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[Kerbal Space Program] OLD THREAD! Periapsis too low! Abandon ship!

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Posts

  • AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    I put them underneath the capsule. So it went capsule-science jr-science jr-decoupler-the rest of the rocket.

    I think I read about the onboard kerbal being able to recover the data and bring it into the capsule, but I haven't unlocked any ladders and i'm too terrified by space to have him do an actual EVA spacewalk to get down there.

  • TerrendosTerrendos Decorative Monocle Registered User regular
    Aistan wrote: »
    I put them underneath the capsule. So it went capsule-science jr-science jr-decoupler-the rest of the rocket.

    I think I read about the onboard kerbal being able to recover the data and bring it into the capsule, but I haven't unlocked any ladders and i'm too terrified by space to have him do an actual EVA spacewalk to get down there.

    Spacewalks are easy. Just EVA out, hit R to use the jetpack, and WASD+ Shift/Ctrl to go in all 6 directions. You've got plenty of Monopropellant in the suit for a simple excursion to grab SCIENCE.

    ElvenshaeGnome-InterruptusCommander ZoomZilla360
  • Gnome-InterruptusGnome-Interruptus Registered User regular
    Hmm... I did a wipe and reinstall, and now I cannot get mechjeb to work in campaign mode. Only other mods installed are Chatterer, and FAR (though I'm betting the problem is something with the Toolbar mod that FAR installed).

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  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Terrendos wrote: »
    Aistan wrote: »
    I put them underneath the capsule. So it went capsule-science jr-science jr-decoupler-the rest of the rocket.

    I think I read about the onboard kerbal being able to recover the data and bring it into the capsule, but I haven't unlocked any ladders and i'm too terrified by space to have him do an actual EVA spacewalk to get down there.

    Spacewalks are easy. Just EVA out, hit R to use the jetpack, and WASD+ Shift/Ctrl to go in all 6 directions. You've got plenty of Monopropellant in the suit for a simple excursion to grab SCIENCE.
    For which I really, really wish there was a command pod option for "collect all samples and SCIENCE from attached SCIENCE modules". I already know I can go out there and get the stuff; just give me the credit so I don't have to collect the SCIENCE every time I want to land.

  • AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    So what's the benefit to hiring other kerbals rather than just going with Jeb, Bill, and Bob?

    I guess at some point i'll have manned (kerbaled?) space stations and moonbases and whatnot, and it'll be out of necessity then.

    Elvenshae
  • TerrendosTerrendos Decorative Monocle Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Yes, that's the idea. And if you want to have multiple missions running simultaneously, you'll need more than 3 Kerbals at once. So for example, if you send a crew on a mission to Duna, which can take several hundred days, and want to go somewhere else in the meantime (because just time warping through 200-300 days is rather silly) then you can recruit extra guys for more missions.

    EDIT: Oh, and if anyone besides Jeb, Bill, and Bob die, they don't respawn like those three. So you'll need to call up more if you ever have any casualties besides the Big Three.

    Terrendos on
  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Though the irony is that if you kill Jeb, Bill, or Bob, you're a monster.

    Everyone else is expendable.

    ElvenshaeInfamyDeferredZilla360
  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    Oh my god intercepting an asteroid in vanilla Kerbal Space Program is literally impossible. The controls simply don't seem precise enough to hit a target that small a target at the distances and speeds required. After two hours of fiddling the closest I could get was about 30km. The only way I could see it being possible would be either extreme luck or spending hours and hours doing incredibly minute adjustments constantly.

  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Gundi wrote: »
    Oh my god intercepting an asteroid in vanilla Kerbal Space Program is literally impossible. The controls simply don't seem precise enough to hit a target that small a target at the distances and speeds required. After two hours of fiddling the closest I could get was about 30km. The only way I could see it being possible would be either extreme luck or spending hours and hours doing incredibly minute adjustments constantly.

    You would probably need to make heavy use of maneuver nodes. You can set the asteroid as a target, make a maneuver node to intersect the asteroid's path, and the game will tell you how close the intersection will be. If you can get within a kilometer or two at a roughly parallel trajectory, then you can sort of just drive straight at the thing.

    It's probably a lot easier when it's something like a station with a circular orbit, though.

  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    That's the thing, no matter how many nodes I used (And I can't rely on setting up tons of maneuver nodes in advance since that'd require absolutely zero pilot error.), or how many adjustments I did I couldn't get a planned intersection anywhere close enough. When a single puff of RCS fuel sends you dozen of kilometers off-target it's basically a matter of luck of just hoping by pure chance you get as close as you need to. Most likely though the difficulty can vary wildly depending on how asteroids approach Kerbin. (Trying to rendezvous with asteroids outside of Kerbin's SOI seems... possible, but also significantly more difficult and time consuming.) The one I tried to get was at an almost polar retrograde encounter, with very high velocity, and and never got closer than Minmus' orbit, so certainly there could be more favorable conditions to attempt a rendezvous.

    Gundi on
  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Yeah, I'm not at all a fan of manual docking under the best of circumstances, simply because I have zero interest in wasting loads of time on waiting to see if minute changes are fatal errors in a maneuver. I doubt I'll bother with the asteroid intercept stuff until I have Mechjeb updated, because blowing 30-60 minutes on lining stuff up juuuust right when something can automate that into a few minutes is not my idea of fun.

    Strikor
  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    Especially since automating it is more realistic anyway.

    Strikor
  • StrikorStrikor Calibrations? Calibrations! Registered User regular
    Docking manually for the first time feels like a great accomplishment.
    Docking manually for the second time starts to feel like a chore.
    Docking manually for the third time feels like "Oh my god, why the hell did I plan a mission with docking? Please kill me now."

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Strikor wrote: »
    Docking manually for the first time feels like a great accomplishment.
    Docking manually for the second time starts to feel like a chore.
    Docking manually for the third time feels like "Oh my god, why the hell did I plan a mission with docking? Please kill me now."

    I guess it depends on what you're docking.

    Personally, I love docking. I made a space refuelling station for the express purpose of building a ship attached to it out of dockable modules.

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  • ShogunShogun Hair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get along Registered User regular
    I'm all for fuck docking. Also I watched some videos of the asteroid capture stuff and I can't believe how little science you get for surface samples. I know you're supposed to collect samples at various stages around Kerbin, but man I was expecting hundreds or thousands of science. 60 science for a surface sample of an asteroid? Not worth all that trouble to me. Also if I successfully drag that damn thing back to the surface there should be big-ass cash money or science waiting for me.

    Gnome-InterruptusZilla360
  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    edited April 2014
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Strikor wrote: »
    Docking manually for the first time feels like a great accomplishment.
    Docking manually for the second time starts to feel like a chore.
    Docking manually for the third time feels like "Oh my god, why the hell did I plan a mission with docking? Please kill me now."

    I guess it depends on what you're docking.

    Personally, I love docking. I made a space refuelling station for the express purpose of building a ship attached to it out of dockable modules.

    I like docking things to big space stations, but only because I love approaching big shit in space. It's a very cool moment, slowly bringing this tiny space shuttle in to dock with this 3000+ part space station. And when I can approach something that big at 60FPS instead of 8-10 FPS, that'll be cool too!

    Dhalphir on
    ElvenshaeInfamyDeferredCommander ZoomZilla360
  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    Docking is one of my favourite parts of the game!

    Though if it's taking you 60 minutes to dock, I can see how that would be troublesome and mechjeb would be preferable.

  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    I don't find docking particularly troublesome, but the thing is asteroids are just short of a worst case scenario in that regard.

    Gundi on
  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    Last night I was about to go to bed when I thought "I want to fly a rocket!"

    So I was up about 30 min later than I should have been. On the plus side I picked up 1000 science on a quick Minmus run, using the 'put all the science in the pod' technique that I heard about somewhere.

    Have you guys heard of that?

    It's pretty good.

    InfamyDeferredCommander Zoom
  • AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    All hail Tompfrey Kerman, first Kerbal on the Mun!

    RIP Tompfrey Kerman, unless I can build a better rocket with more fuel to land and take him home.

    Aistan on
    crimsoncoyoteElvenshaeZilla360Gnome-InterruptusDaedalusHyphyKezzy
  • crimsoncoyotecrimsoncoyote Registered User regular
    Aistan wrote: »
    All hail Tompfrey Kerman, first Kerbal on the Mun!

    RIP Tompfrey Kerman, unless I can build a better rocket with more fuel to land and take him home.

    Build a lander that has detachable fuel canisters. Empty those tanks while landing, then ditch them. You should be able to get home with just a poodle engine, 1(full) small tank, and pod rather easily.

    StrikorElvenshae
  • AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    I have yet to unlock a multi-seat capsule, so he'll have to wait until then. Hopefully my next few Mun missions won't have that same problem. I ended up using a lot more than I thought in the descent.

  • TerrendosTerrendos Decorative Monocle Registered User regular
    Aistan wrote: »
    I have yet to unlock a multi-seat capsule, so he'll have to wait until then. Hopefully my next few Mun missions won't have that same problem. I ended up using a lot more than I thought in the descent.

    Put a probe on top of the one-man capsule and then go and manually remove the person in the cabin.

    crimsoncoyoteDhalphirElvenshae
  • TerrendosTerrendos Decorative Monocle Registered User regular
    Well, crap. Made the mistake of opening Steam and not noticing that KSP automatically updated, and started my main save file. Infernal Robotics doesn't work. All my ships that relied upon Infernal Robotics no longer function, particularly the ones that used hinges to aim my microwave power receivers. I quit, cursed myself for not having the foresight to make a backup, and prayed that reloading the last stable version would fix the problem. Nope, now that save file is incompatible.

    Grr... now I've got to wait for an Infernal Robotics update before I can continue my crazy Jool shenanigans.

  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    Aistan wrote: »
    I have yet to unlock a multi-seat capsule, so he'll have to wait until then. Hopefully my next few Mun missions won't have that same problem. I ended up using a lot more than I thought in the descent.

    The important thing to keep in mind is that the ideal efficient landing is one that does only one burn to land, shedding all of your velocity in one long engine blast close to the ground. If you burn your engines all the way down to keep yourself going very slowly from high up, you're expending a lot of fuel fighting gravity.

    Obviously it's very dangerous to only do one burn to land, right near the ground, but that's what you should use as a baseline. Generally for beginners a good guide is to have 10% of your altitude as your velocity in metres per second. at 2km, you want to slow to 200m/s, 1km - 100m/s, 300m - 30m/s, and so on. However, that's still horribly inefficient - usually when I do my moon landings I fire up my engines to full blast at about 500m above the ground, and shed all but 30-40m/s of my velocity that way, then shed the rest in a slow way as I descend.

    Zilla360
  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    You guys need to get the Mission Controller Extended mod.

    http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43645-KSP-23-5-Mission-Controller-Extended-(ARM-CONTRACT!)-Version-61-(4-5-14)

    It basically adds a whole economy with missions setup to the game, and once you figure out how to load the custom mission packs (its not that intuitive), it's actually really well balanced and integrated with the stock tech tree.

    Plus, it has a random mission generator which works well after you max the tech tree to keep you focused on doing different things!

  • ShogunShogun Hair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get along Registered User regular
    isn't this basically what im waiting on .24 for?

    Gnome-InterruptusElvenshae
  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    Shogun wrote: »
    isn't this basically what im waiting on .24 for?

    Pretty much!

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    Took a break from my Duna campaign (Duna Direct!) to play asteroid tag.
    3ZMxIl2.png
    VAKodKA.png
    The grabbo arm thing doesn't really fit in well with any of the pods, but it sort of works out here.
    g9BEhqX.png
    Reaching an asteroid is just like doing a rendezvous with a space station, except your space stations are probably not in crazy fucked up orbits like this.
    yi2CVwO.png
    Ap4MDA8.png
    OjC9tTn.png
    (Mk2 cockpit internals from here).
    Now what?

    I figure when I find a really big one, I'll put together some high-impulse ship to pull it into Kerbin orbit and name it Minmus 2, or something.
    KorcThA.png
    qVQtbPe.png
    60 science? That's it? Change of plans -- now when I find a really big one I'll send it on a collision course to KSC.

    Zilla360crimsoncoyoteElvenshaeHyphyKezzy
  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Make a rock garden at KSC.

    Out of space rocks.

    Gnome-InterruptusStrikorZilla360EvmaAlsarElvenshae
  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    So I've begun Project: Munar Science Scour.

    First step: Establish base production needs (ie. fuel) completed:
    (Searching for a suitable landing zone in kethane rich area)
    938AC630BFC11686C6CFE969A287448A2286C0C0

    (Slurping up that sweet, sweet kethane)
    7D679730A41A9772B053D0A692FC2568B4CB37B1

    Zilla360crimsoncoyoteElvenshae
  • Gnome-InterruptusGnome-Interruptus Registered User regular
    Hmm.. just cannot get Mechjeb to work with the most recent version (the UI wont show up in game, even though I add the part), anyone else having problems?

    All I really want it for is for the landing / surface window that will give me the true altitude and secondarily the horizontal speed.

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  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    Yeah, adding the Mechjeb part does completely nothing for me with the new version.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    There's an unofficial dll (by one of the MJ devs, just not compiled yet) posted in the MechJeb thread. It seems to be working fine for me. Just grab it and replace the one in your existing folder.

    EDIT: Found the direct link: http://www.sarbian.com/sarbian/MechJeb2.dll

    Commander Zoom on
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  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    Yeah latest MJ builds are always here on the official build server, they pull directly from the source on github: http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/

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    Elvenshae
  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    Hmm, on review, I think I'll be sending a different kethane miner to the Mun.

    I have something in mind that will probably be better suited to what I'm trying to do with it.

  • PA DallasPA Dallas Registered User regular
    Decided to give the Mun another try this morning. Got myself in an 11K orbit with a full tank to spare and now I'm too scared to land since quicksave and quickload is acting wonky for me. I'm a PC dude why did I let my wife insist on getting an Apple? Oh yeah I remember now. I didn't want to sleep on the couch.

    Gonna go watch some more Mun landing videos before I make another crater.

    I saw a werewolf drinkin' a pina colada at Trader Vic's.
    And his hair was perfect.
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    Gnome-InterruptusDhalphirZilla360Elvenshaecrimsoncoyote
  • PriestPriest Registered User regular
    Hey, so I want to get back into this game again, haven't played it in months, maybe a year even. Want to use mods, but don't know where to start, looking for recommendations.

    Specifically, I'm looking for mods that don't break immersion, IE, must have mods that:

    Enhance or add science not present in the original mod. (Like Mechjeb's Data outputs)
    Provide Ease-of-use that removes common game tedium while not diminishing difficulty. (Mechjeb programmable launches)
    Provides parts and/or assets that improve or expand gameplay while not being gamebreaking or breaking immersion.

    So basically, trying to avoid tiny thrusters with infinite fuel, or anything that could reasonably constitute 'cheating.'

    Thanks in advance!

    Elvenshae
  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    Engineer is good, Universe Replacer is excellent (Purely a visual mod for higher res and better textures).

    I just started playing with Kethane, which is really good for actually having something to do on the surface of other bodies.

    I doubt there's very many popular mods that also wreck the difficulty curve, except for Mechjeb.

    Elvenshae
  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Eh, Mechjeb doesn't wreck the difficulty curve so much as save you from having to repeat the same things a zillion times. You still have to play the game enough to get the apogee/perigee/prograde/retrograde basics understood, what it takes to build a reliable rocket, what it takes for a craft to land where you want it, etc. Otherwise you'll give yourself a LOT of frustration because you won't even understand what to tell Mechjeb what to do or what the different commands mean.

    Once you can handle the game well enough to, say, do a munar landing and a docking maneuver without Mechjeb, you should be pretty okay to use Mechjeb after that.

    Ninja Snarl P on
    Commander ZoomStrikorZilla360Elvenshaecrimsoncoyote
This discussion has been closed.