Anyone Like Kerbal Space Program?

"macanamera" (macanamera) 05/04/2015 at 13:53 • Filed to: None

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I was finally able to land on Duna with a full-function manned rover. That was...less easy than I thought. Turns out a simple transfer orbit is basically impossible unless you do a bunch of calculations and stuff...so the key was to escabe Kerbin’s gravity, establish a solar orbit kind of similar to Duna’s, match orbital inclinations exactly, then adjust the grow/shrink the orbit with prograde/retrograde burns until it almost exactly matches Duna’s orbit and wait for an encounter. Then you hope you have enough fuel to scrub off the speed, enter Duna’s atmosphere (use it to aerobrake), and parachute down to a gentle landing! Child’s play!

Update:

Then you realize your rover doesn’t have enough fuel/thrust to escape Duna’s significant gravity well, and that your Kerbal will die a cold, lonely death, millions of miles from his home.

Rock Bottom > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 13:59

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My Kerbals have all accepted that every interplanetary trip is going to be one-way. It’s a wonder they keep “volunteering” for my experiments space program.

macanamera > Rock Bottom 05/04/2015 at 14:03

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If I had engines with a bit more thrust I could have gotten this back to Kerbin! I used LV-N engines because they are really efficient, but I shouldn’t have...

E. Julius > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:03

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I love KSP! That is a pretty large rover, what was your launch vehicle like?

PNW Hoon > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:06

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I played the demo 2 years ago. Went to the moon, loved it but decided I would wait until the actual release. Picked it up last week now that it's out of early access and have been thinking about it non-stop. I see folks landing on the far off planets and get frustrated, but then I remember sandbox mode unlocks everything.

My productivity at work -> nothing.
Honey-do list -> no progress.
KSP career -> Restarted 3 times trying to optimize the tech tree, made an orbital flight, and now I'm trying to get my Kerbals to the moon. Scott Manley's voice is in my dreams.

Awesome game. I'm counting down the minutes till I get off work so I can build a plane and fly around to gather some more science!

Sam > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:13

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I’ve been in the game since early-alpha (yeah, I’m a hipster). It’s insane how long it’s come in just a few years.

You should try out MechJeb, it does most of the complex calculations for you. In fact, you could set it up to run entire missions pretty much hands-free. Then you can pull off things like building space stations or doing refueling. Even Scott Manley (YouTuber) uses it, and he’s a legitimate Astrophysicist.

macanamera > PNW Hoon 05/04/2015 at 14:14

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I like to experiment in Sandbox to

1) develop my skills

2) figure out if something will work before trying it in career

macanamera > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 14:15

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All. The. Rockets.

Two six engine stages, then a four engine stage. I got all the way to Duna’s atmo with that four engine stage, soooo with a few tweaks I should be able to do a round trip.

LongbowMkII > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:16

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Nobody told me rocket science had this much math in it.

E. Julius > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:21

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Shit you went full Soviet, sounds crazy. Are you playing with the new aero model (1.0+)?

DoYouEvenShift > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:22

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Man, KSP looks so badass. I wish there was an Android version. But with working 60 hours a week, I dont have time for much of anything.

So jealous.

Rock Bottom > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:22

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I haven’t checked since the latest update, but I seem to recall the nuke engines being not much better than normal rockets in an atmosphere? They are crazy efficient in a vacuum, though.

Related: I started KSP last night for the first time in weeks and was like “Oooh, look at all the new rocket parts”, and then I realized the controls for docking thrusters changed, so I crashed a ship into my space station, got mad and drank beer while cleaning a rifle and listening to Korn. /ragequit-but-not-really

Firewrx234 > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:26

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I tried the demo of that game and felt like a complete buffoon. I threw all kinds of rockets at it and sent it into space where it quickly ran out of fuel and plummeted to Kerbal 1’s death and with a few quick modifications...Kerbal 2’s death and after a lot of modifications....Kerbal 3’s death. So, I noticed that every modification involved Kerbal death, so I decided to just go all out and just eject the Kerbal mid flight...wow. What a crazy game.

As a side note, I have no idea what I’m doing and tried to attach some rockets together and all that happened was having added weight with no thrust because they apparently weren’t attached and neither was the wing so it veered out of control catastrophically into the ground.

E. Julius > Rock Bottom 05/04/2015 at 14:28

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How did they change the controls? I haven't done anything too complicated since the update but I did a basic orbital rendezvous and the controls seemed the same to me.

Rock Bottom > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 14:30

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I used to change to “docking mode” and use WSAD to translate, then hit space bar and use WASD to rotate. Now the controls are all FGHINJL or something...

E. Julius > Rock Bottom 05/04/2015 at 14:32

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Ohhh ok. I’ve always used the WASD for rotational control and IJKL+HN for translational.

Rock Bottom > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 14:33

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Ahhh... so I just wasn’t sharp enough to discover the IJKL controls until they took away my other ones!

E. Julius > Rock Bottom 05/04/2015 at 14:34

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I honestly didn’t even know there were other ones!

macanamera > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 14:36

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Yep! Last version I had was .25 I think and the updates are fantastic. Being able to set the SAS to automatically orient pro/retrograde or normal/antinormal is a huge, huge help.

macanamera > Rock Bottom 05/04/2015 at 14:38

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Yeah, that was the problem. They aren't great in atmosphere and have very little thrust, so I couldn't escape Duna. They are great in vacuum. Except they overheat so much.

E. Julius > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 14:48

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Yeah if you don’t use mods to do that I can imagine that being pretty obnoxious to overcome. Well you’ve definitely done much more than I have in this new version so far!

space_captain_steve > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 15:27

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I have a base with 3 Kerbals on Duna but I’m far too inept to design a spacecraft that could go there, pick them up, and fly back to Kerbin. So they’ll be there for a long time. And then I have 2! marooned crews on Ike. I tried to rescue the first crew but the rescue mission was also a failure (crashed on landing) so now I have 2 crews on Ike with crashed/out of fuel ships.

KSP is awesome.

Racescort666 > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 16:18

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We are going to need to swap KSP stories.

Racescort666 > DoYouEvenShift 05/04/2015 at 16:25

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Maybe I shouldn’t be running it on a laptop but that’s all I’ve got and it totally bogs down my computer. I bought my laptop in the end of January for reference so it’s not like it’s some archaic piece of crap either. You pretty much need some serious CPU to run this game. RAM, Graphics, and core count doesn’t help much, you need raw clock speed.

macanamera > Racescort666 05/04/2015 at 16:28

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Yes, let's.

Racescort666 > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 18:58

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I’ve been experimenting with some ridiculous ships lately. I was pretty impressed that this was able to do a powered landing without using the chute.

ETA: and SSTO

macanamera > Racescort666 05/04/2015 at 20:28

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What is that? Is that just two fuel tanks, engine, and a reaction wheel?

theandysho - drives a SHO > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 22:03

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Kerbal Space Program - design a spectacular vehicle to explore other planets, and watch it blow into little bitty pieces because you didn’t sequence the engines correctly.

TheOnelectronic > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 22:18

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Once you get a handle on the main game, check out some of the mods that are out there.

Racescort666 > macanamera 05/04/2015 at 23:14

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Pretty much. It’s my minimalistic approach to rocketry. There is a control seat for a Kerbal on it too. It’s basically like Landas was riding a giant rocket. Actually... that’s exactly what it was.

I managed to get a Kerbal into orbit with a nuclear rocket engine and only 2 radially attached SRBs. I’m in the middle of a mission right now but I’ll post again with the build when this one is done.