problemecium

Hmmm. I do sort of agree with OP and some of the commenters on a few points. At some point, a bugfix-focused release that doesn't also involve adding a bunch of new parts is welcome in my book. Or perhaps that can also fall into the scope of a visual overhaul release where they add in the long-awaited stock clouds, etc. There's a lot of "missing features" and old, frustrating bugs that need tackling more than I personally need new parts at the moment. I disagree with the complaints about new version breaking old ships. Your mindset is wrong. Despite SQUAD's claims that KSP is "1.0" and thus "scope complete", I still see it as a work in progress, so I never have any expectation that anything that works in one version will still work in another. I'm grateful when anything does and unsurprised when it doesn't. I'd rather have things fixed and improved than have SQUAD spend time keeping out-of-date ships and mods functional. Now, in situations like we've had a few times in the past where a new minor version comes out every month, I can understand frustration when you keep trying to get through Career and finding everything breaking before you get to finish. It is reasonable to be slightly irritated when 1.0.2 breaks your 1.0.1 ship and then shortly thereafter 1.0.3 breaks your redesign, but of course when a "big" update like 1.1 arrives, it's only to be expected that a lot of things will change. My solution is this: When you get the new version, don't overwrite the old one - just install it in a new place and have two KSPs on your computer. Even Scott Manley has done this. This way you can finish up your old save and still get to play with the new stuff. P.S. I also second Gaarst and ExplorerKatt in that perhaps this should have been called 1.1 and the next one called 1.2, but A: it's too late, and B: it was too late as soon as they decided in advance what the next version number would be and what would be in it, i.e. announcing that 1.1 would be the Unity 5 upgrade. If they then released something different, dumb people would get all confused (and not to be a downer but there are a lot more dumb people than not dumb people, in every community including this one). I guess in my ideal world they'd just number the versions on whatever day they come out, but it's really not a big deal in the end.

I'm all for this, but allow me to advise you to [i]take your time[/i]. There's a LOT of planets out there, and I wouldn't want you skimping on the missions just so you can get to all of them. It may also be wise to send a flotilla. I'm usually a proponent of massive singular motherships, but if you're going on a multi-system grand tour, you're likely to go way beyond KSP's "reasonable" part count limits. It can also save you time if you send each ship to a few planets, and stagger their arrival times using KAC so you can take turns visiting planets one after the other without having to wait years and years every time. I guess that's not technically a grand tour in the classical sense any more, but you'd still be visiting everything and it'd still make a fun series to follow - something like Kuzzter's Duna and Eve stories involving multiple ships.

Come to think of it, SQUAD DID say they were changing the aerodynamics to make it easier to aerocapture around Eve and Jool... in light of which I expect yet another atmosphere adjustment in the near future to nerf the excess heating at high altitudes. I can handle it, but when my airbrakes are all blowing up even when undeployed, and every other part is coming within a few single degrees of exploding, it feels a little mean xD

I've only ever played modern versions of KSP (i.e. not the 0.13.3 demo) on one computer, but my understanding is that for processor-intensive games like KSP (and Minecraft historically), clock speed is everything. Thus I splurged on a Core i7 with a (at the time) really fast 3.4GHz processor and have no regrets over it. KSP doesn't slow down noticeably until I break 200 parts, and doesn't become "unplayable" until well over 1000. And surge, could you elaborate on the "sluggishness?" Last I heard the Unity upgrade is expected to produce massive performance [i]improvements[/i]. Did you hear otherwise somewhere?

I agree that two redundant parts would be undesirable, so I'm all for adding in a fighter cockpit with different stats. Perhaps the plane cockpit can be light and have a high crash tolerance, while the fighter cockpit has a high thermal tolerance and more monopropellant. We have lots of 1.25m engines, so why not have two 1.25m cockpits, if they serve different roles?

Kidonia is finally finished! FINALLY! I'm tired and I'm gong to bed, so no pictures here, but you can look in my signature for the main thread.

1. I clicked "yes" before reading the OP. I regret nothing about this. 2. I really wanted to click "Bananas," but unfortunately if I did that I couldn't also click "yes." 3. Now that I've actually read your post: - Reentry heat is somewhat worse, but remember it did get nerfed in 1.0.2 or somewhere around there. It's still quite manageable. - The jet engines still seem to work fine for me. I've had other, bigger problems making me have to redesign my planes. - Yes. The old fighter cockpit is gone, and that is sad, but I wouldn't sacrifice an update over it. And surely there is or will very soon be a mod to restore it a la Kerbal Historical Society. - Game seems about the same for me. The difference is imperceptible. That said, computers vary and thus so does performance. - Admittedly the Panther doesn't live up to the hype IMO, but the Juno has its uses, and the uh... what was the big one again? Whatever. It's the big one! And it's not like they took away the old engines we know and love - they just repainted them a bit.

Uhhh, guys? Did we all forget about the LV-N? I mean sure the aerospike is much improved, but it's still got nothing on that 800 vacuum Isp. Low TWR hardly matters when the efficiency is that high, unless we're specifically talking about landers. I guess you could say "best 1.25m lifter engine" or "...chemical engine" maybe, but in general the LV-N is still way ahead of the pack.

Thank you, OP. I still consider complaint threads to be generally unproductive, but you're the first person in quite a while who has a complain about the latest version, whatever number it happens to be, and doesn't title their thread "Goodbye KSP, patch made it unplayable." Instead you titled it based on what the real problem was - that it was frustrating you - and posted a paragraph actually related to the thread topic. I appreciate that ;)

Wow, thanks LordFerret! I don't even have Windows 10, but knowing I'm doomed to have to use it someday it's good to know that it's possible to block the mandatory updates. Those are the primary reason I didn't "upgrade" to begin with.

I second the motion to go to Jool. And maybe stop at Dres on the way.

Part Sixteen: Final Preparation Phase 2 The last few mission components have now been added to Kidonia. First, a total of six stackable ion probes were brought to it via my (relatively) new cargo spaceplane and installed in the secondary cargo bays near the bow. Then a small pair of boats were added so the Kerbals could sail around for a bit on Laythe. Currently there is no means of recovery for them, so while the Kerbals can return aboard the Laythe Plane, the boats will remain as permanent fixtures. Due to the intervening update to KSP 1.0.5, two of the mission components were rendered unusable and had to be replaced. As pictured above, the original boats used air scoops for hulls, which due to the redesign clipped through and obscured the chairs and other important pieces. The Laythe Plane's cockpit also changed shape, necessitating a redesign and replacement of the craft. Fortunately, nothing else changed significantly enough to need replacement. The final mission component was the Ore Bot, placed in the upper rear cargo bay, opposite the Tylo lander. While hopefully it will not need to be used for the mission, it has been included to enable Kidonia to refuel itself through ISRU in case it does not retain enough delta-V to return to Kerbin at the end of the mission. Due to unavoidable circumstances resulting from the launch timing and fuel restrictions, this docking operation occurred at night, making it difficult but not impossible. At this point, all of the mission components had been installed. Prior to departure, some final reconfigurations were performed: the survey probes were moved from their temporary locations to the secondary cargo bays opposite the ion probes; and the temporary nose cap was removed along with the empty Monopropellant and Xenon tankers. Between these missions, five more fueling runs took place. Kidonia is now fully fueled and ready to depart as soon as the rest of its crew arrive aboard the SSTO shuttle. ADDENDUM I didn't have a lot of time for KSP today, but I did manage to send up the rest of Kidonia's crew. The total count is eleven Kerbals, enough for three to remain behind in each of the two portable stations while five can return to Kerbin so as to complete the challenge. The roster: Jebediah, Bill, Bob, Valentina, Lola, Bobzor, Kimma, Merbart, Nedrick, Shepby, and Mila Kerman. Frustratingly, the Kraken decided to be a complete troll about things. Kidonia was all ready to go - I literally had to just undock the last fuel tanker and press Z - and then the Kraken struck, but not in the ordinary way. The ship itself was untouched, but the crew... poof! All vanished without a trace. At first simply the EVA portraits disappeared, but when I tried to switch back to Kidonia from the Tracking Station, none of them showed up in the crew list, nor in the individual crew lists for any of the crew cabins, and the debug log was flooded with NullReferenceExceptions. The worst part was that my quicksave was apparently from after the glitch occurred, and even manually messing with the save file didn't help. I ended up having to hack the save file to beam them all back to the Astronaut Complex and then send them all back up to the ship again, and out of paranoia move them all into the ship on EVA rather than via crew transfers as I'd done the first time. Since then I took a look at my menu screen and confirmed that I had, indeed, failed to install the silent patch from a week ago. I knew I'd redownloaded KSP as soon as I'd heard about it, but I figure I must have jumped on it too fast because both the original 1.0.5 zip archive and the "new" one were identical. Accordingly I've re-redownloaded KSP and confirmed that I do indeed have 1.0.5 Build 1028 now, which according to the changelog is likely to have solved whatever the problem was. So with any luck... xD Later this week, possibly tomorrow, I'll try and get around to ACTUALLY LAUNCHING the blasted thing ^^; And I'll look into perhaps streaming it or recording a video if there's any interest out there.

If clipping engines leaves a sour taste in your mouth, as an alternative I suggest making use of the O-10 "Puff" monopropellant engine - a dense cluster of them. The specific impulse won't be great, but it'll get you the thrust you need.

-4 Team Zero lends its support!

It's neat, but why the part about the universe on the other side being bigger? Is it necessary for the portal to work, or is it just supposed to be like the Nether in Minecraft?

Yay! New patch imminent with hyperbolic colors and fully-functional GUI fields (I too thought I was going mad when the Offset didn't work ^^; )! P.S. Some advice for wayyy, way in the future: Currently Unity (and by extension KSP) allows the loading of customized shaders by creating them at runtime from a text string. This, however, is deprecated in the current edition of Unity (which 1.1 will likely be using when released), but in future versions, possibly later this year, that functionality is going to be removed to enhance performance. For the sake of future-proofing, I recommend researching the use of Asset Bundles for shader imports. Don't worry about it for now though ;)

Now that the boat hype surrounding 1.0.5 has died down a little bit (I hope), before we forget about them let's take a moment to gather together and reminisce upon those good old days when only the crazy built boats and tried to sail them on Kerbin's (or any planet's) seas. Rules: - Must have been built prior to 1.0.5 - prior to 1.0 is preferred, but admissible. - Stock is preferred, but not necessary. Ships made without boat part mods will get more brownie points. - Must post at least one picture, but no more than maybe two or three - to include more, link to your own thread or wherever. - Craft files are not necessary, as they most likely won't do us much good any more anyway ;) - Mention the version number! As mentioned in the title, old boats are more impressive. I'll start with one of mine so the thread doesn't start off empty: [URL="http://www.servimg.com/view/17274547/99"][IMG]http://i58.servimg.com/u/f58/17/27/45/47/screen63.jpg[/IMG][/URL] The "Davy Jones Crocodile Machine," from KSP 0.23.5. It uses a single jet engine to push itself along at a leisurely 5.7 m/s, or about 11 knots. Ahh, the nostalgia xD

Can we be done fighting about zekes already? Yes? Good ;P Moving on, if this is indeed officially going to be for pre-1.0 craft, I guess I'm out too. Kidonia is very much alive and kicking in 1.0.5.

Update! I've run some tests in KSP 1.0.5, and in principle this still works, but with the changes to buoyancy it is VERY unforgiving of part clipping and of rockets wherein a small, weak part lands before a large and heavy one. For the time being, the demo craft linked in the OP is unusable, so I'll probably post a new one soon.

646: Fortunately for Kerbalkind in general, the Kold War "escalates" so high that it drifts off into space, out of Kerbin's SOI, and eventually out of the Kerbolar system altogether. Peace is restored on Kerbin, and those directly involved in the war, such as Kadolf Kerman, are doomed to fight one another forever in the depths of interstellar space (but somehow using biplanes and K-boats rather than spaceships). Needless to say this gives rise to many a legend among extrakerrestrial civilizations yet to be discovered. 647: In an effort to bring the explodiness of rockets down to around that of the new jet engines, the StrutCo company is founded and begins marketing a device which, when attached to two spacecraft components, allows them to structurally brace against one another and thereby create a more durable whole. These "struts" become wildly popular among Kerbals, and before long all Kerbal architecture features them prominently (in a similar fashion to columns in ancient Rome on Earth, not that the Kerbals would know anything about that). 647: Bruce Kerman is mugged in an alleyway, and in an effort to reduce crime rates in his hometown, proceeds to reinvent himself as Bat Kerbal.

Unfortunately, the ocean dried up so you can't sail either. [IMG]http://gallery.photo.net/photo/6900152-md.jpg[/IMG]

WHOA! At first I was like "what was wrong with the old Navigation Lights mod?" but then I read the part about the custom bloom effect and looked at the pictures. That IS different! I love it! I'd put these all over the Kidonia for those night docking operations if I hadn't already launched it xP (also it's supposed to be an all-stock mission, but still).

[quote name='Jimbodiah']@Para: I run into 0.5fps if even that sometimes, it's hard to control anything manually if the update is so slow. I've reduced part counts by half now, deleted old ships and landers and replaced them. Making nice looking ships is like I did before (form before function) is a thing of the past...[/QUOTE] Mind telling me what sorts of part counts you're talking about here? I was sort of kidding, because the only place I have to dock at 2 FPS is with the Kidonia, which has about 1400 parts now. All of my "reasonably-sized" ships run just fine. P.S. I know this isn't a thread about CFG optimization, but if you haven't looked into it, make sure that "Max Physics DT per frame" slider is all the way to the right, and if you have to, you can even do what I did and open the CFG file manually and type in a smaller value (mine is currently at 0.015). This will of course make time slow to a crawl around big stuff, but you'll preserve your framerate and thus controllability.

Dude, this sounds brilliant! Brilliant but ambitious. I confess I have no idea whatsoever how to make it happen, but best of luck with it. ;)

Aha! This graph explains how my newest spaceplane designs are managing to get to orbit with fewer intakes than I'd expected. Before, the basic recipe was a minimum of one "real" intake (e.g. shock cone) or 2 radial intakes per engine, but now I'm getting by with significantly fewer (although I haven't run tests to see just how few I can manage).