basic.syntax

In another thread asking for improvements to KSP water, I offered that this would be a good area for a paid expansion. "Inner Space" - submarine stuff - could benefit from a new UI for navigation and plotting courses under water. It would need a new Assembly building on the water near KSC, and entirely new parts categories for making surface and submarine ships. The ocean would offer new types of science and exploration content. All of this is outside the scope of the current "outer space" game.

Action groups can help: in the VAB / SPH you can assign a group to activate brakes, or toggle the motor, for any set(s) of wheels. Then when driving, just press the appropriate number key that you pre-set, when you want brakes or motor control - front or back. Even if driving was "easy," It would take more time than most are willing to spend, to visit every biome on a planet or moon.

Why all this messing around with warp drives and hyperspace, when we could simply exist in all points simultaneously? ** (referencing the Infinite Improbability drive, found in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) **If anyone needs me, just leave a message. I'll be hiding under this very expensive towel for the next hour, where any tomatoes and cabages hurled in my direction, can't hurt me.

Water begs for more than a few tweaks, I bet the designers didn't have much thought for water, or they'd have given us wings (for water, lol.) It could be a good subject for KSP's second or third expansion pack: Ocean Exploration. Physics improvements (which should be rolled into the base game, not just for paid DLC) and Parts for surface and submarine craft.

If you have not seen this, the main developer has written about why they are not waiting for Unity 5. I think I will be happy for a while with a much more stable KSP running on Unity 4.6, if they manage to deliver it. In the latest Squadcast, Maxmaps said that "loads" of old bugs are being fixed. KasperVld re-iterated that "1.0" is not the end of development, and, they do plan to update to Unity 5 - after its released.

Setting aside any pro/con discussion about FAR, I think the OP has some good suggestions that would help everyone, improving the navigation UI.

They are cute, stuffed plush toy characters, kids identify with them: great marketing. Mascot characters. SomeONE to rescue, when a ship is lost in space, in what could otherwise be a dry spaceflight sim.

Thank you for this detailed reply. It does not sound as daunting as the alphabet-soup of mods, that some experienced players call essential for them to play the game. On launches, I'm always switching to the orbital view to see AP height and time-to, often completing the orbit there. KER's "hud 1" info is four fairly unobtrusive lines, fully configurable. Having that info on the main screen makes it possible to launch and complete the orbit, without missing any of Bill and Bob's expressions of impending disaster

Mercy! :) You're right of course. An industrial revolution was taking place. People were excited by the new-fangled television-typewriters, in so many shapes and sizes. Microsoft didn't make and put hardware on people's desks. Their tagline occasionally ended with '....running Microsoft software.' Personal computers were going to get huge with or without MSFT, but there are winners and losers in every revolution. Following the IBM PC OS deal, (which could have gone to IBM's first choice, Digital Research,) their presence had a significant effect, in the industry transition from a massive variety of business, niche, hobby devices and kits, toward wider mainstream PC adoption around fewer devices, as buyers sought lower prices, compatibility, and hardware companies consolidated.

that's the line they dance around: experienced players want some dV info, but would you want "mechjeb level" additional info screens and number spewing widgets, in the base game? The UI can get cluttered in a big hurry. How about flight automation? They have been holding a line on what is 'too much' for stock. How much, is too much?

Some nice info! Thanks again, ObsessedWithKSP. The anticipation is building That landing gear looks really hefty, extending to offer ground clearance for craft. For easy landing on resources, I wonder if the scanner item has to be built into a craft. It could be a bit more challenging if we need to remember the overlay, or switch between ships, while steering to land parts for resource extraction. For career mode, I'm hoping scanner quality of info will improve with R&D and/or tracking facility upgrades. (I don't think early career should need to go mining, until ready to leave Kerbin SOI.) ---- Edit: "Asymmetric flameout is fixed because it shouldn't really exist" -yay!

Here you get at a fundamental philosophy difference between software approaches. Microsoft succeeded in putting a computer on every desk and every home (judging by OS market share at its height, and various court cases under the heading of "monopoly") partly due to business practices and partly because they focused on making things easy for end-users, hiding complexity. ("like Apple," some might say.) They looked at how other office appliances "just work" and tried (varying degrees of success) to take out controls and features that clutter or confuse the experience for a majority of users, and focused on the most common use cases. Part of their business model with built-in apps is to provide a basic set of features, that leaves room for third party apps to beat. Windows Movie Maker, for example, *could* have done so much more than it does/did - intentionally. For the longest time, antivirus was left to third parties. But complaints about attacks always refer to "Microsoft" having the problem. Eventually they bought another company, and incorporated its tech into Windows Defender, so they could knock out the most common attack vectors that plague computers that had - nothing at all. Antivirus vendors, probably looking at the ruins of Novell and Netscape - were petrified that M$FT would put them out of business with that move, but MSFT left plenty of room for the competition. Windows Defender doesn't score high in reviews in roundups of antivirus packages, but it is easy, unobtrusive, and much better than nothing - just what they set out to do. Around Windows, they built a support system of many different layers, that you have to go through to figure out a problem or get a bug fixed. Online help systems with a press of F1, on up to Technet and MSDN. But the system actually works for a majority of people, or they would not have achieved the level of success that they did. The courts have held their feet to the fire for missteps, and so I don't worry about *intentional* secret backdoors. They would and do get called out for "shenanigans," by a legion of white-hat IT pro's and security experts. All that said, Linux derivatives have grown into good, functional, incredibly configurable and scalable (especially on the small side) platforms where you can get your hands dirty, and if you're knowledgeable enough to begin with, feel more confident that you know what is going on behind the scenes. I don't argue that it has not fostered innovation, but, wanting to make money, and leveraging an existing platform such as Windows, has also fostered a lot of innovation

I didn't install KER until I wanted to design manned-return mission from EVE. I knew the tools existed, but I was having fun getting to kerbin's moons and as far as Duna, through Trial and Error and Reload. And the occasional napkin calculating. Then I did a spreadsheet, to try different numbers and understand the way the math worked. But EVE, well... after 15 times reworking a build that "looked cool" with lots of stages and asparagus, I gave up and went to KER. I think dV readout is important, once the KSP honeymoon is over and you find yourself reverting 255 part or higher craft from Launchpad back to the VAB for tweak after tweak, until instability builds and the game crashes. But, I want to see the "just try it!" lack-of-info preserved, for the early career game and first-time-player experience. I think HarvesteR is right, that there is an excitement you can have from not being completely sure something will work, and the result can be more rewarding when it does, than if you were SURE it should work. The top comments on STEAM aren't about complex orbital mechanics, except in passing. They're mostly jazzed up about trying different things out, whether it works or explodes, and the WAAAHHH! expressions on Kerbal's faces I think there's a place for this gameplay experience, its common to other games that may use an abstract bar graph in places where they could put a number. I don't think it was "a bad idea" to try out. But, again, getting deeper into KSP and wanting to get to EVE... Jool... yeah. At that point, and experience level - I'm ready for dV readouts.

I'm not sure I understand you fully: "should be said upfront" do you mean, how they sell the game? The main website says:

I think you're looking at the simulator aspects, and wanting to take that to its logical extent, while HarvesteR was speaking to the emotional investment a lack of complete information can build in the player, the nail-biting experience of "will I, or won't I succeed here." And then the feeling of success against the odds you can get, when you achieve an objective with BINGO fuel remaining Other games manifest this similar situation: information presented as a bar graph, instead of a number. How long until that last pixel goes away? I think these are valid choices for game designers to make. I may wish for "the answer," but not having a cold number can lead you to try something creative, and have an interesting experience, as opposed to not even trying, because the number says don't bother. (In before someone tells me to just turn off the dV feature, when 1.0 is released.)

I would like to read how HarvesteR's mind changed, or was - changed, over providing delta-v info. I thought he made a very thoughtful case for not having it, whether I agree or not, it was a well-made argument.

A rocket died while I was distracted here The only other game forum I have participated in, is for EVE Online, where players make a habit of tearing the company, and each other, apart on a daily basis. (Every 2-3 months, a new "EVE is dying" thread, complete with all the reasons players can think of, and Peak-Concurrent-User graphs on the side.) This place is a breath of fresh air by comparison, where players often help each other, instead of "I can haz your stuff now, yes?" Also, default black text on white background in these forums, is much easier on my eyes than their white text on black I would rather support and encourage Squad to continue with what communication we have, and try to show ways the glass is half full - than complain too much about other media activity.

I vote paranoia. Absence of Squad posts here can have explanations beyond that dark cloud. If Squad was "turning against," Kasper would have begun his postings in this critical thread much more harshly, if at all. They could decide that their time is better spent working on the product, than taking the time to write Devnote Tuesday - by far the most detailed, weekly publication about KSP. In the days before kickstarter and early access... games were simply... released - or not released, and ranted about afterward; no years of player feedback going on beforehand

but it can be. Reddit may contain a greater number of casual or non-players who've heard about KSP, than these forums. Here, people who have registered to post, have made a conscious choice to affiliate with a particular product. Squad made a choice to start an improve-the-tutorial research thread there. That says nothing about what reading they may have done on these forums before starting up the Reddit thing. But they do not count these forums out by any stretch, offering by far the best and most detailed info about the game's progress, to these forums.

On the 'treasure hunt' for information: Movies and TV are frequently promoted this way, with different clips, still photos, and writer/director/cast member quotes placed in different media. Some media outlets often get the exclusive right to host a particular thing 'first' for a short time. Some people may win a contest, and get flown to Hollywood, where they can ask questions of the creators. A lot of kickstarter games these days offer direct communication with the developers, on their highest contribution tiers. It may be irritating to completion-ists who want to get all the info in one convenient place, but marketing is done this way again and again, year after year. Fuel for the hype-train

Abstaining. Kasper has explained this will be carried out for at least one such Daily Kerbal posting, in the "other thread" in this post.

The engineer dV details weren't ironed out to the point they were ready for our comments. Max wrote in this post. The question must back up a step: should Squad leak any thought of a feature they seriously plan to implement, on any media, before the feature details are ready for our comments? This is separate-but-related to the poll question, which asks that Squad-sourced news, leaks, comments, polls, research questions - in other media - be simultaneously posted to these forums.

When they add back the originally planned KSC first level, all the leveled restrictions will have to be re-scaled; they could easily give access to 6 at the start.

The first announcement said that specially named Valentina would be joining the KSC team. I don't recall seeing a formal announcement that other females will be added to the flight crew, but they definitely should be, its hinted by danRosas comments about progress of animation rigging.

"Liftoff," "Launch" - Squad has many ways to go, that are all pretty easy and fit perfectly. I think I'm going to like whatever they pick The updates before now, were much harder to name.