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What's The One Thing That Niggles You About KSP


NeoMorph

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Has anyone ever built a rocket, got it built perfectly and then you add the launch stabilisers and go to launch it... only when you light the touch paper and the rockets fire and you find that YOUR LAUNCH STABILISERS ARE LINKED TO STAGE 1 INSTEAD OF THE MAIN LAUNCH STAGE??? Arrrgg... my fault... my fault. Back to the assembly building (good job I don't work for NASA).

Seriously... I forget EVERY darn time to set the stabilisers to release when the main engines fire. It's only a few seconds to go back to the assembly building and move them to the right stage but man, does it make me grind my teeth in frustration. It's ultimately my fault but oh, I wish they defaulted to the last stage you have in your stack instead of getting dumped into the stage they are linked to.

Funniest incident was when all the stabilisers but one (which was attached about 2/3 the way up the stack) were set up right and when the engines fired the whole rocket started spinning around the one anchor... would have turned into a huge Catherine Wheel except everything blew up rather spectacularly on the third turn... Not seen it happen like that since but have had plenty launches that I had to abort because the stabilisers were attached in random seeming stages.

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IF you notice it before you launch you can change the staging on the pad so no need to go back to the VAB (this flight only, remember to change them properly for the next launch!) ;-)

My biggest annoyance with clamps is that whenever I think I need them they are almost bound to collide with something and cause more trouble than they solve.

Now I only use them on VTOL (VAB) jet launches in order to give the engines time to spool-up to the required thrust.

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Terrain seams ripping the wheels off my rovers and scattering their debris in a 40 meter line from the impact site. As if it wasn't already hard enough to get to the Mun, then get science on the Mun, now I have to send two ships: a new science hunter and a rescue mission.

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IF you notice it before you launch you can change the staging on the pad so no need to go back to the VAB (this flight only, remember to change them properly for the next launch!) ;-)

My biggest annoyance with clamps is that whenever I think I need them they are almost bound to collide with something and cause more trouble than they solve.

Now I only use them on VTOL (VAB) jet launches in order to give the engines time to spool-up to the required thrust.

I had a funny way of solving this problem. Once I made a quite spectacularly complex rocket that had the fatal flaw that when the launchpad finished loading, immediately the top of the rocket began wobbling and fall over BEFORE I had a chance to do anything. I knew once I got it into the air that I would be fine because my rocket required that I have the standard booster-from-below, but also what my friends have decided to call, a kite-booster-from-above. The kite doesn't quite PULL the rocket (though I have made ones that did that), but it mainly exists to keep the rocket stable in flight...sort of...lol... Anyway, I couldn't use the stabilizers because their trusses conflicted with the lower booster.

So what I did was that I put a radial decoupler on the edge of the upper part, then I mounted a strut/truss on there, basically making a large rod sticking out the side of the craft, far enough away that I could attach a stabilizer onto the end of the bar! But you can't just decouple the stabilizer and the radial decoupler at the same time, you'd have this big bar flop down onto your ship and cause you problems...so I put two separatrons on the rod so that it would go shooting away into the distance (spinning around its long axis). The result was that when I loaded, everything was fine and stable then when I hit launch the stabilizers detach, the radial decouplers detach, and the separatrons send the rods shooting out into the distance. It is somewhat terrifying once this massive thing launches into the air, to see one of those rods somehow turn around in a long arc and fly directly towards you like a seeking missile. Luckily the rod ran out of fuel and ended up flying under me. My special kite and booster system worked wonderfully!

The craft in question was of a sort that I love to make, something so ridiculous and stupid that in order to get it into orbit I MUST work as a team WITH mechjeb. It is not a matter of letting mechjeb do the work and sitting back, oh no, this rocket is too ridiculous for mechjeb to control properly, it just explodes. But, I cannot pilot the rocket on my own without mechjeb handing the proper throttle, staging, and constantly providing me with direction updates on where I need to have the rocket pointed...I just don't have enough fingers. You see, the kite system stabilizes the rocket so that I can direct it without it just going into a tumble. But in order to actually make gravity turns without falling over into a tumble, I need to mount rockets that JUST push me left, right, forward, back on the kite so I can force the end to point where I need it. I use several of the number keys, set up so say 0 activates the rockets that push me right, and deactivates the rockets pushing left. It is lovely seeing these things get into orbit knowing the effort it took.

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That launch clamps aren't variable in length so they can only be attached to my lowest stage.

here:

6qXXm.jpg

if I tried to attached to the upper part of the rocket the clamps won't attach because they clip through the lower tanks.

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Accidently pressing F5 (Quick save) instead of F9 (Quick load)…

That is a moment of mental breakdown sometimes

I feel your pain. That is actually the worst feeling after having deliberately quicksaved so that you can avoid redoing the entire mission, and then all that work and forethought to save goes away with a quick press of F5. Done it myself too many times.

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Tonight I got a ship all the way to Duna, did science in orbit, and got it back to Kerbin to find out that I didn't have a stack decoupler to drop the nuclear engine.

Thus my craft was too heavy for my parachutes and I lost about 3/4 of my science. It wasn't even from a catostrophic crash. No, it landed without issue but was too tall and fell over. THAT was was did in most of my experiments.

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I had to make a workaround of the short launch clamp length for a Saturn V I made

dRjfEpHl.jpg

It works great if you put the ullage motors in the right place...or else you get a rapid unplanned disassembly of the booster. :rolleyes:

But, I hate how my rockets turn into fish during launch, thinking they can go faster by flopping. :sealed: It can be amusing too.

PS: Never put launch clamps on your rockets where your winglets are, where the clamps clip inside the winglets. The rocket will slide around to Kerbol and back :sticktongue:

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1 - the launch clamps always attach to the second stage

2 - no data about TWR available

3 - the navball is always closed down when you first go to map view (normally as you are doing your gravity turn)

4 - lots of things I see in mods that should be standard

5 - the fairings on nuclear engines

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Maneuver nodes! They close, they disappear completely, they can't be added after an SOI change, they jump one orbit ahead and burn time predictions are worse that the weather forecast in the 80s.

It would also be easy to force 1x warp on every SOI change to keep errors to a minimum. Basically implement Precise Node and Kerbal Alarm Clock.

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