Creature

Well that's not exactly what I meant. What you're saying is true, but it applies to any sort of station part that is useful in some way. That's the only good thing about the MPL, it has some utility and it's a reason to have stations. But what I was trying to say is that the mechanic itself is not interesting. You land somewhere, get the experiments as usual and then you take the same experiments again and shove them into the MPL and come back a year later for free science. Maybe I'm expecting too much but it just doesn't seem well thought out.

I did, but it was mostly just for the heck of it. But yeah, what you said is exactly the point. It just does something. There doesn't seem to be any game design behind it. Even though it's useful or even necessary in hard mode, the gameplay and design behind it is still kinda weird and definitely not engaging.

Exactly. The social security alone for one month in my country almost equals the whole years minimum wage in Mexico. Different countries have insanely huge economical differences. How does anyone expect a company to pay over ten times higher salaries than average especially before they've released any products at all? Imagine an indie start-up game company in the US trying to pay every programmer and artist 20 000 dollars per month.

I just have a hard time figuring out what's the design philosophy behind the part. Did they really think the player needs a way to re-use the same experiments from a biome for practically unlimited science? Or that such a part would somehow improve the gameplay? Even if you're not cheesing out with multiple labs, even the basic usage just doesn't seem to promote any kind of meaningful or fun gameplay. It's not even a much of a design choise, just slap MPL in your station and you're good to go.

Another vote for Vernor Vinge, especially A Deepness in the Sky is my favourite. Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space -series is pretty great, it has minimal amount of hand-waving as far as space operas go. Main series (in this order) is Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap and The Prefect. There's also some books in different universes and short stories from him, but Revelation Space is the best series IMO. Iain M Banks of course! Read at least Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, and Use of Weapons before making up your mind. Consider Phlebas is not that great but they get better and better. Also from the more recent ones Hugh Howey's Silo series is interesting too. For old school, read pretty much anyhing by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris being probably the most famous one.

Most of mine have already been mentioned, but here's a few: 1. Nebulas and asteroid fields. "Oh no, they're flying into the nebula!" Yes, it sure is awful. They will now encounter at least two more molecules every 1000 kilometers than they would outside the nebula. 2. How science is depicted in general. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/683:_Science_Montage

This sounds about right to me, too. I play career only and I hate it. I love building stuff, I love flying my designs and overall KSP is amazing, but darn do I hate career. But it's the only way to have at least some game mechanics to progression, science and budgets so it's still better than sandbox for me. To get a bit deeper into the subject, I think one differentiating thing could be whether people see playing KSP as either gaming or more as a playful activity. Those who play sandbox maybe have a more playful attitude and get enjoyment from just having free reign to decide how they want to experience KSP. On the other hand career players don't necessarily recognize this and might feel that sandbox players are just blatantly breaking all the rules that define the game. There's a trend these days that adult playfulness is becoming a thing with stuff like coloring books for adults and such. In a way this is in part what simulators really cater to as well. There's no "game" to play, it's much more about experiencing the playground and having fun with what's there. You're not trying to game the system or beat the game. I know I probably ruffle some feathers by saying sandbox players are more playful, and some people probably interpret this as "not serious" but that's not what it means (after all this applies to even the most hardcore simulators). It's more a matter of what you're actually enjoying as you play the game and how you approach it.

For me it's really about what I consider to be the "game" in this game. What I want to do is game the system, so to speak. I want to try to find the best and most efficient ways to progress in the game and sandbox really doesn't have that in the same way since it has far less restrictions and fewer game mechanics in place. To me sandbox feels a bit like solving a Rubik's cube with a hammer and superglue - it's more about getting a nice looking cube than actually solving the puzzle. There's always the option to just brute-force your way through anything by making monster rockets and as many launches as you want to get where you want. And I don't mean this as condescending towards sandbox, I enjoy it from time to time a lot, but it's just a fact that there are fewer puzzles there to solve. Sandbox gives me the hammer and glue as legitimate options that I can use if I choose to and I'm not breaking any rules. At least that's what it feels like to me. It's the same thing with badly balanced or overpowered parts **coughcoughMPLcoughcough**. If the solution to not breaking your gameplay is "don't use it", it's a badly designed mechanic. I find it difficult to feel satisfaction in playing the game if I have to constantly and consciously stop myself from touching certain parts of the game. In terms of progressive gameplay, sandbox is a bad design for that (obviously since it's designed to be the exact opposite). Although it wouldn't have to be, had it been designed differently. Take RemoteTech for example. It's a good way to progress in sandbox environment. You really have to launch those relay satellites if you want the comms coverage. Or if you want to get rid of comms delay, use a manned control station. It doesn't help you at all no matter how many free monster rockets you can launch, you still have to do that. So there you have a solid progression element. Same goes for ISRU. If these kinds of elements were present in science and funds and part research, I'd be really happy. But in the end I'd guess that the people who play sandbox and to whom self-imposed challenges are enough are enjoying a different aspect of the game than those who want career mode to bring the challenges. But yeah, I don't like the career we have right now and I don't get much enjoyment from playing with those mechanics but I guess that's a topic for another discussion.

If you could get realism overhaul, that would basically make KSP your simulation software. If it feels a bit daunting and you don't have too much time then just use the stock version, RO is quite a handful at start. Just remember that you're supposed to focus on the problem and the solution, not on you playing the game. You could for example take a probe which has too little dV to reach a planet and then propose how you would use a gravity assist to solve the problem. That would be fairly simple to do even with RO if you have time to set it up. Just presenting the dV requirements, craft capabilities and the transfer orbits should be more than enough for a high school project. Another idea would be to present something like a moon landing but instead of one big rocket to bring the command module and lander, you use two small ones and dock the two craft together in orbit. That way you can focus more on the rockets themselves and present a more detailed math on the rocket equation and maybe even show the huge difference in launch vehicle size if you go with either one or double launch, then present some discussion on why Apollo went with one huge rocket. For a more straightforward problem you could also just take staging as your subject and show in detail why it's used, the differences between atmospheric and vacuum engines and if you go the RO route you can discuss for example different fuels and boil-off and such. I don't know if any of this was helpful but just random ideas that popped into my mind

I thought we assumed Earth-like plantlife and surroundings. Of course if the biochemistry is somehow exotic, then it's a whole different discussion. I'm sorry but most of what you're saying just doesn't make much sense. In photosynthesis plants capture light by chlorophylls, which is a generic term for an organic molecule that covers several variations of the same basic structure. It has two major absorption bands at blue and yellow-red areas (hence the color). The absorption spectrum is defined by the molecular structure. There are tons of pigments that absorb at near-IR for example. It doesn't work at all like you described. The pigment doesn't have to be "more sensitive" in any way, it just needs a different absorption band. Obviously the energy of longer wavelength radiation is much smaller, hence it's not a good source of energy for photosynthesis and the associated biochemistry would be different. I think there was a mention somewhere in Wikipedia about some plants even using IR for photosynthesis, but I won't vouch for it's accuracy. In any case, the light absorbing molecule is still just a regular carbon-based organic molecule and their photobleaching properties are a completely separate issue. For example you can't just "bash" an IR-dye with UV kill it like you suggest. First of all it doesn't catch the UV light very well, it just passes over it. This is also a nice property, because it can be used for spectrophotometry. Second thing is that even if it would absorb it (and be an UV pigment instead), it would probably withstand our UV levels just fine since organic pigments do that fairly well in general. Unless you propose that the covalent bonds are somehow weaker around red dwarfs? The reason why UV is dangerous for living things is because DNA has absorption maximum at 260 nm, which means that as long as the exoplants have DNA, they are susceptible to UV induced cell damage. This has zero to do with photosynthesis. Like I said, it's possible that life developing around a red dwarf might be ultra sensitive to UV, but it's just as likely that it would have the same resistance to it as any domestic plant. But since it's already hard to say if a plant from Siberia would live when transferred to Mongolia, it's impossible to say these things about a fictional exoplant.

What do you think is the reason why this would happen? Assuming they're made of similar organic structures as plants here, why would the molecules break? The molecular bonds are the same strength and proteins hold together just fine under our light so I don't see why the molecules would start breaking apart. If their photosynthesis uses primarily red to infrared spectrum, the most important factor is the difference in intensity at the absorbing spectrum between our star and their home star. If it's much greater here, the biochemical kinetics could possibly be overwhelmed and cause a myriad of problems but if it's about the same, there should be no issues. This of course is also dependant on how far from the parent star their home planet is. So taking for example the near-IR, let's say 900 nm wavelength. What's the intensity of 900 nm light on Earth and could there be a planet at some reasonable distance from a red dwarf so that the intensities would be the same? Another thing that could be a factor is if their home world has low levels of UV, then they might not be adapted to it. I'm not a botanist but plants on Earth have adapted to all kinds of different conditions so it's probably more a question of evolution. There is no underlying law of nature saying they couldn't thrive here, it's just a matter of details wether or not they can or can not adapt and would some other random factor here cause their death.

I see right through your evil master plan! As for the topic itself, if we assume only one trip and let's say the time traveler is 30 years old, lives to 75 via sheer luck (all of you going to B.C times, have fun with the doctors back then) and has to live to see the rocket launch. 1912 Russia would work for sure. The main issue is that there's just not enough time to develop the necessary infrastructure if you go too far back. Something like 1850 could work in a very optimistic scenario but it's hard to do stuff like this in 45 years. Even skipping all unnecessary studies and super-optimising the education process, it would still take 10-15 years of studying to aquire the required skills to even start building the infrastructure, 10-15 years to build that before the developement of the rocket could even start. So yeah, I'd say in extremely optimistic scenario, 1850 and one of the european superpowers (also because they can ask help from other superpowers easily) or Russia or possibly China (not familiar enough with chinese history). But in any case I don't think anything before the industrial revolution would work.

Can I vote for a colony on Earth orbit? There's a huge amount of science to be done, it's pretty safe and easy to evacuate, easy to get to and pretty much anything we want to do in space can be done in orbit or Moon surface. There's some entertainment value and possible soonish even real tourism value that would drive technological development forward. It's also nice because we have no idea how to build self-sustaining colonies, how to construct or mine anything in space, how to lift ultra heavy payloads at a reasonable cost to space or how to even survive in space for extended periods of time without some major clinical concerns. I'd like to see all of this stuff figured out within the next 50 years.

Something like this is probably a big reason behind most conventions outside science. Like for example we use comma as decimal point here, which kinda makes sense if you're writing things by hand because it's easier to see that way and in normal life there's usually no need to write down numbers beyond thousands so you don't even need separators. And if you do, you can just leave a small space and it's pretty much always clear what the intention is. Same goes for millions and billions, we use the silly milliard concept here which again is actually more convenient if you don't go above that or translate between languages. It's convenient because it's phonetically more different from million than the word billion and our language doesn't use the letter b much. Also people don't normally need higher numbers than that and event then it's mostly for things like government budgets and such. Otherwise it's just plain silly. In science people here often speak in powers of ten just to avoid any confusion. It's not uncommon to see mistranslations in media where the english word billion translates to finnish word billion which is wrong.

Semantics. They are a company which developed and released a game, they have a sizeable team only developing the game and nothing else. They have a commercial product which has sold a significant amount of copies and generates a sizeable revenue. They publish through Steam. They're workign on a console port. For all intents and purposes that makes them a game company. Also the last time I checked, KSP is officially launched as a finished product. They have 3 (?) years of experience now, one succesfully launched product, collaborations with for example NASA and kerbalEDU, merchandise and an active community. Maybe we have different standards for what counts as experience, but I'd say that's quite a alot already. Yes it's nothing compared to the grand old masters and Blizzard-level megacompanies, but in their own league Squad has done a lot and they've gone through the whole process now. Honestly I don't understand why so many people seem to have this huge need to categorize Squad as something else than a medium-sized independently funded game studio? I think that's a pretty cool thing to be.

My thoughts exactly. I love KSP, it's well worth the money and then some. But I've been on a hiatus for almost a year after the massive letdown that career mode was, just waiting for some new and actually interesting gameplay elements to be added. And I'm still waiting. But Unity 5 port is obviously the most important thing they need to be doing right now, also because it enables future content in a completely new way. But I think they really should hire a designer who has experience in designing sand box-type games with progression and economy elements to create a completely new and actually interesting career mode. Call it an expansion, name it Kerbal Space Race and slap a 20€ price tag on it. If it's even remotely good, I'll pay and I bet many others will too. The way I see it, Squad has been doing this for a while now and they've delivered a succesful product. They're not two guys in a shed coding a game, or a marketing company dabbling in game development or a tiny indie group just trying to make a small profit. They're an actual game company with a good reputation, experience and great product which has sold a significant amount of copies. It just bugs me that I'm a happy customer ready to shower them with money if they would just up their game but they seem to have no interest in that. Instead it looks like they're re-developing the same game over and over and adding content that's not really content. I hope this will change after 1.1 and the whole U5 hassle is over.

I think many of the questions and arguments in this thread would benefit from more clearly defined parameters. Like what's the range the engagements are happening at? Where are the crafts coming from and how fast? Are they highly maneuverable? How big are they? If we assume scaled up laser technology, how does the heat shielding technology hold up? If we go with today's technology, I'd say missiles are very good against any space target but so are lasers. And pebbles, too. If we're on the more sci-fi end of the technology spectrum with a highly maneuverable ship closing in at relativistic speed behind a massive heat shield then kinetic armament could be useful. If the attacker is able to dodge well enough and keep the evasive maneuvers up for a long time, it's almost impossible to hit it effectively until it's well within a few light minutes at best. If that's the case, then I could imagine firing similarly powered relativistic torpedoes to meet it half way. Even a shrapnel hitting the craft would make for a nice explosion at those speeds. If it's coming in at for example 0.1c, you'd need some hefty lasers to completely vaporize several tons of heat shielding before it makes a pass and unloads whatever attack payload it's carrying. Obviously that sort of propulsion is complete fiction, but so are laser battles in space in general

Oh man, I started reading both of your stories and just couldn't stop. Amazing work! I'm not sure if I'm more impressed about your abilities to write a good story or your ability to write what Kenlie wrote

B.Sc. (Technology) in biotechnology 2013 (majoring in molecular biotechnology and diagnostics but they don't call it that officially anymore, everything is just biotechnology) University of Turku, Finland. M.Sc (Tech) in the works, only need to finish up writing my thesis and graduate before christmas. Same major and university as above. Also a physics dropout, studied for 2 years in university, started hating it, took a break before switching majors and now I kinda miss it...

Fun fact about space whiskey: A major distillery has been studying it. I can already see what my 60th birthday present will be.

I play career but I don't really like the way it works. I don't hate it either but it's just that I want some sort of progression in my game and so far career is what gives it. But it feels very arbitrary. If KSP was a city building game, we wouldn't get money from balancing taxes or building industry and commerce and residential areas to support the workers who in turn need entertainment and so on. Instead we'd get random miniquests telling us things like "build a road to a random hill and get money" or "build a swimming hall next to a lake and get money" etc. And that would be all. Contracts don't drive my gameplay, they're just something to do. It doesn't matter so much what I build, where I build or in general what I do in the game. I'm just chasing the randomly generated objectives. It's like an entirely different design paradigm compared to the building and flying part which is where the greatness and fun of this game is.

I think you're kinda missing the point that at least I was trying to make. It's not about the survey itself, that's actually a great mechanic you built there. The process of orbital mapping is the issue, not how it relates to the resource system. Like you said yourself on the first page regarding scansat, it takes 10 seconds to timewarp through the mapping process. That really shouldn't be a problem for anyone since we constantly timewarp anyway. So we gain 10 seconds of timewarping but what we lose is (at least to me) interesting mechanics. And what happens if I mess up something and end up in 60 degree inclination with no dV left to get polar? Normally I should still be able to map out a sizeable portion of the planet. Now the scanner for whatever magical reason just doesn't even work. But anyways I don't mean to criticize the resource system as a whole, it looks great and I can understand your reason for the instascan even if that's not what I'd personally prefer. I just feel this game has too much "right click - press button - you're done" -mechanics as it is.

I think the insta-scan is oversimplifying so much it clashes with KSPs general level of realism. Gameplay-wise you can say it's not exactly "fun" to timewarp through something but on that same principle you could just as well skip all travel through space since hey, that's just timewarping too right? We have timewarp exactly so we can retain the realism level of having to actually do the travelling but still have it condensed to under one minute no matter where you're going. I don't think it's a major issue and in any other game I'd probably back it up as a good decision but not in KSP, it just doesn't fit. Having to actually complete the orbits also forces you to think about the power requirements in the craft design. How much power does the scanner use? Do you have enough batteries to keep it going on the dark side of the planet/moon? Enough solar panels to keep it running in the sunny side as well as to charge the batteries? Now you don't have to think about these things. Having a map being drawn in front of your eyes actually teaches you about how real world satellites move and how the different orbital changes affect the path over ground. It shows you exactly why you have to be on polar orbit if you want to scan everything. If you can't make it to polar you should still be able to scan something, it's just not as complete. But now the scanner magically can't scan at all on equatorial orbit. Just doesn't make sense. It just seems like several interesting mechanics are being thrown out and you're being imposed an unrealistic and potentially infuriating limitation all just so people can avoid 20 seconds of timewarp after first timewarping probably 10 times to get to their destination. Not a big issue but just feels like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Either way presents some pros and cons. Going with multiple pressurized containers you lower the risks of seal breaches. There are more possibilities for it, but the effect is dramatically reduced if it happens. However this shouldn't be an issue because the container needs to be tested and manufactured so well that breach is not even a real possibility. On that thought, one mission critical thing to consider is what sort of regulations the launch provider has for pressurized containers. It's probably doable with just one bar of air inside but it may affect the design so it should be cleared as soon as possible (unless someone already has?) I've never cultured plants (unless growing chilies counts) but I'd imagine that atmospheric variables are a factor in growth. As a rule of thumb with biologicals is that you need to know everything. If there's no growth somewhere, it helps ruling out at least the most obvious factors. On the other hand if you have shared atmosphere but you're actually studying individual growths, then if there's early and/or strong growth, can this affect the growth of others by affecting the shared atmosphere and could it be an issue? Another issue is with temperature measurements. It would be good to measure it from the inside of the growth chamber so that you can tell what the true ambient temperature is, not to mention the gas sensors which need to be in contact with the atmosphere. Obviously due to weight considerations you can't do this with individual cells, the wiring alone would hog several percentages of the precious weight budget. Additionally you need to find a way to get the wiring through the chamber wall while keeping it airtight. This might cause some headache, especially with multiple chambers. To me it seems that you can either choose isolated chambers if you don't necessarily need all that data from the sensors and free up some weight budget or choose shared chamber if you want that sensor data and the interference isn't an issue. Or go with some kind of hybrid solution? Divide the chamber in two separated parts, both with their own heating element and sensors. This way you could keep the other half at low temp where the moss hibernates (guessing around 5 degrees celsius?) and keep the other half at growth temp at the first g-force level. Once the first experiment is finished, spin up to the second gravity condition and start heating the second block. This is of course supposing that hibernating moss starts growing in a reasonable timeframe. As a bonus you could see what happens to the first growth when changing the gravity. One more thing popped into my mind. Was there a spesific reason this experiment is done with the cubesat instead of inside the ISS (apart from the coolness factor)? It would also be interesting if identical experiment was done aboard the ISS using a small centrifuge. That would be a valid control as the conditions inside the station don't change and if the satellite-based experiment performs identically, it would also double as a proof of concept for cubesat based experimenting.

They don't (hopefully) overlook it, it's just that for the most part it doesn't really matter. Whenever something is exposed even in a clean room, it can be contaminated for many reasons which is why other quality control measures should be in place. The chances of contamination and the degree of it is just much smaller in a proper clean room but whatever it is you're doing there is just rated for the appropriate level of cleanliness. The more you want to lower the chances of contamination the more precautions you need to take but nothing is ever completely sterile for sure. I'd imagine though that if you keep to similar levels of carefulness you do with surgery, the chances of contamination are so low that you can be reasonably sure we won't contaminate other planets. The workers just really do have to be mindful of what they touch, not hold their face over anything if at all possible and things like that. Then use chemical cleansing after a part is attached plus UV sterilization and the thing should really be quite clean. It would be interesting to see what the guidelines are for real.