What did you do in KSP1 today?

[FTLparachute]

1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ok so I gave career mode another shot just now, and frankly, it still just is NOT my thing. I know a bunch of yall enjoy/love it, but, for me, its just too haphazard for my tastes. There is absolutely zero rhyme or reason to what the contracts want. Sure, you wont get a contract to reach jool lets say while you still lack the tech to reach even Mun or Minmus, but, its just too poorly done. I had hoped it had seen some improvements in my absence but, nope. its still as clunky and haphazard as always. Maybe science mode is better, but, idk. Maybe I will give science mode a try, but, for me, even 11 years in, sandbox where I can write my own story, blaze my own trail is where its at. Shame really, I had high hopes way back when, and even now, and even now it still fails to deliver a quality experience. Heck one of my complaints STILL exists to this day: Not a single ounce of story which leaves zero compulsion to do this or that. Oh well. I still have sandbox so yay! 035201252025

TBH i agree. I use the contact packs mods as they're a little better, but yeah, stock is pretty abysmal.

Sandbox is good, but I usually use Science with a cheated tree, so I can actually view the experiments after I've done them

[Fizzlebop Smith]

53 minutes ago, FTLparachute said:

TBH i agree. I use the contact packs mods as they're a little better, but yeah, stock is pretty abysmal.

Sandbox is good, but I usually use Science with a cheated tree, so I can actually view the experiments after I've done them

There is a new mod being developed with a name in Cyrillic. 

It creates procedural missions without the mission profile.

Instead of exact orbit to place a satellite  ... you will have to establish a relay with the Mun or place a probe in Kerbol SOI with a minimum DSN range multiplier.

 

I have not played but this was what the description led me to believe  I'll try to link it here when I get back home.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

My playstyle in career is to have many flights in progress. Therefore, I can only skip forward for some hours at best before the next maneuver. This makes many standard contracts weird, because I have to wait months IRL until a probe arrives at Eve for example.

I make up challenges for myself, like rotating crew around to max out XP, or replace space station modules and deorbit old designs to keep the part count low and frame rate up. I'll also try to see how much data I can fit into an Experiment Storage (currently holding at 278 with Mun/Minmus data). Guess I'll install some contract packs soon.

What I like about career is that it gives you an additional design goal you can optimize for: being cheap. I went through about 50 MunAir prototypes and the one I finally flew in career was the one that was inexpensive and adequate. I had already an SSTO that would work just fine for the job, but I spent a week on design and test flights  to save 13,000. 

Career mode also gave me an incentive to design reusable launchers and train how to fly back to KSC from orbit.

Edited 23 hours ago by Duke MelTdoWn

[Eclipse 32]

i broke the game. i was jumping my catcher and comet back to LKO, when it started to spasm. it got to the point that the Klaw(and comet) slammed into the ocean and were destroyed. *sigh*

[Eclipse 32]

currently going to Eve the first time. i plan on leaving again.

[Eclipse 32]

i'm doing a bit of a cheeky grand tour, checking out Parallax. 

[Eclipse 32]

i just imploded the eardrums of everyone within 6 kilometers of the KSC during the launch of my new grand tour SSTO, after timewarping too far with the last one and slamming it into duna.

[Eclipse 32]

just discovered that MJ can't make a transfer node to another planet if you have an encounter with anything.

[DennisB]

I officially reached 1000 hours. In fact I'm already over it, because last year I played sometimes offline, because I didn't get the mail from Steam with the security code for login sometimes.

[FTLparachute]

Had the very 'fun' task of landing several craft on laythe today, most of which weren't that keen on staying cohesive

If you want to see that, plus me reaching Laythe's seafloor (1st time legit, have to do it 2 more times lol), see below

also i found eeloo

Spoiler

 

[Eclipse 32]

5 minutes ago, FTLparachute said:

Had the very 'fun' task of landing several craft on laythe today, most of which weren't that keen on staying cohesive

If you want to see that, plus me reaching Laythe's seafloor (1st time legit, have to do it 2 more times lol), see below

also i found eeloo

  Hide contents

 

kirk kerman?! there's no way that came out of the name generator.

[FTLparachute]

1 minute ago, Eclipse 32 said:

kirk kerman?! there's no way that came out of the name generator.

it did, along with Felipe, Dave, Buzz, Pasted and Scott.

[Eclipse 32]

my SSTO fell over, then i ramped it off a hill and somehow got airborne again.

[Eclipse 32]

25 minutes ago, FTLparachute said:

it did, along with Felipe, Dave, Buzz, Pasted and Scott.

if Kirk is not a pilot, you have to fix that.

[Eclipse 32]

images from Ike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what you can't see in the last image is the ship sliding away at around 1 m/s.

[Eclipse 32]

geeze, once you get to the outer system, grand tours take forever. the jool transfer took longer than the rest of the mission before it combined.

[Eclipse 32]

just lost a kerb. stupid ground.

can't even afford to give them a grave, since Lathe just went into shadow, and i needed to get to the next stop.

now i need to get the survivor out of the way of the Terraformers(installing a Lathe enhancement mod)

[Cavscout74]

So I had a little time this evening to get a few missions launched.

First up was a new Kerbin station, which let me deorbit my old Manned Orbital Lab

Then fine tuned my little intercepter that is supposed to dock with one of my solar relays for a contract

Finally, I picked up a comet and launched a much bigger interceptor to catch it.  Everything is a "go" and it's on course to intercept.  Now I just have to wait 3 1/2 years.....

[Krazy1]

Antenna advice for @AlamoVampire 

Spoiler

On 1/21/2025 at 7:19 PM, AlamoVampire said:

On 1/21/2025 at 6:07 PM, Lyra said:

It's only use is for direct craft control from Kerbin, or direct science transmission from Kerbin.

Capture 2 qualifies then for direct control as i need to control it to dock, drill, refuel, and redirect. So the question deepens. 

No, you can relay a signal from a Communotron through a relay or multiple relays to Kerbin. A relay antenna can relay signals from "direct" antennas.
Works: Kerbin to  RA-100 to RA-100 to 88-88. 
Doesn't work: Kerbin to 88-88 to RA-100 to 88-88. The 88-88 is not capable of relaying signals. 

It looks like that last connection may simply be too far away. Did you do the math?   5x RA-100 to one 88-88 right? (The relay probe has 5x RA-100 and 4x 88-88 but the 88-88s are useless, can't relay signals) 5 relays don't have 5x the range. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet#Range_calculation
It's 100G*5^0.75= 334Gm
So the max signal distance between the 2 ships is sqrt(100*334)=183Gm 
Eeloo's PE is 66 GM for comparison. It looks like your rendezvous point with the comet is 3x as far as Eeloo's PE (just a rough guess from your screenshot)... that's 198 Gm. So it's not obvious to me if it will work.  
I know KSP is buggy but maybe it's right this time?!
Also if you're playing on Medium or Hard, the antenna distances are all reduced. These calcs are for Normal. Also note that 5x RA-100 are stronger than a KSC level 3 tracking station: 250G. 
I think what would help is adding more 88-88s to your Capture2 ship. Even 2x 88-88 would be 237 Gm. That should do it. Or go get the JXAntenna mod for bigger antennas.

PS: or just build a big repeater station near Kerbin with a dozen RA-100... brute force it. 

PPS: this tool may help too https://ksp-visual-calculator.blaarkies.com/commnet-planner

I've been busy IRL moving and starting a new job. Today I returned 320 experiments from Dres (JNSQ). I had 7 copies of some experiments to get <0.1 science unharvested. I made a nice little probe to return the science from LKO and delivered cargo resupply. 

Edited 12 hours ago by Krazy1

[AlamoVampire]

4 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

No, you can relay a signal from a Communotron through a relay or multiple relays to Kerbin. A relay antenna can relay signals from "direct" antennas.
Works: Kerbin to  RA-100 to RA-100 to 88-88. 
Doesn't work: Kerbin to 88-88 to RA-100 to 88-88. The 88-88 is not capable of relaying signals. 

It looks like that last connection may simply be too far away. Did you do the math?   5x RA-100 to one 88-88 right? (The relay probe has 5x RA-100 and 4x 88-88 but the 88-88s are useless, can't relay signals) 5 relays don't have 5x the range. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet#Range_calculation
It's 100G*5^0.75= 334Gm
So the max signal distance between the 2 ships is sqrt(100*334)=183Gm 
Eeloo's PE is 66 GM for comparison. It looks like your rendezvous point with the comet is 3x as far as Eeloo's PE (just a rough guess from your screenshot)... that's 198 Gm. So it's not obvious to me if it will work.  
I know KSP is buggy but maybe it's right this time?!
Also if you're playing on Medium or Hard, the antenna distances are all reduced. These calcs are for Normal. Also note that 5x RA-100 are stronger than a KSC level 3 tracking station: 250G. 
I think what would help is adding more 88-88s to your Capture2 ship. Even 2x 88-88 would be 237 Gm. That should do it. Or go get the JXAntenna mod for bigger antennas.

PS: or just build a big repeater station near Kerbin with a dozen RA-100... brute force it. 

Appreciate this. FWIW all my saves are normal difficulty. The save has been deleted so I cant go back in an look at it <mission was a failure regardless of datalink failures> to know for dead certain, but, from memory, DSRN2 with the 5 RA100's and 4 88-88s were within range of the relay net closer to Kerbin and Capture 2. I never do maths so much as sling a bunch of relays out into the void to ensure coverage, but, here as an example is from my prime save. Only highlighted are my relays. 

Comm Net 1, 1.1, 1.2 Relay, 1.3, and 2.0:

while technically the one pictured is Comm Net 1, all 4 listed are this version that you see orbiting Kerbin.

This is MRA Relay orbiting Moho. 

And this is my Prime Saves DSRN. 

Comm Net 2.5. 

Last up is Comm Net 3.0 around Jool. At time of image in its orbit, it has 2 yellow bar connection to KSC. 

My prime save has a much more robust communication network as you can see. I was checking my probes and they have the 88-88s but the relays are as you see in the images. It was the memory of THIS network that had me so frustrated in my test save with Capture 2 and my relay set there. I guess in the end, building a temu version of THIS beastly network did my datalinks in, and a dismal ship did my idea of moving a giant comet around in lol. If I had turned on  my tracked items other than my comm net relays for the first picture you would see this save also has a comet in it, but its orbit is much more dainty compared to Sanrie 1 from my test. Its orbit is no further out than the gap between Jool and Eeloo if memory serves. I didnt think to look while getting these pictures just now lol. I should also state that the network shown here was designed and orbited before my best friend and brother from another mother died back in August of 2020. So, also theres that fun 4 year gap in my play time between around when he died and I left KSP and my return just some few short weeks ago. But, I do honestly appreciate the refresher you gave me. And I hope you and everyone else enjoys seeing the ghost that sparked such frustration in me lol. Also, isnt that just a pretty shot of the relay over Jool? I do not run any visual enhancer mods. Pure stock for visuals

024601262025

[AlamoVampire]

Im giving science mode a try. So far? Its interesting. Its letting me forge my own path and write my own story. This I like. Im at the 90 science per box level on the tree and i got to that level in a few launches. I just did my first successful mun mission. No landing, just a high orbit then a lower pass as a return to kerbin was targeted. I had no idea my dV margin was going to end as tight as it did. I had 24m/s left after getting a 50km periapsis. Took a pair of aero captures to land. 2nd aero brake slowed me enough to land. Was actually fun! 062401252025