From before Hiatus

Some leftover screenshots from before my hiatus, Kerbal Space Program.

Tinkering with a Mk-3 sized cargo-or-fuel spaceplane.

It is big enoug to bring a whole Münbus-class spacecraft into orbit. Or alternatively, a big fuel tank. Untested yet.

My biggest spacecraft design so far. Behold the "Candlekeep", a modular designed interplanetary spacecraft. Top level, here, an evolution of the old Scientia-class ship design. Used for orbital explorations and low-gravity landings. Untested yet.

Bottom level of the Candlekeep. Quadruple Poodle engines, lots of fuel tanks and an ISRU-unit to mine fuel out there for independent and indefinite operation. Used for interplanetary transfer and as a fueling station in orbit.

The middle level, visible on both last screenshots, is the habitat and docking ring, with luxury apartments for 8 tourists, or cram in 36 kerbonauts!

Trying to capture the Candlekeep as a whole is difficult; it really is big.

Another project, a maximum deltaV vessel for this stupid tourist contract to enter a low orbit on the sun. Untested yet.

After these rather construction focused screenshots, back to some action. My Moon-Buggy design was not tested yet, so I gave it a spin.

Descending near the north pole of Mün.

Almost down... it IS steep slopes there!

Very disappointing to realize that the rover wheels don´t give more push for this lighter design, compared to the Yawl, which I had quite extensively tested before this Mun Buggy.

My planned itinerary led me from the Mün polar highlands to the polar crater. Catching some biomes also in between, I realize later that most of them were already recorded from previous landings. It might have been the steep slopes, but I found it hellish difficult to keep the Buggy from not sommersaulting. High speeds, like with the Yawl, were simply not possible. This was probably due to the higher center of mass, making the thing less table on a bump. On top, the wheels blew up rather quickly, even though I tried to use the indestructible landing gear as often as possible.

Test unsuccesful. Product line discontinued.

This all was done during two or three rather short and unispired game sessions. It is interesting for me to note; when I am not sure how to continue the "big picture" ventures, I become rather unfocused on the smaller ventures in between.

The big question, which I am still pondering even during/after my hiatus, is, whether the new Candlekeep design should travel to Duna in place of my existing Omniscient-class vessels. And, which dinghy´s/landers should I bring along. The Yawl was a success on Mün, but will it be on Duna, too?

I really hope this blockade of what to do how does not keep me from just going on. After all, the Kerbal way is "just do it, goddamnit!"

Since three monthes have passed already since my last blog entry, some interesting game opportunities and unfinished "want to plays" await:

- The upcoming Star Wars movie and the seeming excellent new expansion for the online-game Star Wars: The Old Republic make me want to fire up the latter again, after three years not touching it anymore.

- A game of the year edition of Dragon Age: Inquisition includes all expansions which I haven´t played yet. A good time to do a second playthrough, again an elf mage, or trying a different character? Same problem as with Kerbal Space Programme: Blocked by not being able to decide which way to go. I am weird sometimes.

- I never finished Pillars of Eternity, which is a shame. There is also an expansion in the meanwhile, tempting me.

- There is this nice retro-style Shadowrun: Hongkong. I had played the precedessors and liked them a lot. I really should keep up here, too!

- Coming out in January 2016 is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. A must to play!

- And last, but not least: Elite: Horizons is very near. Landing on planets in my favourite galaxy simulation! It might be tempting to leave it be until the Oculus Rift VR goggles are finally out in Q1 2016. Frankly, ever since I played that game at the Premiere Event back in October 2014 with those VR goggles on, I am so spoiled and don´t want to play it anymore any other way!

Sigh. And there is this "little issue" of my wife having jumped the ship. Would be nice to find somebody new to continue my now shattered little family, maybe even being able to understand and share this weird passion my blog here is about. However, life is probably too fast and too short in order to have everything, right?

Review on Rebel Galaxy

With still little time and other things preoccupying me, I tend these days to rare game sessions and only smallish ones, which require only little immersion into the game rules and systems. E.g. Sid Meier´s Starships, for a few turns in between. And then I found Rebel Galaxy.

I just finished the main story line, which really is not the main attraction of the game. It rather is a nice little distracting game when you don´t have the time or the mindset to involve yourself with deeper, more complex games like Elite: Dangerous (ED) is.

It is a similar combat system to StarTrek Online, but also brings in some Homeworld and Eve Online feelings, by virtue of commanding a big ship and destroying small fighter vessels like annoying flies. It is watered down to a mere two dimensional maneuvering on a plane (just the NPC fighter and gunships are allowed to zip around above and below you) and spiced with the broadside-style ship combat which hails from Assassins Creed: Black Flag, which I never played. But it for sure is quite a difference to the classic cockpit style of ED. Add to this the ability to pause and to have a pure offline game experience, resulting a much more "family friendly" game than ED ever can be.

The little lively universe, with constantly changing market prices and faction presence, makes your actions do show up some consequence there. The ships all look gorgeous, just the right mix between practical and exotic. ED ships look bland, in comparison.

Also, Rebel Galaxy demonstrates how some sprinkled-in NPCs with dialogue can make a game world suddenly seem much more personal and alive. This is certainly something which Frontier should really start working on for ED, hopefully after Horizons. I also read some guy´s post about an idea to make NPCs as procedural as the environment, mentioning Shadow of Mordor´s Nemesis system, where NPCs would also level up and adapt, according to how successfully they managed to harass (read: kill) the player avatar. Yes, please!

In the end, though, I did not expect much depth from Rebel Galaxy and thus could not get disappointed. It is indeed very easy to construct yourself an overpowered ship, as any kind of scissor-stone-paper balance between weapon and defense systems is missing. Also, defense system strength is independent from ship size, so a small frigate with Mk 5 shields is almost as sturdy as a dreadnought with the same system (just the hull strength is supposedly different, but your shields should never get whittled down firsthand).

My op-ship is a Barracuda, which has insane and totally unbalanced speed and maneuverability for its considerable medium size. Mining lasers are, opposed to in ED, actually the strongest turret weapons available (which probably makes sense, but not so in combination with a deadly instant targeting capability). Also, there is hardly a space craft which allows for more than four turrets aimed at the same target, so any bigger ship just has too little advantages compared to the increased vulnerability due to loss of speed and agility, it seems. As broadside weapon, I chose the tachyon cannon. A ramming deflector completes the setup. For combat, I fist lure the annoying fighters and gun ships a bit away from the big pots and let my turrets take care of them. Then I boost in, ram the big ships and make use of the tachyon cannon´s fastest firing cycle, by buttong mashing from close up so that I do not need to aim the broadsides at all. Add in the high-damage dumbfire missiles as secondary weapon, and, together with the turrents, this obliterates even the largest enemy vessel in a blink of the eye.

Really, it is a child´s play, since the NPC ships only do fire at a much slower pace than the cannons actually would allow for. This is why this game is more for your mood when you just want to quickly blow up something on a short relaxing evening or just want to relish in some mini game of trading, doing missions or some mining. For this, Rebel Galaxy is indeed perfect.

Repost: That Star Wars Trailer

From this website:
"It's amazing. Enjoy this feeling for the next two months, because if this movie turns out to suck, a lot of us will never love again. We will be husks, dead inside, shells of our former selves, hollow-eyed and pale, huddled together for warmth, not because we care to be warm or social, but because our instinctual lizard-brain tells us that was something our former selves used to care about back when we were human and "hope" was a word with any meaning."

Indeed, a perfectly executed trailer. I think it is the music, mixed in perfect timing with sound and speech. Just close your eyes and follow how it develops from that single crystal drop reassambling back to that incredible and famous old symphonic theme of Star Wars, changed and throbbing with a new power. If the film industry will not show its very best with this movie, it will be a dissappointment.

Just a link in between

Stumbled upon this article in The Guardian. Would be nice if mainstream would get there one day, understanding the place of computergames in society.

Will hopefully soon be able to continue flight.

Hiatus

Shit hit the fan in real life. Pause for VR.

Bye, Mün

Here I am, spending almost two game sessions designing a new smaller plane, dedicated for quickly and efficiently rescuing a Kerbonaut in LKO. This kind of mission contract pops up quite frequently. It takes so long because somehow I cannot accept that a deltaV of 1400m/s for the second stage rocket should not be enough to reach LKO. I mean, the "Whiplash" turbo jet engines catapult the plane already to 24km altitude and 1200m/s speed. The altogether 2600m/s deltaV are enough to get me into orbit, but there is not enough left for course correction and re-entry.

The final version has to dump the excess liquid fuel for more oxidiser, and I finally can conclude my rescue business with a small, fast and easier to fly spaceplane. Just for the landing, I have to experience again that a too narrow landing gear can easily topple the plane when braking and not moving exact straight.

- just single-serving, because construction is fun









Other news, my Mün patrol now has established routine, the Yawl can cross the entire Farside Crater without a single crash. I wonder if a rover with just landing gear and an ion drive would make for an even better racing machine? Just a bit more punch for going upwards slopes would be really nice. I do a short stop to commemorate the Omniscient´s old landing area; it seems so long ago that it has landed on Mün so daringly, but in truth, the Omniscient hasn´t even returned yet from its virgin flight and "Grand Tour de Kerbin"!

- visiting a historical site










A game session later, I still find myself driving across Mün, on my last planned and very difficult leg. Upwards, out of the Farside Crater, onto the Highlands and then to a close by Highland Crater. I cannot avoid to have an accident, driving dully straight fowards numbs awareness and, suddenly, that crater opens up without a warning. I can hastily lower the Yawl´s landing gear and mitigate and survive the downfall, but my achingly slow route back upwards and out of the crater, over the rim, makes a rover wheel finally blow up. Since the Mün patrol is really not finished and the engineer on board is missing the experience level to repair it, I reload my last 15 minutes. Oh well.

The very steep slopes suck out the Yawl´s electricity charge and, as it is midday, my solar panels have almost no sun exposition, forcing long breaks for re-charging. Then, thanks to having two reaction wheels installed, I discover this little trick here to increase the sun exposition area for my solar panels;



- rest&recover in Praying Mantis style











After a while, I have conquered the worst cliffs and finally reach highlands. My scientist goes on EVA, slips and has to discover that the Yawl oviously has some more grip than the astronauts´ boots. She tumbles down for about 400 meters before I can regain control over her. Each bumb resembles more an impact and I feared the worst, but Kerbals are tough. This accident reminds me of the upcoming cinema movie "The Martian".



- she is my Mün-ian











Some time later, I reach my final goal, a very impressive looking highland crater.

- it´s like in real life; photos do not seem to do justice









For the Yawl´s launch, I travel some more miles back to the equatorial plane. Like this, I hope to get an immediate rendez-vous with the Kerbonaut which I have the rescue contract for. Getting sloppy, I drive with rover wheels at about 14 m/s over a steeper inclining rim, a rover wheel blows again. Since it is only going downwards from here on, the damage is not debilitating my movement anymore.



- hurrah for landing gear!











The Yawl´s launch is timed a bit too late and it requires to orbital revolvements before it has caught up with the Kerbonaut in need. Then it is time to burn for Kerbin and bring back a lot of valuable scientific data. Can´t wait for it! I will land the Yawl instead of keeping it in orbit and fetching the data via a spaceplane; it is not only the destroyed rover wheel but I also plan for some improvements for its next version. Overall I am rather content now how it worked out. Maybe I can access the tech node with the "ruggedized" rover wheels, which sound like they would not blow up? Should I dare to omit the landing gear once I have them? I will decide this later.

- a long and very successful expedition is heading for home










I have taken over all two full game session for just driving around Mün, so I say a heart-felt "Bye, Mün!". I have done about half of Mün´s biomes, but for the rest, there is still the Crab Lander ready. Not sure though if I really want and need all science from there, but the completionist within me is already tugging all my inner sleeves...

The final leg of Mün Patrol has also taken about one more Kerbal day and brought up the maneuver node for the Scientia 2, which is entering Minmus SOI. On board are tourists for a suborbit and a landing. For the latter, I choose the Greater Flats, because I already know how difficult it is to touch down this vessel; it could benefit from one more reaction wheel. And indeed, the last meters become a bit fiddly and I have to emergency burn upwards again for two times until the horizontal velocity is really low enough to not make the heavyhanded rocket-tower which the Scientia 2 is, topple over.



 - nice to meet again











I use the occasion to also bunker some more scientific data for the Scientia 2 Mobile Lab. There is now enough data to refill it twice. Until then, I shouldn´t overall have any open tech nodes anymore. The next stop should be Mün, where over my demanding little tourist buggers expect the same stuff. This should originally then have been done by the Yawl, but I am sure I will find another way once the Scientia 2 has arrived there. The insertion into Mün orbit takes a bit of fiddling with the maneuver node, and, due to a crappy transfer window, eleven travel days. But I have all the time in the world for this particular expedition; it is not vital for the upcoming big Duna expedition.

There is quite some time again until my next maneuver is due on the Kerbal Alarm Clock. I fulfill one older mission contract by sending scientific data to Kerbin, one of the still stored crew reports in the Yawl. Immediately, a new contract is available, another satelite insertion into Mün orbit. Which is a job for the Firebird.



 - always fantastic to behold











Sharpened by experience I notice that the required Mün orbit is a retrograde one. Once the satelite leaves the cargo hold, it gets plotted for a proper burn to arrive the "right way around".

After all this tight action since the start of the "busy days" a few weeks back and, in particular, driving around so long on Mün, it feels strange to suddenly have 5 Kerbal days with nothing to do. Even all my numerous contracts have nothing in there which requires another new expedition to be launched. Instead of pushing time warp, I decide on a little experimentation. The accumulated 1400 science points on my account get used to unlock Mk3 parts, all the advanced cockpits and docking ports, multi connectors. It is design and construction time! (I did not open yet the tech node with the claw equipment; I suspect it would introduce new types of missions, which I do not want and need yet; need to keep interesting stuff for later!)

Unfortunately, a game session spent on designing, trying to find a new iteration of my Omniscient-class motherships, is not something exciting to write about in this blog. Short version: Disappointing, because the Mk3-parts provide not really for an own ship line, but need to be combined with Mk2 parts, like the Mobile Lab or the ISRU and drills. As such, they just mean more mass but not better functionality. Basically, my current Omniscient class, the Navitas, already seems to have everything you can get and need for space travels, barring nuclear engines.

Well, we will see if I can still come up with something new and nice. In between my game sessions, three since my last blog entrys, I found an awesome album which contains a lot of inspiration.

In the meanwhile, over and out.

Tumbling on the edge of failure

This game session is indeed properly themed; almost every action is very close to a failure, this time.

As a little break from my Mün patrol activity, I have to attend to some maneuver nodes. As it turns out, I misplaced two of them, behind the periapsis instead of before the periapsis, both for the Fuel Ship, as well as the Tripol on their return trip to Kerbin. Thank god I routinely check for every vessel at the start of each game session; I know that I get sloppy sometimes. If I hadn´t realized in time, both ships would have entered Kerbin´s atmosphere way too low, causing re-entry and, consequently, as both were not constructed for this, their destruction. The reason why I misplaced those two maneuver nodes is that the elliptic orbit usually lets my spacecrafts return on the retrograde side, relative to Minmus´ orbit around Kerbin. Somehow, my last two ejections from Minmus with said ships made them return on the prograde side of said elliptic orbit.

After the errors are corrected, the satelite for my mission contract "Mün polar orbit" gets inserted. Then, switch again, I plot the final rendez-vous vector for the Firebird, which still is in orbit, racing to rescue a Kerbonaut. Flipping the spaceplane over for prograde and retrograde correction burns is tedious and slow. I really have to remember to put a large reaction wheel on it!

This last maneuver slightly overlaps with the first aerobraking pass of the Fuel Ship. To my annoyance, I again have to realize that aerobraking does not take place when the game is not focused on the according vessel. So, one more long elliptic orbit has to pass with its according longer travel time. Since there is no urgent need to refuel any expedition, this mishap is no big deal. But trouble is just about to start.

After the Firebird finally reaches the Kerbonaut, another quick switch to the Mün satelite is required for its last correction burn. Bing, +80,000 credits. Due to another overlap, the re-entry of the Firebird is delayed by another orbital round. During this one, I realize that I haven´t payed attention to the periapsis during its last maneuver, which had dropped to suborbit. I need another burn so that the re-entry point gets not skewed. Awfully slow to flip, the Firebird manages just in time.

Finally at the correct point for re-entry, the Firebird adopts a +10 degree descend angle, like I have come to use also for the White Goose. This causes am increased slow down in the upper atmosphere and does not drop the point of touchdown too much from the initial plot, as it usually does when the spaceplane flies straight its way through the atmosphere and just relies on its airbrakes.

Unfortunately, at 45km, the Firebird suddenly flips over, despite its airbrakes being deployed as a counter balance. I fear the worst; normally, a plane at still 2000+ m/s should get ripped apart in no time, and it already happened to it some time ago while in the lower atmosphere. To my astonishment, though, the plane holds together here in the upper atmosphere, doing the major part of its re-entry in sommersault modus. Squad probably nerfed the game´s harsh physics model by a bit too much? But right now, I don´t look a gift horse into the mouth.

Once low enough for the jet enginges to kick in, I desperately try to re-align, unsuccessfully. Flipping, altitude dropping, dropping, ...




- mayday, mayday, mayday!

At some point, I finally manage, just to loose forward alignment again. WTF!? Then, my error dawns on me. I have forgotten to re-balance the remaining fuel to the front; the Firebird currently has a center of lift far in front of the center of mass! Desperately pumping fuel in the again violently sommersaulting plane, howver, there is not much fuel left, and only by also activating the airbrakes as surplus control surfaces, at about 3 km altidude, the Firebird finally passes over into a stabilized flight pattern.

At what cost, though. The fuel reserves are nearly used up, and the Firebird is still far away from the space center, above a wrong continent. An emergency landing is in order. I quickly raise back up to about 10km altitude and then glide the Firebird, with just some 200 units of fuel left, to the coastline.





- initiate emergency landing

Unfortunately, the coast line is littered with steep slopes. On the last kilometers before touchdown, I manage to do a counter approach, turn 180 degrees and set down undamaged on the beach, in parallel to the coast line. Whew. I sure have very sweaty hands by now!

Recovering the spaceplane that far from the Kerbal Space Center makes me loose 25% of its value. This roughly reduces the profit from the rescue mission (50k credits) to one third and thus manifests as a mere efficiency drop, but not a real economic loss.

Considering all my errors during this session, considering how little I could advance my expeditions overall, I nevertheless consider myself very lucky, and strangely, leave this game session with a feeling of tremendous success.