Mako

I'm no lawyer, but I don't think they can just negate existing copyrights with a blanket, generic ToS or EULA. So any orginal code and assets would belong to the creator and whatever copyright it has at time publishing would stand. Take-Two can't use licensed or copyrighted material in a commercial product without obtaining the rights to do so. Fan works, like fanfic and fan art, are much more complicated. Basically, you're using someone else's copyrighted material, and if you do so without permission then the owners of the copyright could take action against you. Typically it would be a Cease and Desist order, but if the owner believes you've damaged their finances in some way they can attempt to recover those damages in court. Fan works will usually fall under a derivative work. The only exception to this is Fair Use, but that is limited in scope and doesn't seem to cover typical fan art or fanfic. Basically, any mod that is made that uses copyrighted material from souces other than Squad, Take-Two, and the mod author (like using copyrighted fonts) cannot just be taken and put into the game. The most they could do is a Cease and Desist. If the entire mod can be seen as fully derivative work written/made by one person and published on Squad/Take-Two owned servers then it's likely that Take-Two can do a lot more with it. Especially if you make it after this new EULA goes into effect. In the case of fan art and fanfic, well, if you're posting it here on the forums and not all on your own server, then just like everything else here Take-Two can edit it or delete it whenever and however they want. If you only post it off site they can probably just Cease and Desist you, or possibly try to use DMCA to issue a takedown. It cetainly seems that under this new EULA Take-Two could even just use fanfic that's been posted here without permission or accreditation. All of this being said, it is unlikely that Take-Two would do nefarious things unless they saw potential for more profit than problems. It may be hard for them to do anything nefarious, however, because Squad has shown a history of celebrating fan creations. This new EULA does change things though, and while it's likely to cover the upcoming missions built with the expansion pack, it really should be addressed by Take-Two before it goes into effect. Scaring away mod makers and the community at large is not in Take-Two's best interest, but maybe they just don't care. They spent money buying KSP, though, so one would think they care at least enough to keep us around as future customers. TL;DR - I don't think the worst that can happen will come from this, but it is bothering folks because companies aren't your friends and are always acting in their best interests first and foremost. It'd be nice, and probably a good idea, to see Squad and Take-Two be proactive about this and clarify some things in writing before the new EULA goes into effect.

The first screenshot in the above "How-To" seems pretty self-explanatory.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: Read the Weeklys for more details. Unfortunately, all the info we have is spread throughout dozens of different threads and sometimes requires reading through whole threads for the rare dev comment that answers a question. The only info we have regarding mods at this time is from the most recent Weekly. They're implementing a system to notify Mission players which mods were installed when the Mission was created. How well the Mission creator will be able to handle mods like RSS will remain to be seen, but it seems like Squad has built it with mods in mind.

I would argue that it is fortunate that the Chinese version is in Chinese, but I think we all know how you meant that. The only way to get the assets (textures, images, icons, etc.) in English would be to replace all the Chinese assets with English ones. For that you have two options: you can recreate all the assets from scratch in English and mod them into the game in place of the Chinese ones; or you can download the English version of KSP to access the English assets. I'm going to say that downloading the English version will be faster and much easier, even with very slow internet, and at that point you should move your save files over. Or you could just keep playing with the Chinese assets. I don't know how much they impact the understanding of things since you were already able to change the language files. Either way, good luck.

I agree. The Kickstarter page is a bit easier to understand, and I think the trailer there shows what the game is going for. The Kickstarter page and trailer are what I used to determine that this game is focusing on the RTS and management simulation side of running a space agency as opposed to KSP's focus on rocket/vessel design and piloting simulation. To me, the idea of this new game would be better compared to something like the Sid Meier's Civilization series than to KSP. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're looking for more KSP I don't think this would scratch that itch.

No offense, but it looks like it's as similar to KSP as No Man's Sky is similar to KSP. The only thing similar about them is they're both sort of about space travel, but they're very different types of games. Initiative: Red Dawn looks like a lite real-time strategy game mixed with a business management sim, and KSP is a vessel design and physics flight sim with practically no business management and zero RTS elements. Once upon a time it sounded like KSP Career Mode might be more like this game (as far as managing the business of running a space agency, at least), but KSP never really figured out what to do with its Career Mode. Initiative: Red Dawn looks like it might have some potential to be a fun multiplayer space race game, but it doesn't look like its doing too well. It didn't meet its Kickstarter Goal, but the devs have said they're still working on it with less bells and whistles. That was in November of last yeat and I haven't found any news from them since. At that time they also said they wanted to have a demo out for youtubers and streamers available by January, but that doesn't seem like it's happened. Maybe Initiative: Red Dawn will eventually be available, and it might possibly be good if you like management sims with RTS elements.

Okay. Here I was thinking we had to design a vessel that could handle Eve's atmosphere AND cargo that could handle the atmosphere and landing. I might give this a go. It's been a long time since I went to Eve.

Don't objects/vessels in atmospher auto-disappear below a certain altitude if you're not controlling them and leave physics range? I thought they did. If that's still the case, is it possible to drop something to the surface during the atmosphere dive? I guess you could land, or try to slow down and drop it close to the ground, but that doesn't sound like much of a dive anymore. If I'm wrong then that's pretty neat, because I remember when any object auto-deleted long before it could land unless you were controlling it or controlling a vessel within the physics range of it.

They have already said that the store will be back for folks who bought KSP directly from the website. Your question was asked and answered, maybe in this thread or maybe in a Weekly. Unfortunately info is scattered all over the place and is easy to miss. By the way, even if you bought the steam version now, you wouldn't lose progress. You could copy your saves between installs pretty easily.

I'm genuinely glad you've had such a positive experience. The reason I maintain my position of wait and see if problems are fixed is because not everyone has had such a positive experience and there's no guarantee that things will be fixed. Everyone hopes they will be fixed, but after a lot of work, a release, two patches, a lot more work, and then a re-release people are still feeling negatively about the console versions due to bugs. I think it's best if people have as much info as possible, so it's great to have your positive experience voiced as well. Then folks can make the decision that best suits them. And hopefully the upcoming patch makes a whole lot more folks feel positive about their purchase of KSP on consoles.

The assumption is it will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as it always has been (at least since I've been an owner and forum-goer -- around beginning of 2013). Maybe it's been mentioned explicitly somewhere, but I can't imagine they'd stop providing Mac and Linux versions all of a sudden. And it's always been simultaneous releases.

Analog control of vehicles, especially planes and rovers, is generally preferable, and analog control of vehicles with a mouse is generally pretty miserable. I can see why people would prefer a controller for some stuff. However, when it comes to things like vehicle building, especially complex vehicles, would want a keyboard and mouse every time. That being said, the number one reason I advocate waiting to get the console versions is the number of complaints I've seen. Through normal play, there have been too many people experiencing significant issues that should be fixable, so it makes sense to me to wait.

Trust me, if instead of a silhouette it was a fully rendered/textured Kerbal you would see that it's only the head and torso of a Kerbal with arms at its sides. I will absolutely agree that it's easy to see arms and legs the way the image was made, but it doesn't look like that's what the artist intended. First off, Kerbal arms aren't that thin. Second, if those are legs why are they two wildly different sizes and only occupy two of the three boosters in such a weird way? And last, Kerbals are not that squat. Squad has never depicted a Kerbal the way you are describing and I don't see why they would do so now and in such a poor manner. I'm positive it's just a bad composition and if the rocket shape was rotated clockwise a few more degrees or if the Kerbal was textured it would be more clear. But I 100% agree in its current state it does look like a derpy, squat, skinny-armed, misshapen-legged Kerbal attempting self-powered flight. If this is final art that makes it into the game or is used in adverts and/or on store pages it would be a shame. It's fine for a mock-up, but it needs work before I'd put it in/on a product. The lettering position/spacing being uneven bothers me too.

I don't think too many people get upset about spoilers to things like inside jokes. Based on the clue Squad gave, you either know what they're talking about -- you're in on the secret -- or you have no idea and just want to use a feature they've openly discussed as available to all console players for months and then surprisingly obscured behind some unrelated decades-old video game nostalgia that not everyone might be in on. The second I read Squad's post I knew what they meant, but as evidenced in that same thread not everyone did. I think the statue of limitations on twee nostalgic obfuscations has been exceeded and if someone needs to do a search for how to access the menu they probably don't care about spoiling the secret.

The rocket shape does appear to be unfortunately aligned with the Kerbal silhouette, but I think that what you're thinking are arms outstretched in a T-pose is actually the collar on the space suit. But maybe I'm telling you something you already knew and your humor flew right over my head; I've been know to miss humor before. That said, it probably wouldn't hurt and it might actually help if they rotated the rocket shape clockwise to maybe 30 degrees and gave the Kerbal his helmet so the collar stops looking like arms.

You can always copy the KSP folder from wherever Steam installs it and paste it to wherever you want and run the game from there. You can do that as much as you want. Want to make 5 different installs with various different mods you can do it. Just copy the KSP folder from Steam as much as you want and you'll never need internet to launch the game. Those copies won't auto-update, so they won't break mods when Squad releases an update. You don't need anything but the Steam version if you prefer Steam, you just need to do a copy&paste to never have that problem again.

I completely understood your point. My point wasn't that there's already a mod for parachutes, it was that however Squad decides to restrict parachute access a person could always make a mod to make parachute access different. If you think parachutes should be available at Level 0, guess what! There will probably be a mod for that. If you think they should be available at the same time as EVAs, guess what! There will probably be a mod for that. It doesn't really matter how Squad decides to do it, you can change it to be how you want with mods. Hooray mods!

I actually thought they would have tied it to a building upgrade instead of astronaut level similar to the ability to EVA. But I suppose it hardly matters what Squad choses when you can just mod it to behave how you prefer.

Okay, I understand your perception of the situation, but in this case KSP doesn't require an internet connection to play. Since KSP is DRM free, you can run the Steam version directly with or without starting Steam, so it will work whether you're online or offline. I suspect the expansion will be this way as well, but I guess we don't know for sure. In your case, since you prefer the convenience of Steam you should probably buy only that version. Unless you feel some strong desire to give Take-Two twice as much money.

Do you play both versions? If so, why? They are no different and you can have multiple installs with the steam version. I can't think of any reason you would buy the Making History expansion two times.

Just because it's common doesn't mean that it's the best way to do things. I'm of the opinion that it presents the game as unpolished. For an indie title from a smaller studio many folks will probably make an exception. I know I do. But very often a polished game isn't one that's going to ask it's players to stop playing the game to go figure out how to play the game. The game's community should not have to be the best place to go to learn how to interact with the game. Here's the thing: when you've released something broken and then over a year later you claim to have fixed it and it is now "Enhanced" you should take every effort to make sure easily catchable things like controls are fully tested, explained, and working. Testing controls has to be the easiest thing about testing KSP. In a game where testing everything could prove a challenge especially for a team with little to no experience with KSP, testing the controls should be easier as it's pretty straightforward to determine and compare the expected result to the actual result. If you call something "Enhanced" and don't deliver a product the customers perceive as enhanced, it will likely go over poorly for everyone involved. Controls, UI interaction, and the in-game communication of both could have been one of the easier ways to prove how enhanced the re-release is, but they dropped the ball. I'm hopeful that at least with the patch(es), they'll get the controls and UI working right, but I hold no hope for the in-game communication as its never been particularly good.

I recall Squad saying they started receiving assistance from an external QA team shortly after Take-Two purchased KSP. Additional resources from Take-Two, such as a dedicated QA team, were touted as a benefit of the IP sale. It was announced on March 31st, 2017 that Take-Two purchased KSP. I'd conservatively guess that Squad/Blitworks had access to this QA team for at least 6 months before the Enhanced Edition launched. It's not hard to imagine that this niche, build-your-own-vehicles-that-function-according-to-real-world-physics-and-go-anywhere-in-a-one-tenth-scale-solar-system game proved challenging to QA. Being a rather unique experience with a rather difficult learning curve would make finding and documenting bugs more difficult, but some things, like control issues caused by poor communication or poor UI design, are fundamental of all games and would not require a robust knowledge of KSP and orbital mechanics. I don't know how the Enhanced Edition launched with such poor in-game communication about controls like setting trim, or with UI that just doesn't work under certain circumstances. Bugs are one thing -- they can be tough to find/reproduce at times -- but controls, UI, and tutorials explaining both that run at first game launch and are repeatable on demand are fundamentals that should be unmissable in a complicated game. But then again, even on PC there's keyboard commands I never knew existed until I read about it on the forums; they aren't really mentioned outside of configuration files. Also, there's UI elements that have barely been discussed as well. Maybe some/all of this stuff made it's way into the KSPedia and I've just never looked. Either way, I guess it shouldn't be a big surprise that the console versions aren't much better in that regard. It seems they were rather overconfident in calling it the Enhanced Edition.

It definitely could use its own post with more/better info. I think everyone can agree on that. The Weeklys are just recaps though, and there isn't even a ton of PC related news in them -- it only seems that way compared to console news because console news is so lacking. If you take the PC news on its own, it's also lacking, but by comparison the PC news is practically Tolstoy's War and Peace. I would love for everyone to get more info, starting with the console folks, and I would love to say I think it might happen... If things are like they've always been, we'll get all the info were going to get when everything releases.

The NASA Asteroid Redirect Update was a minor version update around April 2014. It was not DLC. The Asteroid Day mod, which is what I think you're trying to refer to, was a small offical mod, consisting of 4 or 5 parts and a contract, released in June 2015 and eventually got folded into stock KSP. The Making History Expansion is going to be quite a bit bigger in terms of number of new parts and in terms of features than both of those combined. It's adding a whole new, completely separate mode to the game along with historically-inspired parts and mission. Again, if think it should be free then it's obviously not worth $15 or you. And that's perfectly fine. But to try to say that Making History is on the same scale as what Squad has released previously is not accurate.

I'm referring to all the art that's still being worked on, the personnel parachutes still being implemented, implementing how mission mods are communicated, etc. It's hard to get a sense of how much work is done and how much is left to do from these Weeklys. I'm sure they don't tell the whole story, of course, but I stand by my impression based on the limited information we're given. We've heard very little of any progress on the Unity engine update for example. Or localization progress. It's very hard to judge, and I'm not a person to just take things on faith. But like I said, I'd love to be wrong. All we know is development work is still going on, we have no idea how much QA has been performed, and I know that big publishers sometimes push stuff out before end of fiscal year when money has been invested without showing returns yet. I was just curious if anyone else was feeling similarly. I don't expect anyone to admit that's the case, and I'm not criticizing Squad's work or the decision itself. If I'm right it just is what it is and I'm sure everything will be fine in the end, and if I'm wrong then everything gets to be fine a bit sooner. So no real harm; I'm just expressing a minor concern.