hello all (and some questions)(now with kerbals journal)

[mrgreaper]

brought the early access to kerbals a few days ago, loving it so far.

I also want to commend you on your support of mods from the get go! the site you have for them is fantasticly organised!

i would love to know how to put a kerbal in a stable orbit though (mine all seem to be an egg shapped orbit lol)

also i heard you can dock ships in space? how do you do this (most of my flights seem to be rather...umm uncontrolled, i feel my kerbals may as well be just strapped to a fire work and sent off) in sandbox theres RCS which help but they seem missing from career mode

how do i add more ram to the game ( i know its new and buggy but it seems to only use a portion of my ram and every crash to desktop i have had has been ram related)

is it possible to choose to start in space or launch from the moon (for us beginers that cheer when ever we manage to get off earth with out killing a few kerbals )

also is it possible to link decouplers to fuel tanks so when a fuel tank is empty it auto fires the decoupler?

Edited January 1, 2014 by mrgreaper
so people know theres more then a hello here

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Hello! And Welcome!

The Eggshape orbit is called an elliptical orbit. To make it, normal, timewarp to Apoapsis. Turn prograde, then burn until the periapsis is above 70km.

You can! But, it is very, very hard. Learn how to get to the Mun, and land. Then Minmus, then Duna. Then learn how to dock!

There is no way to launch from certain positions but the KSC without mods

RAM is set to 4 gigabytes, and cannot be upgraded. This isn't because of KSP, but because of Unity. KSP's engine

There is no way to autostage without mods

[Seret]

i would love to know how to put a kerbal in a stable orbit though (mine all seem to be an egg shapped orbit lol)

Elliptical orbits are fine, and will be stable if the lowest point (called the periapsis) is above the atmosphere. In practice that means any orbit with a Pe above about 70km is stable.

Circularising your orbit isn't compulsory, but does make things like rendezvous, docking, and planning further manuevers a bit simpler. To circularise, either burn at your Ap to bring your Pe up to the same height, or burn at your Pe to drop your Ap to the same height. Within a few km of each other is good enough to be called circular.

To assist with these kind of orbital maneuvers, have a play with the maneuver node system. In the map view, click on either your Ap or Pe and add a manuever node. Drag either of the light green icons until you get the orbit looking circular (don't touch the other icons for this manuever). This will put a dark blue marker on the navball showing what direction you need to point in, and give you a time to the burn and how long it will be. Split the burn time and go to 100% thrust when you're that close to the node (ie: for a 30 sec burn, you want to light it up 15s before the node).

More info on maneuver nodes.

Video tutorials for newbies, check out this guy's other videos too.

Edited December 30, 2013 by Seret

[BlackBicycle]

Welcome! Your questions seem to indicate you are really into this thing, as most of us are. So here we go, I'll try to answer the first question.

First of all I have to say we have a very decent wiki where you can learn it all. Other than that, here's a short primer (without mods. Get MechJeb and it all becomes a breeze (once you've learned how to handle it).

Stable orbit:

1. Press T - that will keep you stable. Launch. Go vertical until 10 km. Make sure your speed does not exceed 200 m/s under 5km, 300 m/s under 10km. Throttle down a bit if needed (down to half-power or more, depending on the vehicle). The Wiki has more exact figures.

2. At 10 km, slant your vehicle 45 degrees to the right. The navball should indicate 45 incline towards 90 degrees (that is, you are halfway on blue towards brown, and the mark on it reads 90 degrees. You should be traveling east (to the right) along the equator.

3. Press M to switch to map, bring up your navball (map screen, low edge, middle) to make sure you are on course and to be able to cut off engines from the map view. Zoom in with the mousewheel (sometimes you need to rotate around the planet, rightclick-hold and drag, move mouse sideways), take a look at your trajectory. There will be an apoapsis icon. Mouseover that and you will see your apoapsis increasing. When it reaches space (over 70km for Kerbin (edge of atmosphere), you can turn off the engines and fly up there. Make sure your apoapsis does not fall below like 75 (you will need those 5 extra km for corrections, if you aren't using an autopilot, like MechJeb). You are still in the atmosphere, so if your apo gets low, just do a short burst, same direction, 45 deg up above horizon (into the blue). When you are good, just wait till you are near the apoapsis (if we are talking 75, 70+ will be close enough.)

4. Orient your vessel towards the horizon in the direction you are traveling, (there should be that greenish-yellow circle with 3 short sticks protruding from it - that's where you are actualy going). Don't match the circle, just lay exactly on the horizon.

5. When you are about 72-73km, start burning (forward). Let your direction stay on the horizon, switch to map (M key) and watch your trajectory pull out and out until it becomes an orbit. Watch the opposite apsis of the orbit (mouseover the small icon there) and see when that also clears the 70 km of the atmosphere. You can press X then (make sure the navball is UP in map view, or it won't work) to shut down the engines. You are in orbit.

6. Every orbit has a highest (apoapsis) and the lowest (periapsis) point. The most energy-efficient way to change those are to raise apoapsis at the moment you are passing periapsis and wise-versa. You just burn towards that yellow-green circle (your direction vector it's called) to increase the opposite point (be it apo or peri), and burn retrograde (backwards) do decrease the opposite point.

There we go, Google is our friend. Just google for "ksp youtube orbit"

Enjoy : )

Edited December 30, 2013 by BlackBicycle

[mrgreaper]

I did grab the mechjeb 2 addon, and have used that to change my angle but beyond changing angle i have no idea on it....i confess my approach has been to get up as fast as possible, did you know if you strap enough solid state rockets that do 700 thrust to the heavy labs you can get the re-entry effect on going up? (yeah i have a lot to learn lol)

the issue with the elliptical orbit is the science labs i have on board my ship, fail the experiment when the distance changes too much. so the info on how to fix it is greatly recieved thank you!

shame about the ram issue though, but with luck unity will fix that at some point, i doubt kerbal is the only game to benifit from such a change to the engine (assuming unity is an engine ofcourse)

one of you mentioned "There is no way to autostage without mods" .... any chance you know what mod adds that? im not above modding my game to add stuff i will find handy/useful/fun

thats the other thing, is there any mods inparticular i should look for?

and yes i am really loving the game, something awesome about seperating the back end of your ship and seeing it slowly drift off into space, or when you fire your first set of thrusters and realise you havent used enough space duct tape (my term for the struts) and they whizzzzz off up into the atmosphere while your kerbal sits in his pod...on the runway...looking confused as the main core of the ship slowly falls over (true story)

[mrgreaper]

mod please merge this with my last post, seems my posts take some time to show so cant edit

I had a look at some videos of the mechjeb and it seems easier to use then i thought...will look it up more, the tutorial videos too were very helpful thank you!

I do plan to put a kerbal into mun (later i may be goodenough to land one on mun.....and then even later i may be able to land one on mun AND get him back again!)

once i learn to dock i will have to rescue the 3 astronaughts who are in different elliptical oribits around kerbal ...they have reports to file after all...for science!

[BlackBicycle]

Oh man... you are going to have one hell of a time rescuing those unless you get mechjeb and learn how to use it.

On the bright side though, the greatest aspect of mechjeb is letting you see every stage of the process. I learned so much about orbital operations just by watching it do the thing. Not that I didn't have any background though, but that was minimal.

I'd suggest that you restart the career, making sure you got mechjeb, research its stages as needed (the needed nodes in the tech tree are there in mechjeb description somewhere, just search for it (on the web that is, not inside the game) - to get the first mechjeb stage just go Control in the tree.

Best of luck!

[Seret]

i confess my approach has been to get up as fast as possible

To get into orbit what you really need to do is pick up a lot of horizontal velocity (about 2200ms^-1). The only reason to go up is that doing this inside the thick soupy atmosphere is too hard. Basically you want to go straight up out of the thickest part of atmo, then begin turning gradually towards the horizon to get that horizonal velocity. On airless bodies like the Mun you only go straight up as much as you need to clear terrain, then you flip straight over and burn hard sideways.

I'm not anti-Mechjeb, but you really don't need it just for launches. The process of getting a rocket into orbit is actually pretty simple once you get what you should be doing. Maybe try taking one of the pre-built ships for a fly, so that you know you've got one that's capable of reaching orbit.

[mrgreaper]

Didnt see a section for it so decided to add it here, basicly bored at work so figured i would write up my progress thus far, in the form of a journel from one of the kerbal victims errrr test subjects errr i mean volunteer, (the names may of changed to protect the innocent...and because i cant renember all the names involved) some un eventful launches or too identicle launches will be striken from the record

Day 1.

Our first attempt at flight, i was told that i would be placed into a capsule strapped to a rocket and hurtled up into space, i asked how long i would be up there and the scientist s******ed(*edit why on earth is that censored, over here it means to laugh quietly but in a mischiefus way, think of the mut (mutley) from catch the pidgeon cartoons), i asked how i would get home....all the scientists laughed, im sure they will get it fine though, its not rocket science after all!.

well that was amusing if a little scary, no sooner had i sat in the cockpit when the ship split in two part of the sides fell off and there was paniced commotion...my pod fell to the ground and i got out unheart, i took a soil sample and did an eva report.

Day 2.

Today my good friend bill was launched into space, they used a small rocket then mine and he is now in what experts have told our mission controller is called an "elliptical orbit" he still calls it the egg shaped orbit of success though, one day we hope to be able to retrieve bill he aparently has a report to file.

Day 3.

Confident of the success of the last mission a slightly bigger ship was made, with the plan of going up and coming back down. Now how can i word this.... the first stage rockets did fire, and they did go up to what looks to be about the right altitude, its such a shame the rest of our craft was left sitting on the launch pad, one of the scientists does have high hopes he can fix it though and i last saw him coming out of tesco`s with several bags of bluetack .....i have a bad feeling about this!

Day 4.

the second attempt saw the ship radicly redesigned, it got to a very impressive height before it started to slow down, then slowly drift back down to kerbal ...then not so slowly, the second stage was fired off and the top of the ship rose magesticly up out of the explosions of the main fuel tanks crashing into our parking lot, and the roar of the engines drowned out the screams of myself and the other kerbals as we rushed about putting fires out, this second stage got higher then the first one when it ran out of fuel...and dropped, the third stage fired off and Toms pod was released from the plumeting wreckage, the chutes flared up and i would love to say that toms pod floated majesticly down...but well our mission controller was a bit tired when he arranged the chutes...still the remains of stage 2 did parachute down nicely even if poor tom was not around to see it!

Day 5.

Some new parts showed up in the workshop including a state of the art lab for multiple kerbals! and some experiments this should be fun!

Day 6.

Today a massive ship was built, we were all herded into it about 6 of us, some were to use the lab and i was to pilot, we sat on the landing pad for 2 days while the lab worked, then we were told to get out....so disapointing but mission controller seemed very happy with the result!

Day 7.

The same thing happened as yesterday only this time the mission controller wasnt as happy, something about science degrading.

Day 8.

Today saw the test flight of another smaller vessel, we went up really fast, i thought i might see bill but sadly we only made it to the outer atmosphere where upon we started to descend, luckly this had been the mission controllers plan all along and he was joshing when he said we were going to space, his plan had been to land us on the icy bit of the planet, what luck that was where we landed, im glad im in the hands of such a competent and forward planning commander! we took some "soil" samples wrote out a report and raised the flag in honour of our successful mission. we even had a snowball fight, not easy thing to do in these suits.

Day 9.

two more friends are now in egg orbit of kerbal, when i asked the commander why he had done that, he said it was to see if the rockets would make it to space with that weight or blow up. He seemed very happy with the result and this new device he has stuck to the bottom of all pods called a mechjeb, he says its the best thing since sliced bread! he was talking about putting a kerbal into mun...im sure he ment onto.

Day 10.

oh wow today started as good day, we launched a massive ship it wobbled a lot but our commander has discovered "space duct tape" its a sort of strut that holds two parts of a ship together, he uses it everywhere. but we got this ship into orbit with a bit of trial and error, i was very pleased when he announced we were in a stable circular orbit and could do some science! then there was some cursing and vile language from our commander the likes of which i dare not repeat here, it seems in our haste to launch we had forgotten the scientists, no one noticed them in the back of mission control quietly cheering me on through the launch, i dont think they have the faith in our commander as i do. Well following my commanders instructions i pointed at kerbal and fired the main rockets to get back into atmosphere fall, just then the commander had a fantastic idea, why dont i step outside in my eva and do a little report, after all it seems a shame to waste such an opertunity, the engines were shut down and i stepped outside...where inertia threw me clear of the ship, i filed my report "large lonely space, feel somewhat scared slight smell of fecal matter and urine" and watched my ship start to enter the atmosphere, thats when i saw these massive words in my mind "revert to ..." then i woke up, it had all been a dream aparently.

Day 11.

we launched the big ship, (she was called Big Splat) unlike in my dream we had not forgotten the scientists, for 2 days we orbited kerbal watching some plants grow, it was not the most fascinating of times i admit but we are the first gardners in space! our commander also got a new device, it converts energy into fuel, he said that when i write that down most reading this journel will tut point at him and call him a cheater but he is ok with that, after all he is just having fun (and advancing kerbal kind into a bigger brighter world ofcourse) its quite useful though when we orbit the darkside of kerbal the power goes out and we all have to hold our breath. It was time to return and the chutes worked perfectly, however there was a slight mishap with the lab, it seems it was made of plyboard and the speed of 10/ms we were at was more then the 6/ms it was waited for, i will miss fred rob john and lue, the commander was destrought, he called them by a nickname wailing the name over and over "my data", "my beautiful beautiful data" poor man, it hard, bit like the pod. sorry was that too soon?

Day 12

we launched again, though i was told the past mission never happened and i should forget about it...wierdly fred rob john and lue were back about so maybe it was all a dream, i have had so many dreams of failure. we watched the plants grow and this time we landed safely it seems our commander had looked through the very fabric of reality into something called a text file and made the lab a lot more sturdy, he also insisted the engineers fit some legs to it.

Day 13.

We used the same ship but instead of doing science in the outer reaches of space we decided it would be fun to land on another part of kerbal and do it there. we found a problem though when we discoverd that the legs attached to the science pod float, as does my pod, the science pod however pops like a bubble, i was most upset for a minute or two until i relised it too was one of those dreams that have the big revert words in them.

Day 14.

A new ship! it was a sight to behold all sleak engines and thrusters, weighing nearly 500 tones, every kind of science lab on it that money could buy, its a shame it couldnt get off the launch pad

Day 15.

A new ship, some what smaller then yesterdays and this we did get into space, we orbited kerbal in our second to last stage while the small solar panals slowly powered our advanced generator turning raw sunlight into fuel, we then went and orbited mun, the mission controller was praising mechjeb the whole way there ! we did some science and then came back all perfectly successfully! the amount of science we brought back made the commander very happy, he promised that this week we would all get payed!

Day 16

With some slight tweaks to the ship we had decided to land on mun! extra chutes had been added and some additional rockets to get back up. i have never seen so much space duct tape! all went well untill we got to the actual mun landing, it seems there is a design flaw with mun and parachutes dont work there! something about the lack of atmosphere, there was a flash and it seems it had been a dream again!

Day 17.

With some slight tweaks to the ship we had decided to land on mun! extra rockets had been added to get back up. we were also in two ships held together with two docking clamps the bottom ship was to be the main left off vessel that would then get us to mun, we would undock, land do science then redock and go home, it was an ambitous plan and one i feel would of worked had the docking clamp not snapped mid launch, we lost control of the launch vessel and i can only hope the kerbals in side there knew to pull the chutes ! We fired off our rockets that were designed to ease our mun landinf and get us back off it...but they were more powerful then we could of hoped for and got us into orbit cleanly, once in orbit of kerbal, we began the slow task of deploying all our solar arrays oh how i wish i could bind them to one button in the control deck! and the refueling generator turned that energy into fuel, once topped up we were off again, we got to mun with so little fuel used that there seemed little point in orbiting to refuel, after all once landed our solar panals sticking out at odd angles will refuel us while the science experiments continue.

well, our descent was at a perfect angle and we maintained a steady 10/ms descent speed (though a few times the commander seemed to be cursing something called "sticky keys" i felt it was prudent to not ask him what that was, what they get up to in mission control is thier buisness affter all), however mun was rotateing and we also had some forward motion, and we landedon the side of a hill...all in all it was not the smoothest of landings, we immediatly toppled over the fueltanks and engines (we have four positioned around the ship) acted as a roll cage as we rolled down the hill, satalite dishes and solar panals were torn from us in little explosions, when we got to the bottom of the hill we spent two days watching the plants grow, we have 600 science, an amount the commander is very pleased with but we cant launch! the commander said he has a plan though he going to publish my journel were like minded people can see it and ask if they have any ideas for retrieval. i hope he gets some soon as he was talking grappling hooks and unmaned vessels earlier and i have seen him on the claw crane in the cafe and it wasnt pretty!

hope you enjoyed me killing an hour or so of work by sharing my kerbals exploits, i know im no shakespear and my dyslexia may put some off but i hope it made one or two of you chuckle

also yeah, how am i going to rescue all that lovely lovely science? oh and jeb ofcourse, the most outrageous idea i had was to launch a rover and use a grapple hook mod i saw that would allow me to either right the vesel (the engines and pods are intact and have a lot of fuel left. or tow it to a custom built launcher , hook it up and tow it back, but the only rovers i saw are premade ships made to look like rovers and ofcourse not possible to get into space (anything non symetrical is pretty much impossible to get into space lol)

also dont judge me too harshly for using a fuel generating mod, im only playing for fun after all

***edited bellow*****

GReat news folks! when i loaded kerbal up it was saved before the crash errrr i mean landing

took me a fair bit of time but i got them down safely

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=210825464

i also managed to get them home for a whooping great science injection!

Day 18.

we made it, we landed on mun, there was shouts of joy from mission control and some of the scientists in the pod stopped praying long enough to enjoy the view!

we watched the plants grow and then fred volunteered to go out side to plant the flag, he made the first foot print on the moon (not including the ones on his back where we pushed him into the airlock) After planting the flag and writting a report out he started doing jumping jacks eventualy he came back in (we told him if he didnt we would leave without him)

the flight home was hair raising! we were doing over 2000 m/s on approach to kerbal, the uper atmosphere tore off all our solar panals and we could see that it was to be a water landing! its ok though the chutes flared and unlike the mun the worked! im now about to enjoy a lovely plate of bacon and chips while my mission controller gets some food and finishes his victory dance/spasem

Edited January 1, 2014 by mrgreaper
game glitch saved jeb!

[adson]

Congratulations on your successful mission to the mun! Impressive journal, thank you for sharing your experiences with us.

[mrgreaper]

Congratulations on your successful mission to the mun! Impressive journal, thank you for sharing your experiences with us.

Thanks , i plan to add more to it when bored and i have missions to tell about,

Day 19.

Happy new year all!

Day 20.

The mission controller was quite sure that anything non symmetrical would never fly but he gave it a try anyway, he said something about kerbals being a renewable expandable supply, i have no idea what that means but im guessing it means to be treasured and looked after. He had a "rover" idea and using some caterpillar tracks he made a massive rover that included a science lab and just about any small science item he could find space 4, it looked amazing its 4 caterpillar treads and 6 separate rockets designed to lift it back of any planet we land on. it was stuck to a huge two stage rocket. The idea was simple, stage one would get us into or near space, stage 2 would be used to put us into a circular orbit where we could use the fuel generators and some frankly scary large solar panels to refuel...from there off to a new planet! well...there was a slight hicup, we only raised up slowly and didnt even reach 10k before stage 1 was out of fuel! there was some mild panic and stage 2 slowed our plummet (errr i mean graceful descent) down, but little else then that! we detached the rover with the hope of atleast testing its first stage chutes but 4 of its 6 thrusters, which we were then using as retro thrusters to slow our descent had thier fuel go into the first stage rockets (they were after all ment to be refueled in space) so only 2 of the rockets fired, this put us into what mission control refered to as a "death spiral of oh my god thier all going to die" i had faith in our mission commander though unlike the rest of the crew! well we cut the engines and fired both chute stages at once, this did slow us down...our landing was in water and i feel the rover is more designed for....well...not water, The rescue party took a picture of us:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211054958

some of the rover desolved in the water sadly .

Day 21.

i was passing the rocket design shed when i heard an animated discussion between the mission controller and a scientist, it will never work they were yelling at him, but then there was a chill in the air and i heard our commander almost shout, "all we need is more power", somewhere i heard thunder, "more engines = more power!", more thunder,"moooo ha ha ha ha haaa", yet more thunder...i backed away to prepare for launch.

Day 22.

well the scientists have strapped some jet engines around the rockets to give it more of a boost in low atmosphere (in unrelated news the nearby airport has had to ground all flights due to mechanical issues and i was unable to get my latest shipment of jelly beans )

I had a friend take a photo of it so you can see it

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211055425

We were worried it wouldnt launch (well not me ofcourse, how could the commanders new design fail!) now it did indeed launch but there was a slight issue, we use what we thought to be indestructable ship holders to keep us upright before a launch (wouldnt want to start off resting on our engines after all lol.) however the initial thrust was too much for them and one broke free of the ground and game with us, my friend was thrown in the air with us and took this picture (he will be missed)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211055232

with the extra wieght we still managed to get to an impressive height of 18k, luckly the girder fell off and had a soft landing on Ms Macs Orphanage and lost bunny refuge, once cleaned we can use it again so all is well on that side. we dropped stage 1 and told the autopilot to put us in a circular orbit, now it said we needed a booster flare of 1 minute 53 seconds, i checked the second stage fuel supply, it read 26 seconds of fuel left, so grabbing a bit of paper, a pen and a 20 sided dice i did the complicated mathmatics to determin if 26 seconds would cover it....RATS! we would be 15 seconds short!!!! fred and leu volentereed to jump out to save weight, but it didnt make any difference. we deployed all solar panals and turned on the fuel gen, but it was no good the system is not efficent enough to keep us in flight so we dumped stage 2, dont worry it too had a soft landing, thank god for the near by petting zoo! in our rover we used both chutes again and decended to solid ground, it was pretty awesome when we landed and were able to drive around, we had lost all the solar panals though as we entered the atmosphere there was a further issue though, when we went to watch the plants grow it appears the scientist that built the rover must of not followed the comanders instructions for where the plant growth lab should of been was instead a bio goo and nautrients bay that was incapable of doing anything!

The mission commander has gone to his day job now, so i shall have to sign off, but ill leave you with an image we have in our cafe of one of the more successful landings,

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=210403167