GluttonyReaper

Thing is though, we only consider that an important space because that's where the altitude is in KSP1. In reality, it's actually a bit of an awkward position - on larger screens, it's generally not somewhere you're looking very often, especially given the most important time you need it is during landing when you're going down. It's not massively suitable for something you need to know in real time; I'm assuming this is the reason that shooter type games often put health/ammo at the bottom of the screen.

I can only speculate (I'm not a new player, after all) but I would say that for players coming into the game, the kerbals themselves are a pretty crucial part of the game - hence why even in KSP1 they take up a pretty substantial part of the screen. Aside from being a third of the title, they're argubably one of the biggest draws to the game for many people - they're the difference between KSP being a fun game about flying rockets and a dry space simulator. Consider a lander crashing on the Mun. Without the kerbals, it can be *interesting*... but at the end of the day it's just a pretty explosion, followed by disappointment as you realize you've failed. With kerbals though, there's a bit of humour to it - Bill and Bob might be terrified, and Jeb'll prolly be grinning like a maniac as they plough into the ground. Sure, it might not be a big deal to veteran players, but for new people it might be the difference between enjoying the game or ditching it. So yeah, point is I think they're important enough to be prominent on the screen, at least by default. Having options to hide it is another discussion entirely, which isn't exactly something that's shown particularly well by this low resolution screenshot of a probably-not-final UI that everyone's formed such strong opinions on

There absolutely should be - all Community Tech Tree does is add extra nodes beyond the stock tech tree; it's just a framework for other mods to fill out, and as such has many empty nodes with no other mods installed. Kerbalism and Stockalike Station Parts will out some of them (mostly the habitation nodes) but all the advanced propulsion and rocketry nodes are untouched. See the Community Tech Tree page for a list of supported mods, or if you want to get rid of the empty nodes, use Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes. I'm assuming you've used CKAN to install Kerbalism? Community Tech Tree isn't at all necessary to run Kerbalism (although Community Resource Pack is, an entirely separate mod), it runs just fine on the stock tech tree is that's the issue. Yup, Stock Station Expansion works just fine with Kerbalism (I use it myself!) and the SIMPLEX page lists it as compatible, so you should be good to go! As others have said, the SIMPLEX Kerbalism config is entirely separate from the SIMPLEX Tech Tree, so if you don't want that there shouldn't be any issues using the default Kerbalism config

I wouldn't mind a perpendicular intersecting runway too - getting on target for polar landings is hard enough without having to make big sweeping 90 degree turns

My headcanon is that probe cores are actually sentient AI that make decisions on what maneuvers to do all on their own, so signal delay isn't an issue. But, of course, they are still humble machines - despite their vast intellect, they get nervous when they can't phone home for support, even if they don't actually use it, so can only do a few basic things confidently

Just echoing what others have said earlier, but complexity for complexity's sake is really not helpful, especially in a game that's as already as difficult as KSP. It feels obvious when you've been playing a while, but I've seen quite a few new players trying to, for example, attach a liquid fuel engine to a command pod without any fuel tanks at all, because coming from a gaming background, it's certainly not a given necessity, and if you don't have a background knowledge of spaceflight, it might not be something that immediately occurs to you. This is actually the reason the tech tree starts with a solid fuel engine - because you can just stick that on, and it'll work, which might be the difference between the game catching someone's attention and just shutting it down, never to be played again. That said, I wouldn't mind different fuel types, but it's important that they be interesting and distinct. In my mind, this is the problem with hydrazine and methalox engines. As far as I can tell, methane is just a slightly worse kerosene/RP-1, with the only really advantage being that it could synthesized off-world easier. Would that even make much of a difference, especially given that by the time a player would be thinking about ISRU, they probably mostly switched over to the more 'advanced' methane engines anyway? In that case, it's not even a real choice - it's not an interesting decision, it's just an outright replacement for kerosene after a point that could easily be just represented by new engines. Hydrazine could be interesting... but the real world benefits of it are that it solves real world problems - namely, it's hypergolic, so it's easier to build multiple-ignition engines using it. This isn't an issue in KSP, given all engines have infinite ignitions anyway, and changing that would add more unnecessary complexity. Hydrazine also raises another problem - realistic accuracy. Hydrazine doesn't use liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, which could raise more questions than it answers - really, the only thing it's accurately depicting is that hydrazine is a fuel used for small engines. Again, there's a reason KSP uses the generic Liquid Fuel rather than anything specific. By abstracting, you remove the problem of accuracy entirely - any resemblance to real life fuel is entirely coincidental, which is why for the 1.0 release they were able to drop the ISP of every engine in the game by ~50, and allow it to be synthesized from 'Ore' without any major complaints about it being inaccurate. Anyway, this all sounds really down on alternate fuels, but I would say Liquid Hydrogen is a perfect example of a good one! Having played with Cryo Engines for a bit, it's definitely a fun option. It's more expensive and much less dense than Liquid Fuel, but has a much higher ISP, which makes it plenty distinct enough. But it's also interesting - it has the added issue of boiloff, which makes it impractical for anything beyond the the inner Kerbin system, but you can mitigate it later in the game using more advanced tech to store it indefinitely for long periods of time using electric charge, which even ties into another system. It just feels like a very different fuel, used by a very different class of engine. That's pretty much the gold standard for a fuel type Oh, and just because there's a little bit of talk about resource gathering going on, here's what the original plan for resources was in KSP1 several years ago: https://i.imgur.com/lGlWdyn.png

Ah man, glad to see this back! Gonna give it a spin tonight

So the time has come again when I feel over-modding KSP - at the moment, I've get the Nertea suite of mods and Kerbalism going, and a few small bits. For once, I'm thinking of trying to spice Career mode up a bit - I'm not a fan of the stock contracts at all. I've picked up Strategia already, any suggestions as to what would work well with that? I'm on 1.9.1. Thanks in advance

Ah nice, thanks, I'll check it out! That's pretty interesting, I'll have to have a think about that Good stuff, I'll check this out too The plan is to write a few short character-driven stories - I'm assuming it's pretty hard to get lost in world building when you've only got 2000 words to work with

Hey all, I'm looking for a bit of advice on a story I'm thinking of writing - it's not KSP based at all, but people here seem to know what's what In particular, I'm struggling with names and terminology for a made-up race. I've got a lot of the world built up in my head (and a notebook!) but it's somewhat difficult to write without actually naming something once in a while. Without going into too much detail, the story revolves around Borrower-esque race that effectively co-exists with modern humanity, although language barriers and other practical issues prevent any real communication between the two, with humanity mostly ignoring them outside of scientific curiosity. The issue is... well, what do they call themselves? I have a term that humans would use to refer to them, but I can't for the life of me come up with anything they'd label themselves and things around them as without it sounding kinda silly. I'm assuming there's something of an art to it, but it's not something I have any real experience with. A more conceptual thing I'm grappling with is how much detail I can get away with without it coming across as ridiculous - I'm fully aware that centimeter tall human-like beings couldn't exist in reality, but I'm not sure whether it's something I should even address at all or just ignore it? I have a very hand-wavy loose explanation involving convergent evolution, but I doubt that would hold up to scrutiny, and might actually make it less believable if I were to bring it up. This ties into my first issue as well, I suppose - would it be more believable to, for example, describe such a being as living in [non-human word for hollowed-out stone] or just to leave it as a "house". Thanks, any input is appreciated

Oooo, I actually remember this one! https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/57742-023-alternis-kerbol-release-thread-v01-jan-3-development-halted/ All the way back in 0.23 (or 0.23.5 perhaps?) this was the very first mod I installed - without Kopernicus, mods that changed the planets were fairly rare back then, so it was pretty special, especially considering it was made by an ex-developer! There's a more recent version here: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/120246-173-alternis-kerbol-rekerjiggered-v250-august-8th-2019/ I'm pretty sure the second mod I installed was PlanetFactory, which surprisingly mostly worked on top of Alternis Kerbol.

A properly set-up career mode that's balanced enough to gently guide players through the early game, but to still progressively get more challenging.

I hate to say it... but this unfortunately doesn't look like it's going in the direction I was hoping for. Perhaps it's a bit biased (this is the future tech episode after all) but I'm getting much more of a "cool sci-fi" vibe off that video, rather than a "realistic science game-ified" vibe. My concern, I guess, is that the whole metallic hydrogen issue is just the tip of the iceberg - there's a lot of talk in the video about what things might be like in the future, or what things could look like, as opposed to current KSP tone of what things do or at worst should look like. I'm bit saying that that's not a valid design decision, but personally it's not really what I'm looking for in the game. My biggest worry at the moment is how essential all of this is going to be on a gameplay level. It's an assumption on my part, but it sounds an awful lot like Met. H in particular will be an assumed part of even just moving around the stock system, and everything balanced as such. Only time will tell I suppose.

Which seems like a great idea until that gene mutates and ceases to work, disabling the self-destruct, and it might not be long before that leads to a strain with a higher survival rate than the original

#bringbackthelakes

I could be entirely wrong, but I believe it was to do with it being more universal - Isp only has the units of seconds, which has always been accepted as the standard unit of time for everyone. Velocity however would often be quoted in feet/second by one certain country, and in metres/second by everyone else. Not the best reason, but it is what it is. I totally agree though, velocity is much more convinient measure - it actually gives you a little more info

I'd argue it's more fundamental than this - the biggest problem with career mode in my mind is that it doesn't really function as a cohesive whole, instead just working as a set of vaguely related modules, some of which aren't even balanced in themselves. It more kind of resembles a lot of what somewhat thought a career mode should look like, without doing the legwork of actually making it work - I spent a lot of time trying to tinker with the difficulty settings in the past to try and get it to a point I was happy with, but honestly I never really found a happy medium, nor do I think I should have to do so. The preset difficulties should set things at a reasonable level, but fail pretty horrendously to my mind, just swinging between being mindlessly grindy and trivially easy at various stages in the game, with only a few specific parts really working as intended. I could go on forever about the various issues with career, but with regards to contracts.... bleh. Without regurgitating what other people above have had said too much, I would add that even the most mundane of contracts should be *interesting* at least - KSP might be a simulator in some areas, but career is the one place where game logic should really prevail. A couple of changes off the top of my head that could help: Part testing contracts should have have conditions that are sane (Heat shields being used for reentry, launch engines being used to launch, etc.) and have a chance of failing or performing strangely, such as an engine exploding or producing excess thrust and overheating. This would also make it less useful to hoard part testing contracts to gain access to parts you're not supposed to have yet Tourist missions could do with being flipped on their head a little - in my mind, it'd make more sense for the player to specify a number of empty seats and a destination, rather than the current system of just cycling through contracts and hoping to find some kerbals all wanting to go to the same place. The satellite launch and science gathering missions... well, I think it'd help if they didn't feel so disjointed and purposeless. Like, it'd be nice if these kind of contracts were actually building up to something, like giving you some genuinely interesting science-y info about a body, or a slow progression towards a useful satellite system (also, why do I get to keep the satellite after the contract has finished? Do these people not want their satellite?) ...But honestly, such changes are largely irrelevant, unless the underlying issues with career mode are fixed.

I can't *quite* remember how long ago it was (definitely post-1.0), but they did some pretty serious work a while back changing up the orbit code to try and reduce those kind of problems somewhat. That combined with some other tweaks they've made (e.g. automatically lowering timewarp across SOI changes) has made it all pretty solid in my experience, although I admit I had no idea you could instantly jump to high warp levels without going through the lower stages first.

Ah my bad, I just booted up 1.8 for the first time and.... yeah. Not so great as a launch engine anymore. I was more thinking about it's previous use as the de-facto 1.25m lifter, considering it used to totally outclass the LV-T engines in literally every way

It's been lost to time unfortunately, but I used to have a craft that was designed for a Tylo landing and return... and both the lander and the launcher were entirely powered by Sparks. I think there was a nuke in there for the transfer stage, but the stats on that thing were insane. Except for an atmospheric launch, no?

My understanding of the physics behind it is admittedly quite limited, but I'm not entirely convinced that having the stars follow planet-like Keplerian orbits is actually realistic. I was under the impression that it's an inherently more complex scenario that can only be even approximated through N-body physics, given that the combined mass of stars in a galaxy is not negligible compared to the central "body" they orbit, unlike planets orbiting a star, especially given that it's not a necessity for every galaxy to have a supermassive black hole at all. Point being, it might actually be less realistic to have stars following such orbits than just having them static, which would pretty much be identical from a gameplay point of view.

I was actually thinking of writing a mod that allowed kerbals to form 'bonds' with other kerbals if they spent enough time with them, then providing some kind of bonus when using them together. Alas, it was never to be...

It's not something I use super regularly in my life, but I really do struggle to keep what East and West are in my brain for whatever reason. I always have to check which is "left" and "right", no matter how much I'm using them at any given time, yet North and South being "up" and "down" seems to stick quite happily. Fun thing - I've been doing some stuff with solar astronomy recently, and one of the conventions that is often used for observations is to project the Earth's compass points onto the Sun. This has the really unfortunate effect of actually flipping East and West when using that system, which really doesn't help the confusion...

Can confirm, this combined with having 'floaters' means that I prolly haven't seen clearly for a long, long time The only thing I'm vaguely opposed to is motion blur, if only because it can make me feel a bit queazy sometimes.

I see... it's clearly a moderator conspiracy to monopolize the like economy (and presumably take over the world)