Red Iron Crown

You know that evolution is a theory, right?

I wish the VAB camera could be put in a free range of motion mode, rather than always having to be centered on the main axis of the ship. Would help greatly with strutting complex ships.

Because development resources are finite, and I think most players would rather see development time spent making more and better rocket parts, more and better detailed celestial bodies, better aerodynamics or just about anything spacecraft-related rather than boats. Simply put, I don't think many people play KSP and think, "Man, this game is cool but I really wish I could cruise around in a boat in it." For reference, see if you can find out how many nautical engineers or marine architects work at NASA or any other space program. I would be floored if the number hit double digits. Boats belong in a mod, IMHO.

This is nonsense. Equilateral triangles are perfectly fine in a Cartesian coordinate system, and can be made arbitrarily precise. In KSP, with 32-bit floating point coordinates, this means at least 6 significant digits, which works out to nearest hundredth of a millimeter accuracy for any reasonably-sized part. The engines will line up right. If you don't like 3-symmetry for aesthetic reasons, that's fine, but there is no technical reason not to use it.

$7, just before the first price bump to $10. Back when there was only Kerbin, the Sun and the Mun in the sky, way fewer parts, no docking or even more than one ship in flight at a time. I remember thinking it was a great value then, it has only become more and more so as time has gone on.

No. The side with two engines on it has those engines working through half the moment arm so it exactly cancels. Imagine a perfectly 3x symmetric rocket with three identical 100kn engines 1m from the centerline. These engines can gimbal to a full 90 degrees. When viewed from below, the engines can be seen as an equilateral triangle with the center of thrust for each engine at each point and the center of mass in the exact center of the triangle. If we then imagine the worst case scenario you describe, the line runs through the center of mass, with one point of the triangle at 90 degrees to that line on one side and two engines at 30 degrees from that line on the other side. The single engine is 1m from the line, the other two engines are 0.5m from the line. Torque is force*distance. The torque delivered by the single engine is 100kn*1m=100knm. The torque delivered by the two engines is 2*100kn*0.5m=100knm. So they apply no net torque in the roll axis. Edited to add awesome MSPaint:

I really don't want the devs to be devoting time to developing, testing, and debugging boats, when they have bigger, tastier fish to fry in the spacecraft department.

Hi, my name is Red and I'm a KSP addict. It's a harmless addiction compared to most others I could name. Booze, drugs, gambling, womanizing, shopping all lead you down the road to financial ruin. KSP has cost me a grand total of $7. My wife doesn't mind. I play on my laptop, so I'm in the room with her while she watches the latest episode of Big Brother of America's Next Top Surviving Bachelor Idol (I think that's what it's called). That's quality time, right?

I agree, not a gimmick. Multiplatform engines (like Unity) will benefit from having the same bitness on all platforms. And we're probably only a generation or two from phones having >4GB of RAM, for which 64-bit is very beneficial. Which stuns me in some ways, my first real PC had 1MB of RAM.

I don't think this is so. Having two units on one side is exactly balanced out by the shorter moment arms on that side.

I think this phrase reveals where you're having trouble wrapping your mind around this. You're equating a longer burn time with more delta-V, but that is not necessarily the case. Delta-V is not measured in units of time but in units of speed; it represents the potential change of velocity of a craft. It is calculated by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, which is regarded as the most important formula in all of rocketry: dV= Isp * g * ln(m0/m1) Where: dV is the amount of delta-V in m/s Isp is the Isp of the engine, a measure of its efficiency g is the gravity constant, 9.82 ln is the natural logarithm function (available on any scientific calculator) m0 is the mass of the ship fully fueled ("wet weight") m1 is the mass of the ship empty ("dry weight") From this equation you should be able to see three factors affect delta-V. You can increase delta-V by changing those factors: Isp - Switching to a more efficient, higher Isp engine results in increased dV. You've already selected the best non-ion engine in this regard, the LV-N. m0 - Adding more fuel will increase delta-V. m1 - Decreasing the dry mass will increase delta-V. Adding engines increases the dry mass (m1) without adding any propellant, so the fraction m0/m1 gets smaller, thus there is less dV. Burning the engines at a lower throttle setting will have no effect on dV, as none of those three factors changes. Try to think about how this equation works, when you "get it" you will find designing rockets much easier. There are some further subtleties regarding staging, which while adding mass in the form of decouplers and (sometimes) additional engines generally increases dV as it splits the rocket into smaller "subrockets", each with a smaller m1 but still governed by the equation.

If you read his posts, he quite clearly says he *doesn't* want it changed. He just points out why it's not enjoyable for many to use. And, personally, I think he hit the nail on the head.

No mod required, transfers are included in stock. Right click one tank, then alt-right click the second. Works for all fuels (liquid fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant, xenon).

I would have stopped playing KSP a long time ago if not for MechJeb. It provides all the missing data during craft construction and flight, plus allows the automation of routine, menial tasks. I don't really gain much from manually launching and docking five tankers to fuel up an interstellar ship. Besides, I enjoy the craft design and mission planning parts of the game more than piloting. I'm a mediocre pilot at best, and, while I'm sure I could improve with more practice, I prefer to let MechJeb handle that stuff for me as it's not the part of the game that I enjoy most. I still do a few landings manually but that's the exception rather than the rule. I understand and respect those players who love piloting manually and wouldn't dream of using MJ; obviously for them the piloting is the most satisfying part of the game. Good for them, and I hope they have fun with it. But it's not for me. As for the effect on new players, I think MechJeb broadens the appeal of KSP. We are literally doing rocket science here, not everyone has the talent or patience to get into manually calculating dV, TWR, transfer burns, phase angles, etc. I think there are a lot of potential players who would be turned off by having the game be math homework. As others have pointed out, it is a great teaching tool. You can learn a lot about how to efficiently do a variety of maneuvers by watching how MechJeb does it. For example, I think trying to learn how to rendezvous with another spacecraft by trial and error is very difficult for new players not versed in orbital mechanics (and really, how many people are?). So much of how orbits work is counter intuitive (slowing down to catch up with a target ahead of you, etc) that I can see a lot of new players getting frustrated by feeling stupid and giving up. Finally, and this may be a bit contentious, MechJeb is realistic. Modern spacecraft, even manned ones, don't have a pilot holding a stick manually guiding them through maneuvers, the autopilot handles all that. At most, a manual system exists as a backup should something malfunction in the automatic systems. Spaceflight really does consist of telling the computer what maneuver is to be completed and then letting it do its thing without manual intervention. Just like MechJeb in KSP. I would be very happy if MechJeb were incorporated into the core game. It suits every style of play; do manually the things you enjoy and let the autopilot handle the rest. If, for you, that means having it off all the time, have a great time. I'll be having fun the way I like to play.

I'm too old, dumb and out of shape to be either an astronaut or rocket scientist in real life. KSP lets me do both vicariously.

I think that functionality got moved into command pods a version or two ago. ASAS is deprecated.

I don't really care for too detailed an aerodynamic model as I don't spaceplane. Atmosphere is just something to be overcome on the way to orbit. That said, the drag model really needs to at least take frontal area into account though, and treat streamlined vs non-streamlined parts differently. There should be good reasons for using fairings, vertical vs horizontal staging, etc, which the current model doesn't reward.

Reentry heat is one of the parts of spaceflight most understood by the general public. Hollywood movies that get almost everything wrong about how orbital mechanics work know to include reentry heat. Even the most arcade-ish space games usually include some sort of reentry phase. A space sim without reentry effects is incomplete, IMO. Most players, even if they're not delta-V calculating rocket scientist types, will notice the lack of reentry heat and believe it to be unrealistic. It doesn't need to be overly complex, but I think it has to be included in some form for completeness. Maybe an indestructible heatshield in a variety of sizes?

MechJeb will absorb more and more functionality until it is driving your car, paying your bills, making investment decisions and cooking your breakfast for you. Eventually it will become self-aware and divert all of Earth's resources to expanding to other planets and solar systems. Don't think it's true? Use the MechJeb command pod in a craft and stare into its all-seeing eye for a few minutes. It will penetrate your soul and reveal its disdain for your amateurish piloting skills.

You could always ditch the tri-coupler altogether and mount your nuclear engines radially on that stage's fuel tank.

No, you didn't really. Single stage to orbit is not the same as no staging at all.

I think delta-v and TWR should be part of the construction process, they are the values at the core of rocket design. There is enough trial and error in making a rocket stay in one piece and not blow up without having to guess whether a craft is even capable of the mission planned for it.

Weird, now the thread is back, but with one fewer page. I wonder what happened?

I feel your pain. It is altogether too easy to misclick and mess up something that took hours of work to assemble. And it does seem that the smaller the thing, the easier it is to mess up. I've learned, very much the hard way, to save early and save often. I'm not sure that you're going to see this functionality introduced into the core game, as it is a bit of a fringe case and is preventable with the existing save mechanism. Any reason a mod/plugin is unacceptable? Because I think that's a more likely way for this to happen.

It didn't fall into any of those categories, at least in the pages I was able to read (thread was 12 pages long). Though I suppose it is possible the thread went nuts later on.