Your Suggestion for Smallest Change Causing Greatest Improvement

[tater]

No one should know where any of the biomes are, ever, they should be randomized, and you should have to actively do science from orbit to detect them.

I'm not sure how small it is as a change, but a huge payoff in replay would be to have the option to generate an alternate system each new career. Same basic system, but with the worlds in different arrangements, perhaps aside from Kermin (which needs to be in a habitual zone). Everything else might be up for grabs. With a "seed" system, people could even find cool systems and share them (default would be the extant system).

[Laie]

I'm pretty new to KSP so I don't know much about mods yet. Calculating the delta-V it the easy part, the tedious part is adding up the mass of all the parts.

Click launch. On the pad, switch to map view. Open the small info panel (marked "i"). Note weight. Revert to VAB.

Yeah, showing the weight right in the VAB would be a small thing and a big improvement. Using all kinds of data display mods, I didn't even think of that.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm pretty new to KSP so I don't know much about mods yet. Calculating the delta-V it the easy part, the tedious part is adding up the mass of all the parts.

Welcome aboard.

The calculators do the summing of masses for you, removes a lot of the tedium involved in manual calculation. I recommend Kerbal Engineer Redux if you'd like to try one, it gives a lot of the information that is "missing" both in construction and in flight. There are others as well, MechJeb gives a lot of info as well as autopilot functions, VOID gives a more minimal display of data.

[John FX]

Having to wait a few days while your rockets are built.

[CaptRobau]

No one should know where any of the biomes are, ever, they should be randomized, and you should have to actively do science from orbit to detect them.

That would be weird. Ocean would be flatlands, icecaps would be desert, etc. Unless you randomize the terrain too, that would just confuse the heck out of people.

[OhioBob]

Click launch. On the pad, switch to map view. Open the small info panel (marked "i"). Note weight. Revert to VAB.

I've done that at times but I still find it a bit tedious. I've also noticed that the mass listed in the info panel doesn't always add up to the total of all the parts. Is that due to massless parts not being counted?

[CaLVin-K]

I've done that at times but I still find it a bit tedious. I've also noticed that the mass listed in the info panel doesn't always add up to the total of all the parts. Is that due to massless parts not being counted?

More then likely, if you manually add up masses of parts and include physicsless (massless) parts your calculated mass will be more than the rocket actually weighs in game. I do not know if the mass read out in the info panel in map view counts massless parts.

[tater]

That would be weird. Ocean would be flatlands, icecaps would be desert, etc. Unless you randomize the terrain too, that would just confuse the heck out of people.

Some are self-evident, like oceans. Where certain geological formations are are seemingly random now (some craters have a biome at the bottom while others do not, some are different than others, etc). In addition, I mean randomize the "biomes." If there are 10 kinds on Kerbin (20, 30, whatever) apply them randomly. That means build the terrain randomly, not slap a random name on it. If an area is sand colored (in your last game it might have been green) it is probably desert, green, could be steppe, might be "grassland," dunno.

The bottom line is that until we sent an orbiter to Venus to radar map the place, we had no idea what the surface was like. Until we got better pictures of Mars from space, we knew little about the geology. Some "biomes" (we can ignore the fact the Mun, Minmus, etc don't have biomes at all, as they are lifeless) would require surface collection/analysis to determine.

The bottom line is that with google, there is no way to have a proper "fog" about planets unless they are randomized. Having that means that "science" is not just for points, but to gather information that is actually useful.

Edited November 7, 2014 by tater

[waterlubber]

Two things:

Make Oscar-B fuel tanks have more storage and be RADIALLY ATTACHABLE.

Also, radial stack separators for probes, so their not thrown off balance.

Like so:

Probe[±]Main Craft

Decoupled \/

Probe[± Main Craft

Probe is unbalanced.

This would make my day if these were fixed.

[OhioBob]

I do not know if the mass read out in the info panel in map view counts massless parts.

I performed an experiment to check and it appears that the info panel does not include massless parts.

[Capt Snuggler]

add hinges and rotation parts.

end communication.

[Vallius]

How about displaying spacecraft mass, weight (drop-down menu by moon or planet) and max thrust in the VAB? The max thrust is represented by current stage of the craft. I know SQUAD doesn't want to give us all the info--but is it too much to give me a little help on whether my craft could take off again from Duna before going there?

So that the info isn't free, maybe I'd need the gravioli detector to determine the gravity of other bodies before the weight information is unlocked.

[DBowman]

One of the 'planetary maneuver node' style proposals to eliminate the 'difficulty discontinuity' between planing a Mun mission and a planetary mission.

[bv1]

One of the 'planetary maneuver node' style proposals to eliminate the 'difficulty discontinuity' between planing a Mun mission and a planetary mission.

Which one do you have in mind?

[tater]

A simple way to make flights outside Kerbin SOI slightly easier would be to have contracts for exploration to other words generated based on periods when launch windows open. Like "Duna will be ideally situated for an exploration mission launched around Year 1, Days 230-250. Blah, blah.

[MartGonzo]

part welding

[Wallygator]

Eliminate the tech "tree". Let career mode players research and purchase individual parts in any order.

[SunJumper]

* Larger xenon tanks

* Larger Ion Engine(s)

* A 2.5m Hubmax part

* Stack Mounted external seats

* Stack mounted monopropellant engines

* A half-size variant of the goo module and materials bay for the later parts of the tech tree

* Radial Attached Control sources

* Altering the ElectricCharge numbers so that 1 ElectricCharge is 10MJ (based on the ion engine, it is 9.441MJ)

Edited November 10, 2014 by SunJumper

[Red Iron Crown]

A simple way to make flights outside Kerbin SOI slightly easier would be to have contracts for exploration to other words generated based on periods when launch windows open. Like "Duna will be ideally situated for an exploration mission launched around Year 1, Days 230-250. Blah, blah.

I've noticed the deadline for interplanetary missions seems to be based on transfer time + worst case wait for a good window. Definitely agree that they should be spawned a week or so before an ideal window, at least at first. Makes it more discoverable for newbs.

[Wallygator]

Triangular Structural Panels please.

[Joonatan1998]

This thread doesn't seem like "simple changes"

"overhaul the research system"

"Part welding"

[Wallygator]

I suppose everyones perspective of "simple" is based on their individual experience.

[moogoob]

Cameras.

By that I mean visual science suites - maybe two of them. Small one for robot probes/rovers and a larger one for giving Kerbals on flybys or stuck in orbit something to do. Either treat them just like EVA reports or give the ability to look through them (with digital noise and the ability to take screenshots). Maybe make this a stock ability of cockpits with windows? I know that the ISS's cupola is commonly used for taking pictures.

[bv1]

* Larger xenon tanks

* Larger Ion Engine(s)

* A 2.5m Hubmax part

* Stack Mounted external seats

* Stack mounted monopropellant engines

* A half-size variant of the goo module and materials bay for the later parts of the tech tree

* Radial Attached Control sources

* Altering the ElectricCharge numbers so that 1 ElectricCharge is 10MJ (based on the ion engine, it is 9.441MJ)

"If you could make one small change to KSP in order to cause the greatest improvement to the game, what would it be and why?"

The point of this thread is to pick your one suggestion. If you could only have one, which would it be?

[Kegereneku]

"rewrite entirely KSP from C# to C++ for 64bits and multi-threading support"

I'll show myself out.