Yemo

I m aiming to include Kolonization support for the next release of my SETI-BalanceMod (link in signature). On of its key features is using procedural parts instead of the mass clutter in the construction buildings. This mod would make a huge impact on usability by decluttering the menu for colonization, so I plan to make it a requirement when using Kolonization. Thank you very much, cant wait for the release!

You might want to take a look at my SETI-BalanceMod, the link is in my signature. It removes clutter (procedural elements where possible) and focuses on gameplay, rather than part mods. It is still work in progress, but already much better than stock balance (starting with a probe, then meaningful choices between better rockets, planes and survivability). Kolonization, Karbonite and Community Tech Tree (which supports NearFuture) integration are planned for the next major update. Havent tested it with different solar system. I suggest playing it with all mods listed under "INSTALL" and "STATUS" in the forum thread, there are some interesting new dynamics when all mods are present.

@FreeThinker: Thank you for the suggestion, I included the code in the new SETI-settings.cfg. @kiko1004: CTT is planned for the next major update, together with Karbonite and Kolonization. After that, progress on the mod will be much slower. I really like the heat mechanics from KSPI and some other dynamics from it. FreeThinker does a KSPI/NearFuture Integration and suggested a cooperation, which would be ideal. New Version 0.5.1 Science Changes Switching the biome mask for crew report and eva report Thus crew reports low in space are biome dependent, while eva reports low in space are global, resulting in less annoying science gathering Proposed by "FreeThinker" based on "ScienceRevisited" mod by "CaptRobau" Part Progression changes Elevon 1 and the basic flat wing available earlier Batteries (Z-400 and Procedural Battery) available earlier Procedural Battery has higher capacity limits and dummy parts in the tech tree Ladders (Pegasus and the large folding one) available earlier Small external oxygen tank (Universal Storage) shifted back a bit Improved SETI initial crafts, new plane for Kerbin survey missions with FAR Minor Tweaks and Fixes

If stock + far and tac is too easy, you might want to take a look at my SETI-BalanceMod, link is in the signature. It aims at tackling those major stock imbalances. For a really great and challenging game, play fully modded and on hard or even 50% reward setting. You have to think, but it is not overly grindy if you dont go over 200% penalty (which influences building upgrades). Rrecommended mods are listed in the "INSTALL" and "STATUS" sections in the thread.

Thank you very much! Important: For people who already moved parts out of the instance, you need to get the 3 radial decouplers back. One major update is incoming in the next days, after that, it will be much slower progress. Waiting for full port of KSPI to 0.90.

Your boosters will profit from some nose cones.

If your mods need to much RAM, install ActiveTextureManagement. You might also want to take a look at my SETI-BalanceMod (link in signature). It makes heavy use of ProceduralParts, which makes a lot of parts obsolete, so they can be deleted without gameplay constraint. Also, you dont start manned and there are a lot of rebalances already.

@KaiserSoze: I m not sure about the balance of "crowdedness of category" vs "crowd of categories". This is my proposal based on my experience from the SETI mod, where reducing clutter is one of my main foci. I Command & Control a) manned unmanned c) control (reaction wheels + RCS) II Tanks & Storage a) liquid fuel advanced fuels (eg Xenon) c) Ka/K+/Ke d) thermal/plasma/aso e) Life support + special storage f) Universal Storage wedges III Engines a) liquid fuel Solid c) Jets + Intakes d) multimode e) advanced propulsion (ion, nuclear) f) Ka/K+/Ke (mineable resources mods) g) thermal/plasma/aso IV Structural a) standards (launch clamp, struts, fuel line, inline structural elements) decouplers + adapters + couplers d) girders e) Docking Ports + Fairings f) Habitat (Kolonization mod) V Electrics & Resource Extraction a) Internal (Batteries + Generators) External (Solar + Heat dissipators for KSPI) c) Resourse Extraction VI Science a) Antenna + Science Lab Sensor/Experiment VII Survivability + Mobility a) Parachutes + Heat Shields Landing gear + legs + rover wheels VIII Aero a) Wings Winglets c) Control surfaces

@C.A.Sizemore: I m not sure about the prop plane, I think the solid rocket is early enough for a space program and not everyone wants to fly with planes. This is one of the reasons, why SETI starts in that fashion. After essentially 5 science points, there are meaningful choices presented. Especially with mods, you can go to bigger rockets, planes or survivability (better parachute selection, heatshield, life support). @OTHOAB: Actually that was on my agenda, but I had too much to do with other stuff, rl and modding obstacles. I have not yet tested it, but I plan to do so. SETI only uses the stock tech nodes, so in theory it should work. I just released 0.4.0, with some major changes. The material bay and mystery goo canister science can not be collected anymore. I wanted to make it differently, so that you can collect, but only get the transmission value, but dont know how or if that is possible. On the other hand, the science lab now improves the transmission value 2 fold, making it much more useful. Also many engines are rebalanced based on the values of StockReBalance by stupid_chris. Some parts, like adapters, are available earlier and others got some changes (eg. the starting max diameter for the SRB is now 0.5, so that it doesnt overshoot the atmosphere in FAR. There are now dummy parts giving a general idea how to unlock larger fuel tanks (still temporary ones). And, of course, new mod supports: KAS, RemoteTech and TAC life support

@5thHorseman: If you plan on a longer game, I plan to release a significant update late this evening (UTC). It will at least provide support for KAS, RemoteTech and TAC. Maybe even some engine and science balancing. From memory, I currently dont use - the SQUAD fuel tank folder - the SQUAD decouplers in the utility folder (I do use the couplers at the bottom) - the BACC and RT-10 solid fuel boosters (but I use the sepratron) - The SQUAD ring batteries afaik the 200, 1k and 4k ones the other parts are all over the place and since the mod is still heavily WIP, some might change, and I didnt make a list yet. All sorted out parts are actually shifted to the previously unused tech node "experimental motors" for easier in game reference. The techtree config files for that sorting out all have the suffix "unused" and are generally ordered by mod.

That one is WIP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/104231 If the construction menues are too crowded, you can also take a look at my SETI-BalanceMod, link is in my signature.

This is my experimental jet for longer distance survey missions (SETI-BalanceMod, 23science spent, no facility unlocks, link in signature). To reach distant target areas faster, it has a solid rocket booster: Due to the wing/engine placements and especially the landing gear, it is not only very stable in the air but also during takeoff/landing.

That is my early survey plane for close by sites, will upload the one for further away sites later on. In my SETI-BalanceMod, this plane only requires basicRocketry (5science) and stability (18science), a simpler rocket plane is available with basicRocketry (see screenshot in mod-thread from signature). This basic jet can land vertically with parachutes, especially helpful in bad terrain areas to do some science, after doing a survey.

@Etsu: I m really glad that you like the mod, even in this early stage. Giving players a variety of meaningful options/choices was one of the main goals and planes are an intergral part of that. I m trying hard to find a procedural parts texture, that fits better with the aerospace parts. Unfortunately I m not good enough at graphics modding to do it myself. Thank you for your post, it is really spirit lifting to get a response. Best regards, Yemo PS: I m not sure about the 5 science issue. I would attribute it to some not shown decimal points which were rounded up for display, but not for calculation. I read about the same thing when launching vessels. It says 18.0t in the info panel, but when you want to launch it, it tells you that the vessel actually has a mass of 18.03t and is thus too heavy.

All mod icons are messed up, from VHB to normal screen to in-flight. While I see the page 317, post 3168 reference above, I have mods installed that are not listed there. Also I guess that this does affect more people (everyone?) and everyone rewriting their own configs is a bit redundant? My current choices are, to have black and white icons around, to configure everything myself instead of working on my mod or to suffer the long loading times again. Is there no better way to this? I m not even using aggressive.

You might want to take a look at my SETI BalanceMod (see signature), supporting heavily modded installs without the downsides of clutter and ram usage is one of the reasons I m making it. It is still in early development, but is progressing rapidly. While I dont recommend it for massive mod install yet, one of its main features is, that it uses only procedural parts where appropriate (eg adapters, fuel tanks etc). This saves a lot of part count in the assembly menues. The momentarily unused parts are currently shifted towards an unused tech node, so if you want, you can take a look at that node and delete (make a backup first) those parts from the folders. It is planned to automate this when the mod is more mature. And deleted redundant parts dont eat up memory. Commenting in the mod thread will bumb it up, attract more people, who find more issues and thus make the mod progress faster ;-).

Given price, sale frequency, players on steam, forum members and so on, I would be surprised if it does not have 7 figure total sales. And that goes for the normal game, not KeralEdu (those features should be added to normal or at least be a dlc for normal, and ffs make the building upgrades and initial career missions moddable, while you are at it!)

@Musil: There is a mod on kerbalstuff, which does more intelligent auto-staging, I will add it to the recommended mods for seti. edit: Smart Stage

With the stock contract/game balance, you will drown in science around tech level 5.

While there is no need for contracts for science, most contracts will provide lots of science and thus give you science regardless of experiments. Thats where balancing mods come in. For example with my mod configuration, which is WIP and in an early stage (but already much better than stock), you get extremely little science from contracts, while experiments give you full science. Of course this is further modified by the difficulty slider, if you want a more "grindy"/epic game. Also, simple experiments can be transmitted for 100% science, while special experiments (goo, materials bay) are heavier and should still be returned for full science. About 0.90, yeah, I currently have 4 installs of KSP on my hdd. Among them an epic insterstellar game from 0.23.5 ...

Hello, I m the author of the SETI BalanceMod. The mod is under development (early version has just been released on kerbalstuff right before your mod), and one of its features is, that it heavily uses ProceduralParts to remove clutter from the assembly building. Unfortunately ProceduralParts had some not so great textures for - Batteries - TAC life support - Aircraft fuselage parts (plain white is too bright, and for the others, the textures wont fit in) I plan on making your mod a requirement in the next release and set your textures to be the new defaults for batteries and life support. edit: I think we need to work on the cfg files you provided, since yours seem to create duplicate parts. I ll take a more detailed look at them and then propose the changes to you under the ProceduralParts license. edit2: I misread your zip structure, "installing" the mod actually overwrites the ProceduralParts folder, which is extremely problematic in terms of mod installs. This among other things has to be reworked, especially for CKAN support. As I said, I ll take a look at it, though I m no expert (learned it yesterday for my mod ;-) ) If you are interested, it would be very helpful for my mod, if you consider making a texture that fits in with the stock mk1 cockpits and generally the aero textures. Especially needed for Procedural Structural Element, Procedural Fuel Tank and Procedural Nose Cone! Thank you very much and best regards, Yemo

The difficulty science modifier also affects the science gained from experiments, not only contracts (and I m not sure it affects all contracts). Thus the imbalance prevails but it forces you to do contracts instead of experiments. Using a mod is much better, you can adjust the mod settings as well, or you can combine slider with mod.

You might want to take a look at my SETI BalanceMod, or at least the dependencies (one mod restricts science gain from contracts) for a more balanced gameplay. If you use SETI, start a new career.

There is a mod for more reasonable auto staging: https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/398/SmartStage

I consider the "science" resource to be something like influence on the public/government/scientific community. Eg pictures/experiments from the mars rovers today help to secure the development of new vehicles/rockets/parts for future missions. If you want a more reasonable progression (within limits, since SQUAD decided to make the initial missions not moddable and eg the altitude contracts can only be done by manned vessels), you may want to check out my SETI-BalanceMod. It rebalances the gameplay with the help of other mods. On level 1 you only have unmanned solid boosters, level 2 gets you simple manned rockets, on level 3 you may make meaningful choices, like liquid fuel rockets or jet planes. Level 4 offers the standard crew capsule for space manned space flight, level 5 provides docking ports, rover wheels and landing cans.