The mun and minmus are easy once you know how to read the navball and change orbits. well, there's still the matter of building reasonable rockets but a lot more of them become viable when you're not wasting fuel in silly maneuvers.
Getting back though......![]()
Holy. Shit.
Ok, so I was dicking around building a rocket with the huge FL tanks and rockets and managed to get one in orbit with a fair amount of reserve fuel. Ok, guess I'll shoot for the mun (never been there yet). Swing around to the opposite side of Kerbin from the mun, burn the engine and push out the apoapsis towards the mun. Works great, a little too great as I accidently push the apoapsis well past it. Nothing I can do so I float towards the mun, past it, and back to Kerbin. This time I retro burn the other direction to bring the apoapsis back in line with the Muns orbit, I have no idea if our points in orbit will meet again, but I head out and unbelievably about 4/5ths of the way there orbit tracker changes to show I'm going to be captured by the Mun! Amazing! But I have a problem. It shows that while I'll be captured by the Mun, I'm just going to be flung off into space. I know I have plenty of main rocket fuel to make the necessary burns to prevent that, but my RCS is almost out, and I probably won't be able to maneuver to burn in the right directions to get back to Kerbin. So I'm left with a choice of staying on course and drifting into space, or retro burning and crashing into the Mun. I pick the latter. With the last of the RCS I flip away from the Mun and burn to slow my speed. It works as expected and my trajectory changes to show in impact. I start tumbling into the Mun and see an opportunity. As a last ditch effort to save my crew I time the tumbles and burn the rockets full force right as they're facing downward to try and break away from the weak gravity. The last of the fuel burns away, and, defeated, I check the world map. Unbelievably my last ditch effort had worked! My crew made it into orbit at the last possible minute, my periapsis is just 2,300 meters off the surface. So now their just floating around the Mun, waiting to be rescued. Sorry for the long write up, it was just an awesome moment.
TL;DR- This game is fucking awesome.
Made it to the Mun for the first time with a three quarter tank in my lander left. Unfourtunately I haven't quite figured out how to get back into a decent orbit around Kerbin from Mun. I had to burn all my fuel to get into orbit, with nothing left to slow the orbit and land back safely.
I am having major trouble aligning my rocket to get into a nice stable orbit after take-off. My orbit's plain doesn't align with the Mun's plain.
From breaking the lander's legs to running out of lander fuel, it's not been easy for me.
Btw, does anyone find that the bigger fuel tanks and engines are much too heavy and powerful for the available couplers? Te lower parts of my rocket tend to want to go through the upper part after takeoff.
As a complete space geek, I felt it would be irresponsible of me not to buy the full version. I'm having a little trouble reliably getting into orbit. Well, at least anything resembling a circular orbit. I am terrible at reading the attitude ball and piloting the craft. But I'm slowly getting better.
What addons does everyone suggest? I'm just using stock parts right now, but I'm itching for some cooler stuff.
The planet's named Kerbin, by the way, not Kearth. I mean, hey, it's on the map screen.
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I went for a larger lunar lander for my latest mission. Last time I didnt have enough fuel to return to Kerbin. I wouldn't make that mistake again!
Things were looking great for this mission. I made it to the Mun with plenty of fuel, had a near perfect landing without burning excess fuel. After a fun little jaunt on the Mun I was ready to set off back home. I checked my fuel tank, main tank almost empty but the small four side tanks were all full. Fuck yeah, plenty of fuel. RCS tanks were very full too.
So I begin my launch off Mun, set my orbit, pro burned and see that I will be captured by Kerbin (rather high orbit, but a capture none the less). Now orbiting Kerbin I am ready for my final burn that will put me back on the surface of my beloved home planet. Double check fuel, main tank is on fumes but all four reserve tanks are full. Brilliant, no way to fuck this up. I begin my retro burn and it stops with my Pe some 215k m out. Wtf! I look at my ship, I have fuel lines attached from the reserve tanks to the main tank. Shouldnt this allow fuel pass through to the engine? Guess not. I am at a loss. If only I could EVA and move a fuel line! But no, I am stranded again, forever orbiting home. But wait, my RCS! I have plenty of fuel and my lander was designed with eight single thrusters on the bottom of the craft in addition to the multi-directional nose thruster array. I orientate retro and burn. I watch my Pe slowly edge toward Kerbin. 150K m .100K m so close, come on RCS go, go, go! Finally the orbital path converges on the surface of Kerbin. I can go home! I nearly destroy my command capsule as I jetison my remaing stages in a panic as I forget to dial back the warp. Thankfully my three parachutes slow me down and open as planned. A successful mission!
TL;DR - Over building can sometimes lead to unintended benefits, go RCS! Second, always, always test your fuel line systems and later stages before setting off on your mission!
Did you diagnose the problem with the fuel lines? Maybe they broke off during launch?
sup.
http://i.imgur.com/xPaFp.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
Lol his face in the corner says it all.
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I've been taking the game in stages after buying the full version. I've had fun reading everyone's stories so I thought I would share mine.
First I wanted to build a good land based vehicle for the future missions. Unfortunately, I had to resort to mods to find anything that would go faster than 20m/s without the physics freaking out and blowing it up randomly. The landing gear always ends up shaking violently and exploding if I go any faster on terrain. So, after plenty of speed tests on terrain, I decided upon this design which I was able to get around 200m/s top speed before it becomes unstable:
[IMG]http://i.minus.com/iJzBSvemRutTZ.png
After that was done, next I wanted to get a reference point into orbit. I chose to build a large space station. This was my proclaimed ISS (Not very creative):
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I didn't anticipate it's great size causing me so many problems. Getting it airborne became very difficult. I had problems between balancing, weight, and power output. Breaking even the 2000m barrier was very difficult. Eventually I took advantage of the games new jet engines as a cheap, light, thrust source for the first stage:
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I was finally able to get it into orbit. The cool thing about it is it contains the 'space station dock' mod so when I get lazy I can just teleport crafts to start from my space station now. It's made for an amazing testing platform.
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Unfortunately, while gathering the screenshots for this post, I blanked out and clicked the dreaded 'end mission' button. So it looks like I am going to have to relaunch it again.
...
After that was done, next I wanted to get a reference point into orbit. I chose to build a large space station. This was my proclaimed ISS (Not very creative):
...

Jeb: Challenge accepted.
Since i bought a new laptop (now waiting for delivery), i guess i could buy this game as well. The trial version was a lot of fun.
How much is this at the moment?
$18? So, 14. Yup, gotta buy this one.

Bought. Now to build some rockets.
Once the download is complete anyway...
Are there any recommended mods? Any "must-haves"?
Unless I'm missing it, KSP isn't on Steam's Project Greenlight yet?
You don't really need to understand any of those. Just remember Newton's Laws, specifically the third one.wow this seems so intriguing yet so intimidating as well..
To a TOTAL noob with not basically no prior knowledge about rockets, physics etc. how hard would it actually be to get into this game without having to watch like 50 tutorials?
thanks, i tried the demo on my laptop and unfortunately it ran like crap even with downscaled details and resolution, so i will give it another go next time on my desktop![]()