f13.net

Kerbal Space Program Teaser Trailer  (http://youtu.be/l5OhFnq_iKw?hd=1)


This game was brought up a bit back in the "What are you playing" thread. Its worth a look and gives back some fun.

I would love to see what designs and Failures you guys come up with.

Grabbed the demo, seems a bit shallow.  In terms of failures, I could upload a few videos, but the builder seems rather limited (there are three "types" of engines and fuel tanks you can stack together, struts for fuel lines or structural support, a few types of control modules, and some winglets of dubious usefulness, and that's it) so they'd all be variations on the themes of "I keeled over on takeoff and obliterated the tower" or "here I am spinning out of control". 

The only really funny thing that happened to me so far is that my decoupler refused to decouple (maybe because I was under acceleration when I accidentally hit it, I dunno) and when I started to lose stability, I yanked the parachute to try to pull the command module away from the rocket, but it still wouldn't detatch.  So the ship ended up spazzing out like a ballon stuck with a pin until crashing.

Other than that, seems fairly straightforward.  I managed to get onto orbit on my third try (though I did fuck up the landing by sticking the SAS module on the wrong side of my last decoupler, which crunched it under the command module when I landed rather than dropping it on someone I don't care about when I jetissoned the last stage).  I'm just not sure what else there is to do.  I kind of considered trying to Apollo it or something, but with no mission control and no accurate navigation devices, and no numbers on things like distances or orbital periods, I'm not sure if I'd be able to crunch the math.  And you'd have to hack something together if you wanted to actually land on the moon, since there's no way to design an LM or re-dock with the CSM if you did.  I love the idea of a space sim like this, so I'll keep an eye on the game, in case they add some more to it, but at this stage, it seems like there's not a whole lot to do.

Who was it that did a Radicalthon type playthrough of the other space sim? They need to tackle this game now for my amusement. 

Eh, I've been to the moon already. I want to watch someone else sweat this time.

I suppose I could give it a shot (orbiting the moon, at least, I'm not sure you can land in the demo), but it would probably be less interesting than a hardcore space sim.  While this game is reasonably solid with physics, it ignores the most powerful force that binds us to the Earth: economics.  Apollo had serious limitations on what it could do, limitations I can ignore, like fuel limitations (add more boosters) mass limitations (add more boosters) and time limitations (things like food and air consumption are not modeled AFAIK).  I can build a ship with a trillion dollars worth of fuel, and just point it roughly at the moon and go.  Eyeball the steering, burn a new stage every hour or so and correct my course, fast forward time in between burns, and you could probably do it in a weekend without using a calculator.  I don't expect it would be terribly interesting to watch.

Much of that stuff is on their "to do" list though.

KSP is one of my favorite games to re-examine every few months. I've successfully been to the moon and back using stock parts. It's coming along nicely, but it's still not "there" beyond beta yet, which is why I haven't really brought it up here. If you want more parts there are tons and tons of user-created pieces and people are already putting together space stations and such. But I'd really check back in a few months.

This is pretty awesome.  Yeah, it's not complete and a bit thin in places, but it's definitely promising.  It's provided enough entertainment that I feel like they deserve the $15 donation/preorder (and in exchange I get to follow along during development).  I've had some hilariously spectacular failures and some not too horrible test flights.

If you're "into" it, you might like Mechanical Jeb (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8021.0) which adds some really handy space piloting features.

I wasted a number of hours last night mucking about with the 0.14 build.  The Mechanical Jeb is on my "to try" list.

Presented for your consideration, a photo of the ill-fated X6 prototype moments before its destruction, crewed by the brave Gregrey Kerman, Bilford Kerman, and Billy-Bobald Kerman.
(http://frotz.net/misc/kerbal-launch-mishap.jpg)

Also there's a pile of quality fan art over at the game's forum....  http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=140.0

Yeah I only brought it up due to updates, last time I looked, there was none of this orbit stuff, just make and launch. Hell, I don't think you could even adjust the grouping of the stages last I played, it was all build order. Now you can move them around in the list to set up different actions with in a stage.

I just figured it was time for a thread.

Notch could learn a few things about plugin API design from these guys...

Okay, the MechJeb is totally game changing.  I actually managed to intercept the Mun on my first flight with the MechJeb... unfortunately I didn't have enough fuel to slow down so I intercepted it at well over 1000m/s... messy

I'm down for making some parts. If anyone wants to code-em up.

I would be remiss if I didn't post this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkzziGlbK1s

and also:
(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/1327213706821331343717.png) (http://www.filedump.net/index.php?pic=1327213706821331343717.png)

Getting to the Mun is actually pretty easy - launch due west, go about 10 degrees straight up and begin to heel down to 45 degrees when you hit about 12km. Once you hit about 40-50km, even it out and burn until your orbit stabilizes. (watch the map screen).

Then, just wait until the mun comes over the horizon, and start burning. You want your orbit to intersect forward about one third to one quarter of it's orbit. Then just cut your burn and drift. Once the mun is near, stabilize your orbit and descend. This is how one guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYQkn3QBPNY) did it.

Can I interest you in a Dune Buggy (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8431.0) and a Save Game Editor (https://github.com/ToxicFrog/kessler/blob/master/KSPKessler.zip) to teleport it directly to the Mun?


Note that in general, you will actually save fuel if you orbit once before heading directly out due to the Oberth Effect. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect). A somewhat less complex explanation along with KSP video evidence is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClsTnYsR5MU).

I'm poking around with Visual C# and whatnot trying to understand how to make plugin coding go (windows programming is not my usual cup of tea).

For model stuff it looks like you want the KSP SDK from: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/download.php which includes a "partlab" program to preview your parts, and some (thin) docs about models and such.  

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/~kerbalsp/wiki/index.php?title=PartLab
http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/~kerbalsp/wiki/index.php?title=CFG_File_Documentation
http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/~kerbalsp/wiki/index.php?title=Making_an_asset_from_start_to_finish

It looks like for building parts that have an existing behavior with some parameter tweaks and new models/textures, you don't need to write any code at all -- just fiddle with the textual .cfg file.

If you want a new class of part or new behaviours, that needs some C# code -- looks like you subclass an existing Part and override/extend methods for start/stop, state changes (like destruction), and simulation steps.

Getting questions answered about this in the official forums is a headache because the mods are extremely aggressive about squashing any discussion of decompiling/reverse engineering (which it turns out is rather trivial to do with C# assemblies) and there's no actual documentation on the public APIs/classes.  I suspect everyone developing modules *is* just picking the game apart with free C# inspect/disassemble tools but refraining from discussing it to avoid enraging the forum moderators. ^^

I will revise my statement to: if these guys actually *document* their API and put up some minimal getting started instructions, Notch could learn a few things from them.

Additional resources:
Code Snippets: http://kspwiki.nexisonline.net/wiki/Module_code_examples
MechJeb Source Code (GPL): http://svn.mumech.com/KSP/trunk/MuMechLib/
Energy Plugin w/ Source: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7847.0  (enables: solar panels, fuel cells, ion engines, etc)

EDIT:  Installed the free version of Visual C# and compiling this stuff is a breeze.  It took all of five minutes to build a library project, grab the source for the Energy plugin and build the library, which worked fine with the game.   Turns out this C# stuff is pretty straightforward.  VC# has an object browser thing which shows classes/methods/fields exported by a library, so figuring out what classes exist and what their methods are is easy.

EDIT: Some Modeling Stuff

KSP Blender Tutorial: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=4032.0
KSP Blender Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C_6B2r7Rpk
KSP Blender Tips and Tricks: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=6109.0
Modeling Guidelines: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/~kerbalsp/wiki/index.php?title=Part_Modelling_Guidelines

Offer still stands, if someone has a concept, put it here. Perhaps between all of us we can make it happen.  Model format is rather simple.

Should be fun.

I'm most interested in doing some kind of satellite deploy and capture and/or a space station.  Supposedly they're working on actual support for docking in the next version of the game -- right now it doesn't really model that.

Something that might be fun to try would be solar panels that unfold -- the initial model has them folded up against the side of the ship and then when you activate their stage they fold down and out.  If you can figure out how to make the objects for that I'd be happy to take a crack at writing some plugin code to drive it.

Maybe not quite as elaborate as this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRXbi3sQKWc

From what I have read ( in the last 5 min  :grin: ), I don't see much in the way of animations, so all animations would likely have to be from code/script. I shall dig deeper.

So possible projects:

Station parts.
Solar panels.


No bad ideas in brainstorming!

Does the model format allow for there to be subparts?  The code from the MechJeb plugin seems to fiddle with the model to do its animation:


Which seems to make use of the Unity library. 

Should, yeah, I don't see why not.

Something else that might be nice would be some fairings -- parts that cover the parts above or below them in the stack and open up to reveal them.

http://www.esa.int/images/IOV-launch02.jpg

I'm thinking more unfold 3 or 5 slices rather than simply eject them (though ejection would be neat too -- not sure if we can spawn new objects... gotta tinker...)

Have you had any luck creating a model and getting it loaded in-game?  Seems like PartLab may be out of date vs the 0.14 version game.  What software are you using?

EDIT: Confirmed that the Blender instructions work for exporting from the latest version of Blender.  Managed to load the TestCube.

I need to set some time for that. Mabye ill test some things tomorrow.

Yeah, I've been playing this since 0.8 - back when the only thing there was to do was slap together a basic rocket and try to get a decent circular orbit, way before map mode/varying density atmospheres/time warp. Needless to say, I've gotten pretty good at doing all the basic orbital maneuvers manually.

I've recently been experimenting with funky drop-tank-based rockets, in an effort to streamline my designs for greater efficiency.

My best lunar lander so far uses 3x5 liquid stages in the core rocket and a half-size liquid tank and small engine for the lander/return stage. Stringing the 3x5 tanks out so that I can drop each tank as it empties out lets me do orbital insertion, TLI, LOI and much of my lunar landing deceleration with just that core stage of 3x5 tanks, reserving the majority of the lander's fuel for landing/re-orbiting and ejecting towards Kerbin. Usually I have to do final deceleration for KOI with just the RCS, but then can get my periapsis below 70km allowing for nice, slow aerobraking.

I suppose the next thing to master will be orbital rendezvous.

Something boring and generic like this is perfectly adequate to get you to the mun and back with fuel to spare:

(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/mun1331574470.png)

The key to efficiency is to burn all your stacks at once, right from the start, and to force the fuel to flow inward so you can dump your outside empty stacks faster. There is no real reason to use solid rocket boosters, but if you want to, you can do something like below; make sure that you try and time the fuel stack going empty with the expiration of the solid rocket booster.

(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/mun21331575993.png)

But honestly, they are almost more trouble than they are worth. Look at how ridiculously kerbal that second rocket looks! However, the first separates all but the central stack after altitude but before full stable orbit, and the second rocket achieves a stable orbit before separation so you have four (!!) full tanks plus your lander to get from kerbin orbit to mun, or, really, to absolutely anywhere in the kerbal system.

I don't really like the half size fuel tank; I find I like to over-engineer things and getting from the mun back with it by eyeball can sometimes be tricky. I wonder if you can go kerbin -> mun -> kerbin -> mun -> kerbin? Something to play with, for sure.

Oh, I can easily get there and back by eyeball with those monstrosities. The challenge now is to do it with as little fuel as possible, and still land safely. Bonus points for KSC landings.

Edit: For reference, one of my more minimal-fueled designs that's made it there and back again.

(http://i.imgur.com/eRnIc.jpg) (http://imgur.com/eRnIc)

The problem with a design like that is that the separator's weight and drag offsets any gains you'd get by dumping the tanks one at a time. Those separators are goddamned heavy. You can absolutely get there and back with less than 15 tanks (plus lander) and 6 SRBs.

edit: plus stabilization cables, plus fuel lines, plus extra drag for every single outward section...

I've gotten there (and gone boom) with an upper stage with capsule, 2 large tanks, liguid engine, followed by a second stage with 2 large liquid tanks and engine and a third stage with 6 radial solid boosters.  The second and third stage fire simultaneously at launch.  the third stage separates when the solid boosters run dry and the rest of the second stage gets us into orbit.  I think with a little more thrust at launch and landing gear and RCS I'd be set.

Unity Notes (KSP uses Unity and its objects like Part work within the Unity Framework)

from http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/index.Writing_Scripts_in_Csharp_26_Boo.html
- Awake() called when scene is loaded
- Start() called before first Update()
- Update() called once per frame
- FixedUpdate() called once per physics engine step
- do not use constructors or initializers, use Awake/Start

- the above apparently route to onPartAwake() / onPartStart() / onPartUpdate() / onPartFixedUpdate() in the KSP Part class
- there is also onPartLoad()
- onPartActiveUpdate() / onPartActiveFixedUpdate() apparently are called when the part is active (after onPartUpdate())

(http://apload.de/bild/129271/yunoflyPI75R.jpg)

Hay, Quinton. Pm's.

Mrbloodworth and I have founded F13 Aerospace to explore bringing the F13 Community's unique insights into spaceflight to the Kerbal Space Program.

Early this afternoon, Kerbal Standard Time, our brave test crew experienced a technical failure of the Panel Deployment System in low Kearth Orbit:
(http://frotz.net/misc/spaaace.jpg)

Bloodworth provided the models and textures, I spent a lot of time swearing at Visual Studio, C#, Win7, and other related technologies and started hacking on the plugin to make the panels unfold (the models are delivered fully stowed to reduce damage in transport).  Still got some issues to chase down, but it's entertaining progress.

Source and Very-Alpha Plugin/Parts available from: http://f13aerospace.googlecode.com/

Interesting

Me wan't

me i have a download link please  :oh_i_see:
Also dose any body know how to get a new mods for Kerbal space program and not from the officail forum

:headscratch:

I... Yeah. Well, you saw it first.

I need to frame that post and put it on a wall in my room.

i wan't that mod  :awesome_for_real:

If you feed them they'll never go away!

dose any body have IFE's orion pack, Nova's probodobodyne v0.6 and Nova's Se2 alpha 2 kit
so I can down load it but I don't wan't a the download links to come from the KSP officail forum

I'm a bit baffled as to why you want to avoid the official KSP forums.  At the moment they're the best place to find mods for the game. 

Whee!  Version 0.15 is out.  Will have to take a look:

http://kerbalspace.tumblr.com/post/23251916114/ksp-0-15-is-up
http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12319

ChangeLog:

I don't really like the spaceplane stuff. The physics engine doesn't really simulate flight sim-y things well due to overly simplistic drag. If you do try a spaceplane, some things to remember:

You're going to be very confused as to why your flaps only snap in at 90 degrees. You can (and now must, for flaps) rotate parts during placement with WSDFQE buttons.
The 'sensor' nosecone is the ASAS for planes
Center of gravity is really important. If you are having a lot of trouble steering in flight, your wings are in the wrong place, try moving them forward or back.
The plane pivots on the rear wheels to turn; they have to be in the center / center of gravity of the plane. If you can't get the nose up or turn the plane on the runway, this is probably why. Alternately, try a taildragger (two wheels in front at the wings, one in back)

Yeah, I've never been one to muck around with the C7 pack before, and I've only done some cursory stuff with the spaceplane stuff now. I did find that I could tack on some simple outboard scramjets on radial decouplers and leave them running until about 20km or so. Saves me about half a tank of fuel on my central main lift stage, overall.

The inclined-orbit moon is nice. Takes a bit more work to actually rendezvous with it, even though the dV difference isn't very large.

I actually got there first try by eyeballing it; I got into a circular orbit, then burned sideways to precess my orbit, lining up with the new mun. Fast forward a bit, waited until I was at the right-ish angle for the transfer, burned as normal, then retro'd to a pretty much dead stop. Did course corrections (burned directly towards it) to get into the ROI, Landing was easy as it had almost no gravity.

I failed to get back, because I couldn't figure out where/how to burn. :(

Yeah, my first time involved two accidental slingshots past the regular moon and then crashing on the surface due to lack of fuel.

Now I just wait until the longitude of the ascending or descending node is opposite where I am in a circularized orbit, then burn until apoapsis is slightly farther out than the target orbit. Accelerate to apoapsis and burn along the appropriate orbital normal to match planes, circularize and correct as needed by going into a slightly higher orbit in order to achieve rendezvous.

I decided to cough up the money for the Alpha of this since I enjoyed messing around with it so much about 6-8 months ago, and worst case, I would be supporting their wacky game which I found pretty fun back then.

Man, there is a LOT of new stuff since I played it last:

- Planes (which I cannot fly worth a damn)
- New planets (I am never going to reach one)
- Different gradations of atmosphere (seems much more harder to orbit now, though I may be out of practice)
- Persistent debris/spacecrafts (god I hope I don't run into something by accident, I have a LOT of junk up there now from failed orbits, but I refuse to End Flight to delete them, it's part of the fun)
- the little Kerbals can GET OUT for spacewalks and planetwalks  (:awesome_for_real:)
- fuel pipes, larger rocket parts - actually, a ton of different other random parts I haven't figured out yet.

My current monstrosity pictured below.  It needs the ground clamp support things to avoid collapsing on the pad (it actually has two sets, on two different stages, or it collapses at the midpoint if only the bottom stage is clamped). Also, once it is flying, if I throttle up too fast, the bottom stage plows right into the top stage, destroying everything in one massive fiery explosion.  The finest Kerbal engineering!  It flies pretty straight despite being as aerodynamic as a brick, and I can reliably orbit now and I THINK I have enough fuel to get to the moon once I remember how the hell to play.

 :ye_gods:

I've gotten things half the size to other planets. Been to three out of four now; two unassisted, one using the Protractor mod to measure my phase angle as Jool's orbit is so long that I don't have the patience to dick around with apses to get an intercept.

My model is basically:

Lander - NERVA transfer stage - Liquid Orbital Stage - Liquid/Solid Launch Stage

The orbital stage is a trio of gimballing liquid engines mounted with 2x liquid tanks, the launch stage stacks off horizontally from that - four trios of droppable tanks, three of which have large solids underneath them. Touch off two solids initially, touch off the third just before they go dead, touch off the liquids halfway through the third solid at low throttle, gently throttling up as the solid burns out. Then drop tanks as they become empty.

That gets me to a comfortable 100-150km circular orbit, waiting for final phase angle alignment and then a massive ejection burn. The triple-liquids burn out somewhere around halfway to escape, then the NERVA fires up and handles ejection, course correction, planar alignment, arrival retro-burn and most of the descent.

When do you start tilting over for orbit these days?  I used to do that around 20k but with the new atmosphere stuff that seems really inefficient with the drag.  Yet I feel like if I blast straight up to 100k I am burning a ton of fuel and haven't added anything to my sideways velocity.

I begin with a very gentle tilt shortly after 10-12km to about 80 degrees. I let this slowly fade downwards so that I'm tilting 45 degrees by 30-35km. By 60km I want to be going at about 10 degrees, and when I break 70km I cut the engines until apoapsis, then circularize near/at apoapsis.

Firing straight up to 100km then sideways is massively inefficient, but not much worse than tilting too fast too early.

Needless to say, that's all for eastward launches, to save the 300m/s or so you get from rotational velocity.

Welp, I got TO the moon.  Unfortunately I started the deceleration burn a little too late (was descending to the surface, landing gear ready, and hit the gas to slow for landing around 7000 meters), and the Kerbalnaut ended up a red smear on the surface (which turned out to NOT be at 0, whoops).    Next time!

It's hard enough for me to hit the moon, stuff like this seems insane: http://youtu.be/0aCmykWOtjU

VICTORY


I hope they enjoy it there, I don't have enough fuel to get them home.  :grin:

Clearly your next task is to launch a rescue mission with a second command capsule so they can return safely.

I got a craft to Moho last night. Everything was going great, I was 10km off the surface, engine heat was manageable, velocity wasn't too high.

Turns out Moho's atmosphere is hot enough to spontaneously combust random rocket parts, like fuel tanks.

On the bright side, they probably didn't feel much as the little dudes crashed into the near-molten surface at 100m/s while their capsule was immolated by the boiling-hot atmosphere.

There was a 1 1/2 hr Q&A with the community manager last night on the goon public mumble, I'm sure someone will post the recording or transcripts somewhere on the internet, but there was also a BS session afterwards where we were just chatting, and I got additional info that probably won't be in the chat. I didn't take notes but here's what I sortof remember. Note that he couldn't talk about 2013 roadmaps, career mode specifics, anything related to steam steam or anything else that hasn't been authorized by the company to release or anything disclosed elsewhere. Still, there was plenty of good info and lots of "yes, we'd like to see that". There were also answers to specific questions like fuel tank balancing and several 'that won't happen, sorry'. I have no idea if this info is elsewhere, and of course it's all subject to change at anyone's whim. A lot of this is still in the 'idea' stage.

* Right now they are working on getting used to their new scrum+sprint system after the migration of the code base (which is 17k lines plus 200k of unity) from subversion->git. As far as updates, they're anticipating a multi-week (6ish?) sprint and then a consolidation/test phase. The devs really like the new system and it's a much more streamlined workflow.

* The first order of business is the migration of KSP to unity 4. Since unity 3.X is non-threaded, it only uses a single CPU core. Unity 4 is still non-threaded but can offload some stuff to the GPU so they anticipate performance improvements. They don't anticipate any problems porting, but obviously you never know until you start hitting roadblocks. This is expected to take a month or two so development of new features is kind of on hold in the first quarter-ish.

* The upcoming career mode is analogous to survival mode in minecraft; an open world but gated by resources. You will have a budget and periodically be offered missions which you can then decline or accept. An example was a communications company offering you a lump sum to put a satellite into orbit. On the lower difficulties, countries will bail you out and give you money if you go broke. On the higher, you're boned. They are also considering a 'hardcore mode' with all that entails. Satellites, telescopes and probes will play a prominent role because...

* At the start of the game, only a few basic planets will be visible and none of their moons. You will have to build telescopes to find them to get orbital information, send probes with scientific data to get a series of reports of valuable minerals and ores on the planets, which you will then need to build ships to and mine for money. There will be an in-game database which will gradually be populated as you send scientific gear to the planets which you will then reference to plan further missions.

* Each planet will have a specific 'super resource' that you will be unable to get anywhere else and will be used for parts that are just plain better in every way. Even in sandbox mode, these will act as progression gates for more advanced tech such as super-efficient engines and possibly FTL.

* FTL is being heavily considered, they do want to implement it but it's undecided which form of FTL it will take (gates, accelerators, warp drive, what not). There are also performance considerations and basic issues with how the game is internally structured that make it non-trivial to go faster than C without the physics engine crashing. THIS IS JUST MY SPECULATION: My personal bet is they'll be forced to use instantaneous teleportation-esque travel due physics problems with the unity engine. I suspect for gameplay and fun balance they'll have 1:1 gates that you'll use to go between planets and a really large, heavy, expensive FTL engine that you'll use to go to other stars with some sort of out-system 'jump point'. This is my speculation mostly because like traveling with ion engines, no one wants to sit in fast forward for 2 hours of real time waiting for shit to get places. Gates and nodes solve this issue pretty handily without having to put a FTL engine on every single ship and teleportation is fairly easy to implement in the unity engine.

* There will be the ability to launch ships from other bases and planets. He called it something specific so look at the transcripts, but it was a very generic name that implied that you can basically build not just from other bases but from stations and any other object. And that it was already partly coded (or at least accounted for).

* Additional resources will be added, such as food, water, air. These will be in that sort of generic, non-specific form and will act similar to fuel. Kerbals are an object like any other and will slowly consume the resources. There is a delicate balance between fun and challenge and thus will be considered carefully. This will be mostly needed for bases, stations and other long-term structures.

* They want to give the ability to plot and launch robotic or autonomous missions for probes, as well as plan overall missions that Kerbal pilots be able to execute (to the best of their ability) including launch, maneuver and landings. How exactly this is going to be implemented is still in discussion, but it's going to be a large part of career mode. They are very much against the MechJeb idea of a 'push button receive bacon' automated style takeoff and landing, but at the same time they want you to be able to build up a space empire and push farther and farther outwards with first telescopes, then probes, then manned missions in the pursuit of exploration and resources. To do this, you'll need a lot of ships moving materials back and forth and repeated hauling trips which they would like to automate in some fashion without making it too easy.

* With automated probes, you will 'locking in' the flight path at launch and if you didn't calculate the burns timing or whatever, tough luck. Communications relays were brought up in that they might allow you to upload new flight data mid-mission. You still won't be able to pilot them directly.

* Kerbals will have skills and be able to be trained and become better at general piloting, maneuvering, landing, stuff like that. This all builds into the mission planning system. You will be able to take direct control, but if you want to let Jeb do it, there's a chance he might push the wrong button and explode. Obviously you'll need to stick them in training for as long as possible so that your returning ore doesn't make a crater.

* They very much want to create an asteroid belt, and really like the idea of asteroid mining, but the performance issues of a thousand new bodies all with physics that need to be calculated are daunting. They are looking at ways around this problem.

* There will be achievements for things like first orbit, first landing on the mun, stuff like that. They like the idea of achievements and really want to add them. They also like the idea of sharing this with your friends or possibly even the world with a 'fastest time to X planet' type scoreboard.

* You will be able to do a lot more than repack parachutes outside your ship. There have been hundreds of 'Kerbals doing stuff' animations created over the past month or so that they can fit to tasks and so you will be able to do a lot outside your ship or station. They want to heavily increase this aspect of the game.

* Performance with 'unpacked' objects (those that are subject to the physics engine) remains lackluster but they see no real way around the problem. They understand that this affects large ships and stations and are trying to find ways around the engine limitation but they have no specifics on things like force-packing an object once it's assembled or any other workaround.

* They keep a close eye on mods and do look at integrating the functionality directly into the game. They won't ever integrate a mechjeb-like autopilot but they do want to provide people a lot more information about orbits using something similar to protractor.

* Due to engine functionality and coding difficulties, the ability to save parts of ships (such as a payload or launch stage) that you can add or plug into a ship during construction is not a high priority due to the coding time:payoff ratio.

* Multiplayer is something they would like to implement but due to the engine complications they estimate it'd take a FULL YEAR of doing nothing but multi to make it happen. This is obviously not going to happen this year but they talked about a sort of co-op mission system where one person plans the mission and the others are pilots.

* There are no plans to port KSP over to any other system, handheld or otherwise. Performance issues preclude it even on something like an XBOX or PS3. KSP is a PC game and will remain a PC game.

* They would like to add more story and flavor text to the game but there is no writer on staff nor do they have the funds to hire one. The same goes for voice acting, so all career-mode missions will be in text.

I finally ponied up some money to get the current build, and am rather lost at all the new parts. I used to be able to hit Mun orbit, but can't seem to do it now.  :headscratch:

And I'm really looking forward to all the planned sandbox stuff!

Thanks for sharing that, bhodi.  The only thing there that makes me sad is learning that managing rocket/payload combining/separation is not a priority.  Especially for things like putting a station together in orbit, having a lift vehicle that can easily be reused to launch multiple different payloads saves a lot of headache.  I guess this will remain the domain of third party plugins for now...

Oh hello, what's this?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/

 :drill:

Good for them!  They can hopefully invest more time in making the game even more hilariously awesome and less time working on their download/update infrastructure that would melt every time they pushed a new version of the client.  Where do I get my keys? ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUjGW2htpR4

Patch .20 is out.

I Was wondering the same thing.

EDIT: Tada! http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/post/46431820897/steam-keys-are-up

Version 0.22 just landed, with career mode, science, tech trees, reusable sub-assemblies, and other madness.

Big overhaul of the ground facilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orLHj_eJMOs
Amusing Science Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu9eoD1ot0A

Changelist:

Awesome, but uh, you don't start with separation rings, and a parachute can only carry so much wight. I'm stuck at go.

You get 5 science for successfully landing!  Click the recover button that pops up when you mouse over the altimeter when you're on the ground.  You can do this with a pretty small rocket -- just go up and put it down again.

Right-click on the crew pod and you can gather info or transmit it (if you have an antenna) too!

One parachute, single man nose piece, smallest fuel/fuselage, rocket motor.  take her up a few hundred feet cut the throttle hit the parachute and land.

Handy link for the different types of reports to generate from data. Kerbal Science Wiki (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science)

Career mode is nifty, it gets grindy fast of you aren't any good at getting into orbit.

You can get good science for soil samples from different places on Kerbin, exposing Goo to different areas on Kerbin, EVA reports from various places (I survived a brief EVA at 450 feet just after my chute opened), etc.  Basically you can do a bunch of short, low-risk missions to bootstrap up a bit.

I'm definitely enjoying career mode -- it clearly needs some balance and tuning, but the larger game of obtaining science to unlock more goodies to build crazier craft to gather Bigger Science is keeping me amused.

While trying to get to the Mun, my calculator made some errors (I swear it was the calculators fault) and I ended overshooting Mun orbit because I was off with my gravity assist. Now I have a Kerbalnaut drifting into the deep solar system. He was a good one too, high courage very low stupidity. So my advice is to use the AI pilot that can be unlocked very early until you, are confident in your math and nav ball skill to hit the Mun fairly reliably. Oh yeah throw an extra battery pack onboard for the AI command module.

Do the Kerbal attributes (Courage and Stupidity) actually *do* anything yet?

Has anyone worked out how to save subassemblies yet? (or is it because I have an existing/sandbox game)?

Yeah, build the thing you want, and drag the entire assembly to the lower left of the sub-assembly screen. Its a small area with a dashed line around it.

Have they fixed the radial separator attachment mechanic yet? I got very frustrated placing on separators that wouldn't really hold onto the boosters in a radial configuration. It wasn't technically 'broken', but there was no good visual queue to let you know your connections were sold.

Also docking. Hate docking. Like, wtf level of fiddly shit right there, combined with a level of twitch that makes The Witcher seem easy.

Never really had an issue with that item in my builds. Not having it now, post patch.

I have a suspicion your build is the issue? Maybe how much weight you had on it?

No matter how much I read or calculate, I can not seem to make Mun orbit. I think I keep jacking up my gravity assist, rocket science is hard yo. Five Kerbals doomed to wander the solar system.

I've landed twice so far but without enough fuel to get back.  They transmit their SCIENCE back, those faithful Kerbals, telling us all about the nice gray rocks they've found, but they orbit endlessly...

If this is your first attempt to land on another planetary object I'd suggest Minmus rather than Mun (there are a few reasons for this)

There's a YouTube video by Scott Manley that makes it look super easy (I've had one go so far but my peri wasn't quite high enough to get me into Minmus' sphere)

Scott Manley's "Mission to Minmus" tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmAMGJm-bwU

I'm embarrassed to admit that until he demonstrated it, I didn't realize you could grab the circle of a maneuver node and drag it around the orbit -- I was deleting and recreating nodes trying to line stuff up and wondering why it was such a pain in the butt.

Whoa, I didn't know that either.  My skill at guessing what angle to put the node for getting to the Mun is all wasted!  Will certainly make hitting Duna easier, though.

Should be pretty easy. Get into low orbit (80-150km) around Kerbin, wait until you see the moon just start to rise over the horizon. Burn balls-out pointing at the moon, switch to the map view. Once you get an encounter predicted. Should happen around 3000m/s speed, give or take some. Hit X to cut engines and drift until you're in the moon's sphere of influence and do whatever normal maneuvers you want.

That's how we used to do things before we had fancy shit like maneuver nodes or even intercept prediction.



I've pretty much conquered the career mode thing. Slap a gravity detector, 3 XL solar panels, 3 antennae on a probe core, put it in 89-degree sun-synchronous polar orbit over the moon, spam gravity surveys from 65km ("high above") and 55km ("just above") above each biome. When you hit a new biome, spam 3x transmit, wait for complete, then spam 3x transmit again. Nets you about 100-150 science per biome and moon has about a dozen.

You can do the same for Kerbin, but it doesn't do much more.

For landings, I bring 4x material bays, 4x goo pods, 4x of each instrument (seismometer, thermometer, gravity detector) and 4x 1-man command pods, so I can bring back 4 identical EVAs and soil samples, which utterly depletes the science from one surface biome. Between 4 trips of that and the orbital Gravity Sciencer Slurper, I've completed everything but the aerodynamics tech tree, because fuck planes.

Went to minmus once, but other than that, you can get all the science you need from kerbin + moon to unlock everything.

(http://i.imgur.com/tBBsQc0.png)


 :heart:

 :heartbreak:

 :grin:

*salutes*

Something about that just got to me.   :heart:

I did something like that the first I time I found the EVA button.

It's because he is so happy in the first shot.

Kerbals are very happy creatures. At very odd times.

Picked this up during the Steam holiday sale.  Having a lot of fun with it.

Figuring out the orbital mechanics but having trouble getting enough fuel into orbit to do the lunar insertion and return.  Anyone got any tips?  Do you just have to build an obscenely large rocket?

I've played entirely too much of this game. Steam says 79 hours, so I can probably field most questions you have.

Firstly, the base game makes rocket building very trial-and-error; It's fun for the first bit but I then like to have a bit of data when I'm designing my rocket. Mods really make this game shine.

I highly suggest Kerbal Engineer (http://kerbalspaceport.com/0-18-1-kerbal-engineer-redux-v0-5); stick the entire directory inside your gamedata folder, research the new part in the tech tree, and stick it on your rocket to get statistics. You need about 5000dv to get into orbit, or 4500 for a perfect ascent, and your orbit/transfer stage needs say 1.5k, and your lander should have another 2k to land and get back to kerbin.

So, to your question. The biggest thing you are probably missing is asparagus staging and crossfeeding (http://i.imgur.com/kh7BN.png), along with ditching empty tanks as often as possible:


But honestly, less is more. A super basic lander - parachute, pod, t400 fuel tank, lv909 engine, landing struts - can be sent to the mun and back with 2x T800 tanks + engine on the central stalk for your mun transfer, with 4-6 radial decouplers for the ascent stage (which can be 2 t800s and an engine, asparagus staged)

I'm avoiding posting pics, since I think experimentation is half the fun, but there are endless, endless youtubes and how-tos if you're stuck, which I can recommend. Having a little cheat sheet of the DV requirements to takeoff/land on the solar bodies really help. Looking at mine, for example, says 4500 to get into kerbin orbit, 860 to get to mun, 210 to orbit, then 640 to land. Overengineering significantly past those numbers means wasted fuel and a much, much larger rocket.

Oh, also, going faster than terminal velocity wastes fuel going up, but you can't really see those numbers without mechjeb or other mods. As a general rule, if you use kerbal engineer, don't go much above 2.5 TWR on your first stage or you'll hit the limit. Shock waves or heating on going up is a bad sign. Also, you can right click your boosters and tweak the amount of thrust they give. This is really, really handy.

Not at all - Scott Manley has a YouTube video on getting to Minmus and back (which is apparently easier to get to than Mun for a few reasons) with a very simple rocket (way simpler than some of the stuff I came up with originally just trying to get into orbit!)

Thanks for the tips!  I managed to get a rocket to orbit the Mun and return.  Now puzzling out how to build a lander.

Ok, I might start playing this game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhRNO6EZmRA

Latest patch is another giant step from sandbox to game.  Now there's missions and money and whatnot.  Seems pretty cool.   The missions to test various rocket parts are randomly generated, so some of those are weird with the various altitude/speed parameters.

I then got a mission to rescue a Kerbal stranded in space.... and poof, there he is on the radar... how did he get there?  Who knows...

I'm glad I have rendezvous/docking basically figured out now after practicing it a lot a week or so ago, got that poor dude on the first try and doubled my finances.

Some details: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/294-Kerbal-Space-Program-First-Contract-The-FAQ

For docking, this mod (http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220299-docking-port-alignment-indicator-version-3-1) is the absolute best.

1. Get close, match velocities.
2. 'Control from here' on your active vessel's docking port, target the docking port you want to dock with, the window appears.
3. Rotate to align the circle with the crosshairs
4. Spin to align the T-like thing with the top center (optional)
5. Thrust laterally so the small yellow vector indicator moves toward the green lines.  Towards where they intersect to do both at once, or do one then the other.   Correct rotation of the vessel if it rotates when you thrust laterally with RCS.
5a. The green lines will move toward the crosshairs, faster the farther from the center of crosshairs that the vector indicator is.
5b.  Kill lateral velocity by bringing the yellow thing centered as the green lines are centered.  When green lines, yellow thing, and circle are centered, you are lined up perfectly with the target port.

This game has me hooked like nothing else I can remember for a long time. I'm coming up on 400 hours played now.

0.25 hitting soon, nothing majorly exciting in it - Administration Building, which will add some long term strategy options to the career mode and the integration of SpacePlane+ if you're into making planes (not something I've dabbled much with so far).

My current Career Mode save has got a bit over-complicated so I'll be restarting as soon as 0.25 hits :)

I am going to lose so much time to 0.90.

VAB and vehicle editor overhaul.  New career mode goodies.  Bunch of new parts.  Biomes.  All kinds of insanity.

http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/post/105298544359/kerbal-space-program-beta-than-ever-is-now

One of my favorite bits; new buttons next to the 8ball that tell the SAS to hold a specific vector:

(http://i.imgur.com/lDfx4KH.jpg)

Awesome, love the look of those SAS buttons.

I'll be waiting a little while for mods to update before jumping in, but I suspect this'll eat up a considerable amount of my time too :-)

(http://i.imgur.com/wMtNzza.png)

 :awesome_for_real:

Arise!

This has come out of beta and officially launches as 1.0 (http://steamcommunity.com/games/220200/announcements/detail/123063972325987395) today! Big update with aerodynamics, heat, fairings and resource mining now part of the base game.

I haven't played for a while, still minecrafting, but this is definitely one I'll be going back to one day :-)

Bought this as a birthday present for myself.
Wow did I kill a lot of Kerbals last night.

Haha excellent  :awesome_for_real:

I highly recommend Scott Manley's videos if you need any help.

He just did a new series of tutorials for 1.0 Career Mode too:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEkUeJRCh083UT-Lq5ZIKI75

Is there an easy way to fix craft that [now] have invalid parts?

Starting from scratch on the new release build is the best option.

I love building spaceplanes.  That is all.

I've already sunk 15 hours into this (bought it Saturday on a whim) largely failing to even get into orbit and it's insane fun. They've nailed the trial and error aspect by letting you revert to launch or vehicle assembly. It's totally engrossing to come up with a new concoction that will most likely totally fail to achive the things it should. Also the Kerbals are cute and endearing in a way that makes you want to get them safely back to Kerbal. The interface is still cluncky in spots though.

I'm currently trying and failing to get into an orbit around Mun, even though I've watched and read a few tutorials on how to do so. Which brings me to my biggest gripe with the game.

It's very bad at telling you anything about how to actually play the game. Apart from a few very basic tutorials the game offers nothing to help you. No manual, no in-game help system, no tutorial about any of the physics or the orbital mechanics aspects. They don't even tell you really basic stuff that would help you right at the start like that delta v is more important than actual speed, the delta v necessary to get into orbit, the delta v necessary to achieve escape velocity, where orbit actually begins (above 70 km). They don't really tell you what the different speed and directional vectors mean (apoapsis, periapsis, prograde retrograde etc.). They don't even mention basic stuff like that it helps to launch due east to get additional speed from Kerbal's rotation. If you don't have at least a decent background or an interest in physics you'll be totally lost.

In short it's the sort of game where the manual and help aspects have been outsourced to enthusiastic fans on the internet and that's bad because the game itself should tell you what the basic elements mean.

So I had to remember my physics college courses and read up info on the web to work out an efficient way to launch. When you realize that you should turn in a specific direction after launch and work out how a gravity tun works and when you also realize that you don't need to burn the entire duration of a flight only until you're able to reach a height of 70 km or more things get easier. Then you realize you have no idea how the science mechanic works.

It's insane fun but needs much more info and tutorializing built right into the game.

Did you actually try playing the tutorials?

I agree with Jeff the lack of any in-game direction is a little disheartening.
I seem to have run out of contracts in career mode. How do I get more?

What ones have you done already? Once you complete the one to orbit Kerbin, a bunch of new ones (test various parts, take surveys of specific parts of Kerbin) should show up. It seems like once you either do a certain action or unlock a specific node in the tech tree, new types of contracts show up. For example, you'll get contracts to launch satellites into specific orbits around Kerbin after unlocking the appropriate tech thing on the bottom right.

As Manley says in his videos, anything to test a part while landed on Kerbin/launchpad you should automatically do immediately for the free money (and occasional rep/science)


Science is something I've been grinding lately. Each type of experiment (early on - Observation, Goo canister, Science Jr, EVA) can be performed for full value in each seperate Biome (Launchpad, flying above Kerbin's Shores, Upper Atmosphere, Kerbin Near Space, Space High Above Kerbin, etc.) The trick is to realize that there are like 10 different Biomes in your space complex - Each building is its own Biome. I build a little science gocart in the Space Plane Hanger and load it up with my Scientist Kerbal, then just scoot around the complex to all the different buildings performing each experiment, collecting the data, resetting the instrument, then storing the data in the capsule. You can rack up a few hundred easy science this way.

The last contract I did was to hit a certain speed, even have a kerbal in orbit but no contracts (and no reward for that).

I put a scientist in a rocket and its bloody uncontrollable. I get a whopping 3 science or whatever for a biome mission.


Not worth 40 bucks in current state I'll say that.

Don't put a scientist in a rocket unless you have probes, batteries and solar panels or crew modules that house more than one Kerbal. A pilot or a probe module offers stability assist (SAS, activate it with the 'T' key). A probe body uses electricity (hence the need for batteries and solar panels) a pilot does not.

A pilot can operate experiments as well, he just can't reset certain experiments, like the mystery goo or the Science jr., making them one shot only. Most of the early science you'll get comes from crew reports and EVA reports anyway. You'll easily get thousands of science points from crew and EVA reports for the different biomes, in orbit or on the surface of Kerbal, Mun and Minmus, without using any other experiments and so a pilot will suffice.

EVA capabilities require you to upgrade astronaut complex to level 2 but you'll have more enough money to do so after you've managed to get a Kerbal into orbit and gotten the funds from all the implicit missions (like height and speed records)

You'll also get more science for returning the experiments and the crew back to Kerbal than by transitting the results back.

You'll get points for:

- crew report in space high over planet
- crew report in space low over planet
- crew report while flying high over planet (requires a planet with an atmosphere)
- crew report while flying low over biome (requires a planet with an atmosphere)
- crew report while landed/splashed at biome
- EVA report in space high over planet
- EVA report in space low over biome
- EVA report while flying high over planet (requires a planet with an atmosphere)
- EVA report while flying low over biome (requires a planet with an atmosphere)
- EVA report while landed/splashed at biome

Upgrading the science center to level 2 will give you the ability to collect surface samples. You'll also get additional science points for recovering spacecrafts. Celestial bodies also give you multipliers for the amount of science points.

Tip: A device (thermometer, baryometric sensor etc.)  is only able to store one data point at a time, the same goes for crew reports and the command module. However you can EVA, collect the data and then store it in the crew module. THis will reset the ability of those devices to measure new data points (and the ability to take more crew reports).

None of that is covered in a tutorial or explained in a manual by the way.

Yes and they explain the bare minimum if that and most often only resort to 'click on X to do Y' without telling you anything about the underlying mechanics. If it weren't for Scott Manley's KSP tutorials I'd not even know how to get anything into space or even why it would work/not work.

Essential things the game doesn't tell you.

- Orbital mechanics 101
- How orbiting really works. (How to stay in space and the basic ways to manipulate your orbit)
- How rockets operate in atmosphere and in orbit (aerodynamic flight vs. astrodynamic flight. Atmosphere vs. vacuum)
- Thrust to weight ratio and why that's important
- Delta V and why that's important
- Specific impulse and why that's important
- Gravity turns and why those are important
- Launch windows
- SAS. The fact that it exists, why its important and how to get it
- RCS. The fact that it exists, why its important and how to get it
- Basic ways to efficiently get into and out of orbit
- How to efficiently change the inclination, apoapsis and periapsis of an orbit (basically what the icons on the nav ball really mean and how to use them)
- The reason for polar orbits and aequatorial orbits, prograde and retrograde orbits and when to use them
- How to design an orbital approach for docking or rescue missions
- How to design an interplanetary approach/interaction.

That's just the basic gameplay mechanics part, the game is equally failing to tell you anything about how to do science.

Basically the makers of the game rely on the kindness of internet strangers to do the tutorials, help systems and explanations of the gameplay for them. An 'early access' symptom they share with many other developers out there, because coming up with a decent way to help ease new players into the game is hard, writing an in game help system is boring and it's easier to rely on the eagerness and enthusiasm of the early backers to do the 'boring stuff' while you implement new features. It's also totally unbecoming of a $50 game.

They should have simply scrapped the tutorials they have and simply asked Scott Manley to do and narrate a series of tutorial videos like the ones on his youtube channel. Would have been much more useful and worthwhile for new pllayers.

Agree entirely that KSP is seriously lacking in tutorials and help for new players. Unusually, however, the forums are extremely helpful. If you can overcome any reluctance to look outside of the game for help, whether it;s Scott Manley, forums, Reddit, whatever, then it's a fantastic game.

If having to regularly tab out (play windowed) and use other resources is a no-go for you then this is not a game that you will enjoy. Squad should provide in-game links to the plethora of excellent resources out there.

Some useful links (some of these may be out of date, I haven;'t played since 0.90):
A basic info sheet from the Wiki (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_sheet).
Better delta-V map of the system (http://imgur.com/NKZhU57).
Interplanetary transfer planner - this is indispensible (http://ksp.olex.biz/).
Launch window planner - also incredibly useful (http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/).
Key bindings (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Key_bindings).
Another Kerbol system travel guide (http://imgur.com/Vi8H41I).

Contracts open up in several ways.

- After you've completed all of the initial 'implicit' mission objectives, like height and speed records (the last on being 'achieve a speed of 2500 m/s' or basically get into orbit)
- After unlocking new science
- Implicitely once you've reached certain milestones (successful reentry, successful orbit, reached a new celestial body etc.

For example once you've reached the Mun contracts like 'plant a flag on the Mun', 'take science from orbit/on the surface', put something into a specific orbit etc. will begin to show up.

Is there a mod that upgrades the nav ball? I can't read the markings on it (degree scale and directional markers like N,W,S,E) because they are so tiny even though I'm sitting right in front of the monitor. So most of the time I don't even know which way is north or south making it hard to launch into orbit if you are not on the launch pad

Yeah, there's Enhanced Navball (http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/220469-enhanced-navball-v1-3) but it looks like it's not been updated for 1.0 :-(

Is the resolution high enough or too high? Small on mine but not terribly hard to read (I think I'm running 1400xSomething in windowed mode). North has an orange line from the horizon to the center of the sky, maybe you can see that.

I agree the tutorials really do miss a few key things, how to do science and how to get into orbit being the major ones (since you can't do jack without knowing how to do those!). Watching the first 2-3 Manley videos helped, need to watch the rest. I thought the in-orbit tutorial was decent (enough that I could fly by Mun and sling shot back to Kerbal with only one burn), but then I'm not doing anything complex yet - who knows what I'm missing.

Upgrading the tracking station was a big help, with level 2 you can add/plan maneuvers in advance and play with the trajectories/delta-v. Don't know how you'd get anywhere outside an orbit without it.


The in-orbit tutorial talks about these and how to use them, but not how to get them.


The in-orbit tutorial has this too, though maybe you are saying there is a more efficient way than how they say to do it?

I run the game at 1440x900 on my "Retina" Macbook Pro. (Basically 2x resolution since the display is 2880x1600). It shouldn't be to high resolution but my eyesight is not too great and the tiny digits are very hard to read. The fact that they've used white lettering against an orange and blue background doesn't help.

I'll try advanced nav ball's "high contrast" mode once it gets updated for 1.02

Best thing about the Adv Navball mod is that you can scale up the entire navball, and move it around at will. Might be worth giving it a try anyway, it might work under 1.x even though it's outdated.

As for the SAS and RCS part: I redid the tutorials just to make sure and they barely say more than 'something like SAS exists that will make flight more stable" and "there is something called RCS thrusters to maneuver in orbit".

What they fail to tell you about SAS for example is what it really does (as in how it keeps the craft stable and what the limits of the system are). You realize that they should have told you how it works in detail when you deploy your chutes and the inertia of the reaction wheel the SAS uses makes the crew module go sideways with the resulting torque tearing the chutes clean off. It took me quite a while to figure that one out on my own.

Even more importantly they don't tell you that you need certain components to actually get SAS. Either you have a component that has a reaction wheel pre-installed or you need to attach one. They also neglect to tell you that controlling your craft via SAS uses up electricity that has to come from somewhere. Either from the alternator of your engine, from a battery, fuel cell or solar panel. They also don't tell you that you need a pilot to be able to activate the SAS. So you either need a dedicated pilot or a probe body like the Probodyne OCTO.

It's basically the same with RCS. The most glaring thing they neglect to tell you being that you have to manage direction and center of thrust of all RCS modules attached to a craft in assembly and to keep it somewhat in the same planes or the craft will spin wildly and be uncontrollable during orbital maneuvering.

They explain the absolute basics of the nav markers. The important thing about them is though that certain maneuvers are more or less efficient depending on where in your orbit you do them. There are also nodes that are absolutely necessary to pull off certain things while other types of maneuver might make things harder or even impossible to do

For example radial in and out adjust the trajectory without changing the velocity (prograde and retrograde burns always do) and are essential for everything that requires orbital adjustments without changes in velocity.

Normal and anti normal are used during atmospheric breaking and gravity assist etc.

Kerbals are expendable. Infinitely. Don't be afraid to fail repeated while you learn about things.  :awesome_for_real:

Radial adjustments are incredibly inefficient, ideally you'd rarely use them. Also changing orbit height is impossible to do without changing velocity, and vice versa. They are entirely dependent on each other.

Small things make a difference, like figuring out I needed to actually activate the Science Jr to get science out of it. While that may seem really f'ing obvious, it isn't.

If I do take a ship with a Science Jr attached and say land in a different biome, if I then activate it will I get a science boost for Sci Jr. experiments performed in that biome?

Also, you don't have to wait until you get the bigger command modules to send multiple Kerbals: Stacking 1-Person modules works well enough to bring both a pilot and a scientist along. I used that setup for my first Mun orbit yesterday and it was really worth it, since the scientist can keep resetting the Science Jr and goo pod after taking the data. (The scientist has to go EVA for this)

The game's immensely frustrating to a newbie, I'd imagine. I don't feel it deserves the 1.0 moniker at all, considering the new aero model broke a bunch of the tutorials, introduced a number of crashing bugs, and then they all went on a collective vacation so there were no hotfixes.

That said, it's still an amazing game (especially once you install some mods). Download CKAN https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN/releases/tag/v1.6.16 which is a really convenient mod manager. Mods I'm using:

(make it pretty)
Distant Object Enhancement + default config
Environmental Visual Enhancements - High Resolution
HotRockets
PlanetShine + default config
SmokeScreen - Extended FX

(add some usability)
Kerbal Alarm Clock
Navball Docking Alignment Indicator
MechJeb 2
Kerbal Engineer Redux
ScienceAlert
Precise Node
Transfer Window Planner
Waypoint Manager
Chatterer

(new stuff)
Contract Pack: Tourism Plus + Kerbin Space Station
Kerbal Inventory System
Kerbal Attachment System

A few tips for those of you who have somehow missed this game.

Weight is king. Don't use a large 3 person pod when 3 smaller pods are much, much lighter. Why put landing legs on when you can use fuel tanks as landing legs? Dual purpose!
If your rocket is spinning out around 15km up, you're either going too fast or there's too much drag in the front. put some fins on the back. No, more fins. Try the delta deluxe winglets
Updated DV chart for 1.0: http://i.imgur.com/9vVZMxq.png
right click on parts in the builder to get actual useful stuff. Knowing your DV is mandatory, so use kerbal engineer or mechjeb. ISP = efficiency.
Minmus has better science than the Mun and is easier to get to/from.

Mods make the game a lot less frustrating. Science Alert and precise nodes, especially. Install mods, this isn't a game that's meant to be played vanilla. Stay away from 'cheaty' mods if you really have to, but at least install usability ones. Mechjeb's SURF/SURF function allows you to change the tilt of your rocket with a click and it's KILL ROT function is way better than the default SAS. You don't have to use autopilot if you don't want.

Dat mod list. Totally revitalized the game for me, thanks.

Yeah the game has still a few annoying kinks.

The biggest annoyance has to be the way maneuver nodes work. They are very fiddly to work with. They are attached to your trajectory plot in map view which makes them wobble when the trajectory wobbles (for example when you have a very circular orbit and apoapsis and periapsis keep constantly switching places because of it, the node is impossible to interact with). When the trajectory changes significantly the nav node snaps off and is stuck in space somewhere which makes time warping dangerous (game tries to warp to a node that is no longer on your orbital trajectory and won't stop by itself). This has killed one of my crews as the game warped me right into a planet at 1000x time acceleration.

The aerodynamic model and reentry modelling is unpredictable and not deterministic. I have been flying one rocket design more than twenty times now without any problems and suddenly last mission the parachute fell of due to "high temperatures and g-forces" even though it was pretty much the same approach vector and nothing indicated any problem. It kept doing that every time I reloaded from the last save and tried again. Until I quit and restarted the game and then suddenly everything was fine again.

The game sometimes places your rocket on the launch pad at the exact same coordinates it was placed in the VAB. So if you design a rocket that is "hanging" in the air above the VAB's floor and has no clamps, it will sometimes drop from that height on to the ground when you hit "launch" and possibly topple over (or break apart as has happened to me). Or it might just simply stand too much on one side and fall over because there's a ramp on the launch pad.

The physics modelling is instantaneously interacting with your design once you're on the launch pad which will lead to all kinds of weird mechanical stresses that can lead to unpredictable results. (Like a rocket suddenly compressing due to mass and gravity modelling kicking in and then falling over due to the sudden mechanical interaction and forces).

I also can't seem to be able to attach wings parallel to my fuselage at all. They always end up slanted upwards or downwards

I don't think it deserves the 1.0 moniker, really.

It's still loads and loads of fun though

For example last nigth I managed my first nearly perfect launch. Launched into the right orbital trajectory, had a perfect interaction with minmus, had aa perfect landing maneuver (it was so soft that I didn't even notice I had landed until a few seconds later) and I came back with fuel to spare.

That gave me a sense of accomplishment and 'rush' I didn't have in years playing games.

...and then I fucked it up right on the next mission when I crashed Kerbals into things by accident again.

The wing thing is a bug, if you click the snap type icon (next to the 1x 2x, lower left) it'll reset and attach properly.

Does anybody of you know of any info or useful tutorials about RCS systems. Especially how to place RCS thrusters in a way that you can actually navigate a vessel in all directions?

Well there's the RCS Build Aid mod (http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220602-rcs-build-aid), if it still works.

What I always found was that you want to have RCS positioned far away from your centre of mass, and evenly spaced in all directions. So, top/bottom/left/right, and also evenly spaced vertically around the CoM.

You also need a lot of them, or at least quite big ones once your ship gets any larger than a Ford Focus. Don't forget the big ones chew through the RCS fuel. Combining them with reaction wheels is good too, but they seemed to work better to me when placed near the CoM.

I tried to laucnh my first part of my space station yesterday.

Unfortunately the game doesn't like parts with attached docking ports very much. I tried for hours to design a rocket that could lift a station part with two attached docking ports (one in the front and one in the back) yet couldn't make it work. If I attach them radially all is well but if I attach them at the front and the back everything goes wrong. Parts snap to them when assembling and when disassembling and reassembling parts the docking ports simply vanish. Even if not no amount of strutrs can prevent the rocket from breaking apart under stress. Half of the time I can't even attach struts between two parts especially when there is a stack seperator between them.

Gave up after a few hours and don't know what to do about it.

The problem is the way that the ships are kept in the game as a 'tree' structure. You can go from 1 to many going down the rocket, away from the command module but you *cannot* go many to 1. So multiple docking ports are indeed tricky.

The only solution I found was to make space stations highly modular, get them into orbit using launcher vehicles and make sure that each section is only connected to the launcher vehicle (preferably inside a cargo bay, or at the least covered in fairings) by just one docking port. You can stabilise the whole thing with struts in lieu of a 2nd docking ring, and the struts will disconnect when you deploy the module.

Once it's in space you can dock things wherever you want, so have multiple docking rings on your sections if you want, just don't have them connected to the launch vehicle.

The "ship editor" needs to be refactored completely once they switch to Unity 5.

Most of the time you deliberately need to position the camera so that you can't see all of the parts involved or the parts won't snap correctly. Biggest offender: solid fuel boosters and radial decouplers. Accidentally delete the root node of your ship and the editor needs to be reset. All of the already deployed parts are grayed out (not attached to the root), you can't switch the root node and you can't place any new part. "Re-rooting" your ship frequently breaks stuff and makes parts vanish also.

On OSX there is no scroll wheel support for zooming in the VAB (everywhere else it works) which makes things even more annoying.

The game also can't handle multiple command modules. I tried to launch a science module with a cupola attached and the game became utterly confused because I technically had two command modlues.

Ctrl-z in the vehicle editor undoes the last thing you did. Very handy when you delete or duplicate the wrong thing!

The multiple command pods thing drove me mad too. I seem to remember that using an unmanned module (probe cores?) lets you overcome that.

Only if the command module is rotated in the same direction as your probe body. It it points anywhere else it won't work

Ah, poop. Does it still freak out if only one of the command modules is manned?

It  even freaks out when none are manned and there's only the probe body in control. On the last try the nav ball was "upside down" because the game thought that the cupola strapped at the other end was the real control module even though the whole flight was unmanned and only the probe body was there.

I'll see what the internet has to say on that matter.

Multiple command modules work fine; you need to right click on your chosen one and select "Control from here" on your probe core / command module before you take off. That resets your navball to the chosen part. Works with docking modules too.

Just by chance, are you aware that you can right click on a control capable module while on the launch pad and click "control from here" in order to fix the nav-ball orientation issue?

I remember a fun space station module I launched, where due to the structure of the module it would cause the whole launch vehicle to veer and crash, that I had to place the copula module upside down.  That one was a fun one to control.

Of course I didn't know about the "control from here" option.  :facepalm:

I've now played around witha few mods. Which has made the game a whole lot more interssting but also crashier (even though I use the texture optimization mod)

- procedural fairings is something that should be in the base game. Unfortunately it only seems to work with the small rocket parts. I can't seem to find parts for 2.5 or 3.75m parts
- planet shine and distant object enhancement is very nice
- The Environmental Visual Enhancements are very nice but make working in the map screen annoying as fuck. You can't turn off the visual enhancements for the map screen and the realistic planet textures  make actually seeing stuff and working with nav markers quite impossible
- KW rocketry offers a set of really nice and realistic loocking parts but is also very weird in what parts they chose to implement at times
- B9 is currently not 1.0 compatible which is bad because the parts library looks awesome
- Docking port indicator, kerbal alarm clock and a somewhat less cluttered version of Kerbal engineer (focusing on the most important info) should have been in the main game as well.

Ferram Aerospace is something that is both great (semi-realistic aerodynamic modelling of surfaces) and quite terrifying (semi-realistic aerodynamic modelling of surfaces makes things crash and burn more often). It's also really pointless. Because it tries to somewhat realistically model supersonic and transsonic effects in a game that doesn't offer you the mechanics and parts necessary to deal with them. It also doesn't really affect rockets all that much because mach effects don't really matter - except heating due to drag - when you go straight up and then sideways as is the Kerbal way.

The way it currently interacts with the base game is weird. It makes getting into orbit both easier, because it does model Kerbal's atmosphere and the flight surfaces more realistically the vehicles experience less drag, and harder, because you can't really go sideways in any way in the lower atmosphere. If you have any sort of angle of atack then the supersonic effects on drag will make you stall and spin out. So you end up having to spend more on circularizing your orbit later because you have to go straight up longer. It also makes re-entry more of a bitch. If you don't have something that is perfectly aerodynamically stable at transsonic speeds you'll flip and spin out and then burn up. If you have something that is you'll burn up due to re-entry heating because areobraking is not as effective as in the base game. So you end up overspending on control authority for the return vehicle to be able to stabilize yourself during re-entry. Which wouldn't work on a real capsule because the reaction wheels in real life have to adhere to the laws of physics and are therefore less effective than their ridiculous Kerbal counterparts.

It might make SSTOs more interesting to build though.

Yeah I never really got on with FAM. The way I looked at it was that it was an added layer of difficulty, not necessarily of added realism. So if you want some extra arbitrary difficulty it's there as an option.

The procedural fairings thing, is it that you haven't unlocked the research for the larger fairings? Shame B9 isn't working yet, that was always one of my favorite mods.

I have access to larger fairings on both stock and KW parts. In fact I have unlocked both the 2.5m and 3.75m parts. It doesn't seem to be an R&D problem.

Nice, clear delta-V map for 1.02 (click for embiggened):

(http://i.imgur.com/Sp8xpng.png) (http://i.imgur.com/Sp8xpng.png)

After my first unmanned Duna and Eve landings I can say that the rule still holds: If you have enough Delta-V to go to the Mun you have enough delta-V to go to Duna and Eve. Planning the aerobraking/aerocapture maneuvers was thrilling. On Duna I went through the atmosphere 10 km above surface level to have enough drag to slow myself down. Planning this without lithobraking (hitting the ground) was challenging. On Eve I thrust limited my engines to lesss than 10% to be able to control my periapsis with enough precision to not explode. (anything below 75 km was kaboom).

Not any of this would have been possible without the "precise node" addon. I can also recommend "trajectories" which approximates the trajectories you'll follow while flying through the atmosphere and the resulting orbital path or escape trajectory. It helped greatly with my aerobraking maneuver planning.

I just wish 1.0.2 would be more stable. The game regularly crashes after an hour or two of play for me although I've limited myself to the fewest number of mods possible and never hit the 4 GB adress space limit per process. Which is a pity because this game would only be half as much fun without all of the mods

Currently doing some rocket testing for my mission to put a kerbal on the mün without upgrading the KSC buildings. The lack of advanced research parts is only slightly difficult. What's more difficult is the 30 part/18 ton limit. But that's doable.

But you know what really hurts?


Managed to put these two little guys into orbit and bring them down safely.

Well, that mission doesn't seem to specify bringing them back... Or even that they have to reach the Mün at survivable velocity. That makes it doable.  :grin:

So far I haven't had much luck designing something workable with the larger part sets. Everything is - naturally - so much more heavy that you won't get significantly more delta-v out of a first stage than you would with 1.5 m parts. At least if you refuse to go "full Kerbal" and won't build ridiciculous multi engine lift stage constraptions that cost a shitton of money and are strutted to Mun and back. Also the center of mass shifts so far due to fuel drain that those rockets become quite unmanagable to fly during ascent unless you use the fuel balancer mod or spent a ridiculuous amount on control authority and reaction wheels. Thirdly the joints between the larger parts and smaller parts seem to be exceptionally weak even compared to the "wobblyness" stock parts generally exhibit.

What usually happens is that the rocket will flip over and/or break up if you put any sort of AoA on it (even if it's less than 5°). What usually happens is that it'll fly OK for a few km if you fly it straight up and don't tilt it in any way. At about 5 - 6 km enough fuel has drained out of the tank that CoM moves too far from CoL and then the rocket just flips over - even when I fly it completely straight. Either that or it will simply break up at the joints due to aerodynamic drag if acceleration goes ever beyond 1 g or I accidentally reach mach 1 anywhere below 20 km above sea level.

I've had designs that never deviated more than 1° - 2° from prograde flip over and break up during ascent. Even without any sort of control input applied to them. This is ridiculous. A rocket has rotational symmetry and so all forces perpendicular to its axis should apply evenly over the whole 360° and therefore it shouldn't apply a net force. It also should have more than enough thrust to generate enough lift to be able to at least fly straight - regardless of how far CoM moves from CoL. In fact the more "lawn darty" it gets the better.

I wonder what I do wrong since I don't have those issues with the 1.5 m parts.

Bringing them back will actually end up being the easiest. You can't go on EVAs when off Kerbin, but I had no problem getting a kerbal to board a capsule when I shot it into space with him hanging off a ladder on the side. So I should be able to just land an escape vehicle next to the stranded kerbals and fly home.

EVA reports were collected like normal, although without the building upgrade you can't even place flags on kerbin.


It sounds like you're going big for the wrong reason. Your dv problems, the weight transfer from the large dry mass difference,  and your structural problems all sound like you're trying to make a big, long, many stage rocket to increase your payload final speed. You don't build big rockets for big delta v, you build them for big payloads. I can't really be sure what you're trying to do, and so what the problem is, but if you post a few screenshots of builds and list payload amounts and destinations, and what tech unlocks you're using, then I can probably explain what's going on.

I've been playing around with 1.02 for a bit.

• Fins are important: Do not underestimate how important these things are, they will stabilize your craft and allow greater maneuverability.
• Gravity Turns are important
• When doing gravity turns avoid doing them when you see white around the craft (or worse red)
• If you see white (or red) around the craft slow it down, you're bleeding delta-v and the craft is inefficient
• If your craft is decelerating after a stage, wait until the craft accelerates again before trying a gravity turn

If you follow these you should have no problem with gravity turns.

This is the craft I used to land on Mun with a probe attached to knock out two temperature missions at the same time (Skipper Engines are the devil):

I was also trying to complete a docking mission at the same time with this craft which failed, 5600 Dv wasn't enough to re-establish a LKO on the return leg.

Thanks for the tips but I have the basics down so far I think. I wouldn't have managed to land on Eve with a rocket that has barely more than 5500 m/s of delta-v. Flying to the Mun or Minmus, landing and returning is easy at this point. I do this all the time for contracts (I don't want to praise myself just to give context where I'm at right now)

I need a setup that gets me enough delta-v to go to Duna or Eve (or maybe even Ike or Gilly), be able to do a polar orbit and then return to Kerbin so that I can recover all of the delicious science. Even when I use the optimal launch window, possible gravity assists and aerocapture I need about 9k to 10 k of delta-v. I suppose that this should be possible with classical rocketry and without using the more OP aspects of KSP (nuclear motor, asparagus staging, ion engine etc.)

I don't even have that much of a payload, it's just a science and survey satellite that weighs about 9t. My goal is to recover the satellite via re-entry and touchdown and not by orbital rendezvous. I've designed the satellite with re-entry in mind so it has a CoL that is close to the CoM even when 'dry' (which is not that hard since the thing only carries monopropellant). So far I've managed to get that thing to the Mun or Minmus and back to the Kerbin space center with about 5 - 6 k of delta-v multiple times. Using 1.5 m parts mostly. I just don't seem to be able to get a two or maybe three stage design going that is able to give me the amount of delta-v I need for a return trip to Duna or Eve and that is actually able to lift off and/or be stable during ascent.

I have two main issues at the moment (all with FAR installed)

- I need a lifter stage that is able to carry my survey sat and enough fuel for 4 - 5 k of delta-v into low kerbal orbit.
- The contraption should be able to gravity turn and to not topple over or disintegrate during ascent.

My experiments usually end up in one of several ways

- The rocket is too heavy to even lift itself off the ground (TWR close to 1)
- The rocket produces too much thrust and either flips over or disintegrates due to transsonic drag at a few km (limitng thrust alleviates this somewhat)
- The rocket flips over or breaks up during gravity turns even when I keep my maneuvers below 5° AoA. (even when FAR doesn't complain about high AoA)
- The rocket flips over or breaks up during ascent because the ratio of dry mass to wet mass is to high (CoM shifts too much during ascent)
- The rocket breaks up at the joint/stack separator of stage 1 and 2 as soon as I deviate from the prograde vector during gravity turns

I've compiled a few screenshots. The rocket I made consists of:

- a probodobodyne OKTO with a Z-200 battery bank and solar panels inside a conic fairing (so that SAS works during ascent)
- a rockomax brand adapter
- a large advanced reaction wheel
- a rockomax jumbo-64 liquid fuel tank (the standard orange fuel tank)
- an RE-I5 "Skipper" Engine
- 4 large fins

The resulting vessel will fly straight up until fuel runs out and it'll reach an apoapsis of about 3.5 km.


When I attach 4 solid fuel boosters and some struts the vessel will flip over at a height of about 2.6 km and a speed of mach 0.6 (230 m/s). Note that CoM and CoL have barely moved or rather they have both moved by the same amount due to the attached boosters.


Shot of the instant the vessel flips over. Note that FAR claims that all flight parameters are nominal. There has been no control input by me except hitting the space bar to launch this.


When this happens and a second stage is attached to this, then the rocket will flip, bend at the connection due to the stress of the aerodynamic forces that are unevenly applied and then snap in half and disintegrate.

edit. At this height and speed there should not be any sort of perpendicular force that is applied to the vessel. It has rotational symmetry, enough lift due to the large fins, enough thrust due to a TWR of 1.78 and it flies at 0° prograde. Even if the boosters add a significant amount of drag the net force should be applied evenly.

Try putting RCS on it. I'd put 4 up top, near the reaction wheel, and 4 down low, right at the base of the orange tank, just under the fins. If that doesn't work try bigger RCS. Also put a fin on each solid booster.

I've not got much experience with FAR though, so those might be stupid suggestions!

Put the fins on the boosters.

*damnedest thing, I cannot recreate it.

I'll try your suggestions tomorrow. I'll also try what I should have done in the first place, namely get rid of all my mods and check if it is an issue with one of them. If you can't reproduce my issues it might very well be a mod issue.

Note that none of this happens when I use only 1.25 m parts. I can come up with ridiculously unbalanced contraptions that are a bitch to keep straight but at least go directly up.

RCS is cheating and requires additional resources you shouldn't need during a launch.

Jeff, I cannot recreate that problem, which means it's either a mod, or you're just unlucky in placement and found the magical flip spot for booster placement, try moving the boosters up.

It fliest straight up with and without SAS, with or without struts on the boosters, with fins either on the rocket itself or the boosters.

I can confirm Brellium's post. I installed Ferram and tried your rocket, it seems to work fine. It managed to make it into space with only a slight drift with sas turned off, even. So it's probably some kind of weird mod interaction. Also make sure you're using the latest version of everything.

What kind of faring did you use? I used the AE-FF1. It's a stock part, and I don't see it's separator on your staging. Did you use some kind of mod pack part? That might not be playing nice with ferram.

I did a clean reinstall and tried the rocket with stock aero. It flies straight up as was expected. I then added Ferram and the rocket flips over again. doesn't matter where on the tank I place the boosters by the way.

Gore I originally used the procedural fairings mod for the fairing but it also flips over if I use the stock fairings. Basically every 2.5 m or 3.75 m rocket I build flips once I add boosters while a 1.25 m version does not.

I found a workaround, if I activate the main engine and add a tiny amount of thrust (even if it is a negligible amount) from the main engine then it won't flip over. The engine just has to deliver any sort of thrust even if it doesn't add anything meaningful to the acceleration provided by the boosters. So only boosters active -> flips, activate engine and add a tiny amount of thrust -> doesn't flip.

I'll see if this issue also pops up on OS X or if it's just a Windows issue. It seems to be an issue with FAR though because it also happens if FAR is the only installed mod.

Touchdown!

Wow. Didn't think that was possible.

So Squad just announced a PS4 port of KSP. Which is just  :headscratch:. The port will be done by an external developer that has only done bad shovelware games up to this point which is even more  :headscratch:.

Since most of the original devs are working on porting KSP over to Unity 5.1 instead of fixing bugs thathave been active for months now this does not bode well.

The new patch 1.0.4 has just ruined my 200+ hour career mode save. Basically everything I ever built exploded due to the new heating system. Since I can't attach heatsinks to ships that are already in planetary orbit or in transit I've lost basically all of my ships and probes and my space stations.

Also since I bought the game on steam I can't revert back to version 1.0.2 which means that everything I achieved over the last few weeks is now irrevocably lost.

Fuck this.

(http://puu.sh/iAo6m/5dfc80013b.png)

Re-downloaded the game after deleting the game folder.

Even on a new save the game has all kinds of weird glitches. Radially attached devices like solar panels or antennae now sometimes give an "cannot activate while stowed" error if you have a cargo or service bay anywhere else on your ship. If you have two or more that are symmetrically attached it's usually only one that gives the error.

Antennas sometimes get stuck while sending science (won't fold up again), stopping transmission won't work (still stuck) and once you go to the space center and back the antenna gets unstuck but the transmitted science is lost.

I managed to break two Gigantor solar panels by rotating my spacecraft (snapped clean off).

Once I tried to send some science back and my whole service bay and all batteries exploded .

Stuff still sometimes randomly explodes still. Temp is nominal for all of the flight then suddenly overheat markers appear on all parts of the craft and it explodes.Takes just two or three seconds from everything is fine and dandy to shit goes boom.

There seems to be a glitch in reentry heating calculations. If you come in hot you'll sometimes explode the instant you hit the atmosphere (e.g. counter switches from 70,000 to 69,999 on Kerbin re-entry and boom). Doesn't matter how long you are in the atmosphere either, I had this happen once with an periapsis of about 69,600 meters (I was going 7 km/s but still)

There are all kinds of weird phantom forces that hit your craft once physics winds up (switching from tracking station to a craft will make it "yank" around sometimes) or the physics context switches (e.g. from orbit to atmosphere) sometiomes the force exerted is high enough to significantly change your orbit or to break stuff. I have a landed craft where the solar panels will fall of if I switch to it, just from the force the physics model exerts on it during "wind-up". I several times had a force that was so high and sudden that after "revert to launch" my whole craft including the launch clamps yanked sideways and ended up at an angle of 45°.

I haven't built a new craft yet (only worked with ships created in 1.0.2) but it seems that all of the crafts built before 1.0.3 are borked. Somehow the game seems to be confused about which parts are attached to which other parts and then screws up the physics calculations. Since 1.0.3 now models heat convection, heat conduction and shock heating seperately this confuses the heating physics to such an extend that shit blows up.

If you have your old saves, try (in the steam client) properties -< betas and change "none" to -> previous stable builds.

In the case of KSP I have no clue what "previous" version it downloads, but if it works, you can make a client backup and play the old build until they fix the bugs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3auf0y/kerbal_space_program_104_patch_now_available/

That any help at all?

No all of the things I mention happened in KSP 1.0.4

I basically spent last night trying to salvage my save file by starting from a clean install first (I had made a backup of my save file first) and then only installing the mods that are absolutely needed to be able to load a save (every mod part that is attached to a craft has to be there). Fortunately I only needed KW rocketry and Scansat. Which both reportedly work in 1.0.4. When that didn't work I reinstalled the game again and started a new save to see if my save file was the culprit.

btw. if you load a save that contains an active craft with a part that is no longer installed (due to a missing mod) the UI doesn't work anymore, even when you haven't selected the craft. You can't even assemble anything in the VAB.

All the things mentioned happened on a clean new save in sandbox mode with vehicles I had created prior to 1.0.3. Which made testing this annoying as fuck because planning an orbital transfer without precise node installed is shitty.

I'd rather just revert to 1.0.2 actually if at all possible

My bad, I thought you'd said 1.0.3., sorry.

That is very shit, I hate the way Steam takes away user control of updates :-(

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the "previous" version is the 0.90.3 beta.

I've spent the last three weeks trying to report several bugs. Bugs that can be reproduced 100% and where I could deliver detailed instructions and also save files. To no avail.

Apparently - at least that is what a mod told me - the official forum is run by volunteer mods and Squad hasn't hired even one person to act as community manager. Also according to a mod "the support subforum's intended purpose is not for reporting bugs". Also bug reports from modded installs will always be ignored since it is assumed that the bugs stem from a mod. A stance that I can understand to an extend but given that the core game is nearly unplayable without at least some mods this potentially hamstrings the number of people that are actually able to legitimately report bugs to people insane enough to just play the stock game.

The recent ecchanges with the mods were both tiring and enlighting. Suddenly the state of the core game and the number of issues that are still open makes a whole lot of sense. If there's no real legitimate way to report bugs to the dev team and since probably the majority of issues will be ignored because that person runs a modded install it's no wonder that so many bugs remain unfixed.

Well I should have known when I bought an early access game that things wouldn't be run as professionally.

I don't mind playing the stock game.  :why_so_serious:

Yeah but you are a regular on F13.net so we've already established that you are stark raving mad like the rest of us.

The only mod I use is MechJeb. I have no problems. :drill:

Good point.

Alot of the mod problems are as a result of the push to 1.03 and 1.04 which changed heating and re-entry dynamics.

One of the things that surprised me was the fact that you could do a straight launch and straight fall and not have any ill effects.

Go watch Apollo 13 again for an example of why that doesn't work.  One of the major concerns the engineers had about re-entry with the craft was it's re-entry computer had failed and there had been no successful re-entries without some kind of automated assist.  There was a concern the craft would not be able to stay in the correct range for a successful re-entry and would just burn up.

It's why on my re-entries I never aim for the ground but rather 30-35 km altitude for my apoapsis. It ensures that my re-entry gradient is always less than 20 degrees.

It also changed heating dynamics on 0/null weight parts, where they would instantly overheat and go boom.

This is my problem with the game. Its brilliant, its complex, and its hampered by a GUI that drives all but the most dedicated to hair ripping. The last time I quit was when I struggled to get radial fins on a seemingly innocuous midsection for about 10 minutes, only to discover that I had somehow left a little boostery thingie somehow glitched into the midsection, invisible till I removed the section. This was months and months ago so that sort of thing may have been remedied by now, but I'm done with it unless someone can promise that the bad design elements are gone. From what I'm reading, that may not be the case.

It's not, unfortunately.

Lots of people are having problems with the new heat physics. Massless and clipped parts experience runaway heating issues until they explode. You know just things that would be easy to test against if you'd for example change one of your core physics models.

The more I know the more I believe that the Squad are simply not competent or professional enough to deal with a commercial game project. The last few releases had quite a few bugs a decent unit and regression test setup should have brought up well before the testers do.

I got this to keep me amused on quiet moments on my holiday. Holy reamling feck the tutorials are garbage. They honestly dont tell you a goddam thing. For instance on the get ack from the mun one the ship has waaaay too little fuel (I think) so I kept running out when I'm trying to brake for rentry. Then I looked at the forums and people were saying use the atmosphere of Kerbing to lower your orbital speed, There is no bloody way I would have ever thought about that on my own. AND the parachute was set to deploy at 500 nmetes rather than 100 so I kept crashing. Is there a hint to look at your parachute settings? Is there feck.

And the science one "Hey you can reserch stuff. Congrats. oh and you can get science points by doing various things, which we are not bothering to explain. Hope you enjoyed your science tutorial!!!

I mean seriously I can see the appeal here, hell I'm having fun with it but how are you supposed to build better rockets>? Could you xplain the best way to even launch? And saying "oh and go land on the Mun, chop chop!" is not the best way to show someone how to land on something unless you want 199 new craters.

I mean trhis game is fun but it explains very very little. Abd what the feck is deltaV?

Try this guy (https://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg/playlists).

Also, deltaV is a measure of the impulse that is needed to perform a maneuver. Basically it's the amount of "stuff" you can do with your rocket. It is related to the amount of thrust your engines produce, the amount of fuel you have and the weight of your rocket.



Unfortunately you'd have to calculate it yourself or install a mod like Kerbal Engineer that does this for you.

I basically haven't touched the game since patch 1.0.4. There's too much stuff that is still broken and has been for 6 months now while they are working on their magical Unity 5 upgrade of the game engine. Yes the tutorials are bad. They have always been bad and people have been complaining from the moment they integrated the tutorials into the game that they are bad and need to be fixed. Which they never did and probably never will.

If you want to get enjoyment out of this game you need to rely on external sources and info made available by fans of the game. There's a great subreddit that collects all of the necessary info and where to find it and the people on the KSP forums are pretty helpfuk as well. You won't have much fun with the stock game though if you don't want to add at least a few mods and are comfortable with getting most of your infos from external wikis and communities.

Still my biggest criticism of the game. The developer never sticks to finishing, polishing and bug fixing a new feature and basically abandons each new part of the game as soon as something new and more interesting comes along. They also rely entirely on 3rd party modders and fans to basically fix each and every broken feature they never bother to fix, ever.

But the magical upgrade to Unity 5 they keep working on will magically fix everything and will give us kittens and unicorns so all will be well (except it will be not).

Yeah we've definitely covered in this thread that this is absolutely not a game you can get anywhere with without turning to outside sources. Lots of outside sources.  :awesome_for_real:

That first Mün landing, though ...  :awesome_for_real:

I'm just happy I finally didn't kill all my Kerbonaughts landing on Kerbin for the first time *\O/*

Yeah, I just barely pulled off that Minmus return.  Failed to put any solar panels on the craft. Just enough electricity to land on Minmus, lift off, fire engines back and coast all the way back to Kerbin. The Satellite attempt that I made to coincide with landing failed, did not deploy the satellite on the way to Minmus and ran out of power. Stupid brick just flew by.

It'l be back.

Eventually.

Started playing with this again while I wait for Fallout 4.

KSP-Interstellar has a really huge tech tree, although there's a few branches that are just placeholders or underpopulated so far.

The 1.0+ aerodynamics took some getting used to, gravity turns are quite different than they were pre-1.0. I'm also finding cash is actually in short supply in the early to mid game because of the costs of upgrading the facilities. It's nice, it's giving a good structure to a career playthrough.

The new player experience is still terrible of course, there simply is no alternative to relying on outside sources of information. Also the sooner they get on with the move to Unity 5 the better, I've had to force it to use OpenGL because of the atrocious memory handling.

*prod*   *prod*

1.1 is coming, which is the big move to Unity 5. Should have a huge impact on running mods because of proper 64-bit support. Anyway, here's the best bug ever from the 1.1 beta:

Link because gyfy, and .gif is huge (http://gfycat.com/ForsakenVibrantAsianwaterbuffalo).

KSP 1.1 is here (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/developerarticles.html/kerbal-space-program-11-turbo-charged/).

Main big thing is the move to Unity 5, which means 64 bit binaries which should improve performance a lot, and allow much more modding. Here's a list (https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/4fjhvu/could_we_get_a_list_going_of_the_mods_that_are/) of mods that currently work in 1.1.

Other highlights:

The upcoming 1.2 will be the last version:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/55vozd/theres_no_easy_way_to_say_this/

Well, shit. Not unexpected though, KSP has been supported and developed for far longer than you'd expect given the nature of Squad as a company.

It might open some interesting possibilities for modders too now. Knowing that another update isn't going to break things might be nice to know.

KSP has been acquired by Take-Two (https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/?page_id=747), so presumably development will pick up.

I've never played the game but seeing it in the news again combined with a timely meander through the Space Thread has inspired me to pick up a copy. I can sense many Kerbals trembling in fear already.

Yeah, an historical expansion is in the works I hear. Could be very cool.


Be warned, KSP is an incredible game but the new player experience can be hard going. You will absolutely need outside aid to get the hang of things. The subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/) is very helpful and welcoming and Scott Manley has a superb collection of tutorial videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEm5nyZU3a-O2ak6mBYXWPAL) up.

Thanks for the links; I will certainly check them out eventually but I'm not ready to mar the sense of discovery just yet. I spent most of Sunday watching my planes explode on the shitty dirt runway they start you off with and had a blast anyway (I know you're supposed to be focusing on rockets on the launchpad, but I'm a free spirit dammit). Cobbling a plane together capable of rocket-jumping to ~19km to do the starter career missions, plus only destroying a few pieces of my craft on the landing, felt like a real accomplishment.

I will probably look up a primer on the controls sooner rather than later, though. I have no idea what half the things on my screen do in flight.

Hehe, cool :) There's no 'supposed to' in KSP, do whatever floats your boat (or flys your plane...). I'm terrible at getting planes to fly, never got the hang of them. One day :)