[0.90.0] Fine Print vSTOCK'D - BETA RELEASE!!! (December 15)

[Arsonide]

Finally made a breakthrough:

[Superfluous J]

Finally made a breakthrough:

http://puu.sh/aSO0s/aa10cf35ce.jpg

Nice! Any chance for direction markers? Instead of the little "orbit" symbols, 4 arrows pointing in the correct direction would do wonders, I think.

[juanml82]

Arsonide, I have a feature suggestion/request... Supply contracts! They would come in two types, orbital and surface.

Orbital supply contracts would work like they do IRL, requiring you to deliver a payload supplies to an existing Space Station. Surface supply contracts would be similar, except instead of docking, you'd just need to land within a certain radius of a Base (or a marker that your mod places).

Payload wise I'm only thinking about stock items such as crew, fuel, monoprop, etc. While it'd be nice for the payload to support resources implemented by other mods such as TACLS, I'd imagine you'd want to leave that up to the other mod's authors via a plugin system.

Depending on how in depth you wanted to make it, you could also specify what Kerbals should be brought back home to make crew rotation contracts. As for supplies, something as basic as "dock/land with at least 'X' resource remaining" I think would work as a completion parameter.

I scanned a few pages back and didn't see anyone mention an idea like this, but I didn't read all 45 pages so hopefully I'm just not re-hashing an idea you've already seen!

The problem with supplies within Kerbin is one of immersion. You don't use expensive spacecraft to deliver goods within a planet. You use seagoing ships and, only if you need speed, atmospheric aircraft. However, the same mechanic could be applied as touristic flights: instead of delivering cargo, some rich kerbal is paying the Kerbal Space Program for a suborbital or orbital ride. The immersion catch is that I'm not sure if a mod can require that a specific kerbal is aboard a ship and that someone else (or a probe) must command the vessel. Then again, the rescue kerbal vanilla contracts do the first part.

[Arsonide]

Nice! Any chance for direction markers? Instead of the little "orbit" symbols, 4 arrows pointing in the correct direction would do wonders, I think.

The arrows are in screen space, not world space, this would look awkward if the camera rotated, so no, I cannot do that. GUI textures cannot rotate smoothly. What I plan on doing is making the orbit markers very translucent and ghostlike, and adding the four important markers over them at higher opacities.

[IronGremlin]

The arrows are in screen space, not world space, this would look awkward if the camera rotated, so no, I cannot do that. GUI textures cannot rotate smoothly. What I plan on doing is making the orbit markers very translucent and ghostlike, and adding the four important markers over them at higher opacities.

Not sure if it's worth the trouble, especially considering how crazy ksp is with it's coordinate system, but it might be worth checking out the vecdraw stuff they've made for the KoS plugin - it renders properly in the map view independently of camera angle

[Arsonide]

Not sure if it's worth the trouble, especially considering how crazy ksp is with it's coordinate system, but it might be worth checking out the vecdraw stuff they've made for the KoS plugin - it renders properly in the map view independently of camera angle

Looks like a feature that draws using world coordinates as opposed to screen coordinates, which is what my waypoints use. I might rig something like this together in the future, no promises, but right now I have bigger fish to fry.

[juanml82]

Ok, I think I've nearly nailed the Kerbin rover contract. Small rover with a small fuel tank, a single 48-7s and a parachute on top of four S1 SRBs. The rockets can pull it to a 170 km Ap and, if the inclination change started with the rockets still firing, it's possible to aim the landing in the general area of the anomalies. The rockets might be recovered with a probe and enough chutes (or the stage recovery mod). And even if they aren't, it might still be within budget, if slightly. As usual, mixing it with parts contracts (if any) can help.

The rover must have a command pod that's perpendicular to the ground, otherwise the nav point will not show up in the nav ball, as the nav ball will only show up the sky.

Now, there is a problem in Kerbin - water. Which is specially true when the anomalies spawn in a hill next to the sea. So I've ended up landing the rover at some 150 km from the nav points. Some people seem to enjoy long voyages in a rover. I don't, so after some 15 minutes, a lot of reloads and only advancing some 10-20 km, I've used hyperedit to cheat and drop my lander nearby. But I'm now packing for the night - the last time before I've reloaded, my rover went downhill towards the sea because it had run out of power before I realized and braked.

Maybe this missions are better completed, if budget permits, by some sort of rover/vtol aircraft combo. Hilly, uneven terrain by the sea is a risky place to target from orbit, but safer areas for landing might cause the lander to land too far to go on wheels. So maybe it works best if the four SRBs throw something with rover wheels that can fly as well, so you can land in a safer place and approach the nav points at faster speeds than 20 m/s

[Dingbat1967]

Can someone explain to me with pics how the waypoint system works for rovers? I have no idea where I should "point" my rover via the navball. It really ain't clear. I know this sounds stupid but ... need a hint.

[Arsonide]

Can someone explain to me with pics how the waypoint system works for rovers? I have no idea where I should "point" my rover via the navball. It really ain't clear. I know this sounds stupid but ... need a hint.

Click the waypoint in the main map that you wish to go to. It will appear on your navball.

Maybe this missions are better completed, if budget permits, by some sort of rover/vtol aircraft combo. Hilly, uneven terrain by the sea is a risky place to target from orbit

That's the spirit, view the mission ahead of time, and build a craft to the specifications of the mission. Every mission is a snowflake that requires special consideration.

[Dingbat1967]

I know that ... however it seems to appear outside the navball view area.

[Arsonide]

I know that ... however it seems to appear outside the navball view area.

What mods are you running, and are you running 64 bit?

[archont]

The problem with supplies within Kerbin is one of immersion. You don't use expensive spacecraft to deliver goods within a planet. You use seagoing ships and, only if you need speed, atmospheric aircraft. However, the same mechanic could be applied as touristic flights: instead of delivering cargo, some rich kerbal is paying the Kerbal Space Program for a suborbital or orbital ride. The immersion catch is that I'm not sure if a mod can require that a specific kerbal is aboard a ship and that someone else (or a probe) must command the vessel. Then again, the rescue kerbal vanilla contracts do the first part.

Speaking of immersion, consider the tone of the game. Having a contract to deliver a hot gourmet lunch for a kerbal chef of the planet contest, with 20 minutes to do it for example. I don't think a contract like that would be out of tone as far as stock KSP goes. There's also potential for additional difficulty - the lasagna is rated to withstand 10g, anything over that and the mission is a failure.

We need more contracts that involve planes, there's currently little incentive to build them. Spaceplanes are feasible late-game onwards, but because rockets are simpler and faster to build and launch, most players prefer to use them instead. Regular planes are good for getting around Kerbin, but other than the single-digit biome science, there's little reason to.

Arsonide - can't wait until satellite contracts are working properly. They're my main cash flow early game and so far I've had to cheat-complete all of them.

[colmo]

We need more contracts that involve planes, there's currently little incentive to build them. Spaceplanes are feasible late-game onwards, but because rockets are simpler and faster to build and launch, most players prefer to use them instead. Regular planes are good for getting around Kerbin, but other than the single-digit biome science, there's little reason to.

I have an aircraft carrier touring Kerbin precisely for this reason. The returns aren't that great, but the trick is to get a lot of aerial surveys to give you plenty of targets.

Now, it's a whole other ball game if they were to start appearing on Laythe...

[forsaken1111]

Am I the only one who does aerial surveys with brute force rockets?

My rocket surveyor screams out of the atmosphere with a TWR of >5 and comes back in on a suborbital trajectory over the target site then hovers on high efficiency turbojet engines while it dicks around trying to get precisely over the way-too-sensitive target areas.

[Jaxx]

Am I the only one who does aerial surveys with brute force rockets?

My rocket surveyor screams out of the atmosphere with a TWR of >5 and comes back in on a suborbital trajectory over the target site then hovers on high efficiency turbojet engines while it dicks around trying to get precisely over the way-too-sensitive target areas.

You're not allowed to complain about the systems when you're not actually using the proper hardware.

[forsaken1111]

You're not allowed to complain about the systems when you're not actually using the proper hardware.

He said that the aerial survey missions are deliberately left open so you can use whatever you want. There is no 'proper hardware'

But more seriously, I find it much easier to get the target site surveyed while hovering than trying to hit it while moving at high speed in a jet.

[kStrout]

You should also have rich civilian kerbals, looking for a cheap home in space.

[forsaken1111]

You should also have rich civilian kerbals, looking for a cheap home in space.

Oh that would be neat if you could do a long term project with an objective of like "Place kerbal in orbital habitat for 30 days". Makes it even harder if you have a life support plugin.

[Jaxx]

Oh that would be neat if you could do a long term project with an objective of like "Place kerbal in orbital habitat for 30 days". Makes it even harder if you have a life support plugin.

This would be nice to pair with TAC-LS, once it's at least in a stable release, since a contract like that wouldn't have any challenge to it without a time-centric factor.

He said that the aerial survey missions are deliberately left open so you can use whatever you want. There is no 'proper hardware'

But more seriously, I find it much easier to get the target site surveyed while hovering than trying to hit it while moving at high speed in a jet.

I was actually just talking about screaming towards it in a sub-orbital trajectory, since I'm currently pairing it with : Infernal Robotics for a VTOL setup; Karbonite for a single launch, go-anywhere-on-Kerbin vehicle; and Firespitter for some helicopter parts. But yeah, whatever floats your boat and/or tears your wings off at mach 3.

[forsaken1111]

Funny you say that. I actually did end up losing all my wings across one side the first time I launched this thing.

[Jaxx]

Using a non-stock aerodynamics model or no?

[forsaken1111]

Using a non-stock aerodynamics model or no?

Yeah using NEAR. FAR is a bit much for me but NEAR works quite well.

[Jaxx]

Yeah, I started with FAR from the get-go so I'm basically conditioned. I can't even help people with stock problems because I forget how much....well, easier it is sometimes, give them way too much to do. But yeah, I've started putting a whole lot of safety chutes for emergencies since the First Contract update. Haven't gone so far as to have no reversions, I'm not that hardcore.

[juanml82]

I know that ... however it seems to appear outside the navball view area.

How is your rover's command pod located? Here's the thing: if you have your command pod parallel to the ground, the navball will only be blue, as your command pod is point upwards. Which is good if you need to land it, for instance. But it sucks at land navigation.

So you'll also need another command pod perpendicular to the ground, or a seat with a kerbal on it so the navball is half sky half ground, and then you'll be able to see the navpoints.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, I started with FAR from the get-go so I'm basically conditioned. I can't even help people with stock problems because I forget how much....well, easier it is sometimes, give them way too much to do. But yeah, I've started putting a whole lot of safety chutes for emergencies since the First Contract update. Haven't gone so far as to have no reversions, I'm not that hardcore.

Most of my command pods have been modded to include integrated decouplers and I always put on emergency sepratrons. I'm playing an 'ironman' style career game so dead kerbals stay dead. I'm very cautious.