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[BigD145]

Nope. You need to figure out base game before fiddling with mods.

[tahujdt]

A couple, actually. KSP Interstellar will give you many cool stuff, including fission, fusion, and antimatter reactors, as well as new science stuff. There are a couple of science mods I'd recommend. I'm not at home, so I can't check my mod list, but I have one mod that gives a lot of parts for EVA contruction, winches, hooks, electromagnets, and more.

Chatterer is a purely cosmetic mod, but once you've used it, KSP won't feel the same without it. It takes actual NASA comm recordings, runs them through a scrambler to make them sound like Kerbals, and plays them during flights.

In my KSP news, I discover that docking ports only work if they are facing the right way. The problem is, with the Sr. Docking Ports, it is difficult to tell which way is out without consulting the wiki. After figuring that out, I am constructing a major space station with a functioning onboard reactor. I even have extendable radiators to dispose of waste heat. I have a few different Science mods installed, but the various modules haven't gone up yet. For now, I focus on utilities. Screenshots will follow after I get home.

Also, the MechJeb 2 unit, which you get after researching automation, is functional yet creepy. It has an onboard reactor, RCS jets, and a propulsion system. It is basically a nose cone with a robotic eye in the tip. It looks a bit like a Personality Core, but colder and more robotic. It is made creepier by the fact that when you are in the VAB, the eye will track the camera position, so it is always staring at you. It also blinks occasionally.

[BigD145]

I'm not at home, so I can't check my mod list, but I have one mod that gives a lot of parts for EVA contruction, winches, hooks, electromagnets, and more.

That's KAS (Kerbal Attachment System).

You still need to know base game before you can go messing with mods. Don't expect mods to solve all your problems. Current base game parts are balanced for the current solar system and all its bodies, plus lots of leeway.

[tahujdt]

You'd be surprised at how much KAS helps with docking without MechJeb if you don't have a proper docking bay. Send a Kerbal out on EVA, have them attach an electromagnet to the other ship, and reel 'em in. Some of the science mods give you more science for your effort, too.

[BigD145]

You'd be surprised at how much KAS helps with docking without MechJeb if you don't have a proper docking bay. Send a Kerbal out on EVA, have them attach an electromagnet to the other ship, and reel 'em in. Some of the science mods give you more science for your effort, too.

Or the ship explodes. SO! Just build your craft correctly. If you can get within KAS equipment range, you can dock two vessels.

[BFEL]

You'd be surprised at how much KAS helps with docking without MechJeb if you don't have a proper docking bay. Send a Kerbal out on EVA, have them attach an electromagnet to the other ship, and reel 'em in. Some of the science mods give you more science for your effort, too.

Or the ship explodes. SO! Just build your craft correctly. If you can get within KAS equipment range, you can dock two vessels.

Unless, like me, you forget to put RCS thrusters on your dock-ship. Yeah.

[BigD145]

PBKAC

[tahujdt]

I googled that, and I got a World of Tanks group: the Peoples Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Action Committeh

The follow the principles of Catmunism, which is primarily about the abolition of private cheezburgers.
The revolution is maow!

I later found out it means 'Problem Between Keyboard and Chair'.

[GreatWyrmGold]

((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.

[GreatWyrmGold]

More filler. Because my charging cord still isn't in.

A brand-new rocket (my brother either had not noticed or is ignoring the save option). It contains a command pod, a parachute, a T800, and an LV-909 in the first stage. The second stage is three radial T400's with larger rockets, then three decoupling solid boosters. At the last second, he remembers to add a command pod decoupler and some reaction wheels. No nose cones for once, I convinced him they do nothing.
The launch isn't too bad, although my brother notes that the rocket looks better with nose cones. The solid boosters run out at 4000 meters on the dot. He switches to look at debris, which causes him to jettison the mostly-full boosters at 6000 meters and eject the pod shortly thereafter. I note that the flight had been going well, prompting him to retry that design.
The second time, the rocket starts to tilt because my brother didn't turn on SAS until it had a bit of tilt. Um, gravity turn. Right. The solid boosters go out a hundred meters early, but the liquid boosters carry the rocket past the previous ~7,000 meter cap. The stage runs out around 17,000 meters; it turns out to be unstable and promptly points downwards.

At my suggestion, my brother adds three winglets to the bottom of the final stage. At the bidding of the mad scientist inside his skull, he adds two more solid boosters to the sides of the solid boosters. Yo dawg...
The engines start bouncing as physics kick in. My brother: "I think you're gonna die, Dunfrey...maybe you'll get lucky." He releases the first boosters a bit early, at perhaps 3500 meters, due to me discussing what he shouldn't do if he wants to have his rocket not explode. Remarkably, the rocket doesn't explode--the boosters strike each other far enough above the rocket. The boosters take him to 11,000 meters, and I try to tutor him in the fine art of gravity turns. Turns out that putting reaction wheels on top of all your bits isn't always enough to make it controllable. His liquid boosters give out at 34 kilometers; he ejects the engineless fuel tank at 40. I note that he probably lost the engine on the launchpad. This made him laugh.

After lamenting that you cannot connect things using only struts, my brother adds struts between some of the solid rocket boosters.
The first launch lacks SAS. It continues spinning out of control and stages are ejected. The parachute is deployed, but apparently it hit something and exploded. Dunfrey Kerman died in an explosion of rocket bits. "I gave him a parachute! I gave him hope! ...Are you putting in there that I said that?"

I teach my brother how to adjust staging; he uses this to fix a minor staging issue and to make all nine boosters fire at once.
The boosters give a large amount og lift, but little stability; hence, my brother swiftly ejects the nine uncontrolled explosive boosters. He briefly fires the liquid boosters before turning them off, ejecting them, and turning on the small engine at the bottom at a kilometer. Then he ends it to add more struts.

Possibly too many, but probably not. Attaching pretty much every booster and fuel tank to pretty much every other one is pretty close to too much, though. (He asks about "uppy-downy" struts--what did he mean?)
The second launch is pretty good; in my brother's words, "Oh my god, it's holding together!" The boosters run out at about 7,000 meters. After confusing "apoapsis" with "gravity turn," he attempts the latter around 11-12 kilometers. He changes the direction a bit before 20 kilometers, when he sees the Mun in the sky. The liquid boosters run out around 30,000 meters; they make an explosion as they leave, but nothing seems to be damaged. The command capsule was accidentally ejected at 48 kilometers. Said capsule does make it to space, and to almost 110 kilometers. He also lands gently due to having a parachute. Good job, Jedrey, you're the first kerbonaut to survive a flight to space under my brother's command!

He adds several winglets to the boosters and then we have to leave the game. I come back, post this, and prepare for bed.

[MarcAFK]

Awesome!

[GreatWyrmGold]

I decide to borrow my brother's ave and put something in orbit. So, different filler.

to DRopBox Screenshot (Background Visible)

On top: A command pod, landing legs, and a parachute. Last stage: 900 units of fuel plus oxidizer, three LV-909 rockets, reaction wheel. second stage: 2160 units of fuel plus oxidizer, four LV-T45 rockets, four reaction wheels. First stage: Six rocket boosters. LEt's see how close I get to orbit.
the rocket quickly starts tilting and spinning. Manually forcing the controls to try and stabilize it leads to nothing except, perhaps, stopping it from getting worse. The solid boosters are emptied and discarded at 2900 meters; the gimbal of the four main engines corrects this. However, they can't lift the craft up faster than gravity pulls it down. Surface speed drops to 133 m/s on the nose before spent fuel or something makes us light enough to start accelerating again. The craft begins tilting, but it is quite responsive now. Unfortunately, I encounter a bigger problem: The game crashed.
Thankfully, not all was lost!

How does one copy the URL of an image that won't let you right-click on it?

The second launch is pretty decent to start with. Unfortunately, the game crashed again right after I typed that (4000 meters, second stage, flight vertical and stable), so I guess I jinxed myself there.
third try isn't bad. At 5000 meters, something seems to explode, but I'm not sure what--everything looks fine. The gravityt urn is attempted, but the ship is a bit hard to control. Note to self: The next version is getting winglets. Assuming I ever makea  second version, of course. And of course, the game crashes.

You know what? Forget this. Too much escape-pausing is bad for the game, it seems.

By the end of my last attempt, the ship was above 14000 kilometers and was running low on stage fuel. Maybe a tenth left? I'm guessing I could have probably made it into orbit with the last stage, though getting back might be a pain.


My charging cord should come back tomorrow, so that should mark the end of the Picless Demo Adventure.

[MarcAFK]

Suggestion, add more rocket to second stage to maintain speed during launch, maybe a single one would do, perhaps swap the 4 800's for 6 400s plus 100's stacked plus t 45's (or shove some 55's on there somewhere,have we got fuel lines yet?), then add some more boosters to stage 1, 6 is a nice number.

[Aseaheru]

How I did it perhaps?

[GreatWyrmGold]

How I did it perhaps?
-snip-

And how was that?

The charging cord and the update should be coming later today.