[pecenipicek]

and there we go straight down into elitism. "magical autopilot" yadda yadda. for those of us who cant fly for **** its a godsend. i prefer building wacky contraptions and seeing how/where will they fall apart first and not having to wrestle with the stocks control scheme and doing the WSADQE dance constantly helps. otherwise i'd have given up on this game ages ago.

[General Battuta]

Kind of like everyone whoever played and enjoyed Rifts on the tabletop was having BADWRONGFUN.

Do you...even Rift, bro?

[NGTM-1R]

Do you...even Rift, bro?

Only with pencil and paper. GLITTERBOYS FOREVER

[MarkN]

MechJeb is not just an autopilot. In fact the autolaunch system is very poor (the MechJeb SASS is poor at controlling large rockets).
My main use of it is as a HUD. While there are other HUD systems around that do not include the other features, there are two very important statistics that they do not seem to provide:
1) point of closest approach. This is not necessarily the intercept point seen in the map mode, but an actual point of closest approach eaven if you are not intersecting the orbit. Importantly, for the late stages of rendezvous, MechJeb shows this more accurately the the 0.1km scale used in map mode
2) the reentry simulator. this will predict the re-entry path of a spacecraft, giving it's final orbit for a aerobrake maneouvre or how close to a target landing site it will be. Of course you can use the landing autopilot, but if you try to use that with a craft that has parachutes it will undershoot by several kilometres.

There are two other features that are in MEchJeb that should be in stock, just in a less automated way (The Lazor system get both of these right, and as Romfarer, who developed the lazor system, is now a developer, these are likely to be possible with stock in future)

1) deorbit burn for a specific location on an airless world. This is easy enough if you already have something there so if, for example I want to land at a Kethane deposit (or an arch that someone has told be the coordinates of), I cannot tell where that it using stock currently. With Mechjeb you have to use the autoland system with it's particular weaknesses. With the Lazor system you can place a marker in map mode, and try to aim for that.
2) alignment of docking ports. MechJebs SASS sets the angle to exactly aligned, but has a weakness of forcing a particular rotation. The Lazor system has both a SAS option to align parallel which allows for rotation, and also has the docking camera which allows for this type of docking to be carried out manually.

On the other hand I like the idea of an automatic control for launch, as launches of identical craft get boring after a while. After all you have to remember that this is the Kerbal Space Program, not the Kerbal Launch Program.

[Dragon]

Autolaunch system is indeed nice, and Lazor system has a few useful options, but stuff like antigravity, remote resource transfer, teleportation or greatly unbalanced SAS systems is a bit too much.

[pecenipicek]

Oh my ****ing god...

[Scourge of Ages]

Oh my ****ing god...

That was incredible...

And in other news: I keep forgetting to put batteries and panels on my ships, so they get stuck dead in orbit, or if I do remember panels, dead when behind Kerbin.

But, I finally have a decent number of support vessels built and deployed: Land, sea, and space Kerbal rescue busses, an orbiting fueling hub, and a purpose-build space trash/derelict collector.
I have plans already for a surface-to-orbit shuttle so my bus doesn't have to land every time, and a generic refueling tanker.

[adratgg]

I'm guessing you built it piece by piece instead of launching it all at once?

No, I did it all at once.  I don't think it's that difficult to do for something of this size (it's mostly solar arrays, anyway.)  Anything much bigger would be pretty hairy to launch though.

This the later version of the station, which I sent to Eve, but it's basically the exact same thing as the original, which I still have in a high orbit around Kerbin.






The orange tanks get it well above the atmosphere, then the last liquid tanks bring it almost into orbit.  In fact they would put it in orbit if I allowed it.  Instead I put it in a very elliptical trajectory with periapsis just below the surface -- that way I can ditch the tanks without cluttering the orbital space, then use the xenon/RCS to bring periapsis above the atmosphere.  Finally a little liquid-powered tugship docks with it, shoves it into the final circular orbit, and tops off the xenon tanks.

....You might wanna put some nose cones on those rockets. give that nose a cone. noses love cones.

[Phantom Hoover]

Nosecones are worse than useless in their present state. All they do is increase your rocket's mass and drag.

[Herra Tohtori]

Unless you install the Ferram Aerospace Research mod.

Which is awesome...

[Phantom Hoover]

You can also edit them so their drag value is negative, but that is almost certainly going to result in some insane corner case where sticking a load of them onto a command pod results in a re-enactment of the first episode of Farscape.

[pecenipicek]

You can also edit them so their drag value is negative, but that is almost certainly going to result in some insane corner case where sticking a load of them onto a command pod results in a re-enactment of the first episode of Farscape.

if this forum had a like button, i would be bashing it so hard right now.

[Phantom Hoover]

After several days of construction and testing, the Tentative Name is finally assembled in LKO, waiting to be crewed and to begin its mission to Jool:

[Nuke]

that design gives me some ideas.

[watsisname]

Cool design.
And so many docking ports!

[Phantom Hoover]

One problem: the length, mass and part count all add up to something that can only be controlled in slideshow mode. Fortunately MechJeb seems to be able to handle it fairly well, although the length of it and the flexibility of all those ad-hoc dockpoints makes for a fairly hair-raising sway during burns.

[FlamingCobra]

[Nohiki]

Does the reentry heat do anything but flames? I just slammed a ship on the atmosphere at 15 km/s and nothing happened to it

[Herra Tohtori]

In stock game, no, they don't do anything apart from being pretty lights.

However, with the Deadly Re-entry mod...

[watsisname]

Whelp!  I have built a rover and successfully landed it on Duna, skycrane style! 

The launch vehicle, with a totally inconspicuous rover perched on top.


(I put nosecones on it just for you, adratgg)   

Closeup of the rover with its half-ass-designed protective shroud.  Lousy for government work, but good enough to be Kerbal!


Coming in over Duna.  I didn't go straight to landing, but rather aerocaptured first so I could select a nice day-side landing site on the following orbit.


Landing site selected.  Ditching the main engine before atmospheric entry.


Most of the way down, now!  Ejecting the shroud.


Deploying parachute.


What follows next are several moments of terror, but unlike the Curiosity lander, this descent is not automatic...  As it required my full attention, I have no screenshots of this process.

At an altitude of a little over a kilometer, the entry vehicle is still moving at about 200 meters per second at a very shallow angle.  The parachute, now mostly useless, is ejected.  The skycrane engines activate and slow the craft down to a hover just meters above the ground, then separates.  The rover plops down, while the skycrane shoots off into the distance.  It flew so far I didn't even see where it crashed.

A long journey, with long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of sheer terror, is finally complete.


Oh hey, there's the parachute.


Meanwhile, on Gilly: