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Kerbal Space Program |OT| 1.2 Loud and Clear - Comm Networks, New Fuel Flow and More
- Thread starter gutterboy44
- Start date
brianmcdoogle
Member
So I tried to use my massive rocket on the previous page to get to Jool and Laythe. It did not go well....
How should I try to get to Laythe? I thought about getting into a Jool orbit and landing on the moon, but I waste way too much fuel getting into a Jool orbit before transferring to Laythe. So, I just booked it to Laythe and my engine burned up on entry, so I landed just fine, but with no way to get off the planet.
With Duna and its moon, the only moon outside of Kerbin I've visited, I have plenty of fuel so this stuff isn't an issue. But, I'm stumped on how even to approach this. Slingshot around Jool and hope for a Laythe encounter instead of getting into a Jool orbit? If so, how do I then get back to Kerbin from Laythe's orbit?
Edit: Crap. Moho seems even worse. There's no gravity to slow me down, so I'm flying so fast by the planet that I have no chance to slow down. I thought Eeloo was going to be the toughest planet, but Moho is worse.
How should I try to get to Laythe? I thought about getting into a Jool orbit and landing on the moon, but I waste way too much fuel getting into a Jool orbit before transferring to Laythe. So, I just booked it to Laythe and my engine burned up on entry, so I landed just fine, but with no way to get off the planet.
With Duna and its moon, the only moon outside of Kerbin I've visited, I have plenty of fuel so this stuff isn't an issue. But, I'm stumped on how even to approach this. Slingshot around Jool and hope for a Laythe encounter instead of getting into a Jool orbit? If so, how do I then get back to Kerbin from Laythe's orbit?
Edit: Crap. Moho seems even worse. There's no gravity to slow me down, so I'm flying so fast by the planet that I have no chance to slow down. I thought Eeloo was going to be the toughest planet, but Moho is worse.
ThreePiMatt
Member
Another thing about reentry, if you've set your periapsis to a reentry altitude(like 35km) and worried that you're coming in too steep/fast and still have fuel leftover you can use it to slow yourself down before you start burning up in the atmosphere.
Basically get to between 100km and 70km and thrust between retrograde and radial out. The actual point to thrust at will change as you burn, but it's a way to lower your apoapsis while keeping your periapsis the same. If you watch the Project BEAST Scott Manley video at around 1:17 or so mark he gives a good example of this.
Have you tried mounting the engine on top of your craft? Note that the tests requiring firing engines don't specify how long or at what strength. You can cut engines right down to no power at all with an oily rag shoved into the fuel pipe and it'll still satisfy the test criteria
I play on PC and even with a bazillion (ok, but still over 100) mods installed my game is stable. I recommend you ensure:
1. you have your video drivers up to date
2. you have enough RAM - I have only 8GB, but even with the 100+ mods running in 64-bit mode the game is stable
I've actually taken a bit of a break from the game waiting for 1.1 to stabilise. I'm really glad I have come back (I've clocked just over 600 hours so far). I'd forgotten the joy of firing off two simultaneous missions to Minmus (a science lander and a 4-passenger tourist fly-by) and building and coordinating all that
I have a mod that provides a 2-kerbal command pod (inspired by the gemini missions) which means the mission to Minmus could take a pilot *and* an engineer (and had room for some beer and a ghetto blaster to keep them from going crazy).
My only gripe is this bug which makes fine-tuning the Minmus approach a lot of guesswork :-(
brianmcdoogle
Member
Holy heck! I keep running out of fuel and delta V trying to get in an orbit around Moho for landing. Eeloo was a cake walk compared to this. I'm not even getting close to landing. I HAVE to be doing something majorly wrong.
Is Moho that much worse compared to Eeloo or am I screwing up?
Is Moho that much worse compared to Eeloo or am I screwing up?
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
So for someone who hasn't tried this at all, should I jump on the PS4 version, or does it work better enough on PC to try it on a machine with sub-PS4 specs?
PuppetMaster
Member
Ya it happened to me for a third time today on PS4. Came back to it later thinking I will just grab the cloud save. But the cloud save got automatically overwritten by the corrupt one when I put the ps4 in rest it seems.
Last thing I did in my campaign was nearly complete a mission to Eve. Execept I only had enough fuel to get back from Eve and into Earth orbit but not enough for a decsent. So I got out my rescue craft to try to heroicly rescue the kerbal from the Eve mission ship. Fought the controls for a long time to rendezvous till finally I was in EVA range.
I got the other kerbal and he was literally smacking his face on the crew hatch of my rescue module. But I could not get him in my ship!! It had to be bugged! I have done this before so its not like I didnt know when to press the buttons. And I had used this exact ship before for successful rescues. I was reaching the limits of my frustration fighting the EVA controls for just the right angle when the game suddenly fully crashed and closed. And when I launched again the save was corrupt.
Will not play again till patched.
runningjoke
Member
What kind of CPU does your pc have? If it's faster in single threaded applications KSP may run better.
MadYarpen
Member
I have Lenovo Y580 notebook and it plays nicely on quite good graphics settings, especially after the upgrade to the new engine. I don't know how it comparese to PS4 specs though. I think I have a version with i5 CPU.
Anyway if you have choice, try PC version. Mods really give a lot to this game. So much that it makes you wonder why they arent implemented to the core game.
Moho is really that much worse. Delta V requirements from Kerbin orbit are around 50% higher than Eeloo on average
BUT there are ways to make the trip to Moho much more efficient by choosing the right transfer window. You want to try to hit Moho while it's at either the ascending or descending node, whichever one is farther from the sun. That way you don't need to do a plane change in solar orbit and you don't need to lower your periapsis as far to hit it. That's basically how I finally got a successful Moho mission.
edit again: I think when you aim for Moho's ascending/descending node you'll want to do your plane change at Kerbin. You can get an intercept without matching planes, but that will just mean that you enter Moho SOI with a lot more velocity and have to essentially do the plane change there, which is bad because it's the lowest point in the solar orbit. If you align the planes at your highest point (Kerbin) you save a lot
It's possible that you could save even more by pushing your solar apoapsis higher first (beyond Kerbin), then do your plane change and lower periapsis there, but I'm not sure
So you want to be arriving when it's at the node? How do you time this when you're launching though?
ThreePiMatt
Member
Does anyone know if there's a way to sort of "shutdown" satellites? I keep getting contracts to adjust orbits or expand stations for things I don't use anymore, but I don't want to just terminate them. Be nice to just mark something as inactive.
Quick question. I bought the game on PS4. Booted it up, and quickly realized that those tiny menus are impossible to read from about 10 feet away with my living room set up. Is there any way to adjust them to make them readable? I have good eyesight, but the menus seem way too small.
Adjust the UI scale settings?
BlindJesus
Member
I'd break it into a two segmented mission, assuming you can handle docking. Put up a rocket that has an exclusive interplanetary stage, along with an exlusive lander stage. Do what you would always do, get into Kerbin LKO, make a burn to get into Jool's SoI. When you finally enter Jools SoI(or before if you want), execute a maneuver to send your lander/Inter. Rocket into Laythes atmosphere....being that far away, you WILL get an encounter for little fuel. When you have your perapsis low into laythes atmosphere, separate the two stages...now you will maneuver the interplanetary rocket back towards jool and aero break into a high orbit. The desire here is to not spend any fuel, but keep your apoasis high enough so it's relatively close to Laythes oribt.l. Go back to your Laythe lander, aerobreak and land like you would at kerbin. Jettison the heat shields after you have landed, do your science reports, and get back into orbit. Report back to your interplanetary stage orbiting Jool, tinker with the Ap/Pa points until you get a laythe encounter and do a (high) aerobreaking maneuver plus retrograde burn to achieve orbit. Now you will rendezvous the two rockets above Laythe, get into orbit around Jool, and take back off to Kerbin.
Some clarification points:
You will not want to engage your lander rockets until you are taking off from Laythe(because they are covered by ablation shields). This is why the 'complete' rocket(with preferably nuke engines) aims for laythe on approach, then redirects back towards jool. For small corrections to your laythe perapsis after undocking, use your rcs ports(which you WILL need for this mission)
Why send the two stages to two different places instead of both to laythe? You may ask...well, because you can't control them both at the same time, and aerobraking requires your immediate attention..Though if you wanted, you COULD send them both towards laythe, but you would need to stagger their arrival at different points or use up a bunch of fuel on the interplanetary stage to manually reach orbit opposed to aerobraking.
My original suggestion look something like this
.
For these difficult interplanetary missions, it really is necessary to separate your landers from your interplanetary stages during touch down, or you have to compromise too much fuel, engine selection,etc.
You will need control devices on both halves of the rocket, obviously.
Edit it (rename) to mark it as junk.
I had a mission to get a satellite into a particular orbit, it's the first one I had taken on and I completed it but all sorts of stuff I don't really understand happened:
- When I separated out the probe from the rest of the craft, the game didn't seem to realise the main bit of the craft had a pilot in it. This is a bug I assume?
- With the probe, in order to raise my periapsis I did the usual, pointed prograde and burned... but my periapsis started to lower. I spun around to retrograde and burned and the periapsis started to raise. I have no idea why, does this make any sense?
- Later on, I decided to try put that probe into a different orbit to satisfy another contract. This probe was on a similar orbit around Kerbin as the Mun is. When I went to move the probe I found its orbit had shifted and when I tried to lower my periapsis, during the burn the probe just started to spin completely out of control. Again I have zero clue why this was happening. I'm guessing it moved initially because of some Mun encounter but why did it go out of control when I tried to change its orbit?
In the end I just terminated the probe.
- When I separated out the probe from the rest of the craft, the game didn't seem to realise the main bit of the craft had a pilot in it. This is a bug I assume?
- With the probe, in order to raise my periapsis I did the usual, pointed prograde and burned... but my periapsis started to lower. I spun around to retrograde and burned and the periapsis started to raise. I have no idea why, does this make any sense?
- Later on, I decided to try put that probe into a different orbit to satisfy another contract. This probe was on a similar orbit around Kerbin as the Mun is. When I went to move the probe I found its orbit had shifted and when I tried to lower my periapsis, during the burn the probe just started to spin completely out of control. Again I have zero clue why this was happening. I'm guessing it moved initially because of some Mun encounter but why did it go out of control when I tried to change its orbit?
In the end I just terminated the probe.
MadYarpen
Member
As regards pt.1 - you should be able to switch between "controllable" crafts.
pt. 2 - that's weird, but maybe the part controlling the probe was put in place "upside down", and as a result navball and controlls were also wrong way around, and instead of facing prograde it was actually oriented retrograde?
I did switch craft between the probe and the rest of the craft. The rest of the craft had no pilot portrait in the bottom right and moved like SAS was off.
As for the probe being upside down... doh.
MadYarpen
Member
At this point I have to ask if you are sure your poor Kerbal was alive at this point. Or if he really was there. Because if during craft assembly you've installed unmanned control unit first, I think crew cabin installed later on might not be filled with kerbals automatically. That's what I'd check. But it could be bug of course. It's been some time since I've played, due to crashes...
gutterboy44
Member
As others have said, likely had the probe on upside down. As for the craft with no pilot portrait, did it also have a probe core on it? Maybe you switched to the core and not to the capsule. You can always quicksave and go to the space center and select a craft from there just to be sure you are getting exactly what you want. I have also noticed that the craft switching shortcut on consoles (PS4 for me) is very buggy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just keeps instantly switching back to the previous craft you were on.
Not sure about the spinning burn, bringing up your flight log can sometimes show where things went wrong (long options button press on PS4). If you are playing on console, quick save is your friend. I am becoming increasingly disappointed with the bugs on PS4. Obviously the save game corruption is the biggest, as it is game breaking. The other bugs just make things more tedious. Having to reload saves, or use the mouse cursor when shorcuts should work. I know KSP has been buggy on PC, but these bugs are pretty basic shit.
Edit: Looks like the bug tracking tool now includes console versions. Squad also responding to bugs posts in the forums saying they are on it. That is encouraging. If they are able to squash a few big ones and add some controller mapping, the consoles should be in good shape. Let's hope this happens quickly.
gutterboy44
Member
TBH, I can't even figure out how the save system works, I tried quicksaving during a flight and it loaded back to the launchpad.
Any chance of a pointer as to how it works?
gutterboy44
Member
There are two save states happening at the same time when you are playing. The manual one, which is when you decide to quick save, and the persistent one that is constantly auto saving in the background. If you are not manually quicksaving often, and you load your quicksave state, you may find yourself reverting an hour or more back, because it turns out you haven't quicksaved recently. This is where persistent save state can help. If you forgot how old your last quicksave was, and you load it, try to salvage your mistake by loading the persistent save file. On PC you can make named quicksave files, which helps you label and create multiple quicksave files. I haven't figured out how to do this on console, maybe someone else knows. You can however make named quicksave files when you are at Kerbal Space Center.
I am 99% sure there was no core and a live Kerbal in the craft, however it's obviously possible I am wrong. In my head I'm thinking bug.
Thanks for the tips anyway, I guess I will use the tracking station to select the craft, can't be mistaken in that case.
Getting a bit frustrated with my contracts, they're just repeating themselves now. I want one to go to Duna but I'm getting silly stuff like test a decoupler at the launch site, stuff you'd get at the very start of career mode.
Christ, couldn't be simple could it!
Thanks for the write up though, this 'game' (I say 'game' because it feels more like work!) is pretty good at making me feel like a dumb dumb.
gutterboy44
Member
Not sure if it is a bug on consoles, but I feel like I am not getting the "lure" contracts as early as I did when I recently started a new career on PC. I am having to encounter new bodies to get the contracts I want. I just throw probes at Mun and Minmus early, then those contracts started rolling in. If I recall, on PC, the game started putting those next step contracts in my list pretty early, and once I completed Mun and Minmus ones, it was on to Duna and all the shitty survey and test part contracts disappeared. I thought it was a great change, because in older versions, what is happening on PS4 now, would keep happening. It would let you test parts and ferry VIP's forever, without putting in enough challenging new contracts to push you further. Maybe I had my contracts building upgraded more early so that offered more? Either way, just send a probe that encounters Duna, they should appear after that. You may only actually have to get a probe out of Kerbin's SOI to get the Duna and Eve contracts.
The save system has always been a bit odd. It is a little easier to manage on PC when you have function keys to quickly hit for saves or named saves. It is really not that much different than the very common, rolling auto-save file slot and named file slot most modern games have. KSP just makes it seem more confusing than it needs to be.
I'd give the console version a while to settle...
I just made my first VTOL (using B9 early tech parts) and completed a contract to land on the helipad on top of the VAB in KSC
I'm kinda stuck for more science though. I'm finding it much more difficult than before to unlock the Community Tech Tree nodes. Or maybe since I've done it before I just have less patience for the trickle of science. Hmm.
gutterboy44
Member
Yeah, I wanted to jump right in to see how the console version ran, so I was willing to accept it being a bit buggy, but having played it for longer now, I have encountered more bugs than I am comfortable with, especially knowing a save corrupting bug lingers. I 100% recommend KSP on PC at anytime, for anyone, this is probably my favorite game of all time. However, unless you are willing to be part of the people exploring and reporting the early bugs on console, I would wait until the first patch at the very least. I really hope they patch soon. Seeing new people experience KSP for the first time is great, and consoles definitely broaden that market.
Considering the console version is 1.10 and the PC is on 1.13, surely it can't be too far off?
gutterboy44
Member
This is speculation, but from reading early bug reports in forum posts, including my own submissions, all lot io responses from Squad were along the lines of, "these are known bugs on the PC version and have been resolved. We are working to fix these on the console versions." To me that just means consoles are further down the production line, and at some point they had to hit a release date. Ideally it would have shipped with all known bugs fixed, but with having to relay work to Flying Tiger, I am sure that slows things down. Luckily Squad communicates often, and clearly. So we should hopefully have an idea of the time frame for console patch cycles soon. If they get it out within its first month, that is good enough for me.
brianmcdoogle
Member
Thanks for your guys' suggestions on landing on Moho. I've made some changes to my rocket, but I'm still struggling. I'll have to tweak things more.
I did land on Laythe today. Problem is my engine overheated and blew up on entry, which left me stranded on the moon. Not that it would have mattered because I probably wouldn't have had enough fuel to return back to Kerbin. If I refuel my rocket in low Kerbin orbit, I can easily make the trip, so I'm going to try that and see if I can do that and make the full trip. Still, I'd like to be able to do it without refueling.
Instead of getting into a tight orbit around Jool before moving to Laythe, I just got in a huge orbit around Jool, maneuvered until Laythe captured me, and went from there. Also, landing on Laythe is a pain since it is so much water and hills. It seems the only good spots to land are on the shore, which doesn't allow room for error.
I just need to figure out how to land without my engine overheating and exploding. The atmosphere must be really thick or something.
I did land on Laythe today. Problem is my engine overheated and blew up on entry, which left me stranded on the moon. Not that it would have mattered because I probably wouldn't have had enough fuel to return back to Kerbin. If I refuel my rocket in low Kerbin orbit, I can easily make the trip, so I'm going to try that and see if I can do that and make the full trip. Still, I'd like to be able to do it without refueling.
Instead of getting into a tight orbit around Jool before moving to Laythe, I just got in a huge orbit around Jool, maneuvered until Laythe captured me, and went from there. Also, landing on Laythe is a pain since it is so much water and hills. It seems the only good spots to land are on the shore, which doesn't allow room for error.
I just need to figure out how to land without my engine overheating and exploding. The atmosphere must be really thick or something.
Tonight I'm going to Duna. Need one quick Mun mission to get a bit more science and then we're off. God help my Kerbals. At the moment I'm thinking of leaving them there, might go back for them later at some point, not needing to get back off Duna should make the design a lot easier. Other thing I'm thinking is having my mid stage using nuclear engines and just leaving it in orbit with enough dV to get home (might come in handy later), with a lander my dudes can take down.
MadYarpen
Member
Do as suits you more, but Duna does not require a ship big enough to make nuclear engines worth anything.
Also, once you land, it is not that hard to come back. Duna's gravity isn't very strong. I managed to make a lander capable of coming back to Kerbin without much trouble, including significant correction of duna orbit after take off, which I cocked up.
you can find my Duna design earlier in this thread if you want to check it out.
E: However obviously figuring that out without help of other's design is more rewarding and that's what I suggest!
What's the problem, let us give some help. Where do things go wrong for you?
Building sustainable (USI life support) research stations around Mun and Minmus to try to solve my lack of Science. Still working with 1.25m rocket parts, so it's all done in very small parts - it's a good thing I'm good at docking
Currently have the research module (so big it has to be flown by itself) at Mun and Minmus, and have the additional crew + lander module at Mun, and about to dock a resupply (fuel, some more NOMS and a new crew). Next I'll send those other two components to Minmus and both will get a greenhouse, but powering it is an issue. Once I start getting the science generation going, I can finally unlock mining+refining and decent power generation.
Need to remember to install RMM for the resupply ships.
Currently have the research module (so big it has to be flown by itself) at Mun and Minmus, and have the additional crew + lander module at Mun, and about to dock a resupply (fuel, some more NOMS and a new crew). Next I'll send those other two components to Minmus and both will get a greenhouse, but powering it is an issue. Once I start getting the science generation going, I can finally unlock mining+refining and decent power generation.
Need to remember to install RMM for the resupply ships.
brianmcdoogle
Member
This is it, guys. I'm going to land on Laythe and return home! I can feel it!
Oops. I didn't have enough fuel or Delta V to get off Laythe. But, I at least got a cool photo from the trip.
Oops. I didn't have enough fuel or Delta V to get off Laythe. But, I at least got a cool photo from the trip.
EdReedFan20
Member
This is it, guys. I'm going to land on Laythe and return home! I can feel it!
Oops. I didn't have enough fuel or Delta V to get off Laythe. But, I at least got a cool photo from the trip.
Nice shots!
It's hard to get a circular orbit in one go. You can correct it by burning prograde (in the direction you're moving) at Apoapsys (highest point of orbit, marked AP in map mode). That brings up the lowest point.
Of course you can do it in reverse, burn retrograde (opposite direction of movement) at Periapsis (marked PE in mapmode) to bring down the highest point.
It will take a few corrections to get it completly circular.
I wonder if I am trying to get to apoapsys too fast and too soon, maybe I need to flatten out my approach and try to take it a bit more slowly, as I don't seem to have enough time to set up a maneuver node before I pass my apoapsys
For a simple orbit, you don't really need to set a node.
Launch, and tilt gently East, flattening out as you go. When your AP is ~100km, shut down the engines. About 20s before you hit AP, burn prograde. Fly while looking at the map screen so you can see your orbit circularise and then cut engines at the approriate time.
After launch, how soon should you be turning and how flat should you be looking to get?, all the videos I watch seem to show them getting very flat quite quickly, this is probably where I am going wrong.