Visual surveys: EVA surface ones

[255]

How in the hell you do these?

The ones you have to fly over are easy, but these are just impossible to me. The most weird thing is that you don't have a marker in the normal view (Staging view); WHY??; the marker for the location is only in the Orbit Map so I cannot pinpoint the place in the final phase, I just go blind and I miss.

I could just correctly set my trajectory to land there, but the trajectory line is always wrong when inside the atmosphere. And the trajectory mod doesn't work in 0.90 yet.

Any help?

Edited December 19, 2014 by 255

[eRe4s3r]

Only way I could do them is by literally driving my "plane" there. And yes, you are not misreading, I mean landing my plane, and then driving it to the location (you can right click in track view on the target and "Enable Guidance" (or navigation) ;p But you only see it in an actual vehicle, not in EVA. And only when you upgraded both mission planning and the radar facility.

Then it shows in the NAV Ball, wait until you get the yellow text pop up that you "entered zone BLA" and then get out and make EVA report.

Far more hilarious is doing the seismic missions on the MUN, because they are like that, except you can't land on a crater wall. Not sure how to even do these missions without KAS but it's an interesting challenge, building a rover is simply not working, I don't get up or down those crater walls. Now I am just doing an rcs drone... and hope it works.

[thereaverofdarkness]

If you click on the mark in the map, you can set navigation to lead you to it. It won't show in the main view, but you can see it on the navball.

[255]

I know but the navball is not enough, I still miss it because I'm talking about the ones that require you to land there. Flying over is easy but I don't know how to correctly land there. Thanks for the planes idea, although I'm not good at building planes.

[Anquietas314]

I know but the navball is not enough, I still miss it because I'm talking about the ones that require you to land there. Flying over is easy but I don't know how to correctly land there. Thanks for the planes idea, although I'm not good at building planes.

Planes are the only practical way to do the surface ones really. Unless of course you use mechjeb or spam quicksaves to get the landings right. As for building them, here's a pretty simple plane I made yesterday that's exceeding my wildest expectations - it can actually get into orbit pretty easily. Well, it could, if it had rockets on it. It does at least get to space!

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/544139127515727677/58AA4157F31581093E7872D70F78FB4C1A84FFFA/

There's 2 more of those intakes under each wing, for 8 total.... it'll probably fly just fine with 4 though. It's also a plane you can build using the tier 1 SPH and runway

I had a slightly simpler design I used before I unlocked turbojet engines. Basically drop one of the tanks, the rectangular wing part, and replace the turbo with a basic jet. It wasn't the greatest at landings, but it could certainly get the job done (the new one is much easier to land - it doesn't stall if you drop below 60m/s lol)

[Keras]

I didn`t do these missions yet but they sound like the kind that is designed to be accomplished with the use of a rover.

[Anquietas314]

I didn`t do these missions yet but they sound like the kind that is designed to be accomplished with the use of a rover.

Heh.... I hope you enjoy driving all the way to the north pole.... (where my screenshot was taken; it's just south of the ice caps)

[255]

@ armagheddonsgw

Thinking about it it makes sense. These contracts makes use of the planes which otherwise will be useless in the first stages of the game. Well, thanks, gonna try.

Still, it makes no sense not having the mark in "Staging view".

[Anquietas314]

@ armagheddonsgw

Thinking about it it makes sense. These contracts makes use of the planes which otherwise will be useless in the first stages of the game. Well, thanks, gonna try.

Still, it makes no sense not having the mark in "Staging view".

I guess you want a big marker on the main screen? Tbh, it's not a terrible idea - I've had some trouble finding EVA report ones.... particularly when they're 5km away from my landing site on the Mun), but for ones you can do in a plane or a rover the navball is sufficient to find them.

[255]

Damn I still don't have the small gear bay ahah. Well, grinding some science I guess. Or pointing up and landing with the lander-type-gear lol. I wonder if it's possible with the jet engine.

[Anquietas314]

Damn I still don't have the small gear bay ahah. Well, grinding some science I guess. Or pointing up and landing with the lander-type-gear lol. I wonder if it's possible with the jet engine.

Yeah it is, but I wouldn't recommend trying it; the jets have a "spin-up" delay.... which, y'know, makes suicide burns a bit dangerous. You can of course use parachutes, but now you need an engineer to repack them.

[255]

Ok, unlocked the gear and did it. Took some tries to land on those terrains, but was doable. Then I returned home and I landed first try on the runaway eheh (good thing I upgraded it first).

It was actually fun, after flying so many rockets the maneuverability of a jetplane was cool.

Don't feel like doing another one of this contracts though. =_='

[Anquietas314]

Ok, unlocked the gear and did it. Took some tries to land on those terrains, but was doable. Then I returned home and I landed first try on the runaway eheh (good thing I upgraded it first).

It was actually fun, after flying so many rockets the maneuverability of a jetplane was cool.

Don't feel like doing another one of this contracts though. =_='

Congrats You don't actually need to upgrade the runway, though admittedly the tier 1 version is a little too bumpy for my liking (haven't had an "incident" yet with it though). Yeah those missions take a good long while, but you can always watch youtube or come on the forums or whatever while you're flying the however many hundred km to the target

It might be worth your while to learn to build spaceplanes though - they're typically more expensive to launch, but if you can get them safely back to the runway then you only pay for anything left in orbit and the fuel (negligible... under "normal" circumstances). I'd avoid the mk3 parts for now though, at least for something that's going to be carrying a payload to orbit; they're a bit too heavy to get off the ground without a lot of engines (my not-completely-awful design took a whopping 16 turbojets just to survive takeoff... it did handle quite nicely after that though )

[tsotha]

I'm getting these contracts long before I can build a plane or a rover. Fine Print didn't used to release them until you had the technology.

[Anquietas314]

I'm getting these contracts long before I can build a plane or a rover. Fine Print didn't used to release them until you had the technology.

Technically you can do them with rockets, it's just hard to do the EVA report ones without an accurate landing prediction... assuming you don't like walking a few km.

[Keras]

Heh.... I hope you enjoy driving all the way to the north pole.... (where my screenshot was taken; it's just south of the ice caps)

I meant sticking the rover on a rocket, landing it as close to the zone as possible and driving from there. Didn`t think I had to clarify that because for some reason I thought this was about a surface contract on Eve

[ondofpond]

It annoys me a little that I have "Supersonic Flight" but that doesn't include the turbojet. On a basic jet engine I'm finding it impossible to do a very high altitude flight so I can quickly nip around the planet to do some visual surveys. I'm not flying at sub-20k altitudes to the opposite side of Kerbin, takes forever. IMHO be much better if they allowed turbojet unlockable a bit earlier so it can be useful. Soon I won't have a contracts-driven reason to bother with it, as I'll be more interested in outer system stuff.

FWIW though, I can do visual ground missions by sticking Vernors on the belly of my jet, landing legs sticking out the back to take impacts in addition to wheels or landing legs along fuselage in conventional arrangement, plus radial chutes around nose cone. Making sure I have 2 cockipts, one for pilot and one for engineer, I then VTOL off the ground using Vernors, and when I get to target I just cut engines and open chutes, landing on tail, but making damn sure the plane falls forwards to land horizontal on its conventionally placed gear. Taxi-ing on ground helps loads so wheels rather than legs is preferable. Engineer re-packs chutes, and on to next one.

[Anquietas314]

ondofpond: that's (to me) a horrifyingly overcomplicated way to do those . I'm guessing you needed to upgrade the SPH and runway for that?

As for the turbojets, those really need to be late in the tech tree - remember you can get (almost) to orbit with pretty much any plane that has a decent number of intakes and doesn't crash 20 seconds after liftoff.

[255]

It annoys me a little that I have "Supersonic Flight" but that doesn't include the turbojet. On a basic jet engine I'm finding it impossible to do a very high altitude flight

Those, at the start of the game, should be done with rockets I guess. The EVA surface ones instead with the planes.

[Anquietas314]

Those, at the start of the game, should be done with rockets I guess. The EVA surface ones instead with the planes.

He meant contracts that were on the other side of the planet from KSC.... some of them are surface-based.