When you're using a life support mod it gets even more irritating because you need to make sure your other manned stations don't starve while you're warping through a 200-day transfer or whatever.
When I was playing modded KSP I dealt with that by running an entire space program rather than one mission at a time. Use Kerbal Alarm Clock to keep track of it all, and as you timewarp 2 or 3 days for your average mission, that adds up and you can jump between your missions.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Whoo hoo I just got a bug that completely corrupted my career save. There goes dozens upon dozens of hours of work, hurray!
For context, I had sent a manned mission to Duna. Once I got there, I had the bright idea to see if I could use Ike to slow me down into an orbit, and as it turned out that was entirely possible. I set my Ike Periapsis to just around five kilometers, everything seemed to be going fine, except when I entered Ike's SOI my velocity changed to NaN undefined. When I exited from map view to view my spacecraft everything except the navball went black, when I exited to the space center everything remained black. I am really not interested in starting yet another career mode save from scratch.
It may not completely corrupt your save. That bug happens from time to time, and usually you just restart KSP and all will be fine.
If you do need to start again, keep in mind you can edit the SCI = X field in your persistent.cfg folder in the GameData/saves/yoursave folder to give yourself science and leapfrog back to where you were.
if you think Duna gives a lot of science you obviously haven't been to Minmus.
i'm confident he has but i think he might have been expecting more biomes. I will be very disappointed if they don't add more biomes to other planets. I don't need 12 on each planet, but let's break the exploration up and force people out in the solar system to get every last tech. I think people might be very surprised at how far they can go without using nuclear engines for example. I think people might be very surprised at how far you can go with a poodle or skipper engine.
Yeah I was expecting at least some different biomes in Duna, at the very least maybe some polar ones, but I guess they still haven't added any yet. And yes I know both the Mun and Minmus have like a dozen different surface biomes. (And with Minmus it's easy to just fly to all of them on one mission.)
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
That is amazing and now I must build something like it. I spent so much time hampering my own creativity designing ships that could fit inside rocket fairings and be assembled in orbit that I completely neglected "giant freakin' carrier plane with interstellar engines launched from the air strip"
This one went down to the wire, and probably would've gone smoother if I had better design. The landing thrusters proved useless so I pumped out the fuel and ditched them, but it's finally a mobile lab that's stable.
Man, flying to planets is quite a bit different from flying to the Mun and Minmus. This is going to take some experimenting.
You don't have to be using too precise. Assuming you know the rough timing of when you need to launch you can generally use RCS thrusters to tailor your approach however you like. Other tips: You can use aerobraking to easily get into orbit around planets and moons with atmospheres, and likewise you can use any reasonably large moon to help with capture or escape burns. Also orbiter wise it's good to remember you can use the same strategies for maximizing fuel-to-weight ratios in your orbiters that you use in your mainsail rockets.
Actually I think a good playground for messing around with orbital manuevers is Duna: because of Ike's abnormally large SOI you can see a lot of really weird and dramatic effects happen depending on how you approach Duna and Ike. It's hard not to laugh when you get into a planned orbit that's almost a triangle thanks to continuously dipping in and out of Ike's influence.
Sounds like Infernal Robotics is finally making some progress in fixing the problems that happened with 23.5. Still no release or anything yet, but hopefully in a week or so I'll be able to return to my modded save file.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
So, uh.... how do I use that chart? Both reading it and using it to set up a maneuver node.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Use the graphic on the chart. Let's say you want to go to Duna. We can see on that chart that if you want to go there, Duna needs to be ahead of Kerbin by approximately 40-45 degrees. Timewarp on the map screen until you're nearly at that point. Then launch your rocket, get into orbit, and plan your Duna intercept from there.
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ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
So, uh.... how do I use that chart? Both reading it and using it to set up a maneuver node.
I don't know of a way to get it perfect without a mod, but I've eyeballed it to the farthest reaches of the solar system so you just need to be close.
Look at the chart and imagine you had a protractor in your hand. You can also do this in game at the tracking center. Zoom the map out and turn it so you're facing directly down on the solar system. Double click the sun to set it as your focus. The big image in the center is telling you where, relative to Kerbin, your target body needs to be for an efficient transfer to another planet. The smaller images on the left/right are showing the spots in your orbit around Kerbin where you would do your pro-grade burn to raise your apogee. Imagine the black circle around the blue dot as your orbit around Kerbin. Be aware that this is straightforward for any planet that is in the standard equatorial orbit. If your planet of choice is on an orbit that is inclined it is advised to raise your apogee first and then perform a course correction enroute to change planes.
I landed my mobile lab on the mun twice, and both times crashed it while trying to drive to another biome.
Bleh, just going to stick with my disposable "there and back again" craft.
this is the real problem with KSP. All of these cool concepts are only worth building for the novelty. Building a new rocket for each mission is almost always easier.
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ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
I landed my mobile lab on the mun twice, and both times crashed it while trying to drive to another biome.
Bleh, just going to stick with my disposable "there and back again" craft.
this is the real problem with KSP. All of these cool concepts are only worth building for the novelty. Building a new rocket for each mission is almost always easier.
and I have a feeling even with economy and contracts it will still be the easiest way.
I landed my mobile lab on the mun twice, and both times crashed it while trying to drive to another biome.
Bleh, just going to stick with my disposable "there and back again" craft.
this is the real problem with KSP. All of these cool concepts are only worth building for the novelty. Building a new rocket for each mission is almost always easier.
and I have a feeling even with economy and contracts it will still be the easiest way.
it will depend upon how they balance the economy.
If it's anything like the economy mod, it is possible to build a rocket to do any contract using the payout for that contract, so as long as you plan your rockets carefully and only attempt a mission once to succeed, you will always be in the black.
However, if they balance things differently, and there are missions which reward, say, 1000 science and $100k, but to do it with a new rocket would require $250k of costs, maybe it would be worth having refuelling stations already in orbit etc to allow for cheaper ships.
Well, I started a new save for 0.23.5. Went for my first landing on another celestial body; I chose Minmus. I went with a design using 3 FL-200 tanks mounted on radial decouplers around a central FL-200 with a LV-909 and a single-man pod on top, for the wider landing-leg spacing. I've used this design before, and doing it without fuel transfer lines just requires me - I mean Jeb - to make sure to refuel the central tank from the radial ones periodically. (And to try to keep the radial ones fairly balanced to keep the CoT and the CoM lined up.)
Well Jeb was too busy thinking of what his words would be as the first Kerbal to set foot on another body, and he forgot to transfer fuel, leading to a flameout about 500 meters above the surface moving at 60 m/s. Frantic attempts to transfer fuel from SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE failed. The crash was survivable, and I'm sure Jeb's piloting skills would have been up to the task of flying an unbalanced, damaged ship home (full of all the SCIENCE! he could gather), but sadly the one and only engine was a casualty.
One of the weaknesses of the building part of the game has always been wheeled rovers, manned or otherwise. They're difficult to build around, and awkward to launch. (Figuring out how to build design to fit into an orbiter stage without massively upsetting the center of mass can be a real pain.) On top of that, they are incredibly slow and unreliable: Parts easily break off during landings, the power consumption of wheels can make it difficult to travel long distances without stopping to recharge, and most of all flipping is a constant worry.
My worst rover experience was the first time I ever got to Duna, back in the first patch where they added planets. I wanted my first manned voyage to another planet to be special, so I went through the hassle of getting a big two-person rover onto the surface ahead of my manned mission so I could explore more of Duna's terrain. It was a nice design, able to reach speeds of about 30m/s, if I recall. Unfortunately once I actually took it for a spin on Duna it took less than a mile before it overturned. It wasn't fun individually running both Kerbalnauts back to home base. Likewise, I've sent several rovers to the Mun, all but one of which ended up flipping sooner or later. The only rovers I've never overturned were the ones which moved so slowly it was hardly worth it.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
foldable and deployable rover parts will make things a lot easier.
One of the weaknesses of the building part of the game has always been wheeled rovers, manned or otherwise. They're difficult to build around, and awkward to launch. (Figuring out how to build design to fit into an orbiter stage without massively upsetting the center of mass can be a real pain.) On top of that, they are incredibly slow and unreliable: Parts easily break off during landings, the power consumption of wheels can make it difficult to travel long distances without stopping to recharge, and most of all flipping is a constant worry.
My worst rover experience was the first time I ever got to Duna, back in the first patch where they added planets. I wanted my first manned voyage to another planet to be special, so I went through the hassle of getting a big two-person rover onto the surface ahead of my manned mission so I could explore more of Duna's terrain. It was a nice design, able to reach speeds of about 30m/s, if I recall. Unfortunately once I actually took it for a spin on Duna it took less than a mile before it overturned. It wasn't fun individually running both Kerbalnauts back to home base. Likewise, I've sent several rovers to the Mun, all but one of which ended up flipping sooner or later. The only rovers I've never overturned were the ones which moved so slowly it was hardly worth it.
Quick trick to stop this is to throw an ion engine or 2 (or 3) on top to add some down thrust and keep it right side up.
Alternatively: This is why the unmanned mars rovers have speeds measured in meters per hour rather than meters per second.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited April 2014
I think the problems people are having with rovers is that they're building their rovers with wheels instead of rockets.
Rockets are faster, louder, and a million times more dangerous, and thus are scientifically better for exploring any planetary surface. Not only are they a thousand times faster when they work, you also learn a thousand times faster because failures mean explosions, not tipping over two hours down the road.
Like, once you prove the rover can drive X amount of distance safely, if you leave it be the game will simulate it moving at a very slow pace along the surface while timewarp.
1. Stop flipping over the instant they get some speed going, or when they hit some random, invisible bump in the terrain.
2. When they do flip, shit on them needs to not break. Or fall off. Or explode. (At least not unless they are going REALLY fast)
3. When the preceeding are done, they need to be able to go faster. We should be able to go full on rocket powered dunebuggy or something.
I don't necessarily want to circumnavigate the Mun with a rover, but being able to park in a large crater, and hit the 3-4 biomes nearest in a reasonable amount of time would be amazing. Also not exploding when I go over a crater rim.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
On another topic, my asteroid capture failed. Couldn't get close enough to intercept, but I learned a lot and managed to get Jeb back on the return rocket. Next time.
A few quick trips to the Mun later and I've unlocked up to the nuke engine, and a bit more science (thank god, solar panels finally). I have to say, now that I've played with it in a few career mode games, the unlock tree is weird. Solar Panels, the super basic ones at least, should be way earlier in the tree. And the new 'double' engine liquid booster? You get it the same time as the Mailsail, which IMHO it makes completely obsolete. Maybe it should be farther up, or a separate unlock.
Seriously, the new engines are amazing. On my current design I've been able to completely eliminate solid boosters because of it. And that's the double, god knows what kind of payloads the quad engine will be able to carry.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited April 2014
the problem with going rocket powered dune buggy is how do you stick to the terrain? Physics just don't work that way. Why do you think real world rovers don't move much faster than a walking pace?
Most KSP rovers can do 10m/s quite easily and that's HUGE.
the problem with going rocket powered dune buggy is how do you stick to the terrain? Physics just don't work that way. Why do you think real world rovers don't move much faster than a walking pace?
Same as the current RCS solution. Rockets pointing up!
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
the problem with going rocket powered dune buggy is how do you stick to the terrain? Physics just don't work that way. Why do you think real world rovers don't move much faster than a walking pace?
Most KSP rovers can do 10m/s quite easily and that's HUGE.
Yeah, I've built rovers that I could stably drive on the Mun at about 18 m/s. That's about 60 km/h, which is fast for rough terrain.
The issue is the idea of space and it's vastness. Doing a transfer from Kerbin to the Mun is easy because we can time accelerate up to 1000x and make a 2 or 3 hour trip turn into about 20 seconds. But you can't with a rover because of varied terrain. To automate it, the rover would either need a really advance in game AI to avoid massive craters and the like, or the ability to set up waypoints that it can drive itself through and around.
Or, throw the simulation out the window and make it so that a rover can do 200 km/h while stable on a low gravity harsh terrain.
I think the current simulation of rovers is fine, but it needs tweaking on how we control them in order to make concessions to the considerations of fun gameplay.
Also, we need to be able to deflate and inflate the tires so we can pack them in more easily. Actuators so we can fold them up as well, would be nice (So, something like Infernal Robotics, but built in).
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
One change I would LOVE.
Make it so we can lock docking ports together in the VAB or hangar.
Posts
When I was playing modded KSP I dealt with that by running an entire space program rather than one mission at a time. Use Kerbal Alarm Clock to keep track of it all, and as you timewarp 2 or 3 days for your average mission, that adds up and you can jump between your missions.
It may not completely corrupt your save. That bug happens from time to time, and usually you just restart KSP and all will be fine.
If you do need to start again, keep in mind you can edit the SCI = X field in your persistent.cfg folder in the GameData/saves/yoursave folder to give yourself science and leapfrog back to where you were.
Edit: Okay more like one extra biome compared to most planets, thanks to its atmosphere. Still, lots of science!
i'm confident he has but i think he might have been expecting more biomes. I will be very disappointed if they don't add more biomes to other planets. I don't need 12 on each planet, but let's break the exploration up and force people out in the solar system to get every last tech. I think people might be very surprised at how far they can go without using nuclear engines for example. I think people might be very surprised at how far you can go with a poodle or skipper engine.
Shogun Streams Vidya
http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/22talq/the_maiden_voyage_of_my_self_refueling_star_ship/
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/73236-WIP-Loading-textures-only-as-required
That is amazing and now I must build something like it. I spent so much time hampering my own creativity designing ships that could fit inside rocket fairings and be assembled in orbit that I completely neglected "giant freakin' carrier plane with interstellar engines launched from the air strip"
Just installed it. I'll post updates when I try it out.
Now to see if it helps.
EDIT: So far pretty impressive - fully loaded, heavily modded game, and I'm sitting at 2.7 gb of RAM down from 3.3.
This one went down to the wire, and probably would've gone smoother if I had better design. The landing thrusters proved useless so I pumped out the fuel and ditched them, but it's finally a mobile lab that's stable.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
When you launch makes an extraordinary difference in this. Here's a very basic guide image of how the planets should line up when it's time to launch:
I want to say that for return trips, the timing is the same but the ejection angle is the opposite. I'd start with a probe just to be sure though.
They're still a bit impractical, however, because of the large amounts of time it takes to GET anywhere.
Although the more stable you can make it, the easier it is to use an autopilot mod, I suppose.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Actually I think a good playground for messing around with orbital manuevers is Duna: because of Ike's abnormally large SOI you can see a lot of really weird and dramatic effects happen depending on how you approach Duna and Ike. It's hard not to laugh when you get into a planned orbit that's almost a triangle thanks to continuously dipping in and out of Ike's influence.
I don't know of a way to get it perfect without a mod, but I've eyeballed it to the farthest reaches of the solar system so you just need to be close.
Look at the chart and imagine you had a protractor in your hand. You can also do this in game at the tracking center. Zoom the map out and turn it so you're facing directly down on the solar system. Double click the sun to set it as your focus. The big image in the center is telling you where, relative to Kerbin, your target body needs to be for an efficient transfer to another planet. The smaller images on the left/right are showing the spots in your orbit around Kerbin where you would do your pro-grade burn to raise your apogee. Imagine the black circle around the blue dot as your orbit around Kerbin. Be aware that this is straightforward for any planet that is in the standard equatorial orbit. If your planet of choice is on an orbit that is inclined it is advised to raise your apogee first and then perform a course correction enroute to change planes.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Bleh, just going to stick with my disposable "there and back again" craft.
MWO: Adamski
this is the real problem with KSP. All of these cool concepts are only worth building for the novelty. Building a new rocket for each mission is almost always easier.
and I have a feeling even with economy and contracts it will still be the easiest way.
Shogun Streams Vidya
it will depend upon how they balance the economy.
If it's anything like the economy mod, it is possible to build a rocket to do any contract using the payout for that contract, so as long as you plan your rockets carefully and only attempt a mission once to succeed, you will always be in the black.
However, if they balance things differently, and there are missions which reward, say, 1000 science and $100k, but to do it with a new rocket would require $250k of costs, maybe it would be worth having refuelling stations already in orbit etc to allow for cheaper ships.
Well Jeb was too busy thinking of what his words would be as the first Kerbal to set foot on another body, and he forgot to transfer fuel, leading to a flameout about 500 meters above the surface moving at 60 m/s. Frantic attempts to transfer fuel from SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE failed. The crash was survivable, and I'm sure Jeb's piloting skills would have been up to the task of flying an unbalanced, damaged ship home (full of all the SCIENCE! he could gather), but sadly the one and only engine was a casualty.
A rescue mission will be forthcoming.
My worst rover experience was the first time I ever got to Duna, back in the first patch where they added planets. I wanted my first manned voyage to another planet to be special, so I went through the hassle of getting a big two-person rover onto the surface ahead of my manned mission so I could explore more of Duna's terrain. It was a nice design, able to reach speeds of about 30m/s, if I recall. Unfortunately once I actually took it for a spin on Duna it took less than a mile before it overturned. It wasn't fun individually running both Kerbalnauts back to home base. Likewise, I've sent several rovers to the Mun, all but one of which ended up flipping sooner or later. The only rovers I've never overturned were the ones which moved so slowly it was hardly worth it.
Quick trick to stop this is to throw an ion engine or 2 (or 3) on top to add some down thrust and keep it right side up.
Alternatively: This is why the unmanned mars rovers have speeds measured in meters per hour rather than meters per second.
Rockets are faster, louder, and a million times more dangerous, and thus are scientifically better for exploring any planetary surface. Not only are they a thousand times faster when they work, you also learn a thousand times faster because failures mean explosions, not tipping over two hours down the road.
Like, once you prove the rover can drive X amount of distance safely, if you leave it be the game will simulate it moving at a very slow pace along the surface while timewarp.
1. Stop flipping over the instant they get some speed going, or when they hit some random, invisible bump in the terrain.
2. When they do flip, shit on them needs to not break. Or fall off. Or explode. (At least not unless they are going REALLY fast)
3. When the preceeding are done, they need to be able to go faster. We should be able to go full on rocket powered dunebuggy or something.
I don't necessarily want to circumnavigate the Mun with a rover, but being able to park in a large crater, and hit the 3-4 biomes nearest in a reasonable amount of time would be amazing. Also not exploding when I go over a crater rim.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
A few quick trips to the Mun later and I've unlocked up to the nuke engine, and a bit more science (thank god, solar panels finally). I have to say, now that I've played with it in a few career mode games, the unlock tree is weird. Solar Panels, the super basic ones at least, should be way earlier in the tree. And the new 'double' engine liquid booster? You get it the same time as the Mailsail, which IMHO it makes completely obsolete. Maybe it should be farther up, or a separate unlock.
Seriously, the new engines are amazing. On my current design I've been able to completely eliminate solid boosters because of it. And that's the double, god knows what kind of payloads the quad engine will be able to carry.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Most KSP rovers can do 10m/s quite easily and that's HUGE.
Same as the current RCS solution. Rockets pointing up!
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yeah, I've built rovers that I could stably drive on the Mun at about 18 m/s. That's about 60 km/h, which is fast for rough terrain.
The issue is the idea of space and it's vastness. Doing a transfer from Kerbin to the Mun is easy because we can time accelerate up to 1000x and make a 2 or 3 hour trip turn into about 20 seconds. But you can't with a rover because of varied terrain. To automate it, the rover would either need a really advance in game AI to avoid massive craters and the like, or the ability to set up waypoints that it can drive itself through and around.
Or, throw the simulation out the window and make it so that a rover can do 200 km/h while stable on a low gravity harsh terrain.
I think the current simulation of rovers is fine, but it needs tweaking on how we control them in order to make concessions to the considerations of fun gameplay.
Also, we need to be able to deflate and inflate the tires so we can pack them in more easily. Actuators so we can fold them up as well, would be nice (So, something like Infernal Robotics, but built in).
Make it so we can lock docking ports together in the VAB or hangar.