Defenestrator47

839 hours according to steam. Still haven't done a grand tour or landed anywhere further than Duna and Eve. My greatest accomplishment to date was actually launching a multi-component mission vehicle, matching orbits, getting it smacked together, and then pointing in the direction of Jool. Alas then my hard drive died and since then I just haven't had the oomph to complete anything complicated. Mostly these days I doodle around a bit with planes, and then go watch some youtube vid from Danny2462 (landing legs...) or Matt Lowne, Shadowzone...there's quite a few inspiring creators.

Calling Danny2462...

Go and read the statements of the Take Two CEO, who believes gamers are 'undermonetized' and that more content should be sectioned off behind paywalls to be accessed. So in his vision of gaming, buying the game gets you access to core mechanics and some basic assets, but more advanced mechanics and assets (vehicles, parts, planets, biomes, etc. in terms of KSP) would be expansion packs sold separately. He's a great believer in selling smaller chunks of content for more money. Sell it to you? The guy does my work for me. I'm raising my voice because I have been gaming on PC for going on twenty years and this pattern repeats, in one form or another, for that entire time. Yet. Wait until T-Two wafts some money or whatever under your nose. You'll come around. One way or another you will be convinced of the importance of monetizing your customers more fully.

To all those saying 'No Squad said mods will be fine! Stop spreading your kneejerk fear!' I say that I have seen this story play out with other devs, and other publishers. A Dev team or company can say 'this will never happen' all they want. The publisher will apply pressure, give bribes, offer stock options, blah blah blah. Eventually the dev comes around and says 'despite what we said before, that thing we said will never happen, is now going to happen, and here's all the great stuff you can look forward to!'. And then it turns to complete garbage. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT AGREEMENTS WERE SIGNED. YOU DO NOT KNOW THE POWER OF THESE SOULLESS CORPORATE LEECHES TO RUIN EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH IN THE SEARCH FOR PROFIT. You probably have loved games that were ruined by them. Stop thinking KSP is unique in the gaming world. Vigilance MUST be our watchword.

Oh, Take Two Interactive doing the publishing? So....how long until they force microtransactions into the game then? $10 gets you new rocket skin colors, $19 for unique kerbals with enhanced skills, $3 for cosmetic space center buildings... I'm guessing KSP 1.4. You just lost respect, Squad. Bigtime bad juju publisher. CEO openly has stated that paying for a game is not enough. All that 'free content' (Read: game mechanics, art, models, maps) cannot just be given away for free.

So okay. Its page 8 and this is not likely to be read by a lot of folks, but after putting in a few hundred hours, what I'd want out of KSP 2.0 is: A complete refactoring and reimagining of how rockets are built, using a list of parts from the build menus. It's late and I'm up on Insomnia and I don't have pictures to illustrate what I mean, but I'll do my best. So what we have now is a list of predefined shapes. Fuel tanks, structural elements, braces, pylons, wings, etc. Each comes from a different menu, and has predefined roles in building rockets and SSTOs and rovers and aaaaaall the other stuff we can build. And it is great. But it is also limited. In my vision of KSP 2.0, shapes would not be tied to function - for instance, you'd have cylinders, cubes, pyramids, cones...lots of different shapes. Theyd be empty, allowing you to come up with whatever shape of craft you desire, using a snap and tweak sytem much like the current one. Once the desired form is created, an 'outer skin' would be created, which you could then fill with fuel tanks, machinery, electrics, gyros, science (SCIENCE!), crew spaces and command center, and all the other googahs and gizmos and widgets that make a mission happen. A center of mass/lift indicator would help with placement. Varying tech levels would give more variety and late-game increasing capability. Engines would still be placed in much the same way as now, or if someone thinks up a better way for them, do that instead. This came about from reading the back and forth on the forums from the 'clipping/no-clipping' camps about balance vs. 'but it looks so cool like this!'. If the form is not tied to the function, we could create cool looking AND balanced vehicles (only so much internal volume to play with). Add in some form of procedural texturing, to make a unified look for each vessel, with varied texture sets and even community-mod texture sets. Add in the ability to say 'this is an SSTO, put re-entry ablation plating on surfaces that will face into the descent/aerobraking.' Have what direction that is be user-defined, even. Put a 'in-hangar flight simulator' to help define this. The game would also feature a wider range of parts of all types. More cockpits, more wings, or something like a procedural wing generator, because the way wings are built of structural wings and slants right now is awkward, frustrating, and requires lots of strut-bracing to really work. More lights. A functional in-atmosphere autopilot that can hold consistant altitude and course and speed. More arrangements of landing gear, including side-drop, front and rear drop, more fixed gear types, skids... That's basically it. Mostly the 'build a vehicle shape, then fill it with useful components' design goal is what I want. The rest is icing.

I'm an airplane nut, and I have a wish list just for that stuff. - A proper, working in game autopilot that can hold bearing, altitude, and keep the craft level. After the first couple of 'fly here, take temp/pressure/crew reports/etc.' missions, it gets boring, especially when the mission is halfway around Kerbin. (yes I could do it by rocket but that's a whole other thing). - Player-set waypoints to go with the autopilot. I want to click on the map, set a waypoint (and altitude if desired). Basically, stuff to reduce the time in-atmosphere missions take. - Inset navigation and landing lights. The game currently has two spotlights that don't work well if you're trying to create a 'flush-mounted' light. Battery packs have a green light that can do for a nav light, but there's no corresponding red light. Also underbelly revolving 'runway' lights, as military craft have. Mostly just for cosmetic value, sure. But some of us value the pretties. -working hud and displays in cockpits. I know this is more work for a limited section of the game, but boy would it make planes even more of a joy. -tunable actuation of control surfaces. We got cargo bay opening limiters, now I want to limit the steering surfaces, because I fly with a keyboard and it is so easy to fly into a stall by overcontrolling currently. It would be nice to be able to set a percent on these, just like engine gimbaling and thrust limiters for engines. -more types of landing gear, including side-drop type deployment. Also, working landing lights on all landing gear please.

I've been yearning for a proper autopilot for those longer flights - 'hold designated altitude and bearing at designated speed'. After the first couple flights to go do thermal readings at several points in the atmosphere,or drop air-delivered barometric fitted parachuting probes for surface reading missions, it gets old fast to keep the plane on path and not climbing, which it always ends up doing. And to then have to do the flying at 1x speed because 2x is iffy and 3x will destroy your plane if you overuse the controls...yeah. Autopilot, please!

Chip, meet shoulder. Likewise. I foresee great things.

Thanks for the tip, good sir. RIP, Jeb. We hardly knew ya. Everyone, I'd like you to meet our newest test pilot; let's have a warm applause for Jeb! - - - Updated - - - I see that you're trying to be helpful here, but your tone is borderline insufferable superiority. Speaking as a former Eve Online pilot, save the bittervet syndrome for a game more worthy of it.

It took me over a year of playing, on and off, before I finally figured out orbital rendezvous. Then I did three different 'rendezvous' missions in one day. To be honest, most of that time was just me being discouraged by my first failure to figure it out. The lack of this faculty did make for some interesting mission designs, like a single-launch Eve lander and return (and so much debris still orbiting on that career..) Oh, and I am an absolute litterbug in space. I leave fuel tanks errywhere. Nor do I 'recover' them. Nope. They're still out there. One of these days, I'm sure I'm going to get slammed into by a relative-motion hypervelocity orange tank. Should be fun times.

With regards to finding KSC - I first did the map memorization (the crescent of islands off the coast is a really good marker). In my latest career mode I planted a flag at each end of the runway. This not only makes KSC easy to find, but it makes lining up for landing easier with spaceplanes. So, doubleplusgood. Lastly, as others have said - you don't HAVE to do anything in KSC. It's about setting your own goals and challenging yourself.

I don't use any mods, play in pure stock. I eyeball these satellite missions, from launch vehicle engine/fuel balance, to nailing the orbit. Matching them is pretty easy, I find, if you know what maneuvers to make, and when. Hell, I recently completed three satellite orbits with one launch, two in polar of Kerbin, and one equatorial around minmus. Never done a polar-orbit burn for minmus before, but I figured out the window and burned and got there just fine, fuel to spare really. I find the game much more enjoyable as a puzzle of 'is this going to be enough fuel, are my stages set up correctly, did I remember an antenna to beam crew reports back (I didn't, on my recent duna/ike flyby)'. The only change I'd like for stock is an aircraft autopilot capable of holding course, altitude, and speed. Manual to telemetry targets is a tedious chore.

I wish for a stock autopilot for aircraft so I don't have to manual all the way to every pressure/crew report/temperature survey. I wish for many more cool features in stock KSP. I wish for less bugs and better optimization. I wish, most of all, for Squad's continued success with their one-of-a-kind rocket explosion/solar system exploration game.

Condolences to your family Ted. Great dev notes. Thanks for these.

Interesting devnotes. I look forward to revised, improved wheels. The current implementation gives me some problems. Here's hoping for change for the better. Also, this is how you do dev-notes. Still displeased with the PS4 shenanigans. That should have been it's own announcement.

Not today, but two days ago, I completed my first orbital rendezvous, and then repeated the feat twice more. After playing for more than a year and NOT GETTING IT, it was a huge triumph to finally have it 'click' and understand what I needed to do to make it happen. Now on to those bigger orbital projects...

Utterly disappointing devnote. PC master race does not care about console plebs. Now. Tell us more about bugfixing and upcoming features.

1st post here. Build 6-seater spaceplane, vertical booster launched. Test it without booster. Unstable, pitches uncontrollably upwards and crashes. Tweak. Crash. Repeat a few times. Throw away everything behind the cockpit, rebuild from scratch, a lower-part count design. Crash. Tweak. HOHO it works! I can steer! I can land! Build launch booster. Test. It works! Land. Fill passenger cabin and copilot seat with 6 of my current 7 kerbonauts, to get them some sweet orbital XP cheap, have them do spacewalks, etc. Get to orbit, do the things. Re-enter, lined up on runway. Overshoot, but survive atmobraking. Turn 180. Some parts still hot. Game crashes. Learn about heating memory overflow. Relaunch game, discover that I have lost all six crew, apparently when the game crashed, the craft was destroyed. Eyeball the one scientist with no experience I have left. Kinda broke my heart. Haven't deleted the career. Debating fighting my way back. Haven't decided yet. Still love the game as a whole. Looking forward to a fix for the heating memory leak. Edit: A happy resolution! Turns out I had quicksaved during a prior mission. Since this loss of crew was to a bug, and not actual gameplay, I continued from the quicksave with heat gauges off and all my kerbals are back.