Zamaszysty

Now this looks like a fun challenge to try out ! I have an idea that was not shown by anybody anywhere here so far, so keep Your fingers crossed that my idea is not just a mad mans lucid dream, as I have a suspicion I might be extremely wrong about everything

No ... as a matter of fact it would not be stable at all as You describe it, and is not possible under ANY condition whjat so ever. Just as You have different orbits with different orbital speed to remain stable, so a solid ring would require a different orbital speed depending on what part of such ring we would look. It would NEVER stay in one piece as the inner sections of such ring would have to rotate faster than the outside. You could have series of rings with each having different roration speed, but that is NOT solid anymore, and in a way that is also the reason why real rings are made of very tiny particles and fragments. Every single one of those has to move with its own speed and it can only do that when it is not "attached" to anything that would have a different orbital speed due to its location. I hope that explained why solid rings are impossible

NO no no no ... KSP is about exploration, efficiency and understanding of physics. If You want to play some political game go ahead, but this is an exploration focused game and will always be, but politics ... WHY? Go play this here: http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2/index.html Or make a mod that will be played by You and everybody who prefer running an agency instead of true exploration

I guess it's time to do some mapping

Science was just fine for me untill I realised that I could have THIS. Great feature set, exactly what i need

Speaking of different solar panel shapes: We could use some panels designed with landers in mind like here: http://www.kidela.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Mars-probe.jpg http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/181837main_phoenix-brief1-516.jpg (the Phoenix lander probe) or here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Mars_Polar_Lander.jpg http://thewaythetruthandthelife.net/index/2_background/2-1_cosmological/2-1-12_child-overview/mars_polar_lander.gif (Mars Polar Lander) There is so much more to be done in the subcject of different solar panels for various crafts that it could take a massive amount of work to implement them all ... but of course I do agree that curved solar panels are also something that could be done. The only problem with curved solar panels is that they are not that efficient at all as 99% of the surface is never angled correctly towards the sun and as a result such curved panel never gets used in 100%. Maybe some sort of unified module that is a solar panel "ring" integrated with a rircular batery into one "power module" would do the trick?

How about no? That is a very BAD idea IMO. Minecraft crafting was to create items, here the entire "crafting" in on the space ship level and not individual components. In KSP an engine is not an equivalent of minecraft item like a workbench or whatever, it's more like the basic material like wood etc. IF You would want to add more complexity to getting these parts there is a way and probably there is or will be a mod out there that adds separate factories for each kind of parts, but it's up to You to find or make such mod

I already suggested some time ago some sort of "data bank" module should be implemented. Except that, there is also some room for a sample container, so maybe if You had a ship that would wisit multiple moons (as transfering from one to another takes little fuel in most cases), You would be able to send back just the sample container without the need of bringing enough fuel to bring back the entire ship.

Sonar is a really BAD word for this ... SONIC-Radar (that is the origin of the word sonar) is not a thing that would work in a vacuum

^^ That's actualy even better idea than just a height map. I totalu agree with that way of presenting that data along with a surface speed (only in X and Z axis, ignoring the vertical speed) with direction indicator. So in other words You could have something exactly like navball (or maybe a navball alternative display mode?) with slope inclination heatmap a "dot" indicating a ship in the middle and a vector of movement indicating the direction You are moving in with surface speed instead of total speed (or alternatively the surface speed additionaly except the default total speed). If somebody would create a mode like that I would kill to get it

KAC is a must, or at least some equivalent.

Well, I guess that adding a single marker on the navball only for indication of "90 degrees from contact point" would not be to much for navball, only the general "height map" would require a separate UI part. I am wondering if that would be ok if we just "had it there" or rather have a height map requiring some sort of additional part that would be sth like a dopler radar or things like that.

That is a very good idea indeed! Alternatively there could be some sort of "height map" for the area You will be landing on maybe with a color code, so that not only You would be able to see what the slope is, but ALSO check if there is some flat area somewhere near in range of a single course correction.

I guess that's a bad place to go at the THIRD post instead of my first one, but ... oh well Hello everybody. I hope I can fit in to this community just as goos as I hope to. HI !

You already have this kind of progression system that has a form of "missions", but it's not made in a dumbed down way of quests that say simply "do a surface sample of the Mun". Instead of that You get much smoother experience as the science system requires You to go on and do more challenging things. You will not be able to do any advanced thing at all if You don't go to more exotic places, so once You run out of science to harvest from local environ ment, Your mission is "Go further, fly faster, observe more" and after a while You will again run out of "content" You could do with orbiters, so after orbiters You are forced to create landers, after landers You need rovers to move to another biome, after these, You again have to advance and send a manned mission out there to get samples etc. IMO this is a looooooot better than just being punch in the face with a fetch quest "bring us lunar soil". This is not something I would enjoy by any stretch of the immaginatio as it's restricting and limiting instead of encouraging more creativity and exploration. BUT, With what You just said here ... I think there is a lot of space for STORY mode that would do that. And I would agree that such missions would do pretty fine in the story mode as You would require to follow a story with these quests putting You on rails in terms of "what to do" and "where to go". In every other case having these missions would ruin the very best thing about KSP, and that is freedom.

Hi ! I'm not that much of an active user of these forums, but I did sink about 40 hours of gameplay already in KSP with at least 6 hours after the last update playing only career, i decided to post my feedback here. I noticed that collecting data is pretty much fun unless You create a craft with A LOT of different scientific equipment. In such situation You either can get an "action group" for collecting data with Your devices and another one to simply transmit data, but I think there is a much more simple way to do that. What we currently have in our left side of the scree is a vertical staging menu that has icons for all the modules on on the ship. What I thought of is just making almost the same looking bar, so that You can toggle staging controlls and toe original "green bar" would be replaced with a scientific bar with modules maybe in blue, so that You can controll all Your scientific modules from there. Alternative would be expanding the resources menu from it's current form to TWO tabs that would be Physical resources and Data. Again You would have just "bars" of collected data with maybe a single button to "transmit data". IMO this is something that HAS to be done just to make it simple and user friendly. IMO the first solution is better as You could have multiple groups of scientific equipment that would collect data in "stages", so that when You press space You get data from one set of sensors, press again and You get another set of resources etc. This way You could group up "science set for lower atmosphere" another "science set for orbit" and a "science set for interplanetary space", or maybe also for different atmosphere layers just to quickly switch between staging and science controlls to collect data as You launch Your aircraft, as You reach the orbit etc. The last thing is that for such situations when You need to constantly keep track of different staging controlls, rotation, thrust etc., You should have some sort of antena type that would be capable of continous transmission of current data as You go, maybe at a cost of high level of data loss in the process as well. The same function should be also used for spacecrafts that could be designed to crash into a planet for specific data (like an early game, low-tech alternative for lander), maybe adding a use for our old spacecrafts could go together with this, as such "real time data transmission" antenas would require an additional satellite to be on the orbit when not arround kerbal? This way our old orbiters that did their research and are just orbiting a planet, but are still operational and can transmit and receive data, could be any use for us? To just go witht he previous ideas. "Forwarding" data would be usefull, but at the same time adding some sort of "computing module" or "data bank" that could store series of data comming from sensors, would add multiple levels of depth to the game. At a cost of constant energy consumption and decent weight players could construct their spacecrafts in a new way. Instead of adding multiple "duplicates" of the exactly same research equipment to store different values for different experiment conditions, there could be a "data bank module" that could store up to X experiments (that is a matter of balancing or maybe different kinds of such module type?). Maybe that would allow to save up to 80% of the original data (that would be further degradated if transmitted of course), so that You don't get a "full profit" in case of retreiving an aircraft that returned home? Maybe more or less?. IMO that would be also a nice way to recover data in a way, that You launch a tiny spacecraft just made of a battery/panel pack, controll module and that data bank, back home instead of bringing back the entire lander. This is a serious issue for me that I can place a craft on an orbit, but after it has served its purpose I am unable to reassign it to a different task later. The scientifis equipment is not going to provide any new data, so my experiments would not provide to much science, or any science at all, but in the end ... these have their antenas that can just be used as a communication devices all the time. Real-time research streaming would add use to these old spacecrafts that are operationa and useless at the same time. And one last final suggestion: Could we have an option to "LOCK" antenas open? I wen I manualy extend an antena, transmiting data with it should not trigger closing it back, as (IMO) instead of "reverting it to closed state" it should be set to "revert to the stat at the beggining of transmit operation" so if I want to transmit, but my antenas are already open, they should stay that way, and the other way arround when closed at the point of "tramsmission request". To sum up, what I think that the team should do: - Add science UI - some sci midules panel to easy use, just like You manage stages OR resources - Add any way to easy trigger sets of experiments - Allow "live" transmission (it's players problem to manage his crafts power levels for such transmission, right? ) - Data storage parts for science - Add use for old spacecrafts with operational communication items - Fix antena bahavior And a small post scriptum: I am aware that everything should come at some cost when I suggest new modules here and new functionalities, but when it comes to UI ... it's just a matter of being more user friendly, so I hope that is the main thing You could consider out of my entire post here PS: Hi everyone!