Daid

The new website seems to have an side ruler which sort of follows your mouse cursor. While cool, I recommend on removing the moving bit. Why? It's very distracting. It's something that is moving in the corner of my eye, and every time I navigate the site, it grabs my attention while it has nothing to tell me. Pulling away the focus from what I want to do.

I thought water was always at "height" 0? If it's not, then maybe you can check the RSS code to see what they change to get the water level to be at the proper height?

Ever did software development? Do you want KSP 1.0 now or in 2016? As checking everything would take forever. The workaround/fix for this would be easy. We can just not use the scanner as root part, and Squad just has to flip a flag on the part for the next patch. Little harm done, and there are tons of more important things to check (for example, making sure the persistence file is never messed up, which would ruin your game a lot more then this small bug)

Strange bug, I attached a small cargo bay to the bottom of a command pod, attached two radial parachutes to the command pod. And when it came to the point where I needed the chutes, only 1 of the chutes fired. The other was "in the cargobay" according to the game. Opening the bay allowed me to fire the other chute. I've uploaded the craft here for reference: http://daid.eu/~daid/ToErr.craft

The whole tech tree issue can be summed up quite easy. And it was easy to expect from the devnotes. They tuned the tech-tree by looking at the testers team progress. As the tester team is most likely highly experienced players, the whole tree is now tuned towards experienced players. So far the lack of bigger fuel tanks is what I found odd. The tiny first tank, that's normally a more advanced "keep your lander light" solution. Now I just need to stack a whole bunch of tanks to get a single big one. With all the wobble. In the end, I just upgraded the pad first, so I could just use solid boosters to get myself into space, instead of rocket engines. It's more part efficient, and more cost efficient. But I keep forgetting to set the thrust limit, causing quite some fire... (Overal, I do enjoy the update so far. But I'm 100% sure the new tech tree will scare new players)

People need to change how they where playing, due to changes to earo, heating and chutes. People don't like changing in general. Wait 2 weeks, see that the complains will have gone down to a minimal. (Software dev myself. And 2 weeks is about the point where I noticed that people start to accept major changes in their workflow) Love the update myself, but do notice that I need to learn rocket building again, but now proper.

Tried a simple parachute to keep it stable? I noticed that chutes are a lot less likely to rip your ship into a thousand pieces. And just deployed a single chute for the above reason while I was still going at 1000m/s at 10km.

Note: We'll be running our spaceship setup this evening in Amsterdam (yes, short notice, totally forgot about it). We might even have enough players for 2 ships! At the Nerd Night of iFabrica: Gedempt Hamerkanaal 139, 1021KP Amsterdam, Netherlands (You'll never know if a crazy KSP person might show up...)

I haven't tested "over the internet" performance yet. In theory, if you setup port-forwarding on your router (on the person hosting the server), and use the "connect to IP" function, you should be able to connect. It wouldn't be that hard to setup a internet game lobby. But knowing how well it will actually perform trough the internet will be important before that. As for people not that much into sci-fi or star-trek. I noticed that it didn't matter that much. I've played it with about 15 different people now. Only 5 of those can be counted as die-hard nerds. The rest enjoyed the game because of all the hilarious stuff that goes wrong due to miss-communications. (Like enemy shield levels being interpreted as your own shield level). You'll lose a lot of the awesome interactions as soon as you go online (voice chat might help)

It's just local network. Mainly AI ships. But you can setup PvP battles (you have to use the GM screen right now to change a 2nd players ship to another faction. But it will work) Right now we mostly play the "waves" scenario, which just keeps throwing more and more enemies at you. But later on I hope to add more a more flying roaming game. I wished we could say we designed the 3D models. But we bought them. Still they look great. Not planning tournaments or anything like that myself. It's just a hobby project. We talked about this with the team. 3D would only add a bit of complexity in the communication about where to fly to, and a lot of complexity on visualizing things. Unless you do the "2.5D" which Artemis has right now. Which in my mind, does not add much at all. It's important to keep the game fun and easy to pick up. 3D movement simply did not fit in that. Right now it's just basic scanning of ships (so you know nothing of a ship until you scan it) There are some advanced ideas on sensors and stuff: https://github.com/daid/EmptyEpsilon/issues/14 But, that's quite complex to implement, and could be too difficult to use. It does not have much FTL elements yet. I know the engineering station looks very FTL. But there are no real "events" yet as in FTL, nor you can retrofit your ship (the codebase has been prepared for retrofitting). Got some random ideas on missions and events. But nothing has been implemented yet.

I am kinda scared to make this post. But I think some people who are enjoying KSP will enjoy this as well. Note that I love playing KSP. So, I'm here to tell you about a game I made with a bunch of friends. And the game is called: EmptyEpsilon It's a futuristic spaceship bridge simulator game. Like a Star Trek bridge, but then in your own home (or office). The idea of the game is that you gather a bunch of friends. Designate 1 person as a captain, put the other crew behind different "stations" that control different parts of the ship, and fly missions. Kill enemies, and try NOT to touch that tempting "self destruct" button. Optimal is to play with 6 people in total. But I've played with as little as 3. History About a year ago, me and some guys played a sessions of Artemis Spaceship Bridge simulator. We really enjoyed ourselves. But, we ran into quite a few issues with the game as a whole. Our main problems where: Comms station was boring as hell, you pretty much sit there, tell all stations to make nukes. And that's about it, you can report that stations are under attack, but science should be noticing that earlier in most cases. Game lost sync. What was happening on the server was not always happening on the clients. Annoying as hell, as sometimes enemy ships where in front of us on the main screen, but behind us on the weapons screen. Ruins the fun quite quick. While it has a "game master" screen. You cannot do much there. You cannot even create new enemies in a simple way. Visuals. Space is black. Not green+blue+yellow+ So, being the software engines that we are, we programmed our own game from scratch. (Not with blackjack and hookers... yet) And, being the nice people that we are. And because we created it for our own amusement. We are giving it away for free, including the sourcecode. So anyone can modify it up to their own wishes. So, what's in the game? Well, we're still working on it. But the game is quite complete already. We have: Up to 32 player ships, allowing up to 192 players to play in single game (this has not been tested, but should work in theory. Max computers connected to a single session was 12 so far) Bunch of different enemy types. From simple fighter enemies, to advanced ships with missile weapons and warp drives. 5 different officer stations: Helms - Controls the ships movement. Heading set to 115deg, full speed ahead. Preparing for a jump of 20km. Weapons - Fire zhe missles! MOAR NUKES! Engineering - But captain, I'm giving it all she's got! Sending out repair crews to fix the front shield generator! Science - Scanning... scanning... enemies everywhere captain. Put weapons on 480THz for maximum effectiveness. Relay - Just requested backup at station DS5, and supplied will be dropped of at WP3 in sector D4. Also got a friendly scout ship scanning the nebula in C2 for enemies. [*] 1 captains main screen per friendly ship. Can be just on a 3D screen, or switched to short and long range radar. We put this on a beamer, but you can also put it on a big TV. It's best if all players can see this. [*] Fully scriptable scenarios. [*] Actually, lots of stuff is scriptable. Even communications that the relay officer does. And the layout of the ships, the "factions" that are in the game. You can pretty much customize the game to be star-trek if you want (not doing that for IP reasons, and we don't want to be true to star-trek) [*] That said. The main goal is fun. Not realism. So the physics are "wrong", you stop when you turn your engine off. But who cares, that makes for a better game. If anyone asks, it's because of the anti-gravity-based-impulse-drive. [*] Nukes, mines, missiles and EMP missiles. Oh, and lasers. Lots of lasers. [*] Full fancy 2D action! No need to think in complex 3D maneuvers during the heat of battle. You cannot go up/down. Once again, not realistic, but makes it easier to program, and less complex to play. [*] A useful game-master screen. Want to play a complex scenario, and do not want to script it? Well, put someone behind the GM screen, and he can create&destroy just about anything. He can order ships around with ease. Even magically move them around with the powers of a god! He can even hail the relay officer on the player ship and chat with him. Having a friendly suddenly turn on you? You could do that with the GM screen. [*] Jump drives, warp drives, or both. Personally more a fan of jump drives on player ships. But that's fully configurable. [*] Optional touch-screen support (we managed to get 5 very nice touch screens for cheap) Screenshots! Example of the main screen: Showing the players ship. A nebula in the distance (which blocks long range radar) Slightly older screenshot, showing 2 enemies attacking a player. And a small station in the distance. The helms station. Once again, slightly dated screenshot (the combat maneuvers at the bottom did not work out that well, and have been replaced by a different system) Weapons. Easy. Weapon tubes, shields on/off (so important, so much fun when people forget this ) Engineering. Controls power&coolant levels of different systems. Needs to manage the heat of those systems. More power to a system means a more effective system. Also controls the repair crews. Science. Long range scanning radar. Your information is vital for the captain. As you can see doom or easy prey incoming, and tell the difference. 25km range by default (can be changed when setting up the game) Relay. Can always see around friendly ships&stations in a 5km range. Can talk to both ships and stations. Has different information then science. Can send ships into nebulas for watching inside those. Hardware? Because we are slightly crazy. We made our own hardware setup with touchscreens. (also, we have 3D printers and a big CNC mill. So that made it easier) Here the setup is just being "stored". Actually setting up the game. Using a TV because we couldn't find the beamer we usually use. Older setup photo, when only 3 of the touchscreens where ready: (We usually play with the lights off, which makes taking photos during play sessions hard) Finally! Well, if you have read up to this point. You most likely want these links. http://emptyepsilon.org/ <- Main website http://software.ultimaker.com/EmptyEpsilon/ <- Downloads of pre-compiled versions (Mac version might still be broken) http://bridgesim.net/ <- Place where we talk about the game (not that active. But few more people who are playing it also visit that forum) https://github.com/daid/EmptyEpsilon <- Sourcecode (Warning, here be small and big dragons, and wizard-lizards) https://github.com/daid/SeriousProton <- Engine sourcecode (you need this as well to build the source version, engine was build from scratch, because I'm crazy like that) I hope some people will enjoy this as much as we are enjoying it. - Daid out.

I think you're quite wrong on this aspect. You can just see the asteroids as floating fuel tanks. Yes. But, look at the stats, even if 20% of the mass is fuel (which I think is way too much) the wet-vs-dry mass is quite horrible. So if you drag the asteroid along you bring a lot of dry-mass, which our basic rocket equation tells us is a bad thing for your dV. Mining into normal tanks and use those tanks is way more efficient.

Just a theory, you could be losing some dV due to wobbling engines?

I completely fully DISAGREE here. I hated that mod. Damn thing starts up at an odd place, need way too much of my time to be mushed into place, and looked like a total odd duck in the UI. The UX design was horrible. Mod that are now using the stock toolbar buttons are the best thing that happened for me.

You sir. Are exactly what's wrong with a lot of software users. I maintain a semi-popular application (about 80000 uses daily). And it's only 32bit for windows. And occasionally, a stupid user, who thinks they know everything, drops by and says "you should do 64bit!" or "you should do multithreaded!". Without having any clue what's really happening or what the real limits are. 64bit isn't a magical solution for all problems. Never is, never will be. The only thing it really adds is some more virtual memory space. Which allows you to map more memory, IF it's available (and there are tons of systems with no more then 4GB of memory)

Kerbal engineer and watching your deltaV and Trust to weight ratio should be all it takes (and a gravity turn, but I assume you got that covered)

No it won't. Why? That's why. Why would anyone help you making the mod you envision? Modding does not work like that. It didn't work like that 15 years ago (when people started modding HalfLife and UnrealTournament) and it still doesn't work this way this day. Quick googling on your nickname, shows you have a lot of free time: http://steamcommunity.com/id/andy662 Maybe spend a bit of that time on actually learning how to mod, instead of walking in here and hoping other people will do the main work for you. As the mod you envision will take loads and loads of hours.

Software engineer by trade here. Any code, big or small, costs effort. And something big and fundamental like the aerodynamics would be a huge pain in the ass to have two versions off. It would be having like 2 different engines for your car.

PCBs can be made 10 at a time for pretty cheap these days, 10x10cm for 2 dollar a piece at iteadstudio.com But injection molded parts, forget it. That only gets interesting if you go over a 1000 units. Unless you go to protomold, which can do low volume, at higher costs. And even then, it will feel like cheap plastic parts. But I don't think a panel needs any injection molded parts, you can just laser-cut panels, which isn't that expensive for low volume, and actually looks awesome.

That's partially what the 2.3x factor is also for. And, you want to buy the panels that hold all the buttons pre-cut from a metal work company, once you go in the double digit amounts this is quite affordable. And laser-cut metal sheet looks awesome. So then the hours are just assembly and soldering.

NanoGauges already give me that info. And, I didn't have 7segments laying around. I pretty much build this from stuff I had laying around. Better image: And the bottom: (And bonus shot of Ultimaker 3D printer in the back)

Both, you won't be able to get enough dV and the moon is on rails.

I think you want to make a separate topic about this to catch attention. But first do a cost breakdown. If you want to make it worth your while, calculate the raw part cost. Multiply it by 2.3x, and that will be about your selling price. Else, the chance of making a loss, or spending a lot of effort without gaining a thing is big. I know people who have done projects like this quite often, and 2.3x is about right. As you need to cover extra expenses like broken parts, shipping, assembly.

I think the lack of atmosphere is exactly the point for Tylo. As that's what makes it a challenge. Just like the heavy atmosphere of Eve is a challenge.

Note, as 3D design software, you might want to switch to designspark mechanical: http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/page/mechanical It's a lot better for mechanical design then sketchup. A lot less buggy as well.