Screenshots!

[TheGryphonPrince]

bad how?

Bohemia has passed the Revoke Privilegia, they have a ton of infamy due to unlawful territories... and let's not even get started on the border gore.

 

[warpus]

My ZEUS refuelling station in orbit around Jool, just outside the orbit of all the moons. The staging area for my space program's outer solar system missions.

Currently has two docking ports available, provided by two separate ships. Staffed by two friendly roommate Engineers. They are currently replenishing fuel supplies and awaiting the arrival of Valentina, who will be here in 12 days with the ZEUS lander, back from Tylo. Once the lander (and the tug it's attached to) refuel here, they will seek out the Laythe booster, which is already full of fuel and orbiting Jool nearby. They will dock and depart for Laythe.

30 or so days after Valentina arrives, the ZEUS Relay Carrier ship will arrive, refuel, and head for Laythe as well. Its mission is to deploy 2 polar relays around Laythe, as well as an equatorial relay, hopefully before Valentina decides to land on Laythe.

On the way from Kerbin and just under 2 years away is also an attachment to this refuelling station which will allow me to store more ore. It's also equipped with a nice amount of solar panels, batteries, and reaction wheels.

51% ore left in the asteroid. Once this number hits about 10% I am sending one of the refinery ships currently attached to the (pictured) Banks asteroid to bring another class E asteroid to replace this one. I am lucky to have these 2 refinery ships here, one of them is from a mission 10+ years ago, it was in a very low Jool orbit with not a great amount of fuel left. Arrived to the asteroid literally using up all its fuel reserves - I had to complete the last couple km and docking with RCS thrusters only. Anyway, Bill and Ferski are very happy that the station has expanded and has more toys for them to play with

 

[Quintillus]

Does EUIV get this bad?

Not really. In my experience it seems like in most EU III games, either Austria or Bohemia (or sometimes Spain) goes crazy and expands like mad in one direction. Most often in the direction of the Ottomans and into Asia Minor. France is more unusual, but regardless the border sprawl from Bohemia is typical EUIII, and in EUIV countries tend to do a better job of consolidating their borders and focusing on ruling one area rather than grabbing land anywhere they can.

The 90+ infamy for an AI is a little bit unusual though. Maybe since they have so much unlawful territory that their infamy is going up, they just decided to put up with the instability and blow past the limit.

Regardless, good job adding glory to Cyprus!

 

[warpus]

Project ZEUS continues. A new asteroid has been captured and new HERA modules have arrived from Kerbin along with Bob and Jebediah. A RELAY CARRIER ship functioning as a fuel tanker has been dispatched and brings back half of the HERA mothership to the newly captured asteroid and attached JOOL FUEL DEPOT.



After attaching the HERA modules to the other side of the asteroid, the RELAY CARRIER docked with the JOOL FUEL DEPOT in order to test the new HERA reaction wheel upgrades. These upgrades allow the asteroid to be rotated much easier than previously, making docking easier.



HERA upgrades also include 160% new ore storage, electricity storage and generation upgrades, a Kerbin return module for 4 with landing capabilities, and a module containing 8 new relays. The other part of the HERA mothership that sits in a different orbit around Jool contains a booster stage that will allow the ZEUS lander to land on Tylo. It was supposed to be a backup for another booster, but that one ended up working, so I've actually already landed on Tylo.. So instead this booster might be used to land somewhere else, as it can be controlled remotely and used as a standalone craft. The HERA mothership also brought with it an interplanetary stage that is going to be used in a future mission as well.

After all the above happened the RELAY CARRIER refuelled and is currently bringing my most experienced pilot (Valentina) to the asteroid so that she can refuel her ZEUS lander and proceed to land on the next moon.



What you're looking at is Valentina's ZEUS lander at the top, the tug that she used to move around the Jool system next, then the module that at one point contained 8 relays but now only has 2, and the relay carrier tug pushing everything.

Elsewhere in the Jool system I still have the ZEUS science lab (with a scientist), a module with 8 science probes, and another asteroid catcher/fuel refinery (with 2 engineers). They need fuel, but that's another mission for another day

edit: midnight update - Everything's way more stable than I could have ever imagined. All the extra ore storage makes everything a lot faster too. Valentina is now fully refueled and is now on her way to Vall (I think, we'll see). The Relay Tug is also now fully refuelled and is departing a couple minutes after Valentina is gone. First it is going to dock with the HERA attachments to grab the new 8 relays (but that part should be easy)

They are both headed to the next moon (probably Vall), to set up a system of relay satellites and land on the surface and leave a flag with an important message

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Hey do you have a lot of lag? You must have an impressive rig to run this.

Are the green stipes on the planet stock or modded in?

Also, do you put symmetrical antenna mounts for practical or aesthetic reasons? I get that it helps balance mass, but I don't find forced symmetry to be particularly useful and will spend a lot of times designing mass-balanced, asymmetrical systems because I don't want to deal with the mass of 4 useless antennas.

I mean I can pretend they are not useless by imagining them to have narrow beam radiation patterns (and I think mods and higher difficultly levels actually force this) but even still I find it more practical and realistic to just roll the antenna to the correct vector than to carry 4 of them. Not judging, just curious.

What are the end goals of project Zeus?

Are you attempting colonization or just exploration?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Right now I'm working on a 4 person lander for Duna. The lander has 4x NERVA engines for the descent and ascent. These 4 engines are also used for the trans-Duna injection burn and are fed by a second stage which is just a giant drop tank. Also, once it has landed it will drop tanks that it empties on the descent. Finally, once the lander is back in Duna orbit, it will use ion propulsion to rendevouz with a polar orbiting, 11-person survey station, refeul the xenon tanks there and then go all the way back to Kerbin, dropping the NERVA engines along the way.

Getting this stack into orbit is a bit tricky. I tried the Apollo-style approach with an absolutely massive first stage to get it 75% of the way to orbit, then allowing the drop-tank second stage to finish circularizing. Unfortunately, the massive first stage wasn't quite big enough so I've had to add boosters. I tried at first to make it work with two huge SRB's but they weren't quite enough. Next I tried 4 SRB but again they weren't big enough.

I think powerful liquid boosters will do the trick.

Oh and I used a mod to change out the fuel types on the drop tanks because there is a very limited selection of pure-fuel tanks.

 

[warpus]

Hey do you have a lot of lag? You must have an impressive rig to run this.

I get some lag, usually if I have been playing for a while. What happens is every couple seconds everything stops for a half a second, I can't do anything, then it starts up again. Sometimes it doesn't seem to matter if i have a lot of stuff on screen or a tiny ship with almost no parts. What seems to matter is how long my gaming session has been. Sometimes what I described kicks in earlier, but it usually takes a while. I take it as a sign that I've been playing for too long and it's time for a break.

I play with 0 mods so that probably helps with the lag. My gaming rig was assembled 3-4 years ago now, and back then it was a budget performance rig.. meaning it didn't have the best parts, but the best "bang for my buck" parts I could find. I haven't upgraded a thing in it yet, all the FPS games I've tried so far run very well with almost no lag. Mind you I haven't tried anything super recent, either. I do put all the games I play to the highest visual settings, except Civ and a couple other games I think. (I might be misremembering about Civ, but I think I do that cause in the late game it's just too nutty)

Are the green stipes on the planet stock or modded in?

That's stock! I didn't even know you could get asteroids like that, but apparently every once in a while one like this generates. From what people told me, the devs used to have an anomaly orbiting Ike (I think it was Ike). It had patterns like that. Then they took out the anomaly, but they still had the code to generate a pattern like that, so they ended up using it again once the asteroids were added in. This is my first time ever seeing an asteroid like this in my game, and I've captured 4 or 5 total. Based on how excited people in /r/kerbalspaceprogram were to see what I posted, it's rare enough, but not crazy rare.

Also, do you put symmetrical antenna mounts for practical or aesthetic reasons? I get that it helps balance mass, but I don't find forced symmetry to be particularly useful and will spend a lot of times designing mass-balanced, asymmetrical systems because I don't want to deal with the mass of 4 useless antennas.

The part with all the antennas is a module with 8 detachable relays. The module attaches to (well almost anything, I use the same docking port for everything and run a modular space program) to a tug, which then flies around the moons of Jool and puts 3 relays around each moon. Once it does a moon it returns to the asteroid to refuel and/or pick up more relays. Since this photo was taken, a tug showed up with another such module (but only 1 relay remaining), grabbed these 8 relays, and relay'ed 2 more moons. Now I only have 3 relays left, and I am flying the tug to the last moon.

I also have a relay in a tight orbit around Jool itself. Overall that makes 16 relays (5*3 + 1). Initially in my ZEUS mission I sent a relay module with 8 relays (exactly the same as the one you see in the image), because no more relays really fit in the 7 or so launches I was doing to assemble project ZEUS in orbit. I could have done another launch, but I was ready to depart. The 8 relays you see in the image arrived with the HERA relief mothership that also came with a bunch of other upgrades I was needing for the mission (new kerbin return vehicle, fuel refinery extension, a booster for my ZEUS lander (not pictured here) and of course another interplanetary/tug stage (not pictured here either))

The balancing overall doesn't seem to matter when I have just 1 relay remaining, each of my modules has reaction wheels, so when they're docked together it helps out even more.

What are the end goals of project Zeus?

I have the exact mission objective summary written down on a notepad that is at work right now. It was worded very well and concise and stuff, here's a slightly less concise version:

Primary mission A - Deploy a system of relays throughout the Jool system and open it up for future unmanned activity
Primary mission B - Land on every moon using the same reusable lander and do some science, plant 5 flags
Secondary mission C - Figure out the best parameters for using asteroids to run a fully sustainable space program
Secondary mission D - The ZEUS science ship will accompany the mission and do science while all of this goes on. It will also fire science probes into Laythe and Jool itself.

Are you attempting colonization or just exploration?

Right now just exploration, science, and comm. infrastructure deployment. Plus I guess proof of concept.

After the mission is done Valentina will be sent home along with maybe the scientist that has been there since day 1 and one of the engineers. Remaining will be the relief pilot, scientist, and the second engineer. I think eventually everybody except the engineer will be sent home. His job will be to remain attached to an asteroid in case anybody else needs to refuel in the future. A future relief mission might replace him with a 3rd engineer.

My space program really really wants a flying thing on Laythe... but is having problems designing something that would be cool enough and would work. So after all of the above is finished, I am going to focus on that. We also really really want a submarine on Laythe. I have not started trying to design that. I am considering building a flying submarine, but have no idea how viable that would be or how well it would work.

I have never built a base anywhere really, unless you consider landing ships closeby to be a base. I do want to practice colonization efforts on Minmus first, then Duna, then maybe Laythe. But that's not on my space program's radar yet. For now we want to wrap up ZEUS and see if submarines can fly

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh I see, now that makes a lot more sense. I thought you were just putting antennas on for symmetry.

This game is notorious for memory leaks so it makes sense that the longer you play the worse it gets.

I actually wrote down a mission plan for my Duna lander yesterday! It really helps focus your work and staves off feature creep in your designs.

I remember the magic boulder in orbit around Ike (the anomaly with the stripes), I didn't realize they had taken it out of the game. I did not realize that was an asteroid you had drug to Jool orbit, I should pay more attention!


My Laythe base project had an aircraft and it was badass. I based it on Project Dynasoar and it was very tricky to launch and fly but was awesome. I really wish I had been able to finish that project before the game updated and wiped everything. The plane actually got to Laythe and landed at the base, along with the mobile sounding rocket launcher station, the drop-ship with 4 expedition rovers. There was a refueling station with 4 re-usable landers and several relay stations in orbit. The last bit was to send out the expedition crew with a fueling tanker and it was on its way (literally they were in transit) when the game updated.

I also developed mobile base stations which were 4 person cans with wheels and docking ports that could be linked together to form a train. I tested the concept at the launch site and it worked much better than expected though I don't remember if I launched them to Laythe or not. Pretty sure I did because I remember how sucky it was to balance the stack.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Here is Space Watch 1. I built this craft to satisfy 2 different contracts. The first was to observe asteroids from a Minmus orbit. The second was to observe seven asteroids from a Solar orbit. I wanted to do both of these things on the cheap which is how I wound up with all-solid first stages. The second stage is a NERVA which took the probe all the way out to Minus flyby. From there, the dual-ion engines took over achieved orbit, then pushed in into it's solar orbit.

Spoiler :

The mission went well and the satellite is now in Solar orbit forever, watching asteroids and serving as a limited space relay. I really wish I had beefed up the transmitter for reasons I'll go into in my next post.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This is Tiger 1. It is a lander that is meant to shuttle 4 Kerbals to the surface of Duna, rendevouz with a station, then return to Kerbin. To fund this rockets development, I choose to take a contract that required taking 3 tourists to Duna. I had originally intended to launch with 3 astronauts and pick up a 4th from the station to get experience. When I took on the tourists, I foolishly decided to swap out the 3 astronauts with them and fly without a pilot without further revising the design (it has a full control unit so it can be unmanned). This way I could still pick up one astronaut from the station and bring him back.

The problem is that without a beefy antenna, I can only control this thing when it is very close to another transmitter. The net effect is that after performing my trans-Duna injection, I could not control the craft until it reached Duna's SOI, at which point it began picking up the space station. To compound the problem, the station is in a low polar orbit so it goes into eclipse every so often. The net effect is that I have to plan my entry capture burn, descent, ascent and rendevouz within line of sight of the space station which is very hard.

Spoiler :

Initially, I tried to get by with 2 and 4 strap-on boosters but they just couldn't get the job done. Eventually I switched to these massive liquid boosters which overperformed to the extent that I will be able to use the trans-stage drop tank to fuel part of the descent burn.

The trans-stage drop tank is the orange fuel tank in the middle of the stack. It feeds the 4x NERVA engines on the lander and was originally intended to push the stack into low Kerbin orbit, then push it to Duna, then circularize at Duna. The lander was meant to handle everything after that. In practice, the booster gave it enough DeltaV that it was able to do all that and provide some of the landing delta V.

Spoiler :

The lander is shown here. There is a graphics glitch that is preventing the dual XL wings from showing but it has them for power.

The lander is designed a bit like the Apollo lunar lander in that it has two stage itself. There is a cross-shaped cluster of five tanks inside of the NERVAs and these are meant for descent. They also provide stability on landing and are dropped at the surface when the lander takes off. Next to them are the four nacelles with a single NERVA each. These contain landing parachutes for the Duna descent as well as propulsion. They have enough fuel within them to push the lander back into orbit and most likely enough to perform the rendevouz as well - particularly with all the extra fuel the trans-stage gave me.

Once the lander is in orbit, it will drop the NERVAs and continue on with dual Ion engines (highlighted here so you can see them). There is enough fuel to circularize at Duna and rendevouz with the station. There, it will pick up an astronaut, top of the Xenon tanks and then head back to Kerbin.

So far, the only problem I've had is with the limited comm range of the craft and that's only a problem because I swapped out the pilot without thinking through the consequences.

Future iterations will have beefier antennas. Note: This is also like the lunar lander in that science was an afterthought. This thing only carries the most basic science kit, basically anything I could stick on the top that had minimal mass and wouldn't throw off the c.g.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Also, the core of the lander has its own set of 4 parachutes for landing on Kerbin.


One thing that bugs me about this game is how crappy the hold-heading function is. It wanders around and this makes it impossible to walk away during very long burns. You have to stick around to nudge the heading to the right point if you don't have a navball standard heading to lock onto like a maneuver direction or velocity normal/anti-normal. I get there is some sort of PID controller working in the background but how hard could it be to
Heading = UserInput
If PointDirection > Heading + 5deg
Then force PointDirection = Heading
Reset PID controller
???

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Not super exciting, but these images illustrate the frustration of not having a pilot on board. Here, I got very lucky in that where I needed to circularize happened to have space station coverage:

Spoiler :

Here's the burn itself:

Spoiler :

Now I'm in a holding orbit, waiting for the phasing to come together so that I can perform the landing with the space station overhead while in the daylight. Kerbin is towards the sun from Duna so if you need a direct line of sight to it, you have operate in the day time.

Spoiler :

I would have done the landing in the day light anyhow but having to plan specifically around it with the additional space station constraint is frustrating. Rookie mistakes are costly.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Conundrum....

I managed a perfect landing with tons of spare fuel. The only problem is the antenna broke during re-entry. Somehow the vessel remained under control until I time warped, at which point I lost contact.

Because the thing is staffed with tourists, I cannot even have them EVE the ship. So now, if I want to get them back, I have to land on top of the damn thing and hook up a docking port. I do not have the patience to do that nor the skill. Is there anyway to cheat my way out of this problem?

Spoiler :

Oh wow I realized just now that the last picture caught the remnants of the shock waves from the engine as they wooshed away from the engine at MECO.

I tried turning off the setting: Require signal for control

Turns out it was always off but the game is still requiring a signal to control. Worse, the vessel was still controllable after the antenna broke so I went ahead and saved over my quicksave from before landing.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Moderator Action: hobbs, I realize that your posts are all connected and would result in a tl;dr, but try not to multi post in a thread, k? Thanks.

 

[warpus]

Wow that's ballsy performing unpiloted circularization maneuvers with such limited relay coverage. You're gonna kill someone! I don't remember what it was, but a while ago one of my missions went completely under due to something similar. So now all my interplanetary tugs are equipped with the strongest antenna available, as well as backup antennas in case the main one is ripped off somehow by the kraken or whatever. And when I'm heading out to a virgin planet, I always now bring at least 1 relay, so that if/when I end up on the wrong side of the planet, I don't have to wait forever to continue my mission (or perform some important burn)

I feel your pain re: the game updating wiping your stuff. That happened to me once and I stopped playing for a while.

Right now I'm having a big problem with my ZEUS lander. I am in orbit around Bop, but can't undock the lander from the tug. The "undock" option is there, but when I click it nothing happens. After I do that, the option disappears. I checked both docking ports, and the option is just not there, and the ships are both still connected, since all RCS thrusters fire when I test that.. so.. yeah.. bug.

I looked it up and bug confirmed .. ... .. Apparently I have to edit my giant save file and change something somewhere to fix this.. but.. it's the weekend so I don't feel like doing work, so I've been rather upset about it instead

I've docked and undocked these exactly 2 vessels so many times, attached boosters, detached boosters, landed on 3 other moons.. and no problems.. and now suddenly.. bleh

 

[cardgame]

Some RL fashion without being flashy

 

[GenMarshall]

I wish there is a thread to share highlights of our games. So here's mine's:

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

whoa whoa whoa when did you start making videos

 

[Arakhor]

Six months ago, apparently.

 

[cardgame]

Took a throwing knife to the face while fighting the two guardians of the Cathedral of the Deep.

Edit: and it looks like you can see another one embedded in the tree