FleetAdmiralJ

I hope not. I see your concern about playing the game getting in the way of information sharing, but I think the interactivity and ability to answer questions on the fly is very useful. Perhaps you can pre-record your game-playing video so it plays in the background while you are able to talk and answer questions live on stream so we still get to see your booms but you are better able to concentrate on answering our questions - - - Updated - - - Yeah, but at least if they drop "secret feature x" rather than "planned feature x" they at least don't have 200 backseat developers telling them how squad could totally implement it if they were just as good as writing code as THEY were. Also, yes, the purpose is to tease. It's marketing. Increasing hype is part of the point. The key is making sure you don't make the hype bigger than the feature you're revealing.

I'm pretty sure I built a nice rocket, press space, and found my parachute flailing in the wind, crashing me immediately

True, which is how I normally do the explore contracts myself. But I think on my last career, I made the mistake of swinging past Laythe on the way in, and well, that was that for it's explore contract

That could very well be why they're doing it now. Since people are probably going to have to scrap everything anyway, then just as well throw this change in there as well.

Yeah, I'm not sure this is necessarily realism vs. not. The practical in-game effect is probably borderline. (engine efficiency will stay the same. HOW it achieves that efficiency will be different). I think it was just a matter of some people just wanting it to calculate "properly"

That is definitely targeted toward me isn't it? I guess mine is about career mode: Try not to enter a planet or moon's SOI before you get the "Explore" contract for that body, or else you will likely never get it. This may be especially tricky for the moons of Jool, as you often need to complete the explore Jool contract before getting the contract for Laythe, Vall, or Tylo (one might be able to get them by completing the explore Pol or Bop contracts. I haven't really gotten exactly what triggers what yet). But as a consequence, that means your first mission to Jool will likely mean having to stop without using Laythe or Tylo to assist - at least if you want their "explore" contract.

I was just about to come here to say that. The name should be: "Kerbal Space Program"

I dunno about you but I clearly saw the smoke signals

I see the concern. I suppose it depends how intensive the calculations are. If they're not intensive at all, I'm not sure whether it's a big deal. (though I suppose I can see people being annoyed with it changing as they're building the ship). I suppose if there is a button for it, perhaps it should trigger on save and launch button clicks too. I'm guessing their concern is if you leave it as just a button, the players who need it most (new players) may not even notice it.

I actually don't often use that part specifically because I usually put a chute or docking port there. that dosn't mean I don't have an abort sequence, but it's just not the tower

True, though all of those are pretty scheduled and standardized while teaser posts are not. And teaser tweets are probably likely made 1) when they decide they're ready to reveal, and 2) to build hype for the devNotes later

I should also add (as someone who sort-of, kind-of works in marketing (I don't do the actual marking but I work in a marketing department) - some of this is also probably to entice people to follow particular social media accounts and/or interact in other places. If everything is posted here, then there isn't necessarily a reason to follow on twitter. But if teases are posted on twitter, but not here (immediately anyway), then that gives a reason to follow on twitter. Yeah, I know, that may not be 100% the best for people who mostly stick on the forums who want the same info at the same time, but there may be marketing reasons to spread it around like that.

I'm actually not sure how well it would work here. I mean, of course they can post a one sentence post with a tease. But places like twitter, facebook, reddit, etc. I think are better suited to one sentence teases like that because they are, largely, designed exactly for that type of content. (OK, maybe not reddit, but I still think short teases work better there than here). I think the better solution would be just showing the twitter feed on the page rather than making new threads just to tease something.

Meh, I see twitter (and reddit) often for posting teases, devNotes for posting announcements. I'll eat a hat if there is nothing in the devNotes about the item he tweeted about. So you have to wait a few more hours to get a (probably) more expansive explanation here. It's not like they're just flat out not announcing it on the forum. Having said that, a twitter thing like what Mojang has (which someone suggested earlier in the thread I believe) would be a nice added touch. Also, I don't think it has to do with wanting or not wanting to post here (again, they're gonna likely say more in the devNotes later anyway). I think it has more to do with trying to engage different communities of Kerbal users in different ways. And to tease us (which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing).

One of the reasons I use RealChutes (almost more than the more gentle opening of chutes) is to get that stack chute. I don't know how many designs I've had to almost scrap because I wanted to put a chute and a docking port on the same node

These would all be nice, although I might disagree on point #3. There are times where one almost has to test chutes going up with some of the contracts you get. (it's also one reason I generally avoid parachute testing contracts )

1) I guess whether (and even how) the tech tree needs to be fixed is up to interpretation. I mean, in reality, most of the tech tree would already be "discovered" before the Kerbals even launched into space if one is worried strictly about realism. It's not like we didn't know what batteries or ladders or wings were before the Mercury program. But then having half the tech tree unlocked from the start kind of defeats the purpose of having one in the first place. And of course, this doesn't mention the fact that I'm sure many people have different ideas of how the tech tree could be changed. Now, one area I *MIGHT* agree with you on is making it easier to customize the tech three, or perhaps give different tech tree options at the start of the game. Although if one is talking about doing things mods haven't done, one could argue this has already been done with TechManager and the CTT 2) So we're going from mods to "stable" mods (however one defines that). So that begs the question, are/were there any mods on your previous list (KCT, asteroid mods, etc) that might not be exactly considered to be stable (but generally work)? 3) I'm not fully up on the old resources plan (I started playing right after all of that bru-ha-ha, apparently) though I did find this diagram: http://i.imgur.com/08hdJyj.png Which seems more complex than my picture of Kethane or Karbonite admittedly. It also looks very complex, which I'm sure many players would like. My brain was starting to melt looking at all the arrows, though. Though I suppose that doesn't say how it would have played implemented in the game. Of course, they shelved it because they felt that how it was turning out wasn't fun to play as well.

I suppose my answer to the grindyness of career is either: don't do career or change difficulty to make it less grindy. Sure, there are some issues with career, but I think part of the point of career is that you have to work to get ahead. So unless they do some sort of story mode where essentially you are given a mission, you do it, then you are given the next mission, and it's told like a story rather than ad hoc contracts, I'm not sure there is a way to NOT have at least some amount of grindyness to career mode.

I would say they wouldn't, which is why I wouldn't have a problem if that information was left out of the game. I wouldn't necessarily have an issue if it were there personally, but I don't have a problem with it NOT being there either. These are mods that i'm not as familiar with, but I think for most of them my point would still stand: they're about adding features or functionality, not about how you run your space program, per se.

OK, I'll bite 1) Fix career mode - how? Other than rebalancing (which they say they are doing). Also, which I haven't checked, there is probably decent chance there are mods for this, I would guess? 2) GP2 - there are already multiple mods that add new planets, no? 3) Resources - I probably don't have to say this has been modded already in probably just about any conceivable way it could be implemented. 4) The rest appear to be more improvements to how the game runs than actual features of the game (such as docking, which was your example) The point of this being, there is very little they could implement that hasn't already been modded to some extent. I mean, heck, even multiplayer has been modded (though I wouldn't call it very stable). In a way, you're punishing squad for having such a good modding community because they come out with features faster than squad can put them into the game themselves.

OK, what new feature would you like that isn't modded? Or to put it another way, is there anything squad could possibly add to the game which a mod hasn't already done? I actually haven't really used either so I can't speak to that point, but I also put "realism" in quotes for a reason. I'm not all too sure how realistic TAC is either to be told (which I AM currently playing with). But the point is that: unless you are essentially using MechJeb to fly your ship for you, you aren't playing Kerbal like NASA. You may be further down that continuum than other people, but people play the game with varying degrees of precision and recklessness. While the people who play on the precision side can fix their needs by adding mods, if you add too much of that functionality to the base game, you perhaps cut off people who want to play the other way.

So here's my thing with that: where is the harm? If Engineers can show you remaining dV left in flight, how does that impact your ability to play "smart like NASA"? At worst, you just continue to use KER and that's that. On the flip side, if one likes to play recklessly, but the game essentially gives you dV info whether you want it or not, they're shoehorning you into a way to play, at least unless they give an option to turn it off. Would I be angry if they gave us KER default in game? Not really. I understand why they might not want to, however. And one more thing about this: this is on top of the fact that even having dV information doesn't mean much unless you actually have a number or target to compare it to. That's where having an Engineer giving you that data in space is actually useful: you can compare the dV required for a burn vs. how much you have left. However, even if they gave us a KER display in the VAB, it's rather meaningless unless they also tell us how much dV we need to get places. Are they going to give us a dV map in game too? Well, given that the stock game mode is essentially "Reckless Kerbal Space Program" mods aren't really needed to accomplish that. There is DangIt, I suppose, which one could argue is in the pro-reckless camp as one could argue it simulates Kerbals launching with shoddy equipment. But generally the game has more realism mods vs. "recklessness" mods mainly because the game, at this point, is premised on them essentially running a reckless, ill-informed space program. But speaking of realism mods, KER and KAC notwithstanding, I would argue many have little to do with playing "NASA style" vs. playing reckless, and here is why: Let's take five of the biggest "realism" mods: FAR, TAC Life Support, Deadly Re-entry, RemoteTech, and Kethane/Karbonite Two of those: FAR and Deadly Re-entry, are what I would call environmental mods. They change the environment kerbals fly in but otherwise don't impact HOW one runs your space program (other than making it easier to die if you run it recklessly, perhaps) The other three - TAC, RemoteTech, and the general resource mods - add functionality and realism, but I would argue are agnostic on affecting the way one plays. You can play just as recklessly with TAC installed as without (though you obviously add more ways to kill your kerbals by doing so).

Have people completely forgotten that these are Kerbals and not NASA? I thought part of the point of the game - and part of what made it fun - is that they are recklessly going to space, whether they are prepared to go or not. I suppose that is up to each person's interpretation of how Kerbals do things. But then the disagreement is about a matter of opinion (Kerbals are smart and do things like NASA vs. being reckless space explorers) in which case there is no particular "wrong" way for Squad to implement the game. The people who are on the side that Squad chooses NOT to follow, I suppose, would be upset that their side of the argument wasn't chosen.

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