Apollo Style Redux

[Jasonden]

Thanks MagiMaster!!!

Aha, combining Mun *AND* Minmus. I hadn't thought of that. Nice!

[MagiMaster]

It all looks good except for the kerbals in command pod and kerbals landed. If you had 11 total, that'd be 0.7 + 3/11 (0.973) and 0.3 + 8/11 (1.027). The total should be 222.725 if I haven't overlooked anything. Glad you enjoyed it.

Edited January 10, 2014 by MagiMaster

[1096bimu]

I get...

Launch: 1.7 (single, asparagus)

Flight Plan: 1 (Mun, free return)

Kerbals: 85

Kerbals in pod: 1.7 (all of them stayed in the pod)

Kerbals landed: 0.1 (no one landed)

Rovers: 0.5 (none)

Science: 0.5 (none) <- This category got left out

Landings: 0.6 (none)

Return: 0.6 (water landing, stuff breaks, powered decent though I'm not sure why bother if you're going to crash anyway)

Debris: 1 (none)

Survival: 0.006 (85 dead)

For a final score of: 1.7 * 1 * 85 * 1.7 * 0.1 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.6 * 0.6 * 1 * 0.006 = 0.013 points.

Edit: I'm hesitant to add really low scores to the leaderboard. If you've got less than 1 point total but still want your score on the leaderboard, let me know.

awww lawl fail....

How embarrassing

[borisperrons]

Aha, combining Mun *AND* Minmus. I hadn't thought of that. Nice!

Well, seeing you roving along Munar surface and collecting all those biomes made me think.

"Andrea, you really suck at driving, in real life and in KSP. You have only one way to make this working: SPAM LANDERS ON EVERY KODDAMN SINGLE FLAT AREA AT YOUR DISPOSAL."

Also, I always fiddled with the idea of visiting both the bodies in a single mission.

The total should be 222.725 if I haven't overlooked anything. Glad you enjoyed it.

As I said, I really suck at maths

Thanks for the check out!

[Astraph]

OK, my hopes of reaching top 3 have just been trashed... Sniff

I should have included those bloody rovers...

[RandomJeb]

if I understand the scoring right, if I launch 50 kerbals and lose most of them I will win forever?

[Astraph]

Nope, because the final modifier is 1 above the number of Kerbals lost. So, if you lose 25 out Kerbals, then the modifier is 1/25 = 4%...

[MagiMaster]

Actually, if you lose them (as opposed to strand them) it's half that (1 / [1 + 2k]). So basically if you kill all your kerbals your score will about 0.5 total no matter how many kerbals you had (not counting other modifiers, so probably a lot lower).

Besides, two people have tried that already (intentionally or not). YarTheBug stranded 150 kerbals on the Mun for a score of about 0.04 and 1096bimu brought 85 kerbals around the Mun for a hard splashdown for a score of 0.013 points.

Edited January 10, 2014 by MagiMaster

[RandomJeb]

Actually, if you lose them (as opposed to strand them) it's half that (1 / [1 + 2k]). So basically if you kill all your kerbals your score will about 0.5 total no matter how many kerbals you had (not counting other modifiers, so probably a lot lower).

Besides, two people have tried that already (intentionally or not). YarTheBug stranded 150 kerbals on the Mun for a score of about 0.04 and 1096bimu brought 85 kerbals around the Mun for a hard splashdown for a score of 0.013 points.

Your rules makes this entirely unclear. Why don't you just say divided by? "1 over X" usually means "X + 1".

[MagiMaster]

1 over X never means add, at least not in any of the math textbooks or articles I've read. But that's why I provided an example.

[Astraph]

OK, time for my attempt. Damn rover, somehow thought that if I play it safe and don't include them, I wouldn't have to take this modifier into account...

The only mod used was Kerbal Alarm Clock. All craft are 100% stock.

I dedicate this mission to Mirosław Hermaszewski, the first (but not last) Polish cosmonaut.

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And the score:

Launch: 1.8 (single launch)

Flight plan: 0.9 + 0.2 = 1.1 -(Mun + Minimus)

Kebrals in space: 6 (sniff)

Kerbals in command pod: 0.7 + 0.33 = 1.03 -> (2 out of 6)

Kerbals landed: 0.3 + 0.67 = 0.97 (4 out of 6)

Rovers: 0.5 (None)

Science: 0.5 + 1.2 (Mun Farside Crater, Minimus Lowlands, Minimus Poles, Minimus Highlands) + 0.8 (4 satellites) = 2.5

Landings: 0.6 + 0.2 = 0.8 (Two additional landers, none of them two-staged)

Return: 1 + 0.1 = 1.1 (Splashdown within 100 km from KSC)

Debris: 1 - 0.3 = 0.7 (2nd stage left in LKO, plus some debris on escape from Kerbin SoI)

Survival: 1 (No one died, all chaps went back home)

So, the total score is...

1.8*1.1*6*1.03*0.97*0.5*2.5*0.8*1.1*0.7*1 = 9.14

Edited January 11, 2014 by Astraph

[MagiMaster]

You can use [ imgur ] S29XN [ /imgur ] without the spaces.

For your score, there are a couple of problems. The satellite bonus only counts once (it'd be too easy to spam tons of little probes) and the debris escaping from Kerbin should count as debris in orbit around the sun for another 0.2 off. Also, you didn't get a screenshot showing the visit to the Minmus Highlands, but I trust you.

Those changes would make your score: 1.8*1.1*6*1.03*0.97*0.5*1.9*0.8*1.1*0.5*1 = 4.961

Edit: Actually, I'll let you count 2 of the satellites, one around the Mun and one around Minmus. I'll edit the rules to clarify that for anyone else. (I'm pretty sure that won't change any of the existing entries.)

Looking this over, that debris penalty is a little too brutal so I'm going to tweak that too. (This is the only entry that had any debris so far.) Two bits of debris shouldn't be the same as leaving a kerbal stranded on the Mun.

That brings your score up to 7.677.

Edited January 11, 2014 by MagiMaster

[Astraph]

Thanks for helping with Imgur. I wouldn't have figured it out by myself...

My mistake with the probes. I thought that if one can spam rovers ("Each working rover not already scored"), satellites also count - but on the other hand, I agree that putting a rover on the Mun is much more demanding than sending an orbital probe. As I said - my mistake. Also, I interpreted the "escaping debris counts towards the parent body" as all escaping debris still counting for Kerbin (which I understand as body the debris originate from - thus the "parent" one). Anyway, thanks for correcting the score... Even though I can't say I'm happy with my performace. ^^'

[MagiMaster]

I can see how that might be confusing. I meant the parent body (the body it's orbiting, not body of origin) of the body the debris is escaping from instead of the parent body of the debris. Let's see... would "Debris on an escape trajectory counts as debris in orbit around the body it is escaping to." be clearer? (It sounds a little awkward to me, but I'm not too sure how else I could phrase it.)

[Astraph]

I think the main reason behind the confusion is that I didn't understand "parent body" the same way every jargon-fluent KSP player would ^^'

Edited January 11, 2014 by Astraph

[Octobomb]

If I have a manned MMU as well as a sci sat and rovers, can I count that as an extra 0.2 in the science section please? It does weigh about 1t.

[MagiMaster]

MMU? That's cool, but probably not worth 0.2. (Even 0.1 can be a pretty big bonus depending on how well you do in the other categories.) Considering the kerbals already have MMUs built into their suits, I don't know. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? (Besides that, if it works well, you can use it to get extra biome points which are worth quite a bit.)

[Death Engineering]

I chose to stick to the standard 'rover' concept for mobility as that's the most balanced approach to hitting multiple biomes after landing. IMHO the MMU would need its own scoring category, with weighting less than a rover.

This 'hopper' isn't much heavier than the rover I brought along and has about 140km range on Mun. That could have hit at least two more biomes from my landing site. I mean, there's nothing stopping one from EVA/surface travel to every biome on a single landing, but it shouldn't be too easy to do so.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Death Engineering

[Octobomb]

Here's a pic for you of Jeb enjoying his new toy in the z-g testing chamber:

It weighs about 935kg and has it's own custom mounting bracket. I'm bringing it whatever, because it's fun to have, but I thought a bonus for it (for !!SCIENCE!! purposes) would be neat. Strictly intended for whizzing around the ship for the hell of it, I could even conceivably cheat my way through many biomes, but I rather wouldn't. If I wanted huge bonuses, I'd spam kerbals and tiny rovers (I'm taking 12, 3 (2 unmanned, 1 manned)) instead.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Octobomb

[borisperrons]

Well, I think that if yoy bring along an MMU along with the lander and use it to hop around, that should count as another rover, since it works pretty the same way.

Also, you can design an unmanned rover with roughly the same mass (to say, a cubic probe body, 4 small wheels and a fixed solar panel) so you can have the same points, although in a very less stylish way.

[Octobomb]

I never thought of having it on the lander - but it could certainly work. I'd have to take a traditionall Apollo mission there to find out.

[MagiMaster]

I agree that it serves (or at least could serve) the same basic function as a rover, so I'll let it count as one as long as you bring it down to the surface. (I'll add a note about that in the rules.)

[Octobomb]

Great. No points for orbit only then, but I'll be sure to pack one whatever. I'll test it in Munar gravity, see how well it works. If it works well, I might even give it wheels so it can drive around then climb mountains, although a hopper class craft would do better.

[borisperrons]

I might even give it wheels so it can drive around then climb mountains

An hibrid flying-wheeled rover? In my opinion, that would be cool.

[Death Engineering]

"Why bring one when you can bring four at four times the price?"

Took another look at this challenge and this time brought along some hardware purpose-built to this mission. Using four two-stage landers, each with it's own rover, and a crew of 8 kerbals, we visited 8 biomes on Mun and deployed probes around both Minmus and Mun (repurposed lander ascent-stages). All other unused orbiting hardware was either crashed into Mun or Kerbin.

Biomes visited

1. LM1 - Canyons
   
2. LM2 - East Farside Crater
   
3. LM2 - Midlands
   
4. LM2 - Northwest Crater
   
5. LM2 - Highlands
   
6. LM2 - Highland Craters
   
7. LM3 - Twin Craters
   
8. LM4 - Polar Crater
   

Scoring

Launch:

1.8 + 0.2 = 2.0

Flight plan:

0.9 + 0.1 = 1.0

Kerbals in space:

8

Kerbals in command pod:

0.7 + 0.5 = 1.2

Calculated as: (2 Lab Crew + 2 Command Module Crew) / 8 Crew

Kerbals landed:

0.3 + 0.5 = 0.8

Calculated as: 4 Lander Crew / 8 Crew

Rovers: (Note: rovers is a general category and includes all non-orbital travel devices brought down with the lander.)

0.5 + 0.5 + (0.2 * 3) = 1.6

Science:

0.5 + (0.3 * 8) + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.1 + 0.1 = 3.5

Landings:

0.6 + 0.4 + (0.1 * 3) = 1.3

Return:

1 + 0.1 = 1.1

Debris:

1

Survival:

1

Score: 2.0 * 1.0 * 8.0 * 1.2 * 0.8 * 1.6 * 3.5 * 1.3 * 1.1 * 1.0 * 1.0 = 123.0

Thanks, MagiMaster!

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Edited January 20, 2014 by Death Engineering