pbristow

Hi! Can't believe it took me so long to get into automated science gathering... Right now I'm using "[x] Science!", "Experiment Tracker" and "Automated Science Sampler" to mop up every last scrap of missed science while orbiting Kerbin and flying by the Mun, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how well they seem to play together (no crashes yet...!). There's of course a plethora of information up on my screen at once about the science available and what's happening with it, yet there's two really useful things that still seem to be missing. 1. A running total of how many science points I have accumulated back at KSC (i.e. "Have I got enough yet to get me that tech tree advance I'm desperate for, for my next mission?"); 2. A running total of how many science points are currently tied up aboard my ship - i.e., how much will my total at KSC jump up by, if I get the ship home (with all current experiments, labs etc. intact) and do "Recover vessel"? The first total would need to be loaded on launch, and then updated any time science data is transmitted back to KSC. (I don't think any background events lead to KSC's science total(s) getting updated, do they?). The ship-board total however would need to be updated basically in all the situations where [x] Science updates its per-experiment and per-biome data. What I'd like to be able to do is run with either ASS or ET controlling the gathering of new science, with "[x] Science!" just showing those two running totals unless/until I ask for a breakdown. Would that be possible to add? (Or is there another mod I've overlooked somewhere that already does this?) Thanks for reading. Great work on this mod, keep it up! =:o}

Another hearty thumbs-up for this beautiful (and useful!) set of parts! => Shame they don't seem to be appearing over on Curse... [HINT, HINT]

Is anyone running KSP with a GeForce 210, with 512MB? Is it playable? They're available really cheaply now, and I'm just looking to upgrade the onboard graphics on my "spare" machine to something that will handle HD video playback, plus a bit of KSP now and then. I don't need super-smooth frame rates, but I've tried it with the on-board graphics and the result is more like a slide-show than animation! =}

Yeah, its a widely misunderstood idea (and big companies love to exploit the fact that people don't understand it!), but the whole point of trademarks in the first place was to stop people selling rip-off products or services using the same name/branding as the real ones. So I can sell my cola-flavoured beverage, as long as I don't call it Pepsi or Coke, or any other name that's been registered as a trademarked for such a thing. Where lawyers get to have their fun is when a trademark owner can reasonably say "its the same kind of product as ours!" and the defendant has to prove it's sufficiently different that no one would reasonably be confused; or where a big company has splashed their branding over so many different kinds of products that you can't safely sell anything under the same or similar name, just in case they've *ever* made one of those. =\

TheCanadianVendingMachine : That's... terrifyingly awesome. And definitely something for further up the tech tree than I was aiming. =}

Themohawkninja: Thanks for the thought, but you can't *copyright* names like that, you can only *trade-mark* them. And since telescopes and chewing gum are totally different things, the trade mark would not be relevant. Besides, the whole point is the Shakespearean word-play around "Hubble". =;o}

D'Oh! And then of course I immediately spotted this: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/tarsier-space-technology-2/ Well, I think my version's more fun. =;o}

Hi, I've been looking through the mods for parts that generate more science, in particular (prompted by a discussion a friend of mine... Hi Mike! [WAVES] ) *telescopes*. It seems that while there are several telescope mods around, no-one is so-far doing telescopes that actually contribute science points. It seems a bit odd the tech tree has our Kerbals being able to detect negative Gravioli particles before they've even put their first basic ship-mounted telescope into orbit. I therefore propose a new experiment/part: The "Double Bubble Space Binoculars"! Description: This ground-breaking (literally, when we dropped it during installation) attempt at 3D visualisation of distant objects in space, using a binocular optical system orbiting outside the interference of Kerbin's atmosphere, was rendered only *slightly* less useful by the fact that, once switched on, it proved to blind in one eye. (See earlier, re "ground-breaking".) Nonetheless, it is still a very fine, if monocular, space telescope that delivers useful science points, if you point it at something it hasn't seen before and manage not to jog it's elbow while it's taking snaps. Well worth all that toil and trouble, in fact... N.B. The value of the science generated should be inversely proportional to the angular momentum of the vessel it's attached to, and to the distance of the object being viewed, but capped to a sensible limit so that you can't get infinite science points by luckily taking one snap while perfectly stationary! This then adds to the value of taking a telescope with you on your mission to the Joule system, as it will be able to get many more science points by observing the moons up close than if it's squinting at them from Kerbin orbit.) I'd like the part to look like just a huge, bulbous pair of binoculars (aka field-glasses or "opera glasses") with one of the big (one-metre?) main lenses visibly cracked. It should have a fixed orientation with respect to the part it's mounted on, so that it's up to the player to aim the telescope by pointing the ship in the right direction, and stabilise it using reaction wheels to get a steady shot that yields more science points than a wobbly one. I hereby humbly offer "Double-Bubble" as an idea for development by Squad, or by any mod developer who wants to have a crack at it. (Ha! A crack at it! It's got a cracked lens, see, so it... Oh, OK you got it. [bLUSH] )

Hi! There's been some discussion I see about how reverting to the last quicksave can give you a nasty shock as to how long ago you last hit the F5 key, possibly losing days or even weeks of your KSP career. On the other hand, auto-saves tend to happen so frequently that going back to the last one might not be nearly far enough back to fix the problem that just killed your crew. In between those two extremes, we have the "revert to launch" and "revert to construction" options, which are the only points (unless you keep detailed notes with your third hand while flying eh ship with the other two!) at which you know exactly what state you will revert. I'd like to be able to have save points created automatically at certain key stages of each mission, for example: - When dropping any stage (or when dropping any stage using more than one decoupler - so that the last "asparagus split point" of my heavy lifter gets saved before I beuatifully finalise my parking orbit, and then totally screw up my escape burn to Minmus... ); - Whenever entering or leaving an atmosphere; - Whenever entering or leaving a body's SOI; - Whenever crossing any of the altitude thresholds that govern time-warp. The examples I've picked here are all points at which the game has to "change mode" already, which avoids the performance overhead of having an extra set of conditions to check at every moment of play. It may be possible to let players set arbitrary parameterised conditions such as "when altitude exceeds 2736481m", or "when altitude is below 1km and rate of descent increases beyond 30m/s", but that probably isn't desirable from either a game play or a "keeping things challenging" standpoint. The main thing I want to is avoid having to re-play the most boring 10 to 15 minutes of each mission (you know, that long slow haul up out of the atmosphere, with a game that's lagged to blazes by the number of parts on my massive and complex lifter! ) just 'cos I botched the timing of my de-orbit burn. For players to get the best benefit from this, though, rather than just being able to revert to the "last autosave" or even "last scheduled save", it would also be useful to be able to select from a list of the last *several* saves. The saves would each need to be identified by a time-stamp and a brief description (e.g. "Activating stage: 3"; "Entering atmosphere: Kerbin"; "Leaving SOI: Minmus"; or the two existing options "Manual Quick-save" and "Auto-save"). Thoughts? Ideas? Raspberries?

I agree with this completely! =}

Ooh! Yes, that's a good one. Actually, even more useful would a 30/60/90deg triangular wedge, as it gives you twice as many new angles to play with. (I get so frustrated trying to get mount points in the right places so that my spot-lights - sorry, "Illuminator MK I"s - can light up the best/most important features of the ship... They always want to shine straight along the surface they're stuck to, or outward at almost-but-not-quite 90 degrees! =} )

Ooh! Yes, that's a good one. Actually, even more useful would a 30/60/90deg triangular wedge, as it gives you twice as many new angles to play with. (I get so frustrated trying to get mount points in the right places so that my spot-lights - sorry, "Illuminator MK I"s - can light up the best/most important features of the ship... They always want to shine straight along the surface they're stuck to, or outward at almost-but-not-quite 90 degrees! =} )

Heh. A friend and I had a discussion recently: I was suggesting a part that would serve as a variable/switchable aerobrake: Basically a solid body out of which would swing a group of "wings", each with the flat side facing forward to maximise drag. After kicking the idea around for a few minutes we decided that, *if* the drag model was updated to take proper account of angle of incidence, then really all that needs to be added is a very sturdy general purpose hinge, with a short but solid arm to attach more parts onto. You could then position as many hinges as you liked around your ship, and attach any, uh, "negatively aerodynamic" parts onto them that seemed appropriate to build the aerobrake... Or you could use the same part to built a crane arm, etc. (Main problem being how to control multiple hinges if you didn't want them all just to open and close together.) I see that the same "basic hinge" and "arm" ideas are cropping up in this thread... But no one else has mentioned aerobrakes yet! =}

R.I.P., Neil.

Hey r4m0n...? BEST! MOD! EVARRR!!!! [DOUBLE THUMBS-UP] One request: Is there any way to get a label showing up when you switch cams, telling you which cam is active? At present I\'m wasting valuable seconds hitting F7 repeatedly, thinking 'is that the one on the booster, or the on the main body, or...?' A suitable labelling scheme would be to show the stage number that the cam\'s part of, followed by the type of part it\'s attached to (maybe indicated by the same icons used in the staging system?), and then its orientation (either in simple terms such as forward/aft/left/right/up/down, or as polar coordinates with respect to the body of the craft.)

That sounds handy... Where can we find this script? What I\'m *really* looking for is a nice simple tool or technique for importing an existing (e.g. stock) part, tweaking it\'s dimensions, (e.g. doubling or tripling the length of a fuel tank), and saving it back with minimum fuss. I can then tweak the CFG file to match. The goal is to reduce component count in my ships without deviating too far from the visual style and other characteristics of the stock parts. (I.e. the same ship *could* be built with stock parts and behave the same, but using one remodelled part to replace three stock ones improves the performance of the physics engine.) Any suggestions? Is this a useful use-case for a demo video?

Fabulous release! Been having loads of fun with it. My night sky is festooned with a maelstrom of whirling ship debris! The ability to create new part/module types is very exciting. Can anyone come up with a giant space-net (possibly magnetic)? I need it for sweeping up all that oribital debris, towing it up toward escape velocity and then flinging it out into the void! (Or alternatively, just decelerating it so that it\'ll drop onto Kerbin\'s surface and get 'percussively deleted' from the system. ) Or maybe someone can invent an SDI-style zapper satellite, able to break up all those ship chunks into 'harmless' micro-meteorites (as long as you aim it *just right*...) Pre-reg for this game was money well spent! One question, though (or maybe two): 'The flight camera is no longer able to go upside down.' - Why is this considered a good thing? And 'upside down' with respect to what? I can understand why you don\'t want the camera to go below *ground*, but why shouldn\'t it be able to fly all around the ship once the ship is in space? I used to love making movies of my ships in flight, sweeping around them at all angles, not to mention being able to check my trajectory to see where the Mun or Kerbin is (N.B. I like to orient my ship so that the Kerbin or the Mun (whichever is nearer) is *down* when I\'m in orbit and I\'m point nose-forward along the trajectory. This means that half an orbit later I\'m upside down and pointing backwards, and so on. As I follow the ship on it its orbit, this means I\'m rotating to the camera either directly upward or downward to see where I\'ve come from or where I\'m going to... And now suddenly I can\'t do it!

Well.. I came here to learn about alternative SAS/ASAS options, and instead wandered into a Pony Minefield! ??? FWIW, I love the fact that fact that this game inspires quirkiness like pony-themed parts, even though they\'re not to my taste. I think the best solution is probably to provide the parts with a choice of 'skins' (i.e. texture files): One set with ponies, one set without. That way everyone\'s happy. (Well, except for The Grouch. But no probs, he prefers being miserable anyway. )

I'll second the appeal for a volume control (another XP user here). Just a setting in the startup screen (like the screen resolution) would help a lot: KSP launches are the loudest noises my computer ever makes, which can be unfortunate if I fire up the game at midnight having just watched a fairly quiet video...