

[capi3101]

1 minute ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Pretty much.  Its looks are all that it's really got going for it.  Fitted with a reaction wheel and a battery it's almost serviceable, but by itself about the only use for it I've found is as a cheap command pod for static launchpad part tests.

Okay. Last few versions I've been using it as a command pod for a visual ILS for the Runway; looks like that's what I'll probably be continuing to do with it.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Just now, capi3101 said:

Okay. Last few versions I've been using it as a command pod for a visual ILS for the Runway; looks like that's what I'll probably be continuing to do with it.

I've been thinking of doing something like that--- how do you set up yours?

[Guest]

Progress report on more n00by stuff.

My second attempt at a kerbaled Mun landing went off without a hitch, ending with an uneventful splashdown. I followed that up with a similar mission to Minmus. Got tons of science, then earned some Funds by doing a couple of routine satellite launches. Next up is launching my first space station to orbit the Mun: the first module to go up is going to be very simple but I've sketched up ideas on how I want to expand it, so putting some serious thought into where to put to docking ports of each kind. I think the Perfectly Safe Rocket VI will be sufficient for the launch, although I figure I'll have to launch a parallel mission to get whoever sets it up back down.

I did the docking tutorial successfully after much cursing and I now have sufficiently-experienced kerbonauts that they can target track, so I hope I'll even be able to make use of it.

Also planning some unkerbaled missions to Duna. Going to be a busy next few days...

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

I've been thinking of doing something like that--- how do you set up yours?

Usually the markers themselves are a Stayputnik with a battery, an FL-T200, as small of an engine as I can manage to give it a little push and three of the little bush-plane landing gears. You shoot it straight down the Runway at about 20 m/s and park it right off the green of the Runway. Ride the brake as you go; there's a pretty good drop off at the end and you don't want the go out of control. Set the brake, reclass as a base. Then put another one right off the other end of the runway; that one's more about getting turned around. Then put a third one a klick to the west of the one you parked on the landward side. You can add more if you want; I recommend intervals at 5k, 10k, 20k and 30k. Getting them to stay aligned with the runway can be tricky but if you're a little off it doesn't matter. KER helps here - just keep your latitude within whatever tolerance you're willing to accept.

Aside from helping with horizontal alignment, you can use the system to mark the rough position of KSC and use it to help with your glide slope, assuming you're coming into KSC 09 from the west. Just rename the landward probes as their distance from the Runway when you go to set them up as bases. When you're coming in and overfly a probe, take its distance from the runway, multiply it by 100 and then add 100 more to the result (for example, when you overfly 10k, that's 10*100 = 1000 + 100 = 1100). That's your desired altimeter reading at that distance; if you're within 100 meters you're probably okay, if not you're either too high or too low. You can add in the distance to a particular marker when you do the multiplication part as well, that way you don't have to overfly a marker exactly. Why make them bases? Because they'll be visible from orbit if you do. Why add 100 to the formula? To account for the fact that the Runway is about 70 meters above sea level; adding 70 would be more precise but the math will be trickier (and it's a tricky enough thing to do that formula while you're trying to land the plane anyway...).

This system will take a while to set up but from experience I can tell you it works pretty well. I used to have this written up somewhere else but I can't find it this morning. Figures.

I'd ordinarily recommend NavUtilities as a modded ILS solution; doesn't seem to be working in 1.1.3. Or at least I haven't got it set up right. I usually use it in conjunction with the visual ILS.

Edited August 12, 2016 by capi3101

[MaxwellsDemon]

Hm.   I do something sort of like that with flags (also visible from orbit) but I hadn't thought of making the spacing mean anything to the recommended altitude.   Pondering...

Edited August 12, 2016 by MaxwellsDemon

[LN400]

I remembered why Kerbal Alarm Clock is absolutely essential for me. Having 4 ships on their way to Minmus, 3 space stations than need transfer and docking, incoming rescue missions, satelites everywhere mapping all the things while waiting for their transfer windows, and the trendency for all the things happening at the same time, it was a nightmare before KAC. Still mild panic regularely as I realize I overlooked that ship incoming for aerobraking when that robot needs a crucial burn but at least I can wing it and not lose any ships... I hope...

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Hm.   I do something sort of like that with flags (also visible from orbit) but I hadn't thought of making the spacing mean anything to the recommended altitude.   Pondering...

Doing them with probe rovers lets you set it up at a lower tech level, and it gives the Stayputnik a bonafide purpose. I've also used flags in the past, but they'd have a tendency to spontaneously explode; never had that problem the other way. It's a tradeoff.