Empiro

These screenshots show why the game really needed to have rendered stars instead of a static skybox. Everything else in the background is so blurry and muddy and you just have this tiny little dot.

I enjoyed Mars Horizon for a while. I don't think there's many space agency simulators that focuses on the business and research aspects. The rocket building was just a tad too simple, and the minigames got tedious after a while. However, it was overall an enjoyable play and I definitely recommend it when it goes on sale.

I think the issue is that both Unreal and Unity make certain assumptions about the game: namely at its base it's a scene with some sort of geometry and entities that move and interact within the scene. This works great for 99% of all games but not KSP/KSA because of the scales involved. I think KSP's challenges with Unity wouldn't go away at all if you used Unreal. Somethings might work better, but the core incompatibility will still be there. At the same time, I think the nature of KSA is that you don't actually need an extremely complex engine. At its core, it's a physics simulation, and for the small stuff, its sounds like they're already using a dedicated physics library, while for the big stuff, it's all Newtonian mechanics. (That's not to say it's easy, but it's at least known, and it's not like any game engine supports Newtonian mechanics for celestial bodies out of the box anyway) For the default difficult, I don't think anyone would mind if the cats just came back after getting blown up. After all, they do have 9 lives.

The gravity there is low enough that I'm surprised you can get any sort of traction at all. Most likely, all your issues are due to the gravity there. Your wheels don't grip the surface properly and all sorts of weird things can happen at 4x physics warp.

Try to get your approach PE as close to Kerbin as possible. If you're at 4000 m/s at 100 km, this kind of speed is actually quite reasonable and expected when returning from Jool via a direct transfer. When you left for Jool, you probably were moving just as fast when you finished your burn. This is the reverse of that. If you can't survive directly driving into the atmosphere, you don't need to slow all the way down. Just slow down so that you're not on an escape trajectory, which means spending about 1000 m/s to be slower than escape velocity, about 3000 m/s. You can then take your time, at AP lower your PE into the atmosphere and slowly aero brake until you're able to land safely. In either case, it's most efficient to perform this maneuver as close to Kerbin as you can.

In my game, I have unlock all nodes set to false, and have to buy the parts and unlocks, so maybe that's why. In either case, I'm glad there's already an open issue about it, and hopefully it'll become optional (and not have the extra +funds text) going forward.

In my save game, I was able to locate the following lines: SCENARIO { name = PartUpgradeManager scene = 6, 5, 7 UPGRADES { Unlocks { HDD-Upgrade1 = True Unmanned-Upgrade1 = True Goo-Storage-Upgrade = True HDD-Upgrade2 = True SampleCapacity-Upgrade1 = True Upgrade-Slots = True Crew-Upgrade1 = True Upgrade-TV = False SampleCapacity-Upgrade2 = True HDD-Upgrade3 = True } Enableds { } } } I changed Upgrade-TV to false as you see above and everything seems to work fine.

I just wanted to bring back this issue / bug that is present. Basically, if you unlock / purchase the TV upgrade in the Advanced Exploration tech node, you'll increase the cost of habitats like the Hitchhiker Can by 33,500 funds. It also adds the annoyance that for some reason, every part in the game now reads something like √37,500.00 + √33,500.00 cost, even parts like parachutes and engines. I haven't gotten the Radiation module yet, but it sounds like that will make things even more expensive. I was able to fix my game by undo-ing the TV upgrade by editing the save game and removing the upgrade. I suspect that these upgrades are powerful and are designed to make it so that they increase the cost of the parts if you use them. However, there doesn't seem to be a toggle that allows you to NOT use them, and they should probably by default be not enabled on a part.

I have OPM installed, and that might have modified with the maximum DSN range. I'm not 100% sure, however. I can look through my mod folders. Do you know what's the setting to look for that modifies the DSN?

I was able to figure it out. Yes, I was using the default config. Under the Kerbalism Settings.cfg, I found: //DampingExponentOverride = 14 // Kerbalism will calculate a damping exponent to achieve good data communication rates (see KSP.log, search for DataRateDampingExponent). If the calculated value is not good for you, you can set your own. In my KSP.log, I saw that the value had been computed as: [LOG 09:34:34.502] [Kerbalism] Sim.get_DataRateDampingExponent Calculated DataRateDampingExponent: 365.9167 (max. DSN range: 2000000000000, strength at 2 AU: 0.999) I'm not sure if it's a mod conflict or something else that made the damping value so high. I uncommented out the override and everything now works as expected.

Is there some sort of bug with the data transmission rates in the current version? In my early game, I was getting a transmission rate of 0.1 B/s from the Mun even though I was using the antenna and the signal strength was 96%. It should be pretty close to the rated speed of 5kb for the HG-5 High Gain Antenna.

For the same reason that there's no HydroLox or MethoLox in KSP 1 (or even RP-1 since "Liquid Fuel" doesn't exactly have a real-life analogue). It's basically not a area where the developers want to increase complexity in. I'm sure there will be plenty of mods that add fuel types for enthusiasts who want the most realistic and customizable experience.

Looking forward to the improved UI!

There's different ways to do things, but the simplest (though not cheapest or fastest) way to do things is: Eject from Minmus just barely so that you're orbiting around Kerbin. Target the Mun and see where the AN or DN are. Create a maneuver node and burn normal to reduce the relative inclination to 0. Execute the manuver so you're at 0 relative inclination with the Mun. Create a maneuver node to bring down your PE so that it's barely touching the Mun's orbit. Move your maneuver node so that it comes later or sooner, and get an intercept. The encounter markers can help you here -- if the Mun is behind you at the closest approach point, then burn later. If the Mun is ahead of you at the closest approach point, burn earlier. You can reduce the total fuel cost by basically combining the inclination change and transfer burn, and doing it all from low Minmus orbit. However, this requires waiting for just the right window and very careful maneuver tweaking. However, the Minmus - Mun transfer is cheap enough that it's not worth bothering with unless you're purposefully trying to practice timing transfer windows. Going interplanetary is when it's really going to make a huge difference, especially to somewhere like Moho. It's the difference between a round trip needing a big ship, versus needing an absolutely massive one.

It's showing atmospheric versus vacuum TWR. In-flight, KER will always show the TWR in your current situation, while in the VAB, you need to toggle it by pressing the Atmospheric button.