Splashdown missions

[ceauke]

Hi guys

I'm a bit confused with the splashdown mission. I had to test a BACC solid rocket with splashdown.

I learned that i need to have the criteria (be on kerbal, and splashdown) FIRST before I can activate my booster... WTF!?!?

I tried SO many times. Decoupling ANYTHING and trying to get it to splash so that I can fire the booster, but for some reason, whatever I decoupled always ended up in the water after my remaining ship reached the water. Causing crashes etc for the rocket that I would like to light.

In the end, I 'cheated' and just let my current ship (with BACC) touch the water, trigger the splash and IMMEDIATELY (milliseconds) after activate the BACC. I'm sure that's not what the mission intended but then on the other hand, I'm not sure what the mission actually tries to get you to do. Basically it felt more like a puzzle rather than a obvious envelope extension mission.

Am I missing something? In general I think I'm missing how the missions in career mode are working. Why not just accept them all and hope you achieve some of them on the way up!?

Any specific ones don't seem to pay enough for all my failed attempts. It basically forces me to revert all the time. I was 'happy' getting a bit of green blood over everything before. Now it feels like I'm rewinding constantly until I just get perfect launches.

Edited August 20, 2014 by ceauke
Answered, thanks!

[Strainborm]

Here's the way I did this sort of contracts In VAB I would build this sort of stack: small capsule, the BACC with lots of parachutes and no fuel, stack decoupler, RT-10 with a little bit of fuel and some control surfaces. Then I would launch it, turn it towards the ocean, decouple the RT-10 and deploy chutes, and once I'm splashed down, activate the BACC and get the contract done

[Kerolyov]

I don't think you're missing anything. The conditions of the test are that you must only stage that part type under the correct conditions (ie green ticks next to all conditions on the contracts tab in toolbar), so to do that you need to have a special stage on your rocket that contains the test part and not fire any of that part type until you are ready to test it.

So for your splash down test I recommend building a wide ship (less likely to topple) with plenty of parachutes and either different type of booster or liquid fueled rocket to take off with. Then like Strainbom says just take off and parachute into the sea, splashdown then activate the test part and recover.

I gather the devs decided to make the contracts a challenge by forcing you to design a ship that allows you carry out the test, its not meant to replicate real world rocket testing, so you're right its more like a procedurally generated puzzle.

[Simes]

Don't forget that you can also set the amount of fuel in the BACC when building the ship in the VAB. Parts tests will still succeed on a booster with no fuel, and that way you don't need to worry about crashes or explosions or decoupling things before testing them.

[AlexanderB]

Aaaand you can also fire the booster manually-rightclick or with an action group and burn it *before* activating the "test" by staging it.

Same with parts that have "test part" button, for example "test the rapier in orbit", you're not gonna drag a dead rapier up there with a rocket, you just build a spaceplane, fly to orbit, and "test part" there..

[Wanderfound]

If you're really having trouble:

Build a rover. Strap the test part on top. Drive it off the end of the runway into the ocean. Test.

A mostly-defuelled and thrust-limited RT-10 with a parachute and a Stayputnik is usually quicker, though.

[ceauke]

Hey guys

Thanks a lot for the legendary responses!

I was thinking around the right lines then. Can't wait to have AIRCRAFT parts and I'll just fly to to right altitude and do drop and burn tests then. I always thought of this for a creative way of doing this. e.g. giving my self an additional objective to build a droptest plane but reuse it for a bunch of tests. creative engineering cheating

The ONE thing I couldnt' figure out was to DRIVE the rocket to the ocean :-) very funny.

I dont have wheels yet but wouldn't have thought about that. The other option was to eject a piece of girding with a chute but the problem is I can't fly low enough to get it (With the chute) to land BEFORE I crash with my rocket. (BTW, can you defer deployment of a chute on a stage that's already jettisoned?)

From a puzzle point of view I'm ok that we have puzzles to solve sometimes rather than just logical tests, but still... SPLAHSDOWN + Light, must be a single scenario that some developer built in. What else can happen with splashdown... Maybe fly to the moon and splash down? Is it a coincidence that the simulator came up with splashdown + 'relit' or is there ANYWHERE EVER where someone would willingly do it? Or do we have an evil developer?

Lastly, how about all the reverts? If you remove my reverts (Which is basically time-travelling) if you look at my performance, I ALWAYS succeed in a mission. I would have preferred if I suffer some penalty for crashing rather than reverting all the time. Currently the penalty is just too much. I run out of money after trying anything 5 times. (I crash A LOT My Kerbals must breed like rabbits to replenish the kerbanaut corps )

[Wanderfound]

Rationale for splashdown tests: to see if it can be reused.

BTW: if you detach the part before you test it, it's not gonna work unless you've stuck a probe core on it.

The other trick is that the test doesn't say that the rocket has to have any fuel. As well as avoiding complicating your flight with a sudden increase in thrust, it's also worth remembering that 90% of the mass of a solid booster is the fuel. If you use the tweakables to remove that, it's now an easy-to-transport lightweight pipe.

OTOH, sometimes a sudden increase in thrust is quite fun: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87950-Testing-times

As for reverts: if you want to, go to the debug menu (alt-F12), disable revert and quickload. A lot of the more experienced players are running "ironman mode" these days: no revert, no quickload, no respawning of dead Kerbals.

There were a lot of memorial services for Jeb, Bill and Bob in the week after .24 was released.