Kerbal Space Program

[Saturn0660]

Indeed, i've seen those on the KSP board as well. Get so used to the game taking care of anything for you that you can't do it on your own. However, to be fair I can't see any NASA pilot getting a shuttle into stable orbit without the computer. But shit who knows..

I had a hell of a time getting ships up in "orbiter" till I started using the auto pilot and watching what it did when. Only then could i do it without auto.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The game still seems quite buggy to me (version 0.18.1). Editing your vehicles in the VAB often suffers from weird glitches and other annoyances. Currently, I'm struggling to understand why all my RCS thrusters now stop working when I'm less than 50m from the target with which I want to dock. It's also a pain that vehicle design is centred around capsules - it would be much better to be able to design lift vehicles and payloads separately and then mate them in the VAB. I'd also like to be able to choose the crew complement - I don't necessarily want a vehicle to be manned (kerballed?) on a shake-down flight.

Anyway, I'm sure most of these bugs will get sorted out. Looking good...

[Trekky0623]

Asbo Zaprudder wrote:

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The game still seems quite buggy to me (version 0.18.1). Editing your vehicles in the VAB often suffers from weird glitches and other annoyances. Currently, I'm struggling to understand why all my RCS thrusters now stop working when I'm less than 50m from the target with which I want to dock. It's also a pain that vehicle design is centred around capsules - it would be much better to be able to design lift vehicles and payloads separately and then mate them in the VAB. I'd also like to be able to choose the crew complement - I don't necessarily want a vehicle to be manned (kerballed?) on a shake-down flight.

Anyway, I'm sure most of these bugs will get sorted out. Looking good...

Use probes on your unmanned cargo trips.

As for thrusters, are you out of monopropellant? Are you out of battery power? If you are switching to the docking mode, your rotational controls become lateral controls, so you need to stop pressing IJKLHN.

[TheGodBen]

Saturn0660 wrote:

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Indeed, i've seen those on the KSP board as well. Get so used to the game taking care of anything for you that you can't do it on your own. However, to be fair I can't see any NASA pilot getting a shuttle into stable orbit without the computer. But shit who knows..

That's a fair argument, and even Yuri Gagarin didn't have manual control over Vostok 1 when he went into space. But at the same time, I'd imagine that the controls in KSP are considerably easier than those on a real spacecraft.

Asbo Zaprudder wrote:

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The game still seems quite buggy to me (version 0.18.1).

Version 0.18.1 is pretty buggy as it was rushed out to fix a major bug with docking. There'll probably be a version 0.18.2 out soon enough. I've not experienced any bugs with the RCS system though, I've docked a dozen or so times and never had a problem with it.

It's also a pain that vehicle design is centred around capsules - it would be much better to be able to design lift vehicles and payloads separately and then mate them in the VAB.

I think there's a mod for that, but that functionality is definitely is something they should consider adding to the vanilla game. When building my space station, I had a set launch vehicle and tug arrangement and I would just alter the payload manually.

I'd also like to be able to choose the crew complement - I don't necessarily want a vehicle to be manned (kerballed?) on a shake-down flight.

I think they're planning something like that for career mode, along with some sort of skill and experience system for the Kerbals, but nobody knows when that will be. Right now, I'm just happy they've added unmanned vehicles at long last. I can finally send missions to the worlds I have yet to visit without having to worry about the return journey.



I finished construction of my space station. I nearly gave up on it because it had gotten so big that I started to suffer major FPS issues when I got close to it, and the final construction flights were like a slideshow. But it's finally done and I can move on to other things.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Trekky0623 wrote:

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Use probes on your unmanned cargo trips.

As for thrusters, are you out of monopropellant? Are you out of battery power? If you are switching to the docking mode, your rotational controls become lateral controls, so you need to stop pressing IJKLHN.

You can't swap capsules without rebuilding the whole damn rocket - that's my main beef with the interface. I'd like to have a set of, say, three basic launch vehicle configurations, and a larger number of payload types. ***

I have pretty much 100% monopropellant and I'm aware of the mode toggle (R) between rotational/lateral controls. In fact, sometimes the jets fire, most times they don't. Sometimes I even get lateral movement from QWEASD and rotational from IHJKLN without mode switching. Sometimes the jets fire on the other damn spacecraft. I think I'll try reinstalling or maybe wait for the update.

TheGodBen - gotta say, that space station is awesome - you are a master at this. I'm just a fumble-fingered n00b.

*** Actually, you can swap capsules by editing the save-game file. Should be an in-game feature though.

[sojourner]

Asbo Zaprudder wrote:

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You can't swap capsules without rebuilding the whole damn rocket - that's my main beef with the interface. I'd like to have a set of, say, three basic launch vehicle configurations, and a larger number of payload types. ***

Get Payloader. It's great.

I have pretty much 100% monopropellant and I'm aware of the mode toggle (R) between rotational/lateral controls. In fact, sometimes the jets fire, most times they don't. Sometimes I even get lateral movement from QWEASD and rotational from IHJKLN without mode switching. Sometimes the jets fire on the other damn spacecraft. I think I'll try reinstalling or maybe wait for the update.

I've seen the bug were the ship stops responding. A work around I have found for it is to go to the tracking station and then assume control of the ship again from there. Seems to re-initilize whatever the bug is.

My rocket of choice right now uses 9 LV-t30 engines clustered under one of the big orange jumbo tanks as the core and then I asparagus crossfeed 6 of those cores around the central core. 63 Engines firing at once! Most launches the central core makes orbit with a full load of fuel plus whatever payload I have thrown on top. The last launch I tried using this vehicle managed to put up 15 of the hitchhiker pods and the various equipment needed to hold it all together and keep it powered and maneuverable.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Payloader looks promising, although there seems to be quite a lot of faffing around involved. I might give it a go if I feel sufficiently frustrated. Baby steps at the moment...

There's a Youtube video where Scott Manley exploits a 0.16 bug that allows you to go anywhere in the Kerbal system using only a small capsule, a fuel tank, and an aerospike engine. I think it basically exploited a truncation error in computing the fuel usage at low thrust or some such. I'm guessing it's been fixed. Some people have way too much time on their hands.



I think you'd need an Orion nuke-powered spaceship to do similar in the real world.

[Saturn0660]

TheGodBen wrote:

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I finished construction of my space station. I nearly gave up on it because it had gotten so big that I started to suffer major FPS issues when I got close to it, and the final construction flights were like a slideshow. But it's finally done and I can move on to other things.

What kind of rig are you running? thats one thing i fear. I dont want to buy this game only to find the epic shit i wanna build will kill my mac. I'm running an iMac--3.6GHz/i3/4gb/ATI-HD4670. The demo runs great.

[TheGodBen]

Asbo Zaprudder wrote:

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I have pretty much 100% monopropellant and I'm aware of the mode toggle (R) between rotational/lateral controls.

The R key doesn't toggle between rotational and lateral controls, that just turns the RCS thrusters on and off to save mono-propellant fuel. The space key is the default to switch between rotational and lateral controls in docking mode, and I think you actually have to click on the button on the bottom-left to enter docking mode.

TheGodBen - gotta say, that space station is awesome - you are a master at this. I'm just a fumble-fingered n00b.

I wouldn't say I'm a master, I've just become proficient at one element of the game; docking things together. It was useful practice, though. It will probably come in handy if I get a ship stranded somewhere.

Saturn0660 wrote:

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What kind of rig are you running? thats one thing i fear. I dont want to buy this game only to find the epic shit i wanna build will kill my mac. I'm running an iMac--3.6GHz/i3/4gb/ATI-HD4670. The demo runs great.

My PC is pretty old at this stage, 3GHz dual-core, 4GB of RAM, GeForce 9600GT with 512MB of VRAM. The game runs really well unless I build a ship with around 200 parts, that's when I start to experience FPS problems, but it's still playable. The biggest thing I ever built was my space station in 0.17, it was 333 parts at launch and too big to take off from the launchpad, so I had to launch from the runway. But I still managed to get the monstrosity into orbit.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

TheGodBen wrote:

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The R key doesn't toggle between rotational and lateral controls, that just turns the RCS thrusters on and off to save mono-propellant fuel. The space key is the default to switch between rotational and lateral controls in docking mode, and I think you actually have to click on the button on the bottom-left to enter docking mode.

Ah well, I guess there's something definitely up with my installation as I find that I can't use the lateral controls unless I press R - when the controls are working anything like correctly, that is. I'm tempted to write my own orbital rendezvous and autodocking algorithms for MechJEB if I can work out the details of the coordinate system and how to manoeuver with RCS. That's actually more of an interesting challenge to me than jabbing at keys until I feel like I'm going loopy. However, at the moment I have a stinking head cold so the prospect of doing the coding will have to wait for a few days.

[Trekky0623]

One bug if you're using MechJeb is that two docked ships that both have mechjeb will fight to control your spacecraft, often sending you into an uncontrollable spin.

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I've only just tried installing MechJeb on my space tug to try and fix the control problems. Like TheGodBen, I was intending to use the tug to assemble a space station. However, I've sort of lost interest in doing that now. Instead I've created a space lab with attached detectors and probes that I want to send to the various other planets and moons. There's a topographical mapping plugin ISA_MapSat that looks very intriguing. It seems to suggest that there are various Easter eggs planted on some of the bodies. For example, it seems to indicate that there's another launch centre on Kerbin - for a space-race scenario, perhaps?

[TheGodBen]

Asbo Zaprudder wrote:

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It seems to suggest that there are various Easter eggs planted on some of the bodies. For example, it seems to indicate that there's another launch centre on Kerbal - for a space-race scenario, perhaps?

The only easter egg I've been to so far is one of the Mun archs. I think there's three of them in total, and they're pretty easy to spot from a low orbit. A warning in case you visit them, be wary about walking under the arch...

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There's a wiki page somewhere out there that lists a whole lot more Easter eggs - so I'm boldly going where everyone seems to have gone before - sort of like the 10,000th person to climb Everest has to scramble over all the dead bodies (well, until they removed them a year of two ago).

[sojourner]

Trekky0623 wrote:

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One bug if you're using MechJeb is that two docked ships that both have mechjeb will fight to control your spacecraft, often sending you into an uncontrollable spin.

Strange, works for me just fine.