BrainiacBlue

Well done, welcome to the leaderboard. How was it to fly?

This challenge is very very simple: Get the Kraken's Bane into an orbit around Kerbin. Sounds easy right? Well no, the computer will fight you on this one. This 300 part laviathan flies well at low altitudes but becomes less and less stable. Its front engines are necessary to hold the nose up and when used with FAR it rather worryingly tells me it is in a constant state of 'minor stalling'. You should ignore this warning - it flies well enough, like a grease covered brick. Here is the craft file tucked inside a .zip folder: http://www.gamefront.com/files/24929102/Kraken%27s+Bane.zip Here is how my best attempts have so far gone: As you can see, there will be problems. Instability. A smidge of 'oh hell its all blowing up'. Theoretically this has the delta-v and the lift to make it into orbit. Only the bestest best pilots can do it - and I am not one of them. I hand the reigns of this slippery SSTO over to you lot. Current Winners: Stock: - - - - - FAR: - BenjiGH - - - - You Tried - BrainiacBlue - - - -

When you've just spent 10 hours trying to get the PC to accept my 500 part SSTO. I just don't think it can cope. I don't even know if it flies yet. It should. I spent an hour looking at FAR and fuel balancing and Delta-V and I just know it will work!

My concern is not a bug related one, but a game design one. Currently the career mode sucks as a game in itself, if the game were sold just as career I would not buy it, as much as I love Jeb, because it simply is not well designed. I know that the tech tree is being overhauled and that there is probably a bunch of stuff going on that we don't know about, but SQUAD have no experience in game design. In career mode atm I feel like a janitor for the Kerbals doing their busywork and building their stuff. I don't feel like I control a space program. Most of that is due to the arbitrary limits imposed by building and tech upgrades that make no sense from a gameplay perspective. The tech tree is being dealt with (from the sounds of it the buildings thing is not) but purely by testers, not by the community at large which has so far made some pretty good calls on what SQUAD should and should not do (i.e., the tech tree needs redoing, kerbals shouldn't be able to magic up extra dV, we need new landing gear) that SQUAD cannot make themselves inside their developer bubble. Hopefully the testing team can detect problems beyond bugs, but if they cannot then my fears are likely to come to reality based on what information is currently available. I'm now off to see if the vending machines on these trains have snacks on them.

Inching is not the word I'd use. More like sprinting through the beta-but-not-really-because-there-have-been-no-beta-updates stage to reach here. I maintain a slim slice of hope flavoured cake that we will get a .91 to chew on before the final release that KSP will be judged on. Then again, the cake is usually a lie. I'm probably being overly negative (it could be great), but if I can complete the tech tree in under 5 missions and require contracts for mindless busywork I will judge my fears to have been fully justified. Just... don't move too quickly, remember to take steps back and look at what you have done. And with that I tentatively step aboard the hype train. CHOO CHOO!

I hope 1.0 receives the polish demanded of it to avoid a scathing and add... what's the word I'm looking for... progression. And not of the '2 missions and I'm done' variety. Other than that concern - aaaAAALLL ABOARD!!!!!! WE LEAVE IN 1 MINUTE!!

Laythe would be best for a colony, not that we have colony parts so those 'set up base HERE' contracts are basically pointless.

Whislt I beleive that the goal list should *cough* have been reviewed *cough* at some point in the last few years *cough* I think you should only do one additional feature: finish the Kerbol System to add those gas giants and asteroid belt that you said you would a few months ago back when we were still in Alpha. Other than that just add all of the polish. And please do your best to stop the textures from flickering when they cross - its quite annoying when building.

There are some impressive bases in here. Though Iclaim the efficiency prize

'There is nothing that can't fly with more boosters and space tape' I also really liked the 'any landing you walk away from counts as a success' one.

"Boldly going where 12 kerbals have been before, including myself - twice" Or I once had: "After extensive experimentation we can confirm that Bob's tongue does indeed stick to this flag pole. 12 units of fuel were used to remove it."

This Munmus base works excellently, the probes are able to reach any Minmus biome and return to the base. Future missions will include a rover and a larger supply of monopropellant. It is simply called Minmus Base One

I got that one too.

I use this - great mod, I'd almost say it is essential.

Humans also count in base 12 to tell the time.

How did you achieve this?

Where we're from, we sent our health and safety guys into orbit

Hmm... looking at my posts here I've been running around like Jeb on Red Bull. Therefore here is a summary of my concerns: 1) The critics This game will get a lot of praise and rightly so. It has contributed to a resurgence in the popularity of space exploration. It gave a few NASA eggheads some neat ideas and it means we can't use the phrase 'It's not rocket science' - because thanks to KSP I can do rocket science and its really not that hard. However it takes more than physics and some lovable aliens to woo a critic. Take for instance Rock Paper Shotgun. They have a (good IMO) habit of distancing how they feel about a game from how good it actually is. For example most of RPS loves Elite: Dangerous. But their review of it was one of 'yeah this is still in beta wait bit before buying' because of bugs, lack of meaningful success and general lack of polish. The exact same criticisms apply to the proposed KSP at 1.0 - it lacks victory, it has a great many bugs (including the entire x64 version of the game) and has about as much polish as sandpaper. Take a look at its review of the Beta: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/23/kerbal-space-program-beta-review/ Few of the issues raised have been fixed. They will not be kind. They will want to be, but they won't. 2) The product itself KSP lacks victory. There is only so much achievement to be had. Once you've gone to the Jool system and back you are basically done. The contracts quickly become mindless busy work necessary to keep your progress afloat. The game lacks the parts for me to say 'look at my Laythe colony! Isn't it magnaflorious!?' because I can't really do that. I can't say 'look at my glorious space station' because it serves no function. It is an ornament. A 2 million funds ornament - and I cannot recommend that to a friend. It also lacks many of the physics required to call itself a physics based game about flinging kerbals. Water is either pastry or concrete (There is a great mod that fixes that btw). We will get atmospheric stuff so that will be fine. It lacks re-entry physics. I should have to think about the craft design just a little. If I am going to be punished for an out of place control surface I should be punished for sending my crew at 8000m/s vertically at Eve. It is illogical to include some features in great detail and ignore others completely. It breaks progression and it breaks immersion for any space enthusiast as much as flying through the pre-1.0 soup that constituted the air. The game isn't ready from a gameplay point of view IMHO. There is too little to keep me thinking. 3) The bugs Okay. So they will probably fix some of them. They will probably introduce as many as is often the way with any update of any software. However as much as I trust SQUAD to fix some bugs, others I think they simply don't know how. Case in point: memory leaks. Since the Big Bang the great civilisations of the galaxy have gone 'Wow, itsn't it great, the planets are so... hang on, I have to restart - the telescope is starting to tank'. Memory leaks are a serious problem affecting the game that SQUAD simply has not been able to crush. On the basis that the problem has never been fully resolved, just made slower, I do not think they will fix it on release. Then the x64 version. I could write a small book on why a working x64 version of any PC title is important. It needs to work. Then the decoupler bug, something that can be worked around but still should not be there. A minor quibble, but it suggests SQUAD is not inclined to fix bugs with the urgency and efficiency that may be needed. 4) 'Placeholder' There are too many assets, textures and some sounds that are just placeholders. The interior of the MK1 inline cockpit - 'placeholder' from the part's introduction to now. The outer planets of the Kerbol System... do not exist yet. And remain some forum posts on what the devs want to do before launch but because 1.0 needs to be out the door, that will not happen. What the devs themselves want won't happen in their game. Nobody in their right mind would tolerate placeholder assets and textures in a finished product. From what I have read, I will not be able to tolerate 1.0 Overall: I want to love 1.0 - I want to celebrate. But I cannot, the critics will be divided, the game will be buggy, the game will be unfinished, the x64 version will not work, the gameplay will get old quickly. Those are not the hallmarks of a product ready for release and that is why the game is not ready under the proposed 1.0, to be released as the finished product that we will judge it for.

Wait! There is a German word for Kerbal?

Wait 'til Alec Meer or any Rock Paper Shotgun critic gets their hands on it. They'll tear it a new one and will do so in a reasoned and mildly entertaining manner.

Some things being work in progress do not mean ready for release. Planet terrain is WIP, procedural crater stuff is WIP, cockpit IVAs have been WIP since the Big Bang. If someone showed me Assassins Creed: Unity and said 'The NPC faces are WIP' I would slap them and tell them they should not have wasted their money on something so unfinished. The same applies here. WIP does not mean ready for release in any way whatsoever. IF this game launches with missing IVAs, memory leaks, decoupler bugs etc. then as much as I love it I would struggle to give it a recommendation, as these are things that only .... poor Steam scam games possess.

The version number matters because this is what the game gets reviewed on. Endearment and the Esa badge will not excuse the lack of victory conditions, the lack of purpose parts, the lack of progression beyond a contract. 1.0 will be slammed by critics if those are not fixed. The game runs like garbage on a large portion of mid end machines and the game lacks a x64 version that won't crash every 10 minutes. Then the memory leaks. Unless they fix these things this game will sink like a rock when it comes to the critics. I love this game, but I would not be kind to it were I reviewing it.

It's more that the devs themselves have said they want to re-do much of the Kerbol system before release and that we were very much under the impression that this would happen. Not fixed in stone of course, but it seems odd that the devs are leaving out things they wanted to do. It has been known for years that the Kerbol system, according to SQUAD's vision of it, would feature an asteroid belt, at least one more gas giant with Eeloo as a moon and potentially other things such as comets - though those were more recent musings from the devs. The basic thing is for this poll is that these are things that SQUAD has said for a long time that they want to do before relase. And now they are not. And that is odd and disappointing.

This. This and much more. KSP is often held up as a model of the Early Access system and it is about to remove itself from praise by rushing out of beta as Elite:Dangerous, Rome 2 and so many other great titles did. They are remembered for being sloppy at launch, however great they are by 1.4

Its more than that, they have to finish the solar system, make a slew of function fulfilling parts and then test it all before release. And get the x64 version working without massive memory leaks. And optimise it so a mid end machine can get >30 fps (Which currently is only achieveable, at lease on my old PC, on low settings) And then revisit all the stuff the devs wanted to. Unfortunatly. What it is called does matter. 1.0 will be the bar at which the game is judged and the press will likely be unkind if basics such as optimisation and x64 support are incomplete.