BlackAdder128

I found Duna a step up in that it requires a little more launch stage or Lander intelligence. For Dres, I literally just reused my Duna rocket, because it was a tad overengineered. I have to admit I lost a little bit of interest after doing flyby missions of the Jool moons, but I can't claim there was nothing to do. Still, I'm getting back into it a little more with contracts, and I also loaded the realism mods. They're... bit more of a challenge, so far, and the planet tectures are really pretty.

No, because the number of forum replies to a suggestion is probably more proprortional to actual demand for a feature to be in the stock game than the existence of a mod or even the number of dowloads. Therefore, a suggestion thread is not equivalent to search button failure.

Maybe. I haven't read through those in particular. Most of the threads I have read have been thoughtful. But speaking from experience in other forums, getting a less selective community is a necessary consequence of a game becoming more popular, unfortunately.

I am only arguing that the existence of a mod should be considered separately from whether an idea is a suggestion. Ok, yes it's fine to submit an idea regardless of whether it's in a mod. And yes, whether it exists in a mod is one of the the things that should be considered before pressing forward with a suggestion. I thought this thread was essentially about protocol: what bearing, if any, should the existence of a mod have on a suggestion thread. I say it is a good thing to bring up, but a page full of "there's a mod for that" replies are not useful. You have to follow up with, "any I think it should/should not be part of the game for reason X" to be helpful.

I give the community more credit than that. Yes, there are some people who will use "there's a mod for that" for a variety of unstated purposes: * To remind the requester they didn't invent the idea they're asking for * To remind them that at least some solution exists that they or someone they respect worked hard to implement in some really cool way * To remind the user that, if a mod exists, there is a decent chance the devs are aware of the level of demand for a feature. But on the whole, it's just a problem with online communication. Too many words and you lose people: too few and you lose meaning. People tend to err towards the latter: it takes less work.

The *amount* of demand for a particular feature is probably going to be roughly proprotional to the number of people asking for it. It may or may not be proprotional to the number of people willing to download a mod to enable the feature, depending on the particular mod. For example, putting interstellar features or weapons in a mod is an attempt to change the game in a way that Kerbal space program is probably never going to go. It's basically a different game. The fact that people can add that to a mod is fantastic, but shouldn't be confused for demand for those features in the base game. I would make a similar argument for many complexity adding realism features as well as things like the popular Kethane mod. Fantastic mod, maybe, but probably shouldn't be a stock feature.

My powers of time manipulation more than cover for my lack of piloting and rocket engineering competence. I don't use quicksaves, but my revert-to-VAB magical powers largely ensure the safety of Kerbals.

Use that second monitor to watch John Stewart or The Colbert Report.

Combined with the contract filtering mechanism you mentioned in another thread, this might be quite interesting. Last time I played Mission Controller, you lost cash and reputation with a revert-to-VAB. Do you know if that's true with Mission Controller 2?

I've seen this elsewhere and suggested it, myself. So I would definitely second this notion as the primary thing to add to the contract list.

It is an alpha, and so I'll give most people the benefit of the doubt that any criticism is meant to be constructive, things to consider while the system is still in flux and changes are not as costly as they will later become.

Moar contract types and the ability to filter by type does seem to be the most sensible solution, but it's nice to see some real-world support for the testing category. Tbh, a lot of the testing contracts still feel a little goofy to me, but I can appreciate that some people like them.

In general, this is a good philosophy. On the other hand, my personal preferences tend to align with the original poster. If the part testing contracts were separated into a subcategory that could be permanently hidden (and replaced by "deploy a satellite to X orbit" missions or some such), that would greatly increase my own personal enjoyment of the career part of the game.

I agree that real-world less-reusable rockets should be viable, specially considering the real-world difficulty in properly qualifiyng parts that have participated in re-entry for safety, although I don't want to comment too much on the topic, as I haven't spent enough time with contracts to find out if non-reusable rockets are viable. There are a few reasons I haven't spent much time with contracts yet: 1. My 9-yr old has discovered Kerbal space program and spends a fair amount of time flying planes and blowing stuff up 2. I have recently discovered the X3 games (what they lack in realism they make up for in immersion) 3. Contracts don't feel that compelling compared to my pre-exisitng hopes and expectations Focusing on item #3, as I've posted once elsewhere, I would really like the option to focus more on putting up space infrastructure than testing parts or performing one-time "government-funded" mission types. Putting up specialized satellites and space stations or maintaining them for science and profit sounds marvelous, especially as enabling steps for that big Duna base down the road. Crafting a frankenstein rocket to make profitable the testing of half a dozen parts for pocket change to get to the next "government-funded exploration mission" is just not as motivating. I've been made aware there are some mods that meet my expectations a little better than the stock game, and I'll go down that road one of these days, but I personally would really like to see space infrastructure as an optional cash focus in the stock game at some point. I thnk that would make a much stronger career mode.

That's quite a sensible statement... hardly the Kerbal way.

Thanks for the pointer. I've tried out the mission controller mod, though not that version. My big turn-off was that it didn't fit well with my "revert to VAB" trial-and-error style: with every revert I simply lost the cost of rocket. With Kerbal Engineer or mechjeb, it seems possible to do precision engineering and get things right hte first time, but I haven't gotten into the habit of relying on those tools yet. In addition, I must have gotten a flaky install (I did use a plugin manager that seemed to work for other plugins), because I had some other GUI and related issues with the mod.

It's a fair point that contracts are still being expanded, but that can mean many things. Discussing now in which direction they should be expanded feels like a positive thing. Thakns for pointing out some mod examples: I'm still behind the curve on mods.

I've probably spent 100+ hours on Kerbal and had just started messing around with mods. But nothing like a few of the numbers I've seen around. That probably just indicates a healthy respect for time

I suppose I didn't think about the value of test parts making you try new things, since finding uses for what my science mission just unlocked was generally sufficient motivaiton for me. But for me, many of the part contracts were simply irritating from a completionist perspective, because having a contract to fire a solid rocket booster at 14km available compelled me to accept it. Then I had to arrange two stages below the booster in order to meet the height and speed requirement for the stage. After that I fired off a useless separator to meet another contract, followed by a parachute which now met its height and flying requirements, which then needed to be cut, and so forth. I realized I was building Rube Goldberg machines to get petty cash that barely paid for the rocket, and it sort of irked me. On the other hand, the thought of building space infrastructure like a satellite network somehow or repairing telescopes seems grander to me for some reason.

I've been having some fun with First Contract, and Kerbal so far has been a fantastic program, but I have to admit hoping that the contracts themselves would take another direction. Specifically, I had hoped to have contracts dominated by commerical contracts such as I remember from long-ago project space station: please place this satellite module into high or low orbit. I had envisioned space tourism and other commercial concerns playing a strong role in contracts in addition to the base government-initiated budget for achieving orbit and so forth. Basically, I had imagined that as one's reputation rose, a variety of parts such as communications satellites, scientific experiements, space telescopes, or non-crew passengers, etc. would need to be taken farther for greater rewards. The "please test my part" missions, in contrast, are a clever idea that sensibly tend towards low rewards and fit a commercial theme. However, I have two problems with them. First, the reward for those missions must be low to be plausible, and so making them profitable must sometimes involve making bizarre frankenstein rocket designs to accomodate a set of them. Second, they really ought not to be so repeatable: how many separatron tests would they really be willing to pay for? Third, since the only visible high-revenue sources are for exploration missions, it feeds back into the theme that all aerospace funding is government-sourced exploration. It's not that this is implausible, but my personal dream is that ambitious aerospace will become a self-perpetuating commercial venture. So, to sum up, this is my shout out. Are there plans to make commercial funding lines based primarily on bringing satellites and such to the reaches of space and leaving them there (perhaps servicing them once in a while)? If not, is there demand for that kind of contract in the form of a mod? (PS. Please let me know if it's already in there and I just haven't played enough!!!)

After many tries, I recently landed on Duna and returned home safely with 1 kerbal and several experiments. I had done a number of mun landers, but most of those did not use Nuclear engines to land, rely on drogue parachutes, use bileratal rather than trilateral symmetry, etc. I was trying to copy a video that used a fairly minimal rocket, and I discovered a lot of "small" errors that cause landers to tip over or fall apart even at low landing speed (1.2 m/s or so). After finally getting the rock and the piloting right, I took a break to retrieve and asteroid and put my first Rover on the mun near my science processing base.