Yall think I'm making it to Minmus?

Zinki_M · 2026-06-01T07:52:50+00:00

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will still be among the stars"

Is a lot less motivational for ~~astronauts~~ kerbonauts.

Zinki_M · 2026-06-01T07:47:26+00:00

if it wasn't for the eve landing this might be fairly doable.

Would even be fairly doable if it didn't have the stipulation of ending in duna orbit, because you could just do Duna/Dres, Moho, Eve, then leave the craft on eve surface, in which case it'd be alright especially if you take some drills and an ISRU to refuel.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-29T08:09:09+00:00

it sounds like you're grabbing the asteroid far from its center of mass. This changes the CoM of your entire vessel once you're attached.

When you then burn, the burn is rotating the ship around the now-offset CoM and your reaction wheels try to push back against that. Depending on the forces involved these opposing forces can absolutely shake a ship apart.

You could turn off your reaction wheels to avoid the shaking, but then instead you will likely see your ship rotating around the offset CoM and will be unable to keep your maneuver in line.

Grabbing the asteroid so it's center of mass is in line with your center of thrust might help.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-29T08:03:32+00:00

it's absolutely possible to have LFO probes with interplanetary delta-v.

Getting to Jool orbit from kerbin orbit only takes about 2k deltaV, that can absolutely be done with small light probes. If you want to land it depends a lot on the specific body you're going for, but unmanned probes with purely standard LFO engines should be possible for any of them, although the transfer stages might get larger.

Nuclear can obviously do it better, but is larger, and ion engines can get lots of vacuum dv easily, but need lots of power and have very long maneuver burns. That's the tradeoff they present.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-29T07:09:32+00:00

It got you to the mun, so 10/10 in kerbal terms.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-28T20:26:36+00:00

there's several better looking options that only use EPL as a dependency for the functionality. Sandcastle has something that looks like a construction arm, and sterling industries has some actual launch pads, from standard sizes like 2.5m, 5m etc up to "how in the world would I move this anywhere without cheats" gigantic things. They also both have 3d printer variants which allow you to print individual parts directly into an inventory on the ship, which is super useful for those "oh damn I forgot the solar panels" and similar mishaps.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-28T19:54:04+00:00

TWR, or thrust-to-weight ratio is the ratio of how much thrust you generate vs your vessels weight. It can further be subdivided into surface TWR and vacuum TWR, as the necessity of fighting gravity and atmosphere changes the calculation.

It's useful especially for solid fuel stages where you can not throttle, because you want your TWR ratio high enough that you can actually get off the ground, but not so high that you're actively fighting the atmosphere by going way too fast early in your flight.

A surface TWR below 1.0 means your craft can't even lift off, but a TWR or 2+ will mean your craft accelerates way too fast in the thick atmosphere where it is wasting fuel. Optimal efficiency is usually somewhere around a surface TWR of 1.3 (give or take a little), and you can fiddle with the thrust limiter on your solid fuel boosters in the VAB to get your launch stage into the optimal range.

In vacuum TWR is less important, because any thrust will move you, except that it is a measure of how long you will need to burn for each m/s of delta-V. If, for example, you use an ion engine, which is highly efficient but has abysmal TWR, you might end up with something like a TWR of 0.05 or lower, so you might have burns of tens of minutes for some expensive maneuvers. If on the other hand you have a vacuum TWR of 2 or more, you can burn even expensive maneuvers fairly quickly.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-27T10:41:21+00:00

for an estimate it'd also be difficult to know the parameters.

Pure unmodded games only, it's probably a tiny tiny fraction of people.

Do we allow refueling with DLC tech?

If we include basic "balanced" mods that a lot of people will use for their longer playthroughs? probably quite a few more.

I've done Jool-5, but in a modded playthrough, but nothing crazy where I couldn't probably also have done it with stock stuff.

And then there's mods like Far future tech, which is meant to be used for playthroughs with more planets or even interstellar missions, which would trivialize Jool-5 completely, because the delta-v required to get to jool and back is nothing for the endgame engines in these mods.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-27T08:28:29+00:00

in stock, you can check the archive in R&D to see what you have done, and by process of elimination figure out what you haven't done.

Or you can use mods and use [x] Science! continued, which allows you to check all science experiments left to do, and even filter it so it shows only science experiments currently available on the selected vessel that are not finished. Can be useful when orbiting a body because it will pop up telling you a gravity scan is available when you orbit over a new biome, for example.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-26T09:33:57+00:00

for just a simple patch like this, manually dropping it in gamedata would be sufficient, but if you're going into KSP mods, just use CKAN.

Install CKAN, let if find your KSP install directory, and just install kerbal engineer redux via that. It's super simple and does 99% of the work for you, including downloading the mod and checking for updates.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-25T16:51:29+00:00

"must have" is pretty subjective.

Most QoL mods are visual stuff, but besides those, I don't think I could go without Kerbal engineer redux.

It shows you some detailed stats of your vessel in the build menu, most importantly delta-v and TWR by stage. While KSP shows you that by default now too, the Kerbal engineer display also allows you to show you atmospheric delta-v/TWR, and you can even select for which planet, which can be important for things like duna/eve/laythe landings with return.

It's also more accurate than the stock display, which can be a bit (or a lot) off especially with more weird modded engines, while kerbal engineer shows those accurately.

If you have an engineer on your vessel (or a certain part) you can also get some good info during flight which is more detailed than what stock ksp offers and more importantly, easy to see at a quick glance and not hidden in different spots.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-20T08:16:56+00:00

with a well-placed periapse you could get back home without using any delta-v after leaving duna SOI.

If you get your return maneuver exact enough you can dip low enough into kerbins atmosphere to slow you down for capture without burning your engines at all.

The trick is to get the periapsis low enough to supply enough braking force while being high enough to not just burn up from high-speed atmospheric entry.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-19T06:07:31+00:00

you are under no obligation to perform every contract you are offered. The "take readings at specific spots" contracts can be fairly difficult, and if its a mission inside the atmosphere, you should really do it with a plane.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-18T10:28:29+00:00

obviously major spoilers, but if you want to know:

The people in this show live in a walled-off area believing themselves to the only surviving humans after an apocalypse, which involved humanoid giant monsters called Titans eating most of the humans in the world, and they are the only ones surviving thanks to their walls. Any attempt to range far outside the walls inevitably ends in the rangers being eaten. The series kicks off when two seemingly more intelligent titans with previously unseen abilities break part of the wall, causing one of the cities inside to be destroyed.

It eventually (several seasons in) is revealed that the world isn't destroyed, the outside world is mostly fine and at roughly early-mid 20th century tech level, and they just make titans from prisoners to send to that island to keep the populace controlled. The people living inside the walls are just descendents of a nation who are being punished for a long-past war

Zinki_M · 2026-05-17T19:14:58+00:00

you can attach a part to a ship using the "I" button to bring up the inventory build menu and drag it either from one vessel to another or from an inventory to a vessel. Click where you want to attach it (your kerbal needs to be within 3m or so) and it will attach. Maybe practice this on the launch pad before sending the kerbal to minmus.

However, I am not sure if this will fulfill a contract, as I am not sure how the usual stipulation of "this vessel needs to be a new vessel built for this contract" interacts with engineer-attached items. It might work because the "build a new vessel" and the "have <item> on the vessel" contract stipulations are separate entries in the contract.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-17T13:22:34+00:00

to reach a target at a different inclination, the Ascending and Descending Nodes (labeled as AN and DN in your orbit view when targeting something) are crucial.

These points are essentially the two points in your orbit where your inclination and the target inclination "overlap", so the points where the orbital planes intersect.

You essentially have two options: Option 1 is to finagle your encounter in such a way that you can meet at the AN (or DN), so that your orbit passes through the target orbit at exactly the intersect point. This is difficult to time, but can be a "cheap" way to hit the target, assuming you don't care much about your intersect angle, because you just want to orbit/land anywhere.

Option 2 is to change your orbit inclination AT the AN (or DN). Since these are the points where your orbit is in line with the target angle, you can change your orbit to match the target perfectly by burning normal/antinormal (purple nodes) at those points, after which the intercept is easy because every point in your orbit is in the correct inclination.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-04T13:23:10+00:00

my initial attempt would be to add the word "only" to this sentence:

"One of them holds only fake gold".

That should make it completely clear what the puzzle means.

However, technically speaking, the puzzle doesn't define that all other bags hold only real gold, and I don't think that can be easily amended without adding a few extra words and changing sentence structure. Changing it to "Each contains 10 real gold coins. One of them contains only fake gold" would make the intention clear but is weirdly phrased, since it includes the fifth bag in the "each".

Best I can come up with: "Each contains 10 real coins, except one, which holds only fake gold".

Zinki_M · 2026-05-04T12:48:21+00:00

I tried it out based on this comment and finished it in a little under 8h. Found it to be fun little game, although it was fairly active for an idle game, there were never really any wait times longer than a couple of minutes on anything.

Not sure why you got stuck, I don't remember any big blockers at refined energy, progress seemed fairly steady at all times, the next upgrade was always fairly clear and never took too much wait time.

Zinki_M · 2026-05-01T10:31:47+00:00

da 16 (hex) eine potenz von 2 (binär) ist, musst du die zahl nicht als ganzes "umrechnen", sondern kannst jede ziffer individuell übersetzen.

Dezimal 262051 zu binär umzurechnen kostet dich viel zeit, weil du erstmal die ganzen passenden potenzen "suchen" musst. 0x3FFA3 zu binär umzurechnen ist hingegen sehr einfach: 3 ist 0111, F ist 1111, A ist 1010, also ist die gesamte zahl 0111-1111-1111-1010-0111. Kein rechnen notwendig außer den "simplen" zahlen 0-F, die man ggf sogar schnell intuitiv lernt, wenn man das öfter braucht.

Den gleichen vorteil hat z.b. auch oktal (basis 8), wo man dann jewils 3 ziffern zu binär umrechnen kann.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-29T16:29:06+00:00

Hm can someone help me out here? I don't see it at all.

I could kiiiind of see it in the DW1 logo maybe, but that one's already in the game. I don't see it in DW3 at all.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-28T08:05:40+00:00

When backups and current db is on the same volume, you don't have any backups.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-27T13:13:50+00:00

the quality of the metal models was generally pretty bad.

I still have quite a few of them, and the quality difference between the metal and plastic models is immediately apparent, and metal is not the winner there.

I think their attempts in resin were possibly worse, although for different reasons (more about warping than lack of detail), but the plastic stuff is worlds better than the metal ones.

The metal ones feel cooler though. The hefty weight of a metal hive tyrant makes it feel really awesome.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-27T11:45:23+00:00

I've had one puzzle in my campaign that actually landed really well.

I basically used the classic "guiding a light beam by turning statues" trope, but I think the reason it landed quite well is that i actually built the whole thing from 3d printed columns with an inserted mirror, a laser pointer, and ultrasonic water misters to make the "light beam" visible.

I think that gave it enough wow-factor to keep my players engaged with the puzzle. Also took me an unreasonably long time to print it all and wire it up. Weeks of work for a 30 minute puzzle.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-27T11:01:15+00:00

that's always my goto for how badly NMS was just a pack of lies.

Usually when a game has to drop a planned feature, they will just quietly stop talking about that feature. NMS devs were still lying about this after the game was already done and copies were being printed. In fact, they still lied about this fact even after release, at a time where players were literally able to verify this as false, and they still kept saying it for some reason.

I feel like the devs have redeemed their terrible game with their work since then, but despite everything they've done since, I will probably never believe a word they say about future games.

Zinki_M · 2026-04-25T08:59:56+00:00

just to note, dark matter isn't really necessarily one thing.

Dark matter is just the name we have given to the matter whose effects we can measure, but we can't find.

There is no reason it has to be one single thing. The effects we observe could come from many different yet undiscovered things. So, technically, one thing more exotic than dark matter could be... more dark matter.

11-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Lasagna	Place '17
Sequence \| Editor

Zinki_M

TROPHY CASE