Kerano

Most difficult achievement for me was definitely building a ship capable of landing and returning from Eve... at sea level. Made all the more difficult by the fact that my attempt occurred around the transition to one of the 0.24 patches which made radial decouplers apply phantom forces that bent stacks inward and destroyed the rocket.

Damn, looks like I missed the opportunity by a mere couple of hours. Shame, I would have loved to submit an application. Think I'd be a pretty good experimental tester, I'm familiar with the bug tracker and have plenty of spare time. I've also done closed alpha testing for other games in the past. Ah well.

Hmm, perhaps it was bad luck then. I think you should change the one-time "Explore X" contracts to be treated like the "World First" contracts - i.e. automatic credit the first time you orbit/land on a new body. Otherwise you're punished by never being able to gain the benefit of the one-off "Explore X" contract just because you visited a body before the game told you to explore it. It's the same problem that the altitude contracts used to have - a penalty for being ambitious. All one-off contracts should be automatically awarded, IMHO.

If it's reputation based then the balancing is out of whack. I did a dozen or so missions on Kerbin, landed on and returned from the Mun, ferried several tourists around Kerbin and to the Mun, rescued a Kerbal from Kerbin and another from the Mun, and apparently still didn't have enough reputation for the "Explore Minmus" contract to appear. This despite no contract failures at any point. I've noticed in general that reputation gains are way lower than in version 0.90, where I didn't have too many issues with getting the big "explore X" contracts appear. Squad may not have properly adjusted the contract triggering system to compensate for the reduced reputation gains early in the game.

Was your craft's velocity 'locked' at a certain value while your orbit changed? Did you turn on the Alt-F12 debug log while it happened? Any screenshots? This sounds very much like the 'null reference exception' bug that would be randomly triggered by switching to a ship clawing an asteroid. Only solution was always quitting and restarting the game. I made a detailed bug report about it a year ago when 0.23.5 came out (where the claw was first introduced). I'll try to find it and link the thread here.

Quoted for truth. Hopefully 1.0.1 will bring us saner heating values/controls, as well as useful user information. Smoke coming off parts near overheating seems like an excellent visual clue for instance. My workaround for the time being is to use the 'ignore max temperature' option in the debug menu when I'm running nukes, which are the biggest offenders when it comes to overheating. - - - Updated - - - I've noticed this too. Occasionally it seems to bug out and the entire ship normalizes at a much higher temperature than expected, which causes parts to suddenly explode when you go into time warp.

I also never got the explore minmus contract. I was quite annoyed that it didn't come up, as the reward is significant and visiting minmus without it literally sets you back in your space program since it never appears again. Personally I feel the 'explore' contracts should work like the 'world first' contracts. You should be rewarded by default the very first time you orbit/land on a new body. Most crucially you should not be PUNISHED by losing the benefit of a one-off contract forever just because you visit a body before the game tells you to explore it.

KSP 1.0, fresh install, new career, no mods. As per the image below, solar panels detect "Direct Sunlight" despite the fact that the craft is on the night side of Minmus. The higher panels detect being "blocked" from sunlight by the lower panels, and the Sun is on the direct opposite side of Minmus. The behavior is effectively what would be expected if the craft were at this orientation in deep space. My craft generates enough electricity exclusively by solar panels at night to run a dual drilling rig + ISRU converter.

The heat on the LV-N definitely needs toning down. Requiring part spam to reduce heating is not a solution, neither is limiting to 20% thrust on an already low-thrust engine. The mass increase, liquid fuel requirement and bump further back in the tech tree already nerf the LV-N enough. The main purpose of the engine is supposed to be for long deep-space burns, and right now it can't be used in that way. It's no longer a reward to unlock at the end of the tech tree, it's just a source of endless frustration.

Had this happen to me after rescuing a Kerbal in a Mk1 Command Pod, and wondered what the cause was. Originally I thought it was just the game's way of creatively removing debris, but then it didn't happen on my second and third rescue missions. Bugged heat values after a quickload explains it.

This needs to be changed ASAP though. Nukes already got a mass increase, fuel change, and a bump further back in the tech tree. Their main purpose is for long burns in deep space. The current heat production makes them unusable for that purpose. Spamming parts is not a viable solution. Neither is running at 20% throttle on an already low thrust engine.

Confirmed that I've also experienced the same click-through-menu bug in Windows with KSP 1.0.

Yeah the thermal mass isn't adding up, must be something else. Well whatever the cause, structural fuselages, ore containers and empty fuel tanks are 1.25m parts which don't preemptively explode in space when attached to an LV-N. Useful to know. - - - Updated - - - Not according to the values displayed in debug. 200 for both full and empty small ore container.

Did a bunch of tests in sandbox mode with the LV-N and came across several interesting things (link). Summary: Part directly above LV-N should contain minimal or no fuel mass.

Did a lot of tests in sandbox mode with different 1.25m parts above the LV-N and came across a few interesting things. Summary: Part directly above LV-N should contain minimal or no fuel mass. * The part directly above the LV-N always gets the brunt of the heat. * Thermal mass seems to be the key value in the debug right click menu. The lower the better. If it's too high on a small part it'll overheat QUICKLY above an LV-N. * Fuel adds a lot of thermal mass. A small Mk1 tank full of fuel will overheat quickly. Empty the same tank, and now it will heat up much more slowly... so slowly that the LV-N itself will usually explode first on 100% power instead of the empty tank. * Engine pre-coolers seem to be a decent choice above LV-N engines mainly because of their low fuel mass. They don't dissipate heat in space though. * Structural fuselages work even better, due to the complete absence of fuel. Wastes a part though. * Ore containers actually work brilliantly, especially when full. Ore itself doesn't add any thermal mass, and depending on your ship you may actually have a use for ore containers anyway. * Dipping into 1000x time warp briefly will reset thermal values to default levels for all parts on the ship. Nice to know if you're in a tight spot and all else fails.

Good to know. Though even 234,000 is unlikely to cover the cost of achieving a suborbital solar trajectory and recovering.

Anyone else disappointed by the new LV-N? I was originally excited when I saw the liquid fuel requirement and the increased mass. However, in practice the massive heat production from the engine effectively locks you out from playing the game at regular intervals. Not fun. Spamming parts to act as "radiators" is not really a viable workaround when you already have hundreds of parts and a low framerate. I think either the heat production from the LV-N needs to be toned way down, or we need a single heat-sink part that can be placed above an LV-N to remove all heat problems from the engine.

After giving it a fair chance, I'm sorry to say I no longer find the LV-N engine fun to play with. When I saw the liquid fuel requirement and the increased mass I was excited and couldn't wait to try it. However, the massive heat production from the engine effectively locks you out from playing the game at regular intervals. To me, that is not fun gameplay. Spamming parts to act as "radiators" is not a viable workaround when I'm already working with hundreds of parts and a low framerate. Either the heat production from the LV-N needs to be toned way down, or we need a SINGLE heat-sink part that can be placed above an LV-N to remove all heat problems from the engine.

Question regarding resource contracts - does the X units of ore have to be extracted in one go? For example if I have Ore tanks with 1200 units of space and the contract requires extracting 2350 units, will I be able to complete the contract by filling the Ore tanks twice on the same ship?

KSP 1.0, fresh install, new career, no mods. Just noticed I have a tourist wanting a "Suborbital flight on the Sun". Paying a woeful 19500 funds for the experience. Is this a mistake or intended? I guess you can burn retrograde near Jool to get your periapsis down then bring it up again after the contract completes, but that would still be insanely costly. Note I haven't even been outside Kerbin's SOI yet, the Pol missions are due to a bug with taking data from the Poles of Minmus.

I have a tourist wanting a suborbital flight on the Sun. Mistake or intended?

I'm also surprised this bug got through QA. You only need to reenter the atmosphere once to notice the problem. Ah well, hopefully it will be fixed with 1.0.1.

Yeah Harvester made a big post about it a few months back: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/325-Overhauled-Aerodynamics I guess they decided they didn't need it after all, or else that it was too much work for 1.0.

The whole heating system seems a bit like black magic at the moment. It feels like we should be given at least some basic display indicating where the heat is and which parts are in danger. Playing blind to one substantial element of the game isn't particularly fun.

I've been playing through normal difficulty career to get a feel for what a new player will experience. Pretty much encountered the same things: * First few flights are great, the money rolls in quickly from the default contracts. Progression feels quick and rewarding. * After those first flights the difficulty suddenly jumps up. There's not enough money to get all the basic parts along with all the necessary upgrades for a basic Mun shot - so if you're not experienced with strapping together SRB monsters and navigating blind, you're forced to grind out a lot of contracts for cash before you go any further. This is the point where if I was new to the game, I would be getting frustrated. Other thoughts: * Lack of science from contracts is a real loss to the game IMHO. It was perhaps a little easy to get contract science in previous versions of the game, but I really enjoyed that it was an alternative to the biome-hopping grind. It needed tweaking down, but 1.0 pretty much obliterated it altogether. * Tech tree is OK for a veteran player but very unforgiving to a newbie. Number of nodes should probably be reduced a little to allow for more meaningful choices. Parts that usually work together should be on the same node, not split into 3-4 different nodes in different areas of the tech tree. I have enough difficulty getting science as a veteran, how is a new player supposed to cope with this tech tree? * Weird stuff going on with the new aero, particularly reentry. Pods desperately fight to turn the wrong way and burn everything up regardless of how you build your ship it seems. Deploying mysteriously invincible parachutes in the upper atmosphere seems to be the only solution for now.