πŸš€ The Kerbal Thread - Share Your Kerbal Creations



  • Stuff I've done in Kerbal. I don't use mods or cheats. EVER.

    First Mun landing!!! Proudest moment for all Kerballers.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/919017593089814960/243048043089613C88B1CE82A01FF9A8A807ADB0/[/img]

    First version of my Jool ship
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/921273757921355095/611FE06D96E1A3AA0145FE699EBF30F60E2D07B9/[/img]

    The Jool ship "complete" with drop-off fuel tanks and 2 landers docked. I ended up taking this ship to Eelou and planting a flag there instead of doing Jool moons. Tossed one of the landers because (at least in that release of the game) this ship was at the very upper limit of what the physics engine was capable of handling.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/921274718395642083/96AC2FC6EFBA4C8A1D094BC1813A82732728E7D4/[/img]

    I also learned that those Rockomax docking connectors can only barely keep those fuel drop-off tanks in place when the ship's under full 12-atomic-motor acceleration. Yikes! Look at that bending!
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/921274718396381869/C87045508CC689558D319CECBBA9D2A543E0CBC5/[/img]

    Lonely Kerbalnaut planting a flag on Eelou
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/920149199258808966/383AA1145002A1C7123905FC09C7CBF00E399F7C/[/img]

    I designed a Jool ship v.2, but ended up using almost none of it except its fuel modules-- which I had to use to refuel Jool ship v.1, since it didn't have quite enough gas to get home from Eelou. Docking two ships in solar (Kerbol) orbit is shockingly difficult. Here's a shot of the fueling.
    [img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/919023930001854892/9C114BC2B51C8C7BC2CFEE4ABCB5C21324D531AF/[/img]

    And here's a photo-op of the "Eelou 7" back on Kerbin, safe and sound! Except their lander broke in half.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/919023951413441480/DE33FE10DE71CA19006D41FC8BCC49CEFB7D1E95/[/img]

    Of course now with the 5-meter parts, you can build monstrosities like this, which almost make the game too goddamned easy, and make my Jool ship look downright quaint. This is a modification of the "fuel train" concept that Rantis came up with. In his version, the engines are all up front and drop-tanks are dropped from the back of the vehicle one at a time as their fuel is used-up. In this version, each drop tank has its own engines, which gives it much more delta-V, especially initially when the ship is extremely heavy. The longest of these I built was 4 fuel tanks long, at which point the physics engine gave up the ghost.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/616173252271633138/EC3D4819FC2CD618522F562F58F2F912FF8AF97A/[/img]

    Remember that scene in 2010: Odyssey 2 where they aerobrake around Jupiter? Yeah, it's just as terrifying in Kerbal.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/616173252274436258/C531D034A5091FA016BCBAD8644F711DAB32BD6B/[/img]

    Then the asteroid patch. You can do all kinds of fun things with asteroids, like soft-land them on Kerbin.
    [img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/616174158564126844/3C9969E39164FDE5A4CB4CF3A6AEF4A24FA365DC/[/img]

    Or carefully arrange them in concentric circle orbits around Kerbin.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/597039465459576438/75289471FD5AFD26A9DB9BDE4BCB8905D4805496/[/img]

    Of course even just moving a Class E asteroid requires a lot of strange and specialized equipment.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/598164652167762258/ADC00DC77297BB41FD2531D39CC05270F21BE818/[/img]

    One last shot of a recent return flight from the Mun which I think sums up the game amazingly.
    [img]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/40855522629642767/4EABAB6DDB243D27F8925861DF151959E36D2738/[/img]


  • FoxDev

    I run mods. Specifically mods that make the game harder or more fun.

    I run

    • Deadly Reentry
    • RemoteTech
    • TAC Life support
    • Crowd Sourced Science Logs

    these mods make life harder and therefore make the game more fun! and CSSL is on there because it makes science spam a bit more interesting because you have more than like 3 messages you could possibly get....

    On occasion i'l run

    • Ferram Aerospace
    • Interstellar Mod

    If i'm in a hurry and doing a creative build just to sow something to someone i might use, but the last time i was actually in a hurry was 0.19

    • Mechjeb
      or
    • HyperEdit


  • And you're the one who's picking on @ben_lubar.


    Filed under: granted, the screens are shorter, but still



  • Can I just drop in and say that Space Odyssey 2010 is one of the best hard sci-fi movies ever made? MUCH better than 2001 IMO.



  • @cartman82 said:

    Can I just drop in and say that Space Odyssey 2010 is one of the best hard sci-fi movies ever made? MUCH better than 2001 IMO.

    I wouldn't say it's better than 2001, but I do agree that it's under-appreciated and somewhat unfairly forgotten in the shadow of Kubrick's movie.

    I really wish they would have cut some of the Earth scenes. Basically all of them after the Leonov leaves orbit. The scene of the "telepathic hairbrush" works in the book, because you are reading the thoughts and motives of the Star Child. In the movie, it's just weird and unnecessary and out-of-place. (But thank God they didn't add the narration to explain it, which would have been worse.)

    The design of the Leonov is amazing, though, and I just love the way the movie contrasts the compact, blocky, practical Russian-designed ship with the beautiful and graceful but delicate American Discovery. I mean, it's basically just a bunch of cargo containers bolted together. It's one of my favorite space ships in science fiction. Not just due to the aesthetics, but due to how well the aesthetics serve the narrative purpose of the film.



  • Re. 2001. Maybe it's just that I'm more into science than mysticism. I like Clarke's novel just fine - plot makes sense, everything fits together. But if I didn't read the book, I'd have no idea what's happening during the last 30 minutes. That's a failure on Kubrick's part. Too pretentious and atmospheric for my taste.

    2010 takes everything good about 2001 and cuts away the crap. Every scene works. The plot is clear, but not dumbed down (if fact, it's much better than in 2001). There's a rising sense of dread throughout the movie. I still remember getting the chills during the bridge over Jupiter scene. And the ending is just perfect.

    Now if we could only get that Rama movie directed by Fincher, I can die happy.



  • @cartman82 said:

    But if I didn't read the book, I'd have no idea what's happening during the last 30 minutes.

    That's the brilliance of the movie, and also why the movie works better for people who haven't read the book. You have 10 people watch the ending, and you ask for an explanation and you get 11 explanations from them. And you talk to them about what they experienced and you learn something from them, about them, from the discussion and the next time you watch the movie it's a totally different experience because you've absorbed that and become a larger person as a result.

    It's the rare movie where you take from it what you put into it. It's not popcorn Michael Bay entertainment, but that's exactly what makes it brilliant. The slow pacing is on purpose. The lack of explanation or narration during the last half hour is on purpose. The fact that, despite that, you can't take your eyes off the screen because every shot is just that beautiful... that's the brilliance.

    For other examples of this genre of movie see Solaris (the Russian original especially, but the George Clooney remake is genuinely pretty good), or Stalker.

    @cartman82 said:

    2010 takes everything good about 2001 and cuts away the crap. Every scene works. The plot is clear, but not dumbed down (if fact, it's much better than in 2001). There's a rising sense of dread throughout the movie. I still remember getting the chills during the bridge over Jupiter scene. And the ending is just perfect.

    Right; but it's not meant to be 2001 over again. It's a really well-written, competent movie. It has great design, a good cast, tells a compelling and complete story.

    Think of it like Alien and Aliens-- two movies, one of which is a sequel to the other, both of which are excellent, and yet they're entirely different genres.

    @cartman82 said:

    Now if we could only get that Rama movie directed by Fincher, I can die happy.

    You're complaining about 2001's story and you like Rama? The book where an alien spaceship visits, changes NOTHING, brings up 40,000 mysteries NONE OF WHICH ARE EXPLORED OR EXPLAINED, then leaves? Rama's a terrible story.

    At least 2001 has events that affect things. Rama ends with, "oh this weird thing happened but now it's over and back to status quo. Uh. The end I guess?"


  • β™Ώ (Parody)

    @cartman82 said:

    2001

    We watched that over the summer with my kids. They loved it. Wife and I were amazed. My son wants to be HAL for Halloween.



  • I guess I'd be ok with mods that make the game harder. (Especially since the 5-meter parts make the game so damned easy. You can launch Nebraska into orbit with those.)

    The ones that piss me off are the auto-pilots (like MechJeb) and the "teleport the ship into orbit" ones. That's like 75% of the game. You just modded-out like 75% of the game. Why even play it?

    EDIT: also you added no screenshots. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @boomzilla said:

    My son wants to be HAL for Halloween.

    I wonder if I can find the pic from when my husband did that.... Though technically he was anthro-Hal rather than going for a literal interpretation.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    That's the brilliance of the movie, and also why the movie works better for people who haven't read the book. You have 10 people watch the ending, and you ask for an explanation and you get 11 explanations from them. And you talk to them about what they experienced and you learn something from them, about them, from the discussion and the next time you watch the movie it's a totally different experience because you've absorbed that and become a larger person as a result.

    It's the rare movie where you take from it what you put into it. It's not popcorn Michael Bay entertainment, but that's exactly what makes it brilliant. The slow pacing is on purpose. The lack of explanation or narration during the last half hour is on purpose. The fact that, despite that, you can't take your eyes off the screen because every shot is just that beautiful... that's the brilliance.

    For other examples of this genre of movie see Solaris (the Russian original especially, but the George Clooney remake is genuinely pretty good), or Stalker.

    See the problem is, there's a thin line between "a unique personal experience people can discuss and argue about" and "a bunch of nonsense". And the line is, it seems, entirely in the mind of observers.

    Reminds me of those experiments where they take paintings made by children or animals and place them in a fancy gallery and all the critics are awwing and arguing what the genius author wanted to express. If 2001 wasn't such a stunning, well crafted movie (but had the same plot), you would probably think it's a bunch of nonsense too.

    But then again, I didn't like Stalker nor Russian Solaris too, so maybe that kind of abstract artsy stuff isn't my thing.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Right; but it's not meant to be 2001 over again. It's a really well-written, competent movie. It has great design, a good cast, tells a compelling and complete story.

    Think of it like Alien and Aliens-- two movies, one of which is a sequel to the other, both of which are excellent, and yet they're entirely different genres.

    Fair enough. I also prefer Aliens over Alien, so there's that πŸ˜„

    @blakeyrat said:

    You're complaining about 2001's story and you like Rama? The book where an alien spaceship visits, changes NOTHING, brings up 40,000 mysteries NONE OF WHICH ARE EXPLORED OR EXPLAINED, then leaves? Rama's a terrible story.

    At least 2001 has events that affect things. Rama ends with, "oh this weird thing happened but now it's over and back to status quo. Uh. The end I guess?"

    Oh, I love 2001 the novel. Story itself is pretty damn spectacular. I just don't like the movie.

    As for Rama, they explained what they needed to explain. It's dangerous for hard sci-fi to try to explain too much. There's always a point where reader goes "wait a minute" and the magic is ruined. Clarke did a great job with Rama. The twist ending was excellent and left me wanting for more. Too bad the sequels went in a downward spiral, but that's the way things usually go with sequels.


  • FoxDev

    drat, and i needed that $200 for rocket parts!

    i'm not a youtuber so i rarely bother to get SS.

    i'll post some this week.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Do not pass Go.

    Why did you summon Ben?



  • @cartman82 said:

    See the problem is, there's a thin line between "a unique personal experience people can discuss and argue about" and "a bunch of nonsense". And the line is, it seems, entirely in the mind of observers.

    Possibly, but considering the film appears on virtually every "top 10 movies of all time" lists, maybe there's something to it.

    @cartman82 said:

    But then again, I didn't like Stalker nor Russian Solaris too, so maybe that kind of abstract artsy stuff isn't my thing.

    Fair enough. I have a friend who genuinely like Michael Bay's Transformers.

    @cartman82 said:

    Clarke did a great job with Rama. The twist ending was excellent and left me wanting for more.

    Wait what? It's been awhile since I read it, but what twist ending?

    @accalia said:

    i'm not a youtuber so i rarely bother to get SS.

    I do not understand the relationship between those two things.


  • FoxDev

    @blakeyrat said:

    I do not understand the relationship between those two things.

    I play to have fun, not to show others what i'm doing. is that better phrasing?



  • This game is definitely on my "more ways to waste time because I definitely have loads of free time" list



  • KSP is the destroyer of 'To do lists', the devourer of time itself!

    Haven't tried loading up 0.25 yet. Maybe once this project is over and I get some free time.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    what twist ending

    [spoiler]The Ramans do everything in threes[/spoiler]? Probably been 20 years since I read it last.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    Especially since the 5-meter parts make the game so damned easy. You can launch Nebraska into orbit with those.)
    Huh. I guess I should try playing again. I might be able to fucking make orbit now.

    BRB



  • SPOILERS FOR A 30-YEAR-OLD BOOK BELOW






    @FrostCat said:

    The Ramans do everything in threes? Probably been 20 years since I read it last.

    That's not a plot twist, that's more hackneyed sequel bait.

    It doesn't even make sense: Rama has 3 docking areas for visiting ships, and its little drone camera robots are on 3 legs, therefore the ship is going to visit the Earth three times? Huh? What kind of crazy leap of logic is that? Spirit and Opportunity had 6 wheels, so therefore we must be planning to land six of those rovers on Mars, right?

    Not to mention all the hundreds of ways the Rama ship does not do everything in threes. For example, it's bisected by a "sea", not trisected, so it only has two "continents" instead of three. Also, IIRC, there's 6 of those "spiky engine nozzle things" as the ass-end instead of three of them.

    ... that said, to be honest, I kind of liked Rama 2, at least until the end of the book where the aliens just spill their guts about everything. Visiting a big mysterious spaceship, which then leaves without changing anything = boring. Getting trapped in a big mysterious spaceship, with other weird aliens you have to co-exist with, and struggling to even find something to eat, that's compelling.

    @Weng said:

    Huh. I guess I should try playing again. I might be able to fucking make orbit now.

    Built the simplest 5-meter rocket, nothing but two of the big 5-meter tanks sitting atop a four-nozzle liquid booster (and a remote control or small capsule to steer the thing), and it'll escape kerbin entirely. No staging required. They're ridiculously powerful.



  • Over 700 hours logged. My current obsession is making a Laythe-capable SSTO. This is one of my less capable designs from 0.24 (only ~2500 dV left from a 120km orbit, which is enough for a Jool transfer at a transfer window, but some of my designs right before 0.25 were over 3k dV from 120km orbit).

    AND NOW THAT 0.25 IS OUT I HAVE TO START OVER AGAIN. But I like what they're doing with the Mk2 fuselages.

    @blakeyrat said:

    I guess I'd be ok with mods that make the game harder. (Especially since the 5-meter parts make the game so damned easy. You can launch Nebraska into orbit with those.)

    They're also really expensive, though. The old way (i.e. 500+ part asparagus staged mainsail tanks with struts all over the place) wasn't all that fun.

    @blakeyrat said:

    The ones that piss me off are the auto-pilots (like MechJeb) and the "teleport the ship into orbit" ones. That's like 75% of the game. You just modded-out like 75% of the game. Why even play it?

    What's your position on using KE or MechJeb only to measure delta-V? Knowing that (as well as the transfer requirements) makes a pretty huge difference, and not exposing that information to the player seems like missing functionality.

    I also use Kerbal Alarm Clock because guesstimating transfer windows is unreliable, and considering that an assisted Kerbin->Jool transfer is ~1990 dV and an unassisted transfer is ~2700 dV, the difference is substantial. That's also something I feel is missing functionality.

    I'm with you in that autopilot destroys the game, though. The attitude on the KSP forums seems to be "Well, NASA uses autopilot, so why can't I?" With all the improvements they've made to maneuver nodes in the past few releases, there's not really any good reason to use one.

    @accalia said:

    Ferram Aerospace

    I'm considering using that, how is it? I hear it's both easier and harder.


  • FoxDev

    @Groaner said:

    I'm considering using that, how is it? I hear it's both easier and harder.

    Depends on how well you know KSP air physics vs real world air physics. It makes flying work just about like IRL.

    if you know how to build a real plane will probably be easier, if you know how to make KSP plane..... not so much.

    can be really fun, particularly when combined with Deadly Reentry.



  • @Groaner said:

    They're also really expensive, though. The old way (i.e. 500+ part asparagus staged mainsail tanks with struts all over the place) wasn't all that fun.

    Well I tried the economy mode and it was real boring so I switched to science only.

    Also, I don't do asparagus staging because it feels like cheating. As soon as I see a real life rocket pull that shit off, I might reconsider.

    @Groaner said:

    What's your position on using KE or MechJeb only to measure delta-V? Knowing that (as well as the transfer requirements) makes a pretty huge difference, and not exposing that information to the player seems like missing functionality.

    I don't use mods. If you know the exact delta-v, you can just look up the delta-v requirements for your trip on the wiki and bam you've eliminated 30% of the gameplay. Trying and failing is part of the deal.

    And yes, I am aware that real life rockets all have navigation computers.

    The only thing I think feels like "missing information" is the lack of a radar altimeter in third-person, especially since there's one in first-person. That's a weird omission. Especially given the way the altitude works on moons, where "zero" isn't ground level but the lowest ground level, but the actual "ground" could be anywhere from 0m - 4000m with no way to tell other than your eyeballs.

    Oh, also, not showing the staging in map mode is pretty annoying.

    @Groaner said:

    The attitude on the KSP forums seems to be "Well, NASA uses autopilot, so why can't I?"

    NASA's also working in a universe with completely different physical laws which makes (for example) attaining orbit from Earth significantly harder than Kerbin, while landing on Earth's moon is significantly easier than landing on Mun. (Relatively-speaking.) Also our world has 24-hour days, haha.



  • @accalia said:

    if you know how to build a real plane will probably be easier, if you know how to make KSP plane..... not so much.

    My rockets typically don't take aerodynamics into account (one large SAS unit per stack always seems to do the trick). My planes do (to some extent). I guess there's only one way to find out...

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well I tried the economy mode and it was real boring so I switched to science only.

    It makes the science grind a bit easier because some of the contracts reward science points, But yeah, it can be tedious, especially when you're given a bunch of contracts with ridiculous parameters.

    Later on in my last save, I would get a lot of repetitive contracts like "Plant flag on MΓΌn," so what I ended up doing was dropping a permanent lander and then have a kerbal come out, plant a flag, pick it up, and then go back into the capsule. I also put space stations around pretty much every planet and moon so that I could get science data on a moment's notice. Easy money.

    @blakeyrat said:

    If you know the exact delta-v, you can just look up the delta-v requirements for your trip on the wiki and bam you've eliminated 30% of the gameplay. Trying and failing is part of the deal.

    Frustratingly, most delta-V maps I've seen assume the optimal case. They don't tell you that getting into Moho orbit outside of a launch window can require about 7km/s (3k for the transfer, 1k for plane change, 3k for orbital insertion).

    Also, screw Moho. The Jool system is much more fun and interesting.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Also, I don't do asparagus staging because it feels like cheating. As soon as I see a real life rocket pull that shit off, I might reconsider.

    I hear the aerodynamics make asparagus staging generally a Bad Ideaβ„’, although the [Falcon Heavy][1] will have a fuel crossfeed system from its outer stages.

    @blakeyrat said:

    The only thing I think feels like "missing information" is the lack of a radar altimeter in third-person, especially since there's one in first-person. That's a weird omission. Especially given the way the altitude works on moons, where "zero" isn't ground level but the lowest ground level, but the actual "ground" could be anywhere from 0m - 4000m with no way to tell other than your eyeballs.

    Yeah, that's annoying. I hear that the new moons planned for Gas Planet 2 are going to be very irregularly shaped (to mess with the player, of course), so not having that feature is going to be unpleasant.

    Time to get back to work on that spaceplane.
    [1]: http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    therefore the ship is going to visit the Earth three times?

    I thought it was three ships visit, but whatever. I was just guessing anyway--I haven't read the book since the 80s or 90s--I don't remember a twist per se, I was guessing that was @cartman82 meant.



  • @Groaner said:

    Later on in my last save, I would get a lot of repetitive contracts like "Plant flag on MΓΌn," so what I ended up doing was dropping a permanent lander and then have a kerbal come out, plant a flag, pick it up, and then go back into the capsule.

    Right, but, again, that feels like cheating, I'd never do that.

    I think part of the reason I had budget problems is that I didn't use "revert" when I was playing, and I think most Economy mode players do. If I had a space ship that was a bad design, well, oops, there goes 100k and if I'm lucky I can recover the Kerbalnaut. Meanwhile, other people go "revert to launch" and complain that the mode's too easy.

    So I got into a place where I needed a lot of money to make my rocket, but the problem was I had to do like 20 really boring repetitive contracts to save up cash. Then I started questioning, what's the point? Money's not hard to get, it's just repetitive.

    @FrostCat said:

    I thought it was three ships visit, but whatever.

    Well the first book was written ages before the sequels. In the sequels it does turn out to be the same Rama that visits Earth three times, but who knows what Clarke intended originally (if anything.)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    In the sequels it does turn out to be the same Rama that visits Earth three times

    I don't remember that, but I read them as they came out, and honestly I didn't think they were all that great, so a lot of details escape me.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    revert to launch

    Hard mode disables that (and quickloading). I would give hard mode a try, but I've lost too many ships to the Hell Kraken.



  • @Groaner said:

    Hard mode disables that (and quickloading). I would give hard mode a try, but I've lost too many ships to the Hell Kraken.

    The latest build has a bug where sometimes your rocket will just spontaneously destroy the launchpad simply by "settling in". Until bugs like that are fixed, hard mode is untenable.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wait what? It's been awhile since I read it, but what twist ending?

    SPOILER ALERT
    (tags don't work)

    There's a big expectation that Rama will do a breaking maneuver around Sun and head for Earth. Astronauts clear everything up when they leave, wanting to have the pristine scene when the Rama's "real" passengers wake up for the first contact. But Rama doesn't break and instead just uses the gravitational slingshot to launch itself further. The Earth was never the destination. So now, not only will the passengers never make the first contact, they won't even know there WAS a contact, due to the cleanup effort. Neat.

    Of course, they ruin in with sequels, but oh well.



  • @cartman82 said:

    There's a big expectation that Rama will do a breaking maneuver around Sun and head for Earth.

    Pretty sure there wasn't. It might have been thrown out there as a theory but, then again, "the security camera is on three legs, so there's three spaceships" was thrown out there as a theory. Also I'm pretty sure they leave a bunch of shit behind, like that one dude's low-gravity bike thing.

    I'd have to re-read the book to be sure though, and I don't think I have a copy anymore.





  • What's with that lighting? Did you port it to the Unreal engine? (LOL Unreal 1 jokes so current)



  • White lights got boring, so I changed the RGB settings on them in the VAB. Don't remember if that was new in 0.23 or 0.24...

    And now I have the urge to play UT.



  • From that wiki link

    The cause was that KSP prior to 0.17 would move the ship in space, instead of moving space around the ship.
    Did the solution to the bug come to them in a dream?


  • Yeah, but then later they forgot it in another dream.



  • Went back to the Mun for some more science points, made a joke reference to the best worst Moon base movie. GET IT?!



  • Jeb is really digging it.



  • Jeb's always pretty happy. Some of the Kerbalnauts are always scared shitless, but not Jeb.



  • This one costs half as much to launch as Nebraska, but has approximately equal delta-V.

    Somehow, this was unintentionally entertaining.



  • I need to give this game a try again. I played and enjoyed Orbiter quite a bit, but I only took the Delta Glider or whatever and used unlimited fuel. I tried for quite a while to dock the space shuttle with the ISS but kept getting my orbital inclination off by a degree or so, which is enough to prevent docking and you don't have enough fuel to correct once in orbit. Then I tried to visit the outer planets. Jupiter and Saturn were no problem, but Neptune took forever even at max time acceleration, then I missed disabling time acceleration in time and I think I collided.

    All that to say I found orbital mechanics quite fascinating. A friend gave me a pirated KSP a year or two ago but I never figured it out.



  • It's come a long way in a year plus. The increased joint strength, better Isp on the engines, various improvements to maneuver nodes, and many other little things have made it a much better, less alpha-ey experience.

    There's also a wealth of mods, if you're into that sort of thing and are okay with them being temporarily broken after each release.



  • Very nice. Much better than Dwarf Fortress pictures.

    8/10 would peruse again.



  • Speaking of monstrocity rockets. Easily a single launch to Ike or Gilly. Possibly a Jool moon also, but I need to shake-it-out and see what kind of fuel usage I have.

    That's a single-stage lander on a docking port. There's a remote control unit on the mothership so I can pilot it solo if needed.



  • Duna Cruisin'.



  • Gilly's just a tiny rock.



  • Landing on Gilly is the only instance where I want to THRUST DOWN because it takes way too long to land. Those LV-909's on such a small craft are probably going to give you a really high TWR.



  • @Groaner said:

    Landing on Gilly is the only instance where I want to THRUST DOWN because it takes way too long to land. Those LV-909's on such a small craft are probably going to give you a really high TWR.

    WANT to? Damn straight. You'll note my nosecone is facing directly towards that shithole.

    I usually thrust down until I can see the ship's shadow, slow to about 5 m/s, die of boredom waiting for touchdown, then use RCS to keep the fucker ON the ground because the landing legs bounce.

    Landing on Dres is similar.

    Now I'm docking back with the mothership with is seriously annoying, because I left it orbiting at 50k which is WAY too high for Gilly and it's only like 3 m/s from escape. Ugh.

    BTW, I shoved triple LV-909s on this sucker because I think it might be capable of Duna landing, perhaps with an added drogue chute. But I haven't tried one yet.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Landing on Dres is similar.

    Have you done a canyon landing? Last time I tried, it was a top-heavy craft and didn't end well.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Now I'm docking back with the mothership with is seriously annoying, because I left it orbiting at 50k which is WAY too high for Gilly and it's only like 3 m/s from escape. Ugh.

    And the too-high time warp altitudes are another thing that make Gilly missions irritating.

    @blakeyrat said:

    BTW, I shoved triple LV-909s on this sucker because I think it might be capable of Duna landing, perhaps with an added drogue chute. But I haven't tried one yet.

    You're probably fine. Duna's gravity is around 0.3g, and I've landed a single nuclear engine craft with 4 T-800 tanks on it. The tanks weren't entirely full, though.



  • @Groaner said:

    And the too-high time warp altitudes are another thing that make Gilly missions irritating.

    Yeah Gilly's weird, the nav switches to "surface" mode WAAAY above the actual surface. (Compared to Minmus, where you can be resting on the ground and still not in "surface" nav mode, in some areas.) Not sure if that is a bug or some quirk of its weird shape.

    @Groaner said:

    You're probably fine. Duna's gravity is around 0.3g, and I've landed a single nuclear engine craft with 4 T-800 tanks on it. The tanks weren't entirely full, though.

    Probably but I'm always super-cautious on this game.

    Have you managed a Tylo landing/takeoff yet? 0.8 g and zero atmosphere, yikes.


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