fommil

What I was thinking was more what hemisphere / continent you land in.... you really don't need precision tools for that. At the moment, I just basically get into Kerbin orbit and retrograde until I don't have an orbit anymore and then time warp turned up to 11. Without a game mechanic to stop me from being lazy, I never bother with this part of the game. Plus, if there were "politics" - or competitors - in the game, there could be less science points awarded for being second in the various space races.

nice one, the enhanced nav ball does help (though I'm not too keen on all the extra stuff that it adds) and the square brackets are useful.

Because it would make re-entry more than an afterthought.

It would be great if, in order to be able to communicate with a spaceship, there needed to be line-of-sight to the mission control. This would be particularly important for autonomous missions, but would be relevant for manned missions sending science data back home. To deal with this, we (as players) would have to set up satellite formations with comms equipment onboard. The idea would be that all comms are just be trivially re-routed (with bandwidth and electricity constraints at each node) via the nearest comms node to mission control. This would be really cool because we'd have to learn how to create satellite constellations to cover areas. In the contract mode, this could be related to some kind of government contract to create a comms/GPS constellation for planetary use, and just generally add to the overhead costs of running a space programme.

It would be a really amazing addition to the game if some basic competitiveness were introduced with the nations of Kerbin. e.g. land your satellite in the competing nation and don't get it back until you broker a deal (fly some equipment for them?) to recover vehicles, and even then the scientific value is reduce on recovery. It would make re-entry more than an afterthought (at least until you implement the burn-up on re-entry physics). This would also open up the possibility of "spy sat" style contracts and so on in the upcoming release. Imagine even wow-style "choose your clan" choices at the beginning of the game: completely different tech trees.

I have a couple of suggestions that would make this amazing game/simulation even better. Much of this might already be available, but I was unable to work out how to do it. For the nav wheel: * show an indicator at the edge of the wheel to indicate the easiest way to get to the blue maneuver target (it might be nice to have this for other types of target velocities) For the map view mode: * time warp is throttled when approaching any planned maneuvers * sometimes I have too much information on my may view ... imagine a couple of kerbals in orbit and selecting one as target. It would be good if detailed information like AP (for everything that is currently shown inline) was in the corner rather on the map view. e.g. if I have a target intercept point near an AP then they overlap and it is impossible to read any information. * clicking on an object to change the focus (e.g. back to my ship) often doesn't work and I have to stick with whatever body is closest. It would be good if this could be fixed. * show distance TO target in map view (this seems very obvious, so I am perhaps missing it) * when orbiting above a biome, show the name of the biome And a couple for camera/docking mode: * click on another ship and be able to take control! It is a real PITA to have to go to map mode and back again to make adjustments on both sides when docking. Also, if I'm controlling ship A to dock with ship B, and set B to be my target, it would be incredibly convenient if ship B's target was automatically set to be ship A. * be able to reorient the camera back to the ship's axis. This is possible with SPACE in EVA but I can't find the flight/docking equivalent and it really complicates docking if the camera is not in the right place. * it would be great to be able to say "I always want to have the camera track my ship AND keep this object in view". e.g. on approach to dock the other ship often moves quickly across the screen and it would be good to keep it in view. and one more (duped in one of my other threads, but here feels like a good place for it): * be able to set kerbal walking movements to a joystick axis (currently only possible to set a key or button). Having traditional 3rd person controls with camera tracking would be awesome for this mode.

doh! I just found the "resources" button on the top right... it shows remaining fuel in map mode.

It would be awesome if the game had a SABRE in it for spaceplanes! http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre.html

It would be really amazing if engines came with two efficiency charts: * thrust vs generated force * thrust vs fuel consumption This would really help fine-tune use of the throttle, and perhaps engine choice.

I would love to see the following improvements to the map view: * see stages and remaining fuel (like in camera mode) * time warp is throttled when approaching any planned maneuvers * if cruising above a biome, show the name of the biome

Thank you all! I kinda wish this was on a stack overflow style board instead of a vBulletin, because then I could vote up all these excellent responses :-D

Getting Science points for exploring your own planet is kinda annoying for me. I find these initial point-farming tasks actually take away from the awesomeness of the game. Is there any way to remove the points awarded for kerbin biome/situation data retrievals? And bump the amount of points awarded for low/high/orbit data collections instead. That would be much more rewarding.

There are very few built-in tutorials and I'm now shooting for the Mun. Eventually I'd like to build up to landing and taking off again, but there are no tutorials for landing... how do people practice this maneuver? Also, is there a way to automatically stage the lander legs to come out? I've heard about docking as well... I don't think I have the tech for that yet, but when I do is there a tutorial for that? In a way, not having tutorials for this is kinda fun, because one could argue that it *is* the game. But if we think about real life space programs, there is certainly a way to practice using the equipment in a Earth based simulator.