The Apocalypse Challenge

[celem]

The LKO station, currently holding 30 souls. Theres a weird decoupler left-over on one end since I put it on back-to-front. There was originally a mechjeb on the head for liftoff, though it emerged that mechjeb couldnt launch it anyway so it got replaced with a 3 man capsule to pilot it up. Infact its all being done without mechjeb, since launch is all i ever use him for and he is unable to fly any of the rockets i've designed for this challenge thus far. (He's too aggressive with the throttle when trying to hug terminal velocity and tends to shake the craft to pieces)

Then spent several hours rendezvousing a series of ssto shuttles to bring up the passengers.

Will ultimately design a transfer stage able to push the entire thing into position as a single piece when it's done with it's duties in LKO. Once it becomes a Hab proper rather than a transit point then the occupancy will be dialled back to give living space.

Edited December 15, 2013 by celem

[JumpsterG]

Aw, now that I've seen it, I'm going to have to use remoteTech as well. Love that mod so much. I'll be ditching the time delay for sanity reasons, but I won't send Kerbals to the far reaches of the Kerbol system without a line of communication back to home base (and eventually Colony One).

Now I'm thinking of the mods I'll be installing...

Basically required: Extraplanetary Launchpads, Kethane, Kerbal Attachment System (No way I'm using docking ports to supply EL with ore)

My stock-assist plugins: Crew Manifest, Engineer, Enhanced Navball, Navball Docking Alignment indicator, RCS Build Aid, Kerbal Alarm Clock

Challenge-increasing: RemoteTech

Fun or aesthetic: Chatterer, Various sound mods (atmospheric, RCS, etc.)

Autopilot: I haven't used it in .22 but I think I'll grab mechJeb2 since this challenge will require a lot of interplanery, targeted landings and a lot of missions overall. I'm also very fond of this one: Automated Vertical Velocity and Altitude Control

Lately, I've been using Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, since it severely reduces the need for overstrutting, but since the same ship will have different behavior with/without it, it makes the ship less shareable, so I'll do without it for this challenge. I could use this excuse for Deadly Reentry and FAR, but in honesty I haven't tried those yet and don't feel like experimenting with them on this challenge as they will make the game harder in ways I'm not prepared to handle yet. Next time!

I will probably build stand-in modules and structures for life support, just so I don't have to micromanage scrubbers/recyclers and constantly double check each Kerbal is in a pod connected to life support before switching focus away or time warping. Maybe I'll install parts and resources for Ioncross or TAC without the plugins, so I still have to carry the correct mass around and can make things look a little cooler.

[Jacob01]

I think I'll give this ago when .23 hits, sounds like good fun.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Hm. Count me in. I'll see what I can come up with.

[celem]

Aw, now that I've seen it, I'm going to have to use remoteTech as well. Love that mod so much. I'll be ditching the time delay for sanity reasons, but I won't send Kerbals to the far reaches of the Kerbol system without a line of communication back to home base (and eventually Colony One).

Yeah it was one of the few I felt had to be in. It increases the complexity and logistics, but is rewarding when you get it up and running. I also have delays off, I struggle with those big time.

For reference, my mod lineup is:

Extraplanetary Launchpads

Kethane

KAS

Novapunch2 - some adapters, fairings and so on

AlarmClock

Engineer

PreciseNode

As I mentioned, i have mechjeb but dont actually use it as a rule.

Im considering a life-support mod currently, as well as examing stuff like greenhouse mod and various 'base' mods.

[impwarhamer]

Just wanted to show you guys this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52139-WIP-Bavarian-Aerospace-Tubes%21-%28update11-13-13%29

It is perfect for surface bases, but it is very buggy at the moment

[celem]

Some shots of my minmus testing grounds. Begun metal extraction, smelting and construction of rocket parts in addition to kethane mining. 2 seperate sites unfortunately. Was mainly to make sure i understood these mods in combo, but its nice having loadsa fuel out at minmus orbit. Toying with an orbital shipyard scenario.

Main concern is maintaining the spirit (and difficulty) of the challenge, i dont know how EXPL works when it comes to crewing builds, I still have to physically lift kerbals off kerbin to 'win'. Secondly, any orbital shipyard i would consider using would have to look the part... which means loads of parts. Plus parts on launch from whatever ship im using. Dont know if my rig would handle that even without terrain to render. And I feel this challenge ought not be too easy, orbital yards are game-changing.

Anywho, without further waffle. Screenshots.

Everything is liftoff capable and landed itself. No sky-cranes currently.

minmus kethane refinery - automated rover landed first, then delivered central unit and kethane tanks. Accomodation is out of shot (its just a couple of hitch-hikers for this test installation, but its 250m meters away from the mining for safety reasons.) The drilling unit is missing, see next shot for why. The rover is fully independant however and carries everything needed to slowly produce fuel.

minmus ore project - landed all together. The lander with the kethane drills at the back of the shot is not part of this installation, he belongs to the refinery, which you can see is 10.4km away. He hopped over here because the pilot had to EVA and KAS-attach the two unmanned industrial units, he also hooked himself up and used stored kethane to give this base a refueling. He is normally hooked up to the base from the first shot as primary driller, though like the rover, he can independantly produce fuel. The ore project is completely unmanned in normal operation, a shuttle is still in production to collect rocket parts.

Early prototype kerbaled-kethane rover on Mun - the drills can only reach the surface if you park it straddling a ridge, which is stupid. Finding out things like this is why i'm testing locally rather than at destination. Otherwise I kinda like this idea. He's got 3 poodles on there which means he can now roam Kerbin's SoI at will, but in an emergency he can blow the 2 end segments.

Edited December 17, 2013 by celem

[celem]

Yup, we are on our way. Trails for Duna and Jool fleet intercepts. The Duna fleet has much nicer grouping since the Jool window was somewhat 'ruined' by a bad positioning of the Mun. I couldnt get a decent ejection angle without having to make up for a gravity brake off it, and adjusting radially to make it a slignshot seemed like hassle, so they got weird ejections and corrected as they climbed out past Mun. Some majorly inefficient burns, but everyone is packing epic spare dV at this point and they are arriving in the order I wanted. Theres also a scanning team heading for Moho, Eeloo and Dres, all 3 will make for various habs after they are done. Eeloo/Dres team to Jool and Moho team back up to Eve. (That Moho team has actually done its scanning and left moho soi. It burned back to Kerbin encounter as you might have noticed, then changed it's mind. It's going to adjust for Eve destination at next periaps... Just felt daft returning kerbals to kerbin)

Note the RT2 satellite link to the Duna team, they are in comms the entire way. Jool team is dark, they have comms between fleet elements but are cutoff from KSC. They will deploy a single dish for periodic transmission on arrival around Laythe. The flag already showing out by Duna was 'hacked' there. I got this idea of trying to land by it so I can take screenshots from it's POV at some point, no craft have actually visited Duna yet.

You might also note a single craft around Eve. After loading up the Duna/Jool fleets I pushed my entire LKO station, now holding just 12 Kerbals out to high Eve orbit. Replacing the LKO station for the next set of windows, along with designing the phase 2 wave of vessels.

Here is the satellite carrier, shot taken just before departure. Single launch, no orbital assembly or refueling. Nose-mounted satellite is deployed already as the link to the keostat ring, this ship makes the journey pointed retrograde. Crewed by 2 kerbals, carrying 5x relays. Relays mount 5mil m omnidirectionals and 400 Gm dishes. Was too lazy to make a custom launcher so it's on something outta my crazy sack, it will brake and circularise at first drop-spot at Duna still running a Mainsail that was lit on the pad and allowing for satellite drops probably had about 11km dV leaving lko. Its probably gonna have a lot of gas left over for the nuke, but thats fine as it's designed to fit to the Duna station in the same fleet and extra options never hurt, theres snr ports and decouplers both sides of the hitch-hiker. (remember that kethane scanner I forgot? Its on this)

Why didnt I send one of those to Jool? 5 sats wont be enough, and I didnt want to just send 2 of these. I totally want to build a huge satellite dispenser for jool and it wasnt ready for the window. (its a bit of an monster, this thing is 600 parts on the pad already) Plus it adds spice to have a colony in spotty comms, Laythe is gonna be pioneers for me.

New personal rule: No landing of habitats on a surface without a link to KSC (intermittent is acceptable) or an orbital hab with 'Remote Command' (RT gizmo that makes a vessel into a broadcast hub like KSC, needs big probe body and 6+ kerbals in command-capable seats.). Im fine with convoys and orbital habs being 'off-the-grid' provided they have a good enough space:kerbal ratio to sim life support and living space and a high enough population to avoid 'space crazies'.

94 kerbals off kerbin. 67 in flight. A lot of infrastructure en-route. Gonna be space left over in various Habs once they arrive and a number of reusable craft. No major resource installations are currently in transit, though both Jool and Duna teams carry small automated rovers (see minmus refinery shot)

Edited December 18, 2013 by celem
tidying, added sat carrier

[obi_juan]

Now, at day 10 on my game I noticed that I have the window to EVE open until day 42. My interplanetary engine give me +5000m/s of delta-V so I started to send my first Kerbals to the EVE/Gilly colony that are my first two ships.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The next time the tower building will be for 17, version mk1a for EVE. The tower is capable of powered landing on EVE, but not to come back because only have a 2000m/s of delta-V.

The Truck rely only in parachutes for the EVE landing. Now I need to finish the Kethane base extractor and the drill/smelting base, for EVE and Gilly. All the buildings from Gilly colony can move later to EVE.

By now 30 Kerbals became colonist, it is only the first step.

For the final base I was thinking on have one greenhouse for every 8 Kerbals. for the travel I will have only 1 for every 16/17 Kerbals.

I was thinking in use also the TAC Life Support mod, but that will complicate the design of ships.

PD: What is the code to integrate the Imgur galleries to the board?

Edited December 20, 2013 by obi_juan
Thanks @celem

[impwarhamer]

http://imgur.com/a/8Ivod

Whhat on earth is that crazy glowy thing in the middle of your ship?

[obi_juan]

A Greenhouse to produce food and oxygen for Kerbals. I take it from this mod

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53009-0-21-BioMass-Renewable-Bio-Fuel-Modules.

The module is a little heavy, +5t , but if the Kerbals will not return to Kerbin I prefer to give them gardens.

My LKO record by now is 300t. Using mechjeb I only need to send more ships when I am not in front of the computer.

[Sgt. Cookie]

EDIT: I'm dumb...

[KeithStone]

I'll be coming home from vaca tomorrow, but I'm already starting to plan launch windows, this is going to be EPIC.

[celem]

Yeah I was wanting the imagur album embed codes too. So I went and searched it up. your album will have an address like http://imagur.com/v4jt8cd9dk (example). The bbcode to embed the album would then be: (imgur)v4jt8cd9dk(/imgur). Just copy over the bit after the last slash and use the (imgur) tags (replace '()' with '[]').

Also I liked your designs mate. Lotta nukes on there, must admit that low TWR once I eventually light the nukes is a pain for my ships to deal with, since Im often pushing 250tonnes+ on only 6. Might have to experiment with those engine cluster adaptors and the LV-N's.

I opted out of adding a full-blown lifesupport mod since I have already started. It would take some trickery to get everyone who is already en route upgraded to follow the new system. Gonna stick with 2 empty seats for every seat occupied, majority hitchikers to sim that side of stuff. Still pondering over that greenhouse, those do look vidually awesome.

Not much of an update from my save. Been travelling several days and limited computer time, may let it idle until the new year while i prod at 0.23 (which i got a copy of, though all my saves are still running .22 for the sake of my mods)

Edited December 20, 2013 by celem
trying to kill the link (which is spoofed)

[obi_juan]

Also I liked your designs mate. Lotta nukes on there, must admit that low TWR once I eventually light the nukes is a pain for my ships to deal with, since Im often pushing 250tonnes+ on only 6. Might have to experiment with those engine cluster adaptors and the LV-N's.

Here there are a challenge to maximize the delta-V of the ships, with my designs there I learn how to maximize the delta-V. But also learn that the time to burn the nuclear engine could be a pain... for an increment of delta-V of 8000m/s I need to burn fuel for more than 1 hour so I chose a compromise solution high delta-V (around 5000m/s) but with burn time lower than 30min.

My first design was an orange tank with 8 engines, but the burn time was +45min, so i include a 4 nukes below the orange deposit, but 4 nukes are 10t so I include a decoupler and a fuel line to use the fuel of the orange tank, also the fuel of the orange tank goes to the slim deposits of the nukes, when the orange tank is empty I detach the 4 nukes from the bottom and I have the last +2500m/s. But I think that I can made a better interplanetary engine.

[kola2DONO]

Some questions :

First : If some asteroids that are duna sized are heading to kerbin, would they most likely destroy the hole planet and the moons would be bombed with rocks, so is moonbases not allowed?

Second : Can i edit kerbins orbit so i can make it collide with kerbol in five years?

Third : Do i have to get thoose mods?

Edited December 22, 2013 by kola2DONO

[TimMartland]

This + KMP = Awesome!

[KeithStone]

First submission is now ready HERE! 100 kerbals now off-world, but they're far from safe!

[kola2DONO]

Project Kerbalkind

After the recent discovery that eeloo will collide with kerbin due to a slingshot (thanks jool..) a new project has started.

Project Kerbalkind, the aim is to flee as many kerbals from kerbin as possible.

Part 1 - Duna One

The people who will lead the kerbals after the destruction of kerbin will be : Jebediah, Bob and Bill kerman.

All will live at Duna one which is the first base on duna.

The Duna one carries 7 kerbals, 2 rovers and 2 scientific instruments (mounted to the rovers)

I couldn't manage to take an pictures of the rocket on the launchpad due to that it was over 3000 parts (so it could reach duna as fast as possible)

Landing :

One of the rovers went away (Bob forgot to turn on the brakes) but jeb managed to get it back

That must be a new record!

I will probably send more modules to that base later.

This looks like 19 points to me

Edited December 23, 2013 by kola2DONO

[Spartwo]

I plan to do this.Idea for a bonus 'Never safe' ?pts:Have a defensive escort in orbit of colonized planets.

[kola2DONO]

First mission in part 2 :

Send up a orbital station.

The station carries 12 kerbals, that means 12 kerbals times 2 for each kerbal leaving kerbin, pluss 12 for having them in a space station + 10 for creating the space station + the 19 i got on the duna mission = 65 points and i'm just on day 18!

I managed to get the station in orbit in 5 and a half minute, i could shoot up thousands of thoose stations and earn many thousand points..

But that's boring.

Second mission in part 2 :

Shoot up space station Minmus orion in minmus orbit, and land the lander there.

The rocket :

In minmus orbit

Deorbiting the lander

Landed on minmus!

I can actually go back into orbit and refuel a couple of times if i want to, but i don't see any purpose of doing that, i'll leave him on minmus for now.

So to the points, 8 kerbals left kerbin in this mission, that means 16, pluss 7 because i made a space station with 7 crew members = 23 + 10 for making the station = 33 + 65 = 98

Also i'm still on day 18 lol.

Edited December 23, 2013 by kola2DONO

[kola2DONO]

Part 3

Just another orbital station, much simpler design now.

16x2=32

32+16=48

48+10=58

58+98=156

Still at day 18.

Edited December 23, 2013 by kola2DONO

[kola2DONO]

Part 3 and a half

Extended The Minmus Orion station a little, first time i've docked something in space.

I'm wondering if i'm going to make the main base minmus, because it's very easy docking there.

So 11x2=22

22+11=33

33+156=189

Also on day 19 now

I have a science module thing that i can send down with the lander later so i can get that base bonus thing.

Edited December 23, 2013 by kola2DONO

[kola2DONO]

Part 3 and 3/4

Added more fuel + 3 crew to the minmus orion station.

3x2=6

6+3=9

9 +189 =198

Edited December 23, 2013 by kola2DONO

[KvickFlygarn87]

3x2=6+3=9+189=198

What you're saying here is that three times two is the same as six plus three, which is the same thing as nine plus 189, which is the same as 198.

Be careful with the equals sign, it'll break equations so fast it'll make your head spin!!