basic.syntax

The last few updates have focused on air parts, by necessity... now that air parts seem much more complete (sure, there is room and wishes for more) I think / hope v1.1 could turn back to looking at what rocket parts might be needed, to fill in gaps in the Stock parts catalog. Poor, lonely LV-N in the stock parts catalog. So sad. It needs friends.

I wonder about doing it... more expensively... in several ships. The economics may not work. And, I'm not sure this will satisfy contract checks, so that is two strikes against trying this You will definitely need to make a big, asparagus staged lifter, and get that into kerbin orbit. But because you'll be mining ore on EVE, you should** have access to all the fuel you need on the surface. Your EVE lift stages, when lifted off Kerbin, can be nearly empty. They may be 500-1,000t when landed and fully fueled on EVE. This would be a massive job, all around. ** edit: Speaking of EVE, this reminds me of mining missions in EVE Online: they set up a place for you to go that has a SPECIFIC amount for you to mine, nothing more than what the mission asks for. I haven't yet done a mining contract in KSP, so I don't know if they are that cruel 1. land a rover with a claw and ore tanks, for temporary use. 2. land the main mining vessel with ore tanks able to carry all the ore, but after mining it all... transfer what can't be lifted, over to the temporary rover storage tank. 3. Top off your fuel tanks, and lift off with as much ore as you can carry in the first/main ship, and wait in EVE orbit. 4. land other ships as needed, that are able to lift the remaining ore. 5. Drive the claw-equipped rover ore storage tank up to them, and transfer what they can carry. 6. Rendezvous all the ore ferries with the main ship that mined the full amount, fill it up, and take that one to Gilly. 7. (extra credit) Return all lifted stages to safely to Kerbin, for a partial refund on parts costs.

I summon the Atomic Rockets website for this type of occasion. It's chock full of info, broken down in many categories. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/atomicfuel.php Engine List

"If only" we could put rescued Kerbals back on the job market, to be snapped up at random intervals - extra profit above the rescue payment - by a mysterious, non-existent rival space agency.

Agree with this, sad it didn't make it into 1.0. Maxmaps said in Friday's Squadcast that "Tier 0" should be in v1.1. I'm expecting a little bit more news of v1.1 plans in this Friday's Squadcast; far-flung Squad employees are gathering in Mexico this week.

Last paragraph of PC Gamer review:

Inserting MEME: "Keep Calm and Carry On."

This is (now) a known issue. Other linked reports.

This assumes that additional reports will be more effective at getting bugs fixed; lack of testing isn't always the bottleneck in release quality. I wrote about this conundrum a few pages back. Time definitely factors in; I don't think any tester would object to extending a schedule, nearly indefinitely At some point down the road, there may be an new open call for applications to join the Experimental test team. That is Squad's process thus far, and something to watch out for.

Let's hope that checks and balances prevent the gutting of earth science programs. Congress has occasionally funded certain favored DoD programs above what DoD asked for. More enlightened folks might review the budget request, and ask pointed questions. Otherwise, CO2 sounds appropriate... Climate Observer 2. "I don't know what happened to the first one, but if Earth Science budgets are gutted, Observing will be all we can afford."

Agree with this. We need new challenges to keep the career game interesting, once you are basically in sandbox mode, where science doesn't matter any more... because all the parts are unlocked. That is, if KSP maintains the current paradigm. I've participated in some wonderfully creative "overhaul everything" threads. Resources enable longer trips without returning to Kerbin for fuel, and that's a welcome new activity, but it would be nice to see some other exploration & discovery related "end game" activities, in career mode.

The discussion circle comes around again, asking for more testers, in hopes more bugs would be caught. There's close to 100 in the "experimental" test group, (I'm not one) drawn from users of this forum. That seems a fairly large number to me, a good cross-section of players who care about KSP. Hypothetically, if you (anyone not now a properly signed-up KSP tester) had private build access and knew something was broken, did due diligence and filed the bug... I think we would still have release deadlines that can't be moved out any more, and patch notes worded like this: After seeing and filing a bug based on your hypothetical access to development builds, and seeing it appear in the 'final' product for reasons outside your control, I think you might even be more frustrated, than if you didn't know it was coming One of the problems that interrupts the steady process of building, reporting, [deadline hits, have to ship] new build with fix [oops, missed the deadline - patch time] - is the word "deadline." Someone has to decide when to stop the internal iteration of builds, and publish. Why does it have to be.. someone? Why not throw that decision open to the community? -But- What percentage must agree that a build is "release quality?" 75%? 90%? --we need to have a poll to discuss this. How long is the poll kept open, so that a good majority have a chance to vote? Two days? Five? --we need to have a poll to discuss this. Is development work stopped while the vote is taken? --Of course not, new changes, and bug reports are still going back and forth. So, a new vote is called, on a new release candidate build. I'm sorry that I don't have a good answer that will fix the problems that lead to bugs and patches. We all want the best for KSP, everyone wants updates that are consistently stable & as bug-free as possible.

If we must blame someone for problems, it should probably go on Squad management, not game testers. We don't know how many private builds of KSP were built and sent from Squad to the testers for feedback, adjusted, and sent back for another round of testing until the deadline hit. This thread (link) asks that we give Game Test volunteers a break and thank-you, for the work they put in. Also, this from the recent patch notes:

KSP, or "HSP" would still be an interesting game, but, it wouldn't have grown as quickly. Its mascot characters with "courage" and "stupidity" are an anchor that gave early adopters something more to talk about than building rockets, how hard it was to get your first orbit or first rendezvous, and spaceship explosions. I'm not an early adopter, I came in with 23.5. I started hearing about the game, and it sounded interesting because of player's funny stories involving Kerbal misadventures - which also told about the spaceship lego mechanics and learning curve underneath it all. It's a package. ### The human mod described tho, would be useful for "total conversions," things like RSS, and could lead to even more TV news broadcasts using KSP like Photoshop, to illustrate space scenarios and news events. Sumghai clearly knows of the amount of work involved... I found another clue in this Devnote Tuesday post:

I want to re-quote this for humor purposes, and to show others have wondered about this question, as well.

I wonder if you read this reader comment under the PC Gamer review:

Max sees a quote in Twitch chat, and reads it back super fast sometimes while heading into his answer. I had to rewind video several times to parse out the words, in context. The word "drills" was very hard to make out, but I feel really confident on that interpretation. It's 8 minutes into the stream. It sounded something like: "why.doanrills.iv.heateranymore wun rather adding a radiator woulda been a little more complex." OWK: I salute you, man. Transcribing is a hell job sometimes, it's no wonder that good OCR and speech-to-text software is complicated and expensive.

I kept hitting refresh to look for OWK summary, I missed it and wondered what Max had said... started to think OWK had taken this one off, so, I booted up the twitch archive a couple hours ago, started taking notes. And OWK was here, all along. I should have just clicked his name somewhere for latest posts, lol. I can offer a 2nd PoV and a couple extra quotes for you guys. I think folks are getting the wrong impression about the drills and engineer skills. I don't know if OWK heard or meant it that way... its not what I heard in my viewing. Question about drills and heating... why no radiator part? Max: ...that would have been more complex, for now tied to engineer skills... not 100% sure it will stay that way, but for now we think we're OK. Max seems to be describing how it is in the patch today, heating problems are gone, and engineer skill affects the drilling yield. So, Max implies that they are OK with the change, but, leaves open the possibility of looking at the heating idea, later. Here is some excruciating detail on Max's 3rd launch, because some great jokes came out of it: 3rd launch is going for a speed or distance record, using a liquid engine and stack of 8 FL-100's under the capsule. It didn't go so well. Max began a gentle gravity turn at 8000m, "It's not like we'll get an orbit, but may as well try to get as far as we can" When he hit 10,000m an old habit kicked in, he pushed it over some more, a bit too hard this time, and suddenly the rocket tumbled end over end. "Fins! Why didn't I get Fins?!" Rough explanation about why the old 10K turn doesn't work anymore. Parachute deployed around 6000m ... hopes to recover to try again. Water landing coming up. A single parachute wasn't enough for the weight... whole rocket hit the water around 35 m/s, and vaporized. Max was shocked. But he recovered composure, and went back to the VAB. No more Jeb. Val, you're up next... Because... no reverts! Rechecking the same design for the next attempt, he noticed a very important part was missing: no stack decoupler under the capsule. I'm not describing the 4th launch. It ended better... Val survived. Max reads Twitch chat: "You might be a good game designer, but you suck at engineering!" Max response: "I'm not even a good game designer... I'm the PRODUCER!" Kofeyh on Twitch chat: "Max is being efficient: he's already murdered Jeb, to ensure he can't murder him in the future." Max: "Kofeyh is just full of wisdom as usual. Kofeyh has caffeine and wisdom to spare." Unity 5 Aero overlay Maxmaps is very happy with 1.0 changes to "World's First" contracts.

Various comments throughout this thread may help.

Below the PC Gamer review, scroll down to the comments by Silver Fox - that's great stuff, right there.

Sorry, I see your update comments now.I had a specific type in mind with asking about new games: career vs sandbox; fewer parts buttons are displayed at start of career. You wrote that 1.0 was fine. They added one new part in 1.0.1, the basic fin, but also edited values for a bunch of others. Look for similar reports in these support forums, they might provide other ideas for things to try. Another update may come out, that changes things around again.

ok... I should learn2reed. I actually did read the patch notes, but it goes in one eye and out the other, sometimes. EDIT: Fuel Cells don't cooperate with the Engineer's report: It says fuel cell parts store electric charge, but nothing on the craft produces it. From the other direction, fuel tanks report no consumer on the craft.

The picture shows a craft loaded, but, is that step necessary? you simply have no parts icons, in the parts panel? Career and sandbox will change which are available. If you've been starting up in Sandbox, try a new Career game, to see if any parts icons appear. (My guess is that if it was nothing before, it will still show nothing; the problem may be something to do with icon rendering.) I notice the the wing category icon is clipped, from there down, bottom two sidebar icons are not displaying. If you click on the various sidebar categories, does anything flicker, where the parts icons should appear?

ISRU: I'm not understanding what problems are left as a challenge... or, I'm looking at the wrong values. It "just seems to work" now. With or without lvl5 engineer, (sandbox), on Kerbin's runway, the convertor not specially heatsinked. I'm seeing ISRU part temp start around 288 and top out around ~310 after about ~700 ore units have been processed. (via time acceleration) Liquid Fuel gauge shows a rate of -.42, until tanks fill up.

BmB, what steps did you go through, to have the problem? Does the same thing happen, if you exit and restart KSP? Kithylin seems to be reporting a different problem. The parts selection works, but the part isn't placing on craft.