SkyRender

Because unlike Jeb and co., she's realized that they left the keys to the VAB back on the surface of Eve. They're gonna get an earful from Wernher and Gene Kerman when they get back.

It's a purely aesthetic bug, fortunately. There are a number of points where the refresh routine for funds, reputation, and science should be called, but are not. Another one is after accepting a contract: reputation and science don't get updated, though Funds do. So if you have a strategy that converts funds to reputation or science, you won't see the change (or have access to the benefits) until you switch to a scene that refreshes those two values.

I noticed that the heating from aerodynamic forces also cuts out around 32 to 35km, which helps since otherwise you hit the "death wall" (that being the speed at which parts exposed to the airstream start exploding; 1200m/s is the usual speed for that at any altitude). Once you're past that point, it's smooth sailing.

The LV-N would be fine if 1.) it was even remotely modeled after actual nuclear rocket motor proposed design (hint: they also planned to use the same cooling systems as more traditional rocket engines did), or 2.) there were actual heat radiator parts that actually had any sort of effect. Whatever the case, as it stands, the LV-N is currently the most nerfed of all the engines thanks to how the heating system currently works.

Turns out KER was calculating it wrong! The dV of the craft is actually closer to 1300m/s now, which it correctly reports in-flight. For whatever reason, it was giving the wrong number in the VAB. That's one mystery solved.

That's the thing, though: the losses due to gravity on an airless body should be minimal with an efficient landing sequence, even with lower TWR. Indeed, the best fuel margins I managed were around 2% with that lander in 1.0, slowing down horizontally at periapsis and only having to fight gravity for 1.5km. That doesn't really add up, particularly since a similar level of fuel use with the previous version of that engine handled over 5km vertical speed killed. The ISP was not changed for the engine at all, as I noted with the dV rating for the craft being identical between the two versions. A TWR drop from ~5 to ~2.5 should not result in a 15% increase in dV required to land. That pretty much just leaves the Mun's gravity as the culprit.

The Pol thing actually got figured out! If you do any science around the Flag Pole at KSC, it gets registered as Pol. I like to think that the Kerbals got confused about the difference between a Pole and Pol, and started putting out requests for Pol because they really wanted to know more about that flag pole.

Something I noticed in my latest game is that a lander which I designed in 0.90 that could reliably land and return to Munar orbit with 8 to 12% fuel margins now gets closer to 0.5% fuel margins. I used KER to check, and the dV values are the same between the two (~1500dV), so I have to wonder what the culprit is here. It could be the engine power nerf (it's a Rockomax 48-7S, which took a massive hit in thrust), but I'm wondering if anyone else has had issues like this.

I would like it known that I think the testing and experimental teams did a fantastic job. Something we often forget as end users is that we don't actually see the really nasty bugs that pop up. And having done testing before myself, I know why certain bugs that seem "obvious" made it into the final build: last-minute changes to fix major issues often cause minor problems in other areas. It's a lot like plugging a leaking dam, in that when you patch up the big holes, a bunch of little ones tend to pop up at the same time. You can't realistically re-test every single aspect of the game after each and every fix the developers make; you'd literally never leave the testing phase if you did that! I suspect that the testers were (when presented with a new build that fixed an issue) instructed to focus mainly on the issues that were fixed to make sure they didn't resurface (a smart thing to do, since often problems run deeper than they seem to!), then focus on the most common aspects of play, and if they had time, test the more complex aspects. So yeah, I suggest you not be too hard on the testing team. They had a hard job to do.

The new tech tree has some questionable decisions (quite a number of parts seem to be placed too late on the tree for when they'd first be useful versus when they get outclassed), but overall it's pretty good.

I mentioned it in another topic, but Kryten over at The Science Labs is one of the posters who's still active and predates the majority of us. Obviously HarvesteR has us all beat.

That's because currently building damage is calculated as a factor of mass and velocity, with no consideration of duration of impact (unsurprisingly; that sort of attention to detail is something that few games have). Meaning that a craft that weighs enough hitting the pad even at 2m/s can destroy it.

Oh I know a lot about software development. And one thing I know is that you either dedicate a part of your testing team to checking the mundane potential issues involving basic decisions the user can make, or you code an app to do that checking for you. A well-run testing cycle does both random and systematic testing, as the usual method of "just do whatever and report any bugs you find" is going to miss a lot of bugs that a systematic approach will find.

...How did that not get caught in testing!? I would think "check to make sure that every part that can be made the root of the vessel does not cause problems when set to be the root of the vessel" would be a pretty high-priority item on the checklist of things to check...

Further testing of the heat system issues continues! As I predicted, there is in fact a 'death wall' speed limit of around 900 to 1200m/s below about 35km or so on Kerbin. It's really poorly realized, too: I just had the fairing on a rocket blow off as I crossed that magic number, even though there was no shock heating prior to that on the rocket at all. A quick check of the variables for the heating engine shows that, regardless of altitude, heat builds up in a purely linear fashion relative to speed: you'll hit the same temperature at the same speed regardless of how long you've been flying or how thick the atmosphere is. The heat radiation parts do dissipate this heat, but it's heat that should not actually be generated under many of the conditions it is generated. EDIT: And a new bug discovered along with that! When the fairing blew up, all control of the ship was completely lost. Even though there were two command pods and a probe core present, no controls responded at all. Everything inside the fairing appears to have been marked as "dead" when the fairing blew up, despite the fact that it was all still intact and functional.

They can take a LOT of abuse, generally speaking, before they blow up. But yes, it is a good idea to angle your vessels slightly away from the launchpad right away at launch. Particularly in the new version since aerodynamics have taken on a more realistic model and gravity turns are thus much more gradual when done properly now.

Same reason why any of us who registered before a certain point in 2012 weren't: we registered before the last date of the database backup that they restored the forums from.

I joined up around 0.10, so no. Though of the active forum members, a few definitely have. I'm pretty sure Kryten started with the first version, and he's a regular over in The Science Labs forum even now.

Well given that they formally released the game yesterday, I'd cut them some slack. To say that it's been a busy time for them is an understatement; it's understandable that the Devnote Tuesday for this week would be delayed at the very least.

There don't seem to be any limitations on where experiments can be performed any longer, indeed. Which is very helpful since the tech tree needs a whole lot more science points to unlock everything...

You'll probably find that the forum is pretty biased population-wise towards people who bought the game before 1.0 came out at this point. Myself, I made my purchase pretty much as soon as I heard that the price would be going up to $10 for the next version and would keep rising after. Still the best $7 I've ever spent on any game.

A lot of the earliest posters aren't around any longer. It's actually kind of sad, going back through the earliest forum posts. I recognize the old usernames and remember them posting, and find myself wondering when it was they stopped posting. EDIT: Yep, there I am on page 355 of 4713. Meaning that, even if my accouint is #10,659, it's still one of the first.

I think most of us bringing up problems agree that this is a great update. It's just that there are still issues which need to be addressed, and there's no easy way to let the developers know that without coming off as complaining or being condescending. While there are a handful who are knowingly being offensive about these issues, most of us are just trying to be helpful.

After more testing, I can conclusively declare that the heat system needs a complete overhaul, full stop. The way things are calculated at the moment, going between 900 and 1200m/s (how fast depends on the max temperature of the parts you're using) at any atmosphere density greater than 0.05atm is fatal without a heatshield... but anything less than that is not. More to the point, the "death wall" speed is the exact same at all altitudes on up to that atmospheric density (around 25km up), after which the "wall" tapers off exponentially and completely vanishes by 35km or so. This... is not how shock heating works. At all.

The whole "go boom over 900m/s" problem is actually because the heating system is borked right now. It's factoring atmospheric heat generation completely wrong, failing to account for just about everything that an atmosphere does when shock heating is generated. Basically, it's generating the same level of heat at any given increasing speed regardless of atmospheric density.