Kerbal Space Program

[Chuckaluphagus]

redtomato[/url]":2w57tr1v]I like this kind of game. Have downloaded the demo, and trying to play on my Macbook, but it lags horribly and is more or less unplayable. Anything I can do to get it running more smoothly?

Recommended System Specs from KSP website
2.0Ghz Dual Core CPU or higher (preferably higher)
4GB RAM
512MB Video Card, Shader Model 3.0
1GB Free HD space
Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
An Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or higher

My system:
2009 Macbook 2.13 C2D
4GB RAM
Video card - NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB - think it has Shader 4.0
OSX 10.8, also have Windows 7 in a Parallels VM.

Yeah, as .劉煒 says, something's odd there. I'm runnng it on Linux with integrated Intel graphics (Sandy Bridge), and while I need to turn down the graphics it still runs fine.

 

[Blacken00100]

The game is much more CPU-gated than anything else. A 2.13GHz C2D is anemic. Physics is expensive.

I stay in the green on a 2.86GHz Nehalem without any trouble and have only a little more trouble on a 2.6GHz Sandy Bridge in my MBP.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

So, apparently, mods suck.

I finally got the game stable-ish again, but there is this constant weird audio glitch - like a record skipping every 10 seconds or so, and still a bit of weird and repetitive lag.

I guess I'm going back to just MechJeb + Kerbal Engineer + Crew Manifest for now.

Anyone have a good, working mod list that gives me some more construction options without breaking the game, so far as balance and performance goes?

Mostly, I just want more fuel tanks and such for more ways to build things. Is there a mod that lets you add external tanks to a central tank and have them "integrated" to the tank, instead of needing fuel lines? Or a way to add xenon tanks and ion engines on 'nacelles'? The xenon tanks, even from the expanded Ion engines mod, will only mount top/bottom; you can't attach them in a rotary fashion.

I built a long range probe last night and with 5 medium xenon tanks and the 5.0 thrust Ion, it has 1:44:00:02 (or something along those lines) as burn time - is that 1 hour 44 minutes?

 

[Blacken00100]

That's almost certainly not an 'audio glitch', but you hitting the physics sim length limit. Watch the clock in the top left corner.

 

[.劉煒]

I built a long range probe last night and with 5 medium xenon tanks and the 5.0 thrust Ion, it has 1:44:00:02 (or something along those lines) as burn time - is that 1 hour 44 minutes?

1 day 44 hours, I imagine.

 

[ou818]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":393b1lwd]
I finally got the game stable-ish again, but there is this constant weird audio glitch - like a record skipping every 10 seconds or so, and still a bit of weird and repetitive lag.

I get this problem too. For me, the problem occurs when launching with ISA MapSat running.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

.劉煒[/url]":4866leeg]

I built a long range probe last night and with 5 medium xenon tanks and the 5.0 thrust Ion, it has 1:44:00:02 (or something along those lines) as burn time - is that 1 hour 44 minutes?

1 day 44 hours, I imagine.

That seems... odd?

Wouldn't 2 days, 20 hours make more sense???

 

[Deleted member 4603]

ou818[/url]":32ck45ga]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":32ck45ga]
I finally got the game stable-ish again, but there is this constant weird audio glitch - like a record skipping every 10 seconds or so, and still a bit of weird and repetitive lag.

I get this problem too. For me, the problem occurs when launching with ISA MapSat running.

I don't think I have that mod.

The only mods I have that are "more than parts" are MechJeb, Kerbal Engineer, and Crew Manifest. I had the Lazor system or whatever, and removed it for now. I also had some other mod (Mk3 expanded or some such?) that added its own Autopilot to the Mk3 pod, but it would prevent me from using any control functions whatsoever if that pod was used - conflict with MechJeb I would imagine.

 

[Blacken00100]

Lazor's defaults increase the physics area, don't they? I would expect a little stutter at times.

The only plugin mods I use are MechJeb, Crew Manifest, Kethane, and KAS - I'm thinking about adding one of the robotics packs for shits and giggles but they're all just so, so ugly.

 

[Chuckaluphagus]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":qo9hl8l9]

.劉煒[/url]":qo9hl8l9]

I built a long range probe last night and with 5 medium xenon tanks and the 5.0 thrust Ion, it has 1:44:00:02 (or something along those lines) as burn time - is that 1 hour 44 minutes?

1 day 44 hours, I imagine.

That seems... odd?

Wouldn't 2 days, 20 hours make more sense???

Possibly 1 year, 44 days, 00 hours, 2 minutes?

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Chuckaluphagus[/url]":1u1s6cl6]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":1u1s6cl6]

.劉煒[/url]":1u1s6cl6]

I built a long range probe last night and with 5 medium xenon tanks and the 5.0 thrust Ion, it has 1:44:00:02 (or something along those lines) as burn time - is that 1 hour 44 minutes?

1 day 44 hours, I imagine.

That seems... odd?

Wouldn't 2 days, 20 hours make more sense???

Possibly 1 year, 44 days, 00 hours, 2 minutes?

And the latter sounds more like what I *want* in a "Voyager Probe" type deal, but does that sound right? 1500 Xenon x 5 tanks = 7500 total, with the 5.0 thrust saying it takes 1.6 Xenon IIRC... but I have no idea how to :math: that out. Guess I'll just do a 100,000x time acceleration test. /shrug

 

[Duodecimal]

Think Voyager would be more RCS than Ion. Deep Space 1 would be your prototypical ion drive satellite.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Duodecimal[/url]":3lxv0yaf]Think Voyager would be more RCS than Ion. Deep Space 1 would be your prototypical ion drive satellite.

Yeah, but I really don't want to have to figure out how to do orbital maneuvers on RCS alone in KSP... is it even possible? I know you can land on some moons using only RCS, but I'm thus far pretty terrible at landing in general, much less using neat tricks to do so.

 

[Duodecimal]

It's definitely possible, I've done it before. When oriented towards prograde, H for acceleration, N for deceleration -- super good at fine-tuning distant orbital insertions. Unfortunately you can't toggle it on and off (the ship reserves the right to do something like that on its own).

Here's a paragraph from the Dawn probe's ion propulsion system, which was a fun read after experiencing KSP's ions:

The Dawn spacecraft is propelled by three xenon ion thrusters which inherited NSTAR engineering technology from the Deep Space 1 spacecraft. They have a specific impulse of 3,100 s and produce a thrust of 90 mN. The whole spacecraft, including the ion propulsion thrusters, is powered by a 10 kW (at 1 AU) triple-junction gallium arsenide photovoltaic solar array manufactured by Dutch Space. To get to Vesta, Dawn is allocated 275 kg (606 lb) of xenon, with another 110 kg (243 lb) to reach Ceres, out of a total capacity of 425 kg (937 pounds) of on-board propellant. With the propellant it carries, Dawn can perform a velocity change of more than 10 km/s over the course of its mission, far more than any previous spacecraft achieved with onboard propellant after separation from its launch rocket.Dawn is NASA’s first purely exploratory mission to use ion propulsion engines.

 

[incognito]

Ah, I started playing again; made an impromptu rocket that reached.... 17K. (actually, it was much more spectacular than that. I had a couple stages, and a big orange tank with engine 2nd stage with two SRBs to assist as the first stage. I launch... well, the rockets fire, the entire thing starts to lean over, I hit spacebar and the SRBs fly up and collide with the cockpit, still not going anywhere.... Hit spacebar again, the orange fuel tank explodes under the remaining part of the rocket as it shoot up off the launch pad, and finally achieves the 17K before I separate and parachute down into the ocean.)

Made another that went well into orbit (1M K, which I circularized down to 100K), and then proceeded to twitch my thumb on the spacebar and separate the rocket leaving the poor guy stranded in orbit :-(

I think I'll try to get a 'landing gear basket' like I saw on one of Manely's video and try to bring him home.

I'm never sure of which rocket engines are the best for the weight I have. I prefer the single stack design, sometimes with a couple SRBs on the outsides that I can blow off when they run out.

I also don't run any mods.

 

[jandrese]

You can get pretty far with just a basic rocket setup. My first Mun landing was with an orange tank + a /32 (half size of orange tank) with a Mainsail and 4 of the biggest SRBs on radial decouplers. On top of that was a big to medium rocket adapter, a nuke engine, and the biggest 1M tank, and then finally the small 1 guy pod with some RCS and fuel. He was stranded on the Mun, but it's a small price to pay for being the first to set foot on it.

Don't forget that you can (and should) change what happens every time you press spacebar by dragging the icons on the right to different groups.

It's kind of fun to see the groups expand out during a mission. I have one rocket that has 9 Mainsails and 18 SRBs on the first stage, all of which fire at once. The bar goes almost all the way up the screen when I hit spacebar. I really should learn asparagus staging at some point, but it seems so cheaty.

 

[thekaj]

Don't forget that you can (and should) change what happens every time you press spacebar by dragging the icons on the right to different groups.

Bah! It's more fun to not even check that, and have what happened to me the other night happen, my first stage consisting of an orange tank fueled engine and 4 SRB, lighting up at the same time as what I thought would be my 2nd stage of 4 smaller liquid tanks. The SRBs ran dry, so I hit space, they dropped off, as well as breaking off both the large and small liquid tanks. The liquid ones peeled off beautifully, but the large one kept pushing the 3rd stage. So I hit space again to light up the third stage, because you know, why not. I'm not sure how a sustained blast directly on the top of the 3/4 full tank didn't blow it, but it provided for a nice base to cartwheel off of.

I was showing a friend what the game was like at the time. I'm not sure that she was all that impressed.

 

[incognito]

Don't forget that you can (and should) change what happens every time you press spacebar by dragging the icons on the right to different groups.

Sure, I had everything the way I intended it to be; my rocket had plenty of fuel and after a couple orbits, I was going to burn to de-orbit and land; I just hit the spacebar on accident and stranded my poor guy.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

incognito[/url]":3fcox4v6]Ah, I started playing again; made an impromptu rocket that reached.... 17K. (actually, it was much more spectacular than that. I had a couple stages, and a big orange tank with engine 2nd stage with two SRBs to assist as the first stage. I launch... well, the rockets fire, the entire thing starts to lean over, I hit spacebar and the SRBs fly up and collide with the cockpit, still not going anywhere.... Hit spacebar again, the orange fuel tank explodes under the remaining part of the rocket as it shoot up off the launch pad, and finally achieves the 17K before I separate and parachute down into the ocean.)

Made another that went well into orbit (1M K, which I circularized down to 100K), and then proceeded to twitch my thumb on the spacebar and separate the rocket leaving the poor guy stranded in orbit :-(

I think I'll try to get a 'landing gear basket' like I saw on one of Manely's video and try to bring him home.

I'm never sure of which rocket engines are the best for the weight I have. I prefer the single stack design, sometimes with a couple SRBs on the outsides that I can blow off when they run out.

I also don't run any mods.

Step 1: Press ALT+M to lock stages.
Step 2: Press ALT+M to unlock stages
Step 3: Press SPACE to Stage
Step 4: Press ALT+M to lock stages.

Lock your staging, unlock and stage, then lock again. Not the "Stage" light is solid purple when locked, blinking green when unlocked.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

jandrese[/url]":2exmxa43]You can get pretty far with just a basic rocket setup. My first Mun landing was with an orange tank + a /32 (half size of orange tank) with a Mainsail and 4 of the biggest SRBs on radial decouplers. On top of that was a big to medium rocket adapter, a nuke engine, and the biggest 1M tank, and then finally the small 1 guy pod with some RCS and fuel. He was stranded on the Mun, but it's a small price to pay for being the first to set foot on it.

Don't forget that you can (and should) change what happens every time you press spacebar by dragging the icons on the right to different groups.

It's kind of fun to see the groups expand out during a mission. I have one rocket that has 9 Mainsails and 18 SRBs on the first stage, all of which fire at once. The bar goes almost all the way up the screen when I hit spacebar. I really should learn asparagus staging at some point, but it seems so cheaty.

It really isn't "cheaty" - not in the same way Jet Engines are.

In fact, it mimics how either the Falcon or Dragon launch rockets work IIRC, so it is even 'realistic.'

It is just mass savings - burn 4 tanks at once is less efficient than burning through 2 and dropping and then burning through the other two. It doesn't even really give you that much more dV per stage; but every little bit helps, especially with stock rockets where 2.0 TWR is almost impossible to achieve with any non-simplistic payload.

 

[incognito]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":7l31g9oy]
Step 1: Press ALT+M to lock stages.
Step 2: Press ALT+M to unlock stages
Step 3: Press SPACE to Stage
Step 4: Press ALT+M to lock stages.

Lock your staging, unlock and stage, then lock again. Not the "Stage" light is solid purple when locked, blinking green when unlocked.

Thanks for the tip! That's a habit I'll try to get into.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

incognito[/url]":2p0cjyfm]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":2p0cjyfm]
Step 1: Press ALT+M to lock stages.
Step 2: Press ALT+M to unlock stages
Step 3: Press SPACE to Stage
Step 4: Press ALT+M to lock stages.

Lock your staging, unlock and stage, then lock again. Not the "Stage" light is solid purple when locked, blinking green when unlocked.

Thanks for the tip! That's a habit I'll try to get into.

Let's just say "Many Kerbals died to bring you this information." Mostly due to me hitting the spacebar at hilariously inopportune moments

 

[thekaj]

I will again note that it's more fun to get everything lined up for a burn, hover your index finger over the throttle up key, watch the countdown, do a 3...2...1... <thumb twitch> <spacebar> "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Although maybe "fun" also equals "frustrating" there.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

thekaj[/url]":1wov8pjw]I will again note that it's more fun to get everything lined up for a burn, hover your index finger over the throttle up key, watch the countdown, do a 3...2...1... <thumb twitch> <spacebar> "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Although maybe "fun" also equals "frustrating" there.

Well, half the fun in this game... is exploding. Any other game that was "this hard just to freaking play" would have me uninstalling it in disgust. Somehow, they managed to make failure fun.

 

[vturtle]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":2rr5yljh]

jandrese[/url]":2rr5yljh]I really should learn asparagus staging at some point, but it seems so cheaty.

It really isn't "cheaty" - not in the same way Jet Engines are.

In fact, it mimics how either the Falcon or Dragon launch rockets work IIRC, so it is even 'realistic.'

It is just mass savings - burn 4 tanks at once is less efficient than burning through 2 and dropping and then burning through the other two. It doesn't even really give you that much more dV per stage; but every little bit helps, especially with stock rockets where 2.0 TWR is almost impossible to achieve with any non-simplistic payload.

I think where it gets unrealistic is that it would be fantastically difficult to actually move all that fuel to multiple engines that quickly. When I read this article a while back: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2013/04/ ... k-to-life/ I was amazed that there is a rocket engine inside the rocket engine just to get fuel to the rocket engine fast enough. (Yo dawg...) Asparagus staging makes sense and something like it might be possible, but it would take a whole lot more than our little KSP fuel lines to manage that.

 

[jandrese]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":2r8l422l]
It really isn't "cheaty" - not in the same way Jet Engines are.

In fact, it mimics how either the Falcon or Dragon launch rockets work IIRC, so it is even 'realistic.'

It is just mass savings - burn 4 tanks at once is less efficient than burning through 2 and dropping and then burning through the other two. It doesn't even really give you that much more dV per stage; but every little bit helps, especially with stock rockets where 2.0 TWR is almost impossible to achieve with any non-simplistic payload.

I though the Dragon was just a mission section for the Falcon, not a launch platform in itself? As far as I know, the Falcon doesn't drop engines in midflight. I'm pretty sure the Falcon 9 doesn't have anything close to Asparagus staging, the closest thing it has is the ability to shut off a pair of engines if a fault is detected during ascent. Otherwise it's just a traditional 2 stage rocket.

As I understand it, Asparagus staging only makes sense because KSP's aerodynamic model is pretty bogus, which is also a reason why jet engines are so badly broken right now. Well that and because the rocket engines are really really heavy for the amount of thrust they develop.

 

[daishi5]

The Falcon9 Heavy is going to use something like aspargus staging, the outer tanks will provide all the fuel for the first stage, but all of the rockets will be firing. I think they plan to coast up for a while so that the outer tanks can pump the center fuel tank back up to full before dropping the tanks. IIRC, they are actually using the center tank for the first stage, they are just pumping all the extra fuel from the outer tanks into the center tank after they reach a certain point. The cheaty part of asparagus staging is just how easy it is to do, and how much fuel we can pump through those tubes with no extra equipment.

 

[Magus`]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":22wivwen]Step 1: Press ALT+M to lock stages.
Step 2: Press ALT+M to unlock stages
Step 3: Press SPACE to Stage
Step 4: Press ALT+M to lock stages.

Isn't it Alt+L ?

 

[baloroth]

vturtle[/url]":g30590zr]
I think where it gets unrealistic is that it would be fantastically difficult to actually move all that fuel to multiple engines that quickly. When I read this article a while back: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2013/04/ ... k-to-life/ I was amazed that there is a rocket engine inside the rocket engine just to get fuel to the rocket engine fast enough. (Yo dawg...) Asparagus staging makes sense and something like it might be possible, but it would take a whole lot more than our little KSP fuel lines to manage that.

Of course, in real life they use building materials stronger than the chewing gum and wet toothpicks KSP seems to use in its rockets, so a little unrealism in our advantage isn't really cheating.

 

[w00key]

baloroth[/url]":2y6ewaiy]

vturtle[/url]":2y6ewaiy]
I think where it gets unrealistic is that it would be fantastically difficult to actually move all that fuel to multiple engines that quickly. When I read this article a while back: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2013/04/ ... k-to-life/ I was amazed that there is a rocket engine inside the rocket engine just to get fuel to the rocket engine fast enough. (Yo dawg...) Asparagus staging makes sense and something like it might be possible, but it would take a whole lot more than our little KSP fuel lines to manage that.

Of course, in real life they use building materials stronger than the chewing gum and wet toothpicks KSP seems to use in its rockets, so a little unrealism in our advantage isn't really cheating.

Heh, a rocket scientist friend of mine had a good laugh at the engines too, TWR in the real world approaches 150 instead of 15-25.

Squad will change the rules some day but we'll be there to break them with "innovative" designs

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Magus`[/url]":1pem69ur]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":1pem69ur]Step 1: Press ALT+M to lock stages.
Step 2: Press ALT+M to unlock stages
Step 3: Press SPACE to Stage
Step 4: Press ALT+M to lock stages.

Isn't it Alt+L ?

You are right. I've been playing too much MWO, where the button that makes sense for any given function... is some other nonsensical button. "B" for map. "Y" for team chat. "T" for global chat...

 

[Deleted member 4603]

w00key[/url]":2w2h45j6]

baloroth[/url]":2w2h45j6]

vturtle[/url]":2w2h45j6]
I think where it gets unrealistic is that it would be fantastically difficult to actually move all that fuel to multiple engines that quickly. When I read this article a while back: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2013/04/ ... k-to-life/ I was amazed that there is a rocket engine inside the rocket engine just to get fuel to the rocket engine fast enough. (Yo dawg...) Asparagus staging makes sense and something like it might be possible, but it would take a whole lot more than our little KSP fuel lines to manage that.

Of course, in real life they use building materials stronger than the chewing gum and wet toothpicks KSP seems to use in its rockets, so a little unrealism in our advantage isn't really cheating.

Heh, a rocket scientist friend of mine had a good laugh at the engines too, TWR in the real world approaches 150 instead of 15-25.

Squad will change the rules some day but we'll be there to break them with "innovative" designs

The weight of things seems kind of off as well. The biggest thing I built so far was like 36 tons... a heavy lander (which never landed...) over 5 mainsails and rockomax tank setups. Doesn't the space shuttle approach like 200 tons fully fueled, boosters and all?

But maybe I am mis-reading or mis-remembering on either account.

 

[jandrese]

The space shuttle is 2,000 tons fully loaded. You probably couldn't build a rocket this big in KSP. There is certainly nothing even close to the Shuttle SRBs in the base game.

I'm a little annoyed that the VAB doesn't have a little window showing you the current mass of your rocket, preferably broken out by stages and split into dry and wet columns.

The Rockomax boosters (the ones everybody uses) provide 315kN for ~45 seconds. A Shuttle SRB provides 14,000kN for ~110 seconds.

 

[.劉煒]

Mechjeb fixes that.

Kerbal is smaller and has less gravity than earth.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

jandrese[/url]":1b2dy2om]The space shuttle is 2,000 tons fully loaded. You probably couldn't build a rocket this big in KSP. There is certainly nothing even close to the Shuttle SRBs in the base game.

I'm a little annoyed that the VAB doesn't have a little window showing you the current mass of your rocket, preferably broken out by stages and split into dry and wet columns.

The Rockomax boosters (the ones everybody uses) provide 315kN for ~45 seconds. A Shuttle SRB provides 14,000kN for ~110 seconds.

Well, there are only three stock SRB's. The little tiny ones (for Munar lift-off I guess?), the middle ones that seem... pointless... and then the Rockomax.

Which is why I want MODS lol. But they just break stuffs

 

[Magus`]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":2k65zbvc]But they just break stuffs

??

Plenty of us use plenty of mods just fine. What are you running into?

 

[Decoherent]

My, the MechJeb auto lander is a cowboy. I think I've only had rovers survive by ejecting when it gets near the surface

 

[kraquen]

Hat Monster[/url]":2rwo0ib3]

pretty sure that pic was taken on a sound stage

 

[.劉煒]

Works fine here. What it can't handle is changes in available thrust.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Magus`[/url]":1rpxlau7]

Puke Flyswatter[/url]":1rpxlau7]But they just break stuffs

??

Plenty of us use plenty of mods just fine. What are you running into?

Glitching and crashes. I fixed the crashes by removing most of the mods I had been running. But even with just a handful of mods it skips and pauses and glitches and is generally terrible.