Kerbal Space Program: The KSP2 thread is not yet ready for release

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Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Hard difficulty in this patch is some of the most fun I've ever had with this game. Every flight is important, every contract taken is important, who and what you take in your payload is important, choosing your landing spot is important. Love it.

RIP Bob. Next time we won't land on a mountain.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 09:22

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 21:28

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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You people are insane. Just use parachutes until you unlock landing gear.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 09:39

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Kinger posted:

I think the problem is more about "taking off" than it is about "landing"

Although obviously that problem can be solved by just slapping a bunch of SRBs onto your plane!

Ah, ok. In that case, I recommend launching vertical using landing legs - for small planes, a single jet engine will have enough thrust to get you off the ground and flying.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 09:56

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Alaan posted:

I am not using FAR.

I can't give any advice on maintaining high altitude, but if your jet has good TWR you can just skim the high altitude marks by aiming steeply up.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 20:11

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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I love the new experience for Kerbals, Maxmaps. Are there plans to give bonuses to all three classes at all five levels?

edit: Come to think, I'd love for the level 5 on all three to be some silly useless thing that everybody REALLY wants and tries to get. For example, the engineer could change the color of landing lights midflight (i.e. they finally learned how to change a lightbulb)

Thesoro fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Dec 18, 2014

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 03:28

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Luceo posted:

This sounds more like Oregon Trail to me.

Here Lies FARTBALLS, died of Rapid Unplanned Disassembly

here lies andy

peperony and hydrazeen

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 22:37

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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I just took a lander to Minmus and fulfilled two visual survey missions, two temperature data missions, and a science data mission. Landed with 23 contract notifications and 1.2 million kesos. It felt pretty good. Got over the level 2 R&D hump and immediately grabbed about 12 different techs since I had 2000 science saved up.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:52

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Ratzap posted:

I got my first free kerbal contract, built a rather dodgy rescue ship and sent it off. Having upgraded the monitoring, I actually had maneuver nodes so getting a close rendezvous only took two corrections once in orbit. Then I switched over the the kerbal at 2km and used his pack to get over to the rapidly disappearing rescue pod. Grab some EVA reports (unfortunately going EVA kicks the kerbal and the pod into a spin still in this version) while going round to land close to KSC and we're done.

The lack of SAS is the worst though and I assume it's in the latter parts of the tech tree since I can't see it in the R&D under 100 bit. Adding mods is also a 2 edged sword now since you have to pay for all those new pieces to play with. I'm finding myself being very selective at first and adding parts from the VAB if I actually need them.

SAS is based on which probe you use, not any building upgrades. The first probe core with stability assist is the OKTO. If you'd been lucky, the stranded Kerbal would have been a pilot and that would provide it too.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 07:51

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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So, folding in Karbonite and probably home-grown aero. Plus this exciting Kerbalizer news. Female Kerbals, finally!

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 08:32

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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revdrkevind posted:

Slap an Okto onto any mission that doesn't have a Pilot.

This is also a good idea just to let you keep control of the ship during EVAs.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 19:17

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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ToxicFrog posted:

Something that only just occurred to me: why are the Hitchiker and 3-kerbal command pod so late in the tree? You can unlock the Mobile Lab before you even need to upgrade the science facility, which is presumably much more complicated, but if you want to send multiple Kerbals to space without either using labs as crew quarters or stacking a bunch of 1-kerbal pods on top of each other, nope.

My guess is it's to keep it equivalent in tech to the Mainsail.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2014 00:29

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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karl fungus posted:

How are you even supposed to land on things? I can reliably get to Mun, but no matter how much I try to reverse myself, I always slam into the surface at 400+ m/s.

Depends on your approach and your landing engines. If you're taking a conventional approach (i.e. getting to low lunar orbit first then landing from there), then either you're burning too late or (most likely) your thrust-to-weight ratio is too low (which would mean you need bigger engines on the lander).

Can you post a screenshot of your approach and/or lander? Default key is F1.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 02:39

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Roflex posted:

And then cry as you encounter the Mun ten times when trying to match it. I also had one highly eccentric orbit to match that was nearly identical in period to the Mun, and phased such that it would encounter it twice on every orbit. I just ate the cancellation penalty on that one.

It's a problem for bigger orbits, but 1400km isn't even keostationary orbit, let alone mun altitude.

And, if you do get a contract like you mentioned, you can just get it there for 10 seconds, fulfill the contract, and watch it smash into the Mun. The game only care that you get it into the proper orbit, it's presumably the contractor's problem when the hardware is blown to smithereens. Similarly someone on reddit said they had a contract for a clockwise equatorial Duna satellite at about Ike altitude. Ike orbits counter-clockwise.
EDIT: Or, wait, patched conics would show the moon encounter and deny the contract. Nevermind.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 03:59

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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There's definitely a lot of contracts whose difficulty is out of proportion to the reward. Like the "munar station with 14 kerbals, a lab, and a cupola. 100k reward" types.

Those can be easily ignored and overall the system is great - I've deployed 3 space stations in the last two days after making zero before that with 300 hours played.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 04:17

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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For those parameters, I'd probably just go straight up until apoapsis was 70km and then activate it on the way down.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 08:48

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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There is a problem with contracts involving temperature scans on Gilly - one of my survey spots asks me to be above 6600 meters, but on Gilly that's considered deep space and won't allow temperature scans.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 02:20

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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The longest omni antenna range is 5000km, which means that 4 equatorial keostationary satellites will juuuuuust barely all keep each other in range. Once you have that, you have universal coverage in a pretty big area around Kerbin and can put up longer-range sats with impunity.

My network, por ejemplo:

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 17:14

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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karl fungus posted:

Now that I've been to Kerbin's moons, how can I get to other planets? I tried leaving the Kerbin system, but any maneuver I try requires huge amounts of fuel to cross into other orbits.

Like real life, the best way is to wait for transfer windows. For example, when Duna is about 45 degrees or so ahead of Kerbin, that's the best time to make a transfer. You also need to burn at a good angle to Kerbin's orbital velocity.
This site is a great and simple resource for phase angles and ejection angles.

EDIT: As the chart above shows, if your rockets can already hit Minmus then you're only a hop and a skip from being able to intercept Duna. You will have to spend a lot more fuel in slowing to orbit and returning to Kerbin, though. Doubly so if you want to land and take off from Duna.

Thesoro fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Dec 24, 2014

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 23:01

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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karl fungus posted:

I keep thinking I can fly out of Kerbin's orbit and then just keep burning prograde to get to Duna.

I mean, that can get you out to Duna's orbit but Duna won't be there at the right time unless you time it right. For a long time, I'd just burn prograde to get out of Kerbin's SOI and then dick around with maneuver nodes and 100,000x time warp until I got a hit. It's less efficient but it will eventually result in an intercept.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 23:19

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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HogX posted:

Awesome, thanks. So there's a mission where I have to take a crew report above 18,900m in kerbal's frontier. Do I need to just go straight up that high? I tried that once and I'm not sure it worked, Is there a specific spot?

If you go to map view it'll show you markers for where you need to go.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 07:41

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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HogX posted:

So how do battery packs work in regards to recharging your transmitter antenna? Do I slap the battery pack on the same part the antenna is on?

edit: If I launch KSP through ckan, will steam count the time played? Or do I need to launch it through steam for that to happen?

As long as the antenna and the battery are attached to the same craft (even if that 'craft' is actually two docked crafts or whatever) the antenna will draw equally from all batteries on the ship.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 05:34

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Control Volume posted:

I just got this game a couple days ago and today I decided to try my hand at making a pretty standard jet with FAR installed. After feeling like hot poo poo for getting it to a point where I could land it on the KSC grasslands twice in a row, I taxied it over to the space center to get a couple points in science, where it flipped over and exploded because it went over one of the building terraces at 50m/s. A+ game would buy again.

This game forgives a lot of foolish things but your thing was a bit too foolish to forgive.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 18:02

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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karl fungus posted:

How are you supposed to use those girders, nodes, beams, and shaped struts? I'm looking at them and I can't really think of anything that comes to mind. All of my rockets thus far have just been various combinations of pods and engines and separators with some science stuff thrown in.

generally used in:
1. stations
2. rovers
3. weird poo poo

they don't have a ton of direct utility (if your missions are utilitarian they're just dead weight really) but they can help things look cool.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 07:50

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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SKELETONS posted:

Ok that makes sense, lol. I actually launched this craft and that happened but I didn't make the connection.
e: the effect still persists after fixing that, to the tune of about 500m/s in favor of doing the SRB's first. rockets are unintuitive, who knew.

It's always best to burn your least efficient engines first. SRBs have very low ISP compared to liquid engines. If you burn your liquid engines beforehand or at the same time, you're wasting their thrust on moving all this inefficient solid fuel.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 05:27

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Mr. Wynand posted:

Yes I realise - my whole post was that there is the fun kind of hard and the not fun kind, and grinding is decidedly the not fun kind.

How about some wings? And anyway the problem area I was thinking about is in the pre-45sci, pre-mun part of the game. Can people actually reach the mun on hard without grinding for unlocks? Those part + weight limits are murder.

I didn't feel I had to grind for my first lunar mission on Hard. I did a couple of aerial survey and part-testing contracts, but I considered those chances to refine my launch vehicle and ascent and to play around with airplanes. I went without upgrading my tracking station, though. Definitely gives a seat-of-the-pants feeling not to have intercepts plotted!

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 06:52

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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MattD1zzl3 posted:

Could anyone either explain simply or post a link for a first timer using remotetech? I'm having trouble even though I followed old advice to "use omnidirectional antennas". I put a sat in a suborbital path 1.2Kms up and was out of communication with the space center even when it was facing me. Even making a little land craft with an omni and pointing it's dish at "active vessel" didn't work.

There's a few things that could be tripping you up here. I'll take a stab at a few common ones. If you post a screenshot of your flightpath we might be able to help more.
1. Your path may take you outside of line-of-sight with the space center. If the direct line between your vessel and the space center goes through Kerbin, communications will drop no matter what kind of antenna you have.
2. Your probe's antenna might not be on. Most probe cores have a 3km always-on antenna. The 500km omni antenna (this one) is also always-on. The longer ranged omnis (the Communotrons 16 and 32) must be manually activated to function, but will be torn off the ship if exposed to atmosphere while they're activated. Because of the line-of-sight, atmosphere, and distance conditions that RemoteTech imposes, I find myself sending probes in a much higher trajectory than I normally would, and with several different antennae.
3. It's a silly one, but do you have enough electricity? Antennae drain battery constantly while they're activated.

And one last note, a land vehicle pointing at the probe is just fine but the vehicle also needs to have a valid connection to KSC or it won't work.

Thesoro fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jan 8, 2015

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 21:07

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Joda posted:

Is it possible to make a mun rover with stock parts that doesn't handle like a loving balloon? I've tried weighing it down with batteries on the bottom, but learnt the hard way that batteries don't actually have mass.

Galileo is shaking his head at you across history.

edit: for real though the main answers are:
1. wider wheelbase
2. go slower
3. land somewhere with more gravity

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 23:45

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Ciaphas posted:

Really? God damnit I know the outlines of various orbital maneuvers but I've forgotten everything about elementary physics.

Increasing the rover's mass increases the friction force, but also means it takes more force to slow it down. Those two forces remain proportional, just like how gravitational force increases with mass but doesn't increase acceleration.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 00:14

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Control Volume posted:

- 1 Communotron 16 (or a 32 if you have it) for connecting to KSC while in space, cover this with something for ascent or it will explode

This whole post is good advice, except that you don't need to cover Communotrons, you just have to wait until you're out of atmo before you activate them.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 02:39

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Control Volume posted:

Oh hmm when I did testing apparently it was the DP-10 that exploded during ascent. Maybe it's FAR doing it or something but you should probably cover it to be safe.

Oh, I was assuming stock aero. In stock aero it will absolutely not get torn off unless activated. FAR is another world.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 03:34

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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that goofyass return-the-first-stage-and-land-it-on-a-barge mission is ready to go and going up late tonight/early tomorrow morning.

from the real spaceships thread:

Zaran posted:

What goes up should also be able to come down and be used again!
_{Alt Title: When coming home from Space-X marks the spot}

Rocket: Falcon 9R
Payload: Dragon - CRS-5
Launch Time: 10 January 09:47am UTC / 4:47am EST / 1:47am PST
Launch Location: Cape Canaveral SLC-40
Webcast: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.spacex.com/webcast
Notes: First Falcon 9 to have grid fins for atmospheric flight, first attempt to land on a mobile landing/launch ship out at sea.
Photo:

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 07:26

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Met posted:

How exactly do Kerbals gain experience and what exactly does an "Engineer" do? In game it says they have a chance to fix broken parts.

None of this is on the Wiki.

beep boop

It should really be on the "Kerbonaut" page too but oh well.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 09:03

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Trivia posted:

I just had my Duna probes disappear on me. Quite frustrated as I'm playing hard mode.

I had a Jool probe do the same. It was in the tracking station, I switched to it, stuff bugged out, then the game crashed and the craft was gone.

I just call it an antenna failure or insufficient radiation shielding or a sudden solar flare.

(obviously it would be better if the game didn't do this but at least the problem of spacecraft failing randomly is somewhat realistic)

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 17:54

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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I'm trying to work through this orbital mechanics thing in my head and I can't quite get it. Maybe the thread can help:
I'm bringing a vessel + lander to the Duna system to relieve my Ike Station crew and to rescue some crash survivors from the surface of Duna. For reasons of Jeb Wants To Fly The Rescue Op, Ike must be the first visit and Duna must be second. I don't want to aerobrake on the way into the system. Is it most efficient to:
a. Aim for a low Dunar periapsis on my interplanetary encounter, burn my engines at peri until my apo drops to around Ike's height, wait for an encounter with Ike, then circularize,
b. Aim for a high Dunar periapsis (about Ike's height) on my interplanetary encounter, circularize, encounter Ike as normal
c. Be a fancy lad and aim for a low Ike encounter via my interplanetary transfer, and simply circularize from there (even with nukes my TWR is almost certainly good enough to accommodate this kind of quick burn)
d. something else

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 04:57

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Hadlock posted:

Most efficient would be A as you're getting the maximum oberth effect on Duna (which is more massive) and then ideally you'd wait for orbits to align perfectly (your Dna orbit AP is the Ike Pe) and circularize around Ike.

C is probably easiest though. I like to think of the Duna-Ike system as a binary planet

You always want to perform your burn(s) as close to a massive gravity well as possible for maximum efficiency.

You can't really properly aerobrake at Duna anyways unless you come under 20,000m.

Thanks. That's what I thought, but it seemed so weird to be giving up all that altitude for free. Altitude != energy.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 08:47

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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hatesfreedom posted:

I can't for the life of me figure out how to get into orbit with enough fuel to make it anywhere past that second moon (Munin?). I build my rockets larger but they don't seem to ever make it to orbit with enough fuel/stages to make it Duna and land. It is most distressing. What's the advice for making it to another planet?

A lot of KSP is in doing things in the most efficient ways. There's a zillion ways to go about it, but a few things:
-Send the smallest ship that will do the job. Before sending a three-kerbal expedition to Duna or Minmus or wherever, try a single kerbal in a small lander can. If you're comfortable with docking*, try leaving the interplanetary stage in orbit while you go to the surface, then meet back up with it later (think of how the Apollo landings worked). That way, you don't have to haul all that hardware and extra fuel down to the surface and back. Having smaller ships will also let parachutes do more of the slowing down so you can save more of your fuel for the return to orbit.
-Make sure you're starting your transfer at the right time. The Mun is easy because you just wait until it comes over the horizon. Interplanetary is trickier. When Duna is about 45 degrees ahead of Kerbin (in relation to the sun), it'll be the easiest--you still need about 1200m/s of delta v to do it from low Kerbin orbit, though, and you need to burn at a good angle on the dark side of Kerbin.

*note: try docking two things from separate launches in Kerbin orbit before you try it on Duna. Rendezvous and docking are tricky.

Thesoro fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jan 13, 2015

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 20:33

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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karl fungus posted:

Does it ever make sense to bring along a tiny probe on manned missions? I mean, it seems like an easy way to get some extra science by having them hit extra biomes you won't have enough fuel to land on anyway.

This is particularly good where there's an atmosphere. The probe can be even tinier--probe core, enough fuel to deorbit, a parachute, antenna, power source, and instruments.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 22:55

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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I'd also love to see contracts that rely on already existing stations.
"The crew of Ike Station 1 is getting cramped and bored. Dock a new module with capacity for eight kerbals and an orbital tug with at least 900d/v for joyrides."
"The Pol Mobile Research Station crew has been in space for {time}. Bring them home and bring four fresh kerbals to take their place.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 18:36

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Palicgofueniczekt posted:

Be careful when capitalizing his name, though. More than one goon found out the hard way.

the hard way is that he will politely correct you

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 01:00

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 21:28

Thesoro: Dec 6, 2005; YOU CANNOT LEARN
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Count Roland posted:

Are inclination changes more efficient close to a body, or further away from it? I feel like it should be further away but I'm not sure.

To get my head around it, I try to imagine just completely reversing the direction of my orbit (which is basically a 180 degree inclination change). It's easier to do that if i'm moving slower, and higher orbits mean moving slower.

It's such a big difference that it's often more efficient to boost your apoapsis higher, change inclination there, and re-circularize than it is to just adjust it in low orbit.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 03:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Kerbal Space Program: The KSP2 thread is not yet ready for release

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