SkyRender

My best estimate would be around $0.0046 US per hour. That's pretty much the best value of dollars per hour spent I've ever had from a game, and sometimes I feel kinda bad about that to be honest.

Just for the interesting challenges, I build spaceplanes in FAR a lot nowadays. I've learned a great deal in the process about why various features are included on commercial airplanes, such as the iconic "cruciform tail" and "T-tail" configurations. Hint: they make it much easier to steer in thicker atmospheric conditions! Just... don't try to over-pitch. You will have a bad time.

Isn't it obvious? Eh! Steve's mouth made the universe explode and the little blonde man did a tiny, tiny dance. No wait, that's Sweet Cuppin' Cakes. I also have no idea what's going on. Though as a guess, the above works just as well as an explanation as any.

The vast majority of the largest bodies in the solar system have at least an extremely thin atmosphere, actually. Pretty much it was discovered that it wasn't that they lacked them, just that our instrumentation wasn't sophisticated enough to detect such minute quantities. If you mean Moho, back in its debut 0.17 showing, it had a "fake" atmosphere that had no density, but generated heat on parts as you got lower into it. Made landing anywhere below about 8KM or so almost impossible.

The ceiling height limit only applies to the camera. You can use Alt+click to move the entire craft from the lowest piece of the craft upwards, and then continue building well above the maximum VAB height.

Hahaha. Yeah, you generally should not build something that tall without supporting side structures, launch clamps, struts, etc.

This can be even more profitable at a lower reputation cost if you use the Mk3 spaceplane crew cabins. Granted, that does require some launch clamps, but the overall hit to reputation is less doing it that way. I'd guess that fixing how aggressive negotiations work is definitely on the "to-do" list, along with re-balancing the rest of the Administrative Facility strategies.

How about a tour group?

My first Mun landing was... a long time ago. And quite memorable: Back in 0.12, there was a primitive eclipse system, which resulted in it looking like my ship had a massive shadow. Weird, but also kinda cool.

As long as you avoid the 64-bit Windows build, the claw part, and outdated mods, KSP is quite stable.

I have three categories of KSP mod, really: essential, recommended, and ancillary. My essential list rarely changes (in order of priority): Kerbal Engineer Redux Ferram Aerospace Research Procedural Fairings Kerbal Alarm Clock The recommended mods list is often in flux, and currently includes: RealChutes Kerbal Attachment System Karbonite SCANsat TAC Life Support My ancillary mod list is empty right now, but used to include Environmental Visual Enhancements before it got abandoned and stopped working with my KSP installs.

Other than craft that are pretty obviously not aerodynamic, most craft made to work in stock aerodynamics will run just fine under a better aerodynamic model... as long as some form of fairing is involved for the interstage components.

I would guess that you have a few mods installed? I've noticed that some of them don't play nice. In particular, Karbonite tends to cause the Space Center buildings to not respond to right or left clicks on occasion. As well, many of the aerodynamic mods out there (yes, even FAR) can cause weird CoM/CoL issues. Just a few iterations of FAR ago, you had to completely redo any wing setup on any spaceplane if you wanted to make changes after loading a craft from a save, due to some small calculation errors. As for my own impossible occurrences, I'd count my self-destructive asteroid catcher as one of them. If Time Warp is ever activated near it, the moment speed goes back to 1x, it rips itself apart violently. No real reason, mind. The claw just has that effect on ships.

You'll find that getting your hands on copies of versions after the 0.13.x series is very difficult (well, except for 0.18.3, the current demo), as those are all technically pay-to-play releases. Some of us do have the older pay-to-play versions, but we're not allowed to distribute them.

This topic may be relevant to your interests.

Because of how crew seat management is done now. The game would have to remember what Kerbal-carrying parts it has destroyed and which Kerbals were sitting in them to show the KIA portraits. Back when you could only have one occupied command module, this was not an issue. Though it did lead to an amusing situation where all of your crew will die any time any command module explodes in those early versions, even if the rocket still has an operational command motule still attached.

Good grief... I think it would be simpler just to assemble your ship in orbit in two pieces. Or even better, use something more powerful than ion engines.

Count me in the "names are overrated" department as well. Unless I need to refer to a part when explaining something, I'll generally just remember what the part's purpose is and not worry about what it's called.

Okay, now I feel properly like an old-school KSP player. I remember that trailer being released! Heck, I remember playing that version of KSP. Never used most of the featured mods, though... Those are stock Unity effects. They're very memory-inefficient. The game used to chug like crazy every time something exploded, and looking at the water was an invitation to Low-FPSville.

My join date alone did that. Started with 0.11, took my first screenshot in 0.12. Good times.

Actually, a long time ago there was preliminary modeling for eclipse lighting in KSP. It was a bit wonky, though (it only rendered within 500m of the ground, and just made it look like your ship had an enormous shadow), so they did away with it. Unrelatedly, that was the first screenshot I ever took of KSP!

I generally keep whatever info I might need open on my second monitor. And X-Chat, but that's just because I happen to be one of those old-school sorts who mostly chats with his friends over IRC.

I know better than to Alt-Tab off of KSP during starting load; that makes it more prone to crashing. I usually load up a DS or 3DS game and play on that for a bit.

Honestly, the only gizmo I personally ever use is the re-root one. It's not that I dislike the gizmos; I think they're brilliant, actually. It's just that I've been using the (Shift +) WASDQE controls for part manipulation for around 3 years now. It's pretty much the definition of "old habits die hard"!

I have 5 basic rules I stick by. 1. You're not ready to launch until you've confirmed all critical systems are on the rocket. 2. If it's untested, it's not fit for use; test it first. 3. The best contingencies are the ones you can implement for no extra payload cost. 4. Elaborate is fine, but crunch the numbers before you dedicate to a mission so you don't end up with useless hardware in space. 5. The word "survey" is banned in Mission Control.