Zild

Thanks, I did see that mod whilst looking yesterday...

Finally a valid entry for this thread! Does anybody ever not want maximum thrust for blast-off? Ever?! Even if you dial it back when hitting excessive drag you still want to get to that point as quickly as possible.

The essential formula for creating an F2P game relies on two steps: 1: Create addiciton Stimulate a routine (i.e. make the player return to the game every day or every few hours). Do this by adding a new, crucial resource that is only generated by a certain player action, and which can only be generated at a set rate (e.g. 1 every four hours). Simply logging in is one option, but having the player repeat a more invested action (maybe designing a new rocket, or launching a rocket into orbit of Kerbin) could create a stronger addiction. The cycle of regular action followed by reward builds a craving to continue receiving those rewards. 2: Block craving (only after addiction has been achieved!) Introduce artificial barriers to prevent players achieving the reward, that can only be overcome by payment. Do this by making the reward (above) harder to achieve with each mission, to the point that the only way to keep up is to buy upgrades (better parts, space centre buildings, etc.) with real money. Note that many games often use multiple reward systems. I guess the idea here is to have an easy reward to ensure ongoing addiction ("energy" for regular logins) and a harder reward that can be blocked ("drops" for completing a mission, winning a battle, etc.); the addiction to the easy reward keeps people playing even after prolongued suspension of the hard reward. So how do we cram this into KSP? In fact KSP lends itself rather well to blocking craving because the missions naturally get harder over time: launch a rocket, suborbital, low orbit, high orbit, Mun intercept, Mun orbit, Mun landing, and so forth. The existing mission control functionality could be tweaked to provide far fewer options that push players towards missions that are too hard to achieve without payment, although easy (yet time-consuming) missions could remain to allow non-paying players to grind. Reputation gets simplified into a reward for every successful launch. Science gets simplified into something you get for completing missions. Missions get simplified into a choice of Easy (grind), Medium (possible without payment for a skilled player, but with real risk of it all going wrong - i.e. wasting lots of resources for no reward) and Hard (cash payments for super-quick advancement). The tech tree gets removed completely and parts are purchased fresh each time for a combination of reputation and science. Parts are simplified so that casual players can get to grips with them easily rather than having lots of functionality and lots of choice; each part comes in two flavours: cheap inefficient parts or expensive efficient ones. All gameplay challenge is removed in favour of pay to win. Congratulations: You've just turned KSP into one of those crappy rocket / paper aeroplane launching games! (I will leave the subject of anti-social spamming mechanics to somebody else...)

See? This is why I specified in-flight rather than pre-flight - pre-flight (typically construction) problems threads abound on the forums already (and this already seems to have turned into one!) I think the reason problems there are more common is because there are many more options, many more things to consider, many more stages to plan for... At any point during flight the options available and important things to check are relatively few in comparison. Still, am I really the only person struggling here? Should I put on hold my plans for an in-flight checklist generator mod? I actually put an antenna on the main command pod of every ship I make - even the test bed for launch-pad based missions gets one. This, the Kerbal Engineer chip part and (for manned pods) a parachute of course! This is mostly for story reasons: Jeb's got to stay in touch with ground control or he'll go insane - well, more insane! On some of my early game designs this antenna makes the craft a little unbalanced but this actually helps with the gravity turn - so much so that I even reposition it when doing a polar orbit!

...what would it be? Mine: The number of times I have flown a perfect mission, only to touch down and realise I left my precious science in space - or worse, burning up in Kerbin's atmosphere! How about it everyone? What's the one in-flight (not VAB/SPH!) task you forget time and time again that always leads to a *headdesk* moment?

Surely you mean any orbit you can spacewalk away from...

I just managed to get into orbit on my first flight* with a gravity turn. Only barely - 136 m/s dV left - but still, orbit is orbit. (*Note "flight", not "mission"; I do scrounge some basic science off the launch pad first, but I do limit myself to the launch pad - Kerbals waddle far too slowly to bother going anywhere else at this stage!)

Bill or Bob has sneaked into the pilot seat and you notice this just after lift-off.

I can reach stable orbit in two flights in Hard campaign, but I too have never managed a decent gravity turn! I always thought my rockets looked pretty stable, but any attempt to turn them below 30km ended in a flipping disaster. Perhaps more importantly, until I read this thread I did not realise a gravity turn starting at 30km was considered wasteful! Given the limitations of the components available on those early flights (back when you have only the most ineffiicient parts, and hit part count limits long before weight limits) one might be justified in taking a safer, albeit less efficient, flight - but I'm happy to churn few a few Jebs finding out! Ditching science modules is a neat trick I too only hit on recently. Alternatively if you are bringing the science module back (and if you have Bob along for the ride) you can collect copies of the data and reuse the module multiple times to let you get the full science from MysteryGoo etc. in one journey (store a copy in each cockpit available and leave another in the science module itself). Another recent discovery worth knowing: you can ditch heat shields after use. (You can even set them to appear in staging!) I guess this is useful for reducing weight and therefore the number of parachutes needed...

You guys are right. In I think the very first tab of the settings (note: NOT in the input section) there is an option called something like "double click mouse look". Disabling that seems to have fixed it rather nicely, so I can now get back to killing Jeb for reasons I can't blame on other people...

Thank you all. I did check the settings hurriedly last night but will check properly today - should be easier now that I know what to look for. I also did check the changelog but saw nothing regarding this new feature. I wonder what other changes I have yet to discover...

KSP version: 1.05.1028 OS: Windows 10 Mods installed: Kerbal Engineer Redux Hi all, Played KSP on my new PC for the first time today and got an annoying problem. When right-clicking, sometimes the cursor will disappear and the camera will start spinning. This happens about 20% of the time I right-click - no discernible pattern as of yet. The problem can generally be resolved by right-clicking again, but by that point I have usually crashed. (Into Kerbin, not to desktop!) I suspect Windows is doing something dubious with the right-click here. Any suggestions on how to resolve it? I did find some instances of this occurring back in August/September but saw nothing as regards to a solution.

Keeping things stable on the way up is now much more difficult than 1.0.2. Slowing down enough on re-entry (even from low Kerbin orbits) is much more difficult. Seriously, go play around with some very early career designs... For the most part I like that, but I'm not sure newcomers will.

I ignore tests anywhere but the launchpad these days, and never take reports. (I will probably start skipping launchpad tests as well soon... Although then Bill will have nothing to do at all!) I used to take "reasonable" tests - such as a parachute test under survivable conditions or anything in orbit of somewhere I planned to orbit anyway - but I found I would either time it just wrong, or completely forget it, far too often.

Also adds challenge to career mode as you end up effectively paying for funeral expenses. Another option for you: monuments to Kerbals for great achievements, such as first Kerbal in space or first Keral on the Mun.