Kerbal Space Program

[warpus]

I was always under the impression that that's what career mode was going to be. I think this is just way of getting the first stage of that out there - I hope that I'm not wrong.

 

[Antilogic]

I was hoping they would have a greater money component to the campaign mode, although I'll cut them some slack since this is the first implementation. That would encourage recycling parts a bit more (making sure stuff has enough parachutes to be recovered, even booster stages) as well as provide a challenge to overcome. I also feel like there should be more components available up front--why can't I start by launching unmanned rockets and stuff to make a safer rocket for my first kerbonaut? I had to design this ridiculous contraption of a parachute-pod-trash can SRB and land on the trash can to save the poor guy.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I could be 100% wrong but I saw a post where someone quoted Harvester (the screename of one of the devs) where he said that in career mode, 'we aren't going to tell the player what to do' by having it so that the player has to do missions and stuff. They are going to have science and money and recruitment issues that all restrict the player so that they have to find ways to overcome those restrictions. But other than those artificial restrictions...it's basically sandbox+. I mean, you would still have no objectives, no missions, no set goals other than to do enough things to get enough science/cash/good pilots to unlock stuff. That just doesn't have a lot of appeal for me as a career mode, personally; I prefer some structure and some bigger purpose and goal to the game if it's going to have a career mode. I'll probably just stick to pure sandbox mode if that's the case but I really hope I'm wrong. I really, really, really want to have missions and objectives, maybe even competition against the AI who plays the USSR or something, you know?

So that's why I'm kind of let down with the science mode, it's just a restriction without a lot of point to it and not much reward or feeling of accomplishment. Add on the fact that they make it very hard to actually know what you're doing and it's frustrating. (I've only played it briefly though)

By the way, I'm really not understanding how the whole crew training is going to work out. From what I've read, when the pilot experience system is fully implemented, you can only pilot certain vehicles with experienced pilots. But I don't think the experienced pilots will actually do anything on their own (like manage power systems so you don't run dry, plot courses, execute burns, do landings, etc) - you still have to do it yourself. So that means you have to train pilots so that you can....pilot and do everything yourself. That just seems annoying and tedious to be honest. I'll just end up sending up buses with 50 kerbalnaut noobs +1 experienced guy and leave them in orbit till they're all veterans.

I don't want an autopilot, but a few automated features that you can only use if you have an experienced pilot would be awesome. (along the lines of the maneuver nodes, which aren't autopilots but are still enhancing your piloting enormously)

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Edit:
People on KSP's forum are now saying there will be missions, so I don't know.

Why did they have to take the science-experiment text out of sandbox? I can understand not getting any science but it would be really nice to have the text from the experiments just for roleplaying.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I like the career mode as it is now more than the sandbox mode. It is more challenging since you must design rockets with very limited parts and that is funny. For example, since there was not lateral decouplers available nor other similar structures my last rocket to Mun had the two first stages made of solid boosters packed one over others so the engines were so close they overheated quickly. So the first moments of the flight were crazy with the solid boosters exploding one after the other and the rocket jumping like crazy. It was dangerous but it worked miracously and the missions was ultimately successful (after 4-5 missions with not reloads there are zero deaths yet!). I mean, there is already a purpose in unlocking new parts in order to being able to reach further objectives, of course more variables and more complexity are needed, but i think it will be great, even if there is not specific missions. (which i think will be added sooner or later btw).

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Maybe I am easy to impress, but I really love the new update.

Thanks to the new science stuff I conducted several new missions I wouldn't have considered otherwise (flying to the poles on Kerbal to take samples, sending rocket to do experiments in high and low minimus orbit).

I also enjoy the very limited number of parts - I usually had one design I kept repeating over and over again, but with this I really had to tinker again to get things to work. Awesome. I guess it will be even better once they have added money so that we have to weight between science point gain and credit cost expenses.

For a first version, it is certainly great.

 

[Antilogic]

I was mad there wasn't a decoupler or anything for the first set of rocket parts. Or larger parachutes so you can actually save the kerbal easily without building a crunch zone. Or the ability to launch a probe test missile first.

I get that they are trying to mimic the growth of a real space program, but if that's what they are going for why can't we launch Sputnik first?

 

[warpus]

I get that they are trying to mimic the growth of a real space program, but if that's what they are going for why can't we launch Sputnik first?

The reason I saw given somewhere by someone who claimed to be in the know, was that they want new players playing the game for the first time to be able to send Kerbals into space right away... just cause the game is supposed to be all about them and they don't want to discourage new players or whatever.

Starting with probes and working your way up would be more realistic and I'm not sure I buy the reasoning.. I'd prefer to see us starting with probes at first too, but I'm seeing this through the eyes of someone who has seen most of the aspects of the game firsthand, so I'm not seeing it from the "first time user" pov.

I hope that they just sort of threw this science stuff out there to get feedback - and now that the functionality is in place they can tweak the details easily depending on what feedback they do get.

I played around with it for the first time yesterday and had fun. Although I didn't realize I could get my capsules picked up for extra science, so I had like 5 of them lying around in various places.. Once I figured out that they can be picked up, it was all sorts of science being thrown at me - awesome.

So I'm liking the science and where this is going, but it needs a lot of tweaking.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The pilot can also send reports while flying. You can receive more science points for every new situation.

 

[warpus]

The pilot can also send reports while flying. You can receive more science points for every new situation.

That's all I was doing - sending data back using the antenna. Then I was landing and leaving the capsule there. So I was getting science points, but then once I figured out you can retrieve your dudes and get extra science, it was chi-ching chi-ching chi-ching a whole crapload of science at once

 

[warpus]

Jebediah failing at science, but somehow surviving

 

[hobbsyoyo]

LOL

To agree with everyone, I also don't really get why you don't start with decouplers and probe cores in career mode.
______________

I am putting together an Excel spreadsheet so that I can calculate all of the deltaV's, T/W ratios, mass, part counts, etc of my new Laythe Launcher.

I just finished entering all of the part names and statistics from the wiki. There were 167 parts (not counting the single stability enhancer which is the only part I didn't include) and it took much longer to plug all that in that I expected. Tomorrow I'll start writing formulas for deltaV, T/w, etc so I can begin actually designing and building my launcher.

I'm pretty excited about it though I did find a wrinkle. It turns out that with asparagus staging, you can't just add up the deltaV of each booster; it's more complicated than that. So far I haven't been able to find the exact formula or methodology for calculating the deltaV for asparagus staging which is frustrating. *However* simply adding up the deltaV's of each booster will (significantly in most cases) underestimate the deltaV your asparagus staged vehicle will produce. Thus, it serves as a conservative lower-bound estimate of what your rocket can do and really helps cancel out any minor parts you may forget to add to the mass total or whatever. So all is not lost!

I'm not sure if I'll actually begin designing my booster after I write all the Excel formulas though. I think I will probably wait until they release the .22.1 patch. The landing gear thing is a huge issue and they are talking about it and sharing problems with it on the KSP forums. So I can't build a lander - though I could build a launcher I suppose. Then again, I heard there is a bug with the launch stability enhancers where they cut the strength of them so much they are worthless. So I may just wait things out until the patch because everything I build for this project is going to be massive. A rough estimate of my launcher is that each of the 8 boosters will have 4 orange fuel tanks and 3 mainsails. The ICS will probably have 3.5 orange fuel tanks and 8 LV-N's.

Yikes!

 

[warpus]

I'm pretty excited about it though I did find a wrinkle. It turns out that with asparagus staging, you can't just add up the deltaV of each booster; it's more complicated than that. So far I haven't been able to find the exact formula or methodology for calculating the deltaV for asparagus staging which is frustrating.

Wouldn't you have to do a separate calculation for each time you decouple an asparagus stack, almost pretending that each time you do that it's a brand new rocket full of fuel, with a new weight, gravity pulling you down, atmospheric density, amount of fuel, thrust, etc.?

Mind you I don't even know what the formula is, but mathwise that seems to make sense for some reason while I sit half asleep here.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wouldn't you have to do a separate calculation for each time you decouple an asparagus stack, almost pretending that each time you do that it's a brand new rocket full of fuel, with a new weight, gravity pulling you down, atmospheric density, amount of fuel, thrust, etc.?

Mind you I don't even know what the formula is, but mathwise that seems to make sense for some reason while I sit half asleep here.

That's kind of what I was thinking when I tried to go through the math steps mentally. However, the issue is that you have to account for how long (or how much fuel) each stage will burn because they will be different values.

So for 8 booster asparagus staging, your first set of boosters will burn 1/4 of the amount of fuel in them before they empty because they are feeding their own engine plus 3 others in the daisy chain with the fuel in their stacks.

The second set will burn 1/4 (what they pulled from set 1) + 1/3 (they feed themselves plus 2 other stacks) of the total amount of fuel in their stacks.

The third set burns 1/4 + 1/3 + 1/2 of the amount of fuel in their own stacks.

The fourth and final set burns 1/4 + 1/3 + 1/2 + 1 of the amount of fuel in their own stacks.

Crucially, this assumes identical booster stacks. It also assumes the central core engine is not burning with fuel from the side boosters (which is not usually the case with asparagus staging but this math was nicer looking for example purposes).

So you have these fuel amounts and I guess you would plug them into the rocket equation using mass of propellent as a variable and doing it 4 times (once for each set), summing up the deltaV and then doubling the number you get.

I think.

Edit: I spent a lot of time playing with the equations and there's no easy way to calculate the deltaV using the numbers I posted above. It's much more complicated than that unfortunately. Edit edit: Or maybe I can. I don't know, have to keep thinking on it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The ICS stage is already getting out of hand. It turns out delivering 100tons to Laythe orbit is an insanely tall order.

Spoiler :

It will have 4 Jumbo 64 fuel tanks in-line, plus 4 of the fuel tanks equal to half the weight of a jumbo 64 radially attached. That's freaking nuts! Of course, I don't expect to ever have a payload to send to Laythe that's 100tons but it would be nice to have that extra capability. I just don't think it's going to be realistic because even with all these tanks (and while jettisoning all of the empty tanks), I still wind up with only ~250m/s more than is required to get to Laythe, which is still 250m/s short of my margin of safety requirement.

Edit: Dropping the payload to 80tons increases DeltaV to over 8000m/s, which is great. Plus, I'm treating the payloads as not having any fuel of their own - they are just being treated as useless mass I have to haul. In the case of my landers, this is pretty much true as I would rather not use their fuel up if possible so they can go straight in for a landing fully fueled (though if I have a depot there this requirement is relaxed). However, for all other payloads, they will be able to use their own propellants and do a lot of the work so at 100tons I would have plenty of deltaV to spare to get into a good circular orbit and would probably even have some left over to top off landers and deep-space cyclers.

And this is just the cruise stage! The launcher is going to be freaking enormous.

Edit:
Here's the final DeltaV total for the Launcher + ICS:

Spoiler :

Which is above what I need the total to be. Also, the individual totals for the ICS and the Launcher are above what they need to be for their respective jobs (though with a low margin for the ICS w/ 100ton payload which I discussed earlier). This is a conservative estimate, however, as the Isp's for the mainsails is taken to be the Isp at sea level, which actually improve significantly as the rocket climbs.

Also, the totals don't really take into account asparagus staging as I couldn't figure out how to calculate that. So the launcher should have much better performance overall than I have calculated. I did have to break the launcher into 2 parts: The first 3 stage sets and the last stage set. The last stage set has 4 mainsails per booster, to give a T/W of over 2.2. If I had just 1 mainsail on the last booster set, the T/W ratio would be smaller than I would like after all the other boosters have jettisoned. The first 3 stage sets only have 1 mainsail per booster set as the sum of all the mainsails give a comfortable T/W margin.


So I've done half the job, now I have to actually build the thing. Given how much KSP dislikes mega-rockets, I'm not entirely sure I can build this without it all collapsing on the pad. We'll see though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Wouldn't it be more efficient to split the rocket into several pieces and assemble the stages in Kerbal orbit?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yup, but since I'm already going to be sending over 10-15 components altogether, orbital assembly will double the number of launches and add a bunch of extra dockings that I don't want to do.

 

[Antilogic]

The reason I saw given somewhere by someone who claimed to be in the know, was that they want new players playing the game for the first time to be able to send Kerbals into space right away... just cause the game is supposed to be all about them and they don't want to discourage new players or whatever.

Starting with probes and working your way up would be more realistic and I'm not sure I buy the reasoning.. I'd prefer to see us starting with probes at first too, but I'm seeing this through the eyes of someone who has seen most of the aspects of the game firsthand, so I'm not seeing it from the "first time user" pov.

I hope that they just sort of threw this science stuff out there to get feedback - and now that the functionality is in place they can tweak the details easily depending on what feedback they do get.

I played around with it for the first time yesterday and had fun. Although I didn't realize I could get my capsules picked up for extra science, so I had like 5 of them lying around in various places.. Once I figured out that they can be picked up, it was all sorts of science being thrown at me - awesome.

So I'm liking the science and where this is going, but it needs a lot of tweaking.

LOL

To agree with everyone, I also don't really get why you don't start with decouplers and probe cores in career mode.

Yeah, I see that, but I'd just like to have the choice up front of launching Sputniks or Mercury capsules. And have the temperature, pressure, acceleration, and gravity sensors available from start for your science instruments. Those make sense instead of a mystery goo container.

And dear god I need some kind of battery, I can make at most one or two transmissions and then my capsule goes dead.

So you have these fuel amounts and I guess you would plug them into the rocket equation using mass of propellent as a variable and doing it 4 times (once for each set), summing up the deltaV and then doubling the number you get.

I think.

Edit: I spent a lot of time playing with the equations and there's no easy way to calculate the deltaV using the numbers I posted above. It's much more complicated than that unfortunately. Edit edit: Or maybe I can. I don't know, have to keep thinking on it.

It's going to be an iterative process if you plan to do this algebraically unless you know the exact relationship between the change in mass in all your components and the thrust provided. You could do this exactly if you wrote it as a series of differential equations, with each differential mass having the boundary conditions of the fully loaded fuel tank and the empty fuel tank, and incorporated in all the fuel flow rates between the tanks. Then just plug it into Matlab and use a numerical solver to spit out the result.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to split the rocket into several pieces and assemble the stages in Kerbal orbit?

THIS. IS. KERBAL!!!

Are you sane or something?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's going to be an iterative process if you plan to do this algebraically unless you know the exact relationship between the change in mass in all your components and the thrust provided. You could do this exactly if you wrote it as a series of differential equations, with each differential mass having the boundary conditions of the fully loaded fuel tank and the empty fuel tank, and incorporated in all the fuel flow rates between the tanks. Then just plug it into Matlab and use a numerical solver to spit out the result.

Nah, I'm good with my conservative estimates for now. I am going to run this problem by my orbital dynamics professor though to see if there are any shortcuts. For example, the rocket equation for deltaV is technically an integral, but it reduces down to a rather simple algebra formula. Before I go off into matlab (which I don't have on my home pc's) and derive differential equations, I'd like to see if there are any handy formulas floating around I could plug-and-chug with. I already spent a couple hours last night and most of today working on it. Deriving diffeqs sounds more like homework than fun!

I can share the spreadsheet and how to use it with anyone if they want it. I will accept payment in the form of a shout-out in the OT Raves thread.

It's pretty simple and flexible. It's currently set up for my particular rocket but since all of the parts are on another sheet and the formulas are there, it's pretty simple to change stuff around to suite your needs.

 

[Antilogic]

Nah, I'm good with my conservative estimates for now. I am going to run this problem by my orbital dynamics professor though to see if there are any shortcuts. For example, the rocket equation for deltaV is technically an integral, but it reduces down to a rather simple algebra formula. Before I go off into matlab (which I don't have on my home pc's) and derive differential equations, I'd like to see if there are any handy formulas floating around I could plug-and-chug with. I already spent a couple hours last night and most of today working on it. Deriving diffeqs sounds more like homework than fun!

I can share the spreadsheet and how to use it with anyone if they want it. I will accept payment in the form of a shout-out in the OT Raves thread.

It's pretty simple and flexible. It's currently set up for my particular rocket but since all of the parts are on another sheet and the formulas are there, it's pretty simple to change stuff around to suite your needs.

Says the guy that is building spreadsheets to do calculations for his game. If you double check the assumptions made when the delta-V equation was simplified to an algebraic expression from an integral, and I'm pretty sure you'll find a conflict. However, I agree that it's probably good for rough estimates and with an appropriate safety margin you will not run into problems.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Says the guy that is building spreadsheets to do calculations for his game.

Cause you never busted out the calculator to figure out how many times you would have to purchase the maximum amount of coins necessary to trade them in for a Porygon.