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Scott Manley's kids were playing KSP with him back when they were 5 or 6, so I think it's safe to say that KSP is fine for people of all ages. Though some parental guidance would probably be helpful for anyone under about the age of 8 or so, mostly because reading comprehension on average tends to not be so great prior to that age.

KSP could have been declared a 1.0 release as far back as version 0.18 and been accepted for that. I'm not even kidding here, at that time it was being called "as complete as most full-price retail games". But SQUAD stuck to their scope document for this whole duration, and garnered an ever-growing audience. Much of that audience does not remember the heady days before the Steam release. Much is taken for granted, and the idea of what KSP "should" be has been muddied by a misconception that the game "has" to be made to some illusory standard (which differs immensely from user to user, a huge red flag). Sometimes I think KSP should have gone to 1.0 for version 0.18. That's more or less what Terraria did for its 1.0 release. The current version of Terraria is so much more immense and elaborate that, if they were still calling the game a beta and declared that the next version was going to be 1.0, they'd run into the exact same sort of nonsense that SQUAD is running into now with people declaring that the game is "not ready for 1.0 yet" because their pet features aren't in it. So in summation, I agree that KSP is ready for 1.0. And I add the postulate that it could have been released as 1.0 quite some time ago as well.

I've noticed a rather strange tendency of craft to oscillate when returning from orbit, often around an aerodynamically stable point. Basically, the craft will rock back and forth rather dramatically over the retrograde marker. By around 0.8atm the oscillations are almost manageable, and by 0.9atm they can be brought under control. Is that a behavior that actually happens in real life? I'm genuinely curious.

The simple answer is because I enjoy it. As with most simple answers, that doesn't actually tell you anything, but it does make for a spiffy and memorable quote. The complex answer is because it hits so many chords with how I like to entertain myself. It doesn't abuse the randomizer to introduce artificial difficulty. All challenge comes down to the player's decisions within the consistent framework of rules the game sets out for them, and the player gets meaningful feedback from their choices as well. There are elements of resource management, strategic planning, engineering, project management, and experimentation, all of which I find appealing. At a higher level, the game involves both air and space flight, which are fascinating subjects to me. It allows me to explore other worlds (artificial though they may be) and work within different gravitational contexts while doing so. Higher still, it lets me feel like I've actually accomplished something for all my hard work when a mission comes to a successful close, and like I've learned something even when my plans come undone. Choose your answer from the above two. Both are correct, but one is more correct than the other.

My best estimate is that I've played 2500 hours or so of KSP. Since I have the store version (and since I've been playing since before Steam was an option anyway), I can't really give a more precise figure than that. Now in the US, at least, most games go for $60 for home systems ($40 is about the price ceiling for games on the 3DS). Factoring in PC game prices is a lost cause since they tend to go down to 10% of their original asking price within a single year. Since I've had a fairly even mix of titles between my 3DS and Wii U, I'll put my average price per game at $50 (though if I were completely fair it'd be lower still since I have slightly more 3DS games than Wii U games at this point). Now here's where it gets interesting: the majority of the games I buy are much longer-lasting than your typical 10-hour game. I like to play JRPGs and WRPGs both, and my game library reflects this. As such, my value per hour for my collection (even limiting it to this generation and excluding PC games) works out to about $1 per hour. So, by the original poster's reasoning, KSP is worth around $16,250. By my own scale, however, it's $2,500. Either way, that's a huge difference from what I originally paid for it! EDIT: Concerning the argument going on above, any statistical measure is derived and thus is only valuable in an abstract sense anyway. Generally the most "valid" measures are not ones that are easy to obtain. For example, the most scientifically useful measure of how much value an entertainment product has to you would be a combination of how high and how many endorphin spikes you experienced while playing/watching it (indicating how much fun you were having on a chemical level). That's not exactly easy to measure, of course. Measuring by a less precise figure like dollars per hour of value, by contrast, is (even though it also has far greater potential for false positives and false negatives both).

I suspect the first click is to make sure that you don't select a non-root-capable part. If they did it single-click, it would force you to re-click the re-root tool to select a valid root if you picked an invalid one the first time. Just my guess.

Well, let's see. 3.2 years' worth of KSP, playing an average of around 2 hours a day, with an expected crash (game or vessel, take your pick) at least once per hour on average... That's a lot of crashes.

I've begun prototyping for a cheap Mun-capable spaceplane/rocket hybrid that will work in FAR. Here's a small preview of what's in development. It still needs some tweaks (such as a reaction wheel for the lander stage, and a little tiny bit more fuel for said lander as well), but it should be able to allow a single Kerbal to get to the Mun and back on 225/245 LFO, approximately. It may even be possible to get this design to work in stock; we'll see.

It's been just over 3 years since I started playing KSP, so the list of what I haven't done is actually shorter at this point... - I haven't done a FAR-installed Eve land-and-return mission yet - I haven't "landed" on Jool (which I'm pretty sure hasn't been possible for several versions anyway; it was a glitch that you even could!) - I haven't run a Jool-5 mission yet; mostly waiting on an official TAC Life Support 0.90 update before I do That's about all that comes to mind.

I'm going to have to side with the developers on this and say that adding extensive new features to the game at this point is probably not a good idea. You can't stay in pre-release forever, and KSP has been in pre-release for just over 4 years now. That is a lot of time and money for one project even in this day and age, and especially for a company's first video game. There are a lot of things that could be added (obviously given the mountain of threads suggesting features both before and after the 1.0 announcement), but none of them actually "have" to be added. SQUAD defines what is required for 1.0, and that definition is contained in their scope document for the game. Even if some of us don't personally think they're up to where they should be, obviously they feel that they will be in time for the next release. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't request features and the like, but what I am saying is that it's a bit heavy-handed to basically declare that your version of what KSP 1.0 should be is more relevant than what the developers feel it should be. We can certainly ask them to implement new features and unplanned changes, but it crosses the line when we expect those features and changes from them and right now if you please. I'm sure that's not the sort of tone most are trying to convey, but it's the tone that's coming across consistently throughout these myriad threads.

I'll have you know, it's not easy getting those cloaking devices to work right on an entire building like that.

I find that, when you design the same sort of craft often enough, you start to get to like that design. Pretty much from 0.21 to 0.25, this was my go-to design for Kethane mining missions. The details may have changed slightly over time, but the basic design has not, and I still tried to engineer a similar setup for Karbonite when Kethane didn't get updated in a timely manner for 0.90.

I prefer to work from the store version, but I'm a bit old-school like that. Having it on Steam has a few nice benefits like automatic tracking of time played for you and auto-updating when new versions hit, but also some annoyances (like auto-updating when new versions hit; there's a way around that problem in the form of copying the current version to a different location before an update hits, of course).

No, that's next Thursday. Bloody hyperspace bypasses, always getting delayed... On-topic: version number is arbitrary at best anyway. The only reason the latest build went to 0.90 was because traditionally beta builds are numbered 0.9x (where x is also an arbitrary number). It's easier to believe that version 0.90 is the beta than 0.26 to the casual observer.

It's not included in the next update because multiplayer was never planned for the 1.0 release. It's part of the "extended scope" of the game, and was announced as such during the last official KerbalCon.

Also, complaining about the barn is silly since this was a thing that happened in real life: The 1940s space programs were not pretty, but they sure taught us a lot.

I think the biggest issue with this next release going 1.0 is making sure that the testing it receives is even more extensive than it has been for past releases. The general caveat most seem to have is that we don't know how well it will all work, and getting everything to work inevitably means that experimentals will have to be exhaustive in scope for this release. As long as it isn't rushed through testing, and as long as the developers are not shy to go back and do more work if the feedback of the testing team is "this isn't going to work", it should be fine. On a semi-related note for those complaining that their pet feature isn't in KSP yet, I would point you to a number of other games that went 1.0 and grew considerably in scale and scope after that release. Terraria and Minecraft in particular are currently far more elaborate in their current forms than they ever were at their 1.0 releases. Eventually all games have to reach "release state", and smart project developers have a scope that defines when that is. That's what we're witnessing here.

I actually could use a neutral poll option, because my answer is "I don't know yet since I haven't seen how extensive the bugfixes are for this next release, how inclusive the additions are, or how well the new systems will be implemented". Assuming that all of the major bugs are squashed, no new major bugs are introduced, and everything mentioned in HarvesteR's blog post comes to pass, then my answer would be a decisive "yes".

The Engineer's Report is almost certainly going to be an extension of the existing mass/width/height/part count widget. HarvesteR more or less said as much in his blog post. And the aerodynamic preview is definitely not going to be always-on, much like center of lift/mass/thrust indicators are not always-on. It would make building your craft much more difficult if it weren't possible to toggle. As for the realism argument, I am firmly on the "it's a game" side of the argument. Because it is. And as a game, it needs its own identity. Kerbals should not "have" to be perfect human expies, and really never have been. Their space program starting out of a converted farm is perfectly fitting for the mythos the game has already assembled for them from the text in-game and the various animations SQUAD has released. Complaining that the game does not mirror human space flight perfectly kind of misses the point that that was never really a goal anyway.

One troubling omission from the list of additions for 1.0 is the various missing and incomplete IVA views. I'm sure they're on the agenda, though. Overall it's sounding like the next version will be quite a fun one!

I doubt anyone does. The best most of us can do is provide anecdotal evidence (ie. what we paid for it). I know the first asking price prior to 0.14's release was $7US. It went up to $10US when 0.14 came out, and has steadily climbed since to its current price point of $30US. Of course, the consistency of pricing gets muddied when you factor in the various sales it undergoes every once and a while, too.

I decided to see what sort of Laythe-capable FAR-compatible science-gathering spaceplane I could devise in under an hour. The end result was this. Though it does need to be refueled once it reaches low Kerbin orbit, once it is, that nuclear engine has a healthy 5100dV available to it. Even subtracting the fuel costs for flying on Laythe, that amounts to more than enough to go to and from Kerbin's little brother in Jool orbit.

Clearly it means we're getting Vuvuzela Mode, wherein all sound effects are replaced with the iconic noise of the most irritating type of horn ever. Rejoice! (Actually, I have no idea what it is. But I'm sure it'll be interesting.)

Safety and efficiency are not as mortal of enemies as you may have been led to believe when it comes to space travel. That said, I do tend to favor more efficient methods over particularly plodding safety measures. Since arbitrary failure is not a "thing" in stock KSP, for example, an escape tower is pretty well unnecessary as long as your upper stage can safely land on Kerbin. And from a reasonable height, the low-pass method of landing on an airless body is not really dangerous while still losing relatively little dV to gravity.

Unless you got the game well before you joined the forum, that would mean you've played KSP at least 3 hours every single day since you got it. If that's the case... um, maybe you should play something else occasionally too?