Wiseman

I find myself holding strong on the idea that I will finish out a save by completing all missions, current and planned, before moving on... Right up until the option to dump it and upgrade is in front of me. The closer the new content comes, the more shortcuts I take, and the more I go "eh, I don't REALLY need to do a Jool-5 mission", and the less I find myself satisfied with the gameplay. For me, then, it's better to just wrap it up and get ready for the new features.

Is it just me, or is the dev cycle over at Squad starting to sound like a well-oiled machine? I can't believe how fast Experimentals happened for such a big patch!

Thanks It's super comfortable, too. Apparently, the fabric the hoodie is made out of contracts in a weird way when the paint is applied, so my girlfriend had to do the whole thing freestyle by hand, instead of using a stencil.

My girlfriend was unimpressed with the available KSP merch out there, so she took it upon herself to create something for me! The front (and my smiling mug): And the back:

I also used it as a way to dramatically reduce the cost of R&D. I used the PR strategy to max out my reputation (10% from funds to rep, not too difficult), saved up some cash, grabbed a high-paying mission, and then splurged on all the R&D I could. My rep is at -1000 or whatever, but I have a mission that'll give me 3000-4000, so it's not a big deal (assuming I can actually complete it). I play with a ton of mods, so the funds cost for unlocking the tree is way higher than the science cost, so using this swingy strategy in the midgame worked out. Once I got most of the tree unlocked, I canceled Aggressive Negotiations; by then money was no longer an issue.

Patched conics, souposphere, drag model, tiny yet dense planet, etc... There are simplifications and abstractions made to accommodate the fact that this is not a game with a huge budget, being run on supercomputers. Whether those are acceptable abstractions is another discussion entirely, but they do exist, and they do set the tone and feel of the game.

Voted "yes" - I like the idea. It lends itself to more tycoon-style gameplay, and gives a reason for using Kerbals, and even a wider variety of Kerbals to broaden your agency's skillset. The way I see it, the laws of Kerbal physics are already abstracted, and overtures towards realism are sacrificed in the name of gameplay. I'm quite happy with KSP being more of a game and less of a simulator.

I've tried to capture a few large asteroids, and it has always ended in bitter tears. I hear that building your tug to be a puller, rather than a pusher, is a good way to help with the wobbliness... Of course, when I tried this, my engines were too close to the surface of the asteroid, and poof it went

I play career exclusively to have some sense of structure and tangible, game-reinforced goals. In general, I find I get bored just playing in sandboxes with no goals other than "build stuff!" I desperately want KSP's career mode to be better about giving me those goals, because several hundred hours in, just climbing the science tree doesn't do it for me anymore. What I enjoy was planning missions with the technology I had available, looking forward to the next tier of tech, and maximizing my launch windows to get science. That gave me solid objectives and real rewards for my missions, instead of doing things just to do them. Once I have the tree maxed out, I'm basically playing sandbox, and I quickly lose interest and look for more mods to change the flow of my experience in the game. I want to see tangible rewards for executing missions; I lost interest in my .25 career after two part-test contracts netted me 6000 science with the funds-to-science strategy. There's still some joy to be had in unlocking the parts with funds, but what I really want is to get unlockable upgrades (better fuels? more efficient engines? lower dry masses?) or base building that can only be done with rare minerals or something from other planets and moons. Totally unrealistic, I know, since there's nothing out there that we can't get more of easier here on Earth, but my playstyle makes me crave a purpose for my missions other than sightseeing.

Finished the tech tree for KSP Interstellar Lite, and decided to celebrate by taking Jeb, Bill, and Bob out on a little Alcubierre stroll around the system. But then... Looks quite ominous from that angle...

I'd definitely be interested in seeing a documentary on the subject. Like regex said, though, it would need to be an impartial look at the game and its development for it to be interesting - fanservice is great and all, but not what I would pay money to see. What I'm very interested in is the way that the game has influenced learning about physics and orbital mechanics (with some focus on KerbalEdu). I would also be interested in hearing about the interactions with NASA, and what influence on general space awareness that game may have.

This thread is great, since it made me review my entire network, which had all sorts of weird and broken connections Anyways, here's what I'm running for my heavily modded save, including stuff from KSPI-Lite and KW Rocketry. This network (especially the KGN, MOS, and MiOS satellites) was inspired/stolen from this guide. I'm aiming for satellites around at least Duna and Eve as well, but we'll see how long I'm motivated to keep launching dozens of commsats.

That moment when you realize inflatable heat-shields aren't terribly heavy, and your Eve lander probe flips science package-first into a 6000 m/s aerobrake.

On the sun, you say?! Not sure if that's an intended destination for landing or not.

I had a similar idea, and I'm actively working on learning C# (from a distant Java background) to try to implement it. I wanted to add in a few other things, though: Rare resources from other planets/moons, trading depot parts for stations/planetary bases that would then demand those resources (facilitating trade), and the ability to bring raw or machined rare resources back to the KSC for fabulous rewards. I'd love to hook that whole system into a base-building component for the KSC which could really give funds a use in exchange for improved facilities, access to upgraded parts, better antennas, that sort of thing.

FAR drives me nuts. I get impatient on my launches, push too far, cartwheel my rocket and it flies apart. Even my best-designed lifters occasionally cartwheel at 30km two or three times if I'm not paying attention (and those are my SUCCESSFUL launches). NEAR is slightly less frustrating, but just slightly. That said, I like flying in soup even less. I played a bit of stock when .24 came out, and I switched back almost immediately when FAR updated. I love engineering my rockets to need to deal with fairings and interstages, since it feels less goofy, even when launching space station bits and in-situ-assembled interplanetary vessels. Asparagus pancakes aren't for me. I feel a bit like I'm cheating since I don't use KIDS, but to be honest I like the lower dV to orbit requirements, since it keeps the part count down on my lifters.

I thought you were saying there was a collaboration happening between the two modders to combine the mods and my heart skipped a beat. I love using this mod to plan my scientific ventures, but gosh do I wish it had the UI and interactivity that Science Alert has.

Had something strange happen as I tested out the regular Tarsier Space Telescope. I was taking a bunch of pictures of various planets and then transmitting the science data, and each time I would click transmit it would attempt to transmit every picture I had collected so far. So, when I clicked transmit for Kerbin, it sent that; when I clicked send for the Eve picture I took next, it re-sent the original Kerbin picture (for the remaining 2 or 8 or however little science before the transmit cap), then the Eve, etc. This seemed to go on indefinitely - I wound up killing my batteries as I tried to send 6 pictures in a row. I didn't notice anything strange in my logs other than a ton of "Parsing string" "Parsing bool" "Parsing rect", but let me know if that would be helpful for you. I'm running 32bit KSP with a pile of other mods.

I'd also like to see more polish on the existing planets before seeing additional ones. In terms of gameplay, I think the variety of planets offered is plenty as a first pass; there's not much that really jumps out at me as something I sorely miss and would want to be in right away. As a bit of a novice player with only ("only" ) 150-200 hours logged, I still find it pretty challenging to get to other planetary bodies, and that's with a pile of informational mods installed and my second monitor displaying a transfer calculator. This morning I launched a probe into LKO with nearly 12 km/s of delta-v remaining on a mission to fly by Moho and return. Using all the calculators, I was able to get a good trajectory and encounter, hooray. Then, just to see what I could do, I launched another probe with the same configuration to play with maneuver nodes and see where else I could reach - without using the exact angles and timeframes, I couldn't even get close to an encounter. The problem there isn't so much that I couldn't reach it with what I had, which is totally reasonable, it's that there's not really any information on what I needed to do that I could glean from the game itself. tl;dr: If I didn't know anything about phase angles, I'd never reach another planet. I think that needs to be addressed in the stock game before consideration is given to expanding the solar system or galaxy.

I had this same problem. Oddly enough, RealChutes was the culprit. I believe it's been updated to fix this, so you might want to check that out if you have it installed.

Helllo all! I've been playing an unhealthy amount of KSP for the last month or so, and figured it was time to sign up on the forums. When I started playing, I burned through the stock career in a few weeks, and then loaded up on mods for a meatier career mode. I have since been incredibly impressed by the modding community for this game, and that's a big part of why I'm still as hooked now as I was when I first started. That said, I've got a (distant) background in computer science and Java programming, and have recently been taking classes on both Java and C#. I'm not a skilled programmer by any means, but I learn best by having a project that I can work through and teach myself by doing. I'd love to start working on developing mods for KSP (plugin-type stuff, not so much with textures/graphics), so I was hoping some kind kerbalnaut could point me in the right direction to resources for getting started on Unity and KSP plugin development. Thanks