cantab

It's not the most convincing. The CPU is a real weak-point with low single-threaded performance and a dead-end upgrade wise. $300 is a seriously tight budget but I think you'd be better off with an LGA1150 build, even the cheapest LGA1150 Celeron will trounce that Athlon at KSP. Get the Pentium G3258 and a motherboard that can overclock it if you can, though that will probably push the budget up to $350.

Keep in mind the forum is a self-selected group, probably biased strongly towards those who already own KSP.Indeed that may be one reason some of the Squad staff pay more attention to Reddit - more potential customers there. I think that would be a disaster, even using the touchpad it would very much feel like a PC UI shoehorned into a console. A menu system would work better with the gamepad I feel.

GTX 960, 970, or 980 are all a significant upgrade and all according to nVidia will run on a 500 W supply or less. Even a 980 Ti or Titan X might be possible (but I wouldn't recommend it). nVidia's current lineup have really focussed on power efficiency.

Attempting to replicate a mouse pointer with a controller is the wrong approach IMHO. The PS4 control scheme should be designed for the controller for good results, and not end up being a kludge of the PC control scheme.

Businesses typically consider their finances confidential information. So do most individuals for that matter. For better or worse it's how things are. We also know Squad don't even want KSP sales figures to be public, as shown by them having demanded Steamspy not publish figures for their game.

All that shows though is that KSP's editor currently isn't suited to gamepads, not that a gamepad-friendly editor is impossible. Does Squad not have to publicly file accounts or similar? I don't know the rules on businesses in Mexico.

So I'll preface my arguments with two statements: 1) I'm not personally interested in this. I feel the PS4 doesn't offer enough that the PC lacks, and I also have a strong antipathy towards Sony that means I avoid buying their products. 2) I'm assuming the good-case scenario. That is, that the PS4 port has some time and effort put into making it good, that relevant development such as performance improvement is shared between PS4 and PC versions, and that compromises needed for the PS4 version are not forced on the PC version. I'll grant the second one there is pretty bold. The company Squad have contracted-out the port to haven't worked on games for the mainstream consoles since the PS2. Contracting out the port at all probably restricts the code sharing between PS4 and PC versions. With that out of the way, I feel Kerbal Space Program could work very well on the PS4. Controls The most commonly raised objection but I don't really see it as a problem. Considering flight, a keyboard is hardly an ideal control method being limited to binary on/off inputs and yet most players manage just fine. I've played KSP using a controller and for planes it's an absolute joy, far far better than using the keyboard. For rockets it's fine too. There are enough buttons for all the core functions. Now some of the ancillary stuff will be trickier, things like locking individual engine gimbals and so on, but I see no reason the developers can't solve that. Perhaps a menu-based system, perhaps using the PS4's touchpad, perhaps something else. For the editor, again the current controls are deeply flawed. We're trying to manipulate things in a 3D environment using a 2D input device and it not infrequently causes trouble. Try moving a rocket to exactly where you want it in the VAB, or attaching an engine to a central tank and not the six tanks surrounding it, and we're liable to have problems. Now with a controller the player can have direct 3D inputs, with buttons or thumbsticks for up/down, left/right, and in/out, and all the problems that using a mouse brings go away. Done well the VAB on PS4 could be in some ways better than what we have now. Then the control improvements needed to make the game work well on PS4 can be backported to the PC version, giving us PC players the best of both worlds with the possibility to combine a controller or joystick with a keyboard and mouse. Ultimately the assumption that the PS4 controls are going to be bad is an argument from ignorance. Just because you can't imagine how the controls would work well, doesn't mean they cannot possibly work well. Performance This is a fair concern but I feel the developers will overcome it. KSP is going to need some serious optimizations to run well on the PS4, which it will get, not least because neither Sony nor PS4 gamers will be impressed with a lagfest. I expect Squad are reasonably confident those optimizations can be made when they announced the PS4 port, and I also expect they'll make it back to the PC version. Best-case scenario, for PC players lag is a thing of the past unless you go in for truly huge builds. Mods If there aren't mods for the PS4 version it's obviously a big minus to that version, but I doubt it will hurt the commercial success on PS4 much. After all I expect the typical KSP PS4 version buyer is someone who can't play the PC version anyway. On the other hand it will probably encourage Squad to make the stock game better, and add features that previously they were happy to "leave" to mods because those features need to be stock to be on PS4. Then the stock game is made better on PC too. Rushed development? I said from ages ago the move to "1.0 full release" was a business decision not one based on the development progress. I don't believe it was just down to the PS4 port plans though. There were many other factors that could have influenced Squad, such as the increasingly poor reputation of Steam "Early Access" or the desire to get the game in other storefronts. In any case KSP isn't a traditional release-and-done game, development is ongoing and the numbers mean nothing really.

Because I'm running an operating system which has a fully stable 64-bit build of KSP that has not given me any trouble. (Linux, specifically Xubuntu 14.04.)

Working on an Eve ascent vehicle, and on a whim decided to chuck it into the Sun. Then cheated to determine whether a certain rumour was true. Look just under the altimeter The Magic Heatproof Button! by cantab314, on Flickr

The Big Bang? The Big Crunch? EDIT: An event horizon?

Invisibility?

A Volkswagen Beetle?

Just sunrise? Sunrise on the Moon? On Comet 67P? On anywhere that isn't the Earth?

Intel or AMD: Whichever is good value in your budget. Intel has a strong edge in KSP though. Motherboard: Get something decent but there's no need to pay the Earth. RAM: 8 GB. Brand doesn't matter much but I don't like RAM with big fins, they get in the way. SSD: If gaming performance is your only concern then none. If general system responsiveness then I'd go for a Crucial SSD. 128 GB would hold the OS but not many games, 256 would be better. Graphics: *The* most important thing for gaming performance in the majority of games. (KSP is an exception actually!). If gaming is the primary focus then I feel the graphics card should be maybe twice the cost of the processor for good balance. On a $500 hardware budget (reckoning $100 for the OS) I think a good build would be Pentium G3258, GTX 960, 8 GB of RAM, and Crucial MX100 256 GB. Add in a decent value motherboard that supports overclocking, and a 400-500 Watt power supply by a major brand. And if there's the money left over get a nice CPU cooler to get a better overclock and quieter PC. The system will be great for KSP and virtually all games, except for a few that misbehave on dual-core processors. People worry a lot about "bottlenecking" - that the framerate from the 960 with the Pentium might be less than the framerate from the 960 with a better processor. But that misses the point that if you bought a better processor you then couldn't afford the 960. Stepping down to a lower graphics card in order to buy a better processor would give worse framerates in the majority of games.

Sunrise on comet 67-P illuminating Philae's solars?

Is Starwhip's the lunar ascent module?

Roots? An icicle?

Correct! That riddle sure didn't stick around.

OK then, a real quickie: What stays stuck on one place yet can travel around the world?

Whoops, I missed Xannari's post before. I'll see if I can come up with something quickly.

On graphics cards, it's worth keeping in mind power consumption. By way of example, I think these two options would give similar performance: [table=width: 500, class: grid] [tr] [td][/td] [td]GTX 750 Ti (new)[/td] [td]GTX 470 (used)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Price[/td] [td]£110[/td] [td]£45[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Gaming power draw[/td] [td]60 W[/td] [td]200 W[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Hours/day gaming[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Power consumption kWh in 2 years[/td] [td]131.4[/td] [td]438[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Cost per kWh[/td] [td]£0.18[/td] [td]£0.18[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Electricity cost in 2 years[/td] [td]£23.65[/td] [td]£78.84[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Total cost over 2 years[/td] [td]£133[/td] [td]£123[/td] [/tr] [/table] Suddenly that big up-front saving is all but eaten up. Now I'll admit this is an extreme example in terms of the power difference and you still need to play graphically-intensive games - which KSP isn't! - quite a bit to lose out, but it's still worth bearing in mind. Similar things apply when comparing new power-efficient nVidia cards with their power-hungry AMD counterparts.

Could it be the UI that's causing the excessive garbage creation? If for example the game is making a new instance of the relevant objects every frame instead of reusing them. That would be consistent with changing the framerate limit improving things and with different behaviour in different scenes.

A gemstone? A precious metal?

A gravestone?

No. It's an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel display card and not remotely suitable for gaming.Here's one guide with recommendations for various budgets, albeit in UK prices http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32899.html Generally speaking the graphics card market is pretty competitive though and you get what you pay for.