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[gutterboy44]

And that's the problem that mrklaw is having: the ship you get in the docking tutorial only has one set of four RCS thrusters on it. I noticed the exact same thing. WASD turns you just fine, but IJKL doesn't strictly translate. I try to use J to translate left, and yes, the craft does go generally left, but it also starts yawing right, since the RCS thrusters are pushing the rear of the craf to the left.

I've yet to actually build a craft with RCS thrusters myself, and I've only done docking in the tutorial, but I've noticed several problems with the docking tutorial that seem to make it overly difficult:

- They don't give you enough liquid fuel. Even many attempts at doing the docking tutorial (succeeded twice, woohoo!), I'm practically completely out of liquid fuel by the time I get to the actual docking stage. This leaves you with very little room for error when it comes to the initial burns. I get that they're trying to teach you to be efficient, but given that the tutorials are most likely to be used by people new to the game, a little leeway would be nice.

- From what I've messed around with the camera settings, the "Chase" setting that the tutorial recommends isn't really optimal for docking. I find the "Locked" one to be far, far more useful, since it stays stuck where you left it, relative to your ship. This means I can just lock the camera directly behind me, so I at least get a good idea if I'm heading in the right direction.

- The tutorial text also doesn't explain what the "control from here" option does. I've tried docking once with and without it, and I can't really notice a difference.

- This isn't a problem with the tutorial per se, but the docking mode does seem fairly useless, if not downright counterproductive. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that all the docking mode really does is map WASD to the same function that IJKL does in non-docking mode, correct? If so, why bother having docking mode in the first place? You're losing any capability for attitude control, with no upside. I was hoping that it'd give me some sort of "first person" mode for the docking. I'm already dreading any future attempts I'm going to be making of trying to dock larger ships, since the ship itself with be obscuring my view of the docking port.

Are you keeping SAS enabled while docking? That helps small ships with imbalanced RCS help fight the yaw when trying to translate. It doesn't make it perfect but it helps. That seems really stupid that they didn't use balanced RCS in their tutorial ship.

 

[Vlad]

When the docking port is on the front of your ship, it makes no difference. What it does is redefine what directions "forward", " back", "left", etc. are based on the direction the docking port is facing. That way, if the docking port is on the side or back of your ship, you don't constantly have to correct for it "I want to go forward, which means I need to hit the button for left/backward/whatever." But yes, when it's on the front, like in the tutorial, it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense, thanks!

Are you keeping SAS enabled while docking? That helps small ships with imbalanced RCS help fight the yaw when trying to translate. It doesn't make it perfect but it helps. That seems really stupid that they didn't use balanced RCS in their tutorial ship.

I experimented with both, and SAS-on seemed to end up with me fighting with my ship every time I tried to boost it around. Now, this might have just been it compensating for the pitching around when translating and it probably looked exaggerated due to using the locked camera view. I'll have to try it again later and experiment a bit.

 

[gutterboy44]

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense, thanks!



I experimented with both, and SAS-on seemed to end up with me fighting with my ship every time I tried to boost it around. Now, this might have just been it compensating for the pitching around when translating and it probably looked exaggerated due to using the locked camera view. I'll have to try it again later and experiment a bit.

Typically when docking I like to first get my heading as close as possible so my docking ports are on the same plane. Once I feel like I am lined up, I lock in SAS. Then from there I only focus on the translation controls and maybe tweak my heading if I notice it is off as I get closer. The SAS is a little different in 1.0 then past version, but when I did a few dockings so far in my career it felt like it still worked to do things that way. If the RCS balance is really fucked, no amount of SAS is going to help.

 

[mrklaw]

When you're coming in close and using RCS, with the target locked on the docking port, is your ship supposed to pivot around the target? I.e. it isn't pure translation?

 

[Vlad]

When you're coming in close and using RCS, with the target locked on the docking port, is your ship supposed to pivot around the target? I.e. it isn't pure translation?

Well, I've done a little more messing around in the docking tutorial, and I can definitely confirm that the ship's RCS thrusters are really imbalanced. Here's how it works, as best as I can tell:

- Having the docking port set as a target doesn't do anything for your actual control, it just makes sure that the icon on the navball is in the right place.

- Putting the ship in docking mode (as opposed to staging mode) seems to only change the WASD controls from rotation to translation.

- IJKL and HN will always control translation, regardless of mode, so I'm finding I prefer the greater degree of control that comes from just leaving the ship in staging mode and having my left hand on WASD and the right on IJKL. This way, if anything does go weird with the rotation, I don't have to worry about switching back and forth to get my rotation controls back.

- If you have SAS turned off during the tutorial's docking segment, the ship WILL rotate when you try to translate. This is because there's only one set of four thrusters on the back end of the ship. Imagine trying to push a long object floating in water with just a single finger. If you push it in the center, it's going to move straight to the side. However, the further away from the center you push it, the more rotation will be applied. The same seems to apply for the RCS thrusters. Like Gutterboy said, SAS seems to do a good job of correcting the wonky RCS placement. I just did another run of the tutorial mission and left SAS on, and while it did end up wobbling back and forth a little bit as SAS kicked in, it did seem to stabilize things.

I also figured out a couple other things on this last docking attempt. First, when you're coming up on the intersection for the two crafts, the tutorial tells you to wait until they're about 60 km apart to start burning retrograde. Every time I try this, this puts me way, way, way too far away from the other ship once the burn is done. Sure, I end up with the low relative speed that the tutorial requires, but I'm usually like 50 km away. On the last attempt, I waited until I was about 10 km away, and ended up about 1 km away by the time the burn was done.

Also, when doing the docking, (and this might be fairly obvious, but it took me a few tries to figure out), you can do it almost entirely by navball. Once your two ships are rotated correctly relative to each other, all you have to do is cruise forward and make sure that your prograde icon overlaps with the target icon. This means, naturally, that you're headed straight for the target. I was so fixated on trying to do it by visually looking at the ships themselves that it didn't dawn on me to try it that way.

 

[r1chard]

For those looking to maximize Mun and Minmus biomes. If you want to get all of the fly over ones, just set up a polar orbit. The rotation of the moons below you will eventually expose you to all of the biomes as your orbit. It takes some time, but at least you can do it with a single orbital path. Getting all of the biome surface EVAs and surface samples... that is much more work.

What's the most efficient method of getting into a polar orbit? I've not had a chance to play around with options much.

 

[gutterboy44]

What's the most efficient method of getting into a polar orbit? I've not had a chance to play around with options much.

It is just a matter of burning normal or anti-normal at the An or Dn. Play around with the pink triangles on your maneuver nodes. This is what will allow you to shift your orbit into a polar orbit. Some times it is better to do the shift in two burns, one at the An and one at the Dn as a major normal or anti normal burn can thrown your nice stable orbit askew. There might be a more technical way to do it, but that has always worked for me.

 

[jotun?]

What's the most efficient method of getting into a polar orbit? I've not had a chance to play around with options much.

Launch in a north or south direction. It's much cheaper than trying to do a full plane change from an equatorial orbit. For a perfect polar orbit you want to actually head a little to the west as well to counteract the eastward velocity that the planet gives you to start with.

 

[mrklaw]

Launch in a north or south direction. It's much cheaper than trying to do a full plane change from an equatorial orbit. For a perfect polar orbit you want to actually head a little to the west as well to counteract the eastward velocity that the planet gives you to start with.

For Kerbin that's fine, but can you arrive at another moon/planet in a polar orbit?

 

[Crispy75]

For Kerbin that's fine, but can you arrive at another moon/planet in a polar orbit?

You have to tilt your orbit (by burning at the ascending or descending node) so that the intercept happens above or below the target world. It's very hard to get it to align exactly with the poles though, but you can at least get a steeply inclined orbit that is cheaper to convert to something strictly polar.

 

[DBT85]

For Kerbin that's fine, but can you arrive at another moon/planet in a polar orbit?

Arriving at a moon or planet in a polar orbit is easy as it requires such a small change early on in the flight. You can literally just launch from Kerbin as normal, plot a course toward the planet/moon you are after and then make a tiny little adjustment to push that above or below the body of choice. The closer you are to the body, the more energy required to make that change.

Getting it exact isn't as easy and will require something like engineer to give you the actual numbers.

EDIT:

I've just played 1.0 for the first time, spent loads of time in previous versions. I thought I'd do the docking tutorial to see how well they've done it. Its terrible IMO. Getting the ship to close ish is fine, trying to dock that unbalanced hulk as a first time learning experience is madness. Even more so with no decent docking port alignment indicator. They could easily have just had a nice small probe core with some RCS to practise with first. Much more manoeuvrable and just a world easier. Even balancing the RCS thrust properly would have helped. Baffles me why they have not done more for new players.

 

[mrklaw]

I watched a series called 'Phoenix missions' on youtube which I think heloed me get a grip with docking - just need to try it out more. There are a few different missions showing direct rendezvous from takeoff,nth rough trea,IGN with very different orbits.

http://youtu.be/y5fHnNRbKME

 

[Crispy75]

Getting some Kerbin sruvey contracts off my desk. I don't have very many plane parts at all, but this little puppy flew nicely first time off the strip. Hardly needs any runway to get airborne and maintains a nice level flight at 310m/s. I can comfortably leave it flying in the background while I browse the web.

 

[mrklaw]

How do you keep it level? That's my biggest issue with planes. Unless it's the time warp messing things up.

Also, you have retractable landing gear - isn't that part of the more advanced plane parts? I really want those and bigger wings but they cost a lot of science.

 

[Crispy75]

How do you keep it level? That's my biggest issue with planes. Unless it's the time warp messing things up.

Also, you have retractable landing gear - isn't that part of the more advanced plane parts? I really want those and bigger wings but they cost a lot of science.

They're in the 90 science point tier. The key to a stable plane is to have the centre of lift behind the centre of mass (but not too far)

 

[mrklaw]

thanks, went ahead and unlocked them, and the delta wings. Have most of the 90 tier unlocked now, saving up for the larger size capsule and lander stuff for a mun landing.

Just tried grabbing science from low and high kerbal orbit, but it seems like only EVA at low orbit cares about biomes? Did a polar orbit and got EVA reports from everywhere except badlands, but the normal crew reports and equipment like the science jr and thermometer etc just say 'in space'.

So do I have to do atmosphere flybys to get temp/pressure/science jr readings for biomes? And then land for a ground EVA+sample?



Edit: going to do mun and minmus next I think. Just going to go to the pole and tundra first. I have kerbal on in the background, and my ipad is showing a trace of the altitude so I can keep an eye on it just in case.

 

[DBT85]

If you have the manoeuvre nodes available, just go to Minmus. It's actually much easier since the gravity is less. You can hop between biomes quite easily and get a ton of science too.

 

[Mengy]

So yeah, I've been playing the shit out of KSP this past week.


I've been doing a bunch of Mun landings gathering science with a rocket I have designed, a small capsule single Kerbal lander. And I've learned that doing rescue missions is a fantastic way to recruit more Kerbalnauts for free! So I've been rescuing stranded Kerbals every chance I get, I now have a small army of Kerbalnauts, like 5 pilots, 6 scientists, and 4 engineers, and I've not paid for any of them!

But now I have to get them all trained up, so I decided it was time to design a new rocket, a bigger rocket and Mun lander that can take 3 Kerbals at a time and bring them all home. This is the new Pike MkI:

It does the job but just barely, my return trip to Kerbin depends on atmospheric braking in order to land successfully, there isn't enough delta V to circularize and any mistake bounces the Kerbals off the atmosphere and into space forever with no fuel left. But, it can do the job, and I've now done several Mun landings with 3 Kerbals at a time!

Then, I got two missions at the same time to put space stations in orbit of both Kerbin and the Mun. Until this week I'd never made a space station in KSP before, nor had I ever successfully docked any ships at all. (I'd been doing the rescue missions simply by flying very close and EVA'ing the stranded Kerbals over to a drone controlled pod). I figured it was time to venture into unknown Kerbal territory for me. My goal was to first get a science station into orbit around Kerbin and then fly it over into a Mun orbit, thereby fulfilling both contracts. Seemed like a worthy goal and challenge!

So I played around designing a station and rocket that could get itself into Kerbin orbit, and thus the Dolphin MkI was born:

It was my first time using fairings too, took me awhile to figure it out but man are they awesome. So the Dolphin got my station into orbit around Kerbin easily enough, it was really fairly simple, so the first contract got completed in no time at all. NOW though, I had a station in Kerbin orbit with no fuel nor engines on it (I had used up the motor stage trying to push the station into a high orbit, thus I ditched it). My next job was to get essentially a large fuel tank with a poodle engine docked to the station that could push it over into a Mun orbit.

So I used a variant of my Pike rocket which had enough delta V to get the full tanks up into orbit, I then saved my game, and THEN I spent literally two nights trying to dock that thing with my science station. Docking is tricky, docking is hard, I had terrible disasters which were thankfully rolled back through the wonders of "load game". But, in time, I figured it out, and eventually I had my station with an almost full fuel tank and engine:

Which, after this, I easily transferred the whole thing over to a Mun orbit, thereby competing the second station contract. I've since done several Mun landings to collect science and then docked with the station on the way back to Kerbin in order to store the data on the station for processing. I'm actually getting quite good at docking now, it's complicated but practice does make it much easier once you know how it's done. And I'm probably not doing it the best way either, but it's working for me.

Every time I dock a lander to the station though I have to transfer a bit of fuel from the station to the lander in order to get it back home to Kerbin, I burn too much fuel simply docking. In a few more trips my station's tanks will be empty, so I'm going to have to figure out a refueling mission of some kind. Science processing takes a long time, I mean even with 3 scientists on my station it takes like 150 days to get a full 500 science transmitted. But, man does it give you tons of science. I'm up into the 300 and 550 tech tree tiers and I've not even been to Minmus yet!

Speaking of which, Minmus is my next target, probably tonight actually. I still have a few Mun landings I want to do but I may just save them for later while my station slowly processes what it has already. I've got a few Minmus contracts saved up and I think it's time I set my sights on the green planetoid.

 

[mrklaw]

Mengy, how does science processing work? Does it give you effectively unlimited science, just bound by time? I thought there were limits based on biomes so you could scoop up most of the mun/minmus science in a few trips?

 

[Mengy]

Mengy, how does science processing work? Does it give you effectively unlimited science, just bound by time? I thought there were limits based on biomes so you could scoop up most of the mun/minmus science in a few trips?

No it's not unlimited, but processing a data item in the lab seems to grant you about 3-4 times more science than simply returning the observation back to the flight center. I think it varies due to a bunch of variables too, but for me it's netting about 3-4 times more science. The downside is that it takes a long time, much longer. Still it's cool, because I just run other missions and stuff and check back on the lab now and then. I've also run the map screen at high time acceleration a few times to get a full transfer of science data from the lab.

I like it, it's a fun mechanic. Makes me plan a stop at the Mun Station on the way home of every Munar landing.

 

[Borman]

I finally landed on the Mun after months of off-and-on playing. I was demonstrating the game for a class so I was surprised to say the least. Well, really, it wasn't a landing so much as crashing into the surface. But I had to start somewhere hah.

 

[mrklaw]

Man, nearly 2 hours to fly to the Tundra and Ice caps for a measly 53.9 science. Think I'm done with Kerbin for now. Will either practice docking with some rescues, or do some orbiting around mun/minmus.

Thinking to try to take 2 guys up so a scientist can reset the science jr and various instruments. Just unlocked the science lab too. Mk2 capsule will need to wait a little longer



Getting confused by what science you can do where. Is there a list of what science is per biome, and what is per body? When landed, it seems like EVA and all instruments have a per biome reading, but when flying low/high or in orbit low/high, several instruments seem to give just one reading. Would be good to know so I don't waste time doing high polar orbits around kerbin again

 

[mrklaw]

arse. Just did a 3 hour flight to the other side of the planet for a contract, touched down on the surface at the badlands and the game crashed. I had a quicksave but it looks like those don't survive restarting the game so I'm back on the runway :<

 

[Samus4145]

I must be bad at the game. Spent an entire day reaching orbit, and around the 3rd set of science upgrades. I seem to not be able to advance any further than that.

 

[DBT85]

Getting confused by what science you can do where. Is there a list of what science is per biome, and what is per body? When landed, it seems like EVA and all instruments have a per biome reading, but when flying low/high or in orbit low/high, several instruments seem to give just one reading. Would be good to know so I don't waste time doing high polar orbits around kerbin again

There used to be a mod that basically popped up whenever new science was available to you. Can't remember the name. Also gave you buttons to click to collect each rather than rotating the ship around and trying to find the bloody thermometer or whatever.

If you can get a Kerbal to orbit Mun, do that and do a bunch of EVAs above the various biomes. Huge science and no need to land anywhere.

I must be bad at the game. Spent an entire day reaching orbit, and around the 3rd set of science upgrades. I seem to not be able to advance any further than that.

Have you taken some time to watch someone like Scott Manley on YouTube? You can learn a huge amount in a short time which will really help.

 

[Samus4145]

Have you taken some time to watch someone like Scott Manley on YouTube? You can learn a huge amount in a short time which will really help.

Nothing heard of him before. I've tried googling how to get more science points, but I've already run dry that well as far as I can tell.

 

[mrklaw]

Nothing heard of him before. I've tried googling how to get more science points, but I've already run dry that well as far as I can tell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d74m3qThOoU&list=PLYu7z3I8tdEkUeJRCh083UT-Lq5ZIKI75


He has tons of videos, but this recent series is for beginners under the new 1.0 release. Really helpful to get started collecting science etc.

There used to be a mod that basically popped up whenever new science was available to you. Can't remember the name. Also gave you buttons to click to collect each rather than rotating the ship around and trying to find the bloody thermometer or whatever.

If you can get a Kerbal to orbit Mun, do that and do a bunch of EVAs above the various biomes. Huge science and no need to land anywhere.

found this, which I've printed off - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science#Possible_combinations_of_Activity.2C_Situation.2C_and_Biome

 

[Mengy]

So, I made a discovery this morning that surprised the hell out of me.

I had a contract to collect low altitude temperature readings on the other side of Kerbin, had it for a long time but just kept pushing it off, so I decided to get it out of the way and took one of my planes and flew it all the way across the world. After getting the readings I barely had any fuel left so I was just going to land the plane and recover it, when I saw something off in the distance. At first I thought it was just a mesh glitch or something at the base of a mountain range, but as I flew closer I realized that there was actually something there. This is what I found!!!!

There's a small little Kerbal Space Center on the opposite side of Kerbin!!!! I'm guessing it's like a tracking center or something. Since I was bingo fuel I landed at it and walked around looking at it up close.

You can't see it at all from the planet or map view. It doesn't have it's own biome or anything, and you can't interact with any of it, so it's really just eye candy for the sake of flair, but I'm tickled pink that I just happened to stumble upon this. Now I wonder if they've thrown other stuff like this all over the solar system. Probably!

I accelerated time to let the sun rise so that I could get one good pic before I recovered my plane.

 

[mrklaw]

noooo. Just spent 240k to upgrade my launchpad to support vehicles >140t, and now I can't actually afford to build the vehicle that I needed to upgrade it for. Damn.

 

[DBT85]

Can I ask what you are trying to build?

I've not played since 1.0 landed but you could get to Mun and back for like 20,000 before.

 

[mrklaw]

Can I ask what you are trying to build?

I've not played since 1.0 landed but you could get to Mun and back for like 20,000 before.

Oh I was just trying to build something using the MK2 capsule, so I was using the larg 2.5m parts - they add up quickly. Luckily the game crashed and so I got my money back, but had to redo a couple of contracts.

Just done a couple of rescue missions in kerbin orbit so I'm getting the hang of rendevousing (but not docking yet). Think next trip will be to minmus for mucho science. Then might try landing a processing module on it.

 

[mrklaw]

woop - two satellites delivered into weird Kerbin and Minmus orbits

I messed up big time on the minmus one - my Kerbin orbit was way off so I had huge inclination changes to make, and again on the minmus side. Luckily minmus has such low gravity, almost every burn was only 1-2 seconds.


edit: and I just stranded my first guys in space, and then rescued them. Almost messed it up by doing an EVA while in a decaying orbit coming to land and my kerbal bloody let go! after a couple of minute frantic rocketpack action, not helped by the capsule tumbling and then me trying to get back into the main capsule which was occupied by Jeb, I scrambled back onboard. Brought back a nice amount of science too.

Next stop will definitely be to minmus. I keep saying it but then getting distracted

 

[Crispy75]

making orbital corrections round minmus can be damned tricky, the gravity is so low! I'm taking RCS next time.

 

[Mengy]

making orbital corrections round minmus can be damned tricky, the gravity is so low! I'm taking RCS next time.

When I've needed to make very minute thrusts for course corrections, I've actually gone to the external view, right clicked on the engine, and manually set the thrust limit to as low as possible. It helps now and then. Just don't forget to set it back to 100% when you need to!

 

[Crispy75]

I killed my Jeb

Clipped the top of a minmus mountain that he swore he'd sail clear over.

 

[MacGurcules]

Finally made a Mun landing that also came back. I was having a hell of a time getting there with enough fuel to make the return trip. I've ended up short less than a hundred delta-v in prior attempts.

Finally made it not by adding more fuel or cutting weight, but by buying into the fly-by-wire hub to make nailing my transfers easier. I burned the very last of my fuel making an insertion at like 40k perikerb. Managed to land it on the second orbit.

Pretty exciting.

 

[mrklaw]

trying to plan a mobile science lab trip to minmus. It is taking a lot of rocket to get one launched and landed - I add more fuel, it needs more engine to lift it, bit of a vicious circle.

Wondering whether to just launch it to Kerbin orbit and then launch a second ship with a transfer stage and dock them for the trip.

Also not sure whether to just drop the science lab, and then send a rover with science separately to reduce overall weight. And maybe a probe with a capsule to bring the scientists back eventually.

anyone got any pics of bases they've set up on other worlds?

Finally made it not by adding more fuel or cutting weight, but by buying into the fly-by-wire hub to make nailing my transfers easier. .

what does this do?

 

[MacGurcules]

what does this do?

It basically makes whatever Kerbal you have flying your ship a maxed out Pilot. That means you can use the maneuver target lock to manage your heading and only have to worry about nailing your burn.

 

[Mengy]

So my Mun orbital science station is fucking awesome. I've done a couple of Mun landings and then transferred the data to the station for processing. Takes a long time to process but it sure does generate great amounts of science. My tech tree is filling out nicely!

So, I turned my attention to Minmus. Since the gravity is so low there compared to the Mun, I hoped that my 3-Kerbal Mun lander would also work for Minmus, and as it turned out it worked wonderfully.

My rocket got me to a stable low orbit around Minmus with almost a full fuel tank. Not only could I easily land but I also landed many times, hopping my way around Minmus collecting almost 50 science data packs!

When I got down to like 1/8 of fuel left I boosted off Minmus and plotted an atmospheric descent back onto Kerbin. Mission went beautifully, but I was not prepared for the mission briefing screen and the utter plethora of science that my bountiful exploration trip to Minmus had generated:

4797 science points!!!!!!!!!!





Yeah, suddenly my Mun science station seems a bit outdated. A few more trips like that and I'll have unlocked the entire tech tree! Which I'm fine with, because getting access to all of the parts is only one step towards my ultimate goal of planting flags on every planetary body around Kerbol.

I've got a mission to build a base on the surface of Minmus, I think that's going to be my next goal I go after.

 

[DBT85]

Yeah, you can get tons from hopping around on Minmus, same on Mun.

And if it can land on Mun and get back, it'll always get to Minmus and back. Much easier!

 

[mrklaw]

You'd get 5x that (slowly) if you dropped a processing lab on minmus. But that makes me think to just go hopping first, although I onky have the skipper engine and I could do with a little more oomph.

 

[DBT85]

Skipper should be fine on Minmus, though I don't know if the VAB now shows you your TWR or not or if you still need a mod for that.

Its best to get there and hop around in just a small ship with no extra science first just to get a nice haul. It will make returning and doing other stuff much easier as you'll have extra tools at your disposal!

Hoping to play a little in the next few days and fix my mission pack mod for SCANSat.

 

[DBT85]

Finally got a chance to play a little and update my mod.

Mission Pack for SCANSat is now updated!

11 missions to scan the bodies of the Kerbol system!

 

[mrklaw]

I just did a couple of missions to minmus - landed a mobile processing lab, and then sent a MK2 pod to bring the scientists and pilot back to level them up so they give me better science.

But now I'm almost broke - have about 150k funds left, and I had what I thought was loads before. Putting heavy stuff into space is damn expensive. Not sure I can even afford the two flights to send the kerbals back and a little science hopper

 

[Mengy]

Putting heavy stuff into space is damn expensive. Not sure I can even afford the two flights to send the kerbals back and a little science hopper

Yeah it's expensive. I've been completing lots of contracts and implemented a directive to convert rep to funds and now I've got lots of money in the bank saved up.

So I unlocked a lot of the upper tech tree and started experimenting with planet scanners. Pretty neat how they work. Made a planet scanner probe and launched a few of them into the orbits of Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.

They have to be put into polar orbits to work, but once there they allow you to see where the good mining spots are.

I've got a contract to put a surface base on Minmus, so I'm going to speed up time while my Mun Station processes science until I can buy the mining tech node, and then I'm going to attempt to put a science / mining lander on Minmus.

 

[r1chard]

Hey, so if a mission says that the base must "have a facility supporting at least six kerbals" does that mean you actually need to *send* six kerbals, 'cos that's a large chunk of my kerbal roster gone if it does...

 

[mrklaw]

So my Mun orbital science station is fucking awesome. I've done a couple of Mun landings and then transferred the data to the station for processing. Takes a long time to process but it sure does generate great amounts of science. My tech tree is filling out nicely!

So, I turned my attention to Minmus. Since the gravity is so low there compared to the Mun, I hoped that my 3-Kerbal Mun lander would also work for Minmus, and as it turned out it worked wonderfully.

Mengy, what engine did you use in your launch stage - skipper? I was having trouble getting big payloads like that to minmus, but I hadn't unlocked those fuel boosters yet so might try with your setup. Is your lander using a poodle or something smaller? And do you have a science JR. hidden in that equipment bay?

Hey, so if a mission says that the base must "have a facility supporting at least six kerbals" does that mean you actually need to *send* six kerbals, 'cos that's a large chunk of my kerbal roster gone if it does...

I don't think so. But even if it did, you could just bring them back straight after completing the mission. Post pics if you do it - I'm curious how you build a multipart base on the surface.

 

[Crispy75]

I don't think so. But even if it did, you could just bring them back straight after completing the mission. Post pics if you do it - I'm curious how you build a multipart base on the surface.

Before career mode, I did surface base assembly with a special rover, docking ports and two sets of landing legs on each module.

The rover was very flat so it could drive underneath the module to be moved. It had a docking port on top, and each base module had a corresponding port on the bottom. The two sets of landing legs on the module were at different heights, so you could retract one set and the module would settle onto the rover, docking do it.

The most important thing is to build your base on nice flat terrain. It can all go wrong very quickly if a module runs away down a hill, or ends up with its main docking port mis-aligned with its neighbour.

 

[r1chard]

I don't think so. But even if it did, you could just bring them back straight after completing the mission. Post pics if you do it - I'm curious how you build a multipart base on the surface.

Ah, so if I don't need to leave kerbals then I could just send an probe-controlled lander with enough kerbal capacity. Then I don't have to worry about a return trip.

This base doesn't have to be multipart, BTW (though I've previously done multipart bases in pre-career-mode and they're fun

The key to multipart bases is to have the wheels but also have landing struts which elevate the whole thing so the wheels aren't in contact any more, then there's no chance of rolling around.

 

[Mengy]

Mengy, what engine did you use in your launch stage - skipper? I was having trouble getting big payloads like that to minmus, but I hadn't unlocked those fuel boosters yet so might try with your setup. Is your lander using a poodle or something smaller? And do you have a science JR. hidden in that equipment bay?

That rocket has the big boosters on the side, a mainsail engine in the middle, and yeah a poodle for the final stage. Haven't found a use for the skipper engine yet. And yep, the equipment bay has lots of stuff in it:

- science Jr
- temp gauge
- barometer
- goo canister
- seismic gauge
- batt packs
- monopropellent spheres

It's a well packed little bay!

Ah, so if I don't need to leave kerbals then I could just send an probe-controlled lander with enough kerbal capacity. Then I don't have to worry about a return trip.

This base doesn't have to be multipart, BTW (though I've previously done multipart bases in pre-career-mode and they're fun

The key to multipart bases is to have the wheels but also have landing struts which elevate the whole thing so the wheels aren't in contact any more, then there's no chance of rolling around.

You don't need to leave the Kerbals there but you do need to have the required number there for at least a second or two to get the credit. I've actually designed myself a Minmus lander that will satisfy the requirements for a surface base mission I have. I have a mining drill on it so all I need to do is set her down over a good ore vein and I'll be able to fill up the fuel tanks and hop all over Minmus with my "base".