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I use a part failure mod, not kerbalism but DangIt which I think is similar in concept. Stuff just has a mtbf and you don't have to do extra research to make engines not fail constantly. I find it fun. It's pretty much the final tier of challenge for designing both rockets and missions. "What do we do if part X fails? Is there redundancy? Can we abort at all or most times and still get home?" Etc. It makes the abort button and launch escape motor into something you may use for more than just aesthetics! OTOH I have parachute failure turned off -- losing a mission at the very end kinda sucks and backup parachutes aren't really a thing. And yeah, you kinda need to be at the point where you have a near 100% mission success rate before adding stuff that only exists to screw you over.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:58
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Is there a mod that lets you easily set up automatic shut-off of specific engines when other engines fail? For example a lander with 5 small engines could keep going with 3 engines that thrust symmetrically if one fails. That could make for an interesting design challenge to make engine failures not too common (by building rockets entirely out of tiny engines) or too impactful (by having sufficient redundancy). Shutting off individual engines manually is too much of a pain, especially in a landing situation.
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Jan 6, 2024 05:35
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Part failures is a design challenge more than a gameplay challenge. In order to prevent a single parts failure from dooming the mission, you can build with redundancy and use extra parts, but those extra parts add weight and possibly require other design compromises, so it's a careful balance of how much tolerance for failure you want and how much you're willing to sacrifice in other areas for that tolerance. It also encourages you to leave room in your missions for on-orbit repair opportunities. At least in theory In practice, building for redundancy bloats your part count, so you sacrifice FPS when adding redundancy to a larger build, and that's a tradeoff that's absolutely no fun.
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Jan 6, 2024 06:07
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pun pundit posted:Is there a mod that lets you easily set up automatic shut-off of specific engines when other engines fail? I bet kOS could do that, because kOS can do anything. I've seen people do real-time thrust balancing of wildly asymmetric craft. Of course, the challenge is writing the program to do it. The standard KAL controller wouldn't work I'm pretty sure. pun pundit posted:Shutting off individual engines manually is too much of a pain, especially in a landing situation. In a landing situation I would go for a survivable abort design, rather than an extra-redundant set of engines. But also, DangIt has 3 different types of engine failure and catastrophic shut down is the least common. You can also have coolant failure (engine gets hot) and pump failure (gradually decreasing thrust). Both of those give you some time to either react or plow through if you're 10 seconds from the ground. It does mean you have to think twice about propulsive landings though, and a SSTO VTOL rocket is harder. Spaceplanes are just as good though. Vizuyos posted:In practice, building for redundancy bloats your part count, so you sacrifice FPS when adding redundancy to a larger build, and that's a tradeoff that's absolutely no fun. Anything big enough to come even close to FPS trouble for me is a manned station or interplanetary craft, in which case I'd have an engineer along to do fixes. And that type of thing I would never launch on a single mega-rocket in the first place, even before playing with my current mod-set. "Saturn Vs are disposable boosters" has never been a thing for me. So yeah part failure is more compatible with my style.
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Jan 6, 2024 15:15
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https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/222626-a-new-chapter/ very cool that they're calling out mods
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Jan 9, 2024 19:44
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Not to only poo poo on them because I think they are at least saying the right things right now, but god drat, why are they promoting rapist Giantwaffle.
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Jan 9, 2024 20:01
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K8.0 posted:Not to only poo poo on them because I think they are at least saying the right things right now, but god drat, why are they promoting rapist Giantwaffle. it's entirely likely that they just flatly don't know about it, it was a far bigger deal in the speedrunning community than the ksp one. most of the ksp community i've talked to had never heard about it at all.
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Jan 9, 2024 20:12
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yeah dont even know who that is. that's awful tho
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Jan 9, 2024 20:13
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Same never heard about it so I can't fault them for that
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Jan 9, 2024 23:14
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I feel like a sexpest lookup is step 1 of doing any sort of endorsement these days
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Jan 9, 2024 23:28
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Hey folks, I'm trying to build my first airplane in KSP so I can do some contracts. However when I try to launch, the engines just fart thrust and stop. I have 3 Juno engines connected to fuel tanks.
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Jan 10, 2024 02:34
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America Inc. posted:Hey folks, I'm trying to build my first airplane in KSP so I can do some contracts. However when I try to launch, the engines just fart thrust and stop. I have 3 Juno engines connected to fuel tanks. do they have an air intake? can you shot the front of the plane as well?
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Jan 10, 2024 02:48
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e: nevermind
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Jan 10, 2024 02:55
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Horsebanger posted:do they have an air intake? can you shot the front of the plane as well? This. Need air intake. Also those engines are super tiny for anything with real mass.
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Jan 10, 2024 04:08
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Horsebanger posted:do they have an air intake? can you shot the front of the plane as well? Yep, I added an air intake for the two bottom engines, and I use a LV-T30 on the back for good measure: [gimg]https://i.imgur.com/rBd4YMF.png[/timg] I followed this guide from reddit to figure out how to make the aircraft more stable - it was tipping over on the launchpad before lol. I see that when I turn on all caps, I can roll the elevons with q and e, yaw the back fin with strafe, and pitch the side fins with w and s. Getting the aircraft in the air is easy now, but landing is hard. I see that I can slow the craft down by pitching up to catch air, but I need to maintain a small thrust so it doesn't go straight down - in which case the nose will pitch down and then I'm hosed. Any tips on how to land well? Landing an aircraft is so much harder b/c everything has to come back down in one piece. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 05:38
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Have you tried something that isn't 2 feet long? Bet fuel is drastically shifting your center of mass. Have you emptied the tanks in the VAB to see how that changes your centers of mass and lift?
Zesty fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 05:52
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Is it just general landing technique you're wondering about? Try flying straight-and-level (constant altitude), without any engine power. You'll slowly slow down (from air resistance), and have to slowly pitch up to keep your altitude, until you stall and just start falling. Make a note of what speed that happens at. When you're landing, you want to set yourself up pointing at the landing strip, and fly just slightly faster than that stall speed. Pitch so that you're slowly descending instead of flying level, and use a little bit of throttle so that your speed isn't changing. Then just fly it into the ground like that. Cut the throttle when you're about to land, and pitch up to the point the wheels are level just before you hit anything.
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Jan 11, 2024 06:01
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If you're only JUST stable enough to not roll over on the launch pad, you're definitely not stable enough to land without rolling over.
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Jan 11, 2024 06:05
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I do a lot of planes, and the few posts above me are good advice. The center of lift needs to be on or slightly behind the center of mass for it to fly well. On a small plane like that IMHO that means one ball is inside the other. With the center slightly behind. Then in the VAB drain all your fuel tanks and turn off COM and COL and turn them back on to see if they moved.. you need to build the plane in such a way that the centers of mass and lift stay roughly the same in relation to each other when the fuel is both empty and full. If you don't the plane's handling is going to go to poo poo as you use fuel and either end up a lawn dart diving into the ground or going rear end over teakettle engines first. If it's ksp2 also turn off auto suspension and friction on the landing gear. Turn off steering to the rear wheels, crank the dampers way up and turn friction way down to like .4 or the wheels will have too much traction and easily flip you in small planes. Also make sure the landing gear is just a little behind both the empty and full COM. If the landing gear is too far back then when you speed up your plane is going to freak out and veer hard left it right when you try to take off.
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Jan 11, 2024 18:32
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I never bothered to learn how to land properly and just slapped a bunch of airframe parachutes on my jets. Once I completed my objective I'd throttle down and glide until I was 1000 m above terrain before popping the chutes and drifting to the ground. Gotta be careful if you go that route, though, cuz if you don't balance the chutes relative to CoM your plane will not be level as it floats down... And if the craft decides to land on its nose it might slap down too hard and kill your pilot. I've also had the rare occurrence of the physics engine making the entire plane disintegrate out of spite. I will never stop using the airframe parachute design, though, because I find it hilarious how practical it is in KSP versus real life.
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Jan 12, 2024 07:49
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America Inc. posted:Yep, I added an air intake for the two bottom engines, and I use a LV-T30 on the back for good measure: More wing, less fuel. Your problem in that last paragraph is that you are dropping below stall speed. The wings stop lifting, your control surfaces have minimal authority, and your nose pitches down. The fact that your plane stays relatively stable when entering stall means it's an ok design aerodynamically. But it just doesn't have enough wing to stay in the air at low speeds, which makes landing very difficult. What you have is the Starfighter problem. High speed landings are dangerous IRL, and they're very nasty with KSP's bouncy landing gear on any plane that isn't quite large.
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Jan 12, 2024 15:34
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https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/222947-bug-status-112/quote:Signals go through planets and moons (CommNet/Antennas not affected by occlusion) quote:The current behavior is how it was designed. We will consider the feedback. ???
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Jan 13, 2024 17:10
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So the same excuse as the floppy rockets then 
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Jan 13, 2024 17:28
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They fixed the floppy rockets at least.
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Jan 13, 2024 17:34
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That's... super dumb. So no need for constellations of satellites to ensure coverage at all times? That was most of the design challenge.
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Jan 13, 2024 17:35
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It's kind of silly how they recognize the purpose of science mode is to give players a reason to design and launch rockets. Needing a sufficient comm network for your probes and experiments is just another reason to design and launch things. It leads to emergent gameplay/design challenges.
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Jan 13, 2024 17:45
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what they say:quote:but new players don't know how it works! we don't have the systems in place to show what the commnet coverage is! what they mean: quote:it's hard and would've taken more time and we can barely keep up with development as it is
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Jan 13, 2024 17:51
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I'd rather they just say "its not done yet"
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Jan 13, 2024 17:56
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That's what early access means.
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Jan 13, 2024 17:58
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This is a solved problem though, in KSP 1 there's a toggle for the comms difficulty, so you can have it simple or advanced. You can even fine-tune how picky it is with occlusion.
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Jan 13, 2024 17:58
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Cojawfee posted:That's what early access means. is it? quote:The current behavior is how it was designed
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Jan 13, 2024 18:06
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marumaru posted:is it? Yeah, things can change while the game is still being made. The devs make something, players give feedback and things get changed. That's what happened with floppy rockets. That's what early access is.
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Jan 13, 2024 18:25
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While it's a feature I'd like, it also will take time and effort to add. Combined with the fact that KSP2 seems designed to push you to colonies>interstellar fairly quick it seems like it would also quickly become pointless complexity to an extent. Multiple potential mission control locations across system(s) and it kind of makes sense to treat comm range and relay setup as the primary factor.
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Jan 13, 2024 18:50
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In the context of a bug tracker I read "working as designed" to just mean that the "bug report" isn't actually a bug, and by itself it says nothing about the eventual capabilities they want the game to have.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:41
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Retro42 posted:While it's a feature I'd like, it also will take time and effort to add. Combined with the fact that KSP2 seems designed to push you to colonies>interstellar fairly quick it seems like it would also quickly become pointless complexity to an extent. Multiple potential mission control locations across system(s) and it kind of makes sense to treat comm range and relay setup as the primary factor. Actually, signal occlusion becomes less of an issue the further out you are. If you are putting relays in orbit of stars, they are going to be so far out that occlusion will almost never happen, and having two in perpendicular orbits is basically enough for most needs. The only real factor would be signal strength. It becomes slightly more of an issue if you are trying to control a rover on the surface of a planet in another solar system, but if it's just an interstellar probe, you will pretty much never be occluded.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:46
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Dramicus posted:Actually, signal occlusion becomes less of an issue the further out you are. If you are putting relays in orbit of stars, they are going to be so far out that occlusion will almost never happen, and having two in perpendicular orbits is basically enough for most needs. The only real factor would be signal strength. It becomes slightly more of an issue if you are trying to control a rover on the surface of a planet in another solar system, but if it's just an interstellar probe, you will pretty much never be occluded. Yeah, this was my experience. Having two comm satellites launched by drone around a body in highly elliptical orbits one orbital plane 90 degrees up and one down where the AP and PE are the minimum and maximum in the SOI, then a second set of two or 4 in like a 20-30 degree angle max eccentric opposing orbits orbit that doesn't ever hit a moon or other body SOI. This means the up and down ones loiter so long they are essentially never occluded. and neither are the outside ones on the ecliptic plane giving you basically 100% coverage in that SOI forever. This can all be done and deployed in a single rocket. After that plopping them in any location you need comms is just busy work and all the same as the last 5 times you've done it. I've never understood why people talk about the challenge of comms. There doesn't need to be any math or anything fancy Just busy work that once laid lasts forever.
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Jan 13, 2024 20:04
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The annoying mathy part of comms for me has always been figuring out what range I need, since it's hard to measure distances from point to point ingame and the signal strength math isn't straightforward either. Occlusion is a much easier problem to solve, one that can easily be worked out by eye without needing to touch a single number, and one that's much less likely to irrecoverably doom a mission if you gently caress it up.
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Jan 13, 2024 20:13
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People like doing perfect geostationary coverage even though (or likely because) the game doesn’t give you the tools to make it trivial I’ve always just used a couple of relays in molniya orbits
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Jan 13, 2024 20:16
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by and large, my comm network strategy is to just accept satellite contracts and have those satellites use relay antennae. though i do also tend to send out a relay mothership containing 2-4 relay satellites concurrently with my first interplanetary ship when i first go to a given planet or moon for the first time in a new career mode.
DEEP STATE PLOT fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jan 13, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 23:33
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I have fun trying to design the most efficient sat/rockets combo. You can put sats up for less than 5k a pop iirc.
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Jan 14, 2024 00:52
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