Kerbal Space Program

[Thorgalaeg]

Is there an undo function? Didnt know it. Just now i am trying ctrl+z while in the VAB but apparently doesnt work at all. Well, nothing to be amazed of. Of the many glitches the worst one for me is when the rocket i am building gets off centre and it is impossible to place it in the center of the VAB again, so it ends in some corner of the hangar. That gets me mad.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think it's control+z to undo, but it only ever works maybe 10% of the time for me.

I do know that it works better if you press it once and wait for a while. It can take a moment and if you keep pressing it, nothing will happen.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, if your rocket has many parts, you need to press ctrl-z and go get a drink or something. That worked for me 100% of the time 100% of the time until a couple weeks ago and now I get the duplication thing each and every time.

I'm looking for a fun easy mission for 3-4 hours for tonight, but am not sure what I wanna do. Jool would be ful, but getting a mission ready would take far longer than that I think

 

[LamaGT]

What's the best way to land on Duna only using parachutes? I tried landing a "rover" with 6 radial parachutes and with an initial periapsis of about 10000m and yet they didn't slow it down enough to prevent it from shattering when the parachutes deployed fully (I think I was going at roughly 150m/s, could be more). Powered landing is kinda hard since the engine is placed horizontally, so what if any is the height of the periapsis for a nice very shallow descent?

 

[warpus]

You need to slow yourself down with a chemical engine before deploying your chutes... to.. 200m/s should do it? Depends on how stable your lander is.

 

[cardgame]

You can't do only chutes.

Use a drogue and coast it to the surface, then fire your engines to slow to a safe landing speed.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You need to slow yourself down with a chemical engine before deploying your chutes... to.. 200m/s should do it? Depends on how stable your lander is.

Naw, keep it under 100m/s.

What's the best way to land on Duna only using parachutes? I tried landing a "rover" with 6 radial parachutes and with an initial periapsis of about 10000m and yet they didn't slow it down enough to prevent it from shattering when the parachutes deployed fully (I think I was going at roughly 150m/s, could be more). Powered landing is kinda hard since the engine is placed horizontally, so what if any is the height of the periapsis for a nice very shallow descent?

Not sure I understand your last sentence.

I'd just set up my orbit so that I barely skim the top of the atmosphere (around 35km IIRC). After enough passes, you'll enter the atmospher for good at pretty much the most shallow angle by default.

You can't do only chutes.

Use a drogue and coast it to the surface, then fire your engines to slow to a safe landing speed.

I remember when we didn't have drogues.


BTW - I am really, really sorry I haven't finished the ICBM thread. It's going on a month since I've had a day to myself.

 

[cardgame]

I think I pulled 50+ G's dropping in on Duna with my first HOME design. Quite a steep angle. It's really no wonder my chutes snapped and solar panel tower blew off. Going to be harder to get precision landings when the map mode doesn't account for atmospheric drag.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It already doesn't account for drag - the path down to the surface doesn't compute the impact the atmosphere has and it also doesn't show the difference that the planet/moon's rotation makes. It makes precision landings very difficult indeed. The closest I've ever managed was about 10km, IIRC. Then again, that was when I landed a massive module that would qualify as a complete mobile Mun base but was part of a convoy of identical modules I sent to make a massive complex. As it was so big, it had tight fuel margins and low TWR so I had to pick a spot from orbit and steadily burn all the way down with no deviation.

 

[cardgame]

On that note, nothing is more thrilling than landing a base on the Mün with literally nothing left in the tanks.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

inorite!

 

[LamaGT]

Naw, keep it under 100m/s.

Not sure I understand your last sentence.

I'd just set up my orbit so that I barely skim the top of the atmosphere (around 35km IIRC). After enough passes, you'll enter the atmospher for good at pretty much the most shallow angle by default.

I remember when we didn't have drogues.


BTW - I am really, really sorry I haven't finished the ICBM thread. It's going on a month since I've had a day to myself.

I made it alive in the and, I just had to slow down until roughly 60-70 m/s and then once they fully deployed I didn't need to do anything, terminal velocity was 9 m/s

Anyway, now comes the hard part: building a massive space station, sending it to geostationary orbit around Duna and then starting to send habitat modules on the surface

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Well, my mission has started!

The ships are already in Minmus replenishing its tanks. I have decided to do what warpus suggested, so from here the kethane platform is going first alone and unmanned, refuel at ike and continue to jool, land at some small moon and reload. The ion ship and the lander will depart some days later, arrive at duna, then the lander will descend to duna (i have yet to decide where) while the ion ship reloads with the ike platform. The lander will takeoff rejoin with the ion ship and they will continue to jool where will meet with the other platform which just arrived some days before.

The mission is carrying two little probes wich are equiped with ballons, to explore jool and laythe. The lander will also descend to laythe, which is the most dangerous part since i dont know if it will have thrust enough to take off again.

The lander, which is equiped with underescalated kethane system, has four atomic engines plus two jets which use kethane. The four atomic engines alone will not have thrust enough to take off from laythe surface so i hope those kethane jets work fine at laythe atmosphere...

Kethane platform landing at minmus (using the mechjeb autopilot, it sometimes works):

Spoiler :

Ion mothership plus lander orbiting minmus:

Spoiler :

BTW i have observed what the struts and some other elements become corrupt after some reloadings and they are now misplaced. Note the struts at the large fuel tank at ion ship in the second image. I hope it does not affect the structural integrity of the ship...

 

[warpus]

Naw, keep it under 100m/s.

Oh man.. my first successful Duna mission was lllluuuuckkyyy

@Thorgalaeg Very interesting mission! You'll also be interested to know that 0.19 is supposed to include resource mining! Like kethane, but different.. I don't know about details, but there's this:

Spoiler :

New 0.19 parts:

From left to right:

Drill
Pump
Resource container
same
HMU - converts dirt into various substances
Nuclear refinery - refine blutonium to use in a nuclear generator

of course, if ksp redditors are to be believed. A lot of them seem to spend quite a bit of time on the official forums, so I'm going with "this is probably true"

There is also this uber cool resource flow diagram somebody put together. I don't think it's comprehensive

WARNING: size

Spoiler :

 

[cardgame]

It seemed to have been posted by a dev on one of their many streams

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Dp....

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Oh man.. my first successful Duna mission was lllluuuuckkyyy

@Thorgalaeg Very interesting mission! You'll also be interested to know that 0.19 is supposed to include resource mining! Like kethane, but different.. I don't know about details, but there's this:

Spoiler :

New 0.19 parts:

From left to right:

Drill
Pump
Resource container
same
HMU - converts dirt into various substances
Nuclear refinery - refine blutonium to use in a nuclear generator

of course, if ksp redditors are to be believed. A lot of them seem to spend quite a bit of time on the official forums, so I'm going with "this is probably true"

There is also this uber cool resource flow diagram somebody put together. I don't think it's comprehensive

WARNING: size

Spoiler :

*recovering*... wow!

Things are getting interesting. I hope this game does not become "too succesful" and continue being oriented to somewhat geeky people only, interested in physics and space exploration, so it continues getting more complex and richer instead of more "playable" (in the sense of simpler and dumber).

 

[LamaGT]

Seems like an awful mess, hopefully they won't make it overwhelming

 

[warpus]

I'm sure the way things are going to work once the final game is finished is that you're going to have a tech tree and you're going to start with a rather simple resource flow diagram and a limited number of stock parts. Then, as you go through the game, discover new planets to explore, and new technologies, you'll slowly have more and more options available of you in terms of the sort of stuff you can do.

So if they get the game dynamics and balance right there, it shouldn't be too overwhelming.. aside from the, you know, rather steep learning curve.. which should get easier too, with simple missions at first, and so on. Personally I am rather excited to have more stuff to do on other planets, rather than just exploration. Exploration's exciting in its own right, but having more concrete missions once you get there is exciting me, especially since things seem to be revolving around "crafting resources". Once they add weather to the atmospheres, more interesting terrain, and who knows what else, this game is just going to kick everybody's arse.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I hope it is complex enough and a bit overwhelming. We have already enough RTS games where all you need is wood stone and iron. I wonder if they have commented something about building colonies and such. If they are thinking on such a complex resource system and a tech tree it would need colonies to make sense.