merendel

Dont forget the high speed docking manuvers, those are always crowd pleasers as well as the high velocity landings.

Agreed. Most times a colision occurs between 2 craft its at a couple hundred meters or less. Normaly an overly enthusiastic rendezvous is the cause but sometimes 2 craft that started in the same orbit can meet agian after one transitions into a more ecentric one. Still thats slow enough that most times the ships wont bypass eachother between physics steps. While you can intentionaly generate edge cases such as the 180 degree orbits in the OP you also have to figure that that situation has the unpioleted ship crossing the physics window in 2-3 seconds. Not worth the extra performance hit to cover those rare edge cases.

You know i've never understood the poodle hate alot of people have. It may as well be a cluster of 4 909's in a 2.5m frame. It has the same weight and vacume isp as 4 909's and slightly more thrust and better vectoring. its a prety decent upper stage motor if your working with 2.5m parts. i use it whenever i'd use several 909's and dont need the isp of the LVN (or its long ass length) cuts down on the part count and makes the craft squater. My personal list of never used parts are the micronode and the stack seperators. that little weird block just does not seem to serve a use that I couldnt just as well use a cubic strut for and its heavy. The seperators I've just never found a use for that a decoupler couldnt do just as well. If I want to break a craft into 2 parts most of the time one piece is destined to crash back into something so I dont care if the decoupler is attached to it. if both parts are staying in orbit for continued use then thats an ideal place for a docking port to be leaving the seperators redundant.

You could also send 2 craft, one your lander/assent vheicle to get the kerbal off planet and the second one a moderately sized rover. land the return craft in a convenient place, and try to land the rover somewhat nearby. You could even put wings on the rover to alow for a bit more down range control over where you land. Send your kerbal down in the rover (with engineer skill) in case you need to repair wheels after landing so he does not have to walk to it. Drive around collect science and then drive to his return vheicle.

Personaly I'd recommend a bit sooner than that. While a 32 bit program can technically handle up to 4gig for various reasons it will crap out a bit before that. I find that if the ram usage of ksp ever reaches 3.7 it will crash, do not pass go, do not collect any science. As scene changes tend to give a brief spike in ram usage leting it get to 3.5 frequently results in a crash the next time something happens. My rule is 3.3 is the cutoff for time to restart. Gives me a couple of scene jumps of leeway in case I miss it reaching that threshold to avoid crashing at an inopportune moment. Still I agree, the only good solution is to either restart often or as the usage gets high. I've tried various ram cleaners to try and free up the unused ram that KSP thinks it needs but is really just leaked bits and bytes but they tend to only be a marginal stopgap and often result in instability. Also in the time they take to run and for KSP to settle after it reaquires whatever resorces it needed I could have just restarted anyway.

You'll get some, broken bits of planets that were able to form them at some point and then were destroyed/ejected into space. However I still stand by it being relitively rare. The conditions to form complex hydrocarbons just do not exist free floating on a chunk of rock a few KM or less in diameter. When they are present its cause they were formed elsewhere but a 2km rock bolder is not going to magicly start forming them no mater how many eons it drifts alone in space. Water in the form of ice is far more likely to be present on any given chunk of space debris and is a convenient sorce for oxidizer should you find something better to burn than the hydrogen.

I highly doubt asteroids would have any significant quantities of hydrocarbons on them. Those tend to be produced by biological decay which presumably is rather rare the vacuum of space. You'd be far more likely to find ice that you'd then need to electrolyze into H2 and O2. And yes that takes alot of power to split significant amounts but you dont need to do it all at once. You can split water with solar based electricity as long as you don't mind taking alot longer than if you had a nuclear reactor on board.

I generaly manualy add/remove from gamedata with multiple folders. I keep a "Clean" instance for archive of each version of KSP that I generally dont play on, it has some old saves in there from when I copy it out of the steam folder (I use steam when I play a vanilla game). Next to that archive copy I have at least 1 instance of a moded game that will usualy be my main play instance. I'll do small additions/removals from that one if it wont screw up my save too much. If I want to do a major reconfig of the modset such as adding RSS/realsim overhaul or extra planets vs a game with a stock system but lots of parts I spawn off another instance. Most releases have ended up with 2 moded instances on top of the archive copy and the vanilla copy that stays with steam (well mostly vanilla I put in KER and alarm clock, can't play without those anymore).

No way that could be pulled off. Orbital mechanics dont work like a squadron of jets flying in formation. A constellation of sats drawing anything other than a strait(well curved) line along their shared orbital path would very rapidly drift out of formation. You'd need to expend alot of dV to hold them in a formation that would be recognizable from the surface. You could technicly get them to look like jeb for a briefe period of time, say one pass over a specific geographic location. However by the next orbit "Jeb" would come out looking like a tattoo on saggy skin. It would be like those guys that got a tattoo of a prety lady on their bulging biceps and then lost alot of mussle mass, the tat looks like .... afterwards. A few orbits later and there would be anything even that recognizable. Basicly way to expensive to ever be worth it.

I've used them for small probes plenty of times just cause I dont like the oscarB. That said I dont mind too much if they are just changeing it to a xenon tank. Since the assets will still be there it will take me all of a minute to copy it right back and revert it to its LFO glory.

The same can be said for jigglypuff and yet he/she/it has been in what... all of the SSB's? Being able to walk in a strait line or even able to attack through normal means is not strictly a requirement for a SSB fighter I could see Jeb headbuting with his helmet and pulling out random rocket parts to smack his opponants with from both melee and range. It would be quite comical to see a fighting style designed for a kerbal.

Discounting bugs that force a revert I'd say about 1 out of 20 missions results in some level of failure. Most of those failures are along the lines of runing out of fuel (or too low to attempt a landing/return) or landing a touch too hard and breaking off something important to the mission. Its fairly rare for me to get into a situation where the failure kills the pilot however and normaly a rescue mission is sucessful. I dont count unplaned dissasembly right after launch due to editor glitches, my favorate example is using symmetry and finding out the editor copied everything exactly except for the struts on a single copy. having one of the external tanks/boosters rip off because the game skiped the struts that should have been there gets a revert. I've also had plenty of ships explode for no reason on a scene change while in a stable orbit that I don't count either. I also dont count my sandbox save where I do my prototyping and the occasional imitation of Danny.

Both designs look nice but so do those sword replica's that people hang on the wall yet you wouldnt want to fight with one of those swords nor would I want to try to land either of those. I just dont like tall landers, too much chance of landing wrong and tiping over. I prefer ones I can land on a rather steep incline and not tip, particularly if the ship is going to be reused. So anyway you get many bonus points for asthetics on both designs but from a practicality standpoint they are both kinda meh.

Honestly I dont think many if at all of the mods on your endangered list are really in all that much danger unless the mod authors themselves get bored and leave. Toolbar --- Unless squad makes theirs significantly more customizable there is almost no danger here. Frankly I wish I could turn theirs off because its often in my way more than anything else and I cant tweek the size/position or even what butons are displayed. MechJeb --- Only the SmartASS module of mechjeb is duplicated and even that has more options for tweeking in mechjeb. Theres alot of other things MJ can do. FAR/NEAR --- By every indication new stock aero will be more accurate than curent stock but not to the degree that FAR goes. I strongly suspect there will still people that prefer FAR/NEAR. It may be a lower marketshare so to speak but I suspect Ferram cares enough about the mod to maintain it just for her own use anyway so I doubt much will change. Deadly Reentry --- Possibly a point here but DR also has options to tweek just how hardcore you want it to be. I wouldnt be surprised if this mod sticks around but hooks into the stock reentry system and alows for easy tweeking. Procedural fairings --- Here it depends on if the squad version is as fully featured as the mod. If stock basicly copies it like spaceplanes plus then maybe it will vanish but I doubt stock will go that far. Part catalog --- See toolbar. I find the stock version vastly inferior and supect many others do as well. Karbonite --- Not likely an issue unless RoverDude drops off the planet somehow. That guy is a mod makeing machine. He made karbonite because he was not satisfied by any of the other alternitives for resorce gathering. First he built it on the back of KSPInterstellars ORS, then he forked ORS to get extra funtionality then he basicly wrote his own version from scratch (regolith). He might use part of the stock system but I wouldnt be surprised at all if he wont be satisfied with it and just keeps doing his own thing, balanced agianst stock values but keeping whatever extra features he wants to add. I just dont see any of these mods dieing out or becoming irrelevant due to some of their functionality becoming stock. The ability to customize things to your own likeing is always relevant for someone that mods the game. So far every mod thats had some or all of its funtionality added to stock had more customization than the stock version and often had extra bits that never made it to stock. There will always be a demand for these mods as even if copied wholesale into the game a dedicated moder can often develop improvements faster than the squad dev team that has to devide their attention among dozens of other systems. If any of them die it will be due to the moders droping the mod for their own reasons and no other moders being willing to take up the torch for them (or restrictive licensing, thats killed a few mods over the years)

I'd say for myself the closest thing to a weakness is precision landings in an atmosphere with a balistic craft and no mods to help out. I've goten prety good at eyeballing the return to KSC but thats mostly from reppitition and I still tend to have a margian of error of +/- 50km or so. If I've got either wings or fuel to burn I can land right where I want to but otherwise I need to use the trajectories mod or accept the fact that I'll probably over or undershoot by a couple hundred KM if I have to go balistic.

Personaly I think thats a bit beyond the scope of what KSP is intended to be at this time. However that would be exelent fodder for an expansion pack. I think KSP is fine as is for what its trying to be, a fun but educational game thats able to teach a fair bit about orbital mechanics. Alot of the construction of the rockets is abstracted because you really dont need to know everything about how a rocket works to slap togeather stock parts and putter around a digital solar system. I could easily see squad makeing a second game that focuses more on the engineering aspects that can mesh seamlessly with KSP however. IF you like designing the rocket moters themselves you can tinker in the new game/expansion and then import your design into KSP and try to fly it. IF someone does not want to futz with all that and just fly starships around and build stations they just stick with the base game. Personaly I wouldnt mind paying for a game/expansion like that. It would add alot to KSP but I already feel bad about how much I've goten out of the game for such a low pricetag as it is. IT would be far more worthy a concept for a paied expansion/DLC than some of the crap the big studios push on their customers.

95% of the time I use RCS for docking only. I do ocasionaly use RCS for fine tuning a burn thats particularly sensitive but thats normaly a situation where I already had the jets for docking and its easier than trying to turn around and thrust limit. Very rarely will I use RCS for rotation or stability on larger ships. Useing it for stability normaly only happens during launch when I cant stuff enough reaction wheels and fins on a craft to keep it sable on the way up. Turning happens when I've got a massive craft and I dont want to stuff dozens of reaction wheels intoto it to make it turn in a reasonable timeframe. Both can sometimes happen if I'm trying to push a space potato around and couldnt line up well enough on the COM. I've deorbited once or twice off them but it was never a planed thing. they were out of fuel situations that just happend to have monoprop and thrusters from earlier in the mission. May as well use the mono prop instead of geting out and pushing.

sweet. new hotness for our IVA's. I to would be intrested in knowing if those MFD's on the mk3 cockpit are funtional. Even if they cant be changed like with RPM it would be cool if they all work and are not just glowy stickers.

Primarily function for me. I will tweak locations a bit to make things look a tad nicer, particuarly now with widget controlls but I dont like lugging around alota extra parts just to pretty something up.

I wouldnt be surprised if the "Professional reviewers" end up being alot more harsh than the steam reviewers. Steam reviewers are folks that actually play the game and enjoy the type of game and leave positive reviews. Those that don't like this type of game either never buy it or are just ambivalent about it when they try it and decide it isnt right for them, often not careing enough to leave a review either way. Pro reviewers on the other hand are being payed to review the game. They have to post a review weither they like this type of game or not and are much more likely to blast any faults they find if they dont like the game for any reason. Add that to the learning cliff and limited time for the reviewer to overcome that and you have a recipe for negative "Professional reviews." Seeing as how squad is not a huge company and is not likely to be buying positive reviews like some other companies do... well lets just say I wont be surprised by a mirror image of the review bias we often see on high budget titles such as EA games that get 9's and 10's from places like IGN but 3-4's from players. KSP will probably get rave reviews from players and luke warm from the pros.

I wouldnt do it next to KSC. if you park a bunch of planes near the runway you'll have a ton of parts withen load distance of the launchpad and runway. Launching a new craft will take forever as it takes a while to load onto the pad and even simple craft will put you into the yellow/red physics timesteps. If you actually land space planes its even worse as you'll get those big stuttering pauses as your on final approach when your graveyard enters the physics window. Bad situation all around. The few times I've done a ship graveyard I've parked them well away from KSC. Once I landed a bunch in the desert but I've also taxied planes 5-6km Northwest or southwest while still on the grassy plain. Well out of load range of the space port and offset enough that a normal flight approach wont get close enough to load and give a stutter at a bad moment. I did try the island runway but not all my aircraft can safely land there unless I attach parachutes to them.

I think that the max timewarp is fine for realtime display of the orbits, if anything its too fast if your moderately close to a planet. However I would appreciate the ability to simply increment the universe time to whatever arbitrary point in the future you pick. For example you could be on Y1D1 and decide you really want to jump to some window comeing up on Y3D50. You punch in what day you want to jump to, everything is placed on rails and the status of all orbits are updated as if the persist file had been edited to advance time.

Normal mod is relitively OK although science is a bit too easy to get mostly due to contract rewards cupled with bioms. I tried out hardmode to get a bit more of a challange and got a rather unplesent surprise however. I was expecting half fund/science payouts for contracts and such and got that. I wasnt expecting it to double the cost of building upgrades (I asumed it was more expensive craft) I was siting on a crap ton of science, nearly enough to compleate the tree by the time I scrounged up enough funds for the 6mil pricetag on the T3 science. Even geting to T2 was a bit rough. Wouldnt be so bad if the tech tree wasnt such a disaster but very critical parts are hidden just over the threshold. I was constantly in the state of "I could take better paying missions if I had just this one part but I cant get that part untill I put up 100 sats." I can do alot with low part counts or low weight restrictions but the science center costs more than both buildings combined and alot of things (hello plane parts) are arbitrarily high tech and blocked.

He died in the second movie and was "Burried" on the genisis planet, a life bearing planet that was created at prety much the same time he died (although it blew up in the next movie). Laythe is the only other planet with a breathable atmosphere in the kerbin system. Dosent quite fit but laythe or kerbin are the only two that even remotely fit. Where would they put Gagarian's? Yes he was the first man in orbit but what would they do? put a random capsule in orbit? how would anybody even find it if it wasn't targetable as it would be mobile (finding the magic bolder around ike was a PITA) He also died long before KSP. Armstrong died during game development and his memorial was a spur of the moment thing added when it was on the dev's minds due to being a current event. Not arguing he's not worthy of a memorial, just lacking the immediate motivation and easily appropriate location and imagery.

Alot of rockets look deceptively small because we rarely see pictures that give us a good perspective. The falcon 9 is something like 14 stories tall with just the first stage that they are trying to return yet does not look that big in the launch videos because everything else around it is also huge.