The_Rocketeer

Honestly, I'm impressed. I haven't left Kerbin atmosphere in years. Too much to do! If I had to hit Jool in an hour I'd probably spend at least 30-45 minutes in the VAB tinkering, 5-10 ascending to LKO, and the rest at high warp.

Er, I mentioned that. 6th post.

First, welcome to KSP and PC videogaming. Great choice for a first game btw, but you should definitely believe the stories you hear about the learning wall. Taking a craft with no reaction wheels and no reaction-wheel-capable command module, what you said would probably be right, you'd depend on thrust vectoring to control attitude (meaning the direction you're pointing in). This is a very inefficient way to steer though unless you are conducting a burn anyway. That's why the game also has reaction wheels (and RCS thrusters). If your craft has reaction wheels or a command module module that includes reaction wheels, this will allow you to control orientation without thrust, using only Electric Charge (you can also use RCS thrusters instead and they'll need monopropellant as fuel, but they're heavier and less efficient). If you run out of EC, it will stop working, so use batteries/solar panels/other power sources to make sure you don't. If you already have reaction wheels on your ship, I guess there's a chance you haven't figured out how to steer with them, although I think that's pretty unlikely. Assuming you've got EC and reaction wheels on the ship, if you end up in a spin, shut off the thrust and turn on SAS. This will stop the rotation as the SAS controls and holds orientation for you. Also, you can control a spin yourself. Look at the navball and see which way it's tumbling. Assume that the centre of the navball is always directly ahead of your ship, like a helicopter's artificial horizon. Steer towards the side that is emerging, and away from the side that is receding. When the navball stops tumbling, you have stopped tumbling too. Possibly because they're not buttons but sliders. I have to agree with @The Aziz though, all you really want for this game as a start is a keyboard, a mouse and maybe a joystick. Speaking from firsthand exerience, a gamepad is going to be pretty limiting unless you go for some sort of hybrid arrangement with the keys too, which is inevitably very custom.

Not to be confrontational, but bigger wings aren't necessary at those levels. If you want to share a .craft file, I'll see what I can do to demonstrate/improve (keys/mouse controls only).

In fairness I come with a certain amount of flight-sim gaming experience and I started playing KSP before airbrakes existed at all. That being said, from my perspective, if you need airbrakes to land a plane, it's not a very good plane. Stall speed is a matter of design, and approaching the runway too fast ,if the plane is designed to be capable of flying slower, is pilot error.

Regarding pilot skills, practice, practice, practice. Regarding issues simply getting a plane of the ground, I would question the design. Take off mass, thrust, rolling angle of attack, undercarriage placement, excessive drag, etc etc. A few extradesign principles and you might find all those problems go away. Regarding stopping, KSP wheel brakes are quite effective, but only if a) there are a suitable number of wheels and b) they're perpendicular to the ground. Edit : It's also worth noting that the runway being longer would create much larger or steeper ramps at the ends due to its absolute flatness compared with the curvature of Kerbin's surface. Potentially you could extend inland, but I wouldn't want to take it any futher towards the ocean for fear of creating a near-vertical drop onto the beach/into the water. It's also been discussed before that the further you go along that flat plane away from the centre, the more gravity will start to pull you back towards the centre. This could lead to planes starting to rapidly roll along the runway towards the middle when they're supposed to be at rest.

@Claw's circumnavigations. @Azimech and @klond's contraptions. @GoSlash27's ion collier trophy challenge. Many more.

I couldn't agree more, I have been around long enough to remember the disappointment when updates started to focus on improving models and textures instead of adding this much-needed content. At the time, I found myself in the minority... vOv

Agree. Also youtube below: But to tackle the point, part of the reason KSP was so successful was because it focused on gameplay and not graphics. Many of the most fun games are pretty graphically simplistic, just well-executed. It's much more important that they're supporting an immersive engaging game design, and of course it always helps that that design is also well executed and not infested with showstopping bugs - World of Warcraft and Minecraft are outstanding examples. I don't see any reason to doubt Unity is adequate to the task. On a personal note, I genuinely don't care if KSP2's effects are 2nd rate or 10-years-old as long as the game is a genuine iterative improvement on the original in various ways.

I suspect the difference is related to drag occlusion, I seriously doubt there's a more general airflow simulation. This has not been my experience when testing push-pull configs, I've spent hours trimming and re-trimming the tail prop to keep up with the nose.

KSP 1.whatever would still exist for those players. KSP 2 would be a sequel.

@UomoCapra YEEEEEEES! @SudAntares Like distant biomes on other planets, local biomes are reachable by rocket.

The Four Companions

Wow, this is a blast from the past! Amazing job! What version of KSP is this in?

I mean, you're right... but that's why the bug tracker was set up like 3 or 4 years ago. The fact that it has taken this long to get to a point where they are making noises about actually using it themselves is simply a massively unappreciative and incompetent slap in the face to the people who have actually been doing their work for them by using it. Nobody ever expected Squad to trawl through the forum for bug-related issues, but bug-hunting and especially bug-squashing are kinda basic requirements of being software developers. Even with a helluva lot of user help - 1300 unique bugs! - they just really haven't bothered.