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[Almighty]

Scott Manley to the rescue!

In short, tilt slightly almost immediately after takeoff, follow the prograde marker, aiming to be at ~45 degrees at 10 km up. Once you break 70km apoapsis, kill the engines and circularize as normal. Do not point your ship much outside of the prograde marker or it's easy to spin out of control. It's actually easier to get into space now than before since it's ~1000 less dV, you just have to unlearn some old habits.

Nice that video should help and yeah it looks like my problem is some bad habits. I was starting the gravity turn too late or going too aggressively and losing control. Thanks for the link.

 

[gutterboy44]

SweetFX works perfectly fine with 1.0. I definitely recommend using it. Much nicer AA than the in game.

http://sweetfx.thelazy.net/?p=137

 

[Diablohead]

Agreed , HUGE performance improvements for me as well

Loading improvents on my end also, used to have 10+ seconds of the game freezing every time I went to the runway but now it's rather smooth and a lot quicker.

Aero effects can really strain the gpu so I have mine down a notch or two, really helps with my old hardware.

 

[ElFly]

The orbit one I'm pretty sure requires a stable orbit, so you need a periapsis above 70km.

For the booster one, did you activate it through staging? I don't think just right clicking on the engine and choosing "Activate" works, I think you need to hit spacebar to start them to get the contract.

Aaah, that must be it, yeah, my orbit was barely 53km on the peri.

But I did activate the boosters through the staging. I think I had another rocket in that same stage so maybe that was it.

Will try again.

 

[Mengy]

Finally got a Kerbal of mine on the Mun tonight:

I like this lander and rocket design. I still had fuel leftover when I entered Kerbin's atmosphere on the return trip. Had to dump the lower module before it exploded on me during re-entry, stored all of my experiments and data in the capsule beforehand.

Tomorrow night I'll do a few more Mun trips landing in various places collecting more science, and then it will be time to head out for Minmus....

 

[ElFly]

Finally got enough science for planes. I am going bankrupt here! Been taking advantage from space tourism but it is barely enough to keep me afloat.

Any idea about how to get more easily to the zones designated for sightseeing in the contracts? The orbital map is too small, I am left flying around in circles trying to find the area. I switched the navball to surface but I think I made it worse.

Finally got a Kerbal of mine on the Mun tonight:

I like this lander and rocket design. I still had fuel leftover when I entered Kerbin's atmosphere on the return trip. Had to dump the lower module before it exploded on me during re-entry, stored all of my experiments and data in the capsule beforehand.

Tomorrow night I'll do a few more Mun trips landing in various places collecting more science, and then it will be time to head out for Minmus....

woop woop.

Yeah, as long as you have some fuel, you can come back from the mun, at least in the small ships. Not that having too much fuel was ever a problem for me in old sandbox mode.

 

[gutterboy44]

Good up Mengy getting to the Mun. I just did a fly by in my career. Even though I know I can do a Mun landing and return with my current parts, I want to keep my missions semi clean since I have had plenty of "kerbal-esque" Mun missions in the past, so I am waiting for one or two more node unlocks.

Oh, scrap what I said about Sweetfx having no issues. It works, but it will disable edge highlighting, which I really like in the VAB and SPH. So much easier to configure your stages with the parts edge highlighting.

For a game I have 200 hours in, I am so happy to just take my time and enjoy 1.0. I am finding a new appreciation for so many little things. The new aero model makes launches so much more engaging. Keeping your heading in line with your velocity vector in the lower atmosphere is its own mini game. I didn't expect something as routine as launching to orbit to be renewed as much as it has in 1.0. I just assumed only re-entry and space planes would be different. It feels much better balancing your rocket against the drag now. No more ridiculously aggressive launch profiles.

 

[Almighty]

Well thanks to that video and some new tech I can now orbit no problem. Now it is just a matter of doing a few orbits of Mun for science and I should be able to attempt my first Mun landing in the next few days. Normally I skip the Mun and go straight to Minmus, but the missions are all pushing me towards the Mun first and the mountain of cash they are offering is too good to turn down.

 

[Mengy]

For a game I have 200 hours in, I am so happy to just take my time and enjoy 1.0. I am finding a new appreciation for so many little things.

Yeah, I'm having a blast with 1.0 too. I'd not really played much with the missions before, most of my game hours were before they were added, but I'm really liking the whole mission-career structure. And browsing the tech tree last night I see shit like ore drills and planet scanners up there, I've never even seen any of that before. So many new parts and components to mess with. Heck I've never even landed on an asteroid yet even after that big asteroid update.

Yeah, KSP will be keeping me busy for a long time, lol.

 

[Xe4]

Amazing OP. Bought the game, love the hell out of it, and have no time to play it (YAY!).

Spoiler

God damn you Physics degree why do you have to be so damn hard and time consuming.... : (

 

[gutterboy44]

Amazing OP. Bought the game, love the hell out of it, and have no time to play it (YAY!).

Spoiler

God damn you Physics degree why do you have to be so damn hard and time consuming.... : (

Thanks. Glad you are enjoying the game.


A tip for anyone who hasn't done rescue missions yet in career mode, you don't need to wait until you unlock all of the RCS control systems or docking ports. All you need is an open seat on your craft (you can always double stack Mk1 capsules) After that, you perform a normal rendezvous and once you get close enough, kill off your speed and then you can switch over to the kerbal in need of rescue using [ and ] EVA them out of their capsule, then just turn on their jetpack (R by default) and fly over to your ship and jump in. The closer you are the easier it is, but you can fly rather far with the jetpacks so it is good way to get the hang of rendezvous before you need to actually dock to something. Keep the final stage of your ship small as you will need to rotate it between prograde and retrograde quickly since you have no RCS retro thrusters.

 

[Dougald]

Gave this a quick go last night in career mode, screwed up a bunch of launches due to the bad habits I had from the old physics model.

Managed to get Jeb into a stable orbit and back and then quit the game. It's still basically the same, though I'm now legally obligated to play until I've done a return mission to Duna (which is where I seem to stop playing the game after every major patch)

How does the new stuff affect SSTOs?

 

[Mengy]

Gave this a quick go last night in career mode, screwed up a bunch of launches due to the bad habits I had from the old physics model.

Managed to get Jeb into a stable orbit and back and then quit the game. It's still basically the same, though I'm now legally obligated to play until I've done a return mission to Duna (which is where I seem to stop playing the game after every major patch)

How does the new stuff affect SSTOs?

Re-entry heat makes SSTO's much more of a challenge, but the new aero model makes it easier for them to get into orbit. Many great new parts to build them with though. I suck at plane building in KSP, I made a quick small plane a few nights ago and managed to fly it around and even land but it wasn't easy to fly nor a pretty landing.

 

[Mr Swine]

Wow, it took me nearly 20-30 tries before managing to get out of kerbin and now heading to the mun!

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Last night, I managed to put a science lab in orbit around Minimus along with a science lander that has all the experiments I've unlocked so far on it. It wasn't until after I landed, gathered the science, and took off again to dock with the lab that I realized I had forgotten to put RCS on either ship. "No worries," I thought, "I'll just EVA the experiments over." It was then that I discovered that because there wasn't a command pod attached to the science lab, it was completely nonfunctional. So heck if I didn't dock the ships. One if them completely uncontrolled, the other controlled only with 3 LV-909s and the docking port facing the same direction as the thrusters. I think that might be the single most impressive and satisfying thing I've done in this game.

Needless to say, that ship is going to stay docked and I have since designed a new one that will be joining it in orbit the next chance I have to play.

 

[MikeDip]

Last night, I managed to put a science lab in orbit around Minimus along with a science lander that has all the experiments I've unlocked so far on it. It wasn't until after I landed, gathered the science, and took off again to dock with the lab that I realized I had forgotten to put RCS on either ship. "No worries," I thought, "I'll just EVA the experiments over." It was then that I discovered that because there wasn't a command pod attached to the science lab, it was completely nonfunctional. So heck if I didn't dock the ships. One if them completely uncontrolled, the other controlled only with 3 LV-909s and the docking port facing the same direction as the thrusters. I think that might be the single most impressive and satisfying thing I've done in this game.

Needless to say, that ship is going to stay docked and I have since designed a new one that will be joining it in orbit the next chance I have to play.

Jesus that sounds so damn cool. Nice job.

 

[Mengy]

Last night, I managed to put a science lab in orbit around Minimus along with a science lander that has all the experiments I've unlocked so far on it. It wasn't until after I landed, gathered the science, and took off again to dock with the lab that I realized I had forgotten to put RCS on either ship. "No worries," I thought, "I'll just EVA the experiments over." It was then that I discovered that because there wasn't a command pod attached to the science lab, it was completely nonfunctional. So heck if I didn't dock the ships. One if them completely uncontrolled, the other controlled only with 3 LV-909s and the docking port facing the same direction as the thrusters. I think that might be the single most impressive and satisfying thing I've done in this game.

Needless to say, that ship is going to stay docked and I have since designed a new one that will be joining it in orbit the next chance I have to play.

Yeah, I was thinking about putting a science station in orbit around the Mun actually. I've never played around making stations yet. so now would be a great time to experiment with it. I spent all of my time last night cleaning up a bunch of easy missions I had accumulated, like testing components and flying tourists around and such.

 

[JoseJX]

Any idea about how to get more easily to the zones designated for sightseeing in the contracts? The orbital map is too small, I am left flying around in circles trying to find the area. I switched the navball to surface but I think I made it worse.

I'm not sure if it's the same for the sightseeing contracts, but with the sample contracts, you can click on the icon in map mode and it will add a nav point to the navball that you can aim at.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Jesus that sounds so damn cool. Nice job.

Thanks! It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, I was thinking about putting a science station in orbit around the Mun actually. I've never played around making stations yet. so now would be a great time to experiment with it. I spent all of my time last night cleaning up a bunch of easy missions I had accumulated, like testing components and flying tourists around and such.

The new mechanics are pretty cool. Personally, I choose Minimus because you'll be repeatedly landing and taking off, which takes only a fraction of the dv on Minimus as the Mun. The savings should pretty quickly overtake the couple hundred more dv it takes to get there initially.

 

[Diablohead]

Anyone know if there's a clouds mod working with 1.0? I remember using it a while back and it really helps with that leaving orbit / flying high feeling.

 

[DrM]

Any tips on building a space plane or plane as it is - I would like to do science research with it

Also new reentry is quite a thrill, too steep angle and you will turn into nice meteor, as poor Jebediah experienced

 

[r1chard]

I've logged something like 160 hours in KSP before 1.0 (having taken a break just before they introduced career mode). Started playing again today thanks to the 1.0 update. It's quite different, and I'm not sure the trickle of science makes it that much better as a game... Maybe I just need a good cheat sheet for how to get all those elusive science points...

So I finally got a kerbal out to the Mun for a fly-by, only to discover on re-rentry at Kerbin that the command pod doesn't actually have an ablative shield on its arse. Poor Valentina, at least she got to see the Mun up close before she died her fiery, explosive death.

Also, how do I unlock maneuver nodes?

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Also, how do I unlock maneuver nodes?

Upgrade both the Tracking Station and Mission Control to level 2.

 

[Mengy]

So I finally got a kerbal out to the Mun for a fly-by, only to discover on re-rentry at Kerbin that the command pod doesn't actually have an ablative shield on its arse. Poor Valentina, at least she got to see the Mun up close before she died her fiery, explosive death.

Yeah, I discovered that the hard way too!

 

[r1chard]

Upgrade both the Tracking Station and Mission Control to level 2.

Oh, cool. I'm pretty sure I have the cash for that (I don't spend much, which is probably why I'm asking this question

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Any tips on building a space plane or plane as it is - I would like to do science research with it

This thread on the official forums, despite the title and first post, contains a lot of very cool SSTO space planes that work in 1.0, including at least one that can handle >100 ton payloads. There's also some craft files in there. Might give you some ideas. I know I'm planning on grabbing some of the files to experiment with in sandbox to try to get a better understanding of how and why they work.

 

[gutterboy44]

Last night, I managed to put a science lab in orbit around Minimus along with a science lander that has all the experiments I've unlocked so far on it. It wasn't until after I landed, gathered the science, and took off again to dock with the lab that I realized I had forgotten to put RCS on either ship. "No worries," I thought, "I'll just EVA the experiments over." It was then that I discovered that because there wasn't a command pod attached to the science lab, it was completely nonfunctional. So heck if I didn't dock the ships. One if them completely uncontrolled, the other controlled only with 3 LV-909s and the docking port facing the same direction as the thrusters. I think that might be the single most impressive and satisfying thing I've done in this game.

Needless to say, that ship is going to stay docked and I have since designed a new one that will be joining it in orbit the next chance I have to play.

That sounds awesome. I absolutely love when something goes wrong, or you just forgot to add a part to your ship and everything seems done for, but you can do some crazy shit to Kerbal your way out of it.

Damn, you really do hit a science wall at the 45 science nodes mark. Now that all of the next ones are 90, and I would prefer to have one or two of them for a fancy Mun mission, I guess I need to just fly to the Mun and do a bunch of oribtal EVAs. The available contracts are only giving me less than 10 science per contract and the administration building does fuck all. I have both the rep to science and funds to science at 5% each and it almost never yields even 1 additional point of science. I feel like they are poorly explained in the game. I guess I have to commit more to them? So expensive to trash a strategies, and have to re buy it at the higher commitment level just to see how it works out for you.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

That sounds awesome. I absolutely love when something goes wrong, or you just forgot to add a part to your ship and everything seems done for, but you can do some crazy shit to Kerbal your way out of it.

Damn, you really do hit a science wall at the 45 science nodes mark. Now that all of the next ones are 90, and I would prefer to have one or two of them for a fancy Mun mission, I guess I need to just fly to the Mun and do a bunch of oribtal EVAs. The available contracts are only giving me less than 10 science per contract and the administration building does fuck all. I have both the rep to science and funds to science at 5% each and it almost never yields even 1 additional point of science. I feel like they are poorly explained in the game. I guess I have to commit more to them? So expensive to trash a strategies, and have to re buy it at the higher commitment level just to see how it works out for you.

Minimus gives better science and is, in my opinion, a lot easier to deal with because of the low gravity. Also, apparently you can hold multiple surface samples in a single MK1 pod? I don't know if it's always been that way, or if it's a bug, or what, but I used that along with three goo canisters to gather data from three biomes in one go and brought back ~1100 science in one go.

The admin building, in my limited experience, is petty much worthless below 25%, and really only starts to become actually useful at 50% after upgrading. Of course, that was .90, and I'm pretty sure they've changed some of the ratios, so my experience might not hold true anymore.

 

[gutterboy44]

Minimus gives better science and is, in my opinion, a lot easier to deal with because of the low gravity. Also, apparently you can hold multiple surface samples in a single MK1 pod? I don't know if it's always been that way, or if it's a bug, or what, but I used that along with three goo canisters to gather data from three biomes in one go and brought back ~1100 science in one go.

The admin building, in my limited experience, is petty much worthless below 25%, and really only starts to become actually useful at 50% after upgrading. Of course, that was .90, and I'm pretty sure they've changed some of the ratios, so my experience might not hold true anymore.

Yeah, I need to just go science crazy on Mun and Minmus. I am wasting my time around Kerbin, but as soon as I see rescue missions or simple part testing contracts, I am like, "oh I can do that real quick" At least rescue missions yield a free kerbalnaut.

 

[Kinthalis]

What's going on, I'm sucking now!

I've unlocked the first three techs in the tech tree, and I can't build somehting that end up enough fuel for establishing an orbit.

Anyone care to share their ealry career mode designs and strategies for getting into orbit?

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Yeah, I need to just go science crazy on Mun and Minmus. I am wasting my time around Kerbin, but as soon as I see rescue missions or simple part testing contracts, I am like, "oh I can do that real quick" At least rescue missions yield a free kerbalnaut.

And some of the redbird ones are really skilled! I would have had a level 3 pilot from one if I hasn't accidentally smashed her into the ground at 200 m/s...

What's going on, I'm sucking now!

I've unlocked the first three techs in the tech tree, and I can't build somehting that end up enough fuel for establishing an orbit.

Anyone care to share their ealry career mode designs and strategies for getting into orbit?

Get the LV-909 ASAP. A rocket with an LV-T45 and three (maybe four?) FL-T200s in the first stage and an LV-909 and an FL-T200 in the second stage can achieve orbit, if I'm remembering correctly. Also, make sure you're following the property launch profile. It has changed substantially since .90. I gave a brief rundown of it a could dozen posts back, and I believe there's a link to Scott Manley's instructional video in the OP.

 

[gutterboy44]

^ What he said. I was not aware of the launch profile change for several of my early orbit missions. Since re-learning it after watching this Scott Manley video I was able to take those same early rockets I struggled to get in to stable orbit, and easily reach a stable 100Km orbit with fuel to spare. And yeah, the "Terrier" engine is a must for final stage efficiency.

Edit: Oh yeah, saw this linked on KSP's Facebook page earlier. Pic is from NASA's Facebook page.

 

[Mengy]

Minimus gives better science and is, in my opinion, a lot easier to deal with because of the low gravity. Also, apparently you can hold multiple surface samples in a single MK1 pod? I don't know if it's always been that way, or if it's a bug, or what, but I used that along with three goo canisters to gather data from three biomes in one go and brought back ~1100 science in one go.

Damn, you had a good flight there! I did a Mun landing last night where I came back with about 550 science in one shot. I'm up to the 160 tech tier now with a few of them opened.

I always like exploring Mun first, then Minmus. After the Mun it's like a nice relaxing and easy job to run around Minmus! I'm going to milk Kerbin's moons for as much science as I can as quickly as I can because I want to visit Duna for my first time ever.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Damn, you had a good flight there! I did a Mun landing last night where I came back with about 550 science in one shot. I'm up to the 160 tech tier now with a few of them opened.

I always like exploring Mun first, then Minmus. After the Mun it's like a nice relaxing and easy job to run around Minmus! I'm going to milk Kerbin's moons for as much science as I can as quickly as I can because I want to visit Duna for my first time ever.

Yeah, I always go Mun first because tradition, but Minimus is my go-to mid-game science farm. I'll start farming the Mun once I figure out how to build a decent science rover. Anyone have any examples they'd like to share?

 

[gutterboy44]

Patch 1.0.1 is up!

Bug Fixes and Tweaks:

Thermal:
* Temperature gauge system.
* Vessels which are splashed will now have much higher convective coefficients making them cool to ambient temperature faster.
* Removed node size from being taken into account for stack occlusion. Added custom drag cubes for remaining hollow parts.
* Parachute heating/burning.
* Fix for bug in FI dealing with unpacking vessels at analytic warp (>=1000) rates.
* Fixed conduction on service bays. Added Module Conduction Modifier to help service bays not incinerate their contents & configs updated
* Updated emissivity for spaceplane configs.
* Lowered heat production on LV-N.

Resources:
* Replaced overheat mechanic of the ISRU and drills with a skill-based mechanic.
* Removed Overheat Throttle mechanic.
* Increased mass of Ore tanks to match wet/dry ratio of stock tanks.
* Aerodynamics
* New values for physics global drag and lift multipliers.
* Added a CoP offset calculation to procedural fairings
* Fix for the aero debug drag arrows switching directions. Added body lift arrows (cyan)
* Fixed occlusion on mk2 docking port.
* Fix for Laythe's atmosphere.

Solar Panels:
* Solar panels now use the proper inv square from FI's solar flux.
* Removed obsolete power curves from solar panels.
* Rebalanced solar panels against each other.

Career:
* Doing science at the flagPOLe, the north POLe, or the south POLe, will no longer mark Pol as visited with the progress tracker.
* Science contracts and science World Firsts can no longer be triggered with science gained by reverse engineering recovered vessels. You have to transmit or recover an actual experiment.
* Ensured that if a grand tour contract includes Kerbin, that Kerbin is chosen as the final stop on the tour.
* Capped amount of recovery contracts that can generate, but increased caps on station and base to increase contract variety.
* Fixed "On Wheels" optional side objective not triggering on outposts when utilizing the new fixed landing gears.
* ISRU contracts round their capacities up, to handle cases where the player brings exactly enough resource capacity.
* Use the word "spaceflight" instead of "flight" when appropriate, to prevent player mistaking certain things for atmospheric flight.
* If the game cannot find an agent listed in the save file, it will pick a random agent.
* Remove some debug information from survey waypoint generation.

Parts:
* Added Tier 0 rocket fin.
* Added RescaleFactor to the RT-5 (preventing a potential regression bug).
* Removed the allowstack option from the NBS and orbital scanners to fix a bug if they were used as the root part.
* Fixed an issue where the physicsSignificance flag was set to 1 for heat shields.
* Added an option to clamp the lower bound of the deploy pressure of parachutes.
* Adjusted parachutes to open at a slightly higher atmospheric pressure.
* Fixed fairings not initializing their masses in flight properly.
* Added module info section for fairings.
* Rebalanced engine entry costs.

Miscellaneous:
* Moved all Part Loader part info code into a separate method which is run after drag cubes are loaded/created. Thus modules can access the part’s drag cube information in their info.
* MapSO and CBAttributeMapSO methods made virtual and member variables protected.
* Made physics-less part mass effect KB mass value.
* Zero part count vessels will not be run through Flight Integrator.
* Increased mass on some wings.
* Fixed a nullref being caused when clicking between vessels and empty space in map view.
* Vessels that blow up in atmosphere properly kill off their crew members.
* Added Part temperature gauges/highlighting (toggle with F10).
* Part temperature overlay can now be toggled with F11
* Part aerodynamic forces overlay can now be toggled with F12

 

[Megasoum]

Holy shit that score!

http://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-review/

Spoiler

96!!

 

[Woorloog]

Holy shit that score!

http://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-review/

Spoiler

96!!

Isn't that incredibly high score from PC gamer?

 

[Megasoum]

Isn't that incredibly high score from PC gamer?

One of their highest ever according to Twitter

 

[Mengy]

Holy shit that score!

http://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-review/

Spoiler

96!!

KSP deserves it, they've done a great job with this game.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

Patch 1.0.1 is up!

Dang, that's quite the list! Looking forward to playing when I get home even more!

Holy shit that score!

http://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-review/

Spoiler

96!!

Awesome. It absolutely deserves it. Few games do what they intend to do as well as KSP.

 

[DrM]

They really should invest some funds into more servers for updates

 

[gutterboy44]

That PC Gamer review is dead on. So happy to see it get all of the praise it has long deserved. The last paragraph gave me goosebumps.

It's a reminder: we did that. On the back of science, yearning and, yes, a nearly apocalyptic competition between two superpowers, we strapped people into giant combustible machines and shot them out of our planet. We did that, and it was amazing. Kerbal Space Program is a brilliant game for a lot of reasons. It's brilliant because of the robust simulation, because of the satisfying design tools, because of the variety and options, and because of the spectacular community that has generated hundreds of mods, guides and videos designed to help you achieve whatever you want to do. Most of all, though, it's brilliant because it holds a mirror up to one of humanity's greatest achievements, and only does so when you have the greatest possible appreciation for the skill, dedication and courage involved. It's a rare and wonderful game, and deserves the strongest possible recommendation.

Edit: Updated OP. Section 7, is now Helpful Links & Misc. I wanted to make a space for some notable reviews. That PC Gamer review perfectly captures so much of what I love about KSP.

 

[ElFly]

There was just an update, 1.0.2.

Cannot find what it did tho, but I assume it was a quick fix for something in 1.0.1, since it was so quick.

Wonder if Kerbal Engineer works. Tired of having to switch to the map to check my apoapsis.

 

[Woorloog]

Wonder what i'm doing wrong, took quite a bit of research and time to get to proper orbit. And even now i keep running out of damn fuel before i can do everything i need to (namely 2.500 m/s speed and enough fuel for deceleration). Probably should just add additional fuel tank to the uppermost stage?


My current "S-1" rocket looks like this, from bottom up, - for indicating stage separation:

(Thumper) - (Reliant /w 2xFL-T400 and a quad-set of winglets) - (Terrier /w FL-T400) - (Mk1 Command Pod /w heat shield, 2xGoo and a parachute)

Not sure if the winglets are any use actually, i added them because i figured they'd help with the stability (early prototypes had serious issues with activating the Reliant stage).
Will remove them for the next attempt and add a small fuel tank for the uppermost stage.

EDIT The tech tree sucks.

EDIT Absolutely need some kind of wings or fins... this thing starts flipping over in the second stage without them...

 

[DrBo42]

Wonder what i'm doing wrong, took quite a bit of research and time to get to proper orbit. And even now i keep running out of damn fuel before i can do everything i need to (namely 2.500 m/s speed and enough fuel for deceleration). Probably should just add additional fuel tank to the uppermost stage?


My current "S-1" rocket looks like this, from bottom up, - for indicating stage separation:

(Thumper) - (Reliant /w 2xFL-T400 and a quad-set of winglets) - (Terrier /w FL-T400) - (Mk1 Command Pod /w heat shield, 2xGoo and a parachute)

Not sure if the winglets are any use actually, i added them because i figured they'd help with the stability (early prototypes had serious issues with activating the Reliant stage).
Will remove them for the next attempt and add a small fuel tank for the uppermost stage.

EDIT The tech tree sucks.

EDIT Absolutely need some kind of wings or fins... this thing starts flipping over in the second stage without them...

Yeah tech tree is pretty bad. New aerodynamics feel really wonky to me. Actually seem really unrealistic at times.

 

[r1chard]

"Fixed an issue where the physicsSignificance flag was set to 1 for heat shields."

Does that fix the unbalancing issues with the heat shields tipping command pods on their side?

 

[AJLma]

Having a lot of fun playing this blind. Gonna try to continue playing without looking at any tips until I hit a wall.

 

[Woorloog]

Yeah tech tree is pretty bad. New aerodynamics feel really wonky to me. Actually seem really unrealistic at times.

Far better than the previous "aerodynamics".
Not quite realistic, but good enough, IMO, though perhaps they can be tweaked still.

And my modified rocket worked.

 

[Woorloog]

"Fixed an issue where the physicsSignificance flag was set to 1 for heat shields."

Does that fix the unbalancing issues with the heat shields tipping command pods on their side?

That's what it fixes.


And never knew the Mystery Good thinks space is its home...


EDIT Wait. What. Why don't i get liquid-fuel-only tanks with "Aviation" tech? Intakes, check, jet engine, check, wings, check, wheels, check, but no LF tank. WTF?

 

[gutterboy44]

If your craft is flipping over during ascent through the lower atmosphere, you are creating too large of a difference between the direction your craft is pointing and your velocity vector. This creates a huge differential of drag across your ship and causes it to start to tumble. You really don't need wings at all, especially not for early crafts. You just have to carefully move your heading to stay within or close to your velocity vector (pro grade marker) and not pitch too aggressively until you are at much higher in the atmosphere. Once you are at 20Km, you can start to be more aggressive if you are too shallow or too steep on your launch profile.

The new aero is so much better. Makes launches a challenge again.

Edit: Fins are fine, but you can launch a wide range of craft without fins as long as you are careful with your launch profile.
Edit: As of 1.0.2, fins tend to be needed much more often after they tweaked some things with the aero.