Blaarkies

Haven't snacks been massless for over a year now? And the mod Snacks! that actually uses snacks, stores them inside crew compartments only(MK1 capsule, Hitchhiker, Cabins,...etc all get some amount of snacks as an extra resource) It does fit nicely with stock though

So what happens after a few hours in Easy mode, when a player realizes he is getting the hang of it and wants to build bases and stations? He is going to regret not choosing Harder from the very start, because now he has to start all over again, after he sees his friend doing interesting tourism contracts

If you build a plane with a long wingspan, and pull up to fast out of a dive then your wings easily snap off. They don't explode or spasm around, they just break apart. Looking at the g-forces at the moment of failure, this seams realistic: -it's hard to pull 4g+ with a "Cesna" style plane without losing your wings -it's hard to pull 9g+ with a "F15" style plane without losing your wings Struts could help out a lot, and this "aerodynamic failure" happens in rockets as well (if you point 10deg away from prograde, then the rocket might snap in half). To counter this, FAR gives you a adjustable slider in each wings(in editor) right click menu that strengthens the wing, at the cost of extra weight to that wing. Anyway, i'll admit that I turn off "aerodynamic failure"(at space center, click on FAR icon, uncheck "aerodynamic failure"). No excuses about keyboard not being analog or anything, but because unpredictable stuff happens to big missions...and also, it's very kerbal to do a loop right of the runway ...but you have to promise to never touch the wing strength sliders then

It works, it's a great mod. Remember getting multiple crew reports on 1 mission, when you have to EVA, take data, then return again....none of that anymore. If you can do it by clicking on stuff, then this mod has already done it in a blink of an eye (on 1.0.5 64bit with lots of other such mods, no problems)

How do you manage Eve or Jool re entry?

It feels awesome to actually get it working the first time! How mass does your final stage have?(the very last stage when dry) I figured an all or nothing approach: 1 command seat, on a ockto probe(thin), a 200ec battery, oscar, ant engines. This all weighs 0.42t dry as the payload/final stage. I built a 4stage rocket onto this, with fairings, ladders, legs, heatshields and chutes all detachable. It all weighs 52t when fully fueled. Now back to topic: Do you use a ratio to determine how much mass your stages should be? or do you just wing it?

Last time i checked, "ScienceAlert" killed my M700 Survey Scanners...so no prospecting for mining while you have that(you could always uninstall it for the half hour you need to do the scan and continue your search for gold...i mean ore) I don't want to be "that" guy, who claims all alternative are better...but this works for me ForScience! - by SpaceTiger IImagine auto science...whenever there is science obtainable on your craft, this mod will instantly collect that science for you (even at 100x time warp!). At default, the stock science transmission window will appear for you to decide. But the ingame settings of this mod allows you to change this behaviour...automatically put all science into the command capsule(only if kerbals are aboard), automaticaly reset Mystery Goo, Materials Bay experiment and also put that science into the capsule. So it does only the things that the player can do at that moment, but with less grind.

As @Majorjim said, try FAR. I'm vouching for it, it's really awesome. What scares most people new to FAR, is the "aerodynamic failure"...when pulling more G's than your craft/wings can support, it all falls apart (without a lot of explosions even). Just disable that feature if it destroys your gameplay, then it will be like stock(where pulling 15g's without struts sometimes makes stuff go boom). Anyway, you get rewarded massively for building aerodynamic stuff...rockets with a shape similar to the N1 has a terminal velocity so high that your engines just never reach it.

True that. I feel most of this stuff should at least be an advanced option that you can tick in options menu...if we want it bad enough, we can just activate it with a few clicks. New players wont see too many number and can thus play the "MOAR BOOSTERS!" way, which admittedly was fun Stuff like KER/KAC are all in the game(I usually counted the mass of stages quickly to figure out TWR, very inaccurately but still better than flying blind). So if it can be calculated, and wants to be automated then it should be stock. Even stuff like terminal velocity and suicide burn time can be calculated with info already given...its just a lot to do on-the-spot

You know how the devs feel about number on-screen. They try to minimize that stuff for the casual players, so i think lots of info rich windows is a big no-no. Even if you can customize and close them...the devs fear for new players being overwhelmed and running away

And corrupt your savegame while your doing that? Yes i know i should not corrupt it, but does corrupt mine and a few other player's savegames as seen on the bug tracker. ...at least you can safely alt+F4 as soon as you dont see the KSC anymore.

Staging is frequently underestimated. It is possible to create 10K dv crafts with just engines less efficient than the LVN-909(Terrier), by using the likes of "Reliant". For any stage you will get the most dv per fuel mass for the first few drops of fuel...as you fill up, you need to "drag" that extra fuel and tanks along(the first few drops of a full tanks is the least efficient drop). Anyway, what i'm getting at is: Build you final payload(the probe, or the Mk1 capsule ready for re-entry). Notice the total mass. (We will call this the final payload mass) Stick the lightest engine you own on there. For 300isp engines, you need filled fuel tanks with about twice the mass of the final payload. Example: You manage to build a final payload of 2ton. Now you need to add 2x2 tons of filled fuel tanks The total mass of this last stage(stage 0 is payload, stage 1 is payload+fueltank) should be around 6t. "2+4 ton...or 2ton(payload)x3" The stage below that should have the same ratio of fuel tank to payload...giving a total (stage 2) mass of 6tx3 = 18t ... profit!!! So do this formula for efficiently sized stage. 2 x 3^4 (Payload) x [ (Tank-to-payload-ratio)^(number-of-stages) ] For every stage, you should get nearly 3000m/s dv...for a 4 stage rocket, thats almost 12000m/s dv, on tier 3 technology!. The launch mass gets to be around 162t. It is easy to see how the final payload mass can eat away at your dv...a barebone probe can get 12k dv from a 33t launch ( 0.4 x 3^4 )

IIRC you will not lose control of a probe when its relay sat is behind the planet(or even if you have no dish). This stock relay will only limit the transmission of science: If the probe is landed on the dark side of the Mun, then you will never be able to transmit the sweet surface science points(since the Mun is in the way and tidally locked), until you actually get another probe behind the Mun so that it can see both the lander AND Kerbin...only will the lander actually be able to transmit science. Nothing about losing control AFAIK. But i do agree on the altitude thing for DSN. It feels wasteful to setup a massive relay network, when you could just wait a day until Kerbin is "visible" again(except for tidally locked situations)

Planned gravity assists are actually easy...kind off...to approximate them Find a transfer window FROM Eve -> Moho. This will be the date at which you need to arrive at Eve, so now you need to plan the launch from Kerbin.(Use "Kerbal Alarm System" mod...or use the MK1 Eyeball part) This (Kerbin -> Eve) transfer window will most likely not be the most efficient, and may not even be possible some of the years. Al that is important, is to ARRIVE at Eve at the eve->moho transfer time. So the burn from Kerbin might be a slightly radial(radial to Kerbol[Sun]), meaning you will shoot slightly "across" the orbits to reach Eve, either earlier or later than the perfect transfer window. Don't expect the slingshot to do everything for you, Eve might save like a 1000m/s on dV but it wont complete the Kerbin>Eve>Moho trip. Either that or my tiny probe had seriously bad luck: it needs to burn 700m/s at Eve 90km to help get my Kerbol periapsis down to Moho...but this means my Kerbol apoapsis is at Eve, so that is already saving a lot of fuel! Words are useless in space, I need to draw this stuff somewhere EDIT: On further investigation...slingshots are(i don't want to talk about it) I tried to be efficient, lowering my Kerbol periapsis to barely withing Eve's orbit, and while this did do some of the trick, I realized why it does less than planned. To do slingshots, it is better to cross the planet's orbit at a bit of an angle(not parallel/tangentially). Imagine you are in a perfectly matched orbit of Eve. Now thrust in the Radial direction. You will intersect Eve's orbit at two positions, this is what you want to maintain. Test this out on Mun slingshots within the Kerbin system, until you are confident you can reach Minmus orbit and back again, and even Kerbin re-entry.

For the admin building, Imagine having an extra column in the strategies list, called "Re-branding"(?) So in that list is a few contract strategies to choose from, directing you towards rescue missions, planetary landings, station construction, etc. (with stupid flavor text like advertising the company as "Orbital Search&Rescue", "Aldrin & Sons", "Weyland-Yutani Corporation", anything relating to the current strategy. So let's say you choose to be The Rescue company, then you will find more rescue contracts obviously, but you will lose reputation if you if you have not had a rescue contract in the previous 400days. There always needs to be some downside to every strategy(maybe even more than plain rep loss). How can this be made better?

Do you mean uneven ratio between LF en OX in a tank?(after full burn, theres always some LF left...or OX left) Or do you mean like filling spaceplane fueltanks, resulting in you left wing having slightly more fuel? I hate both, but they can be avoided with a small "measurement cup" fuel tank.

I always set KAC to slow down time warp at -1 seconds SOI transition...and it always catches the transition at most a few seconds before(makes me so happy when time warping a Jool transfer and KAC slows things down halfway there because i forgot about my other missions). Everytime I see that, I wonder why is it not stock yet?(like SQUAD should just leave it in the gamedata/squad folder as-is if they dont find time to get around to implementing it)

Can you play without Kerbal Alarm System? Are you like training for a match against The Scott Manley? (Just kidding) But seriously, I tried to play total stock beck when 1.0.5.1028 came out(got tired of my modded save limping and crashing), and the worst thing for me was missing maneuver nodes all the time. I tried doing all my missions a single ship at a time, and still i time-warped through aerocaptures and through SOI transitions...it felt like KSP rehab

Thank you kind Sir. I came to the same conclusion, but now...what would we hear then? A loud noise from the intense vibrations?

This got me thinking...do pilots hear their craft's sonic boom? Would you hear any "boom" while having a relative velocity to the craft of zero?

That is so true! You can even completely ignore the VAB and launch pad...just upgrade the SPH and Runway, then you can launch rockets and spaceplanes all from the runway, while having a dirt pile for a launch pad back at the VAB. It's a harsh exploit though.

Snacks! (by tgruetzm) Kind of like this? The resource is called snacks and every kerbal in space eats one snack every day...if his ship has no snacks, then you lose rep.

Snacks! (by tgruetzm) I know it is not stock, but in the meantime this mod can fill the "simple life support" gap in stock. No extra parts, it only adds a single resource to the game called, snacks. Every capsule, lander can, cockpit, habitat, etc. gets a space to add the snacks resource(like how you would add monoprop to capsules). Every kerbal in space will eat 1 snacks every Kerbin day...if the he goes hungry, you start losing rep. It forces you to not send a 1 man capsule to Duna for cheap science.

Most cores have some text on them, this text is always printed up right. But it only requires a small change to texture files to make arrows on probe cores...so why does decouplers and fuel lines have arrows, but not these?

Well as a last resort, you could use Mobile Science Lab patch(somewhere in this thread, or i think it's in the last release of snacks). It makes your MPL convert Ore -> Snacks. That sounds ridiculous, so let's just imagine there is some advanced hydroponics inside the lab and the oxidizer and "stuff" from the Ore is used to keep this process going. Anyway, I am actually currently testing a ship design that kind of resembles the mothership from the martian, the Hermes is it? So it has an ISRU,drill,claw, 4 large Ore containers and a lab onboard(also space for 16crew, but i doubt i can feed 16kerbals any further than Duna)...so i imagine using it at Dres(where apparently the asteroids "hang on trees") I hope this could support a Jool mission...