Nuke

i think there are zero civilizations in the universe. lots of barbarians though.

im of the opinion that modifier keys be reserved as modifier keys, rather than used for throttle control. throttle controls should be moved elsewhere.

destroy all humans. sorry thats the best i can come up with. im on hydro power and i dont drive. the only time we use fossil fuel is when the power company shakes down the town's backup generator 10 days every year, and when i grill my steak (which i eat rare).

i have to agree here, i cant remember a game of elite where i didnt start a new save by doing the diso->lestii run to get some early cash (at least till i got my fuel scoops, docking computer, and the beam laser). those systems would be generated perfectly identical no matter how many new games i played and this was a game that fit cleanly onto a 5.25" floppy. the frontier games also pulled this off in more detail. these are ancient games too, came out years before 3d accelerators where things. there is no technical reason why this cant be done while confirming to squad's notion that the game needs to be laid out the same for everyone. this still leaves the other problem about how to travel those distances without breaking the laws of physics. which is one that is kinda hard to solve. something involving an unrealistic/pseudorealistic warp drive or other exotic means of propulsion (q thrusters), simulating relativistic time dilation, extreme time warp, or reducing the scale of the universe to unrealistic levels (travel distances <2 ly) or some combination of the above. then if you manage to make that transfer, what do you do when you get there? while you can do the primary goal of adding more stuff, it opens up a pile of other things that you need to make it all work.

the only reason to send humans into space is to test things needed to make permanent human habitability of space a possibility. if what you are looking for has nothing to do with any of that, send a robot.

successful launch: unsuccessful launch:

core 2 duo/quad rigs seem to have reasonable performance in game though, provided you dont run integrated graphics. newish pentium and celeron cpus based on newer architectures (at least sandy) should be fine too. thats based on me running the game on those kinds of machines. but i think support should be limited to cpus currently being manufactured or their performance-wise legacy equivalents. today's low end might be equivalent to a moderate rig from 2 years ago or a performance machine from 4 years ago. im sure a current generation low end machine would run the game pretty well with a low end graphics card. this game is kind of the oddball in that its physics takes precedence over its graphics. almost every other game the video card is the bottleneck. its important to realize what ksp is asking your cpu to do, all those n^2 algorithms that physics require take their toll. this gets worse with more objects you have to simulate. most games impose limits that prevent you from giving the physics engine too much work, but in this game you can go nuts and give physics a rocket that is just too big for it to handle, so to speak.

there has to be a hard limit for how far back the developer is willing to support hardware. 5 years is an eon in computer terms. aaa titles and games utilizing cutting edge tech might support hardware that is 2-3 years old max. things get different in popular games, and indie titles, where it helps to aim for a broader audience. some games you absolutely had to have the current generation gear to get anywhere. but if you expect a 2014 game to run well on a 2004 rig, you may be asking too much. im going to play with the 5 year mark just to show that it is not totally unreasonable. 5 years ago i was running a core2quad with 8gb ram and a geforce gtx 260 (which btw still runs ksp quite well). the cost of such a rig today is almost negligible. now that cpu is no longer being manufactured, the only one i found on newegg was a referb c2d for $50. there is also an ivy bridge dual core celeron there for about the same and probibly better performance cause its a more recent generation. then the cheapest mobo for that chip is about $37. you can probibly buy/build a rig capable of meeting the system requirements of the game by a wide margin for around $200. that is not a very high bar for entry. some people have phones that cost more than that. just because you have a dumpster box, or a 4th hand nostalgia rig from the early '00s laying around does not mean that squad is obliged to support that hardware. im not saying you should throw those away, im just saying that if you run ksp on them, you are not going to have a good experience.

i was a system builder way back in 2002, building pentium 4 rigs. i still build my own rigs because i dont trust oems to not jack me. my formula always was start with the cpu and work your way out from there. i almost always get ram off of the mobo's qvl. then add whatever else you want. i usually choose the power supply last, after ive figured out the power requirements.

i figure we would just blow it all on wars though.

lots of modders are also implementing stuff right out of the planned features list. those mods are definitely getting deprecated once squad implements things in their own way. rovers, docking and asteroids to name a few have all been replaced despite being modded in before squad got around to it. i kinda call them temporary mods, because people stop using them when the official version comes along. i kinda think these mods are a waste of effort on the part of modders who want something now vs something that will stand the test of time. the other side is that modders can try out a lot of ideas long before squad gets around to implementing something. figure out what works and what does not before squad puts any effort into the idea. i dont like to say mods should be part of the game, because when you do that they arent mods anymore. its better to say: x features from mod y should be part of the game.

buy everyone in the world a ferrari.

mods that make up for technical shortcomings in the game totally should be part of the game. however i think they should have the same features implemented in squads own way, rather than to just slap the mod code in there as a quick and dirty hack. having full access to the game code means they can implement the features in a much more robust way that is closed to mod makers.

ive probibly changed every part in my 4th gen ipod. maintaining an old computer is easy in comparison. i mean there aren't even any screws, you have to use a bezel cracking tool and you never have any idea where the clips are. its easy to break something in the process. old computer you can just use a screw driver. once you are inside everything is tiny and fragile. changing the screen was a pita, trying to get a very short ribbon cable into a tiny connector. batteries are a little bit easier. and the board density makes it hard to change out a headphone jack. repairing modern electronics is hard. i should point out that the first computer i built was an early pentium, around the time 486es were being phased out.

i think north korean spies would have trouble recovering the materials from the faked lunar landing to produce the required propaganda space program, since no one in north korea knows how to pull off a fake moon mission. warning: this post is satire. i know if i dont say it one of you nuts will take it seriously.

i dont think a new game should be officially supporting hardware/software that is a over decade old. ive pulled computers out of dumpsters that show less age. i have a machine in my shed that is about a decade old, and it doesn't play ksp very well at all. sure you can make it work for you, but if it is so far below the minimum requirements then it should not be the developer's problem. from a support standpoint i dont really think it fair on the developer that they have to support hardware that isn't even manufactured anymore. support for modest hardware manufactured in the last 5 years seems appropriate for this kind of game, considering the educational market (school computers are always old). quake's requirement was that it needed a floating point unit. a 486dx or 486sx with 487 co-processor. if you ran the game under dos it was kind of acceptable. problem was if you wanted to play over the internet, you needed to run it under windows, which pretty much doubled the memory requirements and slowed things down a great deal.

well this sucks.

for very large rings id just use tangential approach and landing. for this you just have to aim for a landing platform hanging under the ring. your approach rate needs to be synchronized with the station, but your final approach speed is the same as the tangental velocity of the station. for touchdown you and the platform are roughly going the same speed, you just need to hold position over the pad for a bit until the floor rotates up and the stations artificial gravity takes over. the pad can also be retracted up into a hold and the doors closed, so you can step right off the ship into a pressurized, gravitized, environment.

the do not suggest list has its other side. that is squad has acknowledged the request, so there is no need to discuss it anymore. its their way of saying, ok we get it.

just take your iodine pills and call me when/if you survive. [/north korea]

the problem with shooting electrons out the back of your space ship is that your ship starts developing a positive charge, so the electrons that you shoot away tend to come back producing no net thrust. some types of electric engines also have this problem, but in reverse. positive ions fly out the back but that makes your ship negative, to keep the ions from coming back you usually have an electron gun next to the engine to fire electrons into the ion stream, so they meet up with the ions to neutralize them.

^ i have to agree here. its kinda getting old to see threads like this pop up every month or so. its just cannon fodder for arm chair game devs.

id rather have a lua client myself. though id rather wait for documentation than learn to read python.

that sounds more like something the chinese would do. they have the least problems with protesters.

when people ask "what good is a moon base" the first thing i can think of is "place to manufacture nuclear engines in an environment free of hippies". best usage scenario would be for a reusable transfer vehicle. isru would be needed to fill its propellant tanks. i think an ideal engine would be one that can run with a multitude of propellant options so it can top off its propellant tanks at almost any body in the solar system.