Craigs Posted July 13, 2011 http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php Found this while browsing /v/ (don't judge me). Basically you design rocket ships for retarded little green men. There's no real specific goal other than to try to get the rocket as high and as far from the base as possible, though some people on /v/ came up with an unofficial goal in which you try to get the second crew member, Jeb, to panic for as long as possible. 0 Share this post Link to post
Technician Posted July 13, 2011 Darn, I thought this was a belated thread about NASA launching it's last shuttle into space. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted July 13, 2011 That looks like fun, and a safe way to satiate my latent desire to be a rocket scientist. Downloading... 0 Share this post Link to post
Planky Posted July 13, 2011 Downloading. I have no idea what to expect. Hopefully its something that will entice for longer than 5 minutes. Edit: K mediafire is a piece of shit. 0 Share this post Link to post
ArmouredBlood Posted July 13, 2011 It's pretty fun, until you start running into design problems with your winglets being uneven so you never get that perfect launch. Highest I've gotten is 163 km above sea level. I thought for sure I'd gotten into orbit or beyond ... but looking into it it's at like 600 km to escape earth's gravity =/ Now to figure out how to get into and maintain an orbit. 0 Share this post Link to post
Craigs Posted July 13, 2011 ArmouredBlood said:It's pretty fun, until you start running into design problems with your winglets being uneven so you never get that perfect launch. Highest I've gotten is 163 km above sea level. I thought for sure I'd gotten into orbit or beyond ... but looking into it it's at like 600 km to escape earth's gravity =/ Now to figure out how to get into and maintain an orbit. If you hit the circle icon to the right of the selection tabs you can choose to have things on the side placed symetrically. Just managed to get my first rocket into orbit. Of course they're stuck there with absolutely no way to return to the planet, and even if they did I forgot to put a parachute on my rocket. Jeb's cool with it though http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/stuckinorbit.png/ 0 Share this post Link to post
Scet Posted July 13, 2011 Does it really require 2GB RAM or is that just BS? 0 Share this post Link to post
ArmouredBlood Posted July 13, 2011 Craigs said:If you hit the circle icon to the right of the selection tabs you can choose to have things on the side placed symetrically. Just managed to get my first rocket into orbit. Of course they're stuck there with absolutely no way to return to the planet, and even if they did I forgot to put a parachute on my rocket. Jeb's cool with it though http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/stuckinorbit.png/ Eh I've had the symmetry thing glitch out on me a lot, and it doesn't always work. Someone should model tri- and quad-solid booster arrays, cause it's a pain to make them yourself. And nice job, you got a pic of the ship that got you up there? @scet: probably just modern requirements, although with the bigger ships it'd require a lot more power to compute how each individual part is going to affect the trajectory. 0 Share this post Link to post
Craigs Posted July 14, 2011 ArmouredBlood said:Eh I've had the symmetry thing glitch out on me a lot, and it doesn't always work. Someone should model tri- and quad-solid booster arrays, cause it's a pain to make them yourself. And nice job, you got a pic of the ship that got you up there? Yeah, I have to admit, I did cheat a bit by using some addon parts http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69/redrocket.png/ Here's another one I made a little while ago as a joke. To my surprise it actually worked http://imageshack.us/content_round.php?page=done&l=img163/4848/suckitdown.png&via=mupload&newlp=1 0 Share this post Link to post
Snarboo Posted July 14, 2011 It's a pretty fun little sim even this early in development. I haven't had much success getting the little bastards into space, however. :p I'm hoping more sim elements will make their way into this, such as having a budget to work with for ship parts and possibly even colonizing space once your space program takes off. 0 Share this post Link to post
Belial Posted July 14, 2011 So I sent them 1000 km straight up, then I put them into orbit. Now what? (it gets boring really quick, could use some time acceleration controls) 0 Share this post Link to post
Craigs Posted July 14, 2011 Belial said:So I sent them 1000 km straight up, then I put them into orbit. Now what? (it gets boring really quick, could use some time acceleration controls) It's a public alpha so there's no real goals. Hell the game's only been out for like 13 days if I remember correctly. Honestly, I've found it's a lot more fun to just create the most retarded rockets possible and see what happens, like what this guy did here. 0 Share this post Link to post
Planky Posted July 15, 2011 320,000 is my record thus far. When I'm not building insane things that is. 0 Share this post Link to post
Snarboo Posted July 15, 2011 The highest I've managed is ~1200 km with custom parts while attempting to orbit the planet. I still haven't quite managed a stable orbit yet, but I'm almost there. 0 Share this post Link to post
Aliotroph? Posted July 15, 2011 What's the secret here? Flying these things in a stable fashion is next to impossible. 0 Share this post Link to post
Snarboo Posted July 15, 2011 Aliotroph? said:What's the secret here? Flying these things in a stable fashion is next to impossible. Honestly, I just winged it until I found a design that worked. Symmetrical rockets work best, and studying successful rocket designs, both real and created for KSP, helps too. Another trick is to use one SAS module per part added to the craft. Then, hit 't' before launch to enable the SAS system and it should remain stable. Where it gets complicated is successfully orbiting the planet, but if you follow the above you should be able to get your Kerbals into space. Speaking of which, I've finally gotten a rocket into a stable orbit. Apogee seems to be 91,089 m. Not sure what perigee is yet. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mithran Denizen Posted July 16, 2011 This is pretty sweet. After trying ten massive rocket designs which couldn't reliably leave the platform without exploding, I finally stumbled upon a little 6-stage, 13-engine thing which hit 1,523,889 metres on its first flight. It's on its second flight right now, and it was really easy to put into a low elliptical orbit. The ship has been circling the planet for over four hours at this point. The average apoapsis is about 259,920 m, and the average periapsis is about 37,230 m. It seems to be pretty stable, but I can't have the game hogging all of my laptop's CPU any more, so it's time to try bringing it back down. In case anyone wants to check out the ship itself, I uploaded the .craft file here, or you could copy-paste it into a new one from here if using mediafire for an 11KB text file irritates you. Just make sure to max the throttle at the start, or you won't make it off of the launchpad. I'd love to see this game taken further; hopefully they add some more useful orbital instrumentation, at least. I think a lot of interesting stuff could be done with it, though. 0 Share this post Link to post
Planky Posted July 17, 2011 Mithran Denizen said:In case anyone wants to check out the ship itself, I uploaded the .craft file here, or you could copy-paste it into a new one from here if using mediafire for an 11KB text file irritates you. Just make sure to max the throttle at the start, or you won't make it off of the launchpad. I was able to get this ship up to 563,000 0 Share this post Link to post
Mithran Denizen Posted July 17, 2011 Here's the culmination of the first ship I built after the tutorial. It collapses under its own weight on the launchpad unless you hit the engines right away, but it does fly. Sort of. Planky said:I was able to get this ship up to 563,000 I just tried again, and slightly beat my previous altitude, reaching 1,588,182 metres this time. 0 Share this post Link to post
Planky Posted July 17, 2011 Craigs said:This is what real men fly More like except blows its load before take off 0 Share this post Link to post
Craigs Posted July 17, 2011 Planky said:More like except blows its load before take off fuel spary all over the place or something? 0 Share this post Link to post
hervoheebo Posted July 19, 2011 Planky said:More like [rocket] except blows its load before take off I think you're compensating for something... I've toyed with this game a little, few days ago, haven't got to orbit yet. The rocket either doesn't have enough fuel to get off the gravitational pull or is too heavy and can't launch, or randomly explodes midflight. Most of my rockets are just stacked fuel tanks, though, might have to try ejecting the spent ones. Also the SAS, it feels like a placebo or it's just that I haven't activated it correctly. 0 Share this post Link to post
Planky Posted July 19, 2011 There was a bug that made larger designs blow up at 5000m, but thats been fixed by version .8.5 released today SAS is there to stop it spinning, though I find often helps to have the rocket spin with certain designs. If you didnt know, press T to toggle SAS on, rather than trying to hold F and keep their flight path straight. Current ship, 7 stages: 0 Share this post Link to post
Dragonsbrethren Posted July 20, 2011 After a few test runs with simple designs (and a few impressive failures with more complicated ones, including one where the entire thing broke apart on the launch pad and the capsule somehow ended up on top of the tower), I managed to design a fairly simple large six stage rocket that (I think) got the capsule into orbit. Stupidly, I only used a quarter of my fuel when I separated the capsule from the last booster, since I hit space instead of ctrl when I wanted to turn down the throttle. Was hoping to save some fuel to bring it back down, but I don't think it's going to make a difference since it's already decelerating. This game really needs a timestep option. It's probably going to take all night for the thing to come back down. Edit: Okay, maybe I'm wrong. I left the game running in the background and my capsule is now 5,750km above the surface. I don't think I ever actually got it into a real orbit. The thing is still decelerating though, so eventually it's going to come down. Right? Edit 2: Finally gave up on it after two hours. Saved the rocket, I'll probably try again for an actual orbit with it tomorrow. 0 Share this post Link to post