Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

[FlowerChild]

Aye, there seem to be a few annoying bugs like that. I loaded up a quicksave of halfway through my Munar landing yesterday and the ship just...fell apart. Completely.

Did you guys update to the newest version of Deadly Reentry like I mentioned in the readme? The author fixed that one last week, and I haven't run into it a single time since updating to it when it used to happen to me all the time.

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

Whoop, first time I made it to any other body than Mun. I just finally managed to touch down on Minmus... sort of. Came in ever so slightly too fast and toppled over, but everything was still intact, so it's good enough for me. Turns out I needed a lot less batteries than I put on the probe, probably because the second tier antenna is a lot more power efficient than the original one I guess.

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I guess next up is to sling some goo in the general direction of Mun and Minus, then getting it back safely... somehow.

[FlowerChild]

Whoop, first time I made it to any other body than Mun. I just finally managed to touch down on Minmus... sort of. Came in ever so slightly too fast and toppled over, but everything was still intact, so it's good enough for me.

Hehe...the falling over is pretty typical man. I've got a number of probes lying on their sides out there in Kerbal space. As long as you're not planning on taking off again, you're golden :)

Congrats on the landing!

So heat managment appears to be a built in extra benefit of the control surfaces in vanilla KSP. Whether that's the planned behavior for BTSM is for FC to say not me, but it is consistent with the vanilla parts.

Nah, I have no problem with that. KSP heat management is rather fubar and is way beyond what I can tackle with the mod. Fins acting as heat sinks makes a certain amount of sense anyways, the heat stuff just gets really weird in that it seems to be solely based on number of parts, so you run into weird situations like where two smaller fuel tanks attached above an engine will dissipate heat faster than a single large one that totals the same size, or where a single small part attached to something will drain off as much heat as a really large one, which gets really gamey really fast if you let it.

Anyways, FC wanted feedback on interplanetary missions. So I've done one...kinda. I used 6 radially attached solar panels to power a probe after having looked at the numbers and noticed how a single one doesn't seem to quite power a single probe :p Even then, got into kerbin orbit and noticed I was *still* losing power...so I changed my plans from going to duna to going to eve. Not far below kerban orbit the panels started making enough power to keep it alive which was great. I then discovered that I didn't exactly pick a good launch window, and that the fastest time acceleration is pretty slow. Got a cuppa, got an encounter, got to eve...didn't have any way of sending the data home. I forgot to stick on any antenna >.<

So It's doable, and the low power generation of the panels seems to prevent them from being the stupidly OP level they were in vKSP. Now to sit back, realax, stop berating myself for being an idiot and try again later.

Nice man. Yeah, I think I can only go so far with tweaking the solar panels though. They suck basically for the reason your example illustrates, in that they remove any time dependency whatsoever from the game, and along with it, any concern about optimizing a flight plan. I think I really need to start considering adding some kind of part degradation or what have you, along with separate life support, to maintain that in the late game once solar panels come into play. Either that, or a time dependency through an economy or what have you.

All that is beyond what I'm willing to do on this first pass though. I'm basically trying to get a decent balance going for the full tech tree without adding too much more new stuff, then wrap this up for now to move back to working on BTW.

[Stormweaver]

Aye, there seem to be a few annoying bugs like that. I loaded up a quicksave of halfway through my Munar landing yesterday and the ship just...fell apart. Completely.

Did you guys update to the newest version of Deadly Reentry like I mentioned in the readme? The author fixed that one last week, and I haven't run into it a single time since updating to it when it used to happen to me all the time.

I have. I haven't run into a single case DRE's bug since either. I'm guessing the root cause for the bug is something vKSP and DRE just stopped it from happening with their atmospheric heating, since it only used to happen when the last thing you were looking at was going fast (fast enough that it would cause things to instantly burn up at ground level). Perhaps whatever rocket I'd been using just beforehand was under some heavy stress and that carried over or something. But enough with me pretending how games work.

I just purchased the new sciency thing. Looks really awesome, can't wait to use it on something outside of kerbin's sphere of influence.

Is anyone else encountering problem when transmitting science while generating power in some way? I did a short jet flight to get the few extra science points I needed, and even with an almost full battery I was constantly getting the 'electrical charge is running out' message and receiving science in tiny fragments.

[FlowerChild]

I have. I haven't run into a single case DRE's bug since either. I'm guessing the root cause for the bug is something vKSP and DRE just stopped it from happening with their atmospheric heating, since it only used to happen when the last thing you were looking at was going fast (fast enough that it would cause things to instantly burn up at ground level). Perhaps whatever rocket I'd been using just beforehand was under some heavy stress and that carried over or something. But enough with me pretending how games work.

Well, it wasn't just that. They'd also fly apart when you switched to them in space because of excessive G forces, which is something else DR does, and which I take good advantage of with the new solar panel part ;)

That's why I thought you might be running into it due to not updating Deadly Reentry.

I'm surprised you didn't notice that g-force bit with the solar panels actually (or not note it anyways). I'm guessing your rocket must have had low acceleration to begin with.

I just purchased the new sciency thing. Looks really awesome, can't wait to use it on something outside of kerbin's sphere of influence.

Oh dude, I feel a bit bad you didn't purchase that before your flight to Eve. That's where most of your orbital probe science from other planets comes from at that tech level.

Is anyone else encountering problem when transmitting science while generating power in some way? I did a short jet flight to get the few extra science points I needed, and even with an almost full battery I was constantly getting the 'electrical charge is running out' message and receiving science in tiny fragments.

That's a vanilla bug that has come up a few times in this thread, and is also responsible for crew dying due to lack of life support when you have plenty of energy in your vessel.

As far as I can tell, the code for that looks at the command part of the vessel first, and if it's out of energy, assumes the whole ship is or something. The easiest workaround is to right click on your probe core (or command module), and turn off the battery on it so that no power will be drained from it. That seems to make the code check the rest of your vessel for power, and stops that bug from ever occurring.

On manned missions, it can get rather dangerous though if you forget to turn that power back on when reentering or what have you, so don't neglect to do that :)

[PatriotBob]

That's a vanilla bug that has come up a few times in this thread, and is also responsible for crew dying due to lack of life support when you have plenty of energy in your vessel.

So that's what kept murdering Jeb! I lost that poor kerbal 3 times to that bug. I just kept circumventing it by constantly transferring power to the command pod.

I'll be honest, I haven't tried the newest changes I probably will here shortly. I haven't found a "good" way to switch between BTSM and a collection of other mods yet. I guess I'm going to just start maintaining multiple GameData folders. I'll try to update and give tier 7 a go tonight.

[FlowerChild]

So that's what kept murdering Jeb! I lost that poor kerbal 3 times to that bug. I just kept circumventing it by constantly transferring power to the command pod.

The known issues list is your friend man. I never write stuff like that just for fun :)

[Stormweaver]

That's why I thought you might be running into it due to not updating Deadly Reentry.

I'm surprised you didn't notice that g-force bit with the solar panels actually (or not note it anyways). I'm guessing your rocket must have had low acceleration to begin with.

I did have them break once actually; good to know I was spot on about it being G-forces. I kinda figured they would be fragile, what with an impact tolerance of 0.25(?) and all. Happened while trying to escape kerbin when I was a little overzealous with what was left of my orbiting stage :p

I'll re-install later, just in case I messed up somewhere.

Oh dude, I feel a bit bad you didn't purchase that before your flight to Eve. That's where most of your orbital probe science from other planets comes from at that tech level.

Haha, I know. I had 300-and-something science left after finishing the tech level before (after the Mun landing's haul) and it was a case of either hoping to get a decent haul from the old standbys of temp, pressure and gravity or doing another Mun landing. I figured I'd need a test-run anyway ^.^

That's a vanilla bug that has come up a few times in this thread, and is also responsible for crew dying due to lack of life support when you have plenty of energy in your vessel.

So it's that bug? Huh, I didn't realise it was the same thing. I must have been lucky, since I haven't lost any crew to it so far.

[FlowerChild]

I did have them break once actually; good to know I was spot on about it being G-forces. I kinda figured they would be fragile, what with an impact tolerance of 0.25(?) and all. Happened while trying to escape kerbin when I was a little overzealous with what was left of my orbiting stage :p

Hehe...yup, it's G-forces. You basically have to keep your g-meter in the green with those primitive solar panels attached or you start hearing the stress noises ;)

I probably should have just stated that outright in the release notes as it's not exactly obvious what's going on, but was balancing that against my usual desire of not wanting to deprive people of discovering it themselves. I also suspect that by that point in the tech tree, anyone who has reached it is probably capable of figuring it out themselves ;)

I'll re-install later, just in case I messed up somewhere.

Please let me know if that clears it up, as I've yet to run into a single instance of that bug since DR updated, with some pretty heavy testing, and would be interested to know if it's still around in some form.

Haha, I know. I had 300-and-something science left after finishing the tech level before (after the Mun landing's haul) and it was a case of either hoping to get a decent haul from the old standbys of temp, pressure and gravity or doing another Mun landing. I figured I'd need a test-run anyway ^.^

Don't forget that a few airplane flights can net you a bit of science for a node or two at tech level 6-7. There's quite an excess of science floating around in Kerbal's sphere of influence. Way more than you need to proceed. As mentioned in various parts of the release notes, I put in buffers at each tech level to make sure there's enough excess science floating around that players won't get stuck depending on the path they take, and you can often take advantage of that to pick up a few extra nodes here and there if there's a crucial part you want access to before tackling a mission.

So it's that bug? Huh, I didn't realise it was the same thing. I must have been lucky, since I haven't lost any crew to it so far.

Yeah, I started running into the life support thing after the last bit of conversation on it so I can confirm it's either the same bug or one that's related to it. I think it might also be dependent on how you design your craft, like if battery parts are attached directly to the command module or not, which may be why some people experience it and some don't, and probably why I had never run into it when it was first brought up.

Anyways, I've heard that Squad is working on that one for their next release, so hopefully it will be resolved in the not so distant future. For now though, just turning off the battery associated with the pod seems to be an effective workaround.

[maxsi]

so after 6 revisions i finally have "perfected" my minmus goo fly by rock.

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but failed to get the low orbit guu, anyone know what height i need to be to get that?

[Stormweaver]

but failed to get the low orbit guu, anyone know what height i need to be to get that?

It's around 10k iirc - but hey, it's minmus. You may as well land for a third goo.

Speaking of which, I still haven't succeeded in getting goo back from minmus. I should do that. And that scanner data while I'm there. Yay for in-depth planning!

[PatriotBob]

The known issues list is your friend man. I never write stuff like that just for fun :)

Sorry boss, I'll stop reading those at 3 am and save those for when I'm a little more cognitive. :/

[FlowerChild]

It's around 10k iirc - but hey, it's minmus. You may as well land for a third goo.

Errrr...dude, that's still MUCH harder than just an orbit and return. Even though the low gravity makes it way easier than most, I wouldn't recommend any landing, especially a landing and return, as just a trivial thing to tag onto a mission :)

I'll reemphasize my earlier point that if anyone is having trouble completing missions, trying not to do so much on a single one makes things much much easier. I almost always break up my missions into separate orbit, orbit and return, landing, and landing and return ones.

Also, I think low orbit around Minmus is actually closer to the 20Km mark than 10Km. You have to be careful with it, as I think it has more prominent mountains than the Mun, which you can wind up colliding with if you orbit too low.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Two things i want to mention here:

1. The above design seems a bit overkill in my opinion, the keel haul can lift up to 2 orange tanks AND a decent sized payload, resulting in a considerably better efficiency for the first stage if you simply upped the bottom stage, although considering the size of the payload above it I'm not certain how well that would really work. But regardless, it looks very top heavy, and it's important to remember that any wobble caused by that top heaviness gets its energy from your thrust, and so you're losing decent amounts of thrust if that happens, or maybe I'm just OCD.

2. Should tech jumping be a normal part of the gameplay progression in BTSM? I managed to make a munar landing probe with seismic scanner with only 3 of the tech level with keel haul in it (tech 4 i believe? if you consider starting level as 0) the ones i used were Heavy Rocketry, Advanced Construction, and Electrics. (as a side note, i have found that Structural Fuselages are FAR better landing legs than the actual landing legs because of their incredible impact tolerance, which doesn't feel right) as a result of this massive tech influx i was able to buy the Advanced Exploration tech (the one with the Mk 1-2 Command Pod) before i had ever purchased the Space Exploration tech (the one with the Mk 1 Command Pod) which feels really off to me

[FlowerChild]

2. Should tech jumping be a normal part of the gameplay progression in BTSM?

Read the known issues dude :)

Also, my eventual plan is to greatly increase the tech cost of nodes with each progressive level to create more of a geometric progression to it. There's a lot of wishy washy design choices in how the stock tech tree is currently organized, like the general rule that seems to be followed is that costs double with each level, but they round that down instead of up to get round numbers out of it. This leads to a lot of situations where buying at the node above your current tech level is way too cheap by comparison.

Same thing with what I mention in the known issues about requiring all parent nodes to purchase one, instead of just one as is the case many times.

But like I've frequently mentioned, modifying certain aspects of the tech tree (like parent nodes and the cost of them) is a huge pain in the ass at present, so I'm waiting on the next vanilla release in the hopes they are making these things easier to edit, as they hardly qualify as modable at present.

[TheGatesofLogic]

any comment on the matter with structural fuselages being better landing legs than the landing legs?

[FlowerChild]

any comment on the matter with structural fuselages being better landing legs than the landing legs?

Yup, was just thinking about that part. Will take a look at it because I agree that sounds off.

Thanks for that, as it's exactly the kind of feedback I'm needing.

[FlowerChild]

Just to reiterate what I put in the known issues about the above, as they don't seem to be a popular read:

If you want to play BTSM as intended, purchase *all* parent nodes for one before purchasing the child one. This is indicated by the lines that connect the various nodes. If there's a line connecting an earlier tech node to a latter one, then you'll want to purchase it first to play it as intended. That's how I've been designing it, with the eventual intention of making it a requirement once that (hopefully) becomes easier to modify.

[Stormweaver]

Errrr...dude, that's still MUCH harder than just an orbit and return. Even though the low gravity makes it way easier than most, I wouldn't recommend any landing, especially a landing and return, as just a trivial thing to tag onto a mission :)

I wouldn't say 'MUCH harder' - getting to minmus and back that early on isn't exactly trivial (you can see the trouble he's having lacking those nice big decouplers) and landing on minmus, next to everything else, kinda is.

Unless you're really hurting for fuel ofc, though iirc it takes less fuel from kerbin to orbit and escape minmus than it does the Mun, unless you overshoot.

[FlowerChild]

When you take into account all the extra things that can go wrong on a landing man, like toppling over and not being able to launch again, and you add in all the extra weight you will be carrying with your orbital experiments and such, yeah, I think it is much harder, especially for new players.

If you're quicksave spamming or whatever maybe, but if you're playing it all legit, then I personally wouldn't risk doing it all on a single launch.

I think the tendency towards trying to pack too much into single missions is a real issue for a lot of KSP players, so it's something I've been actively trying to point out as a big source of problems.

[Stormweaver]

Fair enough - landing can go horribly wrong sometimes.

It's a great place to learn how to land though, and I'd definitely recommend anyone having trouble with the Mun to go to that great big marshmallow in the sky to do a few practice runs.

[FlowerChild]

It's a great place to learn how to land though, and I'd definitely recommend anyone having trouble with the Mun to go to that great big marshmallow in the sky to do a few practice runs.

Oh, on that we can agree. I'd just say don't pack a ton of extra weight in the form of orbital experiments or expect to return on your first go and make it harder than it needs to be ;)

Those big green patches of whatever they are also make it even easier than the low gravity does, because it provides you with a perfectly flat landing surface.

It's one thing that new players don't seem to clue into very fast that extra weight makes every stage of the mission exponentially (literally) more difficult. I know I've groaned several times watching Icy finish the final touches on an otherwise good rocket design by slapping a ton of extra unneeded parts on there and then wondering what went wrong :)

[TheGatesofLogic]

yeah, as a tutorial place for landing, it's fantastic. It conveniently has large and EXTREMELY FLAT expanses of ice that ultimately make landing absolutely trivial in comparison to landing on the Mun. Whenever i land on the Mun i'm worried i'll hit a spot that looks flat when it is really just slightly skewed, fucking up all my plan, whereas when i land on minmus i simply aim for the big blue seas of ice and land perfectly straight up, not even considering the convenience of minmus' gravity for landing maneuvers

[FlowerChild]

Whenever i land on the Mun i'm worried i'll hit a spot that looks flat when it is really just slightly skewed

I've found aiming for the center of craters on the Mun to be extremely useful in that regard. They're usually perfectly flat (the precise center that is...the further out you are the more of an incline you'll obviously face), and make excellent target markers when adjusting your trajectory to boot.

[Whisp]

While I'm still a bit away from the planetary exploration phase (tech level 4 partially unlocked), I just wanted to say how much I love this mod!
While I really liked vanilla KSP, playing it mostly consisted of trial and error or copying the designs of others without understanding them.
BTSM quickly put this to an end, thanks to the restricted parts it became easier to understand the workings of KSP and identify the reasons of failure instead of the previous "it didn't work, let's fiddle around a bit and try again".

So here I am, just having reached a stable polar orbit around mun, with 0.29 monopropellant, 9.27 liquid fuel and enough battery for about 9 gravioli scans left and I'm proud of my achievement as I never was before in vanilla. :)

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I especially love the way I achieved the polar orbit. Thanks to accidentally having a slightly tilted orbit around kerbin, I noticed in the maneuver planning, that mun would directly suck me into a polar orbit. Definitely gonna remember that for the future. :)

So thanks FlowerChild for using your gift to make us these gifts!