[1.2.2] Realistic Progression Zero (RP-0) - Lightweight RealismOverhaul career v0.53 June 12

[pjf]

Welcome to Realistic Progression Zero, the lightweight career add-on for Kerbal Space Program's Realism Overhaul.

RP-0 is a career mode for RealismOverhaul with minimal install requirements, and fair and balanced gameplay. Our aim is to allow players to enjoy RealismOverhaul in career mode, without installing a huge number of modules on top of those required by RealismOverhaul itself. However we also wish to ensure that RP-0 works with as many additional mods as possible; we use the Community Tech Tree for the basis of career progression, and try to place as many parts from other mods as possible in a balanced fashion without them being requirements.

When starting the game, the balance should be similar to KSP's normal career, so we recommend "Moderate" or "Hard" settings. If playing without part unlock costs, it's recommended you drop contract funds payouts to 20% to maintain balance, since in real life the research programs and the setting up of factories cost much more than serial production.

We recommend installing via the CKAN, ckan.exe install RP-0 on the command line, or just look for "Realistic Progression Zero" in the GUI.

To install manually, install all required mods, then grab the latest release from the releases page and extract the stuff in the GameData folder in the zip into your KSP/GameData folder (and overwrite as needed).

RP-0 is a community effort, and your contributions are appreciated. You can report issues on our issues page, and access the source code on github. The tech tree itself is designed to be particularly easy for humans to edit.

This top-post is jointly maintained by pjf and NathanKell.

 

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Releases Page (however, we recommend using CKAN; if installing manually be sure to install all requirements first)

Source (Github)

License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

Requirements (RP-0 will not work without this):

- Realism Overhaul and all its required and recommended (NOT SUGGESTED) mods

- Real Solar System

- Community Tech Tree

- Lack's SXT (although only the engines have RO configs as of yet)

- Ven's Stock Part Revamp

- Contract Configurator

- Custom Barn Kit

Recommended (RP-0 will not play right without these; note in addition to RO's recommended mods):

- Deadly Reentry

- Kerbal Renamer

- TestFlight

- Procedural Fairings

- Procedural Parts

- B9 Procedural Wings

- Kerbal Construction Time

- Taerobee

- Adjustable Landing Gear (NOTE: Not for 1.1 yet, alas, but RP-0 is playable without it)

- SCANsat

Supported (to varying extents, in rough order of completeness of support)

- BobCat's Soviet Engines

- FASA

- Raidernick's mods

- Habitat Pack (Bigelow habitats)

- Starshine Merlin engines

- Universal Storage

- DMagic's Orbital Science

- AIES (engines, mainly)

- Mk2 Lightning Cockpit

- B9 Aerospace

- Space Shuttle

- KAS/KIS

- Infernal Robotics

Note that more effort has gone into balancing earlier nodes than later nodes. Your feedback and assistance in balancing all nodes is appreciated!

Changelog

 

Tutorial Campaign in RP-0 (YouTube)

 

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Eye-candy from existing RP-0 games:

NathanKell's very realistic career:

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pjf's IronDoge RP-0 career:

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[OtherBarry]

Yay. This is so good.

Edited March 28, 2015 by OtherBarry

[Bender222]

if Igo on ckan and get this will it still work or was it changed for .90?

[pjf]

If I go on ckan and get this will it still work or was it changed for .90?

If you're using 0.25, then everything should work great. We won't see a 0.90 release of RP-0 until the mods we depend upon all support 0.90, and they don't yet.

The latest CKAN release (v1.3.5) fixes a few 0.25 vs 0.90 bugs, so I'd recommend grabbing that if you haven't already done so.

[Bender222]

All of the "sounding rocket" contracs that were there in testing are gone now. Without being able to earn science from the ground you are pretty much forced to choose the node with the capsule in it after the initial basic rocketry if you want to have any money. If you can make it that far.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Bender222

[Blipser]

Finally something to fill the void left by RPL, I've really enjoyed playing through the first few nodes so far, although it could do with some more Soviet engines to mix things up a bit.

[NathanKell]

Bender222: Odd. I have no trouble getting those contracts...

Blipser: soon as we get some early Soviet engines configured for RO, RP-0 will support them.

[Blipser]

soon as we get some early Soviet engines configured for RO, RP-0 will support them.

Cool, I wish I could do it myself, but I briefly dabbled in making RO configs for the Liondhead ESA launchers but found it just to hard and time consuming to pick up.

On another note this pack really lacks lightweight probe parts early on, the lightest early probe core weighs 50kg alone, next to the Pioneer moon orbiter weighing 38kg with antenna, orbital insertion engine, batteries and all, and the Vanguard I satellite weighed just under 1.5kg.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Blipser
typo

[NathanKell]

Yes, I'm sadly well aware of that one. Problem is, KSP makes no distinction between "a part that lets you transmit science results" and "a part that lets you control a 3000t rocket." So it would be a bit unbalancing if we had 1.5kg probes that could control Saturn Vs. I have a feature request for RemoteTech to handle this, though.

[Blipser]

Would it not be possible to make a system where you need to have certain part present, i.e. an apropriate avionics ring, before vessels above a certain mass can be launched? So by placing a small probe core your maximum launch mass is 500kg, but when you add a small avionics ring it increases to 150t? Sort of like how tech nodes limit launch mass in BTSM? Or would that be incredibly difficult?

[Bender222]

Some nice contracts and nodes with an early scansat integration to map biomes would be kinda cool.

[Bender222]

Bender222: Odd. I have no trouble getting those contracts...

Blipser: soon as we get some early Soviet engines configured for RO, RP-0 will support them.

something is up then. I even tried reinstalling rp-0. I start a career with default settings and enable CTT in the prompt and just like before and it still only shows crewed orbit return as my first only contract,

I think it has something to do with non windows installs as someone else has contacted me with the same issue.

Edited December 19, 2014 by Bender222

[Bender222]

I really think you should have access to a heatshield with mystery goo, otherwise you dont get nearly enough science because you cant return from space.

Edited December 19, 2014 by Bender222

[NathanKell]

You do, they're in Survivability.

[Bender222]

which requires 40 more science.

I guess you can disregard everything Ive said recently, alot of stuff seems to be different or wrong with my install so its making trivial things super hard. I am going broke trying to get enough science to unlock the second tier. Does the built in RCS on the capsule not work until you have the other thrusters unlocked too? I did a normal ckan install but ppicked up sxt engines and ven's revamp to go along. As far as I know it should be working.

Edited December 20, 2014 by Bender222

[OtherBarry]

which requires 40 more science.

Well it ain't meant to be easy. And it seems apt to me. First you can only try it out (see: sputnik 2) then after you learn stuff from that, you can bring it back.

[pjf]

Well it ain't meant to be easy.

I started off with a 0.5 science gain multiplier, and then popped it up to 1.0 because I found science returns were too scarce. I know Nathan adjusted the science costs of some of the nodes, but I don't know if that made them harder or easier.

Having said that, I managed to get some reasonable science returns with the mystery goo to flying low and flying high, neither of which requires a heatshield. Once the Science Jr unlocks it can also be used in similar situations.

But yes, I'm also concerned starting science might be a bit thin, especially for players like myself who want to get through the early tech relatively quickly so we can reach the more interested things like orbital science labs and moon colonies. There's a discussion of adding a Geiger counter to starting tech (requires FASA installed) and *integrating* a geiger counter into all probes if FASA is not installed (so you don't *have* to have FASA for balance). I know Nathan and OtherBarry have been discussing early science experiments quite a bit, although I've been looking more at DMagic's Orbital Science for later-game experiments. (If nothing else because all the parts look awesome, and DMagic is awesome to work with.)

~ Paul

[NathanKell]

Basic Rocketry is 25 science now, but that's easy to hit with a few sounding rocket flights and eventually getting out of the atmosphere. The next tier of nodes are 15, 25, and 40 IIRC. Also, the thermometer and the probe report are enabled for biomes everywhere, so there's a ton of science compared to stock KSP and a tonne^2 once you achieve orbit and can get all the biomes.

[Bender222]

I had pruned all the sxt parts except the engines because the Op said there were no RO configs. In doing so I got rid of alot of parts that make the early game alot easier. I still think though if I had the starter contracts instead of skipping to ones that require 60 science worth of tech tree development I'd be ok. When I reinstalled Everything (this time with a bit more sxt parts) I still had the return crewed craft from orbit as my first contract. My game keeps repetedly crashing qhen I try to change the tweakables. looks like im going to have to wait till it is update to .90 to play

Edited December 20, 2014 by Bender222

[Bob Jub]

I hit a snag

[NathanKell]

Hello!

I have just seen the pictures of your semi historical rockets in the thread of the Realistic Progression Zero mod and they look absolutely lovely and very realistic.

Can you please tell me what kinds of mods and part packs did you use to make those rockets? I think I can see some nicely done engines that I did not notice in the game before and also either they are without tankbutts or you have found a way to deal with it?

Thanks! The engines are from Ven's Stock Revamp, which is strongly, strongly recommended (see OP/readme) for RP-0.

How do you make the orange tank endcaps between the stages with the procedural parts? Do you use part clipping of some sort?

Often I do, yes. I also take advantage of the fact that fairing bases often have 3 nodes, not two.

What kind of environmental visual enhancement do you use?

pingopete's RVE.

Also regarding our talk on attitude control systems what of those methods do those particular rockets use?

Gimballed engines, RCS on upper stages / payloads. Spin stabilization for small payloads with solid kick motors.

And you described some really big safe payload mass ranges for some of those rockets unless I am missing something. It is quite hard for me to actually imagine how to make a rocket capable of that and still be safely controllable.

Thank you!

Um, I'm confused. The only payload mass I mention is Vanguard's, in that it lofts a 60kg satellite. I don't talk about mass ranges...

[Kitspace]

Thank you!

Fairing bases with the third node? I only noticed the procedural ones on the pictures and they have just two to the best of my knowledge. Or do you mean the fixed node of the interstage?

Where did you get the current RVE?

Does it have a new thread or something? Nothing changed for some time already in the thread that I know of and there are no downloads because its build is raw and buggy as the author says.

Regarding the payload masses I mean the thrust to weight ratios that are visible in the screenshots and yes sixty kilograms and one kilogram is quite a big range in my opinion.

Also Mechjeb says that there are some places with thrust to weight of fifty or something like that. Is it because of the Atlas booster style staging that it does not understand as far as I know?

[Kitspace]

Also forgot to ask if the engines from the stock revamp work with the usual sandbox overhaul or do they specifically require the career mod in particular for their real configs?

[Bender222]

Thank you!

Fairing bases with the third node? I only noticed the procedural ones on the pictures and they have just two to the best of my knowledge. Or do you mean the fixed node of the interstage?

Where did you get the current RVE?

Does it have a new thread or something? Nothing changed for some time already in the thread that I know of and there are no downloads because its build is raw and buggy as the author says.

Regarding the payload masses I mean the thrust to weight ratios that are visible in the screenshots and yes sixty kilograms and one kilogram is quite a big range in my opinion.

Also Mechjeb says that there are some places with thrust to weight of fifty or something like that. Is it because of the Atlas booster style staging that it does not understand as far as I know?

It should not matter as procedural fairings are available from the beginning and they resize themselves to fit any payload. There is also the "fairing base ring" (sic) one but it seems that it is not resizing itself the last few of my installs.You can get Rve from github (google "RVE github") I have been unable to get RVE to even show clouds, I followed all documentation (even using rbrays .dlls) regular Eve from ckan seems to work fairly well (remove the city lights)

Mechjeb has problems with the atlas style staging, I'm not even sure how you got it to display two separate thrust stages As far as I know the engines work in either career or sandbox and there should be no reason why they shouldn't. To make the curved tanks under the stages I use a second procedural tank set to cryogenic orange texture nd the smooth cone shape.I set the top to be slightly smaller diameter then the first procedural tank.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Bender222

[Bender222]

the Fasa engines without tank butts are awesome but the parts are not all in an "engines" folder and I never had the time to sort through the other folder to separate them.