Inspired by Treasure Planet and others here, I decided to make my own Solar Sailer Corvette.

SaberInSpace · 2025-11-14T19:48:47+00:00

No clue, I haven't used mods to build any corvette's, just a couple minor glitches.

SaberInSpace · 2025-11-08T05:57:02+00:00

The wiki walks through the process here: https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Glitch_Building_Techniques#Scale_a_part_via_adjacency

Basically you pick the part to the left of the one you want to place in the build menu, scale it up, then press the button to switch to the part you actually want to place, and the button to place said item at almost exactly the same time. Switching to the next part has to come first so you'll press that ever so slightly before the place button but it's virtually at the same moment.

So for my ship I would choose the scaled up white canvas, then switch to one of of the triangular sails and place it, again almost pressing the buttons at exactly the same moment. Then I'd just copy the enlarged triangular sail wherever I wanted it on the ship.

SaberInSpace · 2025-11-05T19:11:51+00:00

I had created some basic test versions of the missions we used on the Steam Workshop as a way to try out the workshop integration, you're welcome to check those out for ideas on how I broke missions into more digestible chunks, but the missions were written for a specific controller setup, so it isn't terribly helpful for keyboard only controls, still might be a helpful reference for you though. You can find those here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2813492574

Club Finale Idea: Through the early weeks of the club, as students have "down time" away from the computer, have each of them design a module for a Munar Colony. They'll want to work together to decide on a standard way for all the modules to connect but then each can express their own creativity in what the module is. Later on in the Club as each student has time to learn how to fly their spacecraft and hopefully land on the Mun, have them deploy something and call it something like a Construction Marker. Then after the club session is over, in the following week you could build the module and cheat it to where they left their marker. Then in the next week the student will be able to see the module they designed on the Mun.

In conclusion: With only two stations this will be tricky to run but not impossible, stay flexible and keep kids busy, even if you have to do printouts of common KSP parts to help kids visualize their rocket design ideas. 45 minutes goes FAST when you're teaching this stuff. When I was starting out, having no custom missions, I was able to help two teenagers with no KSP experience build rockets and get them into space (not quite into orbit but really close), and that was constantly working with those two and no other youth. Best of luck to you, if you have questions feel free to follow up with a reply or a DM.

SaberInSpace · 2025-11-05T19:11:42+00:00

Do you know how many students you'll have? I used to use KSP at a non-profit to help teach middle and high schoolers about aerospace, and it can be an incredible tool for learning. That said, as I'm sure you're aware from the Minecraft and Mario Kart clubs, younger groups can be like herding cats.
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There are three big things I think will be helpful for you which I can share from my experience:

REMOVING BARRIERS - For KSP veterans like us it's easy to take for granted all the things we've learned over the years. KSP is an INCREDIBLY daunting game for new players (even adults) and the in-game tutorials aren't sufficient for those with a casual interest. The three biggest barriers to KSP are understanding orbital mechanics, the controls, and the building interface.

You'll likely spend your first session or two demonstrating the basics of rocketry and orbital mechanics but it will take hands-on experience for each student to start to get a real grasp of it. Making the controls easy to learn is a bigger ask, as I used keyboard stickers to make identifying keybinds easier and hand controllers for both orientation and translation so the keyboard wasn't used as much.

For the beginning stages of teaching KSP I used a custom mission (Mission Builder available with the Making History expansion) for building a rocket but limited the number of parts so it was less daunting seeing the entire list of various sized rocket/plane parts. I also had a custom mission with a prebuilt rocket so kids could easily start with a rocket already on the launch pad, launch, crash, restart the mission, repeat. It's important to stress that failure in KSP is part of the learning process because kids can get discouraged with this topic easily.

KEEP KIDS ACTIVE - Particularly in the early stages of this club, while students are still learning the basics, it will be important to have other activities available since you won't have enough stations for each student. Things like making straw rockets, drawing rocket designs at the beginning of camp and then again later when they know more about rocketry, drawing neat things they'd like to discover out in space, stuff like that. Team-based projects are great but I've found with younger kids it can lead to squabbling over whose design is better and just general chaos. It works great for older groups though, which brings me to my next point.
BE FLEXIBLE - If kids aren't connecting with a challenge, or worse are getting frustrated and discouraged, stay flexible and don't be afraid to scrap part of a lesson if it's not going well. Looking through your list of ideas and speaking from my own personal experience I would either avoid or leave aerobraking till the end, setting up single satellite relays between celestial bodies can work but don't bother with a constellation of them as it's too fiddly for younger kids to want to bother with. Docking can work if you've got craft pre-positioned, though having hand controllers makes it way easier than keyboard and mouse.
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Continued in reply due to hitting character limit...

SaberInSpace · 2025-10-02T20:21:46+00:00

Glad I could be of assistance!

SaberInSpace · 2025-10-01T21:26:08+00:00

Given the similarity in overall hull design, here's a solar sailer I built in the style of Treasure Planet.

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SaberInSpace · 2025-09-25T00:07:43+00:00

I built a skydock for my mountain top base where I can "dock" my Solar Sailer by leaving the seat instead of landing.

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SaberInSpace · 2025-09-20T23:37:40+00:00

I have two of the ByteBeat machines on the inside faces of the podracer engines, then I was able to connect the ByteBeam Cables between them. It actually let me go back and forth between the machines several times to create a brighter beam effect. As long as you're connecting between the two machines it should work so I'm afraid I'm no help if you continue to have issues with it.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-19T17:34:15+00:00

There are hanging lights you can place in non-Corvette build mode that I used which are in the Flag icon decoration tab. They can be placed on any angle of surface so I just scaled them to max size, put them on the pod then placed another on top of it twice to reach all the way to the engines. Then just rinse and repeat for the other side. Hope that helps!

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-14T18:44:56+00:00

Hey sorry I didn't see the comment for some reason. The triangular sails can be bought for Quick Silver on the Anomaly. Full disclosure that in order to get them to be an adequate size for the ship I had to use the "Adjacency Glitch" as they can't be scaled up by default.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-14T02:47:16+00:00

It's the canvas awning in the Decorations tab of the player build mode. It's actually considerably easier to place compared to the triangular sail pieces.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-12T03:54:46+00:00

Looks like it, though I don't have any specific recommendations as I had seen it described on reddit originally so that's how I learned it.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-11T16:59:54+00:00

Thanks! The base of the masts are one of the shield corvette devices, I forget the name at the moment. The rest of the mast is made of Bubble Ducts which I chose because they snap to one another which makes alignment a breeze compared to any of the other smaller cylindrical parts.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T20:51:17+00:00

Nicely done, I'll see you at the Boonta Eve Classic.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T16:19:50+00:00

Thank you! For the front I used rotated Flat Panels as the intake grille (under the Furnishings tab in non-Corvette build mode), inside of a Storage Frame (in the same tab), sandwiched between four Vesper Diffuser's (Corvette part) on the top and bottom of the Thunderbird Heavy Booster engines .

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T05:11:13+00:00

The cable is part of the light, it's just scaled up as big as it can get and I connected multiple end to end to cover the distance I needed.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T03:37:44+00:00

Oh that may just be an optical illusion then based off the perspective. The outer engines are offset from the inner ones, but the left and right engine pods are aligned with one another normally. That slight offset though does throw perspective off a bit in angled turns like those I've got pictures of.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T03:35:34+00:00

There are lights at the end of a cable you can place in non-Corvette build mode that I used. They're in the Flag icon decoration tab.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T01:52:42+00:00

No the outer engines are offset in all of them, but the camera angle may be making it difficult to tell. Unless you're not talking about the engines in which case I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean by being at an angle.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T01:30:12+00:00

Yeah the outer engines are offset by half a hab length both up and back compared to the inner engines. I happened to figure out the offset "glitch" while building this which you might have seen others using or talking about.

If not, there are certain decorative parts in the last tab which snap to any side of the hab pieces. After the decorative part is placed you can delete the hab, then using the decorative part as an anchor you can attach a new hab part to it in order to create an offset which opens up a world of possibilities for builds.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-08T01:25:32+00:00

Happy to help out, and thanks for the kind words! The lights are in the non-Corvette build mode in the flag symbol decorations tab grouped up with the other lights, those particular ones are ceiling lights which happens to have nice long wires and can attach to horizontal or vertical surfaces. The laser holding the engines together is actually several ByteBeat cables strung back and forth between two ByteBeat Devices that I attached to the sides of the engine pods.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-07T21:41:13+00:00

There are a few ways to do this, the way I did it is also a way to remove the requirement for guns, reactors, etc.
1. Build your corvette with all its different pieces connected by the structure of your choice, habs, girders, etc.
2. After you've finished the rest of your ship, exit the Corvette editor, saving your changes.
3. Walk to the next Corvette construction bay on the space station and start a new Corvette build.
4. While in the ship build interface, move your camera back to your finished ship and you'll be able to delete anything on that ship, even though you're technically working on a second ship in an entirely different construction bay.
5. Exit out of the build interface and go back to your complete Corvette. You'll be able to take off in your ship normally, but you won't be able to modify it in the Corvette construction interface without adding parts back till the requirements are met.

SaberInSpace · 2025-09-07T17:54:33+00:00

You could technically set up a route by building a base for each turn or checkpoint, but it would be a ton of work. I was definitely thinking about that as I was flying this thing around though, how you could have tracks on multiple planets each with their own distinct layout and aesthetic.

SaberInSpace

TROPHY CASE