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On May 13 2014 21:04 Simberto wrote:
Yes, i had a lot of RCS on the ship. And yeah, i guess i should just get an addon for docking, because i just don't find it any fun to do that docking procedure. Spending half an hour fiddling and fiddling and trying to get 2 things to within a meter with controls that are obviously not designed for doing that is not my definition of fun. "Hm, 10 meters to far in that direction, better try to find out which direction that is for my craft by pressing random buttons as there is no way to see how the ship is orientated. Hm, now i am slowly moving in that direction. But while i aligned these axis, i am now a bit too far away again. So lets try moving forward. Hm now that axis is off. But which one is it? I turned the camera multiple times to get an idea of the 3d position of the two thing. So random button pressing again until i understand which one is which direction."
I already found the inability to speed up time during acceleration annoying. Even with full 4x speed up you sometimes have 5 minute long acceleration phases where you literally just stare at the screen doing nothing. It also makes it impossible to use Ion engines which should be clearly the thing to go to for interplanetary travel with the given stats. But even that is more fun than manually docking something.
And the thought of combining multiple parts into one spaceship in orbit just to fly someplace doesn't sound like something i want to do. I guess i'll just build even bigger launch vehicles instead. I already have a design that can land on Duna, and probably Eve, but i haven't tested that, and return to Kerbin, without any need of docking at any point. Sure, docking a lander would be cheaper then landing an interplanetary craft, but it's not like there is money in the game.
But basically, what i gathered so far is that i am indeed not missing anything, people who dock ships are just utterly insane and actually go through that procedure multiple times.
You know about docking control mode right? Just turn that on, hit space bar till you're on translation mode, and then WASD will translate you forward, back, left, and right as you'd expect, and shift and ctrl translate you up and down. This is with respect to the nav-ball, so there's no camera fiddling involved.
Docking is really not that hard. You only did it once, so of course it will seem tough to you. You have no practice.
I don't have a picture of it anymore, but I built a station in 10 construction launches, the parts had to be perfectly aligned once docked in order to work, fuelled the whole thing up in an 11th docking, docked a transfer stage to that, making 12 dockings, then landed the whole station on Minmus. The hardest part was aligning the parts where alignment mattered with no mods. I had to open solar panels, and aim the camera so I was looking at them edge-on, and when the panels were co-linear with the already attached panels, I was aligned to within less than 1 degree.
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On May 13 2014 23:49 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2014 23:16 a_flayer wrote:Good grief, I rediscovered this game after trying it once and putting it aside about 2 or 3 years ago ... After rediscovering the game 4 weeks ago, I bought it, and now I have about 300 hours invested on steam. I can't stop playing it >_> Last week I added three mods to make the experience more interesting (FAR, DRE and TAC) and I'm about to rediscover interplanetary travel. It's gonna be interesting to see if I have planned it out correctly - my Kerbals will rely on a supply mission to be sent during the next window to keep them supplied with life support, allowing them to stay near Duna for an extended period of time. Also, regarding docking, iirc this Scott Manley video explained it for me. I've gotten quite handy at it over the past few days. I try to get the ports lined up exactly at about ~300 meters while closing in at about 5.0m/sec. Even if I am off by a little bit, I can usually just turn either the ship or the station to make sure the magnets attach. RCS placement hasn't been much of an issue, but I tend to make pretty simple ships. For me the next challenge will be to bring back a spaceplane from orbit (it seems like it might be slightly troublesome with both FAR and DRE installed). If i might suggest, if you want to have fun with spaceplanes, install KAS as well. IR got updated to .23.5 as well, so that might be an option as well, especially for payload (on a hinge, good for tug-based spaceships as well). You could also look into "KSP Interstellar" for interplanetary stuff, couple of nice engines and new "economy" (need for special ressources, like anti-matter, thorium etc) - and some "speed bumps" in terms of wasteheat, stuff like that. FAR and DRE don't make it troublesome, but fun. 
When I say troublesome, I meant that I managed to build an SSTO that got into orbit with fuel to spare, but on my (so far) two attempts at a return trip the ship disintegrated. The ship seems to flop over backwards at a certain point. Maybe it's got to do with the change in fuel distribution after the ascent. I dunno, I'll figure it out. Anyway, I didn't mean troublesome in the bad kinda sense, more in the I've yet to figure it out kinda sense. XD
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Depending on what tanks you use, yeah, pump the fuel towards the nose before descending. Scott Manley had that problem in his "Interstellar" series, quite recently iirc. He pumped everything as much as he could to the front, and got manouverability back.
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On May 14 2014 01:34 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2014 23:49 m4ini wrote:On May 13 2014 23:16 a_flayer wrote:Good grief, I rediscovered this game after trying it once and putting it aside about 2 or 3 years ago ... After rediscovering the game 4 weeks ago, I bought it, and now I have about 300 hours invested on steam. I can't stop playing it >_> Last week I added three mods to make the experience more interesting (FAR, DRE and TAC) and I'm about to rediscover interplanetary travel. It's gonna be interesting to see if I have planned it out correctly - my Kerbals will rely on a supply mission to be sent during the next window to keep them supplied with life support, allowing them to stay near Duna for an extended period of time. Also, regarding docking, iirc this Scott Manley video explained it for me. I've gotten quite handy at it over the past few days. I try to get the ports lined up exactly at about ~300 meters while closing in at about 5.0m/sec. Even if I am off by a little bit, I can usually just turn either the ship or the station to make sure the magnets attach. RCS placement hasn't been much of an issue, but I tend to make pretty simple ships. For me the next challenge will be to bring back a spaceplane from orbit (it seems like it might be slightly troublesome with both FAR and DRE installed). If i might suggest, if you want to have fun with spaceplanes, install KAS as well. IR got updated to .23.5 as well, so that might be an option as well, especially for payload (on a hinge, good for tug-based spaceships as well). You could also look into "KSP Interstellar" for interplanetary stuff, couple of nice engines and new "economy" (need for special ressources, like anti-matter, thorium etc) - and some "speed bumps" in terms of wasteheat, stuff like that. FAR and DRE don't make it troublesome, but fun. When I say troublesome, I meant that I managed to build an SSTO that got into orbit with fuel to spare, but on my (so far) two attempts at a return trip the ship disintegrated. The ship seems to flop over backwards at a certain point. Maybe it's got to do with the change in fuel distribution after the ascent. I dunno, I'll figure it out. Anyway, I didn't mean troublesome in the bad kinda sense, more in the I've yet to figure it out kinda sense. XD
as you burn fuel, your center of mass will shift backwards, and at some point will pass your center of lift. Then you die.
You need to pump stuff forward as far as possible, or have the engine be detachable and just glide in on re-entry. The engine is a huge percent of your total mass once the fuel's gone, so it'll be a nightmare to maintain stability, especially pitch stability.
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
On May 13 2014 23:16 a_flayer wrote:
For me the next challenge will be to bring back a spaceplane from orbit (it seems like it might be slightly troublesome with both FAR and DRE installed).
I think hitting the runway is the toughest thing. I always under/overestimate so either I smash into the mountain or go into the ocean >_<
This is without any fuel left
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On May 14 2014 04:46 Epoxide wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2014 23:16 a_flayer wrote:
For me the next challenge will be to bring back a spaceplane from orbit (it seems like it might be slightly troublesome with both FAR and DRE installed). I think hitting the runway is the toughest thing. I always under/overestimate so either I smash into the mountain or go into the ocean >_< This is without any fuel left
Yeah, I've been thinking of a ILS landing mod or something similar that could be helpful. I generally use a rover or a planted flag to create an "extended center line" for the runway so I have a good idea of how my craft is lined up on approach and then try to make sure I'm at an altitude that I can (if I have to) make a "hot" landing by dropping my nose and then flaring out to try to hit the runway.
Of course, I did just find out that MechJeb's got an option to put some guidance on the navball under the spaceplane menu so that might make things easier in the future. (I'm not convinced the "autoland" on the menu is something I trust - it's crashed every plane I've tried to use it with.)
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On May 13 2014 23:16 a_flayer wrote:Good grief, I rediscovered this game after trying it once and putting it aside about 2 or 3 years ago ... After rediscovering the game 4 weeks ago, I bought it, and now I have about 300 hours invested on steam. I can't stop playing it >_> Last week I added three mods to make the experience more interesting (FAR, DRE and TAC) and I'm about to rediscover interplanetary travel. It's gonna be interesting to see if I have planned it out correctly - my Kerbals will rely on a supply mission to be sent during the next window to keep them supplied with life support, allowing them to stay near Duna for an extended period of time. Also, regarding docking, iirc this Scott Manley video explained it for me. I've gotten quite handy at it over the past few days. I try to get the ports lined up exactly at about ~300 meters while closing in at about 5.0m/sec. Even if I am off by a little bit, I can usually just turn either the ship or the station to make sure the magnets attach. RCS placement hasn't been much of an issue, but I tend to make pretty simple ships. For me the next challenge will be to bring back a spaceplane from orbit (it seems like it might be slightly troublesome with both FAR and DRE installed).
Regarding your docking, closing in at 5 m/s is way too fast. You might want to keep it under 2 m/s or better 1 m/s for better connection.
For SSTO, FAR intruduce the aerodynamic failure back into a mod so if you have too high dynamic pressure (aka going too fast and atmosphere is too thick), things will be torn apart. Couple with DRE that make things disintegrated, reenty can be really really difficult. The best way is to aim the ap abouve 30km and skip the atmosphere a couple of times (at least once) before going for the final landing. FAR should tell you when the dynamic pressure becomes high so try not to move your craft too quickly at that point.
And yeah also keep your fuel in the front tank 
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a few weeks ago I finally finished my Duna mission, got a bit frustrated with the game and stopped playing it as much.
Gathered a lot of Science Points and researched Nuclear Engines. Holy damn they make the game waaaaay easier. Also the other Engines with extremely powerful Thrust make launching so easy °_°
This 1 research closes 1 giant gap it feels like I entered a Cheat code or something ;D
Since then I fell in love with Planes °_° building spaceplanes and doing Science with them is incredibly fun. Launched a staged spaceplane to Minmus and came back, by sheer random luck my return path was perfectly timed and angled so I could easily land on the Runway without flying around too long. Amazing ;D
This game is one of my best Steam-investments so far.
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
Quite excited to use all the small redundant mods after the patch ^^, I haven't bothered installing the new version of Better Atmospheres because of the Texture Replacer dependency.
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I wish all devs would make 64bit versions by default nowadays, sooo much better. <3
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On June 26 2014 13:27 Epoxide wrote:Quite excited to use all the small redundant mods after the patch ^^, I haven't bothered installing the new version of Better Atmospheres because of the Texture Replacer dependency.
I haven't used any mods yet, but with a new high-end computer and 64-bit support incoming, I'm sure as that I'm going to mod this game quite a bit
On June 26 2014 13:40 r.Evo wrote:
I wish all devs would make 64bit versions by default nowadays, sooo much better. <3
Who uses 32-bit system these days?
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
On June 26 2014 13:46 WindWolf wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2014 13:27 Epoxide wrote:Quite excited to use all the small redundant mods after the patch ^^, I haven't bothered installing the new version of Better Atmospheres because of the Texture Replacer dependency. I haven't used any mods yet, but with a new high-end computer and 64-bit support incoming, I'm sure as that I'm going to mod this game quite a bit Show nested quote +On June 26 2014 13:40 r.Evo wrote:
I wish all devs would make 64bit versions by default nowadays, sooo much better. <3 Who uses 32-bit system these days?
I recently installed RemoteTech 2 after the update. It makes the game so much more fun. Satellite's finally have a purpose!
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On June 26 2014 13:46 WindWolf wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2014 13:27 Epoxide wrote:Quite excited to use all the small redundant mods after the patch ^^, I haven't bothered installing the new version of Better Atmospheres because of the Texture Replacer dependency. I haven't used any mods yet, but with a new high-end computer and 64-bit support incoming, I'm sure as that I'm going to mod this game quite a bit Show nested quote +On June 26 2014 13:40 r.Evo wrote:
I wish all devs would make 64bit versions by default nowadays, sooo much better. <3 Who uses 32-bit system these days?
Still too many. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
I remember DayZ for example specifically being like "Too many people are still on 32bit systems so we won't make the client 64bit, only the servers."
._.
e: Oh shit, didn't even see the RT2 update. Thanks!
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
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Holy shit that was worth the wait.
Modupdatespls.
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
On July 13 2014 01:25 r.Evo wrote:
Holy shit that was worth the wait.
Modupdatespls.
Did you see the reddit post on additional solar systems :D? Really excited for that with interstellar and 64-bit 
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Still super-stoked for 64-bit. Like really, what took them so long
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Canada8031 Posts
Apparently Unity had some glaring issues with 64 bit in the past? Dunno if that's true or not though.
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
On July 13 2014 02:52 Spazer wrote:
Apparently Unity had some glaring issues with 64 bit in the past? Dunno if that's true or not though.
According to the comments I've read the 64 bit version of KSP seems to be working without any major issues.
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EPT
