Duna Base Calamity -Duna Permanent Architecture Challenge [Image Heavy]

[KeithStone]

Hello Everyone Keithstone Kerman of Keithstone Mining corp here to finally kick off my entry in to the Duna Permanent Architecture Challenge! It's been a VERY long road of planning, wiping saves, engineering, waiting on .21, buying a new pc, working overtime, and more, but I've finally got the first 500 days fully planned, which means I can start the challenge! First and foremost, a few things of note:

• This mission report follows the rules of the Duna Permanent Architecture Challenge. Further details can be found here. Thanks Sturmstiger for such an amazing challenge write-up. Without you, I may not have had nearly as much fun playing Kerbal these last couple of months.
  
• I'm not going for a high score. For me, this challenge is for fun, and for the, well, challenge of planning and engineering. I find those to be the most fun parts of the game for myself anyway.
  
• I'm a terrible pilot (but I'm honest) and MechJeb will be doing a fair bit of my work for me. I prefer to engineer things after all. I'll stay back and watch everything on video while the professionals do all the flying. I mean, that's why I have an entire space center after all....
  
• This base will likely continue past the 1000 day mark of the challenge. I have some big plans on making a large base with plenty of fluffy (seemingly) useless bits that may require some imagination to work properly.
  
• The list of mods used can be found at the bottom of this first post.
  

Now that that's all out of the way, on to the first image album, of all of the launches that will be used in the first 500 days of the mission. As I get flights in I will continue to document with photos, and once base building begins I plan on supplementing with some video clips as well.

Now, Pictures! (Sorry for the framerate captures, still getting used to screen cap software)

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And the first 500 days mission plan!

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Mods Used:

MechJeb

Protractor

Kerbal Engineer

Aies Aerospace

AviationLights

FusTeck Station Parts

HOME

KAS

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Kethane

Lackluster Labs

MagicSmoke Industries Infernal Robotics

Dromoman's Robotic Arm parts

NovaPunch2

PartCatalog

Rubberband Tracks

Subassembly Manager

Lethal Dose's Large Structural Components pack

I think that's all of them, for now.

[Raptor831]

Look great! I didn't shoot for high scores with mine much. I did go for the achievement scores though. I just wanted it to be "cool".

And I'm with you on piloting! I tend to cause rapid unplanned disassembles on my craft, especially landing.

Looking forward to your updates!

[Speeding Mullet]

Awesome look forward to the updates - The Duna Driller is a quality bit of kit.

[KeithStone]

Video of the reusability of my 30 ton lifter.

[KeithStone]

Well, in a fortunate for testing and not for the mission series of events, I have just about 300 m/s LESS delta-v than I need to land on the mun and mine with the kethane miner. With all of my calculating for duna, I neglected to do any OTHER delta-v calculations and merely assumed it would work. I think I can squeeze enough fuel up by slightly loading a couple of the other launches that I had planned to launch empty, but I'm not sure how it will affect my ability to get back and forth to the mun enough to actually fill all of the tank's I'll need to fill.

[Speeding Mullet]

I did the same in testing with parts of my rig, in particular my Ike base for which I went as far as to forget engines altogether in an absent moment - The landing speed was not optimum.

Here's a helpful cheat sheet if you are more into engineering than trial and discovery (error).

[KeithStone]

I love the cheat sheet, I wasnt aware it actually took LESS deltav to get to minimus, i thought it was simply more efficient for takeoff. Regardless, I'm sticking to my mun plan, and as soon as I get the video edited you can see why I knew I might as well name this base calamity....didnt even get to dock the first crafts together before it held up to its name...

[KeithStone]

Episode 2 is now up!

[Patupi]

Hey Keithstone. It's kind of odd comparing what you're having trouble with to my mission. I think we're sort of reversed. I've had so much experience at docking that I find that easy (And this is in 0.20.2), but have issues doing stuff in atmosphere... like, oh I don't know, flying planes, launching stuff. I had to do a lot of messing around to get my launchers working right and in the end just over engineered them. They have way more dV than they need, thus I can adjust the course as I go up... and need to most of the time. Forget timing a launch to meet a vessel in orbit! I just launch and mess around with the orbit after to get a rendezvous. Docking however, well, a lot of the time I don't bother with RCS. In fact a lot of my ships don't have it at all. I just generally use Smart ASS (or sometimes not even that, though it makes things a heck of a lot easier!) and do flips to dock.

I'm not sure how much trouble the 0.21.1 system is with docking (haven't tried in that yet, only in 0.20.2) but I hope the new RCS system is helping you out some. Yeah, 0.21.1 has serious bugs, but I think it still helps with docking if I remember right. Still issues with SAS not 'locking' position and drift but hopefully it'll help. Once the Duna Challenge is over I'm certainly going to give it a go. I someday want to do a Grand Tour... If I get the time.

[KeithStone]

I would be a lot better at docking if I could set up the D-pad for docking maneuvers, but as it stands setting up an entire xbox control for rovers, flight, docking, and all of the other odds and ends buttons like cameras etc is just such a pain. I think it took me somewhere near an hour last time I did it on the other machine to get everything worked out right. Hell, i'd prolly fly almost all my missions if I had it set up, but for now, I just want to get to Duna!!!!

[Patupi]

I know the feeling! I took so long prepping for this it seems like I spent more than double the time on that than actually flying missions! But heck, designing is fun and I AM an engineer rather than a pilot IRL (Though I flew 4.5 hours on a ultralight a long time ago).

I have a great joystick... that hasn't worked for years. Keep meaning to open it up and find out what wire is busted, but since most of what I do on the computer is strategy I rarely use a joystick. I mostly used it for Mechwarrior 2 wayback, and some flight sims... oh, and Half Life which you could set keys/controls up for both joystick and mouse simultaneously, though couldn't get the throttle in if I remember right? Was a while ago. I never messed with control pads, never really liked them. I guess I started gaming when they were all digital rather than analogue, on or off in any direction, and far preferred analogue joysticks.

Well, hope you get your pad up and running and get things going well. And get that empty second engine tied up to your mining system! Don't worry, I'm sure that orbit's stable. It is insured, right?

[KeithStone]

The last (for now) of the live-narration episodes in the form of

is up. There were a lot of distractions in this one, so I apologize in advance for the added screen-wipes.

[KeithStone]

Where I switch (about halfway through) to a post-commentary style of narration for eveyone's benefit.

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

Post commentary is better for both the host and the viewer...bravo.

And no video for two weeks? What gives?

Looking forward to more.

PS: I hear (though have not confirmed) that if you turn on MechJeb's RCS balancing, the docking autopilot is much, much better.

PPS: I've been playing that Kerbals in Kerbin's SOI do not need supply. I'm pretty sure that's not the official rule, though. So sue me.

TML

Edited September 12, 2013 by ThreeMartiniLaunch