Bay 12 Games Forum

Cromwell grabs onto the backs of Derry's and Alex's shirts, holding on.

"Why are people chasing us?!? What happened?!?"

"I don't know! Let go of me!"

Run for the thing, using my...animating power, I think, to create some kind of barrier.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 18, 2014, 08:43:10 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 16, 2014, 09:41:44 pm

Super-Stalin-Psion?

Not nearly smart enough to be Stalin. Or a super-psion.

Ouch.

Well, you are contemplating how to best kill/betray the only people who might work with you. Pardon the Godwin, but that's Hitler-like levels of stupidity.

((I would have posted this yesterday, but the netbook I'm borrowing wouldn't let me. Dunno what was going on there. Its wifi connection is pretty shaky.))

Still no charging cord, it seems, so yet another filer day* describing my brother attempting the KSP demo. He heads for the Orbiting 101 tutorial. (Side note: Yesterday, he started with the Construction Basics tutorial and kept building more rockets.)
*Current cord estimate: Friday.

His attempts to get the ship back under control at Gene Kerman's nudge made it spin more. He managed to fix it after a bit. He warped right past a maneuver node he set up when trying to raise his apoapsis, and then...um...I think he confused the rotation and throttle keys? After correction and a bit of spinning, he pointed prograde and burnt, raising the apoapsis successfully. When approaching apoapsis, he burned more or less halfway between retrograde and radial-out, which...was not what he was supposed to do. He cursed when I pointed out that he was in the atmosphere, and tried to burn back up, but...ran out of fuel. He hit the "End Flight" button before he could crash.

Then, he began an actual Sandbox game. His rocket started with a command pod, with a T800 attached and detached so he could put a decoupler in between. He then added a parachute and a...that engine with 200 thrust and gimbal. Three radial decouplers with T400s and more engines are added, as are three solid boosters. He backtracks to add an advanced SAS module under the decoupler and several reaction wheels and nose cones to the assorted boosters.
The launch goes well enough, with only a little tilt and spin. When the solid boosters ran out at 4000 meters, he was surprised to see that they didn't fall off (because he didn't add decouplers to them). He was even more surprised 1300 meters later, when he released the (Still-running) liquid boosters and saw his rocket explode in a shower of debris and dead Jeb.

The next version added decouplers and another stage right under the central rocket, compoased of a decoupler, a T400, and a rocket, with another decoupler and a tri-coupler on the bottom. He noted that his rocket was unique, and I didn't argue. Then he started scrambling it, faster than I could note, but the final version seemed to be similar. Then, he added another decoupler on each solid-fuel booster and three more boosters under that (one attached to another).
Him: "You have no idea what this is going to do, do you?"
Me: "It's probably going to fail at some point."
The tri-boosters began swinging before launch, when they began dragging the scrap pile into the air. They began overheating, and he began panicking, firing more engines, then successfully releasing the stuff. At 1800 meters, he fired the other solid boosters, at 1900 they were jetisonned for the liquid ones, at 2000 those were discarded for the main engine. By 2500 meters, he detached the command pod and delivered the parachute. He makes it a bit past 2850 meters before falling, but Bill survived. My brother was as surprised as Bill was about this. My brother's lesson learned: He couldn't decouple the boosters, and should make sure it does in the future. Again, stuff exploded shortly after the parachute deployed.

Fresh canvas. Pod, parachute, decoupler. T800 and an LV-909. Three radial decouplers and three triple-T400s with the 215-thrusting engines...make that with tri-couplers and engines, for a total of nine engines and almost 2,000 thrust. Next, three reaction wheels and nose cones ("because screw it, nose cones look awesome") on the stacked tanks. Finally, three radially-decoupling solid boosters, with two more decoupling ones first. "Okay, let's see how this thing works! Hopefully, it won't explode."
He almost launches, before realizing he should put SAS and nose cones on the solid boosters. "But look at this thing, it's going to reach the goddamn Mun. Write that down, that I think it'll go to the Mun. Okay, bye-bye Bill!"
It wibbles a bit on the pad. "I think I should have used struts." He's right--it explodes literally one second after takeoff, from the solid boosters curving towards and hitting each other.

My brother removes the solid boosters, adds a strut between the three towers, and relaunches. He notes that if this gets to the Mun (a challenge I've given him, incidentally) in this, I should give him "something".
Takeoff is swift and, given the nine engines, not too shabby. The first stage propels the rocket up to almost nine thousand feet, at which point he released them and let them explode abobe him. He began tilting wildly, including down for a period, before just ejecting and ending the flight. "Well, that was a big let-down." He complained about stability.

Three solid boosters were added to the top. Six more were added to those. Struts were added to those. Lots of struts, but none between the three clusters.
Six solid boosters lift the craft into the air, not even exploding. He releases them as he starts to turn, at a bit over 1000 meters. He then starts and releases more stage, which leads to the last stage crashing into something and exploding, killing Bob. "He thought he was going to go home and see his wife and kids, but nope!"

After questioning a bit about why symmetry =/= stability, my brother adds reaction wheels and nose cones to the tops of the boosters.
Dunfrey Kerman launches this monstrosity. The SAS wasn't turned on until the rocket turned about 45 degrees off the vertical, and the stages were repeatedly released. Dunfrey survived this time, though.
The next launch went better; instead of 1200, the first boosters were released at 1500 meters, again due to off-centerness. The resulting explosion knocked the nose cone off one booster. At 1800 he released those, at 1900 he went to his last stage, at 1700 he fired it up, at 1600 he tried to release that. My brother began switching between debris, leading to the parachute deploying a couple hundred meters above sea level.

And despite talk otherwise, that is as far as he flies today.

Oh, great. No one knows what I'm supposed to do.

[W]e're gonna fire those pods up at the ships and pray that the systems in place to 1.stop the occupants from dying of massive g-forces 2.prevent them from being sliced apart by lasers and 3.prevent impact from just crushing the shell rather then letting it get into the ship, work.

...
Okay, no one tell Grate all that.

Quote from: Radio Controlled on March 18, 2014, 11:52:58 am

Cael, Sercon, would any of you be up for this? Both Jim and Milno are also one of Steve's generals after all.

(Nope, I'm not going on the boarding parties unless PW forces me and I'm horrible with organization anyway. Let someone who likes to be super accurate do it, like GWG. )

Um, okay. What am I doing again?

Grate-splosion was fun.  Getting right back up after getting cut in half wasn't..

Isn't that better than not getting back up?

EDIT: And I don't think G forces are a problem since if it uses space magic, your entire body will be accelerated at the same time. Deceleration when it reaches its target on the other hand... that might be a problem.

The effects of g-forces upon acceleration largely depend on how the automanip is programmed, but the above seems likely.

"Careful how you go, though. We can't get anything from mangled corpses and pools of blood."

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 17, 2014, 09:37:42 pm

1. Its its, not it's.

1. It's it's its, not it's, not its its, not it's.
(Translation: The first word is supposed to be "It's" so next time you want to be pedantic, try not to slip yourself.)

It was intentional?
(Also, you don't have to copy the image, you can just press the button. Or just type ":" then "P".)

---

The comms crackle. "You don't want more Swarm coming up behind you. Head through two cryo chambers, then seal or block the door between the reactor and the crew chambers before clearing out the other two chambers. Then...we'll see where we are."

((1. I'll post an action for Carl once the other MC folks speak up.
2. Where are the side sections connected?
3. Actually...could we just get a map key?))

((Update: The current estimate on shipping is about Friday.
The charging cord, not the characters.))