wired2thenet

Gaming in general has always been a panacea for me. I get to kill things (more or less) without repercussions, and generally deal with RL stresses on a modest scale. KSP is one of those games that can help make me laugh as well. I will always remember the one Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode called "The Abandoned," where in Odo instructed a new Jem'Hadar on the holodeck: "In here, you can indulge yourself. You can let your instincts take over. Fight until you're ready to stop, but at a price. Out there, you have to control yourself. You have to learn restraint. Learn how to live peacefully among other races, regardless of how you may feel. Learn to contain your feelings of aggression and violence." I actually teach my son that computer gaming can be his outlet for anger and depression, but the moment he re-enters the real world, he has to learn to control that anger and depression.

Wow! LOL! That is EXTREMELY old school KSP!

And the only other video I have, when jet engines were WAY overpowered. I was talking to my son about orbits as part of his home-schooling, and accidentally went into orbit with this craft.

With all the recent hullaballoo, I think it's a fine time to revisit very old versions of KSP. You remember those times! When things went screwy Kerbal for no reason, and/or you did something that was just stupid and/or cool, and stranded/killed your Kerbals for some stupid reason. Back in 2012, I was recording what was my first Mun landing ... and it didn't go quite as planned. I had to edit this video for obvious reasons, and did some sound editing for maximum effect: Post your screenshots and/or video (can someone please tell me how to link a YT video better????). NM ... just need to know how to properly set this up with spoilers. Nothing seems to be working

This is a thing??? I NEED this contract, since I stress my Kerbals constantly with insane G-forces!

The fact is, it is true. There is nothing you can do about it. Period. End of story. It's a game. Every game eventually dies, and Squad actually has a pretty good history of staying alive (it beats most companies today, in many respects). Squad is a game company. They don't have to tell you anything at all. They don't owe you anything. At all. The company I work for is a major brand-name product, and while in a different industry, has a similar policy. I can't comment on anything regarding internal affairs, nor the state of our product. If all but two employees are fired, let-go, or otherwise leave, I cannot, as the Voice of that company, say anything about it. Period. No matter how much I want to. Even when I leave this company, I still can't comment on what has happened, until (if I remember my NDA correctly) SEVEN YEARS after I leave. That is policy for a lot of companies, and is especially true in the gaming industry. We don't owe you the truth. We won't GIVE you the truth, no matter how much you protest. That's not the way business works. That being said, I wish it did. More open-door policies would do a lot better for PR. But moaning about it won't get you anything. It is what it is. Because on the other side of this coin, there are people who are looking into what they can publicly post, and trying to figure out the best way to do so, without causing a firestorm. I've been in the mix of that morass. It's not fun, and it's not easy. And inevitably, even with your best of intentions and your best PR man/woman making the call, you're still going to get people *****ing and moaning about it. Sometimes it's better to remain silent (I've seen too many incidences where the "best of intentions" backfired). ((And honestly, with the temperament of the internet today, can you really blame ANY company for not saying anything??? The internet gamers today are a far cry from what I experienced in 1999. "Trolling" was rare back then, except for the occasion script-kiddies!)) Let Squad do it's thing. In the meantime, play the game. Don't worry about the future. You have a mostly feature-complete game, which is a far-cry from a lot of games you purchase today on Steam. Don't worry about what's going to comes in 1.3 or 1.4 ... just play the game. As we said in the old days where the best 3d model in a game had maybe 50 polygons (if that! I'm that old-school): GLHF! (Good Luck, Have Fun!) Apologies to the OP: I had hoped that some of my comments would be on-point for this discussion, but it looks like I'm failing. I'll politely exit the thread at this point, since I'm not exactly contributing to your original intent. I do think this is Much To Do About Nothing though, for the reasons I stated. I just came here looking for Cupcakes' old craft files and then saw this

Volition! That was one of the companies I was trying to recall! Disappeared without a trace, then the source code was leaked, leading to some awesome mods later on (for Freespace). Man, I need to find that game again! (Sorry, OT ... just got a squee of excitement thinking about Freespace again )

That's the point, though. I'm passionate about the game too, but there is nothing ... not one thing in the entire universe ... that you nor I can do about it, except play the game as it stands and have fun with it, and rely on the modders and 3rd party developers to improve the game beyond what it is, unless the devs have plans that we don't know about yet. And if the latter is the case, then we're no better than Doomsday Annihilists predicting the destruction of the world back in 2000 ... and how did that turn out? I still play the original TA and TA:Kingdoms, and Cavedog exploded under much more public and destructive reasons than this. I'm not passively insulting you, by any means, and if you're taking it that way, then my apologies. I'm just saying stop thinking about doom and gloom. Squad has give us a wonderful sandbox to play in. Scott Manley, KurtJMac (wish he would come back to the game), quill18, danny2462, Bradley Whistance, Kerbal Space Command, Cupcake Landers, KottabosGames, Billy Winn Jr (omg the hilarity!) ... and too many others to name -- all of them prove a veracity of love for this game, sharing their most awesome experiences with this community. They're having fun, and that's the point of it. Yeah, some of them have left, but that's the nature of gaming. And game development. Bottom line is no matter what happens, you'll probably still be killing sending Kerbals on insane missions a year from now.

Landed this in my Area 51 Proving Grounds test save, much to the cheers and jeers of my 8-year old son (there were some Kerbal-moments during descent that almost doomed me). 1st attempt was an utter disaster, with only one parachute surviving. 2nd attempt was this, so I'm pretty proud. I've done 3 or 4 other attempts since the 2nd, trying to perfect the descent profile, but they've been rather ... demoralizing. 160+ tons edited into Dunar orbit, 101+ tons on landing. Doesn't quite have enough power to maintain operations, but meh, it's a WiP! Bill approved though, and I guess that's all that matters. *Edit* Ugh, forgot how to post images here

^ It's a game. Game companies have a history of Rapid Unexpected Disassembly. They also have a history of multiple employees leaving at once for no good reason and for very valid reasons. I've been a gaming insider since 1999, and have watched probably 2 or 3 dozen implode, and fans going nuts over it. 99% turned out to be for BS reasons, not wild speculation from fans. I've seen a couple irritated devs post openly about bad experiences, but those are few and far between (and generally have more to do with employee performance than anything else). Not saying that's the case here. I've also seen a few companies implode for something similar to this, but once you're on the inside, you realize that it's not quite as complex, or if it is, it's not quite what you think it is. For me, I read over the reddit and the various posts here. Then when I went to tuck my son in bed while still reading about it, I said, "Hey, let's see if I can land this Kerbal contraption safely." Get some fresh air. For the moment, there's nothing to see here. I'm going back to the GAME to land the lander again, just to prove I can do it reliably before converting it to my career game. Because that's what is most important for this game right now ... having fun. Why is everyone so wildly speculating over something that's an internal matter, instead of getting in the game and doing the impossible most kerbal thing they can do? ^^^^

What worries me the most? If my 101-ton Duna mining operation can be landed in one trip successfully, which I finally succeeded in testing tonight (with my son staying up late to watch it happen live ... cheering and laughing when just about everything went wrong, but I still managed to land the ungainly beast intact, to many high-fives and dances). (If you don't understand that statement, you need to take a break and go outside for a few hours and play in the rain).

I've found that after months (if not a full year) of playing, my skills actually have improved. I can do things now in 1.2 pre-release than I just could not do without mods a year ago (esp MechJeb). Watching YT videos have helped a great deal, even when I'm not playing. For example, I had a HARD time landing on any planet back in the day (I could do it after 3 or 4 attempts, but I was struggling a great deal). Now, even in my first tryout of the pre-release, I land on both the Mun and Minmus without issue, and then hard-landed (without parachutes) on Kerbin back at KSP, just a few hundred meters from where I launched. How? I have no fracking clue That doesn't mean things were without incident, as in the What did you do in KSP today thread (it was my first heavy lander): Still, I feel you. In my 1.2 career mode, I've reached a hard-limit on what I can do effectively to gain science ... there's a ... buffer? ... that prevents me from proceeding (the contracts are frustrating the crap out of me right now). So I'm soaking up science wherever I can, and have resorted to some of those mods that help with science acquisition (that are currently compatible with 1.2), in order to get me where I need to be. In addition to the Manley of Manlies, I also have been watching quill18's videos lately, in his 1.2 playthrough. Those have helped enormously. Quick, on-the-fly, delta-V calculations without KER have helped tremendously. Sort of gives you an intuitive understanding of TWR and rocket design. Over-engineered, definitely, but Kerbal all the same. Take a break, definitely. Watch videos and absorb them, but don't play. Wait until you're back in the right mindset.

Been away from the game for quite a while now (my laptop moaned and groaned every time I tried to play it), but 1.2 pre-release has made it recently sigh in relief (well done, devs!). So I've been doing career mode without mods (of course), re-learning the game. I've had numerous landings on the Mun flying by the seat of my pants with lighter landers, but tonight I unlocked some heavy parts and ... well, this happened. Screenshot worthy.

[quote name='Cupcake...']I do miss .90 SSTOs. ;.; [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxmhRIcM14[/url] Good times. :) Cupcake...[/QUOTE] I remember that Little Ship, Big Adventure! I tried to recreate it, but was never successful. My fondest memory is accidentally creating an SSTO while talking about KSP with my 5/6-year old son. When I first flew her, I had her on a high angle, and suddenly found myself in space, so I decided to try again and capture the video: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN7u1nkakxI[/url]

In a recent post (pre-1.0) I managed to get this baby into orbit with little or no problem: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107567-SSTO-Jet-Engine-RCS-only?p=1675000#post1675000 It isn't realistic at all, and something I noted immediately when it happened, because it was a total accident. NASA doesn't even have one right now, and never did even though concepts are on the table. It's a dream that can probably be done (and someone will eventually in KSP if they haven't done it already), but ... like Rocket Science ... ... it's extremely hard.