Piper

I've always played with keyboard, and with spacecraft it is my preferred option. However I do wish I had a working joystick for whenever I'm doing atmospheric flight.

I generally, I multiply my total needed deltaV (as calculated with a deltaV road map) by 1.25x. However if I'm doing any type of precision landing like landing at an anomaly or a base, I'll multiply the amount I need for that portion of the mission by 1.5x. I usally also add on the max plane change amount without any multiplication. Actually liftoff from Kerbin I usually just make an even 3500m/s, no 1.25x added on. So as an example, let's say I was sending a craft to the surface of Dres to investigate an anomaly, I would calculate it as this: Liftoff from Kerbin: 3500m/s Kerbin Escape: 950m/s x 1.25 = 1187.5m/s Transfer to Dres: 610m/s x 1.25 = 762.5m/s Max Plane change: 1010m/s Dres Insertion burn: 1300m/s x 1.25 = 1625m/s Dres precision landing: 430m/s x 1.5 = 645m/s Total mission deltaV: 8730m/s

Back in the 0.18 days, I used to be a big fan/player of Orbiter, and had heard a bunch of talk about KSP through the Orbiter forums. I decided to check it out and downloaded the game, but didn't really give it much of an actual try and it sat unused on my laptop. Around the time 0.23 came out, I decided to jump into it again and started actually playing it, and quickly became hooked on it. One of my earliest memories of KSP is getting my craft into "orbit", only to discover that both my apoapsis and my periapsis was just below 70km, and so I hadn't actually technically made it into space. I think I was trying to get an experiment to work and was completely confused why it kept saying I was in Kerbin's upper atmosphere.

Today in KSP I fried my laptop. Well technically it was two days ago, but it's still fried. So, I had three ships returning from interplanetary missions, each carrying seven Kerbals, and instead of launching multiple ships to dock with them, I decided to build a "Rendezvous Station" and a single large SSTO shuttle that would be capable of carrying all of the Kerbals back to the surface in one shot. After working on different designs for nearly a week I finally got one working that would do the job reliably (and safely), so I decided to launch one more test one in Krash to doubly make sure it works as intended. During the launch to orbit, my screen goes insane and everything just stops. Feeling the heat coming off the laptop my first thoughts are that it overheated, so I immediately turn it off, unplug it, and disconnect the battery. It's been a couple of days now, and it still won't turn back on, and I fear it is completely done for. I'm going to take off the cover and see if it's something repairable. My biggest fear is it's the motherboard itself, but with the way it is behaving (repeatably turns on and then immediately turns off, with a long pause in between without anything appearing on the screen), I suspect it either is indeed the motherboard, or the CPU. I just really hope I haven't lost all my stuff for good (thankfully, I don't think that is likely). This KSP play-through has probably been my favorite so far, and I've been gearing up for my first manned missions to Jool and Eeloo, with some pretty new and ambitious designs (for me), and as I had mentioned been working on m first SSTO shuttle.

Instinctually, I wanted to say Dres, as it certainly gets the most hate/contempt on the boards. Heck, even of the science reports say things like "No planet found here.", but everybody KNOWS about Dres, and I think most people go there at one point or another, so I'm actually going to vote for Vall. Nobody really says it's a bad place or anything like that, but other then those who have been there nobody really talks about it at all. The first time I landed on Vall, I remember thinking "Oh wow this place is pretty cool with some really neat surface scatter! I wish I explored this place sooner!" Now, it's hardly the coolest, or greatest rock in the Kerbol system, it's not even the coolest place in the Jool system, but I would call it the most under-rated simply for the reason it feels like the most forgotten one and therefore never gets rated anything at all.

Mein Gott! What did you do to that guy?!

My first career game was back in the 0.23 days, when career was the current Science Mode and we didn't have funds. Now I had come into the game having played Orbiter for years, so I already had a pretty solid understanding of orbital dynamics, but at the same time it was nice having to work a new space program up from its foundations. The funny thing about that particular career mode, was that for my first manned interplanetary trip I basically went with the hardest I could do, which was a landing on Moho, at night. Since then I've done a couple of different career modes, each slightly different. In my current one, I have it set where contracts give three times as much funds, because I never was big on doing tons of contracts, most of them doing things that don't really interest me, but science results from experiments are cut down by a third as well to try and balance them out as well. This makes the early portion of career mode particularly difficult, since you really need those science rewards to progress technologically, and without all the science experiments unlocked, you can't always gather all the science you really need.

Have you tried MechJeb or KER? Both have options for windows that include orbital information. I personally like the versatility of MechJeb, but it's a bit more complex then KER which definitely seem to be the more popular options these days.

Since Milford isn't one of the "original 4" (Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Val), his generation is completely random. But there is another way to get him. If he press Alt-12, it brings up the Debug Menu, in it, somewhere under the heading "Kerbals", there is an option for generating a new Kerbal, and in it you can type in a custom name, and select their characteristics.

I know Scott Manley has already been mentioned twice now, but my most memorable video has to be him using a single large 2.5m tank (the largest in the game at the time) as his only fuel source to travel from Kerbin, to Duna, to Ike, and return to Kerbin. I don't think you'd be able to do it now, since the way physics works (namely aerodynamics) has changed a ton since then, so have many of the parts, but it is still a pretty cool thing to see.

I can't remember specifically which update it was, I think it was around the 1.4 era of updates, but either way it was definitely in between 0.23 and now, lol. 0.23 and the newest versions are almost entirely different games. But I have the latest version of KSP, and my laptop isn't much newer then the one you have. I think I was even playing KSP on an older laptop with almost identical specs to have, and that was up until 1.3 or something about that. If you have the space on your computer, I recommend installing a second install of KSP of the latest version and giving it a try, and see if it works.

Specifically which version do you have? I know there was one big update they did where they specifically tackled performance and made it a ton faster. I have an older computer laptop myself, and I know I did see a difference, especially with larger stations and bases. It still take forever to load, but I think that's mostly because of the obscene number of mods I have.

Personally, I would love some type of "Vehicle Assembly Building" app that simply had all the ship building capability of the game so you could design ships/aircraft/probes/anything while you are about. I don't know how many times I've gotten an idea in my head while at work or on the bus and had to wait all day till I got back home and was able to try to make it work. This way you could design different iterations while you are out, and fly them once you get home. A secondary app like this would also be a great home for KSPedia as well.

Lol, that has been EXACTLY the case with me. After beginning to circumnavigate Eve, I'm seriously thinking of building a proper aircraft for exploring all of Kerbin, because as of right now I've explored more of places like Dres and Eve then I have of my own homeworld. There are biomes on Kerbin I've never even been to, let alone collected all the science I can. Now that I stop to think about it, I actually feel kinda bad that I've given Dres more love then I have Kerbin.

Funny you mention that. In all the time I've played KSP, I've only gone and visited that one once. In my current playthrough, I've visited anomalies on the Mun, Minmus, and Eve, but yet to investigate a single one on Kerbin.