BSC: Kerbal X - We have a winner!

[Carl]

Ahh cheers, hadn't thought of that . I avoid night landings when testing a new design so never occurred to me.

Though that doesn't excuse the two designs with asymmetrical lights which have them pointing straight up...

Also i think that slope is turning into a bit of a Lander breaker isn't it...

[antbin]

that doesn't excuse the two designs with asymmetrical lights which have them pointing straight up...

If there's a docking port, lights like that can be quite useful for making sure you're pointing the port at the space station. Otherwise, just for show.

My lander has an asymmetric light (you really only need one landing light), but it's balanced out by the asymmetric battery on the other side of the lander (you really don't need even one of those, but ah well).

[antbin]

Gregrox has gained about 40 votes in the past hour or so . Mine is also up 20

But since Sgt_flyer has been leading solidly for most of the vote (neck and neck with Giggleplex), I thought I really ought to fly his rocket.

My critique:

• The escape tower is the coolest thing. Love it.
  
• I take back the bad things I said about the fairings. They are educational. Not my cup of tea, but they do show multiple ways to build them, and KSP fans like fairings.
  
• Also impressed with the not-cheating engine clustering. Pretty, heat-resistant, and functional.
  
• Not so impressed with the low (1.5) thrust-to-weight ratio, especially on the orange tank main stage. The launcher never gets close to terminal velocity, and could really use more of a punch at 20-30km to get an efficient launch. Newbies might not notice, but they need to learn. Still more efficient TWR than Giggleplex's 1.1 though.
  
• I couldn't operate it debris-free, since the escape tower and orbital insertion stage ended up in a half-way-to-the-mun orbit. Why not lose the escape tower with the 2nd asparagus booster?
  
• The asymmetric antenna is a tiny annoyance with the new loosy-goosy ASAS. It pulls the craft slightly to one side.
  
• All that science gear and no lights? Glowy screenshots are science...
  
• All that science gear and it gets jettisoned before the chutes open? Teaching noobs bad lessons about recovering their science...
  

Definitely a contender, and looking forward to checking it out more fully in the shortlist!

P.S. Also, Deathsoul, you are right about your rocket's TWR... that mainsail on the core stage works pretty well, and the acceleration picks up nicely over 15km as more and more fuel is drained away. It's at TWR of 4 by the time the stage is depleted. Good design. I've changed my spreadsheet.

Edited November 20, 2013 by antbin

[XolotlLoki]

But for teaching newbies, I'd want to show examples of minimal, effective strutting that creates structural 'triangles' to stop unwanted flexing.

Excellent, thank you very much for that. I've never actually heard of a space frame, but I've definitely seen them (and other tesselated triangle structures). That's extremely helpful for designing rockets.

I had a go, here. Each booster is now strutted with 2 "X"s from the core mainsail to the booster mainsail, plus one tiny strut at the bottom. The inline mainsail has 3 struts reinforcing its fairing. The part count is now 90 (from 101). I admit my struts are a bit uglier, though.

Very nice, it's much more stable now as the asparagus stages drop. I like the strut cross points.

[Xeldrak]

Gregrox has gained about 40 votes in the past hour or so . Mine is also up 20

*sigh* Well, looks like I have to find a way to tighten security.....

[Carl]

4 more done, 1 came within a hairs breath of sticking the landing an attempting a take-off on my killer slope. Congrats to Kerolyov for giving me some shred of hope someone's going to make it.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

With respect to the crazy effort you're putting in here, Carl, based on your comments I'm not 100% sure you're fully versed in KSP.. Landing and docking lights are pretty key, especially if you're not using mechjeb (i.e. most people). If you don't see that I'm not sure what to say.

[Carl]

The last time i heavily played they didn't have lights IKJ, their all new to me, as naturally are their uses. the last version i have on my computer before 0.22 is 0.17 and the last i heavily played was 0.15 or 0.14, i can't really remember which tbh.

[XolotlLoki]

*sigh* Well, looks like I have to find a way to tighten security.....

I didn't test Gregrox' ship before voting, but with the large number of votes I thought I'd try it out. It was pleasantly stable during ascent and gravity turn, but it had serious trouble getting to orbit (needed some last stage boost to circle at 100km). Once I got to orbit I realized that I had a massive RCS tank and a docking port (useless for Mun direct ascent), and no landing gear (very necessary).

After thinking for a minute, I decided to give it a go anyway, and try to land on the poodle's engine bell, using the massive RCS reserves to balance. I got to within 3km before running out of fuel. I might have made it had I tried landing on a higher point.

I hope Giggleplex' and sgt_flyer's ships are less disappointing. As for tightening security, I'd suggest a separate primary-voting thread (or multiple threads if needed due to poll limits, with random assignment). You can start it when you have the composite image and zip file ready, and end it with a poll. Then come back to the main thread for finals. I don't really see any way around something like that.

Edited November 20, 2013 by XolotlLoki

[Carl]

Can't speak for Sgt's but giggleplex is lacking legs too got it to land on the engine though.

Also decided on my final flat test landing coordinates, spotted something whilst coming in with my last craft for landing. 1KM upslope of my slope test site is the Mun arch, relatively flat and it's in the same inclination so it keeps the two tests very closely comparable.

[sgt_flyer]

@Antbin thanks for your review (as i said, this one was more turned towards construction techniques than everything else ) else, the escape tower and engines are supposed to be staged while in atmosphere (shortly after dropping the core stage ) - although for sure, the upper stage remains a bit debris for sure. but it would have made the rocket more difficult to take apart for new players to check out how it has been done, as i tried to simplify most of those construction techniques (like the escape tower, on my own designs, i usually place the two upper separatrons by hand without symmetry, offcentering one of the two separatrons - here, for sake of easy comprehension, i simply slightly offcentered the topmost cubic strut, with the two separatrons attached on it with x2 symmetry)

and i did not include my most advanced techniques either ^^ - those would have been harder to comprehend by newcomers, as they are not that easy to separate from what is around them, or difficult to see from the outside

@Carl my spacecraft has been designed as an orbiter, it does not have landing legs

Edited November 20, 2013 by sgt_flyer

[Xeldrak]

@Xolotl You see, the problem is, that by now I would need four seperate voting threads. 2 entries more and I would need five threads! Thats not only terribly annoying, but I also think that the mods would not approve if I clutter the forum with 5 different threads for a single challenge.

Right now I'm pondering if a registration would help. You guys would have to tell me you email by pm if you want to vote. Wich is also f*cking annoying - why can't people just behave?!

[Carl]

Ok 13 remaining at this point, so about 6 and a half hours work to go, review post updated to current progress.

Link to the review post in case it's become lost to anyone.

EDIT: @ Sgt: Thanks for heads up, will try to rememberer that though i'll still test decent capabilities to see if engine landing is even theoretically possible, (besides only one not to topple so far was an engine lander, pity about the slide )

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58037-BSC-Kerbal-X-Vote-for-the-short-list%21?p=789456&viewfull=1#post789456

Edited November 20, 2013 by Carl

[XolotlLoki]

Can't speak for Sgt's but giggleplex is lacking legs too got it to land on the engine though.

I did too, but I came down on a very bad slope, and had to ride it down for a while. Good times:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Carl]

Heh, well it went for a tumble on me, only one has landed in a way that didn't tip or explode so far, and that tumbled during the slide. The slopes turning into a real lander killer.

[BlazeFallow]

Why exactly would you choose to land on a slope anyways? It's not the most difficult thing to find level ground on the moon, generally the center of the smaller craters will be (mostly) flat from what I've noticed in my many moon landings.

[Carl]

Got 4 more up, gonna take a few hours worth of power nap to try and get this lot done before day's end.

Why exactly would you choose to land on a slope anyways? It's not the most difficult thing to find level ground on the moon, generally the center of the smaller craters will be (mostly) flat from what I've noticed in my many moon landings.

Because newbies don't mess around with finding a landing zone. They drop it where it goes as best they can. Remember most newbies coming in for their first landing won't have the control of people who've been doing it dozens or hundreds of times. Just getting their velocity Zeroed and putting it down without smashing it into the ground is a serious achievement for them.

Or to quote DeathEngineering:

That's a tough landing zone! I see why you're testing there, though. I recall my first landings were pretty much "It's going to land where it's going to land". Even if you don't get to mine, I'm enjoying reading your write ups.

Sure give them time and they'll be putting it where they want, trouble is by then they'll have outgrown newbie pre-designs like these too.

Edited November 20, 2013 by Carl

[NeilC]

*sigh* Well, looks like I have to find a way to tighten security.....

I'm not sure any amount of "security" will ever let you distinguish votes for "I have tested this ship, it is a solid design that fulfils all the requirements" vs votes for "Lolz, this guy's my friend XOXO #weare12yrsold".

Given the low number of participants in this process, even 3 friends who decide to put all their votes to the same candidate can completely skew the results - which is why the current frontrunner is a ship that can barely make Kerbin orbit and is significantly worse than the Kerbal X we're meant to be improving on.

Can I suggest you eliminate open voting entirely for the "short list" candidates? I can see this taking two forms, both better than what we have now:

1) Xeldrak tests all the craft. Xeldrak decides who makes a short list of 5 or so finalists.

2) Xeldrak accepts and tallies votes only from those who post in the thread showing that they have tried more than one of the craft, and give reasons for their voting.

The final selection can be left to open voting once we have a short list of candidates that actually meet the challenge requirements.

[Mecha Pants]

Hey Carl, Thanks for the craft review. It isn't actually a lander though, it's just a moon orbiter/station service craft. I guess I could have slapped some legs on it somewhere though.

[NeilC]

Wich is also f*cking annoying - why can't people just behave?!

This is the internet. Keep your expectations low, it leads to less frustration.

Seriously, be more autocratic about selecting the initial candidates. Democracy is good and all, but it breaks down when the voters have a personal stake. Don't be afraid to step in and say some designs are better than others - You're setting the challenge requirements, you should decide which designs meet them best. After all, rockets are designed by meritocratic dictators called engineers, not by committees of politicians with vested interests. When the politicians take over the rockets tend to blow up.

[Xeldrak]

Well, the main poll is now closed. The final vote will start in a few minutes or so.

1) Xeldrak tests all the craft. Xeldrak decides who makes a short list of 5 or so finalists.

Hahahaha! I barely have time to manage the challenge these days.

Well, I will ponder how to improve the challenge in on the comming weekend.

Ah, the shortlist are:

GregroxMun - Orbiter X

sgt_flyer - Kerbal Y

Giggleplex777 - Kerbal G

Xeldrak - CROME

antbin - Kerbals XX

Deathsoul097 - Kerbal Z.Z

[Deathsoul097]

Wow, I made it into the finals in my first BSC!? WOOT, I guess,

[Xeldrak]

Time to vote for the best better stock craft!

Do not forget to check the BSC: Challenge Guidelines Mk.II - it's not a beauty contest!

Voting will close in 48 hours.

[Spartwo]

I checked the rankings about a day ago and it was 60-60 now it's at 100-68 to Gregrox,Dayum son.

EDIT:my vote went to Flyer for a few reasons.

-Asparagus.

-Custom fairings

-Engine clusters(this did it for me)

-openable panels.

Edited November 20, 2013 by Spartwo

[NeilC]

Hahahaha! I barely have time to manage the challenge these days.

Yeah, being a benevolent dictator can be time consuming. Not everyone can make KSP their full time job like Carl.

Anyway, I'm sure you can think of some way to vet participation in the first short-list vote that wouldn't eat up too much of your time. I think that's where the problem is: we have too many entrants and too few voters, so corruption reigns supreme.

Maybe it would be enough to post clear goals for the craft, and make it a requirement that entries prove they meet those goals to be considered for the short list. The entries to this challenge span the range from barely-orbits-Kerbin to lands-and-returns-from-Duna. Kind of hard to pick the "best" one given the wide range of capabilities.