Kerbal Madness

[Flachzang]

lol enigma, this is insane. How many parts are that? Are that all ion engines? Holy...

[EnigmaGrey]

lol enigma, this is insane. How many parts are that? Are that all ion engines? Holy...

64 - 80 ion engines depending on the screenshot. Around 850 - 950 parts.

I'm probably going to have to rebuild it -- alterations to decouplers .etc seem to have caused some unintended consequences. Perhaps the part hierarchy got a bit screwed up.

[EnigmaGrey]

No explosions on decoupling after rebuilding.

But.

Spot the problem.

[Flachzang]

You can't turn that beast because there's only one single RCS thruster?

 

Dear Lord, I think my PC would explode if I tried to build something similar. It's beautiful, enigma, great job!

[EnigmaGrey]

Better: The engines are on backwards.   

Or were on. After pushing it to 300,000 meters, I've run into the problem of the sun being eclipsed by the Earth for long periods of time (poor planning on my part) and the batteries only containing enough juice for a ~300m/s burst before requiring recharging (power consumption is around 1100 per second).

I'll have to try this again with a mix of radioisotope generators, but I'm not sure the thurst to weight ratio of the launch vehicle will tolerate that (it's already 1.2). Eh, wait it should be fine: at 0.08, I can back a ton of them without issue  -- I'd only need . . . ~ 1300 (or 150 rows of 8). Yeah, can't see my computer handling that load. Maybe a mix of them with some of these (which don't seem to exist in my parts catalog in the latest build . . . hmfound) Gigantor XL Solar Array, rather than the dinky little 1 x 6s.

The alternative is doing something silly, like slappin' a little engine and a fuel tank on there -- I guess a nuke would fit  that  well.

And all to achieve a grand acceleration of ~3.5m/s at full blast.

Let's do  a quick proof of concept:


Right, so that'll power 5 engines constantly (and a hell of a lot more with the 18 charge * 72 (or more) panels). They also seem to track quite a bit better than the  1 x 6, meaningI could probably take my parts count downby a hundred or so switching so select version of them.

The 72 radioscopes provide enough power to faithfully fuel 5 ion engines without need of batteries or solar cells -- further savings.

[Flachzang]

Wow, they're still pretty hungry for electricity although they have been buffed with the latest patch.

 

0.23.5

Ionic Protonic Electronics renamed Ionic Symphonic Protonic Electronics, description changed, thrust increased from 0.5 to 2, relative electricity reduced from 12 to 1.8.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/0.23.5 / http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/PB-ION_Electric_Propulsion_System

[EnigmaGrey]

1500 closely packed parts might be too much for the physics system to take, since it just seems to spin into a little ball and burst apart without utilizing the debug console.

Hmmmm.

I'm not sure if docking segments in orbit would alleviate this. Fun to watch, though.

Ah ha! It's the girders! They're twisting into one another at immeasurable speed and bursting forth with the power of split atoms!



Invisible bounding boxes are hard to navigate, aren't they?

[Kirrus]

With those gigantic solar cells.. aren't they going to hit one-another, that closely packed? It's why they tend to get strung out on arms afaik

[EnigmaGrey]

With those gigantic solar cells.. aren't they going to hit one-another, that closely packed? It's why they tend to get strung out on arms afaik

Nah, they seem to clip through one another quite happily.

Though for this to be in any way (remotely) practical, I'd have to build a several-thousand part ship in orbit. And it'd still be agonizingly slow.

Might well try it, though.

[CatGuitarist]

Favorite mods, everyone?

I love KAS, Infernal Robotics, Lazor System, B9 Aerospace and Pirated Weaponry.

I love doing giant walkers with missiles @v@

[AliceCooper]

Because of PZ my Duna base hasn`t been worked on in 4 months!

 

@ CatGuitarist : Lazor System, B9 Aerospace, some of my fav`s!

 

/AddmoreBoosters!

[deprav]

So I've been touching myself having good laughs watching Robbaz's KSP videos for months, and with that -40% sale on Steam I decided I had no excuse not to buy it now... so I did !

Just spent like 5h trying not to explode and leave the atmosphere in Training, I finally did and it felt like a great achivement I think I've figured out the basics of rocket building and SAS (thank gawd I figured it out quickly enough), then I made the flying & orbiting tutorials. Now it's plain day and I'm tired as phuck but daym that game feels good.

I'm gonna explore the vanilla game before I try mods out, I just checked and there are so many - it scares me.

[blindcoder]

So I've been touching myself having good laughs watching Robbaz's KSP videos for months, and with that -40% sale on Steam I decided I had no excuse not to buy it now... so I did !

Just spent like 5h trying not to explode and leave the atmosphere in Training, I finally did and it felt like a great achivement I think I've figured out the basics of rocket building and SAS (thank gawd I figured it out quickly enough), then I made the flying & orbiting tutorials. Now it's plain day and I'm tired as phuck but daym that game feels good.

I'm gonna explore the vanilla game before I try mods out, I just checked and there are so many - it scares me.

 

There's currently a series by Scott Manley about "essential" KSP mods. I've seen the videos so far and suggest you try those, they're a great start into modding KSP.

[Ridickulo]

Crap....

You guys are the worst. I had already decided not to get it and that was the end of it.

Now i have to buy it!

GODDAM IT

[deprav]

Woops, I played 14h in 2 days.

 

This game is god damn brilliant, I think I'll be stronkly addicted for a couple of weeks.
 

 

 

There's currently a series by Scott Manley about "essential" KSP mods. I've seen the videos so far and suggest you try those, they're a great start into modding KSP.

 

I'll sure check those !

 

 

But for now I'm sticking with the vanilla game at least for a few more days ^^ I harvested some science on Kerbin (oceans, sand, grass, concrete, snow...), made a couple of flights out of Kerbin's atmosphere, sent a brave but stupid kerbal in a close orbit. I think the next move will either be a rescue mission for that one, or a primitive satellite !

[pugdug808]

stronkly addicted

 

 

ksp in a nutshell

[deprav]

Daym I'm having so much fun and so many sleepless nights.

 

After landing on the moon twice with empty fuel tanks, I finally made it there with enough fuel to come back easily ! The 2 first journeys were brute power and heavy fuel consumption, on the 3rd I just slingshot myself directly to the Mun and caught the orbit like a pr0 . Sadly the 2 first Kerbals won't ever make it back home. The first one died in an attempt to reach the second one and got too confident into his RCS jetpack skills, ended up crashing himself on a hill. The second one tried to take of with the few seconds of fuel he had left, needless to say it wasn't enough... Heroes nonetheless !
Gonna bring back some lunar rocks and get some fat science in their memory.

And for the epeen record, I had no clue about the "click on your orbit to add a manoeuvre point" thingy for the 2 first landings, just feeling da vibe and pilot skillz. The first one was a crash-landing, but alive \o/.

Also question for long time players :

For now it seems impossible to build a somewhat-flying spaceplane, I don't have anything to build serious wings, is it because I'm still at an early stage of the career and I need more science to unlock the essential parts ? (I don't have any wheels yet )

[CatGuitarist]

I heard that they are going to implement 64 bit support!

Oh, the things i would do in the game...

[EnigmaGrey]

I don't believe you really start to access spaceplane components until the 3rd or 4th tier, Deprav. In the end, it's why I often just boot up sandbox right now.

[deprav]

I don't believe you really start to access spaceplane components until the 3rd or 4th tier, Deprav. In the end, it's why I often just boot up sandbox right now.

Ye it seems so ! I'm entering the 4th science stage and unlocked my first real jet part, no jet engine or air intakes yet tho. I'll keep sending rockets for now

Also, can you dock & undock any part ? Like, can I set a docking bay on a fuel tank, undock it when it's empty and dock another on instead ? I don't have any other refuelling technique yet and I want to make a Mun base.

I'm also scratching my brain on a "walking" rover instead of rolling on (yeah I got my first wheels ^^). I think I've read/heard somewhere there's no rotor engine for now tho

[EnigmaGrey]

[Connall]

 

I want to spend a day inside your head EG, I'm sure it would be quite a lot of fun. 

[Fryhizzle]

I love kerbal, and I've spent more time than I'd like to admit playing it.  I used to do it all old school vanilla, but after a while I preferred building over flight control and manually figuring out DeltaV.  With mechjeb, I can build amazing things, and all I have to worry about is its ability to fly, instead of my ability to fly it manually.  I had a ton of screens before I deleted the game awhile back.  I also designed a ton of launch platforms that people could drag and drop in order to get their creations to orbit (so the XL could support 50t added to the top and still achieve 500km orbit)  Some of my friends had trouble getting their stuff to space, so with my platforms they could just stick their ship on top and launch.  At one point I had a save with a craft on every planet, orbiters for those you couldn't land on, and rovers, everywhere overrun with rovers!

 

TL;DR - Kerbal insanity!

[blindcoder]

Speaking of rovers, I've found an easy way to keep your rover from toppling over on the Mun:

disable steering on your back wheels and acceleration on your front wheels.

 

Think about it: your car does the same (unless you got a 4-wheel drive) for the same reason: stability while turning. Ever since I started doing it this way I had far less (read: Zero) rover turn onto their head and spontaneously disassemble themselves.

[Fryhizzle]

Speaking of rovers, I've found an easy way to keep your rover from toppling over on the Mun:

disable steering on your back wheels and acceleration on your front wheels.

 

Think about it: your car does the same (unless you got a 4-wheel drive) for the same reason: stability while turning. Ever since I started doing it this way I had far less (read: Zero) rover turn onto their head and spontaneously disassemble themselves.

^This.  Not doing so allows your back tires to turn and spin, and will almost always cause rollover.  Also using a speed limiter (like in MJ) helps from launching into orbit.