basic.syntax

I addressed this idea, in my post referencing Roger Ebert. Reviewers will downplay flawed areas of a product, if they see appealing qualities in the whole, and they wish to encourage more of that type of product to get made. Edit: Ha! I hadn't finished reading the GameSpot review, before posting.

I tip my hat to sewerbird - nice work.

See if putting a nose cone above the probe core will help. I think the final stage, attached with a very small item (48-7S?) / node to the stack decoupler and FL-800 tank below it, could be too small / too weak to remain solid, against for the forces being applied to it. As soon as you drift off prograde, drag is probably causing the top part to bend at that small node connection. If you have access to struts, it needs those. If you don't, see what other engine or part you can use to keep all center stack nodes the same size / strength. Might help.

Mu singles out Scott in his comments, but he also said "a lot of the streamers." The un-named others probably weren't explaining their difficulties, as well as Scott did. Twitch video archive, available here (link). The Aero comments start around 13m 50s. If some folks are interested in detailed quotes, and what else Squad talked about after the Aero stuff, check my sig

A little late, but... I'd make a rover in the SPH, stick the part on top, and drive it down to the water's edge.

I would be more interested and engaged with career, if it told me a story about humble beginnings, and gradually uncovered explorations and discoveries, by these plucky green folks. Current career casts you as a role-player, making up your own story from bits and pieces of procedurally generated contract text. I can certainly play along, or not even read that stuff and make up my own reasons for why I'm taking contracts, but, I'd like Squad to write a story-based campaign game mode.

LoL. I use the new cylindrical in-line service bays, for snack storage. They cry out to me: "open here for cookie."

The chunking is a sign of their streaming architecture, they don't really want to be a download service. If you want to download it for later, it takes a third party utility... I doubt Twitch encourages that... downloads don't bring ad views I can't do quick summaries... its going to be more like a transcript. I need to step out for a few hours, and it's not done yet.

I'm working on a summary. Squad broadcast a "full team" office party direct from HQ, for close to 2 hrs. Twitch archive is at this link.

The way you write it makes the point clear, I just wanted to nitpick (I have no good knowledge of Aero stuff to say much else in this thread) or clarify that atomic & molecular motion is, or what creates a heating effect. So I think it's enough to say that thicker, denser air has more atoms and molecules bumping against each other and turbine parts, causing a greater heating effect, than lower density air.

ROTFL! Yes! This thread deals with the same topic.

I run win 8.1 now, works very smoothly. The "start screen" is a bit much (its... a full screen thing) but I don't spend all that much time looking at it. It's a program launcher, that happens to support dynamic icons/tiles. And it reminds me... of Windows 3.x. Because the app launcher screen has (unwalled) panes, in which you can re-arrange icons on a grid, just like you could inside Win 3.x Program Manager windows. Microsoft did a lot of user research, which told them people had trouble finding what they wanted in the Win3.x Program Manager messes of icons, and from that created a hierarchical, cascading start menu that packed more programs into a small but organized launcher space. Nonetheless, going from 3.x to Win9x, some people didn't like Microsoft forcing an organization scheme on them. Win8 seemed to throw that Win9x research out, going back to a Program Manager type of solution. Improvements over Win 3.x include the ability to just type at any time, and the launcher searches / filters apps by name, based on what you have typed. And you don't need to set up sub-windows to categorize different programs, just drag and drop into groupings as you like, the start screen will stretch and scroll to hold whatever number of things you care to link on it.

I just got through rewinding a bunch of times over the first 20 minutes of the Twitch stream archive, to squeeze as many words as possible out of the Aero comments, and I think I have a pretty good transcript now, of that early section. I may be posting a more complete summary later, if my OCD and patience holds 11:40 HavesteR lands his airplane nicely in the green hills near KSC, earning this nice one-liner from Maxmaps: Mike (Mu) - "We... fixed a bug in the last week of Experimentals, which... fixed the occlusion on a lot of parts. Thus, the drag dropped significantly. This wasn't quite balanced out by the time we went to 1.0, and a lot of the streamers... Scott Manley for instance... he basically says 'the pods are not slowing down enough. It's very hard to do sub-orbital flights... you're having to run [word unclear] parachutes at high altitudes...' The drag was far too low. So, we upped the drag basically, to what it should have been... before the bug fix. And that also meant tweaking lift values, tweaking the parachutes again. We've not quite finished with the Aero balances... obviously quite a few people have been critical of it, BUT, it is working as intended at the minute. We do have some other changes, just to the drag profiles... the transonic drag profiles, and some other bits coming. But.. that won't be this week." Maxmaps - "Yeah, it certainly will not be this week.... we're going skydiving on Saturday, that generally isn't... the... best environment to code..." Mu - "It's research!" Maxmaps - "Yeah It's research, of course!" Kasper - "It was important to get it out there, why we did the Aerodynamic changes. A lot of people were very..." Maxmaps - "confused" Kasper - "confused about them. It's just people thought they were bugged in the patch version, when actually they were bugged in 1.0" Mu - "exactly. There's no way you should be able to do high mach at sea level..." Maxmaps - "...without annihilating yourself..." Mu - "...without some sort of, like, warp drive. Thing. because the power levels are quite insane."

Yeah... it was not a group sit-down focused on taking questions, it was Squad sharing an office party. They were able answer a handful of questions over the course of it. An aero comments thread is over here. One of them was trying to keep an eye on the live chat, but it gets really chaotic. So many colors I don't usually watch anyone's live streams, prefer archived versions, so I can "rewind."

The team interrupted HarvesteR's moon mission, to show him THIS

I was reminded of this thread in today's Squad HQ twitch broadcast: HarvesteR built up a large fairing around a moon stage, then went IVA on the pad to check out the view. Pod inside the fairing. "Tourists don't seem to mind it..." (lack of view inside a fairing.)

"KasperVld: Right now we have HarvesteR, Maxmaps, MarcoSS, Romfarer, Mu and myself in the room" HarvesteR is designing a ship. Says he has been playing a lot with spaceplanes lately. They are giving the backstory of their KSP screen/user names. The letters in Maxmaps refer to his full name / initials, the "maps" part doesn't mean he is a fan of mapping / cartography. 15:40: HarvesteR is designing a ship to take to the moon, from scratch. Twitch chat is up to full speed now, with questions and comments. 15:54: no immediate plans for 5M parts... They are aware of mod parts packs like KW Rocketry. "3.5m still feels pretty big."

The RT-5 'Flea' was designed to be "MyFirstRocket" in career, I can't find the post atm, but remember something about the RT-10 was thought too overpowered for a first launch. I think it was designed to look good under the 1-Kerbal capsule, it had to be size 1.

I think the mods have been more than generous, allowing the thread to continue this far. Critics of Squad's process have been speaking their minds, defenders have defended with their ideas of why this or that problem might have slipped through to the 1.0 release. We also have HarvesteR's excellent 1.0.1 patch notes statement, that does not gloss over the fact that problems shipped with 1.0, and that they are not stopping and will continue their work to make KSP better.

First thing I did with 1.0 was just read all the new part descriptions. I didn't need to play the game to have some fun with it I found this on the wiki: v.24: Cost reduced from 250 to 42 Edit: It just occurred to me that v.24 is the reverse of "42" ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED

My statement was based on Renegrade's words. I put experience in italics, your word effectively captured what I thought. For the people giving these glowing reviews, it seems any flaws they come across are minor, when compared to the overall picture of what KSP does for them. "Launchpad exploded on launch, booster crashed into center stack on decouple, I sent Jeb on EVA to get last bit of science and lost grip on ladder, lol, lost Jeb for a bit, but we got back. 10/10 would buy again." Roger Ebert talked about his review score for "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" ... I remember this, but can't find proof... he said that he gave it four stars (highest score he gives for written reviews) not because it was outstanding in all respects, but because he wanted to encourage studios to support this type of movie again - movies with this kind of vision. ... then later, he writes He's admitting that the movie is not excellent in all respects. "Let's talk about this other stuff over here, instead." Four stars.Back to KSP: Right from the start, the Post reviewer tells readers on what basis he's making the "masterpiece" claim: the headline "A Playful Masterpiece" - he puts the word "masterpiece" in the context of the word "playful." It's not an outstanding game because of everything, but because it succeeds at creating "anguished expectations of failure and then train its players to figure out which combinations can be used to erase those feelings." That's a very literate review... I'm saving that one for posterity I love this car

They should be back to regular schedule, next week. Maxmaps said in last Friday's Squadcast, that they might have interesting stuff to talk about, following their weeklong meeting/party, this Friday.

Kerbal Space Program It’s Not Easy Being Green Review by Daniel Tack on May 04, 2015 at 03:15 PM A look of playful wonder is in your little Kerbal’s eyes as you count down to the launch of your new spaceship. Does this look of awe change as the struts on your scaffolding break under the weight of 20 perilously placed fuel tanks and your half-cocked creation falls on the launch pad? Does it change when you blow everything in a last-ditch attempt to save the mission from failure, sending the ship rocketing off at a dangerous angle? No, Kerbals are soldiers to the end, staying positive even as you send them crashing at high speed into nearby lakes. Don’t worry – in another few minutes you have a new crew and a better rocket with even more absurd part placement! That’s some of the fun of Kerbal Space Program – unparalleled experimentation with what amounts to a consequence-free box of spaceship Lego pieces. When you sit down to play a game of Kerbal Space Program, you have two main choices: kicking around in a sandbox-style, anything-goes, rocket-creation program, or heading into the far more advanced career mode. Sandbox mode is thoroughly enjoyable for players of all skill levels; you have a wide selection of spaceship parts you can put together any way you like. Then you shoot your craft into orbit, or watch something go horribly wrong as your cute Kerbals explode or are sent spinning uncontrollably into the distant scenery. Career mode is on the opposite end of the spectrum, where the truly hardcore have their work cut out for them. The content here is highly challenging, fare fit for an astrophysicist with some resource management skills. Players must juggle many facets of the program, including R&D, recruitment, orbital mechanics, exploring planets, and mining resources. Without the consequence-free experimentation of the sandbox, this complexity can be daunting, and makes advanced maneuvers inaccessible despite a long tutorial. The tutorial has the best intentions, but explaining some of the concepts involved in procedures such as achieving orbit are simply difficult to teach. The tough-to-navigate UI and unintuitive controls don’t make the process any easier. Kerbal Space Program provides something for everyone: players who will never see a return voyage from “the Mun,†and those who delve into special resource gathering, landing, docking, and crew-out-of-ship activities. If you are a creative type who loves to fool around with physics, you’ll probably love Kerbal Space Program. If you’re just looking to create unbelievable, ridiculous rockets with an impractical number of fuel pods, you can still have plenty of fun. Whatever your level of engagement, you can enjoy shooting these little green Smurfs into space – or into the nearby scenery.

Over 700 posts in less than 24 hrs, on a reddit post asking to "work on the tech tree." Wow. I just glanced. Moving parts around, "it should started unmanned," "No, it's the Kerbal space program," etc.

Since it's after 1.0 release, and the option didn't come with official patches - yet, anyway - we may have to wait for v1.1. Until then, Claw has devised something to go with his excellent set of un-official fixes.