AbacusWizard

Is it true that when the amber light turns on you still have 30 m/s of ∆v left?

This might work well with a simplified version of the kOS programming language.

The biggest problem I have with 0.90 right now is that it frequently--VERY frequently--freezes up (requiring a force-quit) when in the VAB/SPH. Sometimes it takes me an entire day to design a new craft because of all the time wasted on the repeating cycle of freeze, force-quit, re-open.

Reality is insanely difficulty because we use the RSS mod.

Aw, at least give the poor guy a parachute.

As with most questions, it depends on what I'll be doing with it. Is it a satellite that I just need to put in orbit and then forget about? Then just past the atmosphere is fine. Is it a partially assembled massive interplanetary craft that smaller vessels will need to visit? Then I'll put it somewhat higher, maybe 150-300 km up, so the visitors have some room to maneuver. Is it a refueling station for a complete interplanetary craft to dock at between missions? Then it goes much higher than that; no sense dipping further into the gravity well than I have to.

Use of engines and command pods is cheating; REAL kerbalnauts launch themselves in external command seats atop stacks of decouplers!

I'm not entirely sure about this, but it seems like large crafts shaking (especially when composed of several big pieces assembled with docking ports) is a result of SAS. I find that if I turn off SAS, my giant modular tanker doesn't shake... but it does gradually veer towards one direction, which becomes a significant problem for long maneuver burns. The solution I finally found was to use autopilot to point it towards the correct direction for the maneuver, then turn off SAS completely and start it spinning (Q/E) while still pointing in the right direction, then open up the throttle. The spin keeps it pointed in the right direction without any need for SAS. - - - Updated - - - And as Rune pointed out, use as few parts as possible. Kerbodyne tanks can help with this immensely.

What, no Scientist option?

Frankly I'm going to be happy as long as I can send a huge interplanetary ship on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds... and not have to follow up by sending several colossal tankers that are more expensive than the ship itself. Being able to harvest resources and manufacture fuel during the mission will be a magnificent game-changer.

Until we find a monolith on one of them.

I'm in favor of some of both. It's nice to have some level of similarity, both for player familiarity and so that when I tell my real-life friends that I just landed an outpost on Duna I can add "...it's like Mars"... but at the same time, it's great to have unusual things to explore. Also, the fact that Kerbal has two moons gives a lot more early-game variety, and provides a great way to practice transfer orbits... and I find Minmus a lot more fun to land on than Mun anyway.

I would love to have some sort of long-term orbital planning available, probably in the Tracking Center, and this sounds like a great way to do it. I don't want the game to tell me "BTW, transfer window coming up!"; I just want to be able to mess around with maneuver nodes without having to already have a ship there.

Credit where it's due: I got the idea for modular refueling from Arthur C. Clarke's _The_Exploration_of_Space_ (which was written in the 1950s and almost reads like a KSP user manual); he suggests that simply swapping out empty tanks for full ones might be an easier and more practical method of orbital refueling than trying to link up hoses.

I have especially fond memories of the manual for SimCity2000. That wasn't just instructions on how to play the game; it was a fascinating and well-written thesis on architecture, urban planning, and the history and future of City. I used to take it with me to read on long car trips as a kid.

My guess is that the base of the Klaw is filled with hundreds of tiny knomes that pour out into the asteroid when the klaw activates and dig networks of tunnels through the rock so that resources and kerbals can be transferred.

I'd love to see the Kerbals featured in games of a variety of genres, each exploring a different period of Kerbin's history and each with the same level of depth and originality as KSP... build an empire in the early days of civilization, or manage a city during the industrial revolution, or design your own castle and defend it against invaders, or command ship and crew in the age of sail. Any one of those would be fantastic, and an excellent opportunity for Squad to bring their talents to a new arena and show how a particular style of game can be done better than ever before.

A couple of versions ago I made a reasonably large interplanetary ship powered by an ion drive (with tanks of conventional fuel to refuel the landers). It actually worked quite well while it lasted; the only reason I abandoned the idea and switched to atomic rockets was... the tiny xenon tanks. Having to select all of them one by one was a huge pain, and the high part count led to slow performance (especially when I tried to dock with my space station). A larger tank, or even one part representing a cluster of many small tanks, would make this much more feasible on both accounts. - - - Updated - - - One workaround I found for the refueling issue: modular construction. When designing the ion-powered ship, put all the xenon tanks in a cluster on a docking clamp. When it starts to run out of xenon, send up a transport craft carrying a full replacement cluster of identical design. Instead of manually refueling each tank, just detach the empty module and attach the full one. Unfortunately this doesn't fix the issue of slow performance due to too many parts.

I love user manuals for games and I think the industry overall has made a big mistake in abandoning them... but for games of great complexity like Kerbal Space Program (and Dwarf Fortress, for that matter), I think a wiki does work better, simply because of the huge amount of cross-referencing that tends to happen. When I'm looking up information on, say, Ike, I don't just want information on Ike--I want to see its surface gravity, how that compares to the surface gravity of various other worlds, and lists of thrust and ISP of various engines, preferably all simultaneously open in different tabs that I can view side by side.

On that note, I'd love a "Transfer" button on the crew portraits as well. Clicking precisely on the small crew hatch in a large ship can be annoying.

I wouldn't say that looking at the rocket is just eye candy; it provides me with extremely valuable information such as whether any parts have broken off. :-) I would very much like to see staging and fuel information in map view, though. During the later portions of a launch I'm usually watching map view; it's a little annoying that I have to keep switching back to main view to check if I need to activate the next stage yet. - - - Updated - - - Also I think mods like SCANsat provide 2D maps of the planet surface showing the satellite's orbit; it'd be nice if something like that could be integrated into stock.

I don't use Steam, but I have had this problem while using Map View as well... in Map View, pressing Tab switches focus to the next object, and Shift-Tab switches focus to the previous object (very useful for cycling between various planets and moons). This has caused me serious problems in the past when I'm looking over various parts of the map and then suddenly realize I've had my engine turned on for an unplanned ten second burn... Solution: press "." (on the number pad, not the main keyboard) to hide the nav-ball. If the nav-ball is hidden, the game should ignore throttle commands and you can press shift all you want. (I know this works in map view, at least; not sure if it works when not in map view but it's worth a try.)

I recommend Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" during launch and Holst's "The Planets" for landings elsewhere. - - - Updated - - - Specific music for EVA in space and EVA on a surface would be neat too.

I agree. I look at Funds and I see a number telling me how much rocket I can buy; I look at Science and I see a number telling me how much technology I can research; I look at Reputation and I see a color gradient that gives me no information whatsoever.

So I recently designed a modular tanker for long-distance transport of colossal quantities of fuel. The engine module (at the front; it's a pull design rather than a push design) has 16 atomic engines and each fuel module has four large Kerbodyne rocket fuel tanks, assembled in orbit with large docking clamps because it's (in my opinion) way too heavy to launch the whole thing at once. Close-up of fuel module: And here's the fully assembled tanker: The general design of each fuel module's central spindle is like so: [dock] [sAS wheel]* [adapter] [girder] [batteries] [probe core]** [monoprop tank] [girder] [adapter] [sAS wheel]* [dock] * radially linked to each SAS wheel: 4 fuel feed lines; from the aft wheel to the tanks and from the tanks to the fore wheel ** radially attached to the probe core: 4 RTGs, at the end of each of which is a cubic octagonal strut, attached to which is a large Kerbodyne fuel tank The intention here is for fuel to drain from the aft-most tanks first, so that when they are empty I can detach and abandon that module and the remaining modules will still be full of fuel. I assumed that the arrangement of fuel feed lines would mean that the engine module would try to drain fuel from fuel module #1, which would in turn drain fuel from fuel module #2, which would in turn drain fuel from fuel module #3; thus only fuel module #3 would actually lose fuel. I used girders as structural elements because they disallow fuel crossfeed, which I assumed meant that fuel could only flow through the fuel lines. SO HERE'S THE PROBLEM: Fuel isn't draining only from module #3 as I had intended. However, it's also not draining evenly from everything! It's draining evenly from all four tanks of module #3, and from THREE of the four tanks in each of modules #1 and #2! Any idea why this might be, or what I could do in the design phase to make it work like I want it to? At the moment I'm coping by manually transferring fuel out of the aft-most module whenever the total fuel load is low enough to make a difference, but it'd be nice to avoid that next time.