Allocthonous

Bitter much? Besides, chances are there's already a mod for that. I've paid my money for this game, and I'm 400 hours worth of happy with my purchase, most of that even before the most recent update. That works out to the game costing me something like 1 cent per hour of play. Any further improvements that are made, essentially free of charge to me, are just bonuses. If other people disagree with the things that I personally believe could be improved upon, that's fine. Don't get so worked up about it. That said, I still think this piece of interface could be better. Merge target mode into the other modes with new symbols, or even just add color coding to the surface/target/orbit label text. It already changes position, left for surface, right for orbit, and centered for target, but that was apparently subtle enough that I had to specifically look for it to notice.

For all those people asking how this causes problems: Every time it's happened to me, I've been leaving the Mun or Minmus after meeting up with an object orbiting those bodies. Usually I un-target an object after undocking with it, but I forgot a couple of times, and ended up making an incorrect burn. And really, it's not a problem unless you're absentminded about things. But it would be nice to have an attention grabbing visual indicator or other obvious difference between target-prograde and surface/orbit-prograde.

I did this! And then I made sure the flag got planted on top of the arch. Only appropriate place for it, really.

Yeah, that'll happen every so often. Really, we just need distinct navball symbols for 'target prograde' and 'target retrograde'. Or whatever they actually are. I don't think those are quite the right terms. More like 'increase velocity difference' and 'decrease velocity difference'. Add a couple symbols and you could ditch target mode entirely.

Basically a 'select default VAB orientation' option in the menu? I could get behind that. The idea of using what are really the yaw controls to determine ascent angle has always driven me bonkers, so the root part gets rotated by 90 every time right now.

Slap some aero surfaces on a Mk0 fuel tank, a juno jet engine, an OKTO probe core, and an air intake. Strap the whole thing onto a wheeled carriage using a hardpoint. Once you get up to speed, blow the hardpoint and pull up until you're pointed west, and head for the mountains. Practice nap-of-the-earth flying. It's a great way to kill half an hour or so. Docking exercises are always fun, too. Some of the most fun I've had in KSP has been assembling space stations using the docking system.

I once had a slight parachute mishap with a basic capsule on re-entry in 1.13. You know, one of those things where you find out after the parachutes have deployed and then been destroyed by aero forces that no, you didn't change the pressure settings when you added them (I love that this is fixed now). So Jeb's falling at terminal velocity towards the ocean. Figuring I had nothing to lose, since I couldn't revert at that point, I waited until he was almost down and had him go EVA. I don't remember if I tried using his jetpack or not, but it probably doesn't make much difference at sea level pressures. Anyway, he splashed down just fine. Apparently Kerbals are sturdier than spaceship parts. Or maybe that's just Jeb...further testing may be required.

This would be useful to me also. Time-to-node would also be fantastic to have, it would allow much greater precision when doing inclination changes.

*shrug* If it's not really an issue for epileptics, or not more of an issue than computer usage generally, I have no problems with that. I stumbled upon the effect accidentally and thought I'd raise the question. It would still be nice if the bright-to-dark strobe effect were damped down a little bit. It's kind of unpleasant.

They showed up in 1.13 as well. Also featured: Polar orbits, Retrograde orbits, and Tundra orbits. And I agree; I had to go look up the wikipedia page on Molniya and Tundra orbits to find out what the deal was. Cool stuff.

Has anybody else tried time warping at max speed while at the launch pad and not in map view? The sun becomes a strobe light. While I'm mainly concerned that this is going to cause epilepsy sufferers problems, some mitigation of this strobe effect would be nice for the rest of us as well. Either that, or disallow max speed time warp outside of map mode.

I haven't really settled on a concrete naming scheme yet, but I usually stick to a consistent one within a career save. My first long-term save, every different model of craft was given the name of something that swam. Tiny satellites were polyps, and then ostrocods. SSTOs were seals and sealions. I think one of my stations got named clownfish. That sort of thing. The next couple games I did, everything was given a serial number based on SOI, orbital characteristics, science equipment on board, and engine type. Space stations were just labeled with the SOI and orbit. So I'd have things like 'Ker-HO-TBA-Ant-1' which indicated a sat in Kerbin High Orbit, carrying a thermometer, barometer, and antenna, powered by an ant engine, and the first sat in Kerbin's SOI. That got kind of unwieldy, and I probably won't do that again. My current game, I've been giving relay sats and stations themed names. All of the relays in Kerbin's SOI are named 'Switchboard' with a number after them, Duna's are named 'Sirocco', Solar orbit are named 'Lone Candle' and so on. The space station I've got in Kerbin's influence is named 'Tannoy Station' and has massive relay power. That sort of thing. A lot of my ships just end up being 'Manned Minmus Lander Mission 1' or whatever, though. If it's not going to be up there while I'm not controlling it, I don't really bother.

The ability to kill your warp speed instantly would be nice, too. I know the slash key cancels your current timewarp, but it does so by gradually reducing warp speed. It doesn't seem to be a technical limitation, given the way warp scales down almost instantly when hitting atmosphere or reaching an encounter/escape point.

This shows up mostly for the 'authority limit' tweakable on aerodynamic control surfaces, but anytime I go to adjust one I find myself fighting the interface to get it to the correct value. Sometimes it is flat out impossible to make it show up as, say, 20 instead of 19 or 21. What's worse, it's not consistent, which means that you might have one control surface that can be adjusted to that number just fine, but its neighbor won't. This does horrible things to my inner perfectionist. So, could we take that space where the number for the tweakable's current value is displayed, and turn it into a text entry box? Keep the slider working as normal, but please let me highlight that number and enter a value.

Given that one of the game modes doesn't use money, and one of the game modes doesn't use science or money, fiddling things around so that you can play a game mode that doesn't use science but still uses money is perfectly reasonable.

I sent up this thing: The solar panel weighs exactly as much as the survey dish and five z-200 batteries, so the center of mass was still dead center. I didn't have to worry about uneven drag thanks to the fairing. I launched into a polar orbit, then spent a good chunk of time collecting gravity readings from every single biome on kerbin from low and high orbits, as well as the orbital scan. Then I did the same for the Mun. And then I did the same for Minmus. That's 72 different different readings, for those of you keeping score at home. Then I popped loose the return capsule. The return capsule wasn't very stable coming in for re-entry, but nothing exploded. Good enough. I was pretty pleased with the result, although for my next career game I might have to put a limit to how much science I'm allowed to harvest from Kerbin's SOI. That should be enough to get me those jumbo docking ports I wanted, at least! It turned out my second booster stage (one of the largest white 2.5 meter tanks and a skipper) was ridiculously overpowered, and I completed my entire mission tasking before it ran out of fuel. Consequently, this thing is still hanging out between the Mun and Minmus. It's fully fueled, so I might see if it can go visit Duna and Ike. I won't be getting return values for gravity readings, but I do have a relay sat in orbit of Duna already, so it should be worth doing.

Yep. Forgot the parachutes, forgot the reaction wheels for a whale of a ship, forgot to refill the fuel tank after doing checks on how the CoM changes, forgot the solar panels, forgot the crew, forgot the heat shield, forgot the fuel hoses, forgot the fins, forgot the antenna... So many things I've forgotten at one point or another. I'm at about ~400 hours now, and I have no faith in my ability to remember any of these things on a particular launch.

Even if they can't squeeze out another full order of magnitude, a simple doubling would still be welcome. Jool and Eeloo take a looong time to get to. Especially if you aren't smart about your transfer windows.

Unfortunately, 'Kool Kats' is impossible to tell apart from 'Thousand-Yard Stare'. That poor kerbal looks like she's just realized that going out without a tether or a jetpack was a terrible plan. I too would like to see some smiles. I'd also like to see some gibbering terror every now and then for variety. Could be a fun easter egg.

This had occurred to me, and I'd love to see a processing lab part that's entirely separate from an experimental science lab. I would say that it shouldn't process the experiments that can be reset without a scientist, though--crew and eva reports, temp, pressure, seismic, and gravity scans. Only the ones that would actually involve a physical experiment needing processing. Samples, materials bay and goo, maybe the atmosphere sampler. I think it comes down to the MPL being too abstract. It's sort of both types of lab at the moment, and it's terrible at both of them.

You make some good points. On my last career game in 1.13, I avoided using the MPL entirely because I felt it was too easy. So, what uses do space labs have in real life? For the most part, we haul or transmit experiments from the earth up to the lab, have the astronauts perform the required experimental procedures and observations, and then haul them or transmit them back down to earth. This is kind of what the Materials Observation Bay and the Goo capsule are, but those can be done entirely with probe cores, so they don't really fill the same niche. I'd like to see an 'experiment package' part that has to be hauled up to an MPL to allow it to generate science. Heck, make 'experiments' a consumable resource. Pump them out of the experiment package to the MPL, and pump 'finished experiments' back. Give a science bonus for recovery of finished experiments on Kerbin, in addition to some quantity of transmittable science from the MPL. I would keep the in-situ analysis function you're describing above, as well. That would give some incentive for hauling an MPL out to Jool or wherever instead of just keeping them in LKO.

Steering really is wobble-inducing. I've had some success launching satellites in the 1 ton range using the largest solid booster and a fairing without SAS, by using launchpad clamps or supports or whatever they're called and tilting the whole rocket by 5 or 10 degrees eastward. In theory the concept would scale up, but you might need more oomph to your engines to keep the gravity turn shallow enough. Fins also help.

I may have to try this. For science! (literally) And yeah, an empty class A could weigh less than a ton. Not hard at all.

You had to have separate copies of each individual piece of science. So if you had temperature readings for space near kerbin, you could dump that in one lab, and then if you took the same reading again or with a duplicate instrument, you could dump it in the other. But yes, both labs running at once.

Could be a good option. While they're at it, an arm-then-stage option using two separate keys would be nice. I've had to revert a few flights because I accidentally staged out a fully fueled section prematurely.