Anyone who's familiar with mods know how I could alter the FAR drag effects on an object? Turns out the Alcubierre drives are all (except for the 1.25m one) too large for even the 3.75wide KW fairings, and the game still treats them as blunt bodies even though they're actually pretty aerodynamic. I tried to launch a rocket with the 3.75m one and it caused more than 10 times the drag of the rest of my rocket put together.
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Anyone who's familiar with mods know how I could alter the FAR drag effects on an object? Turns out the Alcubierre drives are all (except for the 1.25m one) too large for even the 3.75wide KW fairings, and the game still treats them as blunt bodies even though they're actually pretty aerodynamic. I tried to launch a rocket with the 3.75m one and it caused more than 10 times the drag of the rest of my rocket put together.
Use more rockets.
Or get extraplanetary launch pads and build it in space!
Number one is, while theoretically possible, less viable than in vanilla as I have already maxed out my 3.75m tank with side tanks and adding more horizontally seems unlikely to be effective. The drag is akin to having skipper engine firing in reverse; tough to beat that.
I consider number two more cheaty than altering the drag on the object, which is clearly designed to cut through the air. This is an obvious bug in the mods and I would rather fix it than just negate launching rockets entirely.
The new handling of joints is a godsend. I loaded one of my old super heavy lifter that would crush the separators if you throttled too fast and no issues. I even did 4X time increase while thrusting through the atmosphere with it and the rocket did not explode.
But with 3.75m parts the complexity of heavy lifters is dramatically reduced. The new engines are really good at getting out of atmo.
btw kerbal engineer seems to have trouble with some of the new parts and is unable to calculate dV for those stages.
Man there are far too many cool game updates recently. I can't cram them all into my free time
insert meme here
crimsoncoyote on
+4
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited April 2014
This update brought me back after a long hiatus (After completing the Rover Rig project, I just kinda stopped playing). Starting fresh with a new Career mode.
So much science to do!
EDIT: My work with rovers is far from done, though. Doing stuff on planets and moons seems to me to be the best thing to shoot for with this game. I'm hoping they include more base building in future updates. A whole resource extraction update (Or DLC) would be nice (I know, Kethane, but something official would be even better.)
Ran my first interplanetary manned mission, with a return and everything: a two-man Duna flyby, with satellite delivery and some other things.
I'm definitely starting to reach the limit of my "Delta 4 Heavy"-styled lifter. But hey, after this I'll have the 3.75m parts. I threw on some extra SRBs just to be on the safe side.
Earlier, I flew a big communications satellite into orbit around Duna. Since then, advances in electronics have allowed for smaller comsats capable of Duna-Kerbin communications. Once I decided on satellite delivery for the mission, I got a little carried away. The payload there has eight probes - two long-range comsats to finish the constellation in Duna's orbit, three shorter-range comsats to orbit Ike, two Kethane survey probes (one for Duna, one for Ike) to scout locations for a future landing site, and an unmanned landing probe with science instruments on it. Plus six Science Pods(TM) for research, and the magnetometer and plasma wave antenna from the DMagic pack.
The egg-shaped propulsion module at the bottom there has the nuclear thermal rocket engine and, combined with the propellant in the service module tank, should give me about 4500 m/s of delta-V. This is the first craft where I've actually needed the NTR engine, rather than just using it for the hell of it.
I'm using the two-seat "Radish" command pod from Home Grown Rockets; I find it makes for a nice midway point between the stock one-seat and three-seat pods. (By the way, does anyone make a 3.75m pod to go with the new parts? Or do we just always taper the rocket, like SLS Block I does?) I have a backup battery, solar panel, and snacks container attached directly to the pod, and a backup Kerbal inside in case I lose one during one of the planned EVAs. There's also a hood ornament, of course.
The service module attached to the command pod originally had four fold-out solar panels, but I lost two of them when the craft wobbled as the fairings separated. Well, that's what redundancy is for. It also has the water purifier and CO2 scrubber and a whole lot of food. I think I'm good to go.
Mechjeb thinks I just missed the transfer window and need to wait (some 250 days) until the next one, so I plot the course by hand. We're on our way!
Doing some Science en route. Each pod requires an EVA to retrieve the experiments before jettison.
Arrival at Duna. The plan is to save some delta-V by aerobraking. Aerobraking seemed like cheating without some added risk, so I installed Deadly Reentry before the mission (without even playing around with it first) and chose a periapsis height of 12 km. Duna's atmosphere is so thin that I didn't even get the flame reentry effects, but I did save a few hundred m/s of delta-V.
I wanted to get a Science Pod reading from Duna's atmosphere during the aerobraking, but I couldn't seem to read it. I guess one of these pods is going unused.
Next step: deployment of the lander. The fixed dish is there to keep contact with the Duna comsat through the entire reentry phase. I'll fold up the solar panels before hitting the atmosphere, arm the parachute (I also installed RealChutes for this mission), and hopefully will have enough battery left to unfold them after landing.
Hmm, it's coming in pretty fast there...
...huh. I guess I need to learn how to configure RealChutes properly. At this point I'm concerned about the parachute attached to the command module.
Well, moving on. I go to deploy a Kethane surveyor in low Duna orbit. At this point I realize that for every single satellite I brought with me, the control module is mounted upside-down, so the navball is wrong. Combined with a two-minute speed-of-light delay on my commands makes this difficult to work with.
I deploy one comsat and try to synchronize the orbit with the first sattelite, but it's basically impossible with the navball pointing the wrong way. I get it into a circular orbit that won't get screwed up by Ike, at least.
The second comsat decides not to deploy after I trigger the seperatron. WTF? Oh well, moving to Ike's orbit.
As I jettison another Science Pod around Ike, the stuck comsat goes with it. It proves to be completely uncontrollable, so I reclassify it as "debris" and move on.
Retrieving science from the fifth pod in Space Near Ike. This should be the last EVA, as the sixth pod won't get used.
The Ike comsats don't have Mechjeb; they're just a small probe core, a small engine, some fixed solar panels, and a big omnidirectional antenna. I program in a circularization burn on the first one manually, but because the probe core is mounted upside-down, the RemoteTech flight computer burns in the wrong direction, resulting in a deorbit trajectory into Ike. I don't have enough fuel left in the satellite to save it.
At this point I give up on the remaining two Ike comsats. They'll be fine in the elliptical orbit that the ship is in. I'll worry about them later.
There's no point in keeping that structural spine once the mission payload is gone, so I had planned from the beginning to ditch it. Don't screw up that docking maneuver, boys; you're a long way from home.
And we're good! After docking, I find that I now have over 5000 m/s of delta-V. Holy crap, that's more than this thing started with! Time to head home.
MechJeb provides an optimal transfer to Kerbin that uses about 900 m/s and gets me there in 250 days. I check the snack levels and find that I have 210 days of food left. The two kerbalnauts are ready to play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to live, and then I realize that I can just do a non-optimal transfer since I have (what I think is) a ridiculous surplus of delta-V. I play around with departure angles and find a path that gets home in 57 days and uses 1800 m/s. Well, I've got five thousand after jettisoning all that dead weight, so let's hit it.
Farewell, Duna.
When I reach Kerbin, I realize the mistake I made. Using more delta-V to transfer quicker means that I need proportionally more delta-V to stop when I get there. I've got about 3100 left in the tanks, and the computer tells me that I'll need about 3100 to circularize my orbit. That doesn't leave me with the safety margin that I've grown accustomed to, so I'll need to do some fairly aggressive aerobraking. (Obviously, with Deadly Reentry installed, going straight from a fast Duna transfer to a landing without orbiting first would result in certain death.) I set my periapsis to 32 km and brace myself.
This aerobraking is a whole lot more exciting than the aerobraking in Duna's atmosphere. A couple of scary explosions are heard, but I don't lose the engine or kill the pilots (although the engine did get a little close for a second). I save a few hundred delta-V and then burn through a whole bunch of fuel to brake into Kerbin orbit. Damage report: I lost the antenna on the propulsion module, another one of the solar panels (leaving me with one) and an RCS thruster (leaving me with seven). Not too bad.
The plan was to undock the propulsion module and have it dock to my space station in Kerbin orbit for later use as a space tug, but with the antenna gone that isn't happening. As long as it's docked to the service module, though, it has an antenna there, so I can control it somewhat. I separate out the command pod and get ready to re-enter with a periapsis of 20 km. The leftover propulsion/service module set raises its periapsis to 80km - later I'll jettison it out of Kerbin's orbit. (I guess this is a self-imposed limit, but I don't want to do an uncontrolled reentry to Kerbin of any nuclear engines.)
And we're home. Success! In the end, I deployed at least four of the satellites successfully and collected 2,600 science points from the pods and other instruments. Not quite the perfect success that I was looking for, but not bad.
+12
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Just unlocked the new 3.75m parts in career. Only took one Mun flyby and a Minmus landing mission. It's pretty easy to build a lander that can land and takeoff multiple times around Minmus, and you only need to bring a few sets of goo/material bays to get nearly 2k science from only four separate biomes with no other instruments.
+1
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
So, did a couple flights last night to get some science now that I'm starting over. Picked up a bunch of science on Minmus and came back. Touched down in the water and all the science bits broke off the capsule. I had to watch all my science float away.
So, did a couple flights last night to get some science now that I'm starting over. Picked up a bunch of science on Minmus and came back. Touched down in the water and all the science bits broke off the capsule. I had to watch all my science float away.
So, did a couple flights last night to get some science now that I'm starting over. Picked up a bunch of science on Minmus and came back. Touched down in the water and all the science bits broke off the capsule. I had to watch all my science float away.
You can't recover them from the space center?
Hmm. All but the goo containers despawned. I'll have to check if the goo containers are recoverable.
So, did a couple flights last night to get some science now that I'm starting over. Picked up a bunch of science on Minmus and came back. Touched down in the water and all the science bits broke off the capsule. I had to watch all my science float away.
You can't recover them from the space center?
Hmm. All but the goo containers despawned. I'll have to check if the goo containers are recoverable.
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I wish that Science worked a bit more like revenue/expenses.
I want to take a lab to the Mun, but I'm wondering if all the work of getting it there and making it so that a probe can dock and undock several times is worth it, or if it's straight up more efficient to just launch several returnable probes.
Putting a lab in orbit around another body should bring in science per day, and you can accumulate progress towards the new tech with big jumps by sending probes to new places.
Or just making the lab have more stuff to do.
Right now, how difficult is it to use the lab versus just sending probes back and forth?
I want to say that Minmus is the only solid use case for the lab because of it's low gravity; it takes relatively little to send a lander down and back up to each biome. To do so on the Mun would take a lot more fuel and would substantially increase the required fuel you have to put in orbit with the lab. Not impossible, but probably harder than building a bigger lander and landing twice per mission, at the edge between two biomes, and then going home. Kethane works in favor of the lab since you can refuel the lab's tanks.
So in my haste to try out the new patch I borked my old save and cant access the R&D facility anymore. Anyone know if there's a fix?
Also: I tried replacing all my textures with super HD ones... and it was too much for my kerbal install. What texture packs do you guys use? I'm trying to make the game look as good as possible but the 8K pack I just tried was way too big. I'm already using the texture compressors for K9 and Squad.
Sceptre on
0
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Okay, over my lunch break I installed Boulderco's visual enhancer and Kethane.
Quickly launched a pod at crazy speed (4 solid boosters under a pod mean accelerating at >15 Gs when you get out of the denser atmosphere). Clouds look good, but kinda basic. I think there's some settings I need to dig into, but I haven't had a chance.
My plan for Kethane is to put a kethane extractor on the Mun near a lab and have a science pod that flies around and returns with science and can refuel at the kethan extractor (I think this is how kethane works, never tried it before).
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Oh, and I was able to recover the goo canisters. Thanks for reminding me to look!
What I've been doing is putting a lab on wheels on the Mun. It also has a ridiculously huge nuclear plant and electricity generator on it because ... I don't know. Coolness reasons? I use mechjeb to set waypoints for it to drive to (Jeb does the driving in my mind, mechjeb is just used because fuck having to play desert bus on the Mun). Drive to new biome, do the experiments, then have Jeb get out and collect the data while Bill and Bob clean out the goo container and materials bay. After hitting a few biomes and collecting a lot of data, I send an unmanned probe and land it near the lab. Jeb again gets out to take all the data to the probe, stuffs it in an empty pilot's container, and sends the probe back to Kerbin.
So, did a couple flights last night to get some science now that I'm starting over. Picked up a bunch of science on Minmus and came back. Touched down in the water and all the science bits broke off the capsule. I had to watch all my science float away.
Why didn't you put it all in the pod?
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
If you EVA and click on an experiment, you can collect the data onto your kerbal and put it in the pod when you get back in. Then leave the experiments on the Mun, in space, fire them into the sun etc. You're limited to one copy of identical data so if you have two identical goo pods you'll probably need to radio the other.
Have a Kerbal jump out and take the data out of whatever you're using for science and then have him jump back in the pod. It'll store the science inside the pod. Also check your command centre and you might be able to salvage your little bits floating in the ocean.
You can put the data from multiple goo pods into one command module. I did six (well, five) in that Duna run earlier.
If they're non-identical, i.e. from different biomes/altitudes, sure. If more than one was from the same region as another, it was thrown out when you got in the capsule and you didn't get those points.
You can go EVA and collect the data and then carry it in the command pod; only 1 experiment per type per biome per command pod can be carried this way, though.
My test run of the Jool Harvester didn't go as well as I was hoping. I went down to about 120k or so, in the atmosphere but not really deep into it (I was afraid of reentry effects, since I'm still running deadly reentry). It took two whole dives to accumulate just 0.01 Deuterium. I suppose if I went farther down then I might get more (since Deuterium is naturally going to be a bit more heavy than Hydrogen) but that could risk the ship's structural integrity.
I suppose I could also use the antimatter that I've been harvesting and build a spaceplane-ier version, with the antimatter to power an engine to get me back out of the atmosphere. Would have been nice to just sort of skim the surface and pick up all the LiquidFuel and Deuterium I need.
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Why not try the balloon mod for atmospheric work on Jool?
I imagine the drag on a balloon would have to be immense at near orbital speed and at stationary speed / hovering altitude I don't know how effective the scoops would be.
Posts
Use more rockets.
Or get extraplanetary launch pads and build it in space!
I consider number two more cheaty than altering the drag on the object, which is clearly designed to cut through the air. This is an obvious bug in the mods and I would rather fix it than just negate launching rockets entirely.
But with 3.75m parts the complexity of heavy lifters is dramatically reduced. The new engines are really good at getting out of atmo.
btw kerbal engineer seems to have trouble with some of the new parts and is unable to calculate dV for those stages.
Steam: Handkor
insert meme here
So much science to do!
EDIT: My work with rovers is far from done, though. Doing stuff on planets and moons seems to me to be the best thing to shoot for with this game. I'm hoping they include more base building in future updates. A whole resource extraction update (Or DLC) would be nice (I know, Kethane, but something official would be even better.)
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The first is my spaceplane landing on Laythe, and the second is the ship I intend to use for harvesting resources from Jool's atmosphere.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
I'm definitely starting to reach the limit of my "Delta 4 Heavy"-styled lifter. But hey, after this I'll have the 3.75m parts. I threw on some extra SRBs just to be on the safe side.
Earlier, I flew a big communications satellite into orbit around Duna. Since then, advances in electronics have allowed for smaller comsats capable of Duna-Kerbin communications. Once I decided on satellite delivery for the mission, I got a little carried away. The payload there has eight probes - two long-range comsats to finish the constellation in Duna's orbit, three shorter-range comsats to orbit Ike, two Kethane survey probes (one for Duna, one for Ike) to scout locations for a future landing site, and an unmanned landing probe with science instruments on it. Plus six Science Pods(TM) for research, and the magnetometer and plasma wave antenna from the DMagic pack.
The egg-shaped propulsion module at the bottom there has the nuclear thermal rocket engine and, combined with the propellant in the service module tank, should give me about 4500 m/s of delta-V. This is the first craft where I've actually needed the NTR engine, rather than just using it for the hell of it.
I'm using the two-seat "Radish" command pod from Home Grown Rockets; I find it makes for a nice midway point between the stock one-seat and three-seat pods. (By the way, does anyone make a 3.75m pod to go with the new parts? Or do we just always taper the rocket, like SLS Block I does?) I have a backup battery, solar panel, and snacks container attached directly to the pod, and a backup Kerbal inside in case I lose one during one of the planned EVAs. There's also a hood ornament, of course.
The service module attached to the command pod originally had four fold-out solar panels, but I lost two of them when the craft wobbled as the fairings separated. Well, that's what redundancy is for. It also has the water purifier and CO2 scrubber and a whole lot of food. I think I'm good to go.
I wanted to get a Science Pod reading from Duna's atmosphere during the aerobraking, but I couldn't seem to read it. I guess one of these pods is going unused.
I deploy one comsat and try to synchronize the orbit with the first sattelite, but it's basically impossible with the navball pointing the wrong way. I get it into a circular orbit that won't get screwed up by Ike, at least.
I just looked it up. Do want.
What's this work bullshit? Why can't I play video games all day?
You can't recover them from the space center?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Hmm. All but the goo containers despawned. I'll have to check if the goo containers are recoverable.
Make sure they aren't on the Debris tab.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I want to take a lab to the Mun, but I'm wondering if all the work of getting it there and making it so that a probe can dock and undock several times is worth it, or if it's straight up more efficient to just launch several returnable probes.
Putting a lab in orbit around another body should bring in science per day, and you can accumulate progress towards the new tech with big jumps by sending probes to new places.
Or just making the lab have more stuff to do.
Right now, how difficult is it to use the lab versus just sending probes back and forth?
Also: I tried replacing all my textures with super HD ones... and it was too much for my kerbal install. What texture packs do you guys use? I'm trying to make the game look as good as possible but the 8K pack I just tried was way too big. I'm already using the texture compressors for K9 and Squad.
Quickly launched a pod at crazy speed (4 solid boosters under a pod mean accelerating at >15 Gs when you get out of the denser atmosphere). Clouds look good, but kinda basic. I think there's some settings I need to dig into, but I haven't had a chance.
My plan for Kethane is to put a kethane extractor on the Mun near a lab and have a science pod that flies around and returns with science and can refuel at the kethan extractor (I think this is how kethane works, never tried it before).
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Why didn't you put it all in the pod?
If you EVA and click on an experiment, you can collect the data onto your kerbal and put it in the pod when you get back in. Then leave the experiments on the Mun, in space, fire them into the sun etc. You're limited to one copy of identical data so if you have two identical goo pods you'll probably need to radio the other.
If they're non-identical, i.e. from different biomes/altitudes, sure. If more than one was from the same region as another, it was thrown out when you got in the capsule and you didn't get those points.
You can go EVA and collect the data and then carry it in the command pod; only 1 experiment per type per biome per command pod can be carried this way, though.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I suppose I could also use the antimatter that I've been harvesting and build a spaceplane-ier version, with the antimatter to power an engine to get me back out of the atmosphere. Would have been nice to just sort of skim the surface and pick up all the LiquidFuel and Deuterium I need.