General Kerbal Discussion
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@blakeyrat BTW in case you were wanting to see my long range booster built out of airplane fuselages:
It actually doesn't even look too bad. You can see the fuel capacity is much improved over the last version, and it has 12 atomics rather than 6. Also significantly smaller part-count, for a more capable ship. So the game engine can keep up. Now the biggest limiting factor to payload is the stress on that damned docking connector...
Also it was a bitch to get that thing in orbit without any Kerbodyne parts.
You can also see my "radiator number", which I have no fucking clue what it means.
Gonna use it to bring a science lab and a lander to Jool, where I'll start landing on moons outer-to-inner.
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@blakeyrat That's a pretty nice looking ship.
How much work was it to get into orbit?@sloosecannon is an idiot who doesn't comprehend what he's reading, apparently, since you said it was "a bitch"EDIT: Wait, 4 years mission elapsed time????
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat That's a pretty nice looking ship. How much work was it to get into orbit?
Here's the stack:
Despite all those nozzles, it was amazingly difficult to figure out the correct launch operation to get to that 130 km orbit. (Once I added some sepatrons, I could do my eastward turn early enough to make it without the rocket exploding the instant the first liquid stage was ejected.) I made it with so little fuel left, I just ejected the whole thing instead of trying to save it.
If I had Kerbodyne engines and fuel tanks unlocked, it'd be half the size.
@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
EDIT: Wait, 4 years mission elapsed time????
Yah it stayed parked in orbit the entire time I did that Gilly mission. It's unmanned, it just sits there, no biggie.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat That's a pretty nice looking ship. How much work was it to get into orbit?
Here's the stack:
Despite all those nozzles, it was amazingly difficult to figure out the correct launch operation to get to that 130 km orbit. I made it with so little fuel left, I just ejected the whole thing instead of trying to save it.
Holy crap that's a lot of thrust. How laggy does the game get when you launch that thing?
@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
EDIT: Wait, 4 years mission elapsed time????
Yah it stayed parked in orbit the entire time I did that Gilly mission. It's unmanned, it just sits there, no biggie.
Oh, that makes sense. I was thinking it was either that or you left the game logged in for a couple hours (done that before :) )
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
How laggy does the game get when you launch that thing?
Very. The shit that reaches orbit is a small-enough parts count that it never goes yellow, though.
@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Oh, that makes sense.
Once I figured out how to launch the damned thing, I felt like just sending 3 or 4 up to hang around until I was ready to use it. Decided not to because as I unlock new tech, it'll get obsolete quickly.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Groaner I guess I need a shot from another angle to visualize that.
Here are a couple close-ups:
And one from the bottom, showing how the KS-25s are intentionally off-center.
It's ugly, but without it, the whole thing tips over. Heck, it's difficult to fly straight as is.
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@blakeyrat Payload for Jool:
High part count, but it's all the stuff I need, so. Not sure I can reduce it... lots 'o' docking connectors in case I decide to build a whole space station in Jool region.
If I lined-up those ladders right, Kerbal ought to be able to climb all the way out of his lander into the science or cupola without having to use RCS.
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@blakeyrat Enroute
That poor docking connector is really taking a lot of stress. But you don't unlock the rockomax-sized docking port until way late in the tech tree.
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Jeb: Separation!
Valentina: Uh, Jeb, ain't we burning through this fuel a bit quick?
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Yay, 25 science a day for basically nothing. I wonder if I could do a Moho run while this science processes...
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@blakeyrat While those Jool guys are researching, how about wrangling some asteroids?
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@blakeyrat Can you crash the asteroid into anything? What happens if you do?
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat Can you crash the asteroid into anything?
Yes.
I dunno what happens if you do. In the older versions, if you had enough parachutes you could "land" asteroids on Kerbin and they'd just sit there.
If an asteroid hits your ships, I assume it just destroys anything it hits with enough force. I'm not sure if asteroids themselves can be destroyed.
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@Jarry Nice. I landed mine about 500m off the runway. Never occurred to me to use a building.
That little pond in front of the administration center would be a good spot, too.
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Does anybody know how the fly-by-wire avionics hub works? Is it just better control of SAS in airplanes, or does it actually have an autopilot you can use?
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
fly-by-wire avionics hub works
It used to be just extra SAS control, but it might actually do more than that now. IIRC something like that was added not too long ago...
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@sloosecannon AFAICT it does nothing at all. The description mentions all kinds of neat autopilot features, none of which appear to be accessible.
It's hard to build shuttle-sized planes that don't look doofy. There's nowhere to put a goliath without obstructing the cargo bay door or ramp, and the wings have to go WAY forward to balance the weight of the fuel.
Bah, even in the "kinda 727 position" there, they still clip through the cargo bay:
Maybe the solution is to front-load cargo and put a second level for the cockpit, 747-style.
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@blakeyrat Why do you place the wings so far forward? I thought placing the center of lift slightly behind the center of mass resulted in a more stable plane, while putting it ahead resulted in a more "maneuverable" (unstable) plane. That's what the wiki says, anyway: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Center_of_lift
COL ahead of COM → Flips or turns uncontrollably
COL inside COM → Excessively maneuverable; needs constant course correction
COL closely behind of COM → More maneuverable
COL further behind of COM → More stable
COL very far behind of COM → Very hard to correct course; likely to flip up or nosedive
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@Kian I dunno maybe. Remember there's no payload, so the last 50% of the plane weighs virtually nothing.
The bigger problem is those airliner wings aren't sufficient, and it's hard to come up with a configuration that:
- Has enough wing surface
- Doesn't look like shitty crap specifically designed to "game" the physics engine.
- Allows you to place the landing gear "correctly" so you can rotate on take-off
Seriously. In the real world, you'd just get those airliner wings and scale them up 50% and that works pretty damned well-- look at the wing of a 737 compared to a 777. But in Kerbal you can't do that, and I don't have any bigger wings unlocked. (Not even sure any bigger wings exist...)
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okay..... things i discovered today:
- I used to suck at moving kerbals in RCS in pre 1.1..... i suck a lot more now.
- 40km is too deep for a direct ballistic reentry from minmus
- 50km (second attempt with a new rocket) isn't deep enough and skips twice before landing
- i'm going to have to get reall really really lucky or get a lot better at landing if i ever want to see positive reputation again....
- 5 ded and i've only visited minmus once, and that was a flyby. i havent even gotten to the mun yet
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@accalia I know the feeling. I've already had to ditch two landers (one on Minmus, the other on the Mun) so far. I keep running out of fuel too quick.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Kian I dunno maybe. Remember there's no payload, so the last 50% of the plane weighs virtually nothing.
The bigger problem is those airliner wings aren't sufficient, and it's hard to come up with a configuration that:
- Has enough wing surface
- Doesn't look like shitty crap specifically designed to "game" the physics engine.
- Allows you to place the landing gear "correctly" so you can rotate on take-off
Seriously. In the real world, you'd just get those airliner wings and scale them up 50% and that works pretty damned well-- look at the wing of a 737 compared to a 777. But in Kerbal you can't do that, and I don't have any bigger wings unlocked. (Not even sure any bigger wings exist...)
It presents an even bigger problem for large SSTOs given that the airliner wings only tolerate 1200K. I'm very tempted to use UbioZor welding or TweakScale to provide a large wing solution without exploding the part count, but I hate being dependent on parts mods that will break at the next patch.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
okay..... things i discovered today:
- I used to suck at moving kerbals in RCS in pre 1.1..... i suck a lot more now.
It's a lot harder to change their orientation now.
- 40km is too deep for a direct ballistic reentry from minmus
Depends on your velocity. I've heard some people say that it might be better to aim deeper so that you're in denser air which is better at absorbing heat. But if you don't have a heatshield, you should probably do multiple high-altitude aerobraking passes.
- i'm going to have to get reall really really lucky or get a lot better at landing if i ever want to see positive reputation again....
- 5 ded and i've only visited minmus once, and that was a flyby. i havent even gotten to the mun yet
The parachute mechanics have changed a bit as well, which can catch one off-guard.
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@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Depends on your velocity.
pretty fast, direct reentry from minmus that was. i didn't have the deltav to circularize in low kerbin orbit before deorbiting.
@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
But if you don't have a heatshield,
i did, it failed? or something. might have been my flying. i was decelerating in a fireball with plenty of ablator left and then splat out of nowhere. mission end screen said destroyed by aerodynamic forces.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
might have been my flying.
Probably that. I had a really nasty accident involving a pod flipping around at exactly the wrong time because I ran out of energy for the reaction wheels...
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I had a really nasty accident involving a pod flipping around at exactly the wrong time because I ran out of energy for the reaction wheels...
I always have batteries on my reentry pod for exactly this reason. I like that the latest tech tree gives the containment pod so early on.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
i did, it failed? or something. might have been my flying. i was decelerating in a fireball with plenty of ablator left and then splat out of nowhere. mission end screen said destroyed by aerodynamic forces.
That kept happening to me until I started using the size-up heatshield for the capsule. It looks doofy but works reliably. (And yes, I was using SAS to aim the heatshield into the burn. It just ... didn't work sometimes.)
@abarker said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I like that the latest tech tree gives the containment pod so early on.
Containment pod?
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Containment pod?
Going off memory for what it's called since I was at work. After double checking, I was talking about the service bay.
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@abarker Oh. I could never figure out what that was for.
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I began comercial space flights. They give good money and rep, as long as the tourists don't die. But that's what reverting flights is for.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
But that's what reverting flights is for.
And quicksave/quickload.
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@Groaner Cheat!!!
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@blakeyrat I draw the line at reverting, since it's in the difficulty settings. And once I have multiple ships in orbit, I'm not going to be able to do it any more. It's mostly useful to test designs without losing all your money / rep.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat I draw the line at reverting, since it's in the difficulty settings. And once I have multiple ships in orbit, I'm not going to be able to do it any more. It's mostly useful to test designs without losing all your money / rep.
My current career save is Moderate. I'd consider trying Hard if I was assured that none of my ships would bug out in the middle of an interplanetary transfer, or if coming out of timewarp near an SOI change wouldn't screw up the trajectory I'd set up long ago with a tiny amount of fuel that I suddenly need 500+ m/s to correct, etc. etc.
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Ok so Kerbal crashed once, losing like 15 minutes of progress. Then when I tried the mission again, a physics glitch caused my ship to vibrate wildly until it flew apart.
Fuuuuuck.
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@blakeyrat AND AGAIN the physics model fucks up. FUUUUUCK.
Oh well, excuse to build a new ship right?
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@blakeyrat And the new ship crashed when staged. Jesus. How did Kerbal get so buggy???
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@Erufael Installing a mod that estimates your vessel's Δv goes a long way towards increasing your chances of success.
In fact, IMO it's really a major oversight that something like that isn't already a feature of the core game, because while going to orbit around Kerbin and back is not too hard by just eyeballing everything, practically any kind of mission beyond that more or less requires you to know beforehand whether your Δv is even anywhere in the neighborhood to being sufficient - unless you think finding out (by pure trial-and-error) that your craft runs out of fuel on the home stretch from a distant planet and having to do a hour-long mission all over from the beginning is fun.
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@Jarry said in General Kerbal Discussion:
it's impossible to launch a plane with the first runway, impossible
I've seen potato fields that were smoother than the tech lvl 1 runway...
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@blakeyrat IIRC, it does not have autopilot by itself, but it allows untrained crew to use the advanced SAS maneuvers that normally require a higher piloting level (or one of the higher tech probe cores). I like sticking this part on small single seat landers that I send out to grind science - I can then man them with just a scientist (for resetting the experiments) and still have him flying like an ace - makes pilot kerbals kind of obsolete...
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Planning first mission to visit the Mun, as there's a contract for that. What's the best way to land on a place with no atmosphere? Do you try to bring your orbit down as close to the surface as possible, then burn retrograde for a short fall and fire up again close to the ground to control the descent, or do you bring the periapsis down to the surface from a high orbit and slow down at the end?
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@Anonymouse said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Erufael Installing a mod that estimates your vessel's Δv goes a long way towards increasing your chances of success.
Cheat.
Let me ask you an honest question, do you believe Squad didn't include that because they're incompetent? Or because it doesn't fit their vision of the game?
@Anonymouse said in General Kerbal Discussion:
In fact, IMO it's really a major oversight that something like that isn't already a feature of the core game,
It's not an oversight.
@Anonymouse said in General Kerbal Discussion:
unless you think finding out (by pure trial-and-error) that your craft runs out of fuel on the home stretch from a distant planet and having to do a hour-long mission all over from the beginning is fun.
You're not supposed to do it from the beginning; you're supposed to use that as an excuse to say, "oh man, now I have to make a rescue mission-- awesome!"
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@Anonymouse said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat IIRC, it does not have autopilot by itself, but it allows untrained crew to use the advanced SAS maneuvers that normally require a higher piloting level (or one of the higher tech probe cores).
Oh. I don't know if those Kerbal skills do anything in science mode, and I don't play campaign mode because it's boring as shit. So.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Do you try to bring your orbit down as close to the surface as possible, then burn retrograde for a short fall and fire up again close to the ground to control the descent, or do you bring the periapsis down to the surface from a high orbit and slow down at the end?
It'll take a couple tries to get used to your craft and learn the altitudes at which you should start burning shit.
BTW, there's a radar altimeter in the cockpit if you're in first-person view. It doesn't show up in third-person view. Unlike the delta-V measure, I think that is an oversight. The third-person altimeter measures from "sea level", which on Mun is kind of just a theoretical concept. So your ship, which landed, will be anywhere from 1000m to 5000m in altitude.
The cockpit's radar altimeter shows you your true altitude, and you get the navball as well. So you might take some time and learn to pilot in first-person.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Cheat.
in a purely single player game with absolutely no multiplayer component?
who the fuck cares? The only thing running unmodded gives you is more leverage in the e-peen measuring competitions.
I've run unmodded campaigns, and i've run modded campaigns and they both give vastly different experiences. so effectively i got twice the game by modding.
@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
What's the best way to land on a place with no atmosphere?
whichever way the kerbal walks away from.
generally i bring my PE down to ~5-15km (depending on what body i'm landing on and what terrain is in the way) above the location i want to land at, then burn retrograge until i'm falling more or less vertically, then juggle my velocity to be < 50 m/s until i'm under a klick from the surface, and reduce to less than 10m/s after that. don't trust your altimeter in standard view as that's altitude from sea level. there's an actual radar altimeter in IVA mode that you can use, but landing in IVA is a lot harder.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
"oh man, now I have to make a rescue mission-- awesome!"
Living with the consequences of your mistakes is part of the fun. The idea is you're running a Kerbal Space Program, not NASA. Testing with live Kerbals and suffering some attrition is kind of the point. Especially in the science and sandbox modes, where there's no difference between reloading and just sending another ship up without reloading.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
in a purely single player game with absolutely no multiplayer component?
Yup.
@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
who the fuck cares?
I care.
Look, you play the game how you want, and I'll play the game how I want.
But I want to avoid people coming in here and saying, "OH MAN THE DELTA-V MEASURE IS A HUGE MISSING FEATURE DERP DERP" because it's not. Let people make up their own minds how to play the game.
Especially don't say things that obviously aren't oversights are oversights, because of course they aren't. You can't honestly believe Squad is so incompetent that they've been working on this game for 5 YEARS, saw MULTIPLE mods which add a delta-V measure on craft, wanted it for the core game, but somehow failed to implement it in those 5 years.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
there's an actual radar altimeter in IVA mode that you can use, but landing in IVA is a lot harder.
I know. Honestly, if I could see the orbit data (periapsis and apoapsis) from inside the cockpit, I'd do most of the maneuvers from there. It's kind of annoying that you need to change between different views (cockpit, map, and 3rd person) as you fly to get access to the whole picture. I want to be able to see the orbit when I do orbital maneuvers, but you can't release stages from that view or see the atmosphere pressure (handy when leaving a planet).
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Honestly, if I could see the orbit data (periapsis and apoapsis) from inside the cockpit
if you're okay with modding Kerbal Engineer's a nice mod that gives you access to deltav and orbit info. it even plugs into the tech tree for progression unlocks. you might like it.... of course Blakey will claim it's cheating, which may or may not be a bonus.
but yeah, that is a bit annoying. rather realistic though, there's a reason that all our space flights take many people at the controls, in the craft itself and back on the ground.
