Removed Alt-F12 as an Option (A Personal Victory)

[Probus]

  So its happened to everybody (if not everybody, at least me).  You want to play a really hardcore game of KSP and you do something stupid and you Alt-F12 and cheat your way out of it.  I really wanted a mod that would take that option away from me.  But every time I brought it up, it was said "It couldn't be done", "It would be too easy to undo", "Just tear off your F12 key", "You don't want to use it? So don't use it", "The problem here is a lack of self-control"...

  A few nights ago, I was experimenting with disabling the Alt-F12 option.  No luck, but I couldn't sleep, so I took a sleeping pill and went to bed.  Evidently, that was not the end of the story.  Because today, while working on plumes for the new Waterfall mod.  I can no longer use the Alt-F12 key.  The kicker is, I have no idea how I did it.  None what-so-ever.

  F12 works just fine, Alt-F4 closes the game so I know my keyboard is working.  I don't see anything in GameData out of place.  Simply dunno what I did.  Not a clue.  And now, I'm not going to try to think about how I did it.

  Now, on to a new frontier!  On to some insanely hard KSP!  If the Kraken strikes, so be it. 

  ...Maybe I will resurrect dead kerbals that die in the Kraken's tentacles.  But that's it!  No more!  Wish me well

Edited June 3, 2021 by Probus
Added additional reasons why it shouldn't be done. :)

[Rakete]

Pfff... why a mod to disable alt-f12? You don't want to use it? So don't use it. It's as simple as that.

 

Do it or don't do it. There is no trying.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Rakete

[Bej Kerman]

The problem here is a lack of self-control. Just remind yourself that you're going to regret cheating.

[Probus]

50 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

The problem here is a lack of self-control. Just remind yourself that you're going to regret cheating.

You two hit the nail on the head. I'm not arguing that with you.  But it does make you think twice before you hit that launch button. It definitely increases the suspense. 

[king of nowhere]

On 6/2/2021 at 3:47 PM, Probus said:

  So its happened to everybody (if not everybody, at least me).  You want to play a really hardcore game of KSP and you do something stupid and you Alt-F12 and cheat your way out of it.

No, I don't.

My way of playing hardcore ksp is to set very lofty goals, and keep pushing them.

I certainly do not want my super elaborate mega mission - which required months in real life - to fail because i get distracted during a landing and activate the engine too late. Or because I forgot to set "control from here" on the right part before the manuever. Nor do I want to always drive my rovers at safe speeds, that would be super boring. And I want even less to lose because of kraken attacks.

In fact, I tried once a challenge with saves disabled, and i could not do it. not much because i can't adapt to it, but because i don't want to adapt. If I can't push the limits of my skills with stuff that has a high chance of failing and that will definitely require me to save and reload a few times, then the stuff i'm doing is too easy. and then it's boring.

The whole "it's fairly easy and you do it routinely, but if you occasionally screw up is a big deal" is what we do in real life. In games I want to push those limits, try what could be achieved if there was no need to play it safe

i wish you luck in your endeavor, but your playstyle is so diametrically opposite to mine, i can't figure out the appeal of doing it, even with you explaining.

[Probus]

12 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

No, I don't.

My way of playing hardcore ksp is to set very lofty goals, and keep pushing them.

I certainly do not want my super elaborate mega mission - which required months in real life - to fail because i get distracted during a landing and activate the engine too late. Or because I forgot to set "control from here" on the right part before the manuever. Nor do I want to always drive my rovers at safe speeds, that would be super boring. And I want even less to lose because of kraken attacks.

In fact, I tried once a challenge with saves disabled, and i could not do it. not much because i can't adapt to it, but because i don't want to adapt. If I can't push the limits of my skills with stuff that has a high chance of failing and that will definitely require me to save and reload a few times, then the stuff i'm doing is too easy. and then it's boring.

The whole "it's fairly easy and you do it routinely, but if you occasionally screw up is a big deal" is what we do in real life. In games I want to push those limits, try what could be achieved if there was no need to play it safe

i wish you luck in your endeavor, but your playstyle is so diametrically opposite to mine, i can't figure out the appeal of doing it, even with you explaining.

That's what's great about this game.  With mods, you can pretty much tailor it to your playstyle.  Whether it be Sadistic (Danny2462), Normal (You), or a bit Masochistic (me).  My background is as a test engineer for the Air Force.  That means my job was to figure out what could go wrong and what needs to be done to have a backup (plan or equipment), and a backup to the backup (and in some cases, a backup to the backup to the backup, I kid you not!).  So my brain is pretty much trained to look at things that way (also a lot of chess).  I even play with mods like DangIt! and OhScrap! as if me screwing up a totally good mission was not enough.

So in some missions with strict dV requirements there is no backup,  except for the second backup mission I send along with it (such as Viking 1 and Viking 2).

If I have dV and funds to play with I'll always add extra batteries & backup batteries.  Extra RCS, extra antennas, and in some deep space cases extra engines (why use 1 when a smaller 5 pattern will work) and extra probe core. And usually a Deep Space 1 and Deep Space 2. 

Scott Manley says when things go wrong, things get interesting.  I've found that to be true.  Except for extreme kraken attacks such as switching from a ship full of kerbals and switching back to it and all the kerbals now being listed as MIA.  That kinda stuff I'm willing to dig into the save file to fix.

It really does make you fully test your new rocket designs before spending the cash to send the real thing.  Also makes pressing that launch button extra exciting even with a fully checked checklist.  That may seem like too much work for some people (most people), but that seems pretty normal to me.  I only wish I had an Alt-F12 button for real life!

[Incarnation of Chaos]

13 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

No, I don't.

My way of playing hardcore ksp is to set very lofty goals, and keep pushing them.

I certainly do not want my super elaborate mega mission - which required months in real life - to fail because i get distracted during a landing and activate the engine too late. Or because I forgot to set "control from here" on the right part before the manuever. Nor do I want to always drive my rovers at safe speeds, that would be super boring. And I want even less to lose because of kraken attacks.

In fact, I tried once a challenge with saves disabled, and i could not do it. not much because i can't adapt to it, but because i don't want to adapt. If I can't push the limits of my skills with stuff that has a high chance of failing and that will definitely require me to save and reload a few times, then the stuff i'm doing is too easy. and then it's boring.

The whole "it's fairly easy and you do it routinely, but if you occasionally screw up is a big deal" is what we do in real life. In games I want to push those limits, try what could be achieved if there was no need to play it safe

i wish you luck in your endeavor, but your playstyle is so diametrically opposite to mine, i can't figure out the appeal of doing it, even with you explaining.

Yeah one time i had a multiple segment nuclear mothership that i had spent several real life days assembling in orbit, manuevering to a duna insertion, actually conducting the burns and then finally got into Duna orbit and detached the lander.

So here i am, real life days later. Just happily mining with the lander on it's third excursion between ike and duna, and i just think "I should probably check the lab on the mothership" and change focus to it without a thought.

*EXPLOSION*

The docking port sr had just decided to explode, for no reason. It wasn't clipped, it hadn't been docked to (If anything the load on it was less, as the lander wasn't attached). So either i could design an entirely new mission, perform a mid-mission segment exchange in orbit after the mission had been mostly completed due to a kraken attack with no physical or logical basis.

or i just go into the .cfg and trip the flag disabled...

guess what your boi did? he tripped that flag, took that boat all the way to freaking jool and back and never had a single issue with that docking port again. In fact, one of the 6 lander legs breaking is what caused me to scrub. Because while it was plenty stable with 5, it would mean any further legs lost might have been unstable.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, Probus said:

That's what's great about this game.  With mods, you can pretty much tailor it to your playstyle.  Whether it be Sadistic (Danny2462), Normal (You), or a bit Masochistic (me).  My background is as a test engineer for the Air Force.  That means my job was to figure out what could go wrong and what needs to be done to have a backup (plan or equipment), and a backup to the backup (and in some cases, a backup to the backup to the backup, I kid you not!).  So my brain is pretty much trained to look at things that way (also a lot of chess).  I even play with mods like DangIt! and OhScrap! as if me screwing up a totally good mission was not enough.

After I became able to do everything  in the stock game I set my sights on kerbalism, specifically long missions with kerbalism. Every part must fail, so indeed, I must also design a backup for everything. I am not familiar with your mods, but i guess they do something similar. So I design everything with that principle in mind. The lander would have been sound with a single terrier, but i put 8 radially mounted engines because it can take failures, even though it hurts deltaV. The shuttle bringing the lander from the mothership to low orbit started with 4 engines, but it could keep working even after losing 3, and if that happens, I can dock it to a drop tank with additional engines. In my previous mission I had my Diggers tasked with resupplying at Duna, each one was made to be able to orbit with a broken engine, and I brought 4 of those vehicles as backup. And I lost count of how many redundant life supports and communications I have.

And I like designing stuff that way. And indeed, when things go wrong, they get interesting. Some of my finest moments happened when the original plan didn't work and I had to figure out something else to do with my resources.

But that's part of the difficulty I did choose. I am never tempted to cheat to revert an annoying malfunction. Doing it would be admitting failure.

On the other hand, real space agencies can calculate exactly when to start the suicide burn to be more efficient. And they can calculate exactly where they land. I cannot. So perhaps I start the burn too late, and I crash on the ground. Or maybe time warp is no longer allowed below 25 km, I won't start braking until I reach 10 km, it will take many minutes, so while I wait I go do something else, then i get distracted, and I am reminded of ksp only by the sound of explosions. or perhaps I manage to land on a steep slope where I fall down. Or, I turn around my ship so that the fuel tanks protect the crew from the solar storms and their radiation, then I time warp. But as the ship moves around the sun, it gets turned around, the crew is no longer shielded, and at high time warp everyone dies before I even get the first danger message. those are not fun ways to lose

in fact, those are all things that would never happen if there was a real mission control and real pilots to take care of gritty details. I like designing and planning around part failures, radiation belts, and such. Those are the obstacles I want to overcome.

My own attention span, on the other hand, is not. And I want to be able to revert any mistake caused by that.

I also want to be able to experiment. Would that ship survive a steep aerobraking? how long can I stay inside the radiation belt before it gets really dangerous? well, in real life they'd do all the complicated calculations. I can't do that, so I eyeball it and try; if I explode, I try a higher periapsis, until I find out what is safe.

 

[Probus]

5 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I also want to be able to experiment. Would that ship survive a steep aerobraking? how long can I stay inside the radiation belt before it gets really dangerous? well, in real life they'd do all the complicated calculations. I can't do that, so I eyeball it and try; if I explode, I try a higher periapsis, until I find out what is safe.

I totally respect that way of playing. Most of my games are similar.

I use MechJeb to do a lot of the math heavy lifting and automating burns and such. MechJeb is my NASA rocket scientists and I believe practically all spacecraft are automated. 

Another thing I also do would be to send a series of probes to check some aerobreaking altitudes. I try not to eyeball anything unless I have to and MechJeb is not always reliable (although I prolly did something to mess it up too, GIGO). 

I've never tried Kerbalism, believe it or not. Might need to check that one out. 

[Jack Mcslay]

I think quickloading is far more relevant to a hardcore run than the cheat menu.

I only use the cheat menu in order to test if a craft can land/operate on the body I want to - and then return to the hangar when I'm done, or when the game refuses to acknowledge when a mission is completed, the new engineer-oriented missions have been very buggy