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I disagree. I think it's important to allow options as part of a sliding difficulty scale in the game. Yeah, it's true that Sandbox and Science make things easier than Career, but the play style for each mode can be very different because of the locked options. Maybe I want to play career, but I'm frustrated by the 'normal' career difficulty. So going from 'Normal' to 'Easy' disables comms network (maybe I don't want to go to the hassle of building that infastructure), I don't have to worry about losing money to accidentally destroyed facilities, and the difficulty sliders adjust. That means I can still have the challenge of career without it being as punishing as a normal mode. Switching toScience can't fill that, and neither can Sandbox. The Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel has talked about this a couple times. Here's one of his videos that talks about purity of game maker vision vs. players playing the way they want. I think it ultimately depends on what the KSP2 developers have planned for their vision of the game. The only optional features I'm against is optional features that are not included as part of the difficulty modifiers/scale. So I'm against people arguing that KSP2 should have a life support framework pre-built for modders or life support as an option for players that want it outside of the difficulty options.

I would argue it makes sense that a probe mission is harder than a manned mission. It's a natural offset for their efficiency. Manned Mission Pros: You always have control of your craft You can get Eva and Sample science Manned Mission Cons: Require more resources to support larger craft designed to contain Kerbals Kerbals could die, depleting your kerbalnaut corps Probe Mission Pros: Lighter mission profiles and resource consumption compared to manned missions No risk of life, only afore-mentioned cheaper craft, if mission failure Probe Mission Cons: Always needs radio contact for full control More planning(?)(Included because your comment, not because I agree with it) NASA sends out more probe missions than manned, even before the retirement of the shuttle because they are cheaper and more expendable, not because they easier. About 40% of the probed missions to Mars have failed, and a few of them for really stupid reasons, such as parts installed incorrectly, program errors that should have been detected, etc. We don't even have to worry about comms delay in KSP or cosmic radiation, or part failure, or micrometeorites, or other hazards that make space travel for probes and humans even more dangerous than what risk-averse KSP players do. The idea that probe missions require significantly more planning and effort compared to a manned mission is not true as far as KSP is concerned. Just like a manned mission, they require a control device (probe body instead of command pod), science gear, propulsion and propellant enough to get home, and power/battery. The only difference between them is the requirement of either Kerbals with the weight penalty for their command pods, or a com network and coms gear, which is trivial to set up and is good practice for manned missions anyway. Even then, you've got to do additional planning to make sure your Kerbals can get back safely whereas a probe can just stay at its destination and transmit its findings home. I don't want life support for the sake of yet another thing to manage. I don't mind having to manage heat, propellant, or power because those are things that have a direct impact on the performance of the craft I design, but that's already pretty tedious IMO. I don't also need to manage the minutia of keeping a digital avatar alive. If I want that, I'll go dig up my old tamagachi. I'm not against it being a modded feature, but I don't think it should be a core feature, and I don't want the developers taking time away on core features for everyone to cater to a subset of users by setting up a framework for life support modders. I don't have to feed Master Chief, replenish his 15 minute oxygen supply, or give him potty breaks, I don't want to have to worry about that with my Kerbals either.

Sure, if you want to pay the licensing fees to New Line Cinema, Saltire Cinema, 20th Century Fox, the Irwin Allen estate, etc. No way they would let Star Theory make a paid-content add on without getting a large slice of the pie themselves.

If by very small, you mean initially propped up by Netscape/AOL during the height of their power and aided in the transition to the Mozilla Foundation by donating hardware, intellectual property and a $2 million donation? Mozilla was originally to turn Netscape Communicator into an open source project in a bid to save the Netscape company.

Yeah, because Chrome's parent company pays Mozilla lots of money to guarantee that Google is the default search engine of Firefox. Mozilla also gets a kickback for every search you perform using Google. In addition, Mozilla gets a lot through donations from other companies and individuals because Mozilla maintains a lot of other useful open source cross-platform products that are extremely useful for software development. The scope of Mozilla's products and their usefulness to the companies and individuals that donate to them makes KSP look microscopic by comparison. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

Nobody said it was problematic. OP was just excitedly pointing out that a Kerbal was cracking his knuckles while wearing gloves. Now, IRL that might be a bit tough with the size of real spacesuit gloves and their stiffness from being pressurized, but that's not really a detail that concerns me in a game where I can magically make helmets disappear.

Then use the power of the free market (your wallet) and don't buy a software product until its completion level and functionality meet your requirements. This isn't hard. Nobody forced you to buy KSP when you did. It's a completely optional product that you chose to spend money on. For me, it was watching people landing on the moon before landing gear was ever put into the game. I don't know if it was Scott Manley, or someone else that made the video, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I was willing to spend money on KSP, even if development stopped after that because I'd be able to (crash)land on another world. I see a lot of people in this thread bellyaching and whining about 'incomplete' software being made full releases. If you don't like it, don't buy it and certainly never look at being an early adopter. You knew full well what was going on when you hit the purchase button. It's not like Squad or anyone else hid the development status of KSP, and if you didn't know, then learn your lesson and do some research before you spend your money. Beyond some bugs, the game was fully and easily playable and neither of the DLCs they've released are necessary to enjoy the core game. I, for one, am thankful that Squad decided to continue polishing and refining the game well past what they had marked as the end-point for development. It even looks like they're going to continue development BEYOND the release of the game's sequel, and yes, I know this is because the sequel is not being developed by Squad, so they won't see any money for it. I never have, and never will, spend my money on something until it's reached the point where I'm satisfied with the product even if the company were to up and shutdown the day after my purchase. @5thHorseman makes a good point, you can never tell what users will do to a program to find a bug you never thought to look for. It's the same with errata for board games and recalls for cars and appliances, but barring that WYSIWYG. If you weren't satisfied or excited with the status of KSP when you bought it, then you shouldn't have bought it. Once KSP hit final release, Squad really owed us nothing except some bug fixes as the community came across glitches. A lot of you act as if forking over a few bucks means they owe you the moon in perpetuity, and honestly, they don't.

So you don't like the style of something that's a non-development team member's quick and dirty representation of a temporary placeholder? You are really stretching for something to gripe about. I'm going to hold my complaints on UI until I actually see something that the dev team has officially released as their art direction for the UI. Maybe you should too.

SeaQuest?! Even better! I loved that show. Mycroft is the name of Sherlock Holme's older brother. His deductive reasoning skills and general knowledge base is greater than Sherlock's, but he lacks the interest in fieldwork. Mycroft is a government official for the Queen and usually acts as an oracle, giving Sherlock cases, pointing him in the right direction, and revealing information that Sherlock would not have access too. My favorite interpretation of Mycroft is by Mark Gatiss, who played Mycroft in the 2010-current BBC series. So you're acting just like Mycroft Holmes by refusing to voice your own deductions, but providing factual and rumored information for the rest of us to work off of.

Of course someone named Mycroft would be gathering facts and evidence. Do you have a Sherlock helping you? Good work. I'm a fan of objective data gathering in the face of a heated topic.

How about some kind of rocket Jesus fish? Too on the nose?

True, but by then I would think we would be using something like an advanced version of Spaceship One or realized versions of the many canceled SSTOs rather than chemical rockets, which are coming close to reaching their maximum potential (part of the reason Space X abandoned a recoverable upper-stage). Since we can create SSTOs with space-planes in the hanger, I don't see why this is an issue. Besides, stage reuse is way more expensive and annoying than engineers care to admit. The Space Shuttle was supposed to launch once a week according to spec, but launched maybe every six months at the height of launch frequency and cost way more per refurbishment period. The Redstone rockets in Project Mercury were designed to be recoverable, but this was never implemented because the cost of refurbishing engines damaged by salt-water corrosion was more expensive than just building a new rocket. The only reason Space X may make this work is because they are sacrificing significant payload fractions to land their first stages under power on dry land rather than letting them splash down into the ocean.

Do you have a citation for that? Beyond STS Solid Rocket Boosters, STS Shuttle, Buran and Space X's current work on Falcon 9 Stage 1 recovery, I can't think of any rocket systems intentionally designed to do more than burn up on re-entry or splash into the ocean. That's barely a drop in the bucket compared to the number of rocket systems frequently used around the world. Edit: I forgot to include the Shuttles.

Ah, must be research for Kerbal parachutes.

Thumbs down, I disagree. I didn't experience any major issues on release day. There were a couple of bugs, but nothing that prevented me from enjoying the game.