On April 01 2017 23:20 Cyro wrote:
Today was a particularly productive day for the Kerbal SpaceX Program!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rcO7g4z4s

sick!

Cyro

United Kingdom20295 Posts

April 03 2017 06:46 GMT

#943

Felt great, landing burn went much better than expected other than the hard touchdown (~7m/s). I'd like to fly more but half of the time i get within 200 meters of the droneship it flips out and deletes Earth so it takes a long time to get set up again after that

Broetchenholer

Germany1944 Posts

January 02 2018 23:38 GMT

#944

Hey guys, quick question, is there a simple way to parachute your first stage boosters down to get the refund? The game is dead set on making me fail in this regard, it seems enirely possible to strap chutes on a booster and have them open on seperation, which seems to work somewhat okay. However, as soon as the boosters are out of 25 km range of the second stage, they disappear. I have seen one mod that calculates if the might make it, and then simply gives you the money back, but that is kinda lame. I put probes on top of the boosters, thinking that might make them real vessels and not debris. But that did not work. I have seen some videos that somehow managed to do it, but not sure what they changed. Even if i switch to the boosters and then back to my second stage, the boosters disappear. Any tips?

felisconcolori

United States6168 Posts

January 03 2018 07:13 GMT

#945

You'd have to switch back to the boosters and land them. The 25km is render distance, and once they are out of that range if they are in atmosphere the game automatically removes them. You'd have to have you second stage ascending and heading out of atmosphere, able to ride by itself for a bit, and switch back to the boosters to land them. Once they're landed, they'll stay and you can switch away to get the second stage up and into orbit; then come back and recover them.

That works with falcon style launchers in stock - the thing is you have to stay with the boosters all the way down until they're landed, and that might not work if you have multiple boosters coming back down after separation.

Spazer

Canada8031 Posts

January 03 2018 08:42 GMT

#946

There's a way to change the physics rendering range. I think it's a mod? Just keep in mind that as you push the limits of this range, rounding errors may shift things around enough to make things go boom.

I think people have also tried putting probe cores on their boosters, but I don't remember if that works. If you can get your boosters out of the atmosphere, but on a suborbital trajectory (with a parachute pre-deployed), I think it might survive. Obviously this is silly and horribly inefficient though.

Broetchenholer

Germany1944 Posts

January 04 2018 13:15 GMT

#947

Damn, that is annoying. How does the game determine what is a valid ship an what is just a probe? If you have a mothership in space and send a probe down to Duna for example, the mothership stays in orbit, so do satellites and probes. Would the probe disappear as soon as you switch back to the mother ship as well or is that only a problem on Kerbin? I mean, the kickback booster has the mention of chute recovery in the flavor text

It's not really needed as money isn't the biggest problem in career mode anyway but it was one of the things i simply wanted...

Simberto

Germany11542 Posts

January 04 2018 14:47 GMT

#948

The problem is not the definition of the ship, but that it is in the atmosphere.

The game treats stuff in space as basically save, and assumes that something that you don't control will just burn up in the atmosphere. That is usually a good way of handling things to avoid having to track to many tiny broken parts that no one cares about, but in the specific case of landing boosters, is incorrect. Thus, you need either a mod to prevent stuff from despawning when it is to far away from you, or you need to make sure that the thing you want to land is outside of the atmosphere when you are more than 25 km away from it.

It isn't relevant if it is a ship or a probe or even debris. Stuff sticks around while it is in space or while it is within 25km of you.

nimbim

Germany984 Posts

January 04 2018 14:52 GMT

#949

The boosters are on a sub-orbital trajectory after decoupling. Once they are out of the physics range of your active vessel, the game will decide whether to remove them or not. Since they are in the atmosphere and on a sub-orbital trajectory, they will be removed.
You can notice the difference if you decouple your boosters in a (Pe) 30km-80km (Apo) orbit, the boosters will either be debris or probes, depending on the parts you've used. There is a hard cut-off here (maybe 25km on Kerbin), the vessel will be automatically "crashed" into Kerbin once it's inactive and below height x.

Broetchenholer

Germany1944 Posts

January 04 2018 16:20 GMT

#950

So, no way around a mod to get solid fuel boosters back? Got it, thanks

m4ini

4215 Posts

December 22 2018 03:49 GMT

#951

I'm not entirely certain if this is considered a necro, but 1.6 just released.

Anyone tried it? I had a "brief" break, purchased the addon/DLC yesterday for a fiver, and am currently trying to figure out why my landing gears seem to be made out of spaghettified pogosticks.

Is anyone even still playing?

Cyro

United Kingdom20295 Posts

December 22 2018 04:11 GMT

#952

Still playing sometimes, yeah. Landing gear / legs and a few other things were broken beyond what i'd consider playable on 1.5 so i've been sticking to my 1.3.1 installs as they're the last place that i can confirm that everything works well and some essential mods work perfectly.

1.6 should be an improvement over 1.5 but might still have the wonky legs/gear and ridiculously wobbly craft

From april:

m4ini

4215 Posts

December 22 2018 04:18 GMT

#953

Well, the memory leak got fixed by the looks (according to videos i saw on YT showing it) in 1.6, so that's why i went for that. And so far, it runs stunningly well even with some big ass crafts.

Downside being that you can't really land them on "stock" landing gear but have to, as far as i can tell, make your own out of struts and steelbars etc. Well.. You can, kind of, if you manually set the dampening all the way to max, it does somewhat work. But nowhere near as well as it should, i don't really understand it either.

Sadly, the now implemented DeltaV calculator etc doesn't even remotely work as a KER replacement, but i think for someone starting out, that'll do.

Currently playing vanilla, but hoping that most importantly kerbal joint reinforcement is already updated so i don't need to look at these floppy noodles ascending anymore.

Cyro

United Kingdom20295 Posts

December 22 2018 04:24 GMT

#954

You can, kind of, if you manually set the dampening all the way to max, it does somewhat work. But nowhere near as well as it should, i don't really understand it either.

A friend of mine investigated a while ago and figured out that making the physics timesteps smaller (like running the game in 4x slow motion) eliminated most of the weird shit with legs so it looks like something that they've changed since 1.3.1 is making the physics engine misbehave in game breaking ways - conditions that used to give minor physics errors/inconsistency lead to legs and wheels snapping or teleporting around and craft being shredded.

After like the 20'th touchdown at basically perfect 0m/s vertical speed where half of my craft snapped off i decided that i was done with that shit, 1.3.1 works fine