[WIP] v0.5 SKRX - A 1/7/4 RSS config with extras like a GP2 !

[SkyRex94]

SKRX - SkyRex' Kerbalistic RSS eXpansion

I was undecided which RSS config I really like to choose for my new Career and came to the conclusion, that none of the existing ones is exactly as I would like my game to be. So I decided to make my own RSS config and while I'm at it I can also share it with you, maybe someone else also has my taste of gameplay.

So what have I done and what is 'Kerbalistic'? : Kerbalistic is a mixture of Realism to a certain degree and the the Kerbal Universe. All stock parts shall still be senseful usable, but your rockets shall look realistic and the distances of the planets shall look believable, it should have a semi-realistic sense of challenge, the surface shall look good, but also a low orbit shall look good. Impossible? No, I found a sweet spot where at least I am quite happy with the result.

All Planets where scaled up with a factor of 4.

All Distances where scaled up with a factor of 7.

4 is a good balance, where the PQS still looks pretty good ( even little better than stock in some places) and where making orbit is also quite a challenge. I came to this point because I was unsatisfied with both 3.2x and 5x Rescale.

7 is bigger than 4 that means the proportions of the view have changed. Kerbin-Moon relation now looks a lot more realistic(-ish) . Space feels properly big with this. Additionally it pushes the difficulty further up than what 4x rescale would do alone. Which also adds to properly sized rockets for appropiate tasks, while also having nice looking planets.

So in a Stock/Distances/Sizes manner this is a 1/7/4 RSS reconfig.

LKO speed is about 4600 m/s. DeltaV to LKO is around 6000-6500 m/s

Additional changes:

I wanted this to be a lightweight reconfig, with a proven mod (RSS) and not use Kittopia or Kopernicus, since they still have some bugs and especially Kopernicus seems to have stopped developing. So the aim is to create the System I, personally, want to have in KSP wihle only using RSS.

For this, I took some of the most unvisited (IMO) and unrealistic or boring planets of Stock and reconfigured them to create what I think is a more interesting stock experience.

Ike: Always found it was boring, too big compared to Duna, and has too less Craters for a Rock-Moon. So I promoted Ike to be the 2nd Gas Giant . I call it Syterion, nearly twice as far as Jool, a little bigger , and with a custom blue skin (Thanks goes to Felsmak, who created the Texture and is a really talented person for those things. )

Gilly: now Syterions(Ikes) innermost moon. Has kept its 1x Scale to keep it bumpy and as an Asteroid. In the Futre it is planned that its Orbit is in the Gap of Syterions Ring System, providing Awesome View.

Eeloo: 4xScaled and moved into Syterions orbit. It orbits Retrograde and pretty close, offering a hole new Challenge. 2nd moon of Syterion.

(Analouge to Enceladus combined with Triton)

Pol: Due to it having the color I wanted, I promoted Pol to become an Analouge for Titan. Now 3rd moon of Syterion, 1700km radius ( between Laythe and Duna in size) , 0.5 G ASL , and a thick atmosphere extending out to 510 km. PQS data changed, has a rough mountainious surface, looks really good on surface IMO.

Dres: least liked body in stock. Made it an Analouge of Iapetus, now Syterions 4th moon , with an inclined orbit.

Bop: New moon of Duna. Still in 1x Scale to keep proportions nice. Now looks properly orbiting Duna and not oversized (Analouge of Phobos and Deimos)

Minmus: Has been scaled down to make it bumpier (20km diameter now) and moved into an elliptic solar orbit. KSP has a proper comet now.

KSC: The KSC got moved to a new location. making it ca. 10 degrees off from the equator to make launches more advanced.

Here I'm looking for someone who is talented with EVE. Since Ike and Pol haven't had an atmo, they have no visible atmo-color. I'd like to change this with adding clouds and cloud textures. I seem to make something wrong, I can get thick volumetrics to work as intended on Pol, but cloud-textures always appear thousands of Km above the surface. No idea why. If someone feels like experimenting, and creates a Titan-like Atmosphere for Pol, I will happily include that config in this.

Planned things:

Pol and Syterion will get EVE clouds at some point. especially volumetrics, to cover up the missing atmo-color. Update: apparently since pol has some issues with EVE I don't know yet if there is any way to add clouds to it.

If possible I'd like to Give Syterion a Ring System with Volumetric Dust from EVE. Not sure if it can be made, but I imagine it would look cool, especially from Gilly and when flown through.

Pictures:

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Changelog:

Verion 0.1: initial WP showcase

0.2: moved Bop to Duna and Gilly to Syterion, made Eeloo orbit retrograde and refined some orbit and atmo-values.

0.5: Made Minmus a comet. Moved the KSC. Added optional Kittopia config. refined some values.

WIP-Download:

KerbalStuff

Licence: CC-BY-NC-SA

Includes RSS by NathanKell.

Includes DDSLoader for RSS by Sarbian.

(Includes EVE by rbray89)--not yet but as soon as there are nice looking clouds for Pol and Syterion.

I took inspiration for the config from GregroxMun's RSS configs and WinterOwls recent apollo video RSS config.

Two config files for Kittopia Tech are included but clearly optional. They add an Atmosphere Mesh to Pol and a Ring System to Systerion (Ike) .

Bugs:

- There seemed to be a bug with the proper surface location of Gilly. Have to further Test this. Post Info if you experienced anything.

Additional question: Does somebody know a mod that isn't in development (speaking 'apart from Kittopia'), which can create Rings? properly colored rings?

Share your opinion about Minmus, and if you find any bugs and of course your experience with it.

Cheers

SkyRex94

Edited February 5, 2015 by SkyRex94
updated

[Reddragon]

Interesting but the KerbalStuff link doesn't work.

[Nicholander]

The KerbalStuff link is also not working for me, but on the other hand, I think that Minmus should be made into a comet.

[SkyRex94]

Interesting but the KerbalStuff link doesn't work.

The KerbalStuff link is also not working for me, but on the other hand, I think that Minmus should be made into a comet.

Ohh well, quick look , worked for me... some wondering.... and then saw that I hadn't clicked on the 'publish' button yet . Should work now

[Whirligig Girl]

Well I guess I don't have a purpose in life anymore.

And the rectangle of water, by the way, is actually from the modified config that I use in my configs, which happens to bring back the good ol' lake from the 0.15-0.17 terrain engine. In my configs it looks fine, and it looks like it did back then (with the proper ground color of course) I don't know how to get rid of the rectangle, that's just why it's there.

It's visible here and it looks mostly the same in Jumbo32 and Jumbo5x.

With Ike, Dres, Pol, and Eeloo being relocated, iirc, it's a really bad idea to use RSS's renaming function. Not even the RealSolarSystem config itself uses it. Redescription should be fine.

Edited January 31, 2015 by GregroxMun

[SkyRex94]

Well I guess I don't have a purpose in life anymore.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m26nvnNG5o1qkk10ro1_500.jpg

And the rectangle of water, by the way, is actually from the modified config that I use in my configs, which happens to bring back the good ol' lake from the 0.15-0.17 terrain engine. In my configs it looks fine, and it looks like it did back then (with the proper ground color of course) I don't know how to get rid of the rectangle, that's just why it's there.

It's visible here and it looks mostly the same in Jumbo32 and Jumbo5x.

With Ike, Dres, Pol, and Eeloo being relocated, iirc, it's a really bad idea to use RSS's renaming function. Not even the RealSolarSystem config itself uses it. Redescription should be fine.

Well no, thats not the lake I meant. I like the lake near KSC, I liked it in your configs and I'm happy it also appeared in mine , no what I meant is a perfectly rectangular piece of water that even is slightly above sea level slightly west of KSC. (Maybe its from the trial and error relocations of KSC and the pool from the admin building)

And I'm not renaming Anything, I know that is not good in RSS. Syterion is still refered to as Ike and only named Syterion in the placeholder description, and the rest has kept it names anyway.

And I'm sorry your configs finally didn't hit my taste. I wanted something with the Ground of your J32 and with the difficulty of your 5x or higher. Nothing like that existed, so I thought I 'll try create it myself and implement my Syterion while I'm at it

[Chezburgar7300]

Problems with EVE? PM me detailing exactly what's happening and I should be able to help out.

[SkyRex94]

updated version and OP . Bop and Gilly were moved too. eeloo orbits retrograde(Combining an Analouge of Enceladus and Triton) Especially that change looks really AWESOME in movement, but it's challenging to get to if not already planned when entering Syterions SOI.

Would make a Syterion-4 Challenge extremly Challenging...

Pol is extremly eas to land on, but ridicously hard to start from (as real Titan is too) due to the thick Atmo.

Gilly is has an extremly small SOI, because its so close to Syterion (Ring Distance), making intercept more rendevous-like.

The choice for Phobos-analouge was Bop. It has the proper size and even an huge impact ( as real Phobos has too)

Still undecided about the destiny of Minmus...

[SkyRex94]

So, dev update:

Minmus looks good as a Comet.

But you'd have only one moon left at Kerbin, which could make Career more difficult, since you definitley need to go Interplanetary to finish the Tech. Is that now a good or a bad thing(conisder also that everything is upscaled) ???

And apparently it's not possible to create clouds on bodies that are small in stock. Or at least they are always to high. That means I can't make Pol look like Titan. Although the atmosphere 'works' fine physically...

so options are to keep it as it is and don't look nice. Or to change out the Titan Analouge, whereas I have no idea which planet I would use instead....

[SkyRex94]

Update 0.5:

Minmus has been scaled down and made a comet. Looks really comet-ish now and is in a solar orbit.

The KSC has been moved to a new super secure Launch location at the desert coast. It's no longer perfectly equatorial adding some more challenge.

Played around a lot with EVE. The issue is that EVE can't add clouds properly to certain bodies. Including Pol and Vall (which I considered as an alternative for Pol to get clouds to work, but it has the same issue) So no clouds on Pol, sadly. Any suggestions on the Titan-Analouge topic???

But I added a temporarly and totally optional Kittopia config, which adds Atmo Mesh to Pol and a Ring system to Syterion.

Now just some testing and refining and it can go into release thread. (Although I would like to find a better solution for a Titan like moon)

[Felsmak]

Wow, this looks good!

[SkyRex94]

has moved here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/109753-SKRX-1-7-4-RSS-config-Including-a-comet-and-a-2nd-Gas-Giant