Kerbal Space Program

[FrostedxB]

I tried to do it right but failed. Just gunna quit life now.

 

[StarBob]

Lol... hey at least it was entertaining.

 

[YROC]

Edit: Here's a mod that adds extra parts. I hear it's the best one. http://mod.gib.me/kerbal/mods/Sunday Punch/

Install it by moving the folders in the download to KSP_win_0_8_5 > parts

 

[Unfocused]

Yeah I have no idea what's going on. I've taken apart and put this thing back together 20 different ways and the same thing is happening over and over. I don't know what's causing it. I'm constantly fighting to maintain even the slightest control and I still end up launching in a corkscrew. My ship doesn't look any different than any other ship I've seen. It's like it's getting worse no matter what I do. I give up.

Post your design, now I'm really curious what is it that you're doing.

Morgs. Gravity never ends in the game. It's not completely realistic in that regard.

Is it not? At first I was also like "hurr, I go straight up and hit zero gravity (and orbit the planet!)". When that didn't work I read up on what I already should know (and have known at some point). Technically something is always pulling you - either the planet you're launching from or another celestial body, but you'd have to go very far from Earth for another planet's gravitational pull to dominate. In KSP there are no other planets as of yet, so there's nothing else to pull you in anyway (I doubt the sun is a physical object there).

When you go into orbit it's not like you don't fall because there's zero gravity. You are actually constantly falling, but with a high enough horizontal velocity you keep missing Earth.


Raziaar, I'll have to watch that video, I usually try to manouver as little as possible, because it's often hard for me to quickly figure out "which way is up". You can determine that from the navball, but that would be clear if I had an actual chase camera behind the rocket. I'm not sure what you meant that rotation doesn't matter - if I do half a roll, won't the controls go upside-down? Well, will watch that video in a few minutes.

EDIT: Ahaha, I LOLed at the video. "So yeah, this is how you navigate, it's pretty easy. I can use any of the keys to *CRASH*... go wherever I need to"

 

[Raziaar]

Post your design, now I'm really curious what is it that you're doing.




Is it not? At first I was also like "hurr, I go straight up and hit zero gravity (and orbit the planet!)". When that didn't work I read up on what I already should know (and have known at some point). Technically something is always pulling you - either the planet you're launching from or another celestial body, but you'd have to go very far from Earth for another planet's gravitational pull to dominate. In KSP there are no other planets as of yet, so there's nothing else to pull you in anyway (I doubt the sun is a physical object there).

When you go into orbit it's not like you don't fall because there's zero gravity. You are actually constantly falling, but with a high enough horizontal velocity you keep missing Earth.


Raziaar, I'll have to watch that video, I usually try to manouver as little as possible, because it's often hard for me to quickly figure out "which way is up". You can determine that from the navball, but that would be clear if I had an actual chase camera behind the rocket. I'm not sure what you meant that rotation doesn't matter - if I do half a roll, won't the controls go upside-down? Well, will watch that video in a few minutes.

EDIT: Ahaha, I LOLed at the video. "So yeah, this is how you navigate, it's pretty easy. I can use any of the keys to *CRASH*... go wherever I need to"

The controls will go upside down technically, because the nav ball will be upside down, but your keys will still control your cursor on the navball the same so you won't have to do mental exercise to figure out how you need to right yourself. You just figure out what point on the navball you want to go to, and press the appropiate keys to move your cursor up, down, left or right to achieve that position.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

What really frustrates me about this game is that it seems like I have trouble getting off the landing pad sometimes due to weight or something. Do the liquid fuel engines not have as much thrust as the solid boosters? Yes, throttle control is maxed. Sometimes it works but on some designs I've had to put a stage with boosters at the bottom just to get off the landing pad.

I do really like this game, it needs some better way to control the shuttle though. I have a lot of trouble using WASDQE with that view, I'd rather there was a cockpit view or we had some kind of autopilot where we could plot a course and angle and whatnot.

I cannot wait for Joystick support, I sometimes forget which keys translate into which movement

 

[Unfocused]

I'm having some weird stuff happening.

Stage 6 engines fire along with stage 8 engines in stage 8.

In stage 5, only 3 out of 6 boosters fire (the ones with SAS modules). Then when I press [space] it goes to stage 4, dettaching the used boosters, [space] fires the remaining boosters in stage 5, [space] goes to empty stage 4, [space] goes to stage 3 and proceeds normally.

Am I missing something here?

 

[StarBob]

Post your design, now I'm really curious what is it that you're doing.

Well I'm at work now, but I figured out that you need SAS modules for pretty much every engine you have going and they need to be in the right placesto be effective especially when you're still in the atmosphere. With those I went from pretty much no control to fully controlled. Granted I messed up my ship design so much I can't orbit with what I have, but if I change some stuff I Should be able to. Plus now that I know how to navigate with my floaty balls I can have lots of fun.

 

[15357]

looks like a fun game, gonna try this out.

I always wanted to mastermind a national tragedy.

 

[StarBob]

OH shit we got Numbers on board... shit's going WORLDWIDE!

 

[15357]

RIP

Well, at least the escape rocket works.

 

[StarBob]

Lol... wtf did you do? Those mods are crazy.

 

[15357]

I think it's because I put too many rockets on the damned thing.

They ripped apart at launch and collided together after which I initiated the stage where the escape rocket is supposed to take you to safety. It did, but the parachute got ripped right off.

 

[YROC]

new record for myself. still going.

 

[Krynn72]

My first wocket. At least Jebediah was having fun right up to the split second the flight ended.

New and improved wocket. This time with some pretty amazing safety features, like parachutes and explosion absorbers!

 

[Raziaar]

Don't shoot the wockets!

 

[StarBob]

I had found a chart for orbital speeds at different altitudes. I dunno where it is now.

 

[15357]

I've managed to get into low earth orbit for a limited amount of time, with a 3 - stage rocket consisting of 1st stage liquid fueled tri-motor engine, 2nd stage solid fuel "kick booster" to get it into orbit, and the 3rd stage rocket for final adjustments and control. I've tried to make a 4 stage rocket, but the weight requires more thrust in the first stage, which i tried to solve with 5 detacheable solid boosters but they overheat and explode after 30 seconds into launch, destroying most of the stages and the parachute.

 

[YROC]

My team is the white pixel in the ocean.

 

[Unfocused]

I had found a chart for orbital speeds at different altitudes. I dunno where it is now.

There's one here.

 

[StarBob]

I've managed to get into low earth orbit for a limited amount of time, with a 3 - stage rocket consisting of 1st stage liquid fueled tri-motor engine, 2nd stage solid fuel "kick booster" to get it into orbit, and the 3rd stage rocket for final adjustments and control. I've tried to make a 4 stage rocket, but the weight requires more thrust in the first stage, which i tried to solve with 5 detacheable solid boosters but they overheat and explode after 30 seconds into launch, destroying most of the stages and the parachute.

Throttle back before they explode.

Also that's the chart I found. You refound it.

 

[Shakermaker]

Check out this dude's YT channel. He makes very interesting KSP videos. I already posted his orbiting tutorial and now he has a cool vid of him trying to dock with a satellite. Looks like quite the challenge.

 

[StarBob]

Check out this dude's YT channel. He makes very interesting KSP videos. I already posted his orbiting tutorial and now he has a cool vid of him trying to dock with a satellite. Looks like quite the challenge.

Might be a little easier when they put in maneuverability thrusters. The controls I imagine would be pretty insane though. But yeah I don't think any spacecraft would use the main thruster to dock with an orbiter. That'd be tough no matter what was going on.

 

[Shakermaker]

Might be a little easier when they put in maneuverability thrusters. The controls I imagine would be pretty insane though. But yeah I don't think any spacecraft would use the main thruster to dock with an orbiter. That'd be tough no matter what was going on.

Absolutely. The Wobbly Rockets pack has a retro booster. That is a first step.

In other news, I finally managed to complete my first orbit. Admittedly with a little help from the parts pack. It was also janky as hell and only one single orbit, but still. Sunset in space ftw.

 

[15357]

I've been trying to do what Starbob mentioned a couple of pages back; orbit once and come back to the launch site. Unfortunately, I can get in orbit, but most of the time I have no fuel for return or make any trajectory changes. This is hard but fun as hell. I wish there were navigational aids for the return journey.

 

[FrostedxB]

Finally made it to space with a very basic rocket. Coming back to Earth atm.

 

[Unfocused]

I've been trying to do what Starbob mentioned a couple of pages back; orbit once and come back to the launch site. Unfortunately, I can get in orbit, but most of the time I have no fuel for return or make any trajectory changes. This is hard but fun as hell. I wish there were navigational aids for the return journey.

I can most of the time go into orbit and return from it now, but landing close to the launch site is indeed tricky. The thing is, the best place to fire your engine to slow yourself down and go out of orbit is when you are closest to the planet and that is not above the landing pad. As for navigation aids, you've got markers on your navball that point you towards your landing pad (pink turbine shape) and the direction you are moving in (yellow). Their opposites are also marked - respectively, pink dot within a circle and and a green marker.

When you want to get out of orbit, you have to aim for the opposite direction you are going in, that is aim for the green marker with an X in it and fire your engine to slow yourself down. As long as you don't exceed orbital speeds for the altitudes you find yourself while you're falling down, you'll fall to the planet surface.

Finally made it to space with a very basic rocket. Coming back to Earth atm.

Whare does "space" start for you? Don't want to rain on your parade, but you can go to altitudes like these with a rocket as simple as for example: 2 tanks, engine, 6 boosters around lower tank. No unofficial parts. Don't know what you were building before, but always remember to make your rocket as symmetrical as possible.

 

[15357]

I can most of the time go into orbit and return from it now, but landing close to the launch site is indeed tricky. The thing is, the best place to fire your engine to slow yourself down and go out of orbit is when you are closest to the planet and that is not above the landing pad. As for navigation aids, you've got markers on your navball that point you towards your landing pad (pink) and the direction you are moving in (green). Their opposites are also marked with Xs in them.

When you want to get out of orbit, you have to aim for the opposite direction you are going in, that is aim for the green marker with an X in it and fire your engine to slow yourself down. As long as you don't exceed orbital speeds for the altitudes you find yourself while you're falling down, you'll fall to the planet surface.

Cool, thanks.

I've been trying to maintain an orbit at around 100 klicks, but either I go on a trajectory that makes me spiral away from the Earth, or I simply travel halfway across the globe and crash in the Kerbal equivalent of mainland China. 1 orbital loop is all I'm trying to do at the moment. Also without using any mods, save for the escape rocket which is very cool.


Edit: Also, what use are fins? They stabilize a bit at launch, but they weigh more than they're worth.

 

[Unfocused]

Cool, thanks.

I've been trying to maintain an orbit at around 100 klicks, but either I go on a trajectory that makes me spiral away from the Earth, or I simply travel halfway across the globe and crash in the Kerbal equivalent of mainland China. 1 orbital loop is all I'm trying to do at the moment. Also without using any mods, save for the escape rocket which is very cool.


Edit: Also, what use are fins? They stabilize a bit at launch, but they weigh more than they're worth.

I think when you manage to make 1 orbital loop, if you take no action you'll just keep looping the planet indefinitely (unless the orbit is unstable, but I'm not sure when that happens, if it happens in the game).

No idea about the fins, I don't use them.

Also, edited my previous post, the navigational markers actually look differently than how I described them at first

 

[15357]

I keep exceeding the velocities for a stable orbit at whatever altitude I'm in, and I actually hadn't thought of manuevering myself to slow down, duh.

I kept trying to trying to knock myself out of orbit by thrusting directly towards the ground. I know, I'm stupid.




EDIT: I've done some experimentation with the fins, and all they seem to do is alter your center of gravity so that its more easily manuerable - ex) 6 fins on the top of your rocket will make things easier simply because the navigation is done from the top. 6 fins on the bottom will probably make your rocket more stable as it launches vertically.

 

[FrostedxB]

Space started at roughly 40000meters, where I was in full blackness. This was just a single stage rocket with 2 fuel tanks and an engine from the Sunday Punch (whatever it's called) pack. My rockets were usually symmetrical (unless I was ****ing around) but would go off course when going into stage 2/separating.

 

[15357]

I finally managed to make it into a stable ecliptic orbit at 50k ~ 60k and about a fifth of fuel left. Did 1 full orbit, and started decelerating when I thought I would reach the space center. But unfortunately misread the navball and missed my target by around 8000 kilometers.

(To calculate distance, I assumed that the globe was around 40,000 kilometers around, as the measurements I got in my first orbit. I traveled 48,000 kilometers in a straight "line" around the planet, so therefore I missed my target by 8000 klicks.)

 

[15357]

I can't wait until they add the moon. Until then, here is a lander I made for practice. It's composed of radial couplers and an engine, and 1 SAS module because it was swaying too much.

And it works too.


EDIT: A challenge for you guys: get to 75km with this as your payload, do a semi orbit, detach, then land this thing. **NOTE: Don't try and land on the dark side; it explodes no matter what your speed is.

 

[Shakermaker]

I've did a bit of lander practice after a failed launch and it is damn hard.

 

[Shakermaker]

Version 0.9 has been released about a week ago it seems. Gonna try it out.

 

[Unfocused]

I checked it out a few days ago and the stage setup is much improved. You can add/remove stages, move groups of items and popular actions such as Ctrl+X/Ctrl+V and Ctrl/Shift clicking work too.

Haven't tried the new element, though - it's some sort of stablizing clamp from what I understand.

 

[Ennui]

You can add/remove stages, move groups of items and popular actions such as Ctrl+X/Ctrl+V and Ctrl/Shift clicking work too.

Thank god, this was a sorely needed feature.

I think I'm probably going to try to forget about this game for six months or so then come back and it will be super awesome with tons of items and whatnot.

 

[Shakermaker]

It's still alive! Version 1.3 by now, which features (finally) the Moon. This mod has all you need for a lunar lander.

 

[MFL]

Hey guys, you should check out the changes they made in path .16.

Also here's a vid of my failures:

 

[15357]

Holy Effing Shit.