SkyRender

Ah the joys of cross-generational forums... My parents had toy trains as kids; not sure what my grandparents had. I've had the lot, though: those wooden unpowered train sets when I was little, LEGO when I got older, video games from my teen years onwards (not that I wasn't playing video games before that, but it was about exactly when I turned 13 that I started making levels for DooM and thus was using video games as construction toys).

I think you're speaking crazy speak. Just because powered landings can be fun doesn't mean that you should have to do them.

I'm of the opinion that, if they can get enough of the aspects they want for 1.0 in place for an interim release, they should consider it. Sort of like how the 0.18 series added new content for the interim releases (Pol and Eeloo were added in 0.18.1 and 0.18.2, respectively). Of course, it's up to the development team to decide.

RAPIER engines mass the same as Turbojets, but possess the same air-breathing thrust/ISP output and remove the need for a rocket engine for final orbital insertion (admittedly not very well, but still). Even with a mod like FAR reducing their power, they remain very, very powerful little engines.

If the system is incompatible with the engine it's implemented in, at best you can say that the design of the system is insufficiently designed for the limitations of the engine. "Working as designed" is meaningless if "as designed" is a flawed specification.

That uncontrollable oscillation...! That insane rotation...! That's exactly what I keep encountering with FAR! In fact, I ran into the strangest variant of it yet yesterday: a QBE core with 8 Structural Pylons ringing it, plus one on top, plus a procedural fairing base below it was launched up about 10,000m for a lithobraking test. What happened next was absolutely insane: the QBE started spinning, faster and faster, completely out of my control! It bled off so much velocity on the way down during this uncontrollable spin that it hit the ground at only 70m/s. It looked like some sort of FAR variant of the infiniglide bug, but what caught my attention in all of it was how the QBE was spinning up to absolutely insane speeds along its roll axis. The oscillation effect I've run into even with craft that are otherwise completely stock and the only mod running is FAR, so I'm thinking it's something in FAR itself causing the see-saw motion.

Seeing as I already use Karbonite and/or Kethane (which depends on if Kethane is up to date for the current version of KSP or not), probably not much is going to actually change.

I'd estimate that at least 50% of KSP's issues stem from Unity's quirks, bugs, glitches, and design oversights. A game can only be as good as the engine it's coded in allows it to be, after all. On the subject of when this bug was first uncovered, it was around version 0.20 or so. They switched over to HTTP loading since it's faster than Unity's default loading, not realizing that Unity had such a glaring bug in it regarding enabled-but-disconnected internet connections. Before we knew about that being the root cause, we were checking for all sorts of possible causes: CPU manufacturer, RAM, hard drive manufacturer... In the end, someone who had discovered the issue in a different Unity-based game and solved it for that game clued us in to the issue with HTTP loading, and there was much rejoicing. If you want to see this absurd problem solved, SQUAD is not who you need to pick on; Unity's developers are. They're the ones who have not only had the bug in place for over a year and a half, but also done nothing to fix it even though it affects every single game that uses that routine to load resources. And most Unity games do now, since HTTP loading is literally twice as fast as the normal file load routines, outside of this glaring issue.

Disable all internet connections in Control Panel save the one(s) that are actually active. That will bypass the bug, since Unity at least is not stupid enough to try to make calls to disabled internet connections. If KSP starts loading super-slow again, odds are good that some program (usually Hamachi) has sneakily created a new internet connection without your permission. Just go back into Control Panel and disable that new internet connection as well if that happens.

I remember getting hit by that problem and helping diagnose it. It's due to a bug in how Unity handles its http:// calls, which is how pretty much every resource in KSP is called. Unity will attempt to access all active internet connections when calling that function, even if the call is completely local. If you have an active-but-not-connected internet connection, it will sit there waiting for a "no response" from that connection before trying the next one. Again, this happens even with local file calls, and should not happen at all. It's a very long-standing Unity bug; it's been on the list of requested fixes for at least a year and a half now.

KerbalKon 2012 will always stick out in my memory as the moment when KSP took off for me. I was already a fan of the game before that, but KerbalKon 2012 brought us 0.18 (the biggest update to date at that point) and really got me hyped to play KSP a lot more. Not long after, a number of long-running KSP series on YouTube started, such as Scott Manley's Reusable Space Program. That event was the point where I switched over from playing KSP occasionally for kicks to really playing KSP.

I actually built a rover once with a cage of girders around it as part of my effort to make that rover more capable of surviving flips. (It also had a pair of mini reaction wheels for flipping itself over.) The end result was a rover that was practically indestructible. As long as it didn't land on its wheels (which a rover rarely does when it flips), it could survive tumbles at 60m/s just fine. The main point of this is, if you want to make a craft that can survive impacts, wrap it in the thick girder segments you start with in Career mode.

That reminded me of a classic XKCD comic, actually: It's amazing what a few seconds of revision can do. Not to mention what a few minutes of careful thought before putting a single word in the text input box can do.

KSP is in fact both, as the two are not mutually exclusive. However, as for what its overall identity is, the answer is definitely "a game built around a simulator", not "a simulator with a game mode". Career mode is too comprehensive to call it the latter any longer.

I think you need to be a bit more specific in what sort of payloads they're going to be lifting. Though I suppose a good idea would be to list them according to how much collateral damage they're going to cause if the launch goes haywire. So you could call them Little Bang, Big Boom, Huge Blast, Crater-Maker, Catastrophe-in-Waiting, and Rocket Apocalypse.

There's at least one more easter egg like that on the Mk3 parts. The Mk3 to Mk2 Adapter has "Curvy!" written on it. EDIT: Here's a shot of it: I realize that the spelling is slightly different than I said it was, but this is because I auto-correct K Syndrome whenever I encounter it.

You don't actually need that much to do a successful Duna mission. This craft is a great example of one that's relatively low-tech, has no complex operations, and can gather a wealth of science from Duna while allowing two Kerbals to go along. You don't even need a pilot Kerbal thanks to the OKTO core, so you can take an Engineer and Scientist along instead. The strict tech tree requirements for this craft are: Basic Rocketry, General Rocketry, Stability, Survivability, General Construction, Advanced Rocketry, Fuel Systems, Flight Control, Science Tech, Heavy Rocketry, Advanced Flight Control, Electrics, Space Exploration. (Obviously some changes will have to be made to the craft for it to work at that tech level, mostly just replacing the orange tanks with two mid-size 2.5m tanks; the nosecones are purely decorative for this version of KSP as well.) All of that you can unlock in the first tier of the R&D center, and the rocket itself can easily be built in the tier-2 VAB for a tier-2 launchpad. Flying it's easy too. Get to orbit, intercept Duna, aerobrake, land, return to orbit, re-pack parachutes, return to Kerbin.

Sure do. I remember that one being released to much amused fanfare back in the day. I think I even tried it out for kicks, in fact.

Before SpacePort, there was actually an unofficial mod stockpile of sorts. I found it just a few months ago, and it was still loaded with mods for up to about version 0.13 or so. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bookmark it and finding it in my browser history could take quite some time... EDIT: Found it! Sort of. It used to be called Kerbal Space Repository. Thing is, the domain expired, so the page doesn't exist any longer. Alas. Still, this thread is a relevant blast from the past on the subject.

I couldn't say if KSP has been particularly instrumental in promoting space travel, but I can say that certain individuals could do with the dose of perspective that performing a mission into space provides. KSP is certainly useful for that in a way that televised missions never could be.

0.11 Acquired KSP 0.12 Landed on the Mun; pre-purchased KSP 0.15 Landed on Minmus 0.17 Landed on Duna, Eve, Ike, Gilly 0.18 First docking, first visit to the Joolian system (landed on Laythe, Vall, Bop), landed on Dres 0.18.1 Landed on Pol 0.18.4 Landed on Eeloo, Moho, Tylo Pretty much everything since has been having fun with the game and (once it was implemented) finding ways to break Career mode.

Thanks for reminding me, RIC! I had in fact forgotten, mostly because back then it was common to refer to the mod by the mod creator's alias.

There were actually mods made for KSP before even I started playing. The Sunday Punch Pack was one of the early favorites, as was the Nova Pack, and later they were combined into the NovaPunch Pack. I don't recall if either were necessarily the first, but both were early "must-have" KSP mods.

Because the road happened to be below his craft at the time. He crossed it again 30 minutes later on his next orbit, too.

This was one of the craziest missions I have ever run. The Minimun Lander took off for orbit late at night, bearing its payload of Jebediah Kerman and his tiny Mun lander capsule. Once in orbit, Jeb boarded his mini-lander (and I turned off TAC because he would die horribly on this crazy mission if I didn't). The trip out to the Mun was uneventful. I made a few test-landings before deciding on this site, which was pretty high up and took the least amount of fuel to pull off. My return was where the mission genuinely got nuts. Jeb had to use his (genuinely limited!) supply of EVA propellant to push his little lander into alignment with the target craft, and I had to perform the single most insane aerobraking I have ever done. Look at that margin! Even with all of my careful planning and antics, it was up to Jeb upon intercept with the mother craft, EVA over, take control of it, and perform final docking with it since the lander was bone-dry at this point. Landing... took a long time. A very long time. Pinpoiinting KSC was difficult, and actually landing right at it was effectively impossible thanks to FAR misbehaving so badly. So I settled for "close enough". The results screen compared with the original cost tell the tale: overall the trip cost 724 funds. If I'd managed to land it perfectly at KSC's runway somehow, the total mission cost would have been only 273 funds.