weissel

I am exited to see how much the lessons learned from creating KSP v1 (framework, floating points of origins and Krakens, etc) will be playing out in KSP2. Will new techniques use multi-core CPU resources to a great extend? Will huge rockets be not stuttering in reality? Will mods be able to access multi-core capabilities and/or graphics card computing power? There are so many possibilities that can help make KSP2 shine well beyond it's punch weight ... and mod creators have proven they are game-changers. Literally as well as figuratively. So the most exiting part is the anticipation of what other people will be creating ... especially in terms of mods that then allow other people to create even more ... mods and vessels and stations and stories and settling new star systems ...

With KSP you have the choice not to upgrade (at least for that playthrough). KSP allows multiple installs with different versions and different mods ... just download the .zip and install in a different directory. Say 1.4.x, 1.5.x, 1.6.x, 1.7.x under a KSP directory. You can also mod (copy) in the old engine values into the newest version. You may not play a vanilla 1.7 but you can continue using your career and ships with no surprises. (See above on multiple installs, too.) Or you can convert to 1.7 and adapt. Your in-game crafts will not be affected: their parts and part stats are stored in the savegame. The new engine stats will only affect new craft (launch pad or runway or similarly spawning into the world --- just being on rails does not put them out of the world).

I agree to that, but ... how about those that actively play BTSM for KSP 1.0.4 (which is not the last *complete* complete version, either --- the 'last level' is not really done) or the one for KSP 0.98, IIRC (with the old aero"dynamics" but the last level available) do make a thread, post their pics and mission report and so on? Or even use this very thread? That does not need any special powers, incurs no licensing problems even with ARR mods and absent developers. Posting these things now is no more effort than it was when the BTSM thread was alive & active and the mod in active development.

Contradiction in terms. You have it, therefore it cannot be gone forever. Force majeure does not make a crime. Pity, yes. Loss, yes. Crime, no.

Is Civilization in any way comparable to CoaDE, with or without a mission generator? Is a Civ player more likely to buy CoaDE than a non-Civ player? If so, you better show that connection. Otherwise you might as well compare CoaDE to chess, backgammon or go --- and see how many people play that and have played that for centuries! I also ask you to consider that extra systems, say, trading or supply or alliances or campaign generator means that the time spent there cannot be spent elsewhere --- say on non-cylindrical ships or concave armour, fixing bugs, adding more materials, ... If you simply want to make money, yes, but then how about adding micro-transactions and loot boxes where you can find a bit of this or that material you won't get otherwise? That is a real cash cow for certain AAA games' companies. I understand one of the reasons CoaDE was made to try and understand space combat in a near-future would be --- with real physics instead of Hollywood, basically crowd sourcing the solution of finding good designs and tactics. Which is on a totally different plane than selling more or less copies. Things that promise more for you personally? Like campaigning for the creator to include a campaign generator, maybe? As to source code --- you do not need access to the source code to build a campaign generator! All you really need is to create missions fitting to the current state of politics and war and get back the results of these missions. As I said, you could conceivably do all that by hand, following a set of rules --- just like any old board game! The non-boardgame part comes when you replace rolling the dice for combat with playing the mission in CoaDE. Look up Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator ... No, he's a lone wolf --- and that is fine. As to sharing, there are NDAs and lawyers. But luckily, as per above, you do not need to dig into the game's code to generate a mission. So you are going to invade Vesta? Fine, how much are you willing to spend? Go, build a fleet with enough fuel to go there and get into orbit. You only have that much building time and so and so much development time, so you better get ships that are already built ... but do plan for the future. Check your staging, check your dV and TWR, then send off the fleet ... calculate time to arrival, have other factions do their thing (as they immediately see the invasion fleet going for Vesta, they might want to react, ...) and so on. Finally, once your fleet arrives at Vesta and decides to brake into orbit, set up the mission: your fleet, any fleets and other defences the other sides have managed to move to Vesta, the orbits for all of them, their and your status (ammo, fuel, damages, ...). Run the mission. Take note of damages and losses and fuel/ammo expenditures, and put the info into the campaign. Your fleet was shot up and retreated into a solar orbit, hoping for rescue by a fuel tanker? The other side lost a number of vessels too and is nearly dry on ammo? Fine. You got to figure out if and how to get a fuel tanker to your holey fleet --- another mission! --- and the opposition have to repair and get ammo and fuel in ... which may be a target: if so, set up the attempted intercept as another mission. Not all that complicated, but you need to find some rules how to decide on the actions of everyone.

You say the game play would be better if he did that ... but for whom and measured by what standard? And how much better, since we are at it? And what stops you building a campaign generator (not necessarily a computer program!) that handles all the building and researching and political shifts and material needs and alliances and so on? After all, you already have the module builder, the ship builder and the combat simulator ...

You are asking for a lot, are you not? If CoaDE was a Formula One racing game/simulator, people would want to have a realistic driving physics, competent AI drivers, accurate racing courses, tuning of all the important parts, being able to select colours, patterns, teams, ... and possibly VR. You would ask that the game add a whole (realistic) research and development company, with all the management, hiring staff, running tests, having a budget, build times. With a complete logistics and economics system in the background, so the XXX-team might have less budget if the XXX owner gets into financial troubles. And if there's a flu outbreak, the special part YYY you get from ZZZ can be very much delayed if ZZZ or the way to you has that flu in the way. Then there is volcanoes throwing ash into the air, terrorist attacks, blackmail, industrial espionage and sabotage, ... And let's not forget bribery and the politics of deciding what inventions and parameters are allowed and which are not ... and then let's branch out into world politics and so on. Only then that Formula One game will have even a chance to archive it's full potential. PS: Star Wars is Mohs Hardness 1. If anyone believes Mohs Hardness 6 will necessarily have little if any story, they ought to go out into the world instead of staring at PowerPoint presentations. Though boring meetings with unclear PowerPoint presentations are definitively a part you can find ...

So we are playing WWII subs and destroyers in space? That's a fine, comfortable metaphor we all (think) we understand. Unfortunately, applying naval ships to the space environment is as apt as applying pike formation tactics to air carrier task force vs submarines battles. It simply does not compute, the environment is simply too different. First, you are still misunderstanding the difference between operational stealth and tactical stealth. The aircraft attacking Pearl Harbour were not stealth craft --- they did not do tactical stealth: They were pretty easy to see and to hear. They relied on not being hit by a) surprising the defence (which is why the second and third waves had much higher attrition) and b) being aircraft: much faster and much more manoeuvrable than, say, battleships or destroyers, making them hard to hit. And c) of course also being much smaller than even destroyers. The aircraft utilized stealth (operational stealth) by nobody knowing the carriers were even there --- the carrier force (again, not exactly stealthy vessels) kept away from common traffic routes, used absolute radio silence (including removing key parts of all senders and locking them away securely) and e.g. leaving their (normal) radio operators back in Japan to create traffic[1]. [1] Morse code operators have a distinct "hand", like a finger print. Which means that of course the US knew the "hand" of at least all morse code operators of larger warships, and likely of every last one they could get hold of. And so radio direction finding of the known hands of a warship in Japan would (usually) indicate that that warship would be in Japan. I did not say "hard". I did say it means a lot more mass, mass which is always at a premium in spacecraft. Mass that you do not use for weapons, armour, storages, ammunition, batteries, reactors, heat sinks, fuel, crew living space, sensors, missiles, specialists, an extra bathroom or even a cinema or arcade game hall. But do read up on it, do the maths yourself if you need to and come back and tell us how to do it right and what that entails. "Just put some radiators behind your back" ... just in front of or just behind the engines? And how many can you put there --- remember if the radiating sides can see each other, they will also soak up heat from each other. The enemy will "misread your amount of force"? Yes, they will be getting your exact tonnage the second you use your engine. They know how fast your engine is spitting out matter (spectral line shift), what matter it is (spectral lines), how much matter it is (brightness), how much you accelerate radially (towards/away from any observer they have) and even with one observer they can track your perpendicular motion change. Which means they know exactly what your mass is. And what drive(s) you use. And that is just you using your engine. Which you will have to. Now, yes, you could have various vessel types with the same mass and identical engine but different armour/weapons/stuff, but that is all you can do. And to answer your next question: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nicollslaw PS: how long, again, is your plume? PPS: What "fuel" do you use that is liquid at 3K? Which side would that be, considering that there will be sensors in about every direction everywhere? And how do you, exactly, "ditch your stealth"? No ditching, at best no longer using. As to submarines: if you want quiet, you need a diesel-electric one. Nuclear reactors need pumps and co. Modern diesel-electric subs are quieter than the ocean that surrounds them, which has embarrassed and frustrated a number of US carrier task forces and their commanders as they tend to get into perfect torpedo attack positions and are only noticed when they surface there during the exercise. Note that obviously nuclear subs can outrun (endurance) and outsprint (top speed) diesel-electric ones easily. And of course a nuclear sub can be under water until food runs out; however AIP has allowed diesel-electric subs to stay under water for 3 weeks, including travelling from Europe to the US while staying submerged the whole time. Sure it would. A Harry-Potter-like cloak of invisibility would help enormously as well --- and is on the whole more likely. Dodging means applying your engine. Applying your engine --- well, let's just say that a single RCS thruster of the space shuttle is visible 15 million kilometres away. So inside any kind of weapons range you'll be visible --- and that thing is way too weak to 'dodge' anything for your much larger vessel in combat. The space shuttle main engines + SRBs is visible plain to Uranus at least. So please show me how you dodge without uncovering your radiators and not showing your engine plume. Even with just one single enemy and no other sensors in the universe, the only way to keep your plume hidden is dodging straight towards them. Simplistic? I gave you a minimum example. In an universe where directional stealth worked well, even the smallest "coast guard cutter" would have dozens, if not hundreds, of sensor drones. Never mind that sensor drones would be about everywhere. Imagine an air defence not using any kind of RADAR, but solely relying on listening posts and range, speed and altitude guessing --- today, in a developed country. That's how incompetent "not placing sensors everywhere" would be in that universe of yours. "How can you draw the line?" You really, really have to ask that? I draw a line using a pencil and a ruler (or their electronic equivalents), like anybody else.If you ask how to get the position is even easier: vector maths, finding the closest distance between the 2 vector lines. Let me google that for you. You then assume the "real" point is in the middle of the shortest distance. You set an error term from the length of the shortest distance, and then you get a point and a confidence by combining any number or sensor readings. Accuracy? See confidence above. Evaluate: see above Encrypt and decrypt? Whatever your standard system is? Not that you need to, really, the data is not of that much knowledge to the enemy. Electronic warfare? "YAY, the stealthy enemy is sending a strong signal and is no longer stealthy! Just fire at the source and ready the anti-radiation missiles." Also, cryptographic signatures. Sort of hard to fake, without taking over the sensor sat itself ... for which you would have to become visible to the sensor net. Decoy? As soon as you burn your engine, you decoy better has the same mass (and engine) as you do, or it'll stop being a decoy. Jamming? See above: anti-radiation missile & co. Yes, I assume we all know where our sensors are at any given moment. Just like GPS. Which they actually might double as, except for space, too. Since they are everywhere, they also are a hazard to normal shipping if they don't know, but knowing where they are won't help the enemy to avoid them. And if they die, that in itself is a serious alarm signal. And yes, they'll be connecting to each other and reporting. With cryptographic signatures. The price of stealth is a widespread early warning system you would want anyway? That's like saying big gun battleships were the price the other side had to pay for armouring up their vessels of war (Ironclads, Merrimac, ...). Real generals usually do not keep all their forces in one single block. Unless they had only one single phalanx and no auxiliaries at all: no scouts, no cavalry, no skirmishers, no rear guard ... not even a supply train. Real generals tend to keep their main fighting force together to avoid defeat in detail, but they very much rely on distributed assets for intelligence, scouting, detachments(!), garrison forces, forts well spread out to serve as observation posts, strong holds, supply dumps ... they are distributed. In fact, they would not work centralized. The reason we tend to not have AWACS stealth fighters is the same reason there won't be directional stealth space vessels of war. They don't work in the real world. I also do not know of the illustrious career of the Titanic, where it was sunk at the close of WWII in a mine field laid by the US while doing duty as a "luxury" hospital ship. But I suspect that illustrious career of the Titanic is much closer to the truth than your claim of "trying to be invisible" fortresses and castles. Could you tell me which one of these is trying to be "not seen": photos of medieval fortresses (duckduckgo.com search engine) Some call true reports they don't like "fake news", so I wonder, do you call people inserting facts into your space combat fantasy "nerds"? Or are you simply telling me not to be a stickler with physics and details? Any orbit (in a sphere of influence system like KSP) repeats itself over and over and over and over again. Just like stealth in space discussions, covering the same ground again and again. Please, before you go and tell us about all the wonderfulness of your directed stealth system, do the maths and give us a sensible estimate what weight penalty and operational limits that causes.

Well, the REAL(tm) military ... has fired a gun in space, once, just to find out if they could hit a simple, non-maneuvering object. That did get a bit Kessler, too. Ballistic Missiles don't count, they are to space combat what a hot air balloon from besieged Paris is to air combat. And "Star Wars" AKA SDI has never reached operational status, never mind fought (and that would be against ICBSs, which do not evade or counter-attack). And to my knowledge the Trumpian Space FarceForce is not yet there, either. Which REAL(tm) military were you refering to, then? Oh, I see ... you are talking about ground troops. That's like the "Königin Louisa" here: which surely is a most excellent air combattant, and once you cross their T you really have the enemy. (See the original web page, with more photos and the history of the "real life" vessel which this model shows.) As you can see, Jules Verne's 1886 novel "Robur-le-Conquérant" ("Robur the Conqueror", also known as "The Clipper of the Clouds") predicts the very same model of air vessels. As you can see, this would be the very way the real military fights. On the sea, that is, where the Immelmann, the scissors or the barrel roll were ... ah, rarely performed. Though of course, we can go and do space fights on the analogy of pike square tactics, seeing that the real military used it from the last quarter of the 15th century to the mid-17th century to great effect on those who did not use it. (And it fell out of favour only after firearms were much improved and hand to hand fighting, even against charging cavalry, became rare and the bayonet helped out in these rare cases.) Let us assume you could detect the presence, number, movement and pretty accurate position of all enemy soldiers less than 100km away, under all circumstances (no hills, trees, bunkers, horizon ...). Let us also assume your effective fighting range was around 600-1000m. Would the detection ability change the way you fight? If yes, then yes, you broke operational stealth. The kind you need the enemy not to break when you lure them into a trap. Imagine how the Battle of Jutland --- where both sides tried to get the other side to run into an ambush --- would have been fought if one or both sides had known reliably where the other sides' forces were, even with an error of 10km. If no, then sorry, I disbelieve you. Oh, did I mention lasers yet? At the ranges we are talking about, they are hitscan weapons. You fire them directly at the target, no bullet drop, no relevant time delay even at 30,000 km (about 2/10s, there and back), boom. Range does almost never matter, just angle, and that you can get just fine. Pointing your laser accurately enough is much more of a challenge. No camo will help. You need to stay invisible. Let's see ... "directional stealth". That sums up to a lot of weight. Weight you are not using for reaction mass, weapons, stores, sensors, creature comfort. Weight that will reduce your dV. And you only need 2 remote sensors: Position of remote sensor: Lidar, possibly with a transponder, from the defender Target angle: Simply photograph the target and get the brighter stars in the same frame, too. Startracker software --- especially if you have an idea of your orientation in space, say from said star tracker --- finds out which stars they are (that is very much today's technology), pixel counting tells you the angles. 2 lines intersect at the enemy vessel. Done. And that does not even count active sensors like lidar and radar from the defender. Does your stealthing handle those? The remote sensors can use radar and lidar, too, BTW. If you cross in front of a star from any kind of remote sensor anywhere in the system, you give another data point --- the largest problem would be the time for a sensor many light minutes behind the defender and agressor to detect and for that report to reach the defender. And it does not handle any weapon with sensors and the capability to change its path of flight. Missiles, for example. Who'd also report all the data they get back home. Or drones. They can simply zig out of the stealth shadow and then get in on you. Finally, you do know that your maneuverability is severely restricted if you need to keep the defender in your stealth cone. Which makes you a much less, if at all, maneuverable target, i.e. a much easier target. The comms and processor needs here are trivial. It's like worrying that a game of chess by email might overwhelm the internet in a world of netflix streaming. If the agressors are --- how many is "many enough?" Are we talking about 50+ versus one or 2 defenders (assuming similar tonnage for all vessels)? In which case the combat power of the attackers is going to overwhelm the defenders handily and tactical stealth does not matter. Or are we talking a roughly 1:1 or 2:1 ratio? In this case each defender needs to "handle" only 1 or 2 attackers, the combat network will pass all information between the defenders, no problem. Position + orientation + movement vector data for an attacker is shorter than this sentence ... The limitations on orientation and therefore direction and speed changes given by needing to keep directional stealth aligned is a huge drawback. Especially when you are in effective range against a little maneuvering enemy but not against a freely maneuvering one --- think of bullets & co with a number of seconds of flight time. Enough time to dodge, if you move freely. That really is increasing the chance to be hit. You have heard of "omnidirectional antennae"? And of tactical data links? It's not like the defender is trying to hide it's position or that their vessels cannot talk to one another. And yes, they could use laser comms if they want to. 64bit (8 byte) is enough for sub-mm resolution many times beyond Pluto. A position: 3 values @ 64 bit (24 bytes total), e.g. Distance from the centre of the system angle against the ecliptic (or height above/below it) angle to the galactic centre An orientation. 3 values @ 16 bit (6 bytes total) --- this is enough for a better than 0.01° accuracy --- for pitch, roll, yaw A speed vector. 3 values @ 24 bit (9 bytes total) --- this is enough for a better than 0.01 m/s accuracy up to 100 km/s (which probably is enough unless you are *very* close to the sun), if needed we can always slap on more bits. An acceleration vector: let's say another 6 bytes. An angular velocity vector. 6 bytes should do it. An angular acceleration vector. Oh hell, another 6 bytes. A vessel ID/name/type: let's assume 16 million targets is enough, that is 3 bytes. That would be a whopping 60 byte, and we have not yet talked about any kind of compression/reduction. Likely we will not have a combat space from several times beyond Pluto to several times beyond it on the other side of the solar system. Likely the speed will not change by 5km/s per second, so we can do with a delta. etc. But yes, 273 complete data sets per second --- which is about what an 128kBit MP3-stream has --- will knock out the data links. And that is why you do not do a Napster with one central node. That is why you use a decentralised system. That is why you build a redundant system. That is why any vessel can take over every role of every other vessel when it comes to monitoring and enemy position calculation. Which you would do anyway because it's good design. And you have spent vastly more resources on hauling around all that directional stealth and the gear to look around it, and the gear to fire "over" it (you cannot look or fire through it. And if you want to stay stealthy, you better super-cool your sensors and weapons peaking over it, as well) and the lower acceleration and the maneuvre constraints and the wasted dV and the less efficient radiators. All that stuff just so you could be an easier target as you cannot maneuvre without giving up any advantages of that expensive toy of yours may have ... and you still get shot up. THAT'S WHAT STEALTH DOES TO YOU. The idea --- be harder to hit --- is of course sound. The difference is that camo for soldiers is very lightweight and blends easily in with the background while not hindering movement at all and making them mostly invisible to their enemies if they take advantage of the environment. That is very much not true for space vessels, there are quite significant drawbacks and the threat profile faced by infantry does not usually include (nuclear tipped) homing missiles and the kind of drones we see or lasers reaching 100s of kilometres or 10 km/s projectiles ... You may as well say that because infantry soldiers hide behind walls and in depressions and tend to dive into bunkers or at least trenches and craters when artillery comes a-calling, battleships should act the same way. (That'd be a submarine, which usually does not have a big battleship size gun[1] and certainly not the armor.) And as soldiers have a helmet and a flak-vest, there should be no armour on battleships. And battleships should carry just a rifle or two, maybe an MG when several are around to carry the ammo. Does not make sense, but that is how "real military" fights --- in totally different circumstances, but still ... [1] The M-Class submarines of the Royal Navy (1917/1918) had a single 12" gun, which could be fired (but not reloaded) submerged, from gun spares of the Formidable-class battleships. Torpedoes were seen as unreliable beyond 1000m against faster moving ships and a single shell should kill most merchant vessels. None saw combat. The Surcouf (French submarine) had a 2-gun turret with 8" heavy cruiser guns and 600 shot, as well as an observation floatplane. It was a cruiser submarine --- designed to be a cruiser, as the Washington Naval Treaty limited cruisers, but not submarines. This was fixed soon after the launch by the London Naval Treaty, making her one of a kind. She was lost in Febuary 1942 to either friendly fire or accidental collision at night (or both), not having fired shots in anger. (There was a fight with 4 dead, but that was side arms, when the British, fearing the French Fleet to fall into the hands of the Kriegsmarine at a French armistice --- see also Mers-el-Kebir.) ... or you flick the not-so-secret switch to enable ship and module design from the get go. You will have to do the relevant campaign missions without these possibilities, but otherwise you are fine. And you might even learn a thing or two doing the campaign missions.

Sorry, there simply are things that are not susceptible to optimisation. This may easily be one of them. Actually I am sure it is one of them --- go ask a meteorologist about how they would love to have a more accurate simulation (by using smaller "blocks" they simulate) and thus a more accurate and longer usable weather prognosis. A weather prognosis must be ready before the time when the weather is supposed to happen. And they do put serious money into that problem and have been for decades. You could have a film of weather patterns playing out, basically pre-rendered, but that would be very repetitive weather ...

As if the learning curve of KSP is not steep enough for new players! Yet another hurdle that turns out to be a nuisance. Why not full n-body gravity? That would increase the player's skills and be realistic and actually do something to the whole of the game except just in landing and takeoff at Kerbin, Eve, Jool (where you won't be landing anyway) and Laythe --- Duna has a so thin atmosphere that even very fast winds do little. ("The Martian" (the movie) took an artistic license there, in the book it's "just" sandblasting from the storm that exceed the missions safety parameters.) How about randomly exploding parts, failing engines or leaking tanks? That can happen at any time in the flight and not just at landing, totally unpredictable, so you can have much much more replayability than a vehicle being slightly displaced. Sorry, I don't buy it. If you can only come up with a few vehicles, all slightly different, the problem is your imagination. Space History offers so many ideas, even if you just look at successful missions, never mind the failed ones, the ones that were never launched, the ones that were never built, ... and of course there is hard science fiction. Have you ever heard of OTRAG, for example? And of course you can use limits. No solar cells. No RTGs to Eeloo. Use ion engines only after launch (See the "Dawn" probe for a real life example). Restrict your technology. Use LKO construction to build your craft. Compare the 3 proposed lunar landing methods (EOR, LOR, Direct Ascent) discussed back then by doing these missions and try to find the cheapest crafts that can do the job, or lightest ones on launchpad. There are competitions on this forum where you can try to optimise for a specific tasks against other people --- goals you have never even thought of before. And if that is not enough for you, there are a lot of mods, giving you new solar systems, new technology or a completely altered experience --- Realism Overhaul (RO) would be one big mod bundle, making engines realistic (real fuel and fuel choices, limited ignitions, ullage problems, many are not throttleable) and realistic mass rations for propellant tanks, realistic energy from solar panels, real jet engines and better aerodynamics, proper heat, ...). Do add all recommendations (from proper reentry and real-life size solar system over lightspeed and comm delays to life support and failing parts). You will find this is a totally different game. And with RP-0 (Realistic Progression Zero) you do get a campaign mode similar to KSP, but actually using real engines and real solar system reality. If that does not satisfy, there is the good, old BTSM (Better Than Starting Manned). [you need a KSP v 1.0.4 --- which is pretty trivial from the KSP website (if bought for download there): go to website, go to store, log in, my account, Download, legacy versions, copy the link under 1.0.5, paste it into your browser's address field and change the 5 to a 4 in the obvious place. It'll download v 1.0.4. Of course checks if you have logged into the store and bought KSP --- that's why you need to log in. There is no "security" or "personalisation" in the download link itself, that is why it works. For Steam, you might have to go properties|Beta and hope there is a 1.0.4 there.] You will have fun with a totally different game, challenges where you actually have to think, texts you actually have to read, where you get one try at many missions ... and a lot of new mission types. That is no longer your sandbox, that is a very focussed beginning and then really branching out once you reach the mid-game. There are no dead ends. You can recover if you lose all funds, though that is (on purpose) somewhat grindy. You have to fly commercial missions to fund your science missions --- and having both of them in one launch is of course a good idea. You deal with limited and heavy "batteries" (there is NO potato in there!!) and power-hungry transmissions and probe cores that do not restart if the power goes out (unless you have a Kerbal or another probe core active). You will have fun controlling your early rockets with fins and winglets only, you will love and hate the aptly named "Death Wish", your first liquid fuel engine, which ... well, tends to overheat a bit, you will find out what an unpressurized cockpit is, how to point land and point drop, etc. etc. etc. You will deal with pretty hard life support limits and flimsy reentry shields (do not reenter more than you absolutely must, and neither too fast nor too slow. I mean it.) You will have fun if you like a hard game which does not care all that much about "reality" as in "simulator", but cares a lot about progression and challenging and so on. You are NOT to install any other than the required and listed optional mods, no Kerbal Engineer, no MechJeb, no other help. Then there is SETI UbM (Unmanned before Manned) if you want something more up to date (for KSP version 1.3.x and a different focus). In Diablo you have a few classes and some variants of them each. These are hard limits.*/ KSP is so different, you might as well compare apples and sun rays. Time is not a resource (no life support, infinite electricity with RTGs or solar cells). Time the player has to spend waiting is a resource. Please explain why me waiting for better weather improves my game experience? More than, say, unreliable engines? Nice, so what does the weather do to the Mun and Minmus? Dres? Tylo? Eeloo? Moho? How about ... well, basically all planets and moons, except for the few that have an atmosphere? And if you want to investigate and find out about distant places, there are tons of games that have the focus on that. They even have weather. And much more to find than KSP will ever have. Real space programs is designing instruments and hoping they arrive at far places and then battling to really understand what the data these instruments return actually mean, to balance out imperfections of the instruments, to handle noisy data, etc etc etc. The people doing that do tons of advanced maths and understand a lot of theories how the universe might work, and often enough spend a decade just with one instrument on one satellite. KSP is meant to provide fun. If real space programs are your kind of fun, you know where to apply. Now, how comes the Kerbals never had a boat to drop buoys? Building a space based position finding system --- or rather, launching and flying the satellites into the positions needed --- to have these buoys and balloons record where they are, and building a space based communication network so the buoys can report data gathered w/o a receiving station nearby --- or rather, launching and flying the satellites ... IIRC stuff like that is already a mission. Remember, there are infinite Kerbals to do all kinds of stuff, but only the KSP --- and therefore you --- can put them into space. So ... how about a space based navigation system around Mun, so if you drive your rover out of sight of the rocket, you can find your way back to the rocket? Or for Duna?

Question: What in "wind" makes the game more fun, gives additional options (that are fun) or makes it harder (for those who want that)? Answer: It might influence planes (crosswind landing) Fun? No. Options? Minimal. Harder? Yes, but not much and if you want hardcore planes, there are a number of hardcore plane simulators. It might influence hitting the exact spot --- when the parachutes are deployed and you are moved Fun? No. Options? Minimal. Harder? A bit --- unless you really go for a spot landing with parachute descent and no corrective possibilities (rover, chute + powered descend, ...) it at most will cause a few funds less on recovery. Updrafts might allow gliders to be more viable Fun? Some for some part of the players: those that are into hang gliding in KSP --- outside a novelty use. Potentially tiny. Options? Minimal, maybe some glider landing mechanisms could use the updraft. Harder? No. Might prevent a launch/deorbit Fun? None. Options? None? Harder? Not harder than pressing the "next day" button or advancing time by other means. A nuisance, basically, since you are not limited by life support (not in KSP) nor electricity (if you have solar panels or RTGs). [I remember my "first" Mun-probe back when w/o solar cells or RTGs (didn't have the technology) and how it was packed over and over with batteries to be able to live to Mun and send back science reports. That was fun --- I had to plan a power budget (which worked) and got all that lovely science, but also the probe was no more (except as a landmark) as batteries ran out ... bitter-sweet! Might move clouds and balloons Fun? Optics only (no balloons in KSP), though looks can be important. Options? None Harder? No Sea ccurrents Fun? Nope. Options? You can have an object drift to a different continent in just a few months time. Or take a plane for a few hours. Or a rocket and some minutes. Harder? No, the opposite: you get to different biomes on the cheap. In short, minimal gains. Clouds can "move on their own", without implementing any kind of wind. Quite some work, especially if you want variable updrafts based on low wind direction and speed and the surface of the planet. But feel free to prove me wrong by making a mod (or paying someone to do it) and showing the world at least a bit of your vision. Real space agencies do not fly their rockets by hand and deal with the light lag between home and wherever the probe may be. Real space agencies deal with nasty rocket fuels. Real space agencies deal with failing technology in satellites from several decades ago. Real space agencies do rarely have cameras watching their vessels take off, land and perform that are well outside said vessels. Real space agencies do tons and tons of math to make things happen right, have to work with real world. imperfect material and political interference. If you really want all that (and a few million more real life space agency problems) to be in KSP, I accept your argument. Oh, and why are you playing KSP instead of Orbiter --- the latter is much more realistic, not some silly patched conics and 2 body gravity --- and therefore missing the Lagrange points. They are important for science and L4 and L5 for almost any permanent space outpost still "near" Earth. Or Kerbin. Otherwise, please think "What does $FEATURE as a mod or inbuilt give KSP players that they will enjoy --- as fun or as challenge?" and not "B-b-but it is re-a-lis-tic..." PS: the Earth's moon's gravity is lumpy. This has serious effects on long term orbit stability.

Works on Windows at well (if you install cygwin, which I recommend for everyone who occasionally need the power of (or is comfortable with) a real, sane command line ) Or you can simply use your main RAM as the RAM disk (if you have enough RAM). Then the speed of reading and writing is basically the same speed as your RAM, vastly faster than an SSD. And then the drive is just a s power hungry as your other RAM[1]. And sequential reading from a HDD does need minimal seek time, so if you, say, save an image of the RAM disk (or otherwise structure the data and file layout to be mostly sequential), the loading of 8 or 16 GB should be on the order of 40 - 110 s (3/4th of a minute to just less than 2 minutes), assuming 150-200 MB/s from the HDD and uninterrupted bulk loading (no other disk activity going on). [1] that's not totally true ... Laptops in sleep mode often purge all the RAM they can, i.e. everything that can be recreated from e.g. the disk(s), which means amongst others any cached disk data by the OS (with dirty pages being written out first, of course) so they can shift what they really have to keep into the lowest number of DRAM chips,. Since DRAM needs power (the cells have to be refreshed IIRC 2-3 times per second), less chips to refresh means less power used, longer battery life, ...

Yet another possibility is to use a better SSD-cache and/or RAM-cache system that learns what is accessed when and can thus pre-cache and also return data that has been read recently. This is most important for small files as the access time on spinning rust (HDDs) is vastly longer than the actual read time. And here the very fast access times of SSDs come in handy. Or even the (again) much much faster access times of RAM. On the other hand, HDDs are best when reading large chunks sequentially — movies, large resource files for games … and if they have to seek to a new fragment every 500 MB, that is not that bad (compared to every 4 KB) and therefore needs caching least. And it would take the space of hundreds of small files, too, so the cost of caching is highest and the gain is smalllest — which is a happy coincidence. Theoretically your OS should already do proper caching with all of the currently unused RAM, but with Windows … let us just say the number of 3rd party caching solutions out there is telling.