I feel like I need to apologise for Kerbals

[Foxster]

Whenever I show anyone KSP, I always say something like, "I know, it looks dumb because of the cutsey Disney-looking creatures, but in fact there is a hardcore simulation that can teach you a lot". This because the Kerbals make KSP look like a game for little kids. 

There is something jarring about having overly-cute cartoon creatures in this game. Maybe they are there to attract younger  people? Or they are comic relief? Either way, anyone buying KSP thinking it is a cartoon game about cute space aliens will be quickly disappointed once they have failed a few times at trying to get a craft to orbit. 

I suppose I'd like a cuteness setting slider. Or an option to have realistic astronauts. Something anyway that makes KSP look more grown-up. It might help with my constant need to see Kerbals die in the most pointless and painful ways possible.

[worir4]

I know, my friends always made fun of my for playing it. That was until i got 98% in the space and gravity part of my physics course.   After that they all asked me how to play it. 

[Spacetraindriver]

It's called Kerbal Space Program though...

I remember a reading about the game on a online store and it said something like: " Help these little guys get to space..." I think the whole point of the goofy, silly, dumb, aspects of their personalities and design makes normal achievements 10x more earned. Because these goofy little creatures managed to do it. Personally I have nothing against Kerbals at all! If you need some serious-ing up of these guys just read or watch some Kerbal stories (like on the forums!)/ YouTube cinematics (ex: Nassault) and theres also the fact that when you crash or explode or get attacked by the Kraken you are not losing any humans...

[dangerhamster]

It's little green guys in spaceships..... without them classic cinema and sci-fi would have suffered (not forgetting Dan Dare). Consider them a homage and question the intellectual abilities of anyone who disparages them.

[Wallace]

I've played KSP and I've played Space Engineers, and I just don't care about the astronaut character in Space Engineers, he's got zero personality, may as well be a wet flannel piloting the ships.  Kerbals on the other hand, I just love em, I always want to make sure they are looked after, kept safe, wana get the lil fellahs to the mun, they are always so happy when they plant the flag, astronaut guy, no matter what I get him to achieve he just stands there bored off his face.  I think it's important to have characters you care about to keep a game interesting, and when you're calculating dV and efficient orbits,and a whole load of very difficult flying it's good to have a bit of comic relief. 

[Foxster]

1 hour ago, dangerhamster said:

It's little green guys in spaceships..... without them classic cinema and sci-fi would have suffered (not forgetting Dan Dare). Consider them a homage and question the intellectual abilities of anyone who disparages them.

Well, yes. But there is a difference between these two...

 

One is a green-tinted alien creature that looks capable of traversing the vastness of space (and is probably into probing in a big way). 

The other is something for a 5 year old to giggle at while running up pay-to-play charges on their phone. 

 

Edited December 17, 2016 by Foxster

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I feel like this issue could be solved for everyone by just adding an option (Or make a mod) for opaque/reflective visors. (Also, they just look super cool, someone do this please!)

You'd still have the Kerbals in the Career mode buildings... but it's a simple, easy fix that is actually reasonably possible and would alleviate the issue during the most important portion of the game; the actual game-play.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Tw1]

I like the goofy kerbals. Like the junk like look of many of the parts, it's fun to succeed despite appearances.  They're quite recognisable too. 

 

Maybe, show people the spacecraft, or the orbital view first? 

Edited December 17, 2016 by Tw1

[John FX]

18 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I feel like this issue could be solved for everyone by just adding an option (Or make a mod) for opaque/reflective visors. (Also, they just look super cool, someone do this please!)

You'd still have the Kerbals in the Career mode buildings... but it's a simple, easy fix that is actually reasonably possible and would alleviate the issue during the most important portion of the game; the actual game-play.

Texture Replacer has gold visors that obscure the faces of the kerbals if that is what you want.

EDIT : There is also a reflection addon for cool reflections too.

Edited December 17, 2016 by John FX

[Superfluous J]

Funny, I'm the exact opposite. I excitedly talk about how KSP is a hardcore game with awesome green guys that look (and act, a bit) like Minions.

I don't know your age, but possibly it's because I'm older and don't care if people think I'm childish. Heck I got carded last night at the bar and profusely thanked the bartender who was probably half my age at best.

[GluttonyReaper]

This game must have gotten pretty good if people have resorted to complaining about the Kerbals in Kerbal Space Program

 

Seriously though, a lot of people (including me) wouldn't have given the game a second look if it weren't for those little guys. Heck, I think that's what's kept me playing the game for three years - the whole orbital mechanics thing is fun and all, but I only bother doing anything to see those little guys just hanging out on my ships, or bouncing around on the surface of another planet. They're just a part of the whole charm, and they fit so well - these wacky, cute lil' green guys who just love launching their funky rockets off their tiny little toy world. In that way, it's sooo much easy to relate to their boundless enthusiasm for everything space than a bunch of grumpy, old humans

For me, it's not even an age thing - it's just very good character design. I really couldn't imagine Kerbal Space Program without the Kerbal.

(and if we didn't have kerbals, we'd never have had @Kuzzter's Kerbfleet or @KSK's First Flight, and I don't want to live in world where all the great fanfiction on this site never happened)

[regex]

Kerbals helped sell this game, make it more "accessible", just like their easy-mode solar system. If we didn't have Kerbals the game wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is today.

FWIW I never really focused on the Kerbals when explaining the game to others, there's so many more appealing things about the game that Kerbals just become bit players when I'm convincing someone it's a good buy.

[klgraham1013]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Funny, I'm the exact opposite. I excitedly talk about how KSP is a hardcore game with awesome green guys that look (and act, a bit) like Minions.

I don't know your age, but possibly it's because I'm older and don't care if people think I'm childish. Heck I got carded last night at the bar and profusely thanked the bartender who was probably half my age at best.

Maybe it is age, because, as one of an older persuasion, I quite enjoy Kerbals, purple Eve, and green Jool.

Edited December 17, 2016 by klgraham1013

[Vanamonde]

I do not feel a need to apologize for Kerbals. 

[archnem]

Actually, this is what kept me from playing KSP at first.  I'd never heard of it, and then saw something either on Steam or Unity's site or somewhere about it, and when I looked, I saw these goofy looking green guys and thought "Oh, it's a kids game, not what I'm looking for in a space sim." and moved on.

Then some months later, I saw an article or something about it, and decided to try out the demo.  I then realized it was actually pretty hardcore, just with cute green guys in it.  Now I'm about 2000 hours in, and love it.

[KSK]

16 hours ago, regex said:

Kerbals helped sell this game, make it more "accessible", just like their easy-mode solar system. If we didn't have Kerbals the game wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is today.

FWIW I never really focused on the Kerbals when explaining the game to others, there's so many more appealing things about the game that Kerbals just become bit players when I'm convincing someone it's a good buy.

Agreed,

I'd go a step further and say that having the Kerbals expands the game by allowing players to feel that they can experiment with different play styles. A Human Space Program analogue of KSP would be a bit too close to reality, a little more po-faced because of it and I think would encourage that 'serious space sim' mindset. Which might not be a bad thing depending on your personal opinion  but playing KSP as a serious space sim is clearly only one of the many ways that people do play it.

Heck, I like to think that I play KSP reasonably seriously and I'm right with @Wallace and @GluttonyReaper. The sheer enthusiasm of the kerbals, that wide-eyed sense of wonder at what's going on around them, is a big part of the charm of the game and (in my opinion) as much a part of any real life space program as orbital mechanics or rocket engineering. Heck, read one of the Apollo mission transcripts some time - it's mostly all business but there are plenty of 'how did we ever get out here' moments too. And as for the kerbals as comic relief, I give you a couple of quotes from one Walter Schirra Jr.

"A little levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade."

"Levity is the lubricant of a crisis. We resort to jokes, pranks and good natured kidding to relieve tension, stress and boredom."

Or you might like this section of the Apollo 12 transcript:

087:31:05 Bean (onboard): Take a bath, shave, get all cleaned up, good night's sleep...
087:31:09 Conrad (onboard): [Singing].
087:31:14 Bean (onboard): You got anything else to do tomorrow? All right, that's what we'll do then. We'll go for a little lunar landing, how's that? Unless you got something better in mind - a little surfing at the beach, or something.
087:31:25 Conrad (onboard): Hell, yes.
087:31:26 Gordon (onboard): How about the backside Sand? Go play in the sand on the back side.
087:31:29 Conrad (onboard): [Laughter] Yes. Let's take the LM down and land on the back side. Wouldn't that shake them up? [Laughter].
087:31:36 Bean (onboard): We could do our old DOI burn an hour later. We saw something on the back side that was a little more interesting than the front side.

If a little levity in a space program is good enough for Schirra and Conrad, it's good enough for me!

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by KSK

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Middle-aged guy here, I get a kick out of the Kerbal design. Nothing like intensely focusing on an important launch only to glance down and see your crew freaking out for their lives haha. The little guys and gals add some personality and perspective to the game.

[Guest]

I might've made the characters look like this so I can't exactly complain about Kerbals.

Thing with cartoony characters is they generate distinctive, memorable silhouettes and most people enjoy cuteness on some level. As said above it exudes some degree of character and gets people interested in what wacky hijinks the little green men get up to in order for their facecams to jump from smiling to wide-eyed terror and back to smiling within a minute. I'd actually say that Kerbals are more serious about space exploration than humans; they have a constant wide-eyed childlike curiosity toward their universe, without any political or nationalistic baggage. Exploring space is all they've got to worry about, so they can very well make a damn good job of it. I do love the pride of a rocket with U N I T E D S T A T E S printed down the side, but KSP (as it comes 'out of the box', stock) is about the pure undistilled wonder of space exploration, and it needs its own characters and setting to draw sufficiently far away from the historicity that might drag these themes into... well, historical simulation. KSP isn't a historical game. You can mod it to be one, but as provided it's about possibilities rather than limitations and I think the childish characters go hand-in-hand with that; after all, it is children that ask the most poignant questions about everything until adults typically shut them up. KSP is a great game to start playing as a kid and then grow up with.

That said, I am honestly surprised there isn't a full 'human space program' rework mod for the Kerbals integrated into RO or something, but designing, modelling and animating human characters that don't drop into the uncanny valley with even their basic walking animation is difficult. That said, you could totally have them in irremovable reflective visors with no face model underneath.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Guest
typo

[regex]

19 minutes ago, String Witch said:

That said, I am honestly surprised there isn't a full 'human space program' rework mod for the Kerbals integrated into RO or something

No one's made one yet. It'd be a hell of a mod, in terms of the work to be done and the end result.

[Gaarst]

4 minutes ago, regex said:

No one's made one yet. It'd be a hell of a mod, in terms of the work to be done and the end result.

That'd pretty much be a new game. I'd love something in between KSP and Orbiter.

[NSEP]

If there was a mod that replaces Kerbals with Humans, Reaism Overhaul is almost complete!

[Just Jim]

I love my little Kerbals!  

[Foxster]

9 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I love my little Kerbals!  

Me too.

But I couldn't eat a whole one. 

[Mjarf]

IMO the little green dudes fit the game perfectly. Yes, it has realistic physics and all that, but at the same time it allows you to build some truly ludicrous rockets, so while being relatively realistic, at the same time it does have a "cartoony" setting. I highly doubt NASA would build a ridiculously overpowered rocket to "brute-force" a highly un-aerodynamic payload into orbit. 

I don't know about the rest of you, but I really put in an effort to keep the little green dudes safe as I find them quite adorable.

[eddiew]

I honestly don't think I would empathise as much with a human crew as I do with kerbals... I go out of my way to protect them and rescue them more than I would for more realistic astronauts. I also forgive it more when things don't work right because they have such an air of making it up as they go.