Have You Ever Made A Mission Way Too Complicated

[MrCoolx10]

I was going to bop and I had a brilliant plan of a large two stage lander but instead of decouplers I used docking ports. This meant that I launched the lander docked an orbital stage inbetween the two lander stages and then went to bop. I then landed and brought all the SCIENCE back up with me. Then I undocked the lander and put the capsule and SCIENCE:D Modules onto another orbital stage. THEN the orbital stage brought to kerbin where I docked a parachute module and a landing leg module and finally brought them home safely until I was eaten by the kraken and barely escaped.

All ended well in the end though.

[THE META]

i'm waiting for whackjobs reply to this thread.... but back on topic, yes I have made a mission to complicated once. it was my duna mission, and I made 3 different parts to it. a contingency ship which would arrive before the rest, which held more fuel for the ship, a transfer module with habitat compartment, which despite the on site fuel, I still felt it nessecary to give it 3 KM/s delta V for once it was in orbit, and a lander module, which was actually not to complicated. evevntually I scrapped the contingency module (however it was already in duna orbit, and although the transfer went well, and also the landing, upon EVA on duna's surface, myengine felt the need to fall off. I was much displeased.

[spudcosmic]

There's a thread just like this already active on the first page, Why don't you go post in that one rather than making a whole new thread.

[Luckless]

There's a thread just like this already active on the first page, Why don't you go post in that one rather than making a whole new thread.

The only other one I see is mostly filled with "I made my launch stage in a really weird and not very functional way", where as this is more about how someone designed a mission itself. Seems rather valid to talk about two different kinds of complexity.

My planet missions tend to be more complex than they really should be. Usually relying on building small stations in orbit that then get transferred into orbit of another planet, and generally are planned to have multiple ships follow for resupply, and for no real good reason either other than the smaller crafts are easier to get up to orbit, and that I kind of like docking.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Well, 1000 parts to Mun and return is quite inefficient.

Also, Making Every Word Start With A Capital Letter Hurts My Brain.

[Jon Tash]

Last update I decided to colonize Eeloo, which meant, have a Kethane mining base on the ground and a station capable to process the Kethane and build ships and other stuff in orbit around Eeloo. That was the plan anyway.

To go to Eeloo and transport the first part of the station, I decided to use the Interstellar mod and build a ship assembled in the orbit of Kerbin and warp everything to Eeloo. The first part was easy, everything was in place. I warp and when I reach Eeloo, my ship happens to be going at the wrong side of the orbit, which meant that I had to invert my orbital velocity around the sun to actually be able to have decent velocity to stay in the SoI of Eeloo. It took me 6 real hours to get in stable orbit of Eeloo. I didn't design my ship to be at 100% throttle (no more than 20%) because it wasn't supposed to, so it took really long.

I assemble my station (OAS as I call it), launch a mining ship to land on Eeloo, mine Kethane and get back to the station to process the Kethane and build more stuff, bigger station, other mining ships and crew quarters.

In the mean time I had another ship coming from Kerbin with 25 Kerbals to the station and the soon to be Eeloo colony on the surface of the planet.

And then the 0.23 update came and I decided to leave everything and begin a new save file.

[Whackjob]

Well... I built a rover once.

... really should go back to finishing that.

[Whackjob]

Well, 1000 parts to Mun and return is quite inefficient.

Inefficient. Yes. Awesome? Yes. Worth it?

... debatable.

[Dante80]

Thats not a rover, thats a space bucket-wheel excavator...XD

[ComradeGoat]

First time I went to Duna, my LANDER had an orange tank and I used another 2 to get there. I hadn't realised that Duna is hardly any more expensive to get to than the Mün and that you can get down and back using a Mün lander with a parachute attached.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Well, Phase One of Project Genesis was insanely hard, I had several issues with intercepting Laythe, and I keep ending on retrograde orbits.

[ArmchairGravy]

My Jool expedition consisted of a mothership with 2 landers, a probe mothership, and another lander designed to cope with Tylo. Looked good on paper, but was way too hard to keep all that stuff in sync. 5 separate aerobrakes, rendezvous, etc.

I have a tendency to over-engineer anyway, and when I'm trying for a new goal it seems I square it.

[AlamoVampire]

I seem to over build in my head then in the vab only to struggle a few hours. Then i go and simplify it and get success lol

[spudcosmic]

The only other one I see is mostly filled with "I made my launch stage in a really weird and not very functional way", where as this is more about how someone designed a mission itself. Seems rather valid to talk about two different kinds of complexity.

My planet missions tend to be more complex than they really should be. Usually relying on building small stations in orbit that then get transferred into orbit of another planet, and generally are planned to have multiple ships follow for resupply, and for no real good reason either other than the smaller crafts are easier to get up to orbit, and that I kind of like docking.

you didn't see the thead titled What was the most unnecessarily complicated thing you have done? Really?

[sal_vager]

Lost the pics (seems it is possible to install an OS outside of a VM from within the VM :/ ) but the most unnecessarily overcomplex flight I have done was to rescue a pod from the Mun.

"Meh just bring the Kerbals home in another ship" you might say...

This was pre-EVA, pre-docking, pre-physwarp, 0.17 maybe.

I could have just ended the flight, should have just ended the flight, but instead I scooped up the pod with landing legs below the rescue craft like a kind of cage, it worked once out of every four tries.

Then I had to get it back, I'd take off, get into a return orbit and release the pod as it'd just pass through my craft at warp anyway, then timewarp closer to Kerbin before trying to catch the pod again in open space after it had drifted away.

Quicksaves were many, but they were risky, as if the pod was touching the legs of the cage on reload there'd be a sudden unplanned disassembly.

Aerobraking was another challenge, with the pod loose in the cage it'd move around, sometimes break the rescue ship, and always throw off my center of mass making re-entry dangerous.

I couldn't just re-enter with both craft either as when the chutes opened the rescued pod would smash through the cage and fall to it's doom, I ended up having to leave it in orbit and design a different craft that would put the pod safely on top as it had no chute of it's own, cue a rendezvous with no nodes to help, just a table of altitudes to work with.

All that for one pod...

[AlamoVampire]

THIS was for a MOHO mission, very over built:

THIS was first, a pure NIGHTMARE to launch, it was out of balance. Secondly, this is my furthest Kerbol SOI orbiting object, orbiting out as far as Eeloo. Also, this thing is in SANDBOX mode too.

[Botch]

I'm working on a Duna mission now which includes 6 modules put together in orbit via docking ports and stabilized with Quantum struts. I also did a separate launch for the full crew.

a nuke tug

2 fuel tanks for the tug

a hab/science module

an orbital tug

a lander

I made it a bit trickier by only including command stations for the orbital tug and lander and then launching and assembling the various components in what might be called a non-optimal order.

I've been to Duna and back many times. It is no where near this hard.

[Kilmeister]

First time I put a rover on the Mun I did some over engineering since I was just extending off my Apollo style template. I had an orbiter, a rover, and a skycrane/lander. The mission was to separate from the orbiter, then get to a low altitude and kill all horizontal velocity and drop the rover onto the surface, then land the skycrane nearby. After the rover was finished it met back with the skycrane which took them back to dock with the orbiter, which was then used to return to Kerbin. Pretty sure this was way more complicated than It needed to be.

[Tripside]

Well, I had gone to and landed on Duna a few times, but I never made it back. Then I decided I would make two separate ships, a tug and a lander/return pod. Everything went great until after I docked them and tried to intercept Duna. I was really off and wasted too much fuel trying to get an intercept. After I orbited the sun for a thousand times and finally intercepted it, I had no fuel left in the tug. I didn't pack my lander with any parachutes for landing on Duna, (I had bad experiences trying to land with parachutes, I always tore my ship to shreds, and at the time I didn't know you could repack parachutes) so I had to land rockets blazing. So a) I suck at landing, so I wasted fuel, and I wasted even more getting into orbit around Duna. Anyway, I landed, planted a flag, whatever, and then went back into orbit... or tried to. Ran out of fuel and crashed back into Duna.

[Soda Popinski]

I would have to say...yes.

[Max Grant]

Well, quite a while ago I did a Curiosity-style rover landing on Duna, and as you can see from the video I had a gigantic, way over-engineered ship. The only thing that actually went right on this mission was landing the rover, which is probably because I spent most of my time perfecting it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPc3eqRwLc

I believe the rest of the modules (which included a regular lander) were so hastily designed I couldn't get them back into orbit. Or home. It was sad.

I also did a multi-mission trip to Jool where I had two probes, one for Jool's atmo, one for Laythe, which I separated while I was still millions of kilometers out, and then due to their drift over time actually would arrive several days apart at Jool. I like doing things that way because then I can deal with one mission at a time. However, usually when I bring along several experiments, one of them fails disastrously.

The last thing I just did was a sample-return mission from Duna, which had two landers, one for Ike and one for Duna, and I should have left the parachutes on my Ike lander because it needs to go home. I am still trying to figure how I might bring it back.