Rouady Central

Ready to begin again.  I will set the initial money to about $100K just so there are no early issues (the money part is sort of annoying, but I think it is good to use contracts). On launch I have received a note of incompatible mods. I feel like EVE may not be necessary anymore with the SVE add-on.  I may try it without that but it seems to be working at the moment. Sounding Rocket Alpha Pad Test Successfully recovered temp and pressure from pad for contract. Researched Engineering 101.  Got a bunch of stuff! Sound Rocket Alpha Flight 423dV in 1 stage, Added Seismic to get pad data Rocket Reached a height of 1775 m.  Temp and pressure experiments.  Chute open and vehicle recovered. A-3 Contract completed.  20.8 science earned. SUCCESSFUL MISSION. Sounding Rocket Beta Pad Test (no fuel) 7.3 Science Earned from 4 Xper. Fairings did not separate, probably due to staying on the pad.  Hopefully they come off in flight! Sounding Rocket Beta Flight 528dV in 1 Stage. (449 on pad?) Height 2384m.  4 Xper. Good Recovery.  16.8 Science earned. SUCCESSFUL MISSION. <Early Sounding>  

I had a few odd things happening with my chutes and contracts not being completed (when they obviously were).  So I removed some mods and tried some different things and i think it is clear now. FAR was making my Sounding Rocket chutes fail.  It is removed as not critical. I was not succeeding at the first launch contract because a sounding rocket did not count.  It was fine once I used a built-in rocket.  So, I simply will avoid that contract until I am ready or do a quick built-in launch to fulfill it.  Either way, my contracts are messed up so it is early and easy top restart. CKAN is reporting a new Historical Contracts, Interstellar Fuel Switch, AVC, and Real Plume for Stock, so I am updating those. Adding Distant Object Enhancement (original config), ELP, Procedural Parts, Stock Visual Enhancements and Kopernicus. Ready to start again!

This will be a log I maintain about my first career using the new Kerbal 1.1 update.  I consider it my birthday present from Squad. To set the stage, I have played Kerbal for a while and I was interested in taking advantage of the new stable 64-bit version to be able to use many of the mods I enjoy in one context.  Due to memory limitations, I previously needed to create different install of KSP so that I could experiment with different mod setups without freeze-ups and crashes. Supposedly, this will solve that problem.  Let's see! Since it is newly released, many mods I like have not yet been updated or are still considered in  a testing state.  Part of the value of this blog is to keep track of the mods I use and when they are added and updated to identify issues if they arise. Anyway, I have done my first major mod install on a fresh 1.1.  I used CKAN for the following mods: KER, MechJeb,[x]Science, Capcom, Contracts+, KJR, Portrait Stats, RCS Build Aid, Unmanned before Manned, Module Mgr, Decouple Heat Shields, Historic Missions contracts, Kronal Vessel viewer, Ship Manifest, Universal Storage, Raster Prop Monitor, USI Freight, KSP-AVC, Procedural Fairings, Chatterer, EVE, RealPlume, Scatterer, Planetshine, FAR, DMagic Orbital Science, RealChutes, SCANSat, Tarsier, SpaceY Heavy Lifter and Expanded, MKS/OKS, USI-LS, Karibou Rover, Karbonite, Sounding Rockets, Mkerb Science, and a couple others that were installed as dependencies. I manually installed the following (some are testing versions): Kerbal Alarm Clock (Trigger Tech), Community Tech Tree, Toolbar, KSP Achievements, Ambient Light Adjust, Launchpad Countdown (Athlonic), Infernal Robotics Core, KIS, KAS, and Tweakscale. I got Interstellar Extended and the Part Rework for Robotics, but I am holding on them.  They seem unclear on how up-to-date they are and they are not critical in the early game. Some mods I really want for a variety of reasons are simply not updated so I will wait for them.  They are not critical early game either, but I don't want to launch any Kerbals until I get Final Frontier (for example) so I don't lose the history.  Some others I will watch heavily for include: Transfer Window Planner, Texture Replacer, Hullcam VDS, Octosat, Near Future set, Surface Experiments, Taurus HCV. There are some other nice-to-haves, but that list above do some unique things that I miss until they are added.  Others are more for 'plussing.'  Part of that is other worlds and I am waiting for those to update as well. Now, the moment arrives when I start this monstrosity and create a new career! Fingers crossed...

Well, things seem to be mostly working.  No sign of Tweakscale though.  Could be the items I am using.  I have set many things up, but I'll tweak the interface for a while. Anyway, ready for my first contract.  Very simple.  Collect science.  Easy enough.  I'll use my first sounding rocket for that (no launch). I'll simply get the temperature reading at the pad. I have received two achievements for getting more than $100K (which I started with) and completing my first contract.  However, the ship fell over with only one launch stick attached, I will try three for balance. Next up is first flight and 2 contracts.  The Nazi A-3 contract and the "get something to fly" contract!  This should be pretty easy with the sounding rocket. Odd. The rocket launch went off and an achievement was created for a first launch but the contract did not appear fulfulled.  Also, the parachute came out, but provided no braking so it crashed.  The A-3 contract was fulfilled.  After the crash, it went to a weird orbital view.  Okay, it looks like there are a couple bugs... Rocket height achieved was 11,870 meters.  It was called "First Sounding Rocket."  743 m/s V in one stage.  NO science, but no parachute either! So, I tested the parachute that comes with sounding rockets a bit.  It actually seems to act as extra weight!  Very odd.  I am trying to remove FAR and/or RealChute and see if it then works right (is it a conflict?). First CKAN updated both Planetshine and Contract configurator.  Now I removed both FAR and RealChute to find the problem.  If it still fails, then I don't know. <"Getting started".> First test it looks like FAR screwed things up.  Rocket did not go nearly as high either.  Also, I cannot get rid of the First Launch contract.  I feel like the achievement thing is in the way.  Very odd. I think I want to restart without FAR and maybe the achievement thing to see if that is the problem. New test, no FAR, no Achievements, RealChute returned.  I can live without FAR since I don't do a lot of airplane stuff anyway.