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