-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Kerbal Space Program |OT| 1.2 Loud and Clear - Comm Networks, New Fuel Flow and More
- Thread starter gutterboy44
- Start date
MacGurcules
Member
There's a SpaceX-styled scenario where you've got to pilot a booster to a safe landing. But there's not really any stock way to recover boosters you jettison from your spacecraft. You can attach probe cores to all of them and switch between each in flight, but that's not really practical.
I've used the StageRecovery plugin previously. It gives you a refund on parts that have sufficient parachutes to land safely or (I think) have enough fuel and control functionality to theoretically land under power. I don't think it's updated to 1.1, yet, though.
Yes, although you can only command one ship at a time, which makes staging tricky. You have to get your 2nd stage into a stable orbit before the 1st stage starts to re-enter, or you'll lose one of the stages.
Drogues are also available much earlier in the career tech tree now, so that's cool
MadYarpen
Member
All fine but the fact that one of the landing gears was moved one level up sucks.
I had working space shuttle NASA style and cannot fly it right now... This one with little tweaks:
Turns out you don't have to mount the engines with any angle. I just set thrust lvl of the shuttle's engines to 37.5%, and at one point I have to cut rocket engine thrust to ~60%. The shuttle is connected to the rocket with the fuel line, so that when I jettison the rocket I have full tanks of fuel.
I got it to the orbit beautifully. But I had no way to produce electricity. and rcs thrusters were very badly placed. so I wasn't able to dock to my space station. And I had no control during the reentry. So it exploded kerbal style.
Still, I think I can get it back, after adding some solar panels and correcting the rcs placement. A very nice challenge to make this work.
I had working space shuttle NASA style and cannot fly it right now... This one with little tweaks:
Turns out you don't have to mount the engines with any angle. I just set thrust lvl of the shuttle's engines to 37.5%, and at one point I have to cut rocket engine thrust to ~60%. The shuttle is connected to the rocket with the fuel line, so that when I jettison the rocket I have full tanks of fuel.
I got it to the orbit beautifully. But I had no way to produce electricity. and rcs thrusters were very badly placed. so I wasn't able to dock to my space station. And I had no control during the reentry. So it exploded kerbal style.
Still, I think I can get it back, after adding some solar panels and correcting the rcs placement. A very nice challenge to make this work.
brianmcdoogle
Member
I tried that but it didn't work. Thanks for the suggestion.
I'm going to try deleting the game and redownloading it through Steam. I went into the save folder and backed up my saves. I'll see if that works.
It works! I had to launch the launcher and set things to low, but after that I got the game to run. Odd.
Diablohead
Member
can't say no to performance gains, nice!
StereoVsn
Member
Are there any options for auto pilot?
ThreePiMatt
Member
Curious, how often do you guys use lander cans? In 200+ hours I've never used one. Specifically curious if you use it as the sole command pod in a ship, or if you actually do the separate command pod + lander setup. It seems like the latter method, which is obviously how it was done with the Apollo missions would actually be worse in Kerbal. It would be extra weight on the launch pad for the docking ports and separate fuel tanks and engines. As well as what is probably a waste of fuel to rendezvous unless you were very good at it, or set it up perfectly.
MadYarpen
Member
Yeah but doing Apollo style mun landing seems like fun. I actually want to try this now.
Solaire of Astora
Death by black JPN
I use it all the time. Initially, I used a separate lander to retrieve stranded kerbals back when I kept tipping over on the moon. Nowadays, i use them for my apollo style missions. While I have sent Kerbals out across the Kerbin system, most of my time with the game has been spent reenacting real space missions.
I've finally managed to build a reasonable approximation of the Saturn V that works as it should. The lander is tucked into the fairing of the third stage and I do the docking procedure after TLI. The rendezvous and docking is mostly done with mono propellant, so aside from the additional fuel needed to carry the lander there (and I bring the lander's upper stage back to burn it up on reentry) I don't really use that much more fuel.
But yeah, there's probably a good argument against using it, but I like to do it this way for the fun of it.
I suppose landers are easier to, y'know, land, as they can be fairly short and balanced for landing. Part of the reason I stranded so many Kerbals in the beginning was due to me landing fairly tall rockets with a relatively narrow landing gear base. And lack of skill/experience too, I guess.
The dV requirements getting around the Kerbol system are so much lower than the real real thing, it's not really necessary to make separate landing/orbiting parts for mun missions. There are all sort of realism mods that make the game harder, which force you to use such strategies.
Lander cans are nice because they're lighter than the standard capsule
Using a separate lander Apollo-style can be good for farther-away destinations. For example I recently ran a couple of missions to Moho and Eeloo where I did it that way. I used a big slow nuclear engine stage to get there and back, and it would have been crazy to try to make that whole thing able to land as well. So it was actually much simpler to just add a tiny lander that tagged along on the way there, and that I ditched for the return trip.
Using a separate lander Apollo-style can be good for farther-away destinations. For example I recently ran a couple of missions to Moho and Eeloo where I did it that way. I used a big slow nuclear engine stage to get there and back, and it would have been crazy to try to make that whole thing able to land as well. So it was actually much simpler to just add a tiny lander that tagged along on the way there, and that I ditched for the return trip.
MadYarpen
Member
http://i.imgur.com/AAGJvD1.png
9,400m/s to LEO
+3,260m/s to Lunar intercept
+ 680m/s to LLO
+1,730m/s to landing
= 15,070m/s
This includes aerodynamic and gravity losses
compared to the Kerbol system:
http://www.kingtiger.co.uk/kingtiger/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/KerbinDeltaVMap.png
= 6,260m/s to land on the mun
MadYarpen
Member
Thanks. Few years ago I would remember that
Note that while KSP's delta-v requirements are lower, KSP also doesn't have anything equivalent to the ~450s ISP LH2/LOX engines that we have in real life, and KSP's fuel tanks are also relatively heavy with poor fuel/mass ratios. Engine thrust/weight ratios are also very low in KSP
Ted
Member
Help!
I have been trying to play this game blind (or at least only with in game resources) and have mostly been able to understand what I need to know and do but with orbital rendezvous I am stumped.
I get that I need to get an orbit with the same inclination and slightly inside the target orbit so I catch up with the target and have managed to do so and have my descending node and ascending node have closest approaches of ~20k but I'm not sure what I need to do next.
I am assuming the ascending and descending node represent points where our orbits are closest and the closest approach figure means basically what it says, our closest distance at this point.
How do I, from these points I presume, close this distance further to be able to EVA from one craft to another? I see two new symbols on the nav ball (colour blind so hard to describe) when I switch to target mode but I'm not quite sure what they mean.
The real space stuff I read is pretty indecipherable talking about r-bars and z-bars so I'm struggling!
Any gentle pointers in the right direction or am I going to have to give in and go read a tutorial?
On the patch notes, I like some of the UI changes but am not seeing any improved performance (but I'm probably way below min specs anyway so it even running in a marginally controllable fashion is amazing).
I have been trying to play this game blind (or at least only with in game resources) and have mostly been able to understand what I need to know and do but with orbital rendezvous I am stumped.
I get that I need to get an orbit with the same inclination and slightly inside the target orbit so I catch up with the target and have managed to do so and have my descending node and ascending node have closest approaches of ~20k but I'm not sure what I need to do next.
I am assuming the ascending and descending node represent points where our orbits are closest and the closest approach figure means basically what it says, our closest distance at this point.
How do I, from these points I presume, close this distance further to be able to EVA from one craft to another? I see two new symbols on the nav ball (colour blind so hard to describe) when I switch to target mode but I'm not quite sure what they mean.
The real space stuff I read is pretty indecipherable talking about r-bars and z-bars so I'm struggling!
Any gentle pointers in the right direction or am I going to have to give in and go read a tutorial?
On the patch notes, I like some of the UI changes but am not seeing any improved performance (but I'm probably way below min specs anyway so it even running in a marginally controllable fashion is amazing).
runningjoke
Member
The new icons are target and anti-target. It points directly towards (or away from) the target.
If you are in roughly the same orbit you can play around with maneuver nodes in the map view until it gives you a 'closest encounter' marker. Hover over it to see estimated distance. Try to get the lowest number you can. Perform the burn and coast to the encounter. Once you are at that spot, burn retrograde until your relative speed drops to zero. Now point towards the target and burn slightly, this should give you an even closer encounter somewhere ahead. Repeat until you're close enough for the jump
This isn't the best way to do it, but it's probably the easiest to explain
If you are in roughly the same orbit you can play around with maneuver nodes in the map view until it gives you a 'closest encounter' marker. Hover over it to see estimated distance. Try to get the lowest number you can. Perform the burn and coast to the encounter. Once you are at that spot, burn retrograde until your relative speed drops to zero. Now point towards the target and burn slightly, this should give you an even closer encounter somewhere ahead. Repeat until you're close enough for the jump
This isn't the best way to do it, but it's probably the easiest to explain
Not quite, AN and DN are where the plane of your orbit intersects that of the target. So long as your orbit is co-planar, they can be ignored.
You should make a manoeuver node that raises your apoapsis to meet the target orbit. Unless you're lucky, the intercept markers will be miles away. You want to use the little + button on the node to advance the timing of it by as many orbits as it takes to get a closer intercept. When you get reasonably close, you can tweak the node to get it even closer (just experiment)
After making the burn, get ready to match orbits. At closest approach, burn retrograde (that's relative to your orbit, not to the target) until your relative velocity is close to 0m/s. Now you can point directly at the target and make a slow approach on RCS (or just get out and EVA if you're only a few km away)
Ted
Member
Thanks both of you. I need the game in front of me to contextualise your advice but I will give it a go over the weekend.
Thanks again, very much appreciated.
The underlined part sounds backwards to me. You want to burn retrograde in target mode to reduce your relative velocity.
When trying to close the gap, stay in target mode and try to get your prograde marker to line up with the target marker (and retrograde marker will line up with the anti-target marker). You essentially "pull" the prograde marker around, and you "push" the retrograde marker around. As you go around in orbit, the markers will shift, so in order to close larger distances you'll need to keep correcting them frequently.
20km in low Kerbin orbit is pretty far, and I'd generally try to get a closer intercept than that before working on the approach. If you're behind and catching up, just go through another orbit or few and it will get closer.
Sorry should have said prograde.It's retrograde if you're coming in from a higher orbit. But you should be in orbit mode. You're reducing relative velocity, but the major component of that velocity is not in the target vector direction, it's in the orbit direction.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...bit.svg/2000px-Hohmann_transfer_orbit.svg.png
I guess if you have an ideal intercept, they'd actually be the same direction. But doing it in target mode allows you to easily cancel out any additional radial or normal velocity that you might have relative to the target at the same time. Plus you can just keep an eye on your velocity to reach 0 instead of trying to match orbits on the map
MadYarpen
Member
To me it looks like you guys are making it very complicated...
1. Get to orbit - i prefer it to be narrower.
2. Make sure you are more or less between target and planet - object on the lower orbit will catch up.
3. Match inclination (so that orbits are parallel).
4. Add maneuver so that separation while crossing the orbit is <5km. Burn carefully. You can correct it after the burn.
5. switch the navball to the target mode. when you are close to the point with close flyby, exit the map, point your ship retrograde (in target mode) and burn untill you kill relative speed to 0. Ideally you have 0 relative speed at <5km from the target.
6. then approach carefully. make sure you rotate the ship with rcs off. use rcs only to go forwards/backwards relative to the target.
Navball icons are very important in this. In target mode:
target/antitarget - points directly to/from the target
prograde/retrograde - points in the direction of your speed/against it - relative to the target which is very important and super usefull.
Not long time ago I also was having hard time with it - after it clicked it is still not very easy and requires concentration, but all comes naturally.
1. Get to orbit - i prefer it to be narrower.
2. Make sure you are more or less between target and planet - object on the lower orbit will catch up.
3. Match inclination (so that orbits are parallel).
4. Add maneuver so that separation while crossing the orbit is <5km. Burn carefully. You can correct it after the burn.
5. switch the navball to the target mode. when you are close to the point with close flyby, exit the map, point your ship retrograde (in target mode) and burn untill you kill relative speed to 0. Ideally you have 0 relative speed at <5km from the target.
6. then approach carefully. make sure you rotate the ship with rcs off. use rcs only to go forwards/backwards relative to the target.
Navball icons are very important in this. In target mode:
target/antitarget - points directly to/from the target
prograde/retrograde - points in the direction of your speed/against it - relative to the target which is very important and super usefull.
Not long time ago I also was having hard time with it - after it clicked it is still not very easy and requires concentration, but all comes naturally.
ThreePiMatt
Member
I always figure it easier where after you make your first maneuver to get that close intercept, then at the intercept point just set up a second maneuver to match orbits. After you match orbits, then do the tight fildding with lining up your prograde with the target and all that to bring yourselves next to each other.
MacGurcules
Member
I know Squad has a bit of a philosophical opposition to the idea of achievements, so this is somewhat unusual. Are achievements mandatory for the platform with the consoles or something?
I don't know, but the ones shown are just for landing on planets...some console players seem to obsess with 100%ing stuff...I don't, I just want to play this from my comfy basement set up, so Im probably gonna bite on the PS4 version assuming its OK...and it'll probably run better than the PC I play it on now.
God you're right. I've been making it difficult for myself for YEARS. Years.
Ted
Member
I feel I'm making it difficult for myself still...
Tried for hours, failed for hours. I will crack this!...... but I may need more help.
I think what is frustrating in my current attempts is that the craft I am trying to rendezvous with is within however many kms of Kerbin that means you can't time warp very quickly. I might launch something into a wider orbit and practice again with that.
brianmcdoogle
Member
I'm struggling with my rocket flipping and sweeping all over the place at launch. I thought the center of lift and thrust needed to be lower than the center of mass, so that's how I designed this, but it just isn't very stable on take-off. Here's a photo. It can get to orbit, but not gracefully. I enabled the icons for center of thrust, lift, and mass.
runningjoke
Member
Your ship has no thrust vectoring and only those tiny tail planes on the center stage. Putting control surfaces on the delta wings could help. I see aerobrakes and parachutes, are you trying to get that to Duna?
ThreePiMatt
Member
The SAS modules on the side boosters should be in the middle of the two tanks, not on the top. The lack of thrust vectoring is also an issue. The last thing is that the nuclear engine only needs liquid fuel, you carry a lot of extra weight if that orange tank is full of oxidizer.
Edit - Also, when using radial decouplers you should have the couplers towards the top and struts at the bottom, thus reduces the chance of the boosters falling inwards and damaging the bottom of your rocket.
Edit - Also, when using radial decouplers you should have the couplers towards the top and struts at the bottom, thus reduces the chance of the boosters falling inwards and damaging the bottom of your rocket.
gutterboy44
Member
You also don't need the RCS thrusters on the top of that orange tank. Best to just have an array of four toward the top of your craft and toward the bottom. You can lose the large solar panels on the middle orange tank too. Probably don't need that much RCS fuel for your first and second stage either. A lot less batteries too.
Out of interest, are you just building huge ships and launching them, or are you using things like Engineer to help build a rocket big enough for the job at hand?
Besides the other suggestions (which are probably better than mine...), are you going slowly enough at the beginning of your ascent, ease that monster into its launch.
There are several things that jump out at me.
1. The nuclear engine is no good as a 2nd stage. It's really only any good for interplanetary burns.
2. The nuclear engine only needs fuel not oxidiser, so you are probably carrying loads of dead weight in that orange tank.
3. The draaaaaaag
4. Too much for one sensible launch
I would do the following:
Rocket no.1, from top to bottom
Fairing
Payload - make sure it has an empty docking port
Fairing adapter
Fuel tank, completely empty
Nuclear engine
--
Second stage (estimated)
Rockomax X200-32 tank with Skipper engine
--
First stage (estimated)
Orange tank with Mainsail engine
--
Boost stage
2x Kickback SRM
Rocket no.2 from top to bottom
Nosecone with docking adapter
RCS tank
Probe core
Full fuel tank (to match capacity of the one on the payload)
4xRCS thrusters at each end
--
Second stage (estimated)
Rockomax X200-32 tank with Skipper engine
--
First stage (estimated)
Orange tank with Mainsail engine
Launch the first and refuel with the second.
1. The nuclear engine is no good as a 2nd stage. It's really only any good for interplanetary burns.
2. The nuclear engine only needs fuel not oxidiser, so you are probably carrying loads of dead weight in that orange tank.
3. The draaaaaaag
4. Too much for one sensible launch
I would do the following:
Rocket no.1, from top to bottom
Fairing
Payload - make sure it has an empty docking port
Fairing adapter
Fuel tank, completely empty
Nuclear engine
--
Second stage (estimated)
Rockomax X200-32 tank with Skipper engine
--
First stage (estimated)
Orange tank with Mainsail engine
--
Boost stage
2x Kickback SRM
Rocket no.2 from top to bottom
Nosecone with docking adapter
RCS tank
Probe core
Full fuel tank (to match capacity of the one on the payload)
4xRCS thrusters at each end
--
Second stage (estimated)
Rockomax X200-32 tank with Skipper engine
--
First stage (estimated)
Orange tank with Mainsail engine
Launch the first and refuel with the second.
Started a new career for v1.1...got greedy trying to 1) launch something 2) reach 70,000m right at the beginning with minimal upgrades...accomplished both, but Jeb died, the lack of decoupling technology made my reentry more like being a lawn dart...the standard chute was no match.
so you soon Jeb.
so you soon Jeb.
ThreePiMatt
Member
Tried to do an "Apollo-style" landing on the Mun. But I think I kept my command module too far up, so when I took the lander down I used up too much fuel and only had a sip left when I landed. Ended up having to fly out a refueling drone to fill up the lander before I could bring it back up.
Also, I think some of the Construction items should be lower in the tech tree. I'd like to use the quadcoupler, but its like at the end of the tree, long past when I'd want to use it.
Also, I think some of the Construction items should be lower in the tech tree. I'd like to use the quadcoupler, but its like at the end of the tree, long past when I'd want to use it.
MacGurcules
Member
Getting better thrust to weight is usually more about weight than thrust. Consider a modular lander with an ascent stage that jetisons all of your landing gear, empty tanks, and science experiments. Also, you'll probably need to leave your transfer vehicle in orbit and do a rendezvous rather than taking all that fuel down and back up again.
MadYarpen
Member
Well I'm struggling with ascend vehicle. I thought I would land it on parachutes, since the atmosphere is so dense. So I'm talking only about surface to orbit... I have a transition vehicle built (at least I think I have, didn't have a chance to test it yet.
I see vector engine allows for ~1.5 TWR with decent amount of fuel, but it is only 1 minute burn with full thrust. And around 2000-3000 dV.
I'm guessing I have to change my approach. So far I have no idea what change it should be though.
Nearly impossible to do well enough when constructing stations with multiple connections. Wobble kicks in badly.It's called "flying straight", son.
Plus, real docking ports don't work like they do in game. Much more realistic to have them the way I want...
Several of the docking helpers have alignment indicators that make getting the alignment correct much easier. Docking Port Alignment Indicator is my favourite.
Yeah, it's just the 1 or 2 degree differences that start to build up when building megastructures...
Anyone getting an occasional crash in the new version? Its not game breaking but it seems if I either go a little click happy moving around buildings, or things explode juuuuuuusssst right, boom, staring at Steam.
My Kerbals have orbited, and are now considering putting a few satellites in LKO to handle some repetitive science gathering.
My Kerbals have orbited, and are now considering putting a few satellites in LKO to handle some repetitive science gathering.