Well I got a bit bored of sending probes for science so started on SSTO (single stage to orbit) space planes.
Took a while to get the hang of the flight profile and the number of air intakes (3 per ram jet engine it turns out, or MOAR AIR as they say in Kerballand), but I got my first space plane into orbit, alas Jeb died on the landing, then the second into circularized orbit last night, Bob made a big mess of the landing as well.
Getting the center of lift behind the center of mass and the center of thrust in line with center of mass was a good tip from the forums. Also moving fuel from the aft tanks to the forward tanks to maintain the right center of mass was essential to keep stability later in the ascent.
Meh. Just turned out to be some figurines, sadly. I heard that their next update is supposed to be focused on optimization, though. I’m definitely looking forward to that!
And I seem to have got the knack of powered landings, after a couple disasters. Successful manned (kerballed?) missions to the Mun and Minmus with kerbonauts returned safely home.
But docking, now that’s going to open up interplanetary possibilities beyond just probes.
0.23 out next week
New hybrid jet/rocket engine.
tweekables - apparently adjust parts operating porperties (limitbthrust, reduce fuel load out etc)
Updating science
Bug fixes and optimisation ( which would be welcom for my laptop)
The tweakables sound really nice. I wonder how they’ll balance the hybrid engine? If it works the way I’d naively expect, it might be really overpowered (i.e., trivial SSTOs), especially if you can tweak the fuel/oxidizer ratio. Maybe it’ll be heavy?
I spent some time with the KSP Interstellar mod. It’s pretty cool and has nice science tree integration, though I don’t like that there aren’t really any good ways to fuel a craft with antimatter from the ground. I know they wanted it to stay balanced, but I think there should be a way of storing gathered antimatter at the main KSP facility, since that’s the only place you can build new rockets.
I hope they implement my fix, and split science between transmission or recovery science and recovery only science. I don’t like having to play the game with one hand tied behind my back, so I’m waiting for this update to get back into it.
From what I can gather from the forums ( no release notes at this time) based on people who listened in on the Kerbalcon videocasts there is a new science module called a large science lab that will support longer term experiments and make space stations and moon bases worthwhile.
apparently Kerbals can transfer science experiments between them on an EVA as well.
Not sure if there is a change for transmission spamming.
.23 is out. The new SABRE-like engine is fine. I got into stable orbit with 20% of launch weight expended.
Waiting for the a compatible MechJeb now. I do wish they spent less time on science and unlocking parts and more on vehicle building, vehicle flying and possibly base building elements. It’s much more of a sandbox game than an RPG game.
The tweakables are definitely nice. I have my Mun mission (get Jeb safely to the Mun and back) down to 2.74 tons dry mass–I was able to use a smaller 1st stage tank that normally would contain oxidizer–I drained the oxidizer and reduced the fuel load to the optimum.
Woot! Broke the 2.5 t barrier–2.498 t including Jeb. The lander is remarkably stable and easy to fly, too. The trick was putting the fuel tank at the very top–above Jeb and the other stuff. I was having a problem with the lander flipping over as it entered Kerbin’s atmosphere, because the nearly-empty tank dominates the center of drag. If I put it at the very top, though, it acts like a drogue chute and gives it self-righting properties.
At the moment, I’ve got a probe on a hundred day mission just out of Kerbin’s sphere of influence. I’ve already sent a mere morsel of the resulting Science! back, but hopefully I’ll have a manned craft capable of recovering the rest by the time it returns.
So I picked this game up during the anniversary, started playing after the .23 update–is it just me, or is some of the science seemingly backwards? After several orbital/suborbital missions, I unlocked the Sputnik-like unmanned probe and thought that’d be a great thing to use to learn how to get to Mun and get some science.
Well, the first one failed when I realized that it’s constantly using electric charge, so even with the batteries I included it was going to run dry before getting to the Mun, so I did what science I could in the middle of space there. The next one looked like a Duracell factory exploded all over it, which made it, but with the rules about not being able to reuse experiments combined with the penalty for transmissions, I really didn’t gain that much, and I’m still 2 science short of getting my first solar panel. (any idea if they’re planning on adding some sort of camera as a science piece? That always seems to be a big deal with space probes)
So it really feels like the main use for the basic probe would be the simple orbital stuff, but most of that is already done before you can unlock it.
Yeah, one could easily quibble with some elements of the science progression. You’ve got a few options - one is to play sandbox for a bit to get the hang of things without parts restrictions. Another is to focus on missions that bring the science back home. You also generate power to recharge batteries when liquid fuel engines are burning, with the unfortunate exception of the LV-909.
You can also pick up quite a lot of science on Kerbin itself, and so should be able to unlock the solar panels which really are the nastiest early bottleneck.
Well, my hundred day mission out of Kerbin’s SoI fell foul of a bug. On the other hand, I’ve made a number of successful unmanned return trips to the Mun and Minmus. I’ve got two landers heading back to LKO and two manned craft waiting to collect their Science! at which point I should be able to afford the atomic engine.