Kerbal Space Program

I fixed it. Whats the path in 0.17.1 that ships are saved to? Will upload a similar design as in the first post for 0.17

 

http://forums.empiresmod.com/showpost.php?p=422276&postcount=154

 

I got the demo, game is awesome. I'm going to get the full version tomorrow I reckon.
Looks like loads of fun.

 

orbit the sun then come back here.

 

the less shit you attach, the easier it is. you can go very far with a Capsule-fueltank-fueltank-standardLiquidEngine-setup.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60098067/Bad Dragon and Heavy lifter.zip

Also included a massive rocket, cant remember what it flies like since I havnt played with it for a few days but have a look if you want.

I mostly fixed your dragon, its a bit fiddly to fly for a few seconds after you seperate the first stage due to the centre of gravity being pretty high (jet fuel doesnt weigh much compared to rocket fuel, which you should use for rockets)

Adding a similar example craft to the OP now for 0.17.1. Uses different parts but design is similar and if this is the version I think it is it can also reach orbit around the mun and return

 

I started playing this game much more.
I can now get to the moons and back, alter my orbits without wasting tons of fuel, and now... Docking in Kerbin Orbit!

Here is the start of my humble space station Kerbal-Staytion-One
Sent it up as a probe and as seen here now docked with a hab. Thats the return vehicle waiting to head back - I left two guys up there.

Next mission is to dock another hab and some additional struts to secure big ass fuel pods to.

Got any mission profiles? What should, I do next? I really want to get a rover to duna, maybe do the whole kethane thing and drop a base there.

 

How tricky is docking AZK? I havn't been playing much recently so havnt got round to trying it


Sounds like good news for all the people that have played the demo but didnt buy the game:

All the news for the latest version can be found around 2/3rd of the way down this page: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com...opment-7-11-31st-December-4th-Feburary/page19

 

If you have a grasp of how to alter your orbits it is very simple really now that maneuvers can be preplanned. I'm not sure if maneuver planning was implemented in .18 or before but it really changes the game. No need for so much forward planning and calcs or protractors. In a way less skillful I guess but much more accessible and fun. You still need conceptual understanding but no maths.

You can select a target and then a point along your orbit and plan a maneuver and it will show you the intersect and target position at that point. Basically I had only successfully visited minmus and returned before this. I would carry lots of RCS first time round, I was very inefficient and used a whole tank and a half!... But the movement itself was easy enough. Just ensure you rotate craft with Q/E so that the inputs or RCS (AWSD & JIKLH) are relative to your view from behind the craft and rotate view out often when you get closer (<100m), but only make corrections from chase view / behind the craft where everything is relative to your perspective. Using SAS with RCS enabled seems to burn though RCS fuel, but when you get close I found it was worth it. I kept my closing speed to be 1/100th of distance - so if target was 300m away I kept my closing speed to m/s for example. It seemed to work well and once I got to within 100m I was so careful, I spent about 10 minutes here before docking. I used a little of my main engine to close in but veeeery low thrust so I knew I could scrub the inhertia with my RCS.

I made it on my first attempt (well second TBH, I narrowly ran out of RCS first time! Or I would have made it) so it can't be that hard... Just get into a similar orbit below target to catch up, or above to let the target gain on you.

It is easy to get the plane correction now with planned maneuvers that announce your intersect and positions, you just need to make these corrections at a point they cross/intersect to be most fuel efficient (I think? I dunno). maneuvers seem to be not totally accurate regarding when to start burn but I had no problem correcting inconsistencies with RCS upon my intersect. I had a pretty small engine so I started thrusting a little early, cutting it as soon as I saw the "target" on the nav ball shifting. I made several tiny planular corrections before I attempted to raise my orbit for intersect and my ascention/descention was only ~0.6 degrees to start with. Little by little I refined my orbit until all I had to worry about was the height, then burning up into a higher orbit to intersectkept everything simple for me.

I wasn't lifting much (probably harder to move my heavy fuel tanks out there) but I made my lifter stage with more beef than I needed to push me up through most of the atmosphere and then roll over to 45 degrees (rolling "right") as per a normal launch into a planular (spelling?) orbit. Then keep burning till my apoapsis was ~100K. Then I cut my thrust and separated that stage, and used my second stage (poodle with the short/wide tank) raise the orbit once I reached the apoapsis, burning again half way around to circularise. Mine was inefficient (all the way out at 450k) so it took a bigger burn to make a circular orbit which was ~10K under my target, time acceleration caught me up to the target. I planned a maneuver to burn away from the planet and towards the target/higher orbit (I dunno if burning peri/apo is more efficient but it seemed to make me close in on my target too quickly, plus I had loads of RCS) - I managed with trial and error to make my intercept separation be only ~.7km

First tip - make sure your rendezvous is in orbit above 150k because under 125 you are limited in how much you can speed up time, which would suck if you could onlt hit x10 or something, thats a long boring wait.
It helps greatly to have a nice flat/equatorial & circular orbit on your target, I used the same kind of launch profile for both so it was very easy with small corrections necessary to get a very close match in my orbits.

Second tip - if you are using a shielded docking port on your target - make sure you open it up before you to into dock! I couldn't figure out how to do it so I ended up quickly going back to tracking station, switching missions then opening it. Luckily without a collision.

Final tip - when you get within a meter or so there is like a magnetic attraction between craft and it seems the engine tries to figure out some stuff. It all gets very wobbly. when I turned off SAS it snapped to almost immediately, but when I had it on it was wobbing around for ages.

I found this very useful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHkY3FusJIQ&list=PLYu7z3I8tdElkh_sC7IDZaZC1qvYXaZWI&index=9

But basically I figured most of it out once I was launched, I didn't time anything at all - probably launched at the worst time possible, I was really inefficient. Even though my rendezvous was a fair way out, I wasn't lifting that much mass. I was never really pushed for fuel (had plenty to detach and deorbit with too) but I am crap with the RCS (first use really, other than tiny corrections when landing) so carrying lots of that was a bessing.

It isn't that difficult, the video sets everything out nicely, I was careful not to rush the interception, I passed up lots of opportunities to do it earlier but I think it was worth waiting as I got a nice close one. Go easy, don't rush and I think it is pretty simple.

 

Sounds interesting, im going to have to fire KSP up just to build some crazy rockets again :D

Oh, just so you know apparantly rovers are coming in 0.19 which according to the post I linked to above is currently in the experimental phase so hopefully wont be too long.

 

0.18.4 has now been released.

Quite a lot of bugfixes and has been ported to the unity 4 engine (apparently increases performance). 400mb download direct from their store.

Changelog here

 

I'm glad they fixed the click-drag for setting up staging. That was annoying as hell.

Looking forward to playing with rovers, I'm getting ready to install the Kethane mod for my Mars Direct shot.

 

At the minute, i'm dreaming up some pretty wacky designs for a space station deployment craft, im just thinking that perhaps I should try docking first though. For now I'm trying to decide whether I should make a ridiculously heavy lifter to get the start of the space station or if I should make a smaller craft to ferry a component or 2 up at a time. Smaller craft would be simpler but the ridiculously powerful craft would be more interesting to design and fly without killing everyone. Decisions, decisions.

 

My lifter sucks bit it looks really nice!
I found pitting the rcs thrusters as close to the center of mass is best.
probably it is a good idea to lift as much as you can into orbit then send up smaller parts to dock.