Fuck me spacebros, I thought I was burned out on KSP but noooooo. Started another career and it's the most fun one yet, since the time I first managed a Mun landing (only to crash into a mountain after a smooth re-entry).
Starting parameters: baseline Hard difficulty but 2000 sci, 500,000 funds, allow quickloads and reverting flights, and Funds rewards to 100% ('cuz I don't like grinding for funds). I.e. enough funds to upgrade the runway and enough science to skip the very early-game grind I've done so many times.
Strategy: no fucking (vertically launched, disposable) rockets, (horizontally-launched, recoverable) planes only, and no use of MPLs to grind out science -- return or transmit to Kerbin only. Using MPLs to level up Kerbals in space or as a convenience to reset experiments is allowed.
Having to make low-tech space planes made the game fresh again. First it seemed almost impossible to get a plane that could actually
do something with nothing stronger than a Reliant for go. And indeed I ended up using some liquid-fuel boosters to get my little Terrier-powered plane into orbit for, I think, two launches. Then I had enough Sci to buy Rockomax tanks and a Skipper.
And then I came up with a really successful design. Meet the Osprey in an early iteration:
This is all Tier 1 tech. The key is that the core is crazily configurable. I can attach cargo to the roof (as here), or the back of the centre hull (which I can also use to recover landers and such, if I add some wing surface below to protect it from re-entry), or where I have the cockpit now, or the fronts of the engine pods (if I have two symmetrical loads, e.g. a bunch of satellites being launched at once, and I can make them reasonably aerodynamic). This is a remarkably docile beast -- it's easy to balance for any of these loadouts, it flies well, climbs well, re-enters well, lands well, and even ditches well in case I miss KSC and have to do that. Heaviest load I've lofted was just under 30 tons, a refuelling launch bound for Minmus. That was roof-mounted, with a triple-Skipper configuration for power and a good many more Rockomaxes at all nodes. It could go even a little higher, as there was a fair bit of dV left over.
The problems with this design are more convenience than capability. Payloads need to be fairly carefully designed to fit on the nodes on the plane, and I need to tweak thrust limiters to deal with thrust torque with larger, asymmetrical loads. Other than that, it's fantastic. The final iteration (for now) of the Osprey is little changed from the original -- some unnecessary bits removed, canards for easier take-off, better control surfaces and landing gear when I got the Sci to buy them, plus my shuttle lost its wings, since after getting docking ports I'm able to re-dock and re-enter as a unit, the same way I got up there. I'm also carrying a little more fuel here since I'm targeting about 150 km orbit rather than 75:
Finally I got annoyed enough with the finicky payload designs and thrust tweaking that I developed a successor:
This is still a fundamentally Tier 1 design although in this iteration it's using Tier 2 control surfaces and landing gear -- but these are refinements rather than requirements. The main advantages of the Firewing compared to the Osprey are slightly increased maximum payload mass, and
much increased payload volume. Just about all payloads go where the intra-system shuttle is docked now (that's designed to survive re-entry when so attached, by the way, so it doesn't need the wing surface to shield it). Since this guy rides high and the CoM is just about where the payload sits, I can stick just about anything there and it'll behave just fine, and without roof-mounted payloads I don't need to make in-flight adjustments to compensate for thrust torque. (I could use the engine pod nose cones as alternative mount points too of course.)
The only steps backward the Firewing takes are related to the return trip: it's considerably more draggy which means it falls out of the sky pretty fast, leaving less room for error if I'm trying to hit the KSC, and it doesn't ditch cleanly: because the nose is so high it tends to pitch forward hard and wants to do a somersault. It's survivable but a bit of a rough ride and occasionally some bits fall off. I'm still working on refining the design to improve these aspects. Launches though are remarkably efficient -- I've managed to get to LKO using with little as 3100 m/s dV.
These things are easier to balance and launch than rockets by the way. Just make sure initial TTW is minimum 0.85 or so (more is better!), point them up at 45 degrees as soon as you can, climb to 10k/500 m/s or so, then follow prograde until Ap is where you want it, and circularise. No delicate balancing of the gravity turn, no aerodynamic surprises giving rockets flipping out mid-trajectory, no agonising tweaking of fuel load and TTW ratio between stages. Just load up, add enough Rockomaxes and fuel to get sufficient dV, adjust CoM/CoL by moving the wings and engine pods forward and back, move landing gear just behind CoM, and fly off.
A year ago I bought KSP but I didn't have enough time to get beyond basic orbits around Kerbal so I was a bit disappointed but this year I finally had some time to look at some guides and really have it all sink to me and finally I managed to do a munding!!
