Video Game Discussion Thread Part 10: Video Games Fucking Suck

[LuckyNumber7]

Oh yes. Atmosphere I heard is new. Very awesome part of the game.

 

[DaveC]

it makes for a lot of aerodynamic hilarity (and reverted flights).

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Oh like if you accelerate too hard in time warp and your rocket goes flaccid and explodes?

Happens to me ALL the time.

 

[DaveC]

well actually landing may have been too ambitious to do from scratch in two days, but i managed to get about half a dozen satellites in orbit, did a couple rendezvous (even docked once), and got within about 5,000 m of the mun surface in some nice sexy orbits. they moved the landing struts later in the tech tree in 1.2 though (at least the ones that can support the weight of a manned lander), and i just unlocked it last night so i think by about another half dozen or so launches i should be able to test a lander and get it there and back. glad I restarted the career though, it helped a lot with the learning curve of having to now deal with the atmosphere. aerodynamics are hard.

not bad tho for only three days which included a shit load of playing civ and finishing deus ex too

 

[LuckyNumber7]

As I'm writing this... I forgot struts on my lander. Dammit.

I've made a Munar landing but killed the pilot on kerbal reentry. Have a probe headed towards Duna should be there in a year or two.

Still don't know how to dock or recover people from space.

 

[DaveC]

As I'm writing this... I forgot struts on my lander. Dammit.

I've made a Munar landing but killed the pilot on kerbal reentry. Have a probe headed towards Duna should be there in a year or two.

Still don't know how to dock or recover people from space.

how is it possible that i'm better at this game than an actual rocket scientist? must be because i have kerbal engineer redux. btw if you don't, get it - it just gives you a little customizable heads up display that stays at the top of the screen with the option to display pretty much every figure the game calculates. saves you from doing shit like having to go back and forth to the map for altitudes or guessing temperatures or delta v data. knowing exactly how many seconds of thrust are left in each stage is suuuuper handy.

docking is actually pretty easy once you have the parts (docking ports and rcs thrusters, obviously), it's the rendezvous that's hard. once you get the craft beside each other it's just a matter of pointing them in the right direction and slowly creeping them together.

 

[DaveC]

also enjoying how we are completely monopolizing this thread with talk about the nerdiest game that exists.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I tried to rescue a kerbal and I did a pretty sweet rendezvous. Within 200 meters. Relative velocity within 5 m/s. I switched to the kerbal and tried to jet pack him over and it wasn't even close it was like BYE.

You're better because I just started playing I'll catch up!!

My issue isn't orbital mechanics. I'm pretty sure I can get anywhere within the kerbal or Dunar sphere of influence with relative ease. Rocket design no problem.

It's just when shit is supposed to go slow, I mess it up. I'm like the European space agency

LONG LIVE KSP.

 

[DaveC]

I tried to rescue a kerbal and I did a pretty sweet rendezvous. Within 200 meters. Relative velocity within 5 m/s. I switched to the kerbal and tried to jet pack him over and it wasn't even close it was like BYE.

there's a reason the eightfold symmetry option exists when you're building. you're going on a rescue mission. ladders, man. can't grab the side of a fuel tank.

rip in peace

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Nah brah I'm not talking about ladders. I'm talking about the little kerbal not getting close when I try to jet pack him. Fucking whizzes on by like it's nobody's business.

I swear I took a kerbal who was in an 84/86 P/A orbit... nearly circular... rendezvoused with him... tried to jet pack him and somehow his orbit apoapsis ended up 130,000+. I didn't even know how it was conceivable.

 

[DaveC]

oh, true.

yea, fuck orbital EVAs. i never let go unless i have no choice. out, get science, board - 3 second operation. i think i've done maybe 3 rescues ever. satellite contracts all day baby.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

By satellite contracts you mean...?

I always go for the passenger orbiters. I avoid passenger landers as I don't yet have the proper capsules and landers to fit more than one and really don't want to make $100,000 trips to the Mun for one shitty passenger.

 

[DaveC]

i mean contracts that pay you a lot of cash to put a satellite into a certain orbit. once you build a decent and cheap launcher it's basically free money considering the advance usually pays for the launch itself.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Did you just accidentally kerbal in the presidential thread?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

i mean contracts that pay you a lot of cash to put a satellite into a certain orbit. once you build a decent and cheap launcher it's basically free money considering the advance usually pays for the launch itself.

I haven't had any of these contracts available, what am I missing? All of my contracts are temperature/report scans, exploration missions, or tourism missions. I love designing satellites in this game, but i usually only get to for space missions (such as my probe to Duna).

 

[DaveC]

yep, i kerbaled so hard all over the presidential thread this morning.

you need to have the parts available, and i think the more advanced ones generate more contracts. when i only had the basic probe core, i only got one satellite contract, which was absurd by the way (it wanted me to launch a polar satellite without any SAS, orbit predictions, or an engine capable of providing enough thrust to launch the necessary amount of fuel to circularize a polar orbit) but now that i unlocked the next level of probe cores I have requests for satellites coming out the wazoo.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Oh trust me I know your pain with absurd demands. I was asked to do temperature scans in a polar orbit (since they were all above aerospace flight level) with practically the only early on technologies.

I'm curious, did you download the science pack? Because I advance, but at a pretty slow pace. Even with outsourcing my R&D. So the fact that I don't have what you have... if you just restarted... shocks me. Unless you've literally pumped 50+ hours into the game already.

 

[DaveC]

i hate temperature scan missions, or the ones in general where you have to go to some specific location at a specific altitude and speed and do something. they're never worth the effort.

i don't have anything except KER downloaded and only about 15 hours or so since friday. i haven't even turned on the R&D boost because i've been collecting the cash. did you know that you can walk/buggy around to every building in the space center and do a crew report, EVA report, and plant flags and take soil samples at each one for huge amounts of early-game science? that should be one of the very first things you do. i also load up any flight where i expect to go somewhere new with the science bay, goo canister, thermometer, barometer, etc. crew reports too. you can do all of these each time in both levels of the atmosphere, and in both low and high orbits of kerbin and both moons. in low orbit each time the biome you're above changes (another handy use for KER is that it tells you exactly what biome it is at all times) you can do a 3-second EVA report for each one. between kerbin and the mun there are at least 12-15 different biomes and another 4 or 5 on minmus. EVAs in high orbit of mun and kerbin too, of course. every time you land on a new biome, the EVA report/flag/soil sample routine gets you 15-20 science alone. and now that there is that super-useful new science return box in 1.2 you can get lots of extra science by returning every experiment rather than transmitting the data. only other thing i do is make sure to look for contracts if i'm going for a new flight milestone, if you can get a contract to "explore the mun" on the first flight you intended to send to the mun anyways, those usually bring back a lot of points too.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Nope. I took a sample at the pad and that's it. Looks like I'm getting me some science points.

I haven't been doing EVA reports mid flight. I have definitely been loading up my science kit wherever new I go though.

Didn't know flags gave you any science points.

I'm still confused with how you got so far in 15 hours, but perhaps since it's your second run through you already knew the ins and outs.

 

[DaveC]

yea, i've started new career modes three times - once when i first got the game and screwed it up, the last 1.0 game i had, and now this one. so i've done it before, also i watched youtube videos (scott manley's are some of the best game tutorial videos on youtube, outright) to learn the game so i got a ton of tips from there too.

for my ksc science run i built this:

chute
small capsule
separator
smallest fuel tank
t-45 engine

and shot straight up to about 2000m, turned left slightly for 2 seconds, killed the engine and separated the stage. i dropped right onto the point where the astronaut complex, r&d building, and assembly meet.

planting flags give you 5 science points when you recover the vessel.

like i said with EVA's - super useful (15 science points each time i think, and like i said there's about 20 spots to take them in low orbit in the kerbin/mun/minmus system not counting landings or "in space high above x" areas) but for the love of god keep your finger away from the spacebar.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Yeah I mean I think I've done most everywhere on kerbin now. But not surface samples and EVAs or flags. damn flags I wish I knew they were somehow scientific.

I also didn't do a very biased tech tree. Been spreading in all directions. Which tech do I need for satellites?

 

[DaveC]

you can get the first rather useless probe core with the "basic science" tech, but "electrics" is the one you want, with the small octagon probe core.

i really like the new comms network mechanic. it gives satellites some real purpose now. and my network is starting to look pretty cool too.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I literally just unlocked that core.

The stayputnik one can't handle shit. It's annoying. Gotta try it out.

Also, woo, just had my first kerbal return mission with passengers landed on the Mun!

 

[DaveC]

nicely done. such a satisfying feeling

i'm occupied with figuring out satellites (and making bank to upgrade my buildings) for now, might wait to try landing until the weekend.

 

[DaveC]

well, that ain't happening.

my pc went tits-up last night and i had to do a full reformat and reinstall of windows. on the bright side, it reverted to windows 8, which i liked a lot better. wasn't able to back up my save file beforehand though so now i'm starting from scratch yet again. at least i'd only been working on that one for a week.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Did system restore not work?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Also, woo I'm ahead of you.

 

[gman]

Now that the darker nights are here...i invested in a copy of Metal Gear Solid VI (The Phantom Pain). I prefer playing games in the dark. MGS is my fave game series of all time

 

[DaveC]

Did system restore not work?

nope. windows 10 was stuck in a loop where some program kept crashing windows explorer on startup. it would restart and crash again over and over within about a second. the only thing i could do was ctrl-alt-delete.

i tried a system restore, same issue. looked online and the only ways to fix it were to revert to a previous build of windows 10 if i could get on to windows update (not possible), or reformat and reinstall. luckily my recovery partition ended up having windows 8 still on it, so i've gone back to that and i'm going to keep it as long as i have to, because everything is running so much quicker in win 8.

oh, and don't get too used to being ahead. i have the day off today and nothing to do but watch football and play ksp

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I haven't played in several days so you'll comfortably catch up.

Also, I'm assuming you launched your computer in safety mode first...? I ran into a similar issue with windows 10.